The Crisis of Capitalism Is a Lack of Capitalism

[StreetScooby 5]

Thought this was a good article, pretty much spot on, IMO.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanlewis/2012/02/23/the-crisis-of-capitalism-is-a-lack-of-capitalism/

“The American economy increasingly serves only a narrow part of society, and America’s national politics has failed to put the country back on track through honest, open, and transparent problem solving. Too many of America’s elites-among the super-rich, the CEOs, and many of my colleagues in academia-have abandoned a commitment to social responsibility. They chase wealth and power, the rest of society be damned.”

–economist Jeffrey Sachs, in The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity

Adam Smith, you may remember, was a fan of capitalism. He also wrote a pretty good book on moral philosophy, and had a day job as a professor and tutor of moral sentiments.

One of Smith’s core ideas, which for some reason we forget today, is that capitalism is supposed to be a system which channels base instincts into productive societal activity. Since the beginning of time, there has been some fraction of the human population that is concerned wholly and completely with their own self-aggrandizement – chasing wealth and power, as Jeffrey Sachs puts it. Think of Ghengis Khan. Or Napoleon, off to plunder the wealth and power of Russia. Or your local mafia boss.

At the same time, the great mass of average people have never had enough “commitment to social responsibility” to make a functioning society without some sort of proto-capitalist system – at least beyond the tribal level of perhaps sixty people or so. One thing we have learned from hundreds of experiments in shared, communal living, from the pilgrim settlers or the hippie communes or the artists’ colonies or the kibbutzes, up to the size of communist China, is that they almost always fail. We are simply not spiritually advanced enough, as a whole, to operate in that fashion. We never have been, and probably never will be, for at least a few more millennia.

Smith saw that this rampant self-interest was channeled by the capitalist system – basically a system of private property and common law – into activity that would benefit others. Those focused on wealth and power, instead of using rape, plunder, pillage and enslavement, as was common through millennia of history, would have to provide some sort of useful good or service to others, in a way that provided a profit. Those chasing wealth and power would find that the easiest path to their goal would be to provide something beneficial for society as a whole. Through competition, this profit has never been very high. Corporate profits average about 8.3% of revenues, a lot lower than most people think. Less than most sales taxes.

Despite today’s increasing disgust with the “rich and powerful,” those people who gain wealth and power by providing a useful good or service – who, inadvertently and accidentally perhaps, improve society as a whole — are still celebrated by the masses. Look at the outpouring of affection for Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was not a saint: there was that business about backdating stock options (a means of outright theft from shareholders), and the working conditions at Apple contract manufacturer Foxconn have been known to provoke employee suicide. Lots of musicians have been complaining about their treatment by iTunes. Nevertheless, the pluses outweighed the minuses. What about billionaire Oprah Winfrey? Or Elizabeth Taylor, who became a billionaire (believe it or not) mostly from perfume sales? How about Ty Warner, who became a multibillionaire from sales of Beanie Babies? A harsh word has never been spoken.

This idea – of encouraging socially productive behavior, and discouraging socially damaging behavior – translates into lots and lots of rules. For example, we discovered that the self-interested pursuit of profit could often lead to rather terrible environmental degradation. So, many rules were made regarding pollution and so forth. This changed the incentives. People can still pursue a profit, but they must do so in a way that is not environmentally destructive. We’ve developed regulations for workplace safety, child labor, bankruptcy, and on and on an on, ideally to prohibit socially damaging behavior, and channeling activity into socially productive behavior.

The United States was not only an experiment in democracy along the lines of philosophers like Rousseau. It was an experiment in capitalism, along the lines of Adam Smith, whose famous book The Wealth of Nations was published in the year of the Declaration of Independence, 1776.

“Capitalism” has elements that go by the code words “free market” or “laissez-faire.” These are labels for rather complex, sophisticated ideas that would take tens of thousands of words to explain in full. They don’t mean that “anything goes” or “do what thou wilst.” Capitalism is a system of rules, finely tuned to produce certain beneficial outcomes, even if the participants themselves have no interest in the condition of society as a whole. The virtue is in the system.

In practice, it helped that many did understand and support the virtuous principles of capitalism. Many corporate leaders wanted to abide by the rules, because they understood that the rules benefited everyone. They did not devote themselves to undermining the system that made America wealthy and prosperous, among all social classes.

