But the profit motive makes entrepreneurs responsive to basic needs. It creates a feedback mechanism such that when needs change the supplier adapts to satisfy the new needs. New products and services are created in response. If the profit motive is removed, the new needs do not have to be identified or satisfied …quickly or at all.
The hard core capitalists say that socialism is already in place in the US and elsewhere and that’s what is producing failure.
And it can go right on responding to new needs. I don’t care about that. It’s basic needs I’m concerned with. If Capitalism responds to new needs, that’s just extra. But basic needs are what we have to have in order to exist: food, shelter, and healthcare. And as long as we have to turn to Capitalism for those, we are slaves. The rest is just excess which Capitalism can have.
These are just false dichotomies - basic need and extra need. Old/existing need and new need.
Look at shelter. Populations grow and decline, people move around. During growth, ‘new’ shelter has to be constructed. Who will build it? Profit or non-profit builders?
Look at food. Is ‘basic’ food some ration of bread and water? Can someone supplying lobsters make a profit or is access to lobsters also basic food?
Is the profit factor to be removed from all aspects of food production and distribution? Growing food, transportation of food, preparation and selling food would all be non-profit? You could not even make a sandwich and sell it without a government agency checking how much you profited?
Good point. The profit motive has pre industrial, pre so called capitalistic origins. In feudal times, farmers would go to market to sell their produce, and of course they made a profit. The profit motive is not an invention of ideology,it an inherent part of human nature.
D63 and obe, when it comes to the issue of capitalism; I just want to say that I neither advocate any economic or political system, nor do I wish to make an argument against anyone specifically. Let me repeat what I said in my post on the morning of the 20th:
If I were to discuss these matters in a more hypothetical way, outside of my personal concerns, it would only be in the context of what systems and policies I would assume would be best for the world’s stability. Or, perhaps, in the context of what systems and policies would actually potentially improve the world - but only in the long run, such as the next hundred or more years.
I assumed you were claiming to be altruistic because it seemed you wished to do your part in helping society. If you had absolute power, as if you were a god, and could change the world to be the way you want it to be, and you got rid of all pain, then I would understand the argument that you would have done so selfishly, so that you would no longer have to worry about this contrast between you luck in being happy and other misery. But, I don’t understand how you would think you are more than a part of the solution, in which case your actions aren’t going to be the sole cause of the end of suffering. Of course that is assuming that suffering can be ended, which is another matter entirely.
My implication in my earlier post was that many modern first world people don’t live a life of suffering, and the liberal minded of them (which likely includes the majority of Americans who consider themselves conservative) like to think that by being kind or giving back to those who are outspoken yet polite is all that is needed, ignoring those who quietly suffer. When I said:
I didn’t mean to imply that I believed people must suffer to become a better person (not to say that I don’t believe that, it’s just that the philosophical issue of how suffering and nobility interrelate is another matter entirely). What I was implying is that when one is happy it is always at the expense of another, and if that happy person did not have to develop emotion calluses to continue living life in such a way - happy through them misery of others - it is because they have managed to delude themselves (or be deluded) into thinking that their happiness isn’t at the expense of others.
All that is necessary for this form of delusion is either ignorance of the world, or an ideological way of discounting the ignorance of the world. For the liberal that I was referring to in the above quote: Firstly, he doesn’t have to see those who are suffering regularly and he, for the vast majority of the time, doesn’t have to see the means in which his happiness is at the cost of others - therefore the ignorance. Secondly, because he is told that by holding onto liberal ideology and making very unsacrificial efforts towards the supposed benefit of others, he is absolved from blame - the ideology.
Historically a different form of delusion was common: Firstly, unlike the modern liberal this deluded person, while doing well, did see the suffering of those around him - for example take any large city two or three hundred years ago, on the way to different parts of the city one with money usually couldn’t help but pass by people obviously deathly ill or starving with ribs showing. But, he was always told not to associate with poor people, and told they were lower forms of life and deserved their lot, so sympathy could never develop.
All wild animals must develop certain features that most people in the first world do not, but I wouldn’t say that wild animals develop emotional calluses, or at least not in the way that unsheltered people do. Maybe animals experience fear, isolation as such, but I doubt they experience sympathy. The sheltered person doesn’t necessarily avoid sympathy, but what they do avoid is the constant necessity to turn away from those for which they are sympathetic towards and look after themselves or those they already have an obligation to.
