Topic: Capitalism. - page 2. (Read 6902 times)

Maybe... if you assume that all protection must be only from state, and that more people are wicked than not.
But these assumptions seem extreme, and depressingly pessimistic.

Capitalism is an invenion of the state. Without bureaucracy and state sanctioning, capitalism is not possble.
The very idea of a free capitalism is oxymoronic, because it relies on protection of claims on private property.

The only economic philosophy that respects the right of people to transact bitcoins without interference is capitalism.

Looo!  There is no universal "right price" which needs to be "discovered."  

There is a price that the seller wants to get (everything, all your monyz!)...
and the price that the buyer wishes to pay (nothing).  
The price is arrived at through the dialectic more commonly known as "haggling."  

This dialectic takes a different form in auctions.  Consider an auction with a Luger Parabellum on the block.  

The buyers are as follows:  
A Texan homemaker, who came to the auction to bid on the awesome trimetal cookware set,
a gun collector who loves them Lugers to pieces
& a professional mugger, who plans to turn the luger on the folks in the crowd, thereby robbing them of their monyz.  
Question:  What's the "right price"?  

Perhaps, though in my army breaking ranks over a bridge analogy, neither the bridge nor the army represent the economy.  Economy is the interaction between the two.  The army does not act on economy, it is a part of it.

If we choose your analogy, tossing out the bridge & picking up obstacles & terrain, we can no longe address MoonShadow's "oscillations," but since they flopped as a Libertarian illustration, i guess it's time to march off to greener pastures, over hill, over dale & other nasty terrain.

In your model, were the "central command" represents [Booo!  Statist!] oversight, think it through.  The generals don't tell enlisted men how to march -- they lay out the grand plans for troop movement, so that the army doesn't march off in five different directions to fight 5 enemies of their choosing.  At some lower level of decision making, another bureaucrat looks at terrain maps & aerial photos, making sure soldiers don't need to march through oceans, or lava pits with no health packs in sight if we're playing *that*.  When it comes to picking up your feet to step over dead bodies, have no fear -- you'll still get to do that on your own

Just because you say it, or read it somewhere on the Internet, or listen to some guy who said it in some cute way, doesn't make it so.

I'm finished arguing with idiots about this.  I'm just wasting my time.

^^^Too subtle.  You're arguing against a guy who doesn't understand springs.

To myself, and in this context, 'stable' would mean that the natural 'forces' that result in the business cycle be left alone, so that the magnitude of those oscillations don't have the chance to compound.

And that is what I mean by the 'right' economy.  

What my earlier post was getting at was looking at profit as an incentive that could promote instability. E.g.: -population booms -- higher church membership, need for extra housing and other infrastructure... who wouldn't want a piece of the action?
-depletion of non-renewable resources. Population, consumerism, fads/fashion -- increase demand for oil and oil-based products for profit.
-why innovate when you've got all those other options?

[...]
I know it's possible to disagree with something and still not interfere. However, to me it seems like he's preaching:
"hands-off policy" -- the car is designed to drive itself so you should never touch the steering wheel.
while really practising:
"hands-off approach" -- if you want a stretched spring to recoil back, stop stretching it and let go for now.

OK, let's have a quick look at what that might entail. Say you want a 'stable' economy, it would probably need:
population headcount change = 0
people's changing 'needs' = 0
land or industry encroachment on other economies = 0
net non-renewable resource depletion = 0
net inflation = 0

Therefore, (unless I've missed some other factors for stability) any profit is probably either inaccurate accounting or a transfer of wealth from the loser to the winner. One example of a profitable activity might be to innovate a new machine that produces widgets more efficiently than the machines all the other widget-makers use. Despite rejecting "intellectual property" (I guess that's off-topic and maybe a good candidate for another thread) you guys seem strongly in favour of doing these innovations for the sake of competition (no arguments there).

However, the reward for innovation seems to be the same as the reward for resource depletion, inflation, banning contraceptives, and all that other stuff. I.e.: because profit. With all those other opportunities, why choose innovation?

Without intelligent oversight, to me it seems you'll eventually get your stable economy, but only after numerous resources have been depleted, and various bubbles (including population bubbles) have burst. It's a doomsday scenario.

Secondly, even if things manage to stabilise, there's still a big question mark over how the current (or a future) level of technology would be sustained without all that extra energy being pumped in. The whole world's basically running on oil, gas, coal, nuclear fission, and cheap labour.

To discover the right price of something, an auction with only two people attending will not do as well as one with a great many.  The mob does a better job of price discovery.
When prices are set by a central authority and there are limited choices you get an arbitrarily price rather then letting folks decide what they want to exchange for what and how much at what quality.
Generally, a market is going to do a better job of price discovery than a central planner.  
Perversely, we have central authorities deciding on the price of money itself.

I don't want a progressively increasing economy.  I want the right economy.  The best way to have that is to take a 'hands off' approach, because politicos really don't know as much as they think they do.


I don't deny this either.  I don't know anyone who has besides your claims that someone has.  I just don't find such a society to be ideal.  If you do, why are you still here?  There certainly are groups within the US and elsewhere that prefer the kind of "natural" lifestyle you think is appropriate, and some of them will even accept you.  You just have to find them.  Or create your own.

Or compare it to the marchers who have to adjust to the changing terrain in that scenario.
Economies are affected by all sorts of obstacles: droughts, fertility cycles, disease, weather and more.  
It must adjust, or face a worse fate than if it had.  
The best decision makers for these adjustments are the myriad folks with their boots on the ground.  
When central command is from afar, marchers may not adjust as adroitly.
This marching community may sing the same song and walk in cadence when times are easy,
and move to a different tune when it is not.

Then WTF was MoonShadow talking about with the 'right' economy, describing it as not growing exponentially and basically being stable, but then doing a big song and dance about not calling it stable?

My premise was correct in the first place

  explain.

Pointless tangent is pointless. You picked on the word 'stable' and used it as an excuse to ignore the rest of my post:

An economy is much better compared to a machine in operation than a static construction such as a bridge.