Fortsätt till huvudinnehåll

Up with Capitalism? Down with Capitalism?

City skyline

Capitalism is a term misused by both its advocates and its opponents. It is a word so vague as so be almost meaningless.

"Capitalism" has become just a generic label loosely applied to relatively uncontrolled systems of econonomic organisation. It is characterised by land enclosure and private appropriation of the rent of land, and systems of credit based on usury, with joint stock companies operating under government legislation which gives them special rights and privileges not available to individuals. There nothing natural about such systems, which in many respects goes against natural law and scripture.

A limited degree of economic freedom emerges through the market mechanism, which leads to a measure of prosperity. But since land is not free, labour is coerced into accepting whatever terms it can obtain, and the end result is a few people get very rich, many become very poor, and whilst those in the middle can live reasonably well, their livelihoods are forever precarious. This leads to all sorts of social tensions as people scramble for what is left over after the big fish have had their fill.

One of the imperatives of such systems is the need for perpetual "growth", but since land and resources are not unlimited, a natural ceiling will ultimately bring this to an end. What then?

People talk as if "Capitalism" and "Socialism", or some blend of the two, are the only possibilities available. There can be few commonly held ideas that are as far from the truth.

Kommentarer

Populära inlägg i den här bloggen

Importing people to sustain demand

I got involved in a discussion with a Youtuber called “Philosophy all along”. This was in connection with criticism of Trump’s policy of deporting illegal migrants, which he argued would be bad for the economy as it would reduce demand. This implies that there is a need to import people to sustain demand. There is no obvious reason why a population should not be able to consume everything that the same population produces. If it can not, then something else is going on. It is a basic principle that wages are the least that workers will accept to do a job. Wages are a share of the value added by workers through their wages. The remainder is distributed as economic rent, after government has taken its cut in taxes. Monopoly profit is a temporary surplus that after a delay gets absorbed into economic rent. Land values in Silicon Valley are an example of this; it's like a gold rush. The miners get little out of it. Rent and tax syphon purchasing power away from those who produce the g...

The dreadfulness of British governance

I wrote to my MP on two entirely separate issues recently. The first was to do with the replacement for the Inter City 125 train, which at £2.6 million per vehicle, is twice as expensive as it ought to be. The second concerned the benefits of a switch from business rate and Council Tax to a tax based on site values. In both cases, the replies were full of spurious, unsubstantiated assertions and completely flawed arguments. This is typical. You will not get an iota of sense from the government on any area of public policy at all - finance, economics, trade and employment, agriculture, housing, health, transport, energy. All junk. If you write to your MP you will invariably receive answers that are an insult to your intelligence, no matter what subject you are writing about. Of course they cannot understand statistics. They are innumerate. Whitehall is staffed with idiots with a high IQ. Look at their IT projects. And mind your purse, they will have that too.

How much more will the British tolerate?

The British are phlegmatic, tolerant and slow to rouse. Thus there was no great reaction after the terrorist attack in July 2005. The murder of Lee Rigby created a sense of outrage, but nothing more, since it appeared to be an isolated incident. Two serious incidents within a fortnight are another matter. Since the first major terrorist incident in 2001, authority has tried to persuade the public that Islam is a religion of peace, that these were isolated events, or the actions of deranged "lone wolves", having nothing to do with Islam, or to reassure that the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack were infinitesimally small. These assurances are are beginning to wear thin. They no longer convince. If government does not act effectively, people will take the law into their own hands. What, however, would effective action look like? What sort of effective action would not amount to rough justice for a lot of innocent people? Given the difficulties of keeping large n...