Topic: Solution to poverty - Socialism or Capitalism? - page 33. (Read 30782 times)

Their is no both.
We never had capitalism.
And as long as someone decide what labor is worth, and what my business is worth we can never reach the so called equilibrium of Adam Smith.

Take for example the black death in the 14th century.
The black death made labor so scarce by killing peasants that price of labour rose very high.
Nobles and owners, instead of acknowledging it, asked to the government to enforce low wage, which the government did.

The government prevented wealth to go from Nobles and owners to Peasants by coercion.
And you will admit this is not right, and you are right. But not from the same reason I think.
The reason why it is bad is not that they enforced low wages. It is that they enforced what a wage was worth instead of waiting for profit and price of labor to get to equilibrium.

A capitalist will not necessary endorse that. Even if it would help him to get more profit. It is also in its self interest
The principle of a capitalist (precisely libertarian) is that no third party should decide of a valuation between two people that exchange value for value. (in this particular case Labor for Money)

In fact, we oppose capitalism to socialism because we are brainwashed to think that labour and owner have contradictory interest.
This is not true. In a free market, Owner need Labour and Labour need Owner. The over supply of one, decrease the supply of the other. The Black Death is a typical example that show that owner needs labour.
Any attempt to control what the value of capital or labour is will create friction that would never happen otherwise.
I live in a socialist country (France) and I traveled a lot. What I have seen is that in countries where government does not protect neither capital neither workers, both are happy and working together. (Switherland)

Nowadays, don't ever say that you can't change from labour to profit if you decide to do so.
We are in a knowledge economy where all you need to sell is your brain, no need for factories anymore. Will you sell your time or earn a profit ?
In a free market, you would do both depending on the price of labor and capital.

There is no good and weak points. Labors are not naturally against owners this is an artificial dichotomy created by government regulation.

You might say I'm confused about Capitalism and Libertarian. I am not, but this is a false dichotomy, a false question, that can only drive to false answer. The real one is Libertarian and Socialism.
Do you believe that someone should tell you what your time is worth except yourself ? (And take commission on that)
Do you believe that someone should tell you what your capital is worth except yourself ? (And take commission on that)
If yes to any of them, you are not a socialist. But that does not mean you are for "bosses".

Solution to poverty - Socialism or Capitalism?
I think that both - Socialism or Capitalism have good and weak points.
Capitalism is more oriented to the owners and capital, what is good but less oriented to the workers, what is bad.
Socialism is more oriented toward workers but less toward owners and capital.
WE need balance approach and more market control by the government, in my opinion.

The bigger the government the bigger the corruption and the waste; they look only at what they will get but not at the cost or how better the money could have been used

The solution is to have non coercitive exchanges in free markets

Lack of motivation is the symptom of socialism and not the cause.

This is true.

The issue is that a lot of people are just too lazy to want to work and earn their way

Need to build a resource allocating decentralized computer system.  People + power always seems to equal corruption.

Solution to poverty = practical education.

When there are people who create wealth, then there is wealth. Wealth is what farmers farm, miners mine, engineers create and scientist invent. Socialism cultivates an collective society, where capitalism cultivates an individualistic society. The biggest drawback of most socialist countries is central planning and over regulated markets.
A country tends to be wealthy when those who create wealth are valued. I think that both tradition and cultural background are the biggest factors for poverty.

But again, what makes you comfortable seems to me to be a function of education, or if you will, your values; not everyone is happy just by being able to buy luxuries.

It isn't that you don't make more then others. It is that in order to buy what makes you comfortable you would need to earn more then the average.

I like your rational point of view.   The only question is how do we execute?  Through private enterprise or govt programs or both?

That seems to me to be more a question of education/values than anything else. Personally, I wouldn't care how much I made compared to others, provided I had enough to live and had a work I really liked; I don't think money is necessarily the best incentive.

This may be ideal, but there is no real way to achieve this (everyone to be rich enough to be satisfied).

People will always have varying levels of skill levels and work ethic. This would undervalue people who have high skill levels and work ethic while overvaluing people on the opposite side. Generally speaking in order to be satisfied most people would wish to have something above average.

Only government can create poverty.

no need for hierarchy.

Government can end poverty under any system.

This is such a simplistic and misguided view.  Firstly, technology isn't widely suppressed, there is more vested interest in those that can gain advantage from technology, than interest from those that seek to suppress it.  At best you can suppress for a short while before someone independently discovers, steals, or supercedes it.  I laugh when people say technology X is suppressed by the big bad company, because there are many nations with no interest in maintaining the status quo who would use it if it worked.  Typically, technology X is a great idea that doesn't scale in cost or application to be useful.

Secondly there's more to technology and advancement than energy.  Certainly it is significant and can impact some industries greatly.  But others it might be a tiny fraction.  There are massive capital costs in research, whose use mainly mental exertion and experimentation.  There are capital investments in land, equipment and resources, the materials needed to be extracted, processed, the plant to do that process, all have to be constructed. Then there's supply chain, the movement of the resources   and product.  And infrastructure move or utilise products. Then there's the meatware, the sustenance, protection and education of the people that make it all happen.  The energy bill, while significant as a proportion for some items at the start, fades to a tiny fraction of the value of the end product. 

Consider this:  energy is literally dirt cheap, we mostly dig up carbon and burn it.  Its that worthless.  What we do with it is far, far more valuable.

Peer production economy.

I've just found this article, http://theumlaut.com/2014/04/09/how-uber-and-airbnb-resurrect-dead-capital/
VERY interesting points about how the market solution, and peer-to-peer economy (now allowed by the modern internet info based system we live in) will uplift billions of people,
and how regulation and central planning will fail, most likely with socialist "no property rights" ideas as well.

The socialist idea screams for injustice*, because capital goods are not equally shared among the people, and now we suddenly realize how much of our personal property
can be used as capital!

Of course, this will destroy the taxing coercive power of the state, or in effect those who run it by the name of "public good".

*

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."

Winston Churchill

We live in a limited resources world. The flexible organism usually rise to the top and the inflexible (those bound by rules and moral code) usually sink to the bottom of the food chain.

You want a utopia society? Then join the sheep. They are pretty content with their way of life before being slaughtered for their meat.

Capitalism is warfare on another level. Big fish eat small fish and shark trying to find ways to eat other shark. The top tend not to stay up there for longer than 2-3 generations.

Solution to poverty ?
Monetary policy.

Ideology are only natural consequences of monetary policies. So Socialism and Capitalism are not answers but consequences. (Socialism is a natural consequence of keynesian cures through government spending)

I believe that we'll get development when we incentives people to be responsible of their life.
This means removing all barriers that keep them from innovating.

Be it barrier to capital, legal barrier, knowledge barrier, fiscal barrier, border barrier, all barriers should be gone.
Then, the better of humanity will come out : Mass innovation for the benefit of the world -no one would not be able to set entry barriers-, incentived by the benefit the entrepreneur would reap.

This is what I intend to do with Open Business (https://github.com/NicolasDorier/Open-Business/blob/master/specification.mediawiki).
I am always thinking about how to create the right incentives.

11. Using technology to help employers employ people to work from internet in a wide range of jobs.  Disabled/illness/Mental issues which prevent people who want to work from working.