However, someone has to make the rules. Technically, this is Congress – not a group known today for its commitment to social responsibility or understanding of capitalist principles. Theoretically, the virtue and high ideals of Congress were supposed to be generated by the electoral process. The voters would choose those who had the interests of society as a whole at heart. But, this system can be corrupted, and clearly doesn’t work today.

Even by design, the U.S. system is only slightly democratic, without the direct proposal and referendum system of Switzerland, for example, where the electorate can decide on policy directly. When was the last time you voted on a war? (Don’t worry – Congress doesn’t either.) Politicians can make promises, and then do something completely different when in office. We get the same Hope and Change blather every year, from both parties, and nothing ever changes.

Today, rather fantastic benefits are being enjoyed by those who have provided nothing to society, whose works have been, especially in recent years, destructive by any reasonable measure. Primarily this has been in the financial system, which is enjoying hundreds of billions in taxpayer funds (euphemistically known as “bailouts” but really just plunder), even after they, in large part, caused the economic difficulties today. In the savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s, over two thousand bank executives did jail time. Societally destructive behavior was punished. In today’s much larger, much more widespread crisis, nobody gets punished; they just get more and more money!

Even Jon Corzine, of MF Global, is still walking free today, after outright securities law violations. When futures broker Refco collapsed in 2005, president Phillip Bennett was prosecuted for similar violations. In 2008, Bennett was sentenced to 16 years in prison. (Refco later became the heart of MF Global.)

MF Global, in turn, is being reorganized under subchapter III of the Chapter 7 bankruptcy law, which is for equities brokerages, instead of subchapter IV of Chapter 7, which is for futures brokerages, although MF Global is a futures brokerage. Why? Because it benefits certain too-big-to-fail banks, who are able to pay for this sort of thing. There are no laws today, only plunder.

This is a lesson not only to those in the financial industry, but to those chasing wealth and power in all avenues of society: you can break the old rules, you can steal, and nobody gets punished.

Today, following the long-established principles of capitalism seems like it is a game for suckers. Capitalism is a tough game. Competition is fierce. The risk of failure is high. The profits, as noted, are often low. No wonder the successful are so highly regarded. American Airlines, General Motors, and Kodak provided useful goods and services for decades, on a grand scale, and provided prosperous employment for hundreds of thousands of employees. Nevertheless, they didn’t quite meet capitalism’s difficult standards.

Theft is a much easier game. The risk is low. The profits are high. There is no competition. You don’t even need employees. You just pay off the Congressman, and stick the money in your pocket.

This is not confined only to the financial industry. The entities that are thriving today are those that enjoy some sort of government favor. Defense contractors and the war industry. The education and healthcare cartels. Government employees and their absurd compensation plans. Competition is low. Profit margins are high. And why do we keep having wars with countries with lots of oil (or heroin)? You know why.

To all who are paying attention, the incentives have changed. Socially destructive behavior is much more rewarding than socially beneficial behavior. Government-supported cartelism and taxpayer theft pays better than providing goods and services in the difficult capitalist marketplace. A society reaches a perilous tipping point, when, responding to the existing incentives, the energies and ambitions of the most energetic and capable are channeled into socially destructive behavior.

Rape, plunder, pillage and enslavement are back! It is a little soft-edged today, unless you happen to be a Muslim living atop a large oil deposit. This soft edge often helps with keeping the victims docile, since they can’t quite figure out what is going on. But, essentially, it is the same.

Running a normal business is getting less and less rewarding. Small businessmen, in particular, are giving up. Taxes are too high. Regulations are too cumbersome. Competition with government-favored cartels is difficult. Monetary instability is chronic. The economy is getting worse, and there is little hope that it will improve.

For as long as socially destructive behavior is more rewarding than socially constructive behavior, things will get worse. This can go on for a very long time. In 17th century Spain, the government gradually made it impossible for the middle class manufacturers and merchants to survive, while the parasite class of aristocrats, military and government employees grew and grew. The merchants paid huge sums (to the government) to become minor aristocrats, clipped coupons on government bonds, learned the manners of courtiers to gain access to the government feeding trough, and abandoned the unpleasantness of business. The workers rushed into “safe, stable” government jobs. The parasite devoured its host, and the empire collapsed.

