answer to a problem with capitalism?/

[Xerravon]

Hi,  This is my first post, so hello everyone!

Ive been thinking although I don't know a lot about anarchy, which always sounded crazy to me until I discovered Stefan liked it so that's enough to make me want to learn more about it, so I will do in near future. My feelings at this point is it wont work because of human nature,   Humans as far as I can tell, most of them usually are drawn to a leader, so that is the basic, basic reason I am not hopeful about anarchism though like I said I know very very little about it.

Communism is far far from the answer. Capitalism is the best option as far as I know but not perfect. the big problem I see is the problem we are coming up on. The problem that there is eventually a winner, one guy that owns it all! Right now we are close to the finals. Eventually one person owns everything Currently the top players have a lot of power because of ignorant people doing exactly what they are told though they are the last people that will admit it. I am sure we are all guilty of this to some degree. (I guess it is fair if there is a1 winner, idk???) I have an idea I'am wondering if this may be the answer to the "winner" problem and would like to know what Stefan or others far smarter than me thinks about this as a start of an idea.

High taxes for the rich or what the dems consider the rich is not the answer, it makes it harder to start a business, etc...  My idea is everybody is taxed the same and no one is taxed until you have a certain amount of money, cash, gold etc.. I don't know how to come up with this amount but for this conversation lets say 10 million dollars.  Maybe the amount should be higher, maybe even higher for businesses, IDK.  but for example say 10 million dollars. So once you get 1 cent over $10M you get taxed. I don't know how often but for this example once a month, say the first of the month. On the first of the month you get taxed a percentage, say 10% of the total amount. any time before that date you can spend that money, start a new business, pay your workers more, spend it, give it away, anything but save it. After all who needs more than $10million in the bank? (I know some projects cost more than that to start so this is why I say it is just the start of an idea) one that may not, probably won't work at all.

Pro's - who has more than 10 million dollars in the bank anyway, the people that do would have to spend it, start businesses, pay more, etc...

con's - would have to be global (and I am not a globalist, not at the current age we live in anyway) how to come up with the amount and percent and period of taxing, what about buying/saving gold, silver, etc..., how would this effect the world, prices.. and probably too many cons to list.

I just wanted to throw this out there, seems like this would be the place to do it.

Please forgive my terrible writing, I am baddy crippled from psoriatic arthritis which makes it painful to sit up and type, even to read is almost impossible for any length of time.

Regards,

John

 

 

 

[shirgall]

What has been lost is the idea that people should compartmentalize what control they allow other people to have over them. Where problems arise is where such control is consolidated. The shining example is where a family lives in a coal mining town where all business is related to the coal mine, and so everyone's survival is tied to it.

Diversification resonates with investors, but few people learn in public schools to celebrate competition among leaders and governments and to never allow consolidation of everything into one entity. Instead they learn the conceit that one entity, one form of integration, will lead to the promised land of efficiency and happiness.

People respond to incentives. People don't learn this fundamental in public school. Shocking, isn't it?

[ofd]

Quote

I have an idea I'am wondering if this may be the answer to the "winner" problem and would like to know what Stefan or others far smarter than me thinks about this as a start of an idea.

The historical answer to oligarchies are violent revolutions, where some wealth is redistributed among the elites. That may cool down the plebs until they are agitated again to start another revolution.
The economic answer to oligarchies are economic collapses, where fortunes are wiped out and the game starts fresh again.

 

Quote

Please forgive my terrible writing, I am baddy crippled from psoriatic arthritis which makes it painful to sit up and type, even to read is almost impossible for any length of time.

I have a friend with the same condition. I feel with you and wish you the best

[smarterthanone]

Two big flaws in your argument.

1. As business gets bigger it becomes less efficient, this is how start ups are able to compete so well. Sure buying power creates discounts but communications becomes inefficient. So if you owned 90% of all business in the world, you, such a smart powerful person, could not possibly manage all of your holdings, you leave that to other people, who manage other people who manage other people etc. Nobody cares as much as you do for yourself when it comes to capital management, since its your capital.

So when an opportunity presents itself, John tells Samantha, who tells Mark who says no. Then John does more research and puts together a more formal proposal and sends it direct to Mark and Marks boss Kevin, etc etc.... meanwhile startup Y the guy Jeff just did it already and the product is halfway to market.

