Capitalism is to blame for this crash

Every decade or so, we observe another crash. A few investors leap from their fifth story offices. Everyone panics. Then it clears up. We have a good year or two. Then, soon enough, it's crisis again. This is the cyclic nature of capitalism.

Why is it that a system that regularly fails is still practiced today?

The market is not a force of nature. The market is a direct result of the economic relationships between owners of capital, workers, and all other members of society. By personifying the market, we've applied a layer of abstraction to it. By trading stocks, something that isn't even a real good, we've applied yet another layer of abstraction. Money has been turned backwards and used to value goods rather than the value of goods deciding monetary value.

The economy is not real. The economy is a gutted zombie. We've removed all genuine and human elements from it. It's now entirely separate from reality. Yet we still allow it to ruin the livelihoods of workers because the parasitic bourgeoisie have broken their system yet again.

Resist market crashes, Resist capitalism.

 

While I have plenty of issues with unregulated, pure free market capitalism, the cyclic nature of markets is not one of them.

In fact, cyclic behavior and chaos is inherent in most aspects of life as an energy-dissipating mechanism. Ilya Prigogine was one of the first to elaborate on this in his treatments of non-equilibrium thermodynamics,

Examples include: The four seasons, circadian rhythm, heartbeat, the human life cycle, calcium oscillations in beating cilia,.. and the list could go on. In fact, it would be surprising if the market was not cyclic in nature.

The fundamental principle behind this behavior is positive feedback that is required for growth, but also ensures an eventual crash when the market runs out of steam. So, you could remedy the problem with no growth, but I presume that many people would be unhappy with this.

 

This is silly as capitalism is scarcely being practiced anywhere in the world outside of maybe Hong Kong and Dubai. Most recessions since 1900 are in fact the result of bad government economic policy and 2008 was no exception. Nor is the current stock market crash which is driven almost entirely by the Chinese governments attempt to reestablish control of the Chinese economy.

 

Is it sustainable or are we just waiting for the next technological breakthrough to get us by?

 

I don't get what you are trying to say in response to my post.

 

You call the system that has brought humanity out of it's almost continuous poverty and a temporary equity bubble a failure?

Back to the caves, resist capitalism.

 

"Every decade or so, we observe another crash"
IMO......"every decade or so" is a far cry better than decades of a crash.
Being a communist (or at least with that type ideal in your postings), I'd think you, of all people, would know that!

But, I just have to wonder.......why do you stay in this country when there are other places that conform to your ideals?

Have a wonderful, tranquil day...........

 

Capitalism is a system which operates in a normal cycle like any other economic system. The difference with capitalism, I think, is that it requires constant economic growth which is almost completely based on technology, no?

So what are we seeing when we look at some of these large down swings in the economy? Is the constant threat of global collapse real? If so, why? Is it capitalism itself? Is technology just not pushing economic growth fast enough?

 

and your solution is.....?

 

His solution is a society serviced entirely by robots that people maintain in their spare time for fun.

 

The market has, historically, returned in excess of 10% on the dollar, and that through umpteen recessions, and the great depression. Seems like the occasional cyclical downturn is OK as long as the inevitable subsequent upturn makes it all better. The cyclical boom-bust nature of the market is pretty well known. How is it that it takes so many by surprise?

 

Agreed. And he'd probably buy all the stock from the companies that build them via some insider trading scam. HAHAHAHA.

 

While it's true that capitalism has a cyclical nature and varies from period of rapid growth to periods of contraction none of this changes the fact that in real terms the economy experiences an upwards trend. GDP always surpasses the pre-crisis peak before the next recession. All economic systems are cyclical to an extent, there are downturns in command economies in much the same way as there are downturns in capitalist economies and both free market and command economies can be pushed into recession by falling demand, stagnant wages, a drop in investment or an outside shock.

 

Humanity???? Where? In this business is not a spark of humanity existing! To follow any rule of humanity or common justice is in this business a failure if you want to survive! Wall Street & Co. is War only and without any sort of Geneva Convention existing ... and this is the major problem.

Any crises which we get always again and again is only happening, because these financial sharks are unscrupulous scum!
No miss-understanding, I have nothing against to make win and money etc., as well I'm for sure not a commie / lefty, but as far there are no strict basic rules given with powerful executive institutions watching on them, it is a justice free room as always.

 

What do you consider a "crash"?

 

Uh... this is a bit more than the normal cycles of free markets. Communist China for example, the trigger of the correction, is pretty much anything other than a free market.

 

Do not resist capitalism. That would be like resisting cancer treatment . You don't resist something that creats wealth, health, and overall human advancement in all aspects of life be it economic, financial, technological and political.

Another reason to not resist it are obviously the alternatives.

 

Yes, this is basically the Solow model of economic growth. Growth comes mainly from accumulation of capital, population growth and technical advance.

These are a lot of question, to which I don't have good answers. My feeling is that it is not capitalism in itself that will result in eventual economic collapse, but rather resource depletion, in particular energy and water. resource depletion would happen under other economic models as well, but probably slower than under the capitalistic model, which seems to maximize consumption of energy and commodities per capita.

 

"In the long run we are all dead."- Abstract on Monetary Reform (1923) Ch. 3
"In truth, the gold standard is a barbarous relic."- Monetary Reform (1924) p.172
--Lord John Maynard 1st Baron Keynes of Tilton

Nixon declared himself to be a Keynesian in 1971 and took the US (and thus the world) off what remained of the gold/silver standard ( Remember when our silver coins went out of circulation?).

Now, 44 years later, Keynes, Nixon, and their generations are dead, and this is already the long run for Detroit, Greece, and Puerto Rico, and the US is $18 trillion in debt.

Keynes was good-hearted, benevolent, and very much anti-war, but Henry Hazlitt ( The Conquest of Poverty), who grew up in near poverty, his father dying when Hazlitt was an infant, and he had to leave school to take care of his mother when her second husband died; and Friedrich von Hayek (The Road to Serfdom), among other economists of the Austrian School, were much better critical thinkers.

 

The "market" has generated a lot of capital for a lot of people. It has booms and busts, but over the long haul it has always generated far more capital during the booms versus what it loses in the busts. You spin this into saying capitalism is responsible for the bust, but mysteriously ignore that it is also responsible for the boom. On balance the booms far outweigh the busts. How you rationalize this to be a bad thing defies objective logic. If you choose not to participate, that is your prerogative, but you have no right to hinder my choice.

 

Economic systems are unstable.

So how do you give them some stability? Regulation, for one thing. The crash was the counterargument for deregulation; which we really didn't need.

The other thing you need is to place a value on things that are important, but fall outside the usual antics of commerce. Like global warming.

 

Where Marx really made his best arguements was in his critiques of capitalism and the problem of alienation. To many capitalism represents a system which if left to itself will produce utopian results. I always enjoy a discussion as to why that may not be true when put into praxis. Does government regulation exist because a less regulated system was dangerous or some socialist conspiracy? Im sure there are arguements for both.

 

Where was the humanity of dying early, rotting teeth, no sanitation, and being a serf?

 

Not really a crash
And every type system gets out of whack occasionally
And suffers an inevitable adjustment

And really no nation on earth has a pure system.... Capitalist or otherwise
What we have are various hybrid systems

 

Is it wrong to think things could be better?