The decline continued for more than a century, until, in 1701, by a quirk of royal succession, the grandson of Louis XIV of France, who did not even speak Spanish, was anointed the next King of Spain. He brought in some French advisors, who cleaned out the whole corrupt government, reformed the administration upon the French model, and Spain’s recovery began at last.

Spain once held the world’s grandest empire. It stretched from California to the Philippines. Today, five centuries after Spain’s peak, the country is a nice place for British and Germans to go on vacation – unless soaring unemployment and upcoming sovereign default make it unsuitable even for that.

Today, conservatives in the U.S. are all too willing to defend the status quo, despite its ever-increasing corruption and decay. Liberals don’t seem capable of even coherently expressing what is happening, and have fallen back on century-old platitudes that are barely more than cartoons of political dialogue.

Some people today say that we are experiencing a “crisis of capitalism.” I say that we are suffering a crisis of what happens when you don’t have capitalism, in the moral sense that Adam Smith intended. We have an increasing trend toward theft, plunder and parasitism, divorced from the capitalist imperative to provide useful goods and services. Where this path leads is obvious to anyone who thinks about it for a while.

We are all engines of karma

[kallend 1,644]

I pretty much agree with the author.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[SkyDekker 1,141]

Same here...


Noblesse oblige, but that part has been largely forgotten.

[billvon 2,426]

>Some people today say that we are experiencing a “crisis of capitalism.” I say that we
>are suffering a crisis of what happens when you don’t have capitalism, in the moral
>sense that Adam Smith intended. We have an increasing trend toward theft, plunder
>and parasitism, divorced from the capitalist imperative to provide useful goods and
>services.

Adam Smith sounds like an upstanding moral kind of guy, and his "commitment to social responsibility" is a great idea. It's a way for a capitalist society to effectively do the right thing without any outside agency (the government, a union etc) getting involved.

Unfortunately, the history of capitalism in the US is a long history of such people being out-competed by capitalists who do not have those sorts of morals. The article claims that historically "capitalism is a system of rules, finely tuned to produce certain beneficial outcomes, even if the participants themselves have no interest in the condition of society as a whole; the virtue is in the system." It goes on to claim that lately government rules and regulations have destroyed this.

This seems to ignore history. Standard Oil was a massive monopoly that maintained its power by buying railroads and then denying competitors access to them - and often they were the only means of getting goods to market. The Triangle Shirtwaist company cut down on employee delinquency by locking the fire doors shut, which worked well until there was actually a fire that killed 150 women. US Steel's dirty manufacturing processes made them a lot of money - until their emissions killed 20 and sickened 7000 in Donora, PA.

All of these were instances of capitalists doing what they do best - making money.

The article seems to claim that capitalism is a moral enterprise, working to provide beneficial societal outcomes, functioning quite well until the government comes along to screw things up. I think history indicates the opposite. Capitalism makes money and that is its ONLY goal. Without outside regulation, the company that does the best job at making money wins, and the "losers" that "waste" money benefiting society fail. Outside regulation lets all companies compete on the same playing field, so there are no company-killing penalties for doing what's right.

It would be nice if we didn't need that, if capitalists voluntarily did what was right. Unfortunately that is the exception rather than the rule.

[rushmc 18]

Quote

>Some people today say that we are experiencing a “crisis of capitalism.” I say that we
>are suffering a crisis of what happens when you don’t have capitalism, in the moral
>sense that Adam Smith intended. We have an increasing trend toward theft, plunder
>and parasitism, divorced from the capitalist imperative to provide useful goods and
>services.

Adam Smith sounds like an upstanding moral kind of guy, and his "commitment to social responsibility" is a great idea. It's a way for a capitalist society to effectively do the right thing without any outside agency (the government, a union etc) getting involved.

Unfortunately, the history of capitalism in the US is a long history of such people being out-competed by capitalists who do not have those sorts of morals. The article claims that historically "capitalism is a system of rules, finely tuned to produce certain beneficial outcomes, even if the participants themselves have no interest in the condition of society as a whole; the virtue is in the system." It goes on to claim that lately government rules and regulations have destroyed this.

