My theory/rant on capitalism and associated concepts works

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gamer0004
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Re: My theory/rant on capitalism and associated concepts wor

Post by gamer0004 »

Calling people douchebags for not putting effort into something for which they are not rewarded is a bit too strong for me. I would rather say that humans need incentives, which communism does not provide amply.
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Re: My theory/rant on capitalism and associated concepts wor

Post by DDL »

What?

I was calling people douchebags because (and I cannot stress this enough) people are douchebags.

It's not specific to communism or any political system, it's specific to people.

The fact of the matter is that for communism to work effectively, it relies on this one salient fact somehow not being true.
Capitalism works just fine with douchebaggery (indeed arguably thrives on it), hence: capitalism it is!
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Re: My theory/rant on capitalism and associated concepts wor

Post by gamer0004 »

Communism doesn't work because people need incentives to do something, not because it requires a lack of douchebaggery to work.

EDIT: to clarify, I mean douchbaggery != people need incentives. Acting in one's self-interest is not the same as being a douchebag. Capitalism works because it provides the right incentives. Capitalism with full on douchebaggery wouldn't work. To give an example: if I were a douchebag I would put very little effort into my job. Where I work I have no supervisors around. If I was a real douchebag I would do nothing but the tiniest effort so my boss doesn't notice. I could steal stuff, watch porn, be rude to people and take a lot of time (to make more money).
And yet, I don't. Because I'm not a douchebag. I try to to my job the best I can and keep the time spent every evening I work there to a minimum (so they don't have to spend more than necessary).

If everyone would be a douchebag, capitalism wouldn't work. There would be a constant struggle between employees and employers, and it would require a huge and expensive police force and judicial system to keep track of all conflicts, damage, violence and theft. And even such a huge police force probably wouldn't be enough to keep real douchebags from fucking with things so that the incentive to invest would be greatly reduced. Capitalism works because it provided people with the right incentives, that is incentives which call to our self interest. This self interest can be altruistic btw: when I give money to charity, I do so - ultimately - because it makes me feel good about myself. When I do my best at work I do so, again, out of self interest: because I want to do a good job, and doing so makes me feel good about myself.

Communism doesn't provide people with the right incentives. It is not in their self interest to put in more effort or to come up with a good idea (because they can't profit from the implementation of such a good idea). In fact, all that's really necessary is to perform averagely (because putting in less effort might result in social or judicial punishment) which can result in a race to the bottom. Especially because not only the pecuniary interest of people is removed, but the social incentives as well: by not rewarding people for doing better than average, people feel to be treated unfairly, which reduces their social incentive. After all, why care about doing a good job for the greater good if the greater good doesn't show any recognition? By not rewarding people for doing a good job, taking risk, putting in more effort &c. the "social contract" is violated and they won't have a social incentive to perform either.
Propaganda can be used to offset this to some extent, but it is clearly not effective enough (nor desirable, and probably detrimental in the long run because it suppresses free thought).

EDIT 2: Sorry for the long edit during your posting.
Last edited by gamer0004 on Tue Mar 06, 2012 6:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: My theory/rant on capitalism and associated concepts wor

Post by DDL »

-_-

I don't think you really understand people very well.

Also, survival is an incentive. Hell, survival is THE ONLY incentive. Everything can basically boil down to survival on one or other level. Communism is super for survival, since everybody wins!

However, what something like communism requires is for people to consider the survival and welfare of others beyond their immediate in-group, and this is something that goes against the grain of our entire evolutionary history...which is that of highly-evolved douchebags.

Communism in principle is basically just a prisoners' dilemma: while it's better for everyone if everyone cooperates, everyone opts for being a dick because while this usually works out worse for all concerned, every once in a while it works out really well for the dick, and we're genetically programmed to assume that that person it's going to work out really well for..is us.

