And what if, as I do, you believe that capitalism is more likely to bring about a better society than socialism? You're bringing your own prejudices into the discussion with the above in assuming that socialism = caring about society and capitalism = not caring about society. I can point to innumerable historical and contemporary examples of how I feel capitalism has led to a general improvement for society. I believe and hope, that I have helped make society a better place as an individual. And I've done so in part, through capitalism.
Venezuela the failed socialist state - Rising tensions.
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And what if, as I do, you believe that capitalism is more likely to bring about a better society than socialism? You're bringing your own prejudices into the discussion with the above in assuming that socialism = caring about society and capitalism = not caring about society. I can point to innumerable historical and contemporary examples of how I feel capitalism has led to a general improvement for society. I believe and hope, that I have helped make society a better place as an individual. And I've done so in part, through capitalism.
I think a balance of both is needed.
I grew up in a country not too dissimilar from the states, no safety nets, just the odd pillow to vaguely soften each bounce as you fall down a gaping hole, well below the bare minimum what I believe should exist.
A country where, had I not been able to contact my father to drive an hour to the hospital I was rushed to, so that he could put down a £2k deposit before they would take me in to surgery, I would have died.
My final hospital bill was £6k, which I got my travel insurance to pay, but at the time of the incident it was not possible as I was knocked out on pain meds and my gf had never travelled to the country before and didn't think to grab our travel insurance docs when helping me to the car after 4 hours of non-stop vomiting and pain, and driving an hour to the nearest hospital.
People should not be dying in gutters if they don't have medical insurance.
Also, to be clear, my socialist slant is the social democracy one you mention above, state provides a level of care for its citizens by way of taxing private companies. I just feel that certain aspects should not be privately run. Competition is great, it drives innovation, but that only works when you have a choice.
I do not have a choice when it comes to the rail company I use to get to work. I might have the choice of spending hours in a car I don't own, or on a bike, but neither are practical, and are not the same as competition.
I do not have a choice in my water provider.
I have choice in my leccy and internet providers, and as such can switch if I am not happy, but there are other monopolies on things which are higher on the 'should not be monopolised' list than others.
Soldato
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What's Happening in Venezuela?: Just the Facts
A well-rounded video IMO
A well-rounded video IMO
The problem with charity as a replacement for social security is that it's usually localised, either geographically or in terms of the issue it's targeting or both. If there is one thing that governments are good at, at least governments with strong infrastructure and institutions, it's being able to provide benefits of various kinds to all of those who need them across a country. Governments can also invest in projects and infrastructure that are either too risky or simply not viable for businesses. As great as Galt's Gulch sounds, ultimately it's pure fiction.
Also, we don't need to point to capitalists who say "only do stuff that makes money" because actions speak louder than words and history is filled with examples of companies or individuals who have taken advantage of their employees and stakeholders, their customers, their environment, or a combination of all of the above, in the pursuit of profit. The problem with 'extreme capitalism' is that usually goes hand-in-hand with small government and minimal regulation which allows these problems to continue unchecked. That's not to say that there aren't ethical capitalists, but for every Bill Gates there's a Ken Lay or Bernard Madoff.
So no, capitalism isn't inherently evil, but it can facilitate the worst of human nature in terms of selfishness and greed. Now, I'm not suggesting that socialism is the solution, it suffers just as much from human nature when put into practice. I agree with @krooton that a balance needs to be struck between the two, and I think that the Scandinavian models of Social Democracy are probably the best real-world examples we have of finding that balance, although I appreciate they aren't without their faults.
Problem is they are often facilitated by relatively small populations and relatively wealthy income for the country - we would need vastly more income in this country to emulate Norway for example (not just scaled up by population) and even the nature of that income has implications.
Very true, they also tend to be culturally homogeneous with relatively low levels of immigration, which makes people less acrimonious about benefits etc. going to 'others'. Denmark is finding this out the at the moment with the rise of immigration causing various issues (I did say they aren't without their faults).
I'm not saying the UK has to replicate the Nordic model in its entirety, I'd just like to see the UK become more like Germany and the Nordic countries than the USA for example.