This seems to ignore history. Standard Oil was a massive monopoly that maintained its power by buying railroads and then denying competitors access to them - and often they were the only means of getting goods to market. The Triangle Shirtwaist company cut down on employee delinquency by locking the fire doors shut, which worked well until there was actually a fire that killed 150 women. US Steel's dirty manufacturing processes made them a lot of money - until their emissions killed 20 and sickened 7000 in Donora, PA.

All of these were instances of capitalists doing what they do best - making money.

The article seems to claim that capitalism is a moral enterprise, working to provide beneficial societal outcomes, functioning quite well until the government comes along to screw things up. I think history indicates the opposite. Capitalism makes money and that is its ONLY goal. Without outside regulation, the company that does the best job at making money wins, and the "losers" that "waste" money benefiting society fail. Outside regulation lets all companies compete on the same playing field, so there are no company-killing penalties for doing what's right.

It would be nice if we didn't need that, if capitalists voluntarily did what was right. Unfortunately that is the exception rather than the rule.

Because morality is being driven out by the liberal left

In any event, this was seen by the founders

http://www.free2pray.info/5founderquotes.html

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[billvon 2,426]

>Because morality is being driven out by the liberal left

So Standard Oil, the Shirtwaist Coat Company and US Steel were all "the liberal left?"

[StreetScooby 5]

Quote

It would be nice if we didn't need that, if capitalists voluntarily did what was right. Unfortunately that is the exception rather than the rule.

I think well written rules have a definite place here. In addition to being well written, these rules need to be blind, and enforced.

We are all engines of karma

[billvon 2,426]

>I think well written rules have a definite place here. These rules need to be blind,
>and enforced.

Agreed. That's the challenge - come up with rules that

1) accomplish the societal objective
2) do not impact the industry adversely
3) are equally enforced across the industry

In general I think that 1) is the hardest to accomplish.

[StreetScooby 5]

Quote

In general I think that 1) is the hardest to accomplish.

Agreed that accomplishing societal objectives is difficult. Especially so where there are no accepted principles for doing so.

Our country has veered to the point where it's just fine to take money from people who work and give to those that don't. Even worse, there is no expectation of people being given the money. Apparently doing so "infringes" on their rights.

Not sure how this can be overcome.

We are all engines of karma

[kallend 1,644]

Quote

>Because morality is being driven out by the liberal left

So Standard Oil, the Shirtwaist Coat Company and US Steel were all "the liberal left?"

Don't disturb him, he's on a roll today.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[kallend 1,644]

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Quote

In general I think that 1) is the hardest to accomplish.

Agreed that accomplishing societal objectives is difficult. Especially so where there are no accepted principles for doing so.

Our country has veered to the point where it's just fine to take money from people who work and give to those that don't.

I think the Wall Street execs did SOME work. They still took a lot of money, though, from taxpayers like you and me.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[lawrocket 3]

I think that as much as the “Wealth of Nations” is a fantastic book (and one of my personal favorites) I do not think that it – or Adam Smith – can be fully understood without its predecessor treatise the Theory of Moral Sentiment. For some background, Adam Smith was not an economist because before Adam Smith there was no such thing. Smith was a philosopher along the lines of Macchiavelli, but with a lot more humility.

About 15 years before the Wealth of Nations, the Theory of Moral Sentiment was published. As I view the books, Smith had an idea about how communities operate. And from this are two parts of every individual relationship: (1) the individual self-interest; and (2) the individual interest in everyone else.

The interest in everyone else is what TMS is about. Smith expounded on how people feel and react to others. He discussed “sympathy.” He identified that while we may feel sympathy for others we can never know how another person really feels because we cannot sense it. He discussed that when viewing the conduct of others we only judge them by how we think we would act in those same circumstances.

Our interplay with others is determined by our imaginations of what other people are feeling. He insisted that those who don’t take care of themselves are no good for society. But – that we have to use our imaginations to put ourselves in the position of another person. Only in that way can we care about others.

He goes into selfishness. He describes that that if we don’t use our imaginations then we judge other people based upon whether we agree with them or not. Hence, we don’t place ourselves in the position of the wealthy person, who views himself as working harder for less and less and being attacked politically for it. On the other side, we don’t put ourselves in the position of the homeless person in order to understand their position or why they are there.