2. Nobody is even close to owning the world. Even Besos, Zuckerberg and Gates combined aren't even close to owning the world. There is insane magnitudes of value that is unowned, owned in commons, or privately held by individuals. Even governments are valuable... for example, that which is the US Military, if it was to be offered for sale, how much would it cost? I don't have a good number off my head but Besos would have to buy it before he owned the entire world.

I can give you a good real estate example too, quick Google search says there about 120mm single family homes in the US and the average price is $188k, which puts all single family homes in just the US at 22.5 trillion dollars, by comparison Besos is worth $84 billion. So no he couldnt buy all those houses. Last point on this, even though he is worth $84 billion, he doesn't actually have $84 billion dollars to go buy stuff with. So in terms of buying power he is nowhere close to go buying the world, let alone the US.

Maybe he could buy a city in Africa but he cant even buy a country, the violence used to create countries is so valuable, no country in the world ever would sell their governance of their land for really any price.

[Boss]

Getting tax "once you get 1 cent over $10M" isn't a sustainable or consistent model. Businesses or people can hover at 9.9 million and wait till their competition who have 1 cent over 10M and then watch them lose 10% while they still have that 10% which they can spend as an advantage 

You say "the big problem I see is the problem we are coming up on. The problem that there is eventually a winner, one guy that owns it all"

In free market capitalism, everyone has a chance to decide who to exchange with. If the people don't want "one guy that owns it all" then all the people need to do is change who they do business with. 
 

[Xerravon]

Hi,  Thanks for the replies!  I thought about that where I said were close to the finals. I know where no where near that, not in our life time. the thing is, the top guys now have so much power, it used to be because of the main stream media, now it is because of google, amazon, youtube and the way they manipulate  their algorithms, trending not trending, censorship, etc... I worry about if they get to the point where they fool enough people into giving up free speech, 2nd amendment rights, privacy rights which already seem to be gone (at least the majority do seem to understand how dangerous it is for democracy this "I'm not doing anything wrong why should I care" sickens me). this open borders crap. Sometimes I think they(we) will get what they ask for (some demand)

To where we get to the point where they "own" everything without having to buy it in the traditional way (which I understand isnt capitalism but may be because of it)  I do understand capitalism should take care of the censorship problem by new video hosting sites starting, new Twitter type sites, there are alternatives out there but getting the masses to use them is another story. I started a facebook account to get in touch with someone but haven't used it since. I did the same with Twitter but have recently started using it. Amazon, google, I hate some of the things they're doing but I continue to use them. I actually tried to use different search engine but usually end up back on google. it is hard not to use their services now days. I don't think they will change their ways unless they start loosing money because of it.

 

Thats a good point about the inefficiency of big business, Ive worked for a fortune 500 company and "mom and pop shops" big difference.

 

21 hours ago, ofd said:

 

[Worlok]

Anarchy is no state or no dominant form of government. You family is a government, typically a monarchy or dictatorship. Local communities can form governments that have rules that you must follow or leave. These types can be gangs, clubs, or simple communal organizations. These can and will occur in anarchy. Then, the issue with anarchy is that these forms of government will grow into massive military dictatorships that will kill you and take your stuff. Thus government will form on some level (such as with the founding of the US) as a means of mutual defense. The likelihood of individuals all owning tanks, advanced fighter jets, aircraft carriers and destroyers in an anarchy is something you would have to make an argument for, otherwise an anarchy is just the littlest guy in the neighborhood that can't really defend himself. Smallest government that works is the next logical conclusion and that just means less and less laws until it stops working.

Taxation is legal under the US constitution. However, the founders understood that it is theft, and that people should be able to vote for what they want to pay taxes on. The idea was for voluntary taxation. Then as it is understood that not everybody will vote for the particular tax, it was a very real concern on what taxes at all that could be passed. You can read up on the whiskey rebellion. There was a whiskey tax in which you could pay a tax by volume or a flat rate for everything. Like $1 per gallon or $50 for all of it is how it worked, though the real rates don't matter. This meant that large distilleries could makes 100 gallons and effectively pay half the tax that a small distillery could and the little guys weren't having any of that. Washington was annoyed about the rebellion and Jefferson thought that it was great that the people were telling the government to go drink bleach. At the end, all involved were pardoned by the president. The entire idea is to get people to voluntarily pay a tax and only for what is absolutely required. If the government realistically "needs" a trillion to pay for things that are absolutely necessary

Capitalism does not allow one winner. That is fascism wherein the government makes one winner by stifling competition. A monopoly can only occur in a system of free trade if somebody happens to own all of some resource which is simply illogical. You likely can't do it logistically, and competition will find a way to run things without that resource. Like Oil. If gas was $40 a gallon because of one guy being a jerk and owning it all, we would all have entirely electric cars and gas would have to come down in p rice. This is competition. If anything can be done by somebody else or in some other way for a cheaper or similar price, it will be done. It may take time, but it will occur. The more important it is, the faster it will occur.

