David Hare-Scott wrote:
songbird wrote:
Do you acknowledge that capitalism produces unacceptible
outcomes if growth is not maintained?

no. i think deflation or steady state on prices
is as preferable to some people as inflation is to
others. i think the policy of pushing the system
to have some inflation is actually destructive in
the long term, but the governments/social tinkerers
at present like to hide all sorts of inefficiencies
by using this. also it is a transfer of wealth
indirectly (not very efficiently either) from savers
to debtors (usually this means from the elderly to
the young).


Show me where there has been zero growth or contraction under capitalism for
any length of time. Now tell me what the unemployment was like then. That
is the boogy man the financial controllers and leaders are all scared of.

i'm not able to do that research at the
moment, i'll put it on my list for this
winter (along with Capitalism/Marxism and
other related topics). i have a general
recollection of periods of time in the late
1880s where the uSoA had a poor economy
and some recessions and deflation, but i
wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't find
reasons to object to those examples (not
suitably industrial enough, or poor labor
statistics or no statistics at all).

i think periods of the Great Depression
were deflationary and the unemployment numbers
didn't change that much (the damage had already
been done), towards the end, i just have no
stats on hand here and i'm not interested in
that kind of research ATM. i'm more interested
in sustainable agriculture/gardening topics and
the related sciences...


the crap results are crap because the system is crap
front loaded from the start. garbage in, garbage out.


There is much more to it than weak businesses going under in bad
times. But let's stick to the point.

that capitalism requires profit? well how many
times can i disagree with that as it's pretty clear
to me that the system doesn't magically stop when
companies go non-profit or have a bad year. even in
the worst parts of the Great Depression there were
still companies in business, there were still people
buying and selling things. it really wasn't a problem
of capitalism, but many failed policies and the lack
of banking regulations. then about 80 years later we
ignored the lesson and made banking regulations too
lax and once again the economy took a severe hit,
but in that mess there were a lot of opportunities
for the smart person willing to take risks.


Sounds to me that you are not a true blue free market capitalist at all.

no as i find slavery deplorable, a true blue free
market capitalist says all is market and all vices/sins
are possible/exploitable and taxable. sometimes i
find that leaning appealing as then the government
can be turned into a more taxed approach to where
all is permitted but it is taxed more highly as the
evidence of damage accumulates. so the actual cost
to those not involved in the practice is isolated or
even the wider population has a better or improved
life because the few who insist on the more damaging
approaches to life pay a disproportionate tax. so
they are used to advance society as they destroy
themselves. unfortunately, taxes rarely go for
programs they are intended to (c.f. the lotto or
tobacco settlement monies).


You want it reined in. If it is a naturally correcting system then why is
this necessary?

i want it changed to reflect the costs of
pollution and the depletion or destruction of
resources. that is just encouraging the system
to reflect the true costs so that it can work
better at eliminating them.

it does not "correct itself" by direct
fiddling, it changes by getting a large
enough group of individuals (who make up
the market) to change their actions. the
government plays catchup most of the time.
rarely are they out front in terms of
policies. climate change being a large
example in point.

given a free market i can invest in
companies which do what i want (for the
most part) and if i can convince enough
others to shift their decisions in a
similar manner then i can drive up the
financing costs for companies which
don't do things as i'd like. the more
accurately i can make a polluting company
reflect the damage the more likely it
will change ways. make the cost high
enough and it can't continue and we get
a market response to a societal value
completely apart from any governmental
lack of decisions on pollution (this is
pretty much what is happening now, but
it is a slow process).

the companies already ahead of the
shift are those that reap the rewards as
the value of what they are doing is
recognised.