Don't worry though, out-group douchebaggery is incredibly common in nature, since it's a very successful trait.
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Re: My theory/rant on capitalism and associated concepts wor

Post by DDL »

In response to your edits: while your behaviour is laudable, N=1 here.
I'm (almost) certain that if you took a large representative sample of the population and put them in a similar environment to the one you describe, one half supervised, the other not, the unsupervised group would be substantially less productive.

A person can be awful. A person can be great.

People are douchebags. It's just statistics (and to an extend, herd mentality). And of course, politics doesn't really concern itself with individuals, it's based on the behaviour of the masses. Which is pretty douchey, really.
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Re: My theory/rant on capitalism and associated concepts wor

Post by DaveW »

gamer0004 wrote:I try to to my job the best I can and keep the time spent every evening I work there to a minimum (so they don't have to spend more than necessary).
The thing is, as DDL says, most people aren't like that. Given half the chance most people will attempt to cheat the system because of some skewed mentality that their needs are more important than other peoples'. The reason capitalism even exists is because people don't want to be equal and they don't want things to be fair unless it works in their favour. If you stuck 100 people in identical houses doing identical jobs with a identical families, no one would be happy. People get off on having something better than other people.
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Re: My theory/rant on capitalism and associated concepts wor

Post by Mr_Cyberpunk »

Thats just it, there's always going to be a percentage in a group that doesn't want to co-operate. Its not a flaw with Communism, its a flaw with any political system subjected to corruption (which is what we're talking about here, 98 people will be doing the right thing whilst the other 2 will be robbing the other 98.)

We could simply say "This is why we can't have nice things" arguement, that because there's those two people there fucking everything up for the rest of us, Communism doesn't work. DDL's arguement stands, "People are douchebags".

Creating the perfect system is one where corruption simply does not become an option, I'm thinking though this leads to opression, tyranny maybe even some supression of civil rights (like freedom of speech, which seems to be a common component of communism, the need to propogate what you think is "Right" no matter the cost).

Dealing with this unfortunately seems to lead us into harsh punishements, which then leads us to the whole "Where does it end" and "Who polices the police" arguements. We're dealing with corruption, its really difficult to stop people doing the wrong thing, especially if its morally ambigious. Not even the police or military can monitor it effectively so us as Citizens have about zero chance as well.. as for politicians, they're the most corrupt out of all lol- its in their nature to be corrupt and push their own personal agendas on society, so the solution definately will not come from them, they'd be the worst place to look for solutions.

Even if we did create the perfect system, it could always be altered to be imperfect (And thus subjected to corruption). If it can be created then it can also be removed. No political system lasts forever, as there is always a need for reform and to always improve on it. Capitalisms biggest problem with the modern era is that if its not reforming and progressing, it stops growing, so if that happens the entire benefits of capitalism are lost and the entire thing collapses.

What the capitalists did that was really dumb was they allowed monopolies to exist, the whole strength of capitalism is competition, if you have monopolies then the system isn't working (as it practically becomes a private dictatorship, where the "Elite" rule), if one company is able to destroy all the competition, then we're stagnating.
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Re: My theory/rant on capitalism and associated concepts wor

Post by AEmer »

@ Mr Cyberpunk

Just want to be clear that arguing by reference can be really useful...
...it's just not really going to work in this setting, on this topic, here.

Anyway, as for the problem with communism re douchebaggery...

I agree with the general idea, but I think it's even more general:

Communism is set up as a prescriptive system. In it, people don't behave in their own or their groups self interest, they behave in the self-interest of everything. You can call it whatever you want, but that's fundamentally a failed prescription, because people don't do this by themselves, and communism does not come up with a method by which to bring about this state in people.

Prescriptive models of government and ideology are easy to understand and remember, but they're cartoony and often there's something wrong in them. This doesn't just go for communism - I fully reject the prescriptive models of democracy too, the idea for instance that the intricate system of checks and balances of the US works as it was intended to...it works, but it probably doesn't work for the reasons we might think it works, because it's a massive, very complicated system...
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Re: My theory/rant on capitalism and associated concepts wor

Post by OneLastBattleFGJ »

DDL wrote:What?