Caporegime
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Video Link said:
Here's a 5 minute video that explains 15 years worth of history.
Again, that isn't strictly true.
The "Nationalised Industries" that have been poor performers historically are the ones that have had large heavily unionized work forces.
NCB, Railways, steel, ship building, BL, and the like.
The more professional based (And less unionized) nationalized corporations like electricity, gas, water and the Post office telephones, and so on, actually worked very well. and were typically global leaders in their field (Particularly the Post Office/BT)
If Thatcher had managed to de-unionise the failing nationalised industries without actually selling them off I think we would actually be in a rather better place today.
You clearly not very had the displeasure of trying to get bt to install a new phone line back when they were state owned and had a monopoly on telecoms provision.
Other utilities were little better under state control.
You will note the article has the 'bad' as the railways - principally botched because they rather ridiculously separated the running of the track and the trains running on them...
And the 'ugly' is job losses - which really is a rather double edged sword as it the job losses would also suggest a high degree of 'make work' inefficiency in the formerly state owned industries.
Off the top of my head, charities that I currently or have supported:
Barnardos.
Amnesty International.
IFAW.
Shelter.
Mencap.
RSPB.
National Trust.
A local wildlife preserve.
Red Cross
Oxfam
Out of that list, drawn without pre-thought and purely as they came to mind, ONE of them is local in nature (the wildlife preserve) and 5 of the 10 are international. In addition to rejecting your suggestion that charity doesn't cover wider areas than the immediate locality, it's really not germane. I made a response that being Capitalist doesn't clash with supporting charity. That's more than amply proved and you are attempting to switch ground quite substantially here.
Governments can also invest in projects and infrastructure that are either too risky or simply not viable for businesses. As great as Galt's Gulch sounds, ultimately it's pure fiction.
Galt's Gulch might be a utopian idea from a work of fantasy. But at least it's not a utopian idea from a work of fiction that anybody has been stupid enough to try and implement. (*cough*Marxism*cough*Das Capital*cough*). Besides, I refer you again to what you are debating me on: Capitalism =/= Against Charity. My point in bringing up Ayn Rand is that she's pretty much the archetypal radical capitalist and she was actually supportive of charity. Indeed, in "Galt's Gulch" that you refer to, John Galt actually offers charitable support to one of the main characters. And as his values are a transparent self-insert of Ayn Rand's I think that concludes my point.
But to MOVE ON (I'm fine discussing this so long as it's not considered a counterpoint to what I earlier wrote), yes - governments can and do invest in ventures too risky for the market. Lets take one of my favourite causes: Nuclear Power. I am extremely pro-Nuclear power. It's often said that the UK government subsidises nuclear power. It does, but only by a tiny amount compared to other power sources. What it actually provides is insurance because that is hard to get for a nuclear powerstation. Friend of the Earth loves presenting that insurance as a subsidy but it isn't. The government doesn't lose that money, it doesn't give money. It agrees to cover risk. Now covering risk has a market value so it's an asset. But it's not socialism. It's not ownership of the means of production. And nuclear power is probably the single most difficult thing to get off the ground without state involvement that I can think of. Any other industry - rail, healthcare, security, has been shown to be able to get going on a private basis. Even with nuclear power, one could credibly argue that if the state wasn't subsidising competition to it private insurance would be viable. A government investing in something and recrewing its investment isn't necessarily socialism. You say governments can invest in something that isn't viable for business. That's true, last-mile internet connectivity springs to mind. But in all those cases a local community could do it in the absence of the State providing it and arguing that it interferes with normal valuation of regions and investment. But aside from that, it's somewhat tangential to the point in that it's conflating capitalism with government. Capitalism is an economic system, not a political one. Now a minarchist state where the Free Market rules supreme is a capitalist society. But Norway or Sweden are also capitalist societies. What you're doing here is identifying Capitalism only with the former. It is also compatible with the latter. Remember , Capitalism =/= no taxes. Capitalism == Private Ownership. A state owning the oil companies and recouping their profits is socialism (probably - can also be fascism, cue argument on Fascism is Left Wing or not), but a state taxing a privately owned oil company is not.
