Capitalism is getting obsolete

[ArchangelG]

I have to agree that capitalism is obsolete.

We dont need marketing and advertising anymore. AI will probably replace all that, since it knows much better and more accurately what we want.

[Progress]

@LfcCharlie4 Well the easiest way to balance out corruption is an absolute removal of lobbyist money into politics and perhaps even an outright ban of politicians from owning stocks when they achieve office. I don't think the stock market is the problem, its an extremely efficient economic innovation, I think the problem is the lack of accessibility, ownership and education of it by the average person.

[Progress]

@neutralempty Stability for UBI could easily be gathered through capital gains taxes and the rest an estate tax on this particular portfolio. I never was a fan of direct taxes and more indirect taxes such as VAT not only provide about the same as income taxes but at least gives some choice to the citizen whether they want to pay a tax or not.

*Side note if you noticed now that the tax rate for capital gain(selling stock or getting dividends) is 0% for under $40,000 and the maximum tax rate for any capital gains is actually 20%; you'd notice how the rich get away with paying less taxes, most of their income often come from stocks/dividends and as such their maximum tax rate is 20%. Still for capital gains taxes for capital gains under $40,000 is literally 0% which makes it that much more rewarding when normal people hold stocks. I truly believe having access and owning the market is one of the best ways we can alleviate poverty, it also doesn't require much government interference. 

[Claymoree]

40 minutes ago, Progress said:

@neutralempty Stability for UBI could easily be gathered through capital gains taxes and the rest an estate tax on this particular portfolio. I never was a fan of direct taxes and more indirect taxes such as VAT not only provide about the same as income taxes but at least gives some choice to the citizen whether they want to pay a tax or not.

*Side note if you noticed now that the tax rate for capital gain(selling stock or getting dividends) is 0% for under $40,000 and the maximum tax rate for any capital gains is actually 20%; you'd notice how the rich get away with paying less taxes, most of their income often come from stocks/dividends and as such their maximum tax rate is 20%. Still for capital gains taxes for capital gains under $40,000 is literally 0% which makes it that much more rewarding when normal people hold stocks. I truly believe having access and owning the market is one of the best ways we can alleviate poverty, it also doesn't require much government interference. 

It is all pointless, prices adjust to income, at best  UBI would become some extra income,  there would be need for drastic changes to make UBI actually work, way more then setting up some sum of money that you think is k. 

I truly believe if everyone was getting 1 million a month , 1 million a month would be new poverty line. 

Not saying that there are no thing that can be done, but they have nothing to do with creating systems of earing more. 

Edited December 29, 2020 by Claymoree

[Anderz]

Open source is already a large part of the software industry. And as Ray Kurzweil has said, even physical products are becoming information technology. As I mentioned earlier Kurzweil said that there will be both open source and commercial products and services. But what if as an analogy, open source is like cars and capitalism like the horses a bit over a century ago before cars started to become widely used? Someone mentioned that in New York City they were afraid that horse manure would drown the city. And the side effects of capitalism perhaps can be likened somewhat to the horse manure problem in the past.

 

[LfcCharlie4]

10 hours ago, Progress said:

@LfcCharlie4 Well the easiest way to balance out corruption is an absolute removal of lobbyist money into politics and perhaps even an outright ban of politicians from owning stocks when they achieve office. I don't think the stock market is the problem, its an extremely efficient economic innovation, I think the problem is the lack of accessibility, ownership and education of it by the average person.

 

Yes, this is a brilliant point. 

In a UK based finance book called 'How To Own The World' the author talks about how if the majority of people were financially literate we'd ALL benefit as more companies doing Great work would get the funding they need from a wide array of investors as the majority of people would be investing!

[Anderz]

Aha! I have been thinking of Marxism as Communism and have largely igored looking into it. Now I watched this short video and there is a good point presented which explains the enormous difference in wealth distribution (one of the 'horse manure' side effects of capitalism I mentioned earlier). When a worker produces a product for a company, the worker receives less of the value than the company receives. So there is an inherent and systemic imbalance built into the capitalist system.

The Communist revolution mentioned in the video I think is horrible though. And one expert said that Marxism becomes useful in combination with automation, which is a more peaceful approach forward. Communism is I think even worse than capitalism, such as caricatured in George Orwell's book Animal Farm.