I was calling people douchebags because (and I cannot stress this enough) people are douchebags.

It's not specific to communism or any political system, it's specific to people.

The fact of the matter is that for communism to work effectively, it relies on this one salient fact somehow not being true.
Capitalism works just fine with douchebaggery (indeed arguably thrives on it), hence: capitalism it is!
Even assuming everyone was a selfless angel, good luck properly allocating resources without market mechanisms, which always was the bigger problem with Communism. Most ideas for allocating resources with Communism are really rather silly.

With Capitalism (well, with what we have which is close enough I guess), a guy can figure out the value of something generally just by checking the price and seeing how much money he has/gets paid. A businessman knows what price to set a product because other people interacting have created a reasonable range, and those who do a poor job of this go bankrupt. Its mostly a self correcting system, and there are issues (the intricacies that various schools of economics argue about regularly, like the monetary supply, regulations, etc), but Communism doesn't even reach that stage.

And for the sake of having something somewhat more worthwhile to argue about, Scandanavia is a very poor example of successful government intervention, so there's that.
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Re: My theory/rant on capitalism and associated concepts wor

Post by gamer0004 »

Communism never did away with the concept of money, which is an effective way of allocating goods even without capitalism. Capitalism has nothing to do with money per se, for throughout history civilizations have used money.

@DDL: Oh don't get me wrong: if I were paid a million euros for doing my job even better I would do so. At the current level of pay though the social/psychological incentive is higher than the slacking incentive.
Also monitoring can (and has) reduced productivity. It's pretty ironic that I as an economist to be have to point out to others that money is not the only (or main) incentive :P A simple example is the dictator game: one person get $10 and may divide it between himself and an anonymous other person (so not someone from his own "group"). Even though the other person is anonymous and the "dictator" can maximize his own welfare by keeping all 10 dollars for himself, 60% of participants gave a positive amount of money to the anonymous other. People also give to anonymous people in developing countries.

People want monitoring because they feel they put in more effort than others (typically, between 60 and almost 100% of all employees think that if their group was divided in two parts, one half putting in more effort and the other half putting in less effort, they would belong to the former. Which is impossible because we're talking about medians here). However, if they are monitored, they feel insulted, because they think it's the others that need monitoring, and the fact that they are monitored means their employer doesn't recognize his superior efforts. Which means monitoring and incentive schemes can reduce productivity rather than enhance it (the crowding out effect). Now I'm not a psychologist or sociologist, but there is quite a lot of theory about this (called "psychological contracts"). Higher wages result in people putting in more effort even if this higher effort is not necessary to get the higher wage (so no incentive scheme but an increase in fixed wage without an increase in risk of being fired).

I simply object to calling people "douchebags" in general. Even if they don't care about people outside their group, this does not mean they treat those outsiders badly. Treating outsiders in a neutral way does not make someone a douchebag. And cultural and social influences, if you want to stick to the us-versus-them framework, have apparently increased the "us" part (the own group) enormously, since we even behave socially towards employers and even anonymous people, and anonymous people on the other side of the globe! In that case, social and cultural factors have indeed been able to suppress our natural douchyness (by changing whom we think of as "our group").

Edit: BTW, I am not an idealist, I am fairly cynical towards the human race. But looking at the facts, I am really hard pressed to find examples of how people in general behave like douchebags.
The influence of culture on who is included in one's group and who isn't and the positive effect this has had on the display of immoral behaviour is beautifully proved in wars, and WWII (and 1984): by depicting other races or cultures as inferior and different and non-human, they are transferred from within the group to outside of the group, and once that happens we see some really terrible, immoral, disgusting behaviour (which goes way beyond douchyness).
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Re: My theory/rant on capitalism and associated concepts wor

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gamer0004 wrote:Communism never did away with the concept of money, which is an effective way of allocating goods even without capitalism. Capitalism has nothing to do with money per se, for throughout history civilizations have used money.