This is well written and will take a look at it Stuart, and respond to it forthwith in the near future.
However a very brief summary, philosopher that I am, the adage occurs to me:
If your are part of the problem how can you be part of the solution? But later!
Sorry, Phyllo and Obe, but there is a big difference between food, shelter, and healthcare which we need to survive and the lastest and greatest technology which we don’t. And how are non-profit builders any less capable of building a shelter than for profit ones? This is just common sense.
And your resorting to a really loose application of a false dichotomy. It generally applies when someone is arguing an either/or situation that actually involves a spectrum. For instance: the argument that unless we concede to pure Capitalism, we can only be conceding to pure socialism such as that practiced in Soviet Russia. On the other hand, there is a clear distinction between the deprivation of basic needs and making sure that people, no matter what their circumstances, have a basic level of comfort. It is the clear difference between having the luxury of being able to risk failure and living in the do or die form of Capitalism we are dealing with now.
This, for instance, is why European countries are (or were) more willing to take the risk of free trade agreements because they knew at the time that even if it did affect them, they still had a strong social support to fall back on.
And this notion that the private sphere is somehow more qualified to provide for basic needs than the public sphere is unsubstantiated nonsense. There is absolutely no proof for it outside isolated mistakes made by the public sphere. Why would a college educated public official be any less qualified to to deal with matters than a corporate CEO?
Now, I can go with you to the extent that people have survived before without shelter or healthcare. But history has pretty much established that chance being a major factor in such a circumstance, the life expectancy and level of comfort is likely to be far lower than that promised by Capitalism. The application of the false dichotomy to food is just… well, any argument for it can only come off as manipulation and always has.
What we are talking about here is a basic level of comfort which Capitalism has, time and time again, proven to be incapable of guaranteeing.
The problem with this argument is that it is usually made by people who haven’t the slightest clue about what it is to live without food, shelter, or healthcare -even though they, pumped up on Nietzsche, fancy themselves perfectly ready for it. So it becomes too easy to make such nonchalant applications of abstractions while sitting in an environmentally controlled room behind a computer.
I would also note the subtle deferral to the authority of the natural involved here in that the argument seems to be based on the erroneous notion that Capitalism, given its mimicking of natural forces, is the only only natural means by which food, shelter, and healthcare can be efficiently provided -that is when every other western industrialized nation has proven that to be an utter falsehood.
I’ll address some of your points later when I have more time.
Right now I’m a bit confused. In this system you envision, some government agency guarantees food, shelter and healthcare to everyone…right?
Is an industrial farm which supplies some of this food allowed to make a profit or is it required to sell at cost to the agency?
Ibid here: just for starters though, Sweden can afford it’s social safety net, but look at their immigration policy/enforcement,and requirements, it really is like comparing apples and oranges in social welfare. We have porous borders, conflicting and hypocritical border enforcement, and a corrupt welfare system. In addition a complicated and deceptive drug commerce via criminal enterprise.
Plus USA is burdened by a mental health/homeless crisis of unheard of proportions, and we are just getting out of a recession. The math doesn’t add up. Sweden, put forward as the ideal social service paradigm, really is no basis for comparison. The US has the world’s 4th largest world population, I believe.
And I’ll address your point right now:
Why would making a profit even be an issue?
I’m a bit confused as well.
I’m confused as to how an agency that doesn’t seek profit cannot provide a service at at a cheaper price than an agency that does:
it’s right within the logic of Capitalism,
Phyllo: you’re full of shit. You’re a moron. And I have no sympathy for you.
I would rather get kicked off of this board pointing that out to you than act like you have anything near the status I give to people I like .
Obe: you gonna fall into the prick position of acting like Capitalism is the end all of all solutions. Because I will turn on you as as well. Go ahead and ride on what seems like the pop thing to do. But I have no problem with destroying you as well.
Capitalism, given the philosophical result of it, will be the end of it all.
Fuck you, Obe!
I mean it: go fuck yourself.
You followed the popular way.