[Anderz]

I now realize that Bill Gates' robot tax idea is bad. Because the imbalance of capitalism is still there. And unhinged automation leads to capitalism on steroids and with the wealth distribution in the world getting even more grotesque and insane, and with Bill Gates and his billionaire buddies on Wall Street getting richer than ever. Not good.

No matter how large the robot tax is it can't reach and go beyond 100% because then capitalism is pointless, so the imbalance of more profit to companies than to the workers will remain. And with the 'workers' becoming robots and artificial intelligence the divide between those who own the production and those who don't will increase to absurd levels with a capitalist system.

[Anderz]

If capitalism has caused such a disastrous wealth inequality, then how can I claim that capitalism has been useful? My view is that capitalism has resulted in great progress on the material level and also lots of creativity and unique developments produced through capitalism. Excellent products and services.

Communism would have been a disaster, producing a bleak society with crappy products and lack of progress. And communism is a form of oppression by a centralized politburo that stifles invention by demanding clunky 10 year plans to be implemented in a mechanical and inflexible manner. Capitalism at least provides more freedom.

My claim is that capitalism has been useful but that it will be detrimental in the future if it continues to dominate. And I actually believe that capitalism will start to weaken as a natural consequence of evolution. The Law of Accelerating Returns shows that evolution is a process for how all of reality progresses and not just for biology but also for technology and for our entire civilization.

[Anderz]

China's hybrid system of communism and capitalism is very successful, but it's also Orwellian. For example I think that China's social credit score system is awful, but I heard that they need that in order to deal with problems in society. So it may be that it's only awful from a western society perspective. Even the alleged human rights violations in China I suspect may just be a smokescreen to fool the western powers, in a kind of reverse psychology psyop way.

So I'm optimistic about the Chinese progress. And I expect to see excellent products and services from China in the coming years. China has been "harvesting" western technology and now their industry is capable of operating on its own, and will soon far exceed the western tech industries I believe.

[Anderz]

For example Amazon is just a box mover and China could easily construct JD facilities around the world and outcompete Amazing within months. Definitely the same thing with Apple, and maybe even Google could be surpassed by Huawei.

One huge blunder the western tech companies have done is to outsource hardware manufacturing to the east. Today most western semiconductor companies are fabless, meaning they lack the capacity to manufacture their own microchips. And one expert said that large microchip manufacturing facilities are needed for successful future research and development of microchips. Being an armchair microchip developer like Apple and even Qualcomm won't cut it. What is needed is what the Chinese manufacturer SMIC is doing with its N+1 and N+2 processes.

And those who believe that China is behind the west in terms of technology have been fooled I suspect. China has spent over trillion dollars on microchip research and development. And it's likely that they wait with playing their strongest cards, while the western tech companies can't afford to do that and have to play their best cards immediately. And one Chinese politician called Taiwan a province, lol, which is probably true, so I expect that China already controls for instance TSMC.

[Anderz]

Then what about Trump's ban of Huawei and other Chinese companies, preventing them from using U.S. manufacturing equipment? I think it just gave China an excuse to cut their dependencies with the U.S. and at the same time save face. So I believe Trump indirectly helped China!

I watched a video (I don't have the link) where Chinese experts discussed how they needed to secure microchip development, including CPUs, and China has been aware of the dangers of dependency on other countries for many years, maybe even for decades. So for example NVIDIA buying Arm, is likely a scenario that China already has prepared for in their long term plan. Evidence for this would for example be that Huawei and/or other Chinese companies start using their own CPU architecture(s) instead of ARM or X86 (Intel) already in 2021 or 2022.

[Progress]

@Claymoree If everyone was getting a million a month, that would require massive inflation, aka printing money. There is no extra inflation in my plan. Prices increase my inflation or by supply/demand. As the infrastructure of the United States has not collapse, I'm sure the economy can balance it out. I think you're confusing outright cash vs owning assets. Owning 1 million of stock which provides a 3-5% dividend gives more real buying power as the money is not only not from inflation but directly from companies which have to generate revenues to provide the dividends. Also UBI in my plan is formed from taxes, not inflation. 

[Progress]

On 12/29/2020 at 6:26 AM, LfcCharlie4 said:

 

Yes, this is a brilliant point. 

In a UK based finance book called 'How To Own The World' the author talks about how if the majority of people were financially literate we'd ALL benefit as more companies doing Great work would get the funding they need from a wide array of investors as the majority of people would be investing!