I'm a capitalist. That doesn't require me to argue that there are no beneficiaries under socialism. But only that the system of capitalism as a whole is better than the system of socialism as a whole.
Yeah, you kind of do need to point to where capitalism says "only do stuff that makes money" because the question is of what capitalism requires. Pick me any group that you like - religious, ethnic, political, ideological - and I'll point at someone I can declare is a member of that group and show bad behaviour. Does that actually factually mean that the doctrine is defined by that individual's behaviour? No. Of course not. If I found a vegetarian who shot somebody, does that mean "Vegetarianism teaches shooting people". This is absurd. Who is to even say that Bernie Madhoff even is a capitalist? I've never seen him try to oppose monopolistic practices or refuse government subsidy. Have you? You're an outsider to a group, declaring bad people to be a member of it and the decrying that group. Someone equated capitalism with rejecting charity. Do you accept that this is not so? Because you appear to be trying to work around the fact that it isn't by making an argument that in practice it is. I know a lot of capitalists. None of them are opposed to charity. In fact, I'm quite confident they're very supportive of it. Statistics in the USA show that Republicans are bigger charity givers than Democrats, for what that's worth. But hey - lets stick with your damning by association with who you decide represents capitalists.
As pointed out by others, those economies are more capitalist then socialist. You seem to agree that any system comprised by flawed human beings is going to be imperfect. I think the same. But if the human beings we build these systems on are flawed then the questions are as follows:
- Which economic system mitigates the flaws of human beings best: socialism or capitalism.
- Which economic system leads to the best long-term outcomes with flawed human beings.
- Which economic system leads to the least injustice with flawed human beings.
Another big part of why Norway is so affluent is that it discovered massive oil reserves. I mean, nobody is arguing that Saudi Arabia proves the economic advantages of authoritarian monarchies, are they. Yet when it comes to socialism everybody loves to point at Norway. (Even though it's only moderately socialist, anyway - nothing like Venezueala).
My recollection of the nationalised utilities was that they were mostly pretty good.
Particularly on the day of my Grandads funeral in the late 60's when we woke up in the morning to find that we had no electricity because the main cable under the front garden had failed.
Despite being a Saturday, the (Inefficient/nationalised) electricity provider had an emergency over head supply up and running by lunchtime!
Tell me that would happen today!
As for the improvements quoted in the Guardian article.
How many of those improvements are because of prviatisation and how many of them are simply down to improvements in technology that would have happened anyway over the same period.
EG speed with which new lines are installed.
Then. A phone line was a physical connection that went from your phone all the way back to a terminal on a relay back at the exchange.
Unless there was a "Spare" wire available on the pole outside your house, this would all have to be installed all the way back to the exchange in order to provide your new line. No wonder new lines sometimes took a long time (Using "Party Lines" was a way of mitigating this, but it had its downsides)
Now-All that might be needed is a new line to the local cabinet. And indeed, the effectively unlimited capacity of the new fiber connected cabinets means that it has been easy to "Oversupply" the big cables to the poles to such an extent that an inability to find a spare connection is hardly ever likely to be a problem. Of course one will be able to install new lines quicker today. Even 15 days seems like a long time really.
But this has ****** all to do with privatisation!
Same with the water supply.
Then-Cast iron and steel pipes that were vulnerable to cracks and leakage causing loss of water pressure and large amounts of wastage.
Now- Far more robust and flexible plastic piping.
Again, nothing to do with privatisation. Just stuff that would have happened anyway (And indeed, might even have happened sooner BT was working on VoD over 30 years ago, if they hadn't been specifically prevented from deploying the technology we could have had BT-TV by the late 80's)
Why are people keep forgetting that the Tories loved trying to destroy state companies in any manner they could? The very fact that they may have been perceived as being horrid, is probably down to whatever obfuscation that the asset stripping ***** achieved, considering the state of the utilities now... it's clearly been a waste of time, but at least the Tory chum's got their money.
Also the argument for it is mired in **** when you look at the likes of the US where oligopolies end up running with little regard for the capitalism that apparently exists, usually at the behest of corporate shills in government.
Also the argument for it is mired in **** when you look at the likes of the US where oligopolies end up running with little regard for the capitalism that apparently exists, usually at the behest of corporate shills in government.