Because the ways that capitalism does its corrections if left unattended are
not acceptable to you.

it's not capitalism which does the corrections
it is the sum result of the decisions of the
market participants. so the market reflects the
values of the people in various (and conflicting
ways). if i were a dictator i could eliminate a
lot of noise and wasted energy, but like you say
i'd be lynched so what's the point of such a
game other than kicking around ideas trying to
find a better way.

my own ideas of a better way leaves capital
markets in place, but forces all costs of pollution
or lack of recycling and destruction or depletion
of resources to be built into the taxes and prices
of products (also allows for wild spaces and taxes
to refurbish damaged areas, demolition of unused
buildings and replanting with trees or other suitable
species). if you manufacture an item, it comes with
a built in recycling fee and a pollution fee (which
gets adjusted as more information becomes known, as
pollution improves, etc). also all products sold
are returnable to the manufacturer (as long as they
are in business (for no additional fee), once they
go under then the recycling is covered by a more
general tax). this way electric cars could be put
into use more quickly and the recharging done with
wind/solar energy as much as possible. getting off
the fossil fuel burning route is critical right now.
adding a carbon tax above the damage rate (so that
CO2 remediation and removal projects can be funded
and gotten going).

so yes, not at all a free market person as i would
also rewrite chunks of the US constitution and make
other changes to many laws i find wasteful along
with many subsidies which damage the environment
or topsoil (and increased enforcement of violations
and remediations).


You also point out that the controls that are used
are not always effective. Wouldn't it be simpler just to admit that the
system is broken?

i don't claim it functions perfectly. so yes,
that means it is broken in various ways. some
ways i find pretty horrible (that a few people
could cause wars that cost trillions of dollars
and kill thousands). i'd put the bill for those
at the feet of those who carried it out not the
wider population or future generations.

i'd also redo much of government as wasted
or damaging (river management is clearly destroying
environment and groundwater along with topsoil
depletion, we should be encouraging farmers to
not put in yet more drainage (as that turns the
ground water into the streams/rivers even faster
leading to ground water pollution being even more
concentrated or worse in terms of pollution from
runoff). there are a huge number of changes that
could be done right now that pay off over the
long term. most of them shift labor from meaningless
paper shuffling to actually doing something which
helps restore species habitat and preserves topsoil.
even simple stuff like cleaning up vacant lots,
tearing down abandoned houses and getting the
areas replanted with a variety of suitable species
turns the land into a better climate for good
things and reduces the negative impression and
crimes around abandoned buildings. get that
done sooner and we have an actual carbon sink
being created as the trees get larger. it
doesn't take long for a tree to be a net carbon
sink. later harvest those trees and turn them
into furniture or buildings for the poor and
then the carbon gets locked up even longer
(as compared to if it were used as fuel for
heating or cooking or...).


values will
change as resources become more limited. that's
the nature of the beast. prices rise as supply
becomes limited. people either produce their
own (food, water, etc.) or conserve or find other
sources. what drives the whole system is the
many individual choices made, how they add up.
when we start bumping up against hard limits
like fresh water and food supply then people
will start valuing water conservation and not
wasting so much food. this type of gradual shift
is already happening and will continue to happen.

There are three things wrong with this:

1) The assumption that market forces will eventually result in a
satisfactory new equilibrium

no, i only claim the system keeps working. it is a
dynamic system that also has many conflicting forces
just like there are many different actors with varying
degrees of influence.

i suspect the future is going to be full of many
unsatisfied people. we're not a species geared towards
contentment. it's not a skill that is taught, valued
or explored by many. i think i've done fairly well on
that count though, perhaps others can learn from what
i'm doing...


This is a blue-sky imagination product. Either you have to show that
capitalism with zero growth will continue without ultrahigh
unemployment or that a new system that doesn't produce unemployment
with zero growth will evolve. You have done neither.

i think you ignore the fact that for the most part
actual production of real things is a very minor part
of capitalism these days. i.e. the values have already
shifted. most people could be considered unemployed or
under-employed because most of what they do is shuffle
information, provide entertainment to others, they
really aren't producing tangible things.

