School Monkeytoe on capitalism

[Monkeytoe]

Title says it all, eh? I just noticed, after looking for responses to some monkey's (locked?) thread about the auction house that there seemed to be an interest in discussing the principles of free market economics. I'm all for that. So, tell me what you know about economics.

[unionyes]

Title says it all, eh? I just noticed, after looking for responses to some monkey's (locked?) thread about the auction house that there seemed to be an interest in discussing the principles of free market economics. I'm all for that. So, tell me what you know about economics.

There is no such thing as a free market. There are always some rules, made by someone. And as anyone knows, those who make the rules usually win the game. It should be pointed out here that in a truly 'free' market with no rules, one could amass wealth at gunpoint as legitimately as one could amass wealth by hard work and shrewd investment, as it is merely the existence of a 'rule' that makes one method illegal and the other legal. Taking someone's wealth by gunpoint accomplishes much the same effect as a hostile takeover.

In a capitalist system, in theory the rules are made by the market through supply and demand. In practice, the rules are usually made by those who control the wealth. When the richest 3% of the population control over 50% of the wealth, they obviously will act to preserve what they have, and gain more besides. They will use that wealth to influence policy, annihilate their competitors, and maintain the status quo. This is not a free market, but one that is geared and manipulated to achieve a certain result, the creation of more wealth for those who control it.

In a communist system, in theory the economy is managed by the working class for the betterment of the entire society. In practice, it is run by the leaders of the political arm of the working class, and human nature usually wins out and those with power over the economy use that power to better their own position. This is also not a free market, but an important distinction is that is is not 'less free' than a capitalist system, it merely has different stated goals, as well as different rules and decision makers, and thus a different set of problems when things go wrong.

If you want a 'free' market, you may be living in a fantasy world. Throughout recorded history, there has always been some person, group, or caste who made the rules, and thus manipulated the system for their benefit. Examples would include the Enclosure Act which 'granted' land to nobles and reduced the working class to serfdom, slavery, the Indian caste system, and many more.

The closest thing that we could get to a 'free market' would be a system that has rules that make things level for everyone. Thus far, the world has not been able to produce such a system in any group larger than three people.

[Pellegro]

Nice Unionyes !!!

Good power analysis. Marx would be proud.

What do you want ot know about economics? Books - aye, libraries - have been written.

While Unionyes's analysis (IMO) is pretty spot-on right, economics as applied to the AH work a little different. The "rule makers" (TURBINE) are not traditional rule makers trying to horde/guard their wealth .....

Anyhow ... can you narrow the field a bit? I'd love some intellectual banter.

[arminius]

Union's explanation is, as noted, Marxist. So take that for what it is worth.

Buy this book (if the Man has deemed it in His Class interest to let you have enough money to) or borrow it from the library (if you are one of the Oppressed Masses).

Read it. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Edit: Advanced readers or those otherwise looking for more can try this book.

_

[Hafeal]

Buy this book (if the Man has deemed it in His Class interest to let you have enough money to) or borrow it from the library (if you are one of the Oppressed Masses).

Better yet, read the unedited thoughts and words of the original author: here

[arminius]

Better yet, read the unedited thoughts and words of the original author: here

Yes there is always that option, but yikes! There is some serious digression and anachronisms in there. Like trying to get something out of Sartre's Being and Nothingness (as opposed to the plays and novels, which get his point across much better) instead of reading what others write about Being and Nothingness. I heartily recommend the latter course.

And Unionyes, yes, to me Marxist is a dirty word. I am sensitive to the whole "killed 100+ million people" thing, which I guess makes me a softie. Nobody here is going to stand up for National Socialism, are they? Then why stand up for International Socialism? Does that 10x higher kill count somehow make it cleaner?

But beyond that, it doesn't do one very much good to be defined by the opposition. One should at least hear the pros first, before the cons. Otherwise the cons aren't in context.

And no one said the United States can't socialize medicine. It is that doing so would be a stupid idea. Socializing medicine doesn't make it free, it just shifts the costs from the person being treated to people who aren't being treated, while at the same time removing market incentives for efficiency. I don't want to have to wait 6 months for an MRI, nor do I want all innovation to stop. Every wonder why so many new drugs and treatment technologies are created in the United States? How many come from Canada again? How about the EU?