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@h4rm0ny, before I get into my reply to your last post I want to explain something about my earlier response: You describe yourself as an ‘extreme capitalist’, based on that I made some assumptions: you believe in low taxes, small government, a laissez faire free market system with little or no regulation, and little or no social security or government spending. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve used these same assumptions when I talk about ‘extreme capitalist society’ below:
I didn’t suggest that capitalism and charity are incompatible. It was @Werewolf who said that extreme capitalism would lead to ‘only doing things for profit’.
The point I was making was that I don’t believe charity alone can replace social security, something which I assume you do believe.
I agree, I’m not a socialist. Glad we got
that cleared up.
Nope, not my position at all.
See above.
I specifically said I don’t think socialism is the answer. I’m not sure why you keep turning this into a black/white, either/or capitalism vs. socialism argument. @krooton and I are both talking about a balance between the two.
I consider myself centre-left but more centre than anything else. I’m all for capitalism, I just think it needs to be more controlled than I assume you do.
GPS, the internet, even fracking would not be around today if it wasn’t for government investment in early-stage research. The Obama administration was criticised for investing in Solyndra which went bust (and lost the US government about $500 million), but those critics fail to acknowledge that the same administration invested about the same amount in Tesla. People just assume Tesla’s success is all down to Elon Musk and capitalism, ignoring the fact that in its early days, Tesla struggled to get funding from the private sector because it was deemed too high-risk. Check out
Mariana Muzzucato for some insight into this kind of thing.
In an ‘extreme capitalist society’ with low taxes and small government, we wouldn’t have the kind of investment that funds the critical innovation upon which big business is built.
I agree.
Your back on the point that Capitalism is incompatible with charity, which is not what I said at all.
The point I made was that in an ‘extreme capitalist society’ there are fewer checks and balances in place to curb the bad behaviour when it does occur. That doesn’t mean there aren’t good capitalists, but it means the bad ones are able to get away with worse behaviour/business practices than they would otherwise.
I said I believe they strike the best balance between the two. I have no problem with that being more capitalist than socialist.
Again, I agree. You seem to think I fundamentally disagree with everything you say, and you seem to think I’m advocating socialism, when in fact that’s far from the truth.
Where we appear to disagree is that I think ‘extreme capitalism’ goes too far and needs to be reigned in, and I’d like to see a bit of balance between the two extremes (quite centerist really).
I didn’t suggest that capitalism and charity are incompatible. It was @Werewolf who said that extreme capitalism would lead to ‘only doing things for profit’.
The point I was making was that I don’t believe charity alone can replace social security, something which I assume you do believe.
I agree, I’m not a socialist. Glad we got
that cleared up.
Nope, not my position at all.
See above.
I specifically said I don’t think socialism is the answer. I’m not sure why you keep turning this into a black/white, either/or capitalism vs. socialism argument. @krooton and I are both talking about a balance between the two.
I consider myself centre-left but more centre than anything else. I’m all for capitalism, I just think it needs to be more controlled than I assume you do.
GPS, the internet, even fracking would not be around today if it wasn’t for government investment in early-stage research. The Obama administration was criticised for investing in Solyndra which went bust (and lost the US government about $500 million), but those critics fail to acknowledge that the same administration invested about the same amount in Tesla. People just assume Tesla’s success is all down to Elon Musk and capitalism, ignoring the fact that in its early days, Tesla struggled to get funding from the private sector because it was deemed too high-risk. Check out
Mariana Muzzucato for some insight into this kind of thing.
In an ‘extreme capitalist society’ with low taxes and small government, we wouldn’t have the kind of investment that funds the critical innovation upon which big business is built.
I agree.
Your back on the point that Capitalism is incompatible with charity, which is not what I said at all.
The point I made was that in an ‘extreme capitalist society’ there are fewer checks and balances in place to curb the bad behaviour when it does occur. That doesn’t mean there aren’t good capitalists, but it means the bad ones are able to get away with worse behaviour/business practices than they would otherwise.
I said I believe they strike the best balance between the two. I have no problem with that being more capitalist than socialist.