You are confused between the level of employment in a business sector and
the resources it demands. Despite the swing from large employment in
agriculture, then industry and now information and services all those
workers who don't actually produce material goods still want them.

and if the market reflected the true costs of
having them i couldn't even object. it just means
the future society has a much better chance of
living a similar good life if we switch from
destructive non-recycled production methods to
more sustainable ones.


The
mechanisation of agriculture and industry have if anything added to the
material resource requirements of the economy.

well sure as fossil fuels are behind a large portion
of it. if the costs of all of that CO2 (and the damage
it is causing already with much of the future damages also
built in) were included in the taxes for such products
then those material costs would reflect reality (unlike
as you say it has decoupled currently). the thing is
that reality will get it's due.


2) The assumption that the transition will be gradual and orderly

i don't make that claim either. i've been a student of
the markets and history to know better. the only argument
i'm making is that the system continues to function without
growth. we've had many periods of deflation or stagnation
and in those cases the markets worked, people bought and
sold things and the world did not end. yes, it hurt some
people and was painful, but that doesn't show that the
system didn't function. what it did show is that people
don't normally have any long-term thinking for retirement
or very much discipline when it comes to savings and
investing.


What you define as 'continue to function' would result in such social costs
that no politician who wants to stay in office would say the situation was
satisfactory. I would be the same as I wouldn't want to be lynched by an
unemployed mob either.

yet for some strange reason politicians continue
to be elected and unlynched even now in most
modern capitalistish societies. my changes would
be to eliminate popular elections/campaigns along
with pretty close monitoring of money going to
representatives (regular audits of them and their
contacts to detect any funny changes in income or
savings or offshore accounts). but that's even
further afield...


3) The assumption that it will happen soon enough to allow orderly
transition away from dependence on diminishing resources.

We see as plain as day with the climate change issue people will
stick to the old ways until the bitter end. They will not prepare
in time for a new future. They will waste time, deny, continue to
exploit limited resources until the last. The concept of finite
resources that limit growth and require a whole new way of thinking
is not one that people want to believe - therefore they don't -
therefore they will not prepare for it.

no, there is no assumption of orderly because you
are talking about people here. people panic and
freak out over all sorts of things. all i assume is
that the system continues to function.


But it will function so badly that you have bent the meaning of 'function'
so far out of shape to be useless.

no, it's just history that shows me that. if
something has happened dozens of times in various
circumstances i'd be very silly to not pay attention
to the information those events have provided.

my widest claim is that the system continues to
function and reflects the values of the society, if
the society changes enough and enough actors make
different financial decisions then the market itself
reflects those changes. the market can drive some
effects and gets feedback loops, but those can be
worked out in time. i don't see any other system
other than benevolent dictator which allows such
changes to happen without revolutions. yet we've
had close to four revolutions in a few hundred years
and the system continues on in some form or another.
sometimes with more regulation other times with
less, but i think generally it works well enough.
not purely how i'd like, but it's got more going
for it than the government does in terms of
being able to change rapidly once new information
becomes widely known.


I begin to think that in many ways you
actually agree with me but you are too emotionally wedded to the American
Dream (the one based on a high expansion, high consumption capitalist
system)

i don't think you know me that well, but
i don't have the time to spell it all out yet
again how i live my life.

in terms of reform of the system i'd go for
large changes in government (including rewriting
portions of the constitution and several other
laws). the market would shake and shimmy as
people freaked out, but that is a short-term
adjustment needed to prevent an even longer
term catastrophe.


that you can't give up on staying with capitalism and claiming that
it will 'work' no matter what.

i don't see a viable alternative that can
respond as quickly to new information. we'd need
a revolution of huge proportion to change to
something else. more likely we'll continue to
jigger this one with policy patches and social
tinkerings and the whole system will gradually
change to reflect the values of the majority
that comes along next. i sure hope that
majority is more environmentally aware...
at present i don't think it is as much as it
needs to be that is why i aim my efforts at
talking to people around things like gardening
because at least they do understand that they
can get food from a gardener.


songbird