It is this lack of imagination of the permutations that lead to arrogance. In this, Adam Smith spoke of the failings of humans who think they know best how to manage the lives of others.

Quote

The man of the system…is apt to be wise in his own conceit; and it is often so enamored with the supposed beauty of his own plan for ideal government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it…He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the pieces upon a chess board.

Sound like, um, every politician and activist for the last century?

Adam Smith’s TMS, I think, speaks of how selfishness and conceit cause problems with society. When one uses one’s own thoughts, feelings, sympathies and motives and imputes them on other people in order to force others into those same thoughts, feelings, etc., it is inherent that the person does so without true knowledge of that person. It’s the whole, “I feel this way, and everyone else should, too.”

The Wealth of Nations examined the other side – how our self-interest can benefit society. Underlying it are the lessons from the TMS. Another person benefits if I pay for a jump ticket for that person. But what if I pay for that jump ticket for myself? Others benefit from that, too. The DZO. The fuel supplier. So many others. The self-interest plays its part in society, too.

How is wealth built? It starts with the freedom to imagine. I have a product that I think will help. To make the most money, I have to make a lot of them. For that I need help, and I pay a cut to all people who help me with it. Like Bill Gates, I benefit myself. Like everyone else, they, too, benefit from his advances in software. The employees he has, the stockholders, all through benefitted from his imagination. Jobs’ imagination.

The failures come with the one-track mind of imagination. Jobs did not imagine the lives of those working to produce. The Robber Barons did not imagine the lives of others. They were conceited in their approach, considering what was best for them was best for others. They understood the Wealth of Nations. But did they understand the Theory of Moral Sentiment?

What makes Smith so great in my mind is that he was not himself a visionary. He learned his own lessons and did not become one of those who was “so enamored with the supposed beauty of his own plan.” Indeed, he believed that each societal structure was simply a product of its time and could be changed depending upon the feelings of the people at the time.

Fantastic stuff.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[StreetScooby 5]

Quote

Fantastic stuff.

+1. Great summary. Thanks.

We are all engines of karma

[diverborg 0]

Quote

>Some people today say that we are experiencing a “crisis of capitalism.” I say that we
>are suffering a crisis of what happens when you don’t have capitalism, in the moral
>sense that Adam Smith intended. We have an increasing trend toward theft, plunder
>and parasitism, divorced from the capitalist imperative to provide useful goods and
>services.

Adam Smith sounds like an upstanding moral kind of guy, and his "commitment to social responsibility" is a great idea. It's a way for a capitalist society to effectively do the right thing without any outside agency (the government, a union etc) getting involved.

Unfortunately, the history of capitalism in the US is a long history of such people being out-competed by capitalists who do not have those sorts of morals. The article claims that historically "capitalism is a system of rules, finely tuned to produce certain beneficial outcomes, even if the participants themselves have no interest in the condition of society as a whole; the virtue is in the system." It goes on to claim that lately government rules and regulations have destroyed this.

This seems to ignore history. Standard Oil was a massive monopoly that maintained its power by buying railroads and then denying competitors access to them - and often they were the only means of getting goods to market. The Triangle Shirtwaist company cut down on employee delinquency by locking the fire doors shut, which worked well until there was actually a fire that killed 150 women. US Steel's dirty manufacturing processes made them a lot of money - until their emissions killed 20 and sickened 7000 in Donora, PA.

All of these were instances of capitalists doing what they do best - making money.

The article seems to claim that capitalism is a moral enterprise, working to provide beneficial societal outcomes, functioning quite well until the government comes along to screw things up. I think history indicates the opposite. Capitalism makes money and that is its ONLY goal. Without outside regulation, the company that does the best job at making money wins, and the "losers" that "waste" money benefiting society fail. Outside regulation lets all companies compete on the same playing field, so there are no company-killing penalties for doing what's right.

It would be nice if we didn't need that, if capitalists voluntarily did what was right. Unfortunately that is the exception rather than the rule.