Capitalism is a function of no less than two winners. If we both trade an object to each other, we are both more wealthy. Unless one person is a complete moron, then this mutual wealth creation occurs. Further, this applies to spending cash because it is a mutual trade in which both parties become more wealthy. This occurs with employers and this occurs when you manufacture goods. It is virtually impossible to become poor in a free capitalist economy, unless you choose to. If you don't create wealth for somebody and thus yourself, then you starve and die or leave. The only loss of wealth is if you aren't trading labor or producing goods or if a crime against property rights or accident (car crash, broken window, occurs. Capitalism is a system of infinitely increasing the wealth of all participants. You only lose wealth if you don't participate.

State welfare is a lack of participation in which you are not producing wealth and are simultaneously lowering wealth. This is not capitalist. This is a massive drain and in America it is a drain by tens of millions of people, many of which are children and are being invested in, making the children themselves a form of wealth, while people choosing to steal my tax dollars are just ruining the planet. Charity is capitalist because well being is paid for voluntarily. The recipient is obviously better off, and the contributor has enriched her/his own life and likely invested in a person that will soon be creating wealth. 

Some ignorant people argue that the rich storing money in banks is bad. The banks loan that money to people. So long as you aren't a kid with no experience or collateral and you aren't a deadbeat that only survives on state welfare (which doesn't occur in real capitalism and is antithetical) Then you would have wealth to use as collateral  and could obviously get a loan. The entire point of a bank is that they give money to people that don't have it. Those people then create wealth. So much wealth, in fact, that they pay back the loan, become relatively rich, and hire any people that needs jobs. Storing money in banks IS spending it. It's allowing other people to spend it, but only to do so because of the incentive you create several times the wealth in a relatively short period. You don't personally have to have a boat load of cash to have a boat load of cash. This means that instead of buying a doughnut to make your life better for 2 minutes and creating minimal wealth, you are investing in the economy for maximum wealth for as many people as possible.

Capitalism makes it so that wealth is always created. If your business goes under, then you have to sell all of your capital goods, sell or allow somebody else to rent your business location, allow your employees to move somewhere else, etc. When this occurs, other businesses get your market share and they create more wealth than you could. The are able to more efficiently use your former employees for more wealth to all involved. They can use your previous location, again, to create more wealth than you could. If you are losing wealth in this manner, somebody else is gaining even more wealth than you are losing.  Even though you lost wealth, you lost it to people that are so efficient at it that all the goods and services that you pay for that the goods and services get even better and they get cheaper. If the things you need to buy are cheaper and better, you losing wealth simply means that you gained other wealth via a better economy. You're worse off, sure, but not all that much worse.

Wealth creation via competition in which people win an lose based on how much wealth that they can create simply increases the amount of wealth that can be gained in each transaction. For example, everybody in the US can afford a super computer with 99.999% of known information in the universe at their fingertips. They can all have 60" 4k tvs and playstations, cars, refrigerators, AC, MEAT, and as much crap as they can shove in their fat faces. A car that cost a million dollars 50 years ago is a pile of crap compared to a used 10 year old car for two grand. This richest man on Earth 50 years ago has relatively as much wealth as a "poor" person. Every single transaction is thousands of times more valuable than they were mere decades ago because of capitalism. Kings of old could only dream about the crappiest house in the current American ghetto.

Capitalism allows for individuals to fail and lose market share, but while one person loses wealth, every single other person makes collectively far more wealth. You only lost wealth because everybody else was more efficient at creating it. it's like if you lost ten dollars and ten other people found that ten dollars and they can each spend a single dollar twice as effectively as you could spend it. The wealth effectively becomes worth $20. It's like meat on sale for being near expiration. The store makes a little or loses as little as possible while the person buying it eats it immediately and is far more wealthy themselves than if it hadn't been on sale, and if it wasn't on sale, it would have gone bad. Meat in a store is not wealth for the store. Your money is. It means more to that individual than it did to the store and nobody lost. Even though the store may lose a little by choosing for a really low sale price, they are still gaining wealth and you will likely come back or buy more goods. In for a penny, in for a pound, they say.