Again, I agree. You seem to think I fundamentally disagree with everything you say, and you seem to think I’m advocating socialism, when in fact that’s far from the truth.
Where we appear to disagree is that I think ‘extreme capitalism’ goes too far and needs to be reigned in, and I’d like to see a bit of balance between the two extremes (quite centerist really).
@Irish_Tom I'll reply in more detail when I have time, as your post deserves. I just want to address the point where you keep asking why I'm talking about capitalism being compatible with charity and how you never said it did. The reason is because Werewolf said so, I rebutted it, and then you appear to have been trying to refute my rebuttal. As I already said, I'm happy to debate your points, but not in any way under the implication it undermines it as a counter-argument to Werewolf's nonsense. In a conversation if someone says A and someone else argues back "no, because B", and then someone suddenly starts saying "B is wrong", it's naturally taken as support for A all else being equal - because you're attacking the rebuttal. And that is why I keep pointing out that it IS a rebuttal.
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I'm all for altruistic capitalism, not the capitalism we have now. However, I'm unsure how that can be achieved without some form of state intervention to curb the excesses of unbound capitalism, and that by definition is moving towards socialism.
Appreciated, thanks.
Apologies if that’s how it came across, that wasn’t my intention. I thought I was being clear about my point regarding charity as an alternative to social security (rather than commenting on the relationship between capitalism and charity specifically) but I appreciate I could have been more explicit.
Things aren’t always so linear. Often in conversation someone will make point A, someone else will raise point B which then sparks point C. Point C can disagree with B without necessarily supporting A, or it can be completely tangential to both A and B. That’s how a conversation about Venezuela ends up discussing the finer points of the speed at which BT can install a new phone line now compared to 30 years ago.
Exactly.
Not quite true.
Thatcher/Tories were elected, pretty specifically, on a mandate to crush the unions. after a decade of interminable misery, strikes and disruption over trivia the general public had had enough.
(She also had a mandate to repay the humiliating IMF loan that the labour government had taken out as a result of crapping out the economy during their term in office)
The key to crushing the unions was to remove their power base in the nationalised industries.
By privatising them, the message was sent that there would no longer be a bottomless pit of taxpayers money available to keep bailing them out whenever the unions had a spat over some trivial issue.
In addition, The privatisation sell offs were the only way the incoming government could quickly raise enough cash to pay back the IMF while at the same time delivering the tax cuts that were promised.
(It was a fiscal slight of hand and I was really not happy with it at the time, If it had been me I would have done it differently or not at all and found some other way)
The other aspect of this was the sale of council houses. Again, the idea was that if Workers had mortgages to pay each month, they would be less inclined to go on strike on a whim.
As a strategy, it actually worked quite well. Strikes are rare these days and when they do happen it is typically only in the last remaining pseudo-nationalised industries that still have a heavy union presence.
Younglings can have no concept as to just how bad things were in the 60's and 70's and how fed up the general public were with it all. Thatcher was a breath of fresh air that allowed the non-unionised parts of the population to get on with our lives without continuous disruption and inconvenience.
(Oh, and she should have stuck to her guns over the "Poll Tax" too. Most people actually welcomed it, only the non-contributors objected)
However
I do think is was agreat shame that as a consequence of this so many of our industries either ended up in foreign hands or were even lost altogether.
And the idea of all these different Electricity/Gas suppliers is nonsense.
The electricity all comes from the same power stations and down the same wires. The Gas all comes from the same wells and down the same pipes.
Same goes for water, telephony and and internet connectivity too (In most cases)
And I am sure there are many other examples where there is essentially only a single provider that has an overlay of multiple fake companies creating an illusion of competition that simply does not exist.
And ultimately that, as a consequence of multiple duplication of corperate roles, has got to end up costing us all rather more than if there was only one single provider.
One thing you didn't mention was that thatcher didn't kill the industries, in the same way as the doctor who turns off life support hasn't killed their patient.
The uk post war strategy was flawed, as the industries and services owned by the government were also being run by the government, with decisions made for political, rather than commercial, reasons. By the 1980s, the damage was largely done, the products being produced were rubbish, the techniques being used decades behind and so on.