I would rather get kicked off this board(
than suck the dick of the Capitalism that supports it(
I would rather be free than a bitch…
Obe, you feel like a bitch to me now:
it’s like you’ll go where the action is.
I’m really disappointed in you right now.
But do what you gotta do brother…
Obe:
Kneel and suck the dick of Capitalism if you want to.
I just think I’m better than that.
Obe,
You have no ideal how watching you connive your way through this has changed the way I feel about you,
do you?
I would prefer to stand alone and that you stick to the in crowd you seem to be comfortable with.
How do I know who to love?
That is when everyone wants to be part of an in crowd?
Hey d63: what the heck? I never said I embrace capitalism. Look what it has caused people endure. I made a comparison with sweden, which holds up an exemplary social welfare system, great britain has. No problem with socialized medicine, so on.
Capitalism stinks to the core in the unlimited form.
What is wrong with the view that both systems can merge and afford a better system where there remain no man without the minimum needs you are describing? This country has wealth enough, and innovation enough to afford it. Even under a trillion dollar per annum military outlay, and another trillion or so for social security and medicare, —remember bucky fuller’s geocentric domes? They could mass produce that, subsidize it, and build affordable housing for all disadvantaged, at very low cost. Grant some parkland, and everybody would have a stake.
The projects are not working, because of geographic and equal opportunity employment issues, but technology here is up to it, it would not depress the housing market either, because they would be single unit affairs. It would take 10 times the effort Lyndon Johnston made with his projects with great society, but then, all it would take is someone to stand up.
I still don’t know how you formed your opinion on the little we started with schizoanalysis, and obviously, you assumed I was an either for it or against it guy.
I tried to portray where I am coming from as having full knowledge and experience of where pure unadulterated capitalism can lead, but i am not that, I would like to see a combination of both systems, and this my be going on whether we like it see it or appreciate it. The middle class has lost it’s bottom rung, and it’s merging with the upper regions of the totally disadvantageous. If capitalism goes, there goes opportunities in the private sector.
I am just skeptical that’s all, remembering cliches and ideologies masked in soothing sounding phrases- social democrat. Now what the heck was that? It was a misuse of words. It was fascism from the get go.
When ideologies collide, as some claim that is happening now with the apparent failure of the so called arab spring, things get touchy. Cultures and ideologies are hard wired, whereas other things appearing on the horizon are like soft ware that may or may not work. I am not the only one who is skeptical, I think the skeptics vastly outnumber the ones who have absolute faith in ideological transformation.
What I believe d63 is, that basic needs satisfied, what is really needed is adapting to minimal values, and being able to build up an economy of least waste, maximum utilization or resources geared toward the consumption of most, and guaranteeing them to end endless suffering.
The nationalization of privately held property simply has not worked, because the political leaders without exception will become the new capitalists. Oh yeah, it starts off innocently enough, but the profits always end up in the leadership’s hands.
Human nature d63… There is no exist sartre said, who dropped communism as the basis for existentialism, in 1956, when he witnessed what happened to Hungary, overrun by the red army, tanks shooting at civilians. The patriot prime minister at the time , Imre Nagy who was with the people all through it, was hanged disgracefully in a public hall.
The only type of socialism which has successfully survived to this day, was Sweden, which. Is a mixed economy.
Maybe I am saying redundencies, expressing long echoing ,almost forgotten songs of liberty and fraternity, how well these sounded back in the 18 th century, when the french version of democracy got it’s jump start.
However, sartre could see not exist, by the 20th century, a mere 200 years past and back to gross dissatisfaction.
Look really nothing bothers me as much as misunderstanding via miscommunication have held up as a Kantian, before reading the existentialists, I too suffered a great deal, into which I am not prepared to go into, and as a result of seeking the very exist that sartre saw unavoidable, I do not go with the crowd, I do not want to get stuck on genet’s hall of mirrors on some god forsaken balcony, but am looking for way to utilize the french symbolism/existentialism, because it has become a lifeblood, and look into the postmodern, with the tools I have, and the tools I am yet to learn,albeit at my snails pace, and try to come to terms with my self and my fellow man.
Forgive me, I struck a wrong chord, and have yourself a great evening.
It hurt, Obe:
why did you kiss their ass?