@DDL: Oh don't get me wrong: if I were paid a million euros for doing my job even better I would do so. At the current level of pay though the social/psychological incentive is higher than the slacking incentive.
Also monitoring can (and has) reduced productivity. It's pretty ironic that I as an economist to be have to point out to others that money is not the only (or main) incentive :P A simple example is the dictator game: one person get $10 and may divide it between himself and an anonymous other person (so not someone from his own "group"). Even though the other person is anonymous and the "dictator" can maximize his own welfare by keeping all 10 dollars for himself, 60% of participants gave a positive amount of money to the anonymous other. People also give to anonymous people in developing countries.

People want monitoring because they feel they put in more effort than others (typically, between 60 and almost 100% of all employees think that if their group was divided in two parts, one half putting in more effort and the other half putting in less effort, they would belong to the former. Which is impossible because we're talking about medians here). However, if they are monitored, they feel insulted, because they think it's the others that need monitoring, and the fact that they are monitored means their employer doesn't recognize his superior efforts. Which means monitoring and incentive schemes can reduce productivity rather than enhance it (the crowding out effect). Now I'm not a psychologist or sociologist, but there is quite a lot of theory about this (called "psychological contracts"). Higher wages result in people putting in more effort even if this higher effort is not necessary to get the higher wage (so no incentive scheme but an increase in fixed wage without an increase in risk of being fired).

I simply object to calling people "douchebags" in general. Even if they don't care about people outside their group, this does not mean they treat those outsiders badly. Treating outsiders in a neutral way does not make someone a douchebag. And cultural and social influences, if you want to stick to the us-versus-them framework, have apparently increased the "us" part (the own group) enormously, since we even behave socially towards employers and even anonymous people, and anonymous people on the other side of the globe! In that case, social and cultural factors have indeed been able to suppress our natural douchyness (by changing whom we think of as "our group").

Edit: BTW, I am not an idealist, I am fairly cynical towards the human race. But looking at the facts, I am really hard pressed to find examples of how people in general behave like douchebags.
The influence of culture on who is included in one's group and who isn't and the positive effect this has had on the display of immoral behaviour is beautifully proved in wars, and WWII (and 1984): by depicting other races or cultures as inferior and different and non-human, they are transferred from within the group to outside of the group, and once that happens we see some really terrible, immoral, disgusting behaviour (which goes way beyond douchyness).
Note how I didn't say "money", I said "market mechanisms".

Money, in of itself, is worthless. You need the entire market structure, a reason for it to be the agreed upon medium of exchange (viewed reliability, legal tender of a reliable country, etc), people paying in it and people buying in it in an at least somewhat free market for it to work. Prices in of themselves are not magic, they are just approximations of the present value of goods found through the interactions of about eight billion people.
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Re: My theory/rant on capitalism and associated concepts wor

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OneLastBattleFGJ wrote:Note how I didn't say "money", I said "market mechanisms".

Money, in of itself, is worthless. You need the entire market structure, a reason for it to be the agreed upon medium of exchange (viewed reliability, legal tender of a reliable country, etc), people paying in it and people buying in it in an at least somewhat free market for it to work. Prices in of themselves are not magic, they are just approximations of the present value of goods found through the interactions of about eight billion people.
Somewhat related to this - one thing that's always annoyed me about people who spend their time complaining about fractional-resevere banking and the like, is that they tout the gold standard as some kind of utopian vision. "All the money you've got is worthless paper!" as if gold has any value expect what the market applies to it at a given time.
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Re: My theory/rant on capitalism and associated concepts wor

Post by OneLastBattleFGJ »

DaveW wrote:
OneLastBattleFGJ wrote:Note how I didn't say "money", I said "market mechanisms".

Money, in