I personally think the "committment to social responsibility" would balance itself out if we all played by the same rules regardless if one started a business purely for selfish purpsoses. Humans at their core are selfish, and there's no way to eliminate that. The problem I see isn't with capitalism. What we continue to complain about day in and day out is a corrupted form of corporatism where our govt officials create a world to pander to the wealthy entities that got them elected. Our governing officials have become personal employees of the wealthy entities that got them into elected office, only taxpayers pay their salary, and the "wealthy entitities" just paid the "origination fees" for lack of a better term. We've created the most unfair of playing fields.

Whats wonderful is all this could easily be solved if "we the people" elected some real representatives and not the puppets the mainstream media plugs all day.

What sucks is that most Americans aren't smart enough to think for themselves and need a media outlet to make their decision for them.

[jgoose71 0]

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Quote

>Because morality is being driven out by the liberal left

So Standard Oil, the Shirtwaist Coat Company and US Steel were all "the liberal left?"

Don't disturb him, he's on a roll today.

I guess neither of you followed his link, did you?

When the left started following Saul Alinski's "Rules for radicals" they essentially said that there is no more need to be moral. We know better, the end's justify the means, and we will stack the deck in our favor.

The problem is, when you start picking winners and losers, you start eliminating the rules of fair play. The rules of fair play is what makes capitalism work.

For America to turn around, the government needs to repeal the current rules and put new rules in place that level the playing field and put some teeth in the rules that punish people who step out side the lines.

Week agencies like the SEC that allowed Bernie Madoff to thrive need to be seriously overhauled.

And last but not least, the media needs to start doing it's job. Less commentary and more fact based, well researched news. Most of the news agencies out there are paid propaganda arms that are incapable of an honest conversation. Those that try to have an honest conversation are often screamed out because "if there not 100% backing my guy, we have to label them as liars so we can get our guy in power."

But I guess that is what is to be expected when you turn away from morals and take a "the ends justify the means" approach.

"There is an art, it says, or, rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
Life, the Universe, and Everything

[StreetScooby 5]

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Whats wonderful is all this could easily be solved if "we the people" elected some real representatives and not the puppets the mainstream media plugs all day.

There are alot of people that feel the same way, myself included. I just went through an election here in Westchester County, NY, where Democrats have been entrenched for a very long time. You can imagine the problems the county is facing (we're going bankrupt). We managed to break the Democratic super majority in the council. Took alot of work, but we did it, when most people didn't think it was possible.

We are all engines of karma

[pirana 0]

Quote

Because morality is being driven out by the liberal left

In any event, this was seen by the founders

http://www.free2pray.info/5founderquotes.html

Morality is never "driven out" by any one or any organization. It is a fluid thing, constantly changing, albeit usually in tiny increments.

Your comment is typical of the hyperbole seen when someone doesn't like the direction in which morals are moving. Slavery, human sacrifice, infanticide - all considered perfectly acceptable at some time in the past by most people of the day; and all those changes faced strong resistance by people fearful of changing mores.

Every society blames their perceived weaknesses and difficulties on some boogey man or another. In the USA there are those that think gay marriage will destroy the fabric of society. In Saudi Arabia they think allowing women to vote would do the same.

Guess what, the fabric of society will never be destroyed - it just keeps morphing based on commonly accepted norms.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[rushmc 18]

Quote

Quote

Because morality is being driven out by the liberal left

In any event, this was seen by the founders

http://www.free2pray.info/5founderquotes.html

Morality is never "driven out" by any one or any organization. It is a fluid thing, constantly changing, albeit usually in tiny increments.

Your comment is typical of the hyperbole seen when someone doesn't like the direction in which morals are moving. Slavery, human sacrifice, infanticide - all considered perfectly acceptable at some time in the past by most people of the day; and all those changes faced strong resistance by people fearful of changing mores.

Every society blames their perceived weaknesses and difficulties on some boogey man or another. In the USA there are those that think gay marriage will destroy the fabric of society. In Saudi Arabia they think allowing women to vote would do the same.

Guess what, the fabric of society will never be destroyed - it just keeps morphing based on commonly accepted norms.

So the question becomes, which way will it change?

Moving away from being responcible for ones self is where we are headed

The nanny gov can take care of us and by doing so. allow us to become less moral/responcible (you pick the norm)

The quotes I posted are right on the money

We are headed toward that which they warned us about

Not a question of like or dislike

It is a question of long term viability of a country

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[billvon 2,426]

>I personally think the "committment to social responsibility" would balance itself out if
>we all played by the same rules regardless if one started a business purely for selfish
>purpsoses.

Agreed - and that's how it should work. Have everyone have to follow the same basic safety, environmental etc rules and then let them do whatever they want to do to make money. There's nothing wrong with greed; that's what drives our economy - provided we have a set of rules in place to ensure that greed doesn't hurt others.

>What we continue to complain about day in and day out is a corrupted form of
>corporatism where our govt officials create a world to pander to the wealthy entities
>that got them elected. Our governing officials have become personal employees of the
>wealthy entities that got them into elected office, only taxpayers pay their salary, and
>the "wealthy entitities" just paid the "origination fees" for lack of a better term. We've
>created the most unfair of playing fields.

Agreed there. HOWEVER:

>Whats wonderful is all this could easily be solved if "we the people" elected some real representatives . . .

I think our representatives ARE doing what people want. They want cheap gas and cheap stuff at Wal-Mart. They want big TV's and Miller Lite. They don't want to worry about Keynesian economics; they just want the economy fixed RIGHT NOW.

Imagine a representative was elected who didn't want to live in the shadow of this massive debt. As soon as he was elected he started cutting programs and raising taxes. People would hate him. Both parties would unite in their condemnation of him. He'd be gone in six months.

[SkyDekker 1,141]

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Imagine a representative was elected who didn't want to live in the shadow of this massive debt. As soon as he was elected he started cutting programs and raising taxes. People would hate him. Both parties would unite in their condemnation of him. He'd be gone in six months.

Exactly. Everybody wants the economy fixed, but since it is clearly the fault of the other party, they need to suffer, not us.

[lawrocket 3]

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it is clearly the fault of the other party

Actually, it's always the fault of the "other" whatever. The other party. The other person. Etc.

And who should fix it? They should. Who should suffer? Thy should.

"We" is never something that people look to for sacrifice anymore. "Them" are those who are responsible. People want to be given jobs. They don't want to create jobs themselves, though. Let somebody else give them a job. The whole 99 percent thing is the prime example of it. The 1 percent should be made to give to the 99 percent.

Tea partiers who are on Medicare and Social Security don't want it taken from them. Yep. Cut other things but don't take what I think I have coming to me.

It's the same everywhere. You're correct. But don't just limit it to the "other party." Just "other."

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[diverborg 0]

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I think our representatives ARE doing what people want. They want cheap gas and cheap stuff at Wal-Mart. They want big TV's and Miller Lite. They don't want to worry about Keynesian economics; they just want the economy fixed RIGHT NOW.

Imagine a representative was elected who didn't want to live in the shadow of this massive debt. As soon as he was elected he started cutting programs and raising taxes. People would hate him. Both parties would unite in their condemnation of him. He'd be gone in six months.

Just like my mama always told me. If you try to please everyone you end up pleasing no one.

Anyway what you speak of is no doubt as big of a problem if not bigger than the media influence factor.

[kallend 1,644]

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it is clearly the fault of the other party

Actually, it's always the fault of the "other" whatever. The other party. The other person. Etc.

And who should fix it? They should. Who should suffer? Thy should.

"We" is never something that people look to for sacrifice anymore. "Them" are those who are responsible. People want to be given jobs. They don't want to create jobs themselves, though.

Explain how you think society would work if everyone was self employed and no-one worked for anyone else.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[marks2065 0]

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In general I think that 1) is the hardest to accomplish.

Agreed that accomplishing societal objectives is difficult. Especially so where there are no accepted principles for doing so.

Our country has veered to the point where it's just fine to take money from people who work and give to those that don't.

I think the Wall Street execs did SOME work. They still took a lot of money, though, from taxpayers like you and me.

And who was stupid enough to give it to them? I think polosi had the gavel at the time. Who gives alot of money to the politicians, mostly the dem party?

[kallend 1,644]

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it is clearly the fault of the other party

Actually, it's always the fault of the "other" whatever. The other party. The other person. Etc.

And who should fix it? They should. Who should suffer? Thy should.

"We" is never something that people look to for sacrifice anymore. "Them" are those who are responsible. People want to be given jobs. They don't want to create jobs themselves, though.

Explain how you think society would work if everyone was self employed and no-one worked for anyone else.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.