Capitalism is getting obsolete

[Anderz]

Capitalims has been useful for the development of our human civilization. Competition is efficient and capitalism can even incorporate cooperation. Today however capitalism is starting to look more and more outdated. As information technology improves at an accelerating rate, using money as a means of social interaction is showing signs of the limitations of capitalism.

I think nonintrusive advertisement is fine. What has happened in reality is a lot of intrusive ads. For example a video on the internet interrupted and/or delayed by ads running before, within and after the video. What is the incentive here? Is it to produce and deliver a good video or is it to make money? More often than not these are opposite and conflicting interests and incentives making the result a Frankensteinish and schizophrenic mix.

And people posting on say Facebook for money, that's basically already a big no-no and is considered dirty. Imagine if people on this forum would earn money for successful and popular posts. Would that improve the quality of the forum? I doubt that. Instead I believe it would degrade the forum and introduce extra hassle for dealing with money.

In short, money is beginning  to become more of an obstacle; an obsolete middleman function in society. Of course in practice we will still need to use money in society for decades to come, but as Ray Kurzweil has shown, progress of information technology is exponential and even physical products will become information technology, he says. And price/performance is improving exponentially too so products and services will become dirt cheap which further reduces the need for capitalism.

[Anderz]

Another thing capitalism has done historically is to make people keep business secrets and fight each other in court and even outside the law. From a really big perspective, this has actually been a good thing! Why? Because it has forced people to come up with unique and creative solutions to compete with successful business secrets.

I argue that even this good aspect of capitalism is coming to an end. My current view is that our civilization has already reached the level of uniqueness needed and that capitalism even in this regard is getting obsolete.

[Claymoree]

My friend capitalism is about mindset, not that much about system, system changes with time. 

I do not see any signs of capitalism going away, 

 

[Anderz]

@Claymoree I think it can be seen as content vs structure. The capitalist mindset is both structure and content. I think that the structure will change and taking the content away with it. When making money becomes irrelevant for survival we will see a radical change in how people think about capitalism.

 

[Anderz]

Capitalism has a huge momentum and society has large inertia. So I expect capitalism to remain strong for several decades, but exponential progress of information technology is as Ray Kurzweil said inexorable, so within a few decades from today much will have changed. Kurzweil said that there will be a both/and scenario with both open source and commercial products and services. That's a new layer of competition! I think that will be excellent and capitalism is then only getting obsolete as the dominant method for production.

An even bigger perspective is that evolution is all of reality progressing as a wholeness. Marianne Williamson said that "a tsunami of automation is coming to America". I think she learned that from Andrew Yang. And COVID-19 can be seen as a part of the overall evolution of reality instead of just a random event. And stimulus packages are a precursor to more widespread so-called helicopter money, such as universal basic income (UBI). Those are to me signs of capitalism starting to lose its dominance.

Capitalism has served a useful purpose. Capitalism has caused a trend towards mass markets. Bigger companies buy smaller companies in order to grow and to remove competition. And the majority of markets thereby becomes a question about how many consumers can be reached, how large your customer base is. Even this is something good seen from a big perspective. It has caused society to form a common platform of interests. It has acted a glue to make society as whole more cohesive. It would be confusing to have for example millions of different brands of automobiles. But even this useful aspect of capitalism is getting obsolete or at least reduced. We have reached a point in history where the mass markets are already established and mature. Without mass markets the production of goods and services would in the past have been much less efficient. Now automation and things like 3D printing are starting to reduce the need for mass markets.

[Anderz]

Another huge change I see on the horizon is the introduction of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). China is already testing its new digital currency DCEP (e-yuan). Contrary to popular belief, money today is overwhelmingly created by commercial banks. What governments and central banks do has less influence than it usually is portrayed in media. With CBDCs governments will gain power over the control and creation of money. This means a massive lessening of the power of capitalism.

[Preety_India]

Who knew?

 

[Leo Gura]

Remember, capitalism is not just gonna go away. Whatever comes after it will build on top of it. The foundations of capitalism are too successful to ever completely go away. They will just evolve.

Modern society is far too dependent on giant corporations today to get rid of them. So you need to find ways to run giant corporations in more democratic and equitable ways. But you can't eliminate them.

[DocWatts]

The challenge is to find a system that retains the good parts of capitalism, namely its marked success in generating wealth and fostering innovation, while transcending its limitations - its inability to deal with externalities such as Climate Change, and the distribution problem where its gains are shared so unequally that it begins to distort Democracy and threaten the stability of the whole system. Transcend, and include...

Social Democracy, Market Socialism, and a Resource Based Economy are all possible outgrowths of Capitalism that fix some of its associated problems, but whatever system ends up supplanting it will need to be adopted gradually, rather than being imposed in short order; social revolutions have a bad track record of actually making life better for people living under it.

I could see the United States transitioning to the beginnings of a Social Democracy over the course of my life, as it seems like the next logical step from where we're at right now, but anything beyond that is just speculation...

 

[No Self]

The main issue with present day capitalism seems to be the emergence of younger generations who will never be able to attain a basic standard of secure living no matter how hard they work. Conversely, the billionaire class cannot help but rake in more billions no matter what they do. This takes us dangerously close to the monopoly of power held by aristocracies or communist governments of bygone centuries, all of which were ultimately failed societies.