I am in favor of freedom. Economic freedom is as critical an aspect of freedom as intellectual or religious or political or social freedom. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" is as fundamental to the essence of who we are as individuals as any other question to be had. Giving that decision to a bureaucrat behind a desk in the Central Planning Office does not make the end result any more fair or efficient or right. Giving the decision of what one buys or owns or consumes to that same bureaucrat or any other has no better result.

For crying out loud, we play a game the greatest strength of which is individual choice. That is what sets DDO apart from WoW and the others, an ability to make characters so different from others that they are completely gimped and useless. That freedom gives us the sense of accomplishment that when we do make something not gimped and useless, it is meaningful.

_

[unionyes]

Union's explanation is, as noted, Marxist. So take that for what it is worth.

Buy this book (if the Man has deemed it in His Class interest to let you have enough money to) or borrow it from the library (if you are one of the Oppressed Masses).

Read it. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Edit: Advanced readers or those otherwise looking for more can try this book.

_

Of course, those in power, if they are smart (and they usually are) make it an imperative to influence the educational system and the media, and through those forums make such words as 'Marxist' somehow dirty words. I suppose that is to be expected, although I can't bring myself to accept it.

And of course I have enough money to buy the book. I may have even read it already, I usually try to keep up on that sort of thing when time permits. If I didn't have enough money to purchase a book, I might be tempted to wake up and revolt. The difference between 'money' to buy books and pay my DDO sub and 'money' to own and control the means of production is vastly different on orders of magnitude. Please don't oversimplify. BTW, being poor is no crime (it shouldn't be, anyways), and is NOT an indicator of mental prowess, work ethic, or general fitness to survive. If that was the case, the owner of the widget factory would work 3000 times harder (to correspond with a CEO's average 3000X compensation vs. a laborer in his employ), but if you were to follow them around, I would bet that the widget solderer works a lot harder than the CEO, for a lot less money, but if he demands more he is 'greedy' and 'lazy'.

As for Adam Smith, it seems to me that the 'invisible hand' he speaks of seems to have it's middle finger extended to 98% of the population at any given time. Surely a system worth keeping....oh wait, of course it is, because I MIGHT BE THE NEXT ROCKEFELLER!!!!!! Yeah right.

Myth: Work hard, save your money, have faith in the system, and you will own the company one day.

Fact: Work hard, save your money, have faith in the system, and your bank will lose your money in a 'market adjustment', the system that you fight hard to support will leave you behind, your retirement will be spent saying, 'Welcome to Wal Mart, how may I help you?', and you will NEVER have that house on the hill. Unless the rich folks leave that neighborhood behind, then you can have it, but they have moved on to bigger and better things.

But rest assured, you will ALWAYS have almost enough money to get by. At least enough people will have almost enough to get by, and you are most likely to be in that group, although some will not. But not enough will be desperate enough to overthrow the system. Do you really think that those who own the means of production are stupid enough to allow enough people to be desperate enough to revolt at any one time? It has happened, of course, in Russia, Cuba, Nepal, and various other places.

But I do have a question for ya.

Why is it that a 'free market' system established in one of the most prosperous nations on earth can't provide universal health care to the same standard as a small island nation that has suffered under a trade embargo for decades?

Just a question..............

[Missing_Minds]

Why is it that a 'free market' system established in one of the most prosperous nations on earth can't provide universal health care to the same standard as a small island nation that has suffered under a trade embargo for decades?

But is the level of health care there equal to that which is possible here? Of that I have no clue.

[Monkeytoe]

Hey wow. I wrote a nice long thing expressing my surprise that anyone bothered keeping this thread alive as long as they did and thanking you guys for telling as much as you did about economics. Then I hit [submit] and well, it told me log back in. So much for hacking out long improvised discourses in the DDO off topic forum.

Oh well.

The general drift of what I wrote was: In order to describe the best kind of economic system (which seems to be what was going on) you have to first describe what an economic system is supposed to do. After you explicitly state what the purpose of a system is, then you can rationally describe the best way of achieving that purpose. If you don't state what the system is supposed to do, you can't describe the best way to make it do that.