I AM A CAPITALIST: Your Problem With That Is?

Only the workers pay taxes?

The employees may beable to turn the crank of production, but there is a lot more required to maintain a business. If not, the employees would rent a building down the street and start their own company, getting rid of the dead weight of the owner - they don't. Why?

 

What was the standard of living with the higher rate of employment? If it was so good before, what prevents the East Germans from re-establishing GDR?

 

Another one of the meaningless statements you keep making as if it were fact.

Businesses based on capitialism exists just fine without government protection. In the US, the railroad dealt with the lack of government law enforcement by hiring the Pinkertons.

What government protected the sea faring traders? (requiring the capital of the ship and provisions - capitalism).

 

It is fact. We can't even refer to a free trade loving mature economy without reference to protectionism and how that enabled development. And of course, given market concentration, we know that government intervention is vital. The only disagreement is in the nature of that intervention. A post-Keynesian analysis into cost-plus pricing, for example, has more in common with heterodox analysis into government waste than the standard fiscal/monetary policy orthodoxy.

The problem is that you, like the rest of your ilk, don't deal in economic reality.

 

A good question which has many answers.
- The follower of the socialist SED party, the "DIE LINKE" represents socialism no longer. A fact East Germans don´t realize.
- The GDR economy was destroyed from 1990. West German companies did not want that competition. So former socialist companies were merged into big capitalist companies or destroyed. The East German computer industry was completely destroyed (The GDR made 80 % of its chip and computer requirements self).
- A small nation that would not be allowed to buy high tech from the west, would have to make it self. This would mean, that most of he stuff it makes would not be on the level on which the western products are and therewith not exportable, because there would be no socialist purchaser states.
- It is not allowed to separate parts of Germany from the FRG.
- The people are disabled by high social welfare benefits.
- Most young people leave East Germany because of its sad job market instead of fighting for better conditions.

 

Protection required to maintain a civilized society, no more. Socialism, Marxism, market socialism, no matter what you call it, requires government to play the same role.

That disagreement is a side show. You can rattle on about this or that system for understanding economics, because you are unable to convert your opinion into anything meaningful.

Why should your opinion, which, like your fact free arguments, carry any weight with me?

 

No, protectionism in order to enable economic development and therefore create markets.

This is your standard approach, where you simply ignore economic reality in order to maintain a tedious dogma.

Given I deal with economic reality, you won't find my comments useful. The problem for you is that the non-economic routine that you're reliant upon has been done to death by the homogeneous right wingers who ironically hate the very nature of capitalism. They've just done it with a tad more entertainment

 

No... unfettered capitalism was a problem that was addressed over the past century. Now it is once again raising its ugly head.

 

Neo-liberalism! (although the title will confuse the right wingers as they won't realise its a reference to how 'free market' economics is actually used to coerce destructive profiteering opportunity)

 

I know exactly what I'm talking about. Capitalism existed long before large bureaucratic governments did. Governments depend on capitalism, not the other way around. There is only one true form of capitalism and that's free-market capitalism (laissez faire if you prefer). The spectrum of market systems we see today and throughout history are the consequences of interference by a spectrum of government systems.

 

No it didn't. The market existed. The market doesn't necessarily translate into capitalism.

No again. Government is the most important economic agent in capitalism. It allows stabilisation and therefore ensures reproduction of capitalist profit. To suggest otherwise is just being utopian and ignorant of economic relations.

This is ignorant. Laissez faire is unachievable. And when we do refer to 'free market economics' we are very much enabling destabilising coercion. We've seen that with Thatcherism and with neo-liberalism in general.

And another error! The different forms of capitalism merely represent the different stabilisation policies required. Some countries, for example, would not tolerate the high poverty and low social mobility that countries like the US have been able to enable.

Your whole stance is based on not understanding capitalism or economics in general

 

In the absence of government interference, the market always translates into capitalism.

Government is important, the patent system is not.

How do free market economies enable coercion when they are, by definition, free of coercion?

Government regulations create different market systems, not different forms of capitalism.

 

This is garbage. In the absence of government interference, capitalism will not exist. It is an inherently unstable paradigm. We just need to refer to market concentration and the impact on pricing policy to conclude that. Your confusion of the market with capitalism only tells me that you do not understand either.

Try reading! I said "free market economics". I gave you examples to prove it. You have the utopian view that 'free markets' are possible. It is ignorant.

Bobbins! The different forms of capitalism are well understood. In crass terms we can refer to Anglo-Saxon, liberal democratic and social democratic

 

No you can't. Market concentration has nothing to do with capitalism. It's just a method of measuring the impact of the proliferation of monopolistic businesses within an otherwise free market. As the number of monopolies increases, they become more stable because their respective market shares becomes more captive. But the market becomes less free and competition drops like a rock as the community of small businesses are gradually replaced by a handfuls of large business, who are then able to raise prices through collusion. People who formerly employed themselves are forced into the job market, which saturates the job market depressing wages and allowing monopolistic producers to double as monopsonistic employers thereby creating the need for labor unions etc. and justifying further government interventionism.

 

Nonsense! There is a natural tendency towards market concentration in capitalism.

Basic error here. Monopolistic competition just refers to branding.

This is nonsense. As market power increases we of course have to consider multiple market failures. The important issue here, however, is the impact of cost-plus pricing on economic shock. Essentially stagflation is always 'just around the corner'.

 

Yes, there is a tendency for markets to concentrate as businesses seek to grow. But it's weak in a free market as unrestricted competition naturally counters it. The patent system destroys competition.

Monopolies are, by definition, protected from competition so, there is no such thing as "monopolistic competition". In monopolistic markets, branding creates the illusion of competition and variety.

 

That isn't true. The best you have is a warped version of creative destruction. Theory of the firm informs us that, within capitalism, horizontal and vertical integration will always ensure market power is the norm.

You're not even taking into account Econ 101. Monopolies only require the existence of significant economies of scale. Monopolistic competition is a completely different phenomena, based on the consequences of product heterogeneity. Get the basics right before trying to make these grand statements