[Leo Gura]

Many problems with capitalism could simply be fixed by passing a few rock solid laws.

• No ownership of stock without being employed by the company
• No corporate lobbying
• No corporate political contributions
• No buying of other big corporations by big corporations
• Salary caps for executives and management
• No arbitration clauses in contracts
• No criminal liability protections for executives
• No off-shore tax havens and corp tax loopholes
• All employees get representation on corporate board
• All employees get profit sharing
• Higher taxes on successful wealthy corporations
• Strict environmental regulations
• Severe fines for corporate fraud or mismanagement

Simple laws like that, when rigorously enforced, would fix many problems.

These laws are not that difficult to make work. It's just almost impossible to pass them in Congress.

[captainamerica]

19 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Many problems with capitalism could simply be fixed by passing a few rock solid laws.

• No ownership of stock without being employed by the company
• No corporate lobbying
• No corporate political contributions
• No buying of other big corporations by big corporations
• Salary caps for executives and management
• No arbitration clauses in contracts
• No criminal liability protections for executives
• No off-shore tax havens and corp tax loopholes
• All employees get representation on corporate board
• All employees get profit sharing
• Higher taxes on successful wealthy corporations
• Strict environmental regulations
• Severe fines for corporate fraud or mismanagement

Simple laws like that, when rigorously enforced, would fix many problems.

These laws are not that difficult to make work. It's just almost impossible to pass them in Congress.

200 Years then.

Edited December 22, 2020 by captainamerica

[Joel3102]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

 

• No ownership of stock without being employed by the company.

That’s extremely radical. How are companies supposed to raise capital then? 

Also disallowing average people to make investments if they wish

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, Joel3102 said:

That’s extremely radical. How are companies supposed to raise capital then? 

Also disallowing average people to make investments if they wish

Yeah, it's radical. Some kind of alternative to Wall Street needs to be invented.

The whole point is to break up the consolidation of capital in the hands of a few elites. There need to be systems and laws that push capital downward to average people. One such principle might be that if you leave the company, you lose most of your stock to the guy who replaces you, and holding stock pays automatic dividends if your company makes profit, but only if you work within the company. As soon as you leave, the guy who takes your position gets it.

Passive sources of income need to be gradually eliminated. All passive income comes off the back of wage slaves.

[Joel3102]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

Yeah, it's radical. Some kind of alternative to Wall Street needs to be invented.

Have you thought through the economic implications of this? A blanket ban on public investment would crash the economy. And where are people supposed their extra savings for retirement..?

[Leo Gura]

3 minutes ago, Joel3102 said:

Have you thought through the economic implications of this? A blanket ban on public investment would crash the economy. And where are people supposed their extra savings for retirement..?

It would not be a blanket ban. It would be gradually phased in over decades and you wouldn't lose all of your stock, maybe some percentage. This percentage could phase in.

We could start with simple law that gives 5% of your stock to your replacement if you leave your company. Nothing would collapse this way. This would encourage managers and executives to actually care about the long-term success of their companies.

[Leo Gura]

12 minutes ago, Joel3102 said:

And where are people supposed their extra savings for retirement..?

That's like saying, "And where are white people supposed to get their cotton?"

Go pick it yourself you lazy fuck

You will earn a lot more under my system because during your entire lifetime of work you will be getting dividends from the company you work for. By being an employee you will automatically be vested in the stock market. So you won't need a 401k. All you'll need is a savings account to hold your earnings.

Imagine if every Walmart employee -- even the cashiers and janitors -- earned dividends for every year they worked at Walmart. That would be a just system and they would be a lot richer. Working at Walmart would be a lot more enjoyable.

[Value]

@Leo Gura

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Many problems with capitalism could simply be fixed by passing a few rock solid laws.

• No ownership of stock without being employed by the company
• No corporate lobbying
• No corporate political contributions
• No buying of other big corporations by big corporations
• Salary caps for executives and management
• No arbitration clauses in contracts
• No criminal liability protections for executives
• No off-shore tax havens and corp tax loopholes
• All employees get representation on corporate board
• All employees get profit sharing
• Higher taxes on successful wealthy corporations
• Strict environmental regulations
• Severe fines for corporate fraud or mismanagement

Simple laws like that, when rigorously enforced, would fix many problems.

These laws are not that difficult to make work. It's just almost impossible to pass them in Congress.

Do you think these laws will be implemented in the future?

[Leo Gura]

1 minute ago, Value said:

@Leo Gura

Do you think these laws will be implemented in the future?

Almost certainly. It's just a question of time.

[Joel3102]

8 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

That's like saying, "And where are white people supposed to get their cotton?"

Go pick it yourself you lazy fuck

You will earn a lot more under my system because during your entire lifetime of work you will be getting dividends from the company you work for. By being an employee you will automatically be vested in the stock market. So you won't need a 401k. All you'll need is a savings account to hold your earnings.

Imagine if every Walmart employee -- even the cashiers and janitors -- earned dividends for every year they worked at Walmart. That would be a just system and they would be a lot richer. Working at Walmart would be a lot more enjoyable.

I don’t entirely disagree that all employees could get some stock or dividends to share in the profit.

But if your life savings are invested in one stock and it crashes you’re kinda fucked....the good thing about a 401k diversified portfolio is it mitigates for risk