I subscribe to this ideology wholeheartedly. A financially literate society is a sustainable wealthy society. Everyone benefits from each others financial literacy. The trends are increasing towards financial literacy which means more and more average people benefiting from the fruits of capitalism. From 2019, 10% of the stock market was owned by retail investors and by 2020, it is now 25%. A staggering 150% increase in retail investor's buying power in the stock market in just one year. Why would we dismantle such an efficient economic system when people are just starting to truly benefit from it. The real policies right now should be how we increase citizen's benefiting and owning the economic system. 

[Claymoree]

1 hour ago, Progress said:

I subscribe to this ideology wholeheartedly. A financially literate society is a sustainable wealthy society. Everyone benefits from each others financial literacy. The trends are increasing towards financial literacy which means more and more average people benefiting from the fruits of capitalism. From 2019, 10% of the stock market was owned by retail investors and by 2020, it is now 25%. A staggering 150% increase in retail investor's buying power in the stock market in just one year. Why would we dismantle such an efficient economic system when people are just starting to truly benefit from it. The real policies right now should be how we increase citizen's benefiting and owning the economic system. 

Because it probably can't work, you have to assume that stock market is risk free, but it is not, you can lose all, or huge part of your investment that you spent years to accumulate in one go, even if you are financially literate.

Idea is not bad to shake up imbalance on amount of people who hold wealth, but as further we dive into it more problems show up , it is like another idealistic idea , expecting perfection that in practice is very unlikely to give outcome as expected. 

I strongly agree about financially literate society though, less corruption as more people to call it out and more room or improvement. 

 

[Anderz]

Hmm... The presenter in this video pointed out a problem with universal basic income (UBI). A UBI will just keep the failing capitalist system going for a bit longer. That's a valid point. And automation in a capitalist system will make the wealth inequality much worse than it already is.

The Chinese capitalist model is scary, because it's Orwellian with massive control and surveillance systems. The Chinese model however may be able to deal with automation since the government can control companies and still allow fierce market competition to make good products and services and to keep the prices down.

What may happen I speculate is a Hegelian dialectic scenario where western capitalism is the 1) thesis, the Chinese model the 2) antithesis, and the solution emerging out of both is the 3) synthesis.

Quote

"Hegelian dialectic, usually presented in a threefold manner, was stated by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus[27] as comprising three dialectical stages of development: a thesis, giving rise to its reaction; an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis; and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis." - Wikipedia

 

[Anderz]

Here I found another interesting video (from my self-biased perspective ). I think the scenario where money is no longer needed will happen relatively soon historically speaking due to accelerating technological progress, but my guess is that it will still take two decades before it happens.

 

[Anderz]

I don't know much about world politics or the situation in countries around the world, but the picture often presented in western media of China as a communist dictatorship is misleading I suspect. The west will refuse to adopt the Chinese system I think, but I expect there to be an increased global integration in which China will play a pivotal role. Here is a recent deal between the EU and China:

Quote

"China's president and European leaders met Wednesday to mark their agreement on an investment deal between the European Union and China despite a request for talks on the issue by the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron joined EU leaders Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel in a video conference to conclude negotiations over the deal, which removes a number of barriers to European companies' investment in China." - NPR, Dec 30, 2020

And China is more progressive than one might believe. For example plastic bags are removed in Beijing to save the environment.

And China has done a tremendous job of reducing poverty in the country, and continues to do so.

Unregulated capitalism is unlikely to remove poverty and more likely increase the wealth inequality. And too heavy regulation of the free market leads to inefficiencies. China's capitalist model is more successful than both capitalism and socialism. One problem is the Orwellian control. A possible solution for a global system is an integration of China and the west. Capitalism will then still play a large role but it will become obsolete as the dominating force for production of goods and services.

[Claymoree]

Lets see, for now I think of China capitalism  boost was  thanks to ties with western countries, or rather their use of it,  I do not  see anything significant about it in any area that other countries should learn of. 

[Anderz]

@Claymoree Yes, I wrote somewhere that China has "harvested" western technologies. My guess is that China ironically is very conservative with thousands of years of political experience. And to progress requires innovation which China because of its immense historical legacy has had problem with I think. So they have looked at what western countries have invented, and copied it. And now they are building on that foundation. And very efficiently!

And because of China's vast history they know how to cleverly play the game. In terms of political and business manipulation they can run circles around the western powers. So what I believe will happen in the next few years is an amazing technological development in China. Here is one example: