Capitalism

[kevbone]

Does it work?

[Pete_H]

Why don't you sell your spleen to the highest bidder and find out.

[Hugh Conway]

I'll give you $50 for a finger.

[G-spotter]

wtf bone why aren't you at the Eddie Van/David Lee Roth concert tonight?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Does it work?

 

I thought you stopped caring?

[kevbone]

Poverty is man made.

[ivan]

Poverty is man made.

i've never seen a wealthy marmot.

[kevbone]

Poverty is man made.

i've never seen a wealthy marmot.

 

Look harder.

[akhalteke]

Poverty is man made.

 

Poverty is human nature, wealth and opulence are manmade. Being in Africa right now, I can tell you that the lack of capitalism has not taken a hatchet to poverty in any way.

[kevbone]

Poverty is man made.

 

Poverty is human nature, wealth and opulence are manmade. Being in Africa right now, I can tell you that the lack of capitalism has not taken a hatchet to poverty in any way.

 

If all the wealth in the world was put to better use than greed we could house and feed the entire planet.

 

Poverty is man made.

 

[rob]

Why can't money just be free????

[ivan]

If all the wealth in the world was put to better use than greed we could house and feed the entire planet.

find out the global gdp, then divide it by the global population, then report back your conclusion.

[ivan]

i'll spare you having to look up the numbers:

 

something like $63 trillion in 2010, and 7 billion meat-popsicles currently stumbling around terra firma

[rob]

Yeah, and how much of that GDP would vanish the minute the working poor no longer had to keep working in the factories and sweat-shops? Much of our economic value is at the expense of many. All simple-minded bumper-sticker platitudes aside, if you just equally divided the planet's wealth (even if you had enough to distribute), things as we know them would basically collapse.

[ivan]

Yeah, and how much of that GDP would vanish the minute the working poor no longer had to keep working in the factories and sweat-shops? Much of our economic value is at the expense of many. All simple-minded bumper-sticker platitudes aside, if you just equally divided the planet's wealth (even if you had enough to distribute), things as we know them would basically collapse.

i agree - 9000$ person isn't exactly a fortune anyhow?

[selkirk]

Poverty is man made.

 

Poverty is human nature, wealth and opulence are manmade. Being in Africa right now, I can tell you that the lack of capitalism has not taken a hatchet to poverty in any way.

 

If all the wealth in the world was put to better use than greed we could house and feed the entire planet.

 

Poverty is man made.

 

Tenets of socialism / communism. Works great assuming nice altruistic people. It's too bad people are basically self serving, rotten little beasties.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

It's more fun to have rich people to hate and be jealous of.

[ivan]

It's more fun to have rich people to hate and be jealous of.

no reason you can't hate rich assholes just as much as poor ones?

[rob]

It's more fun to have rich people to hate

 

Well, certainly many of them deserve it.

[ivan]

Does it work?

you might define "work" - historically, it's been plenty succesful in producing wealth and conquering the world - if our space exploration is ever to get anywhere significant, it'll take capitalism to underwrite it i bet.

[G-spotter]

Assuming all wealth was evenly distributed among world population, using an agency model what is the time interval t after which the present level of inequality would become re-established?

 

Show your work.

[rob]

Does it work?

you might define "work" - historically, it's been plenty succesful in producing wealth and conquering the world - if our space exploration is ever to get anywhere significant, it'll take capitalism to underwrite it i bet.

 

A better question is, how well does it work in comparison to other economic systems. Despite it's many flaws, I'm not sure humanity has yet to find a better system -- although we keep modifying capitalism in various attempts to squash its darker, nastier aspects, to greater or lesser degrees of success.

[kevbone]

How about a resource based economy were our resources work for us instead of raping the land for profit.

[G-spotter]

were our resources work for us .

 

They say fire's a good servant but a bad master.

[rob]

How about a resource based economy were our resources work for us instead of raping the land for profit.

 

Then we'd all have enough free time to spend our days lazily dancing around fields of flowers and butterflies to the sound of lutes while nature's glorious bounty provided the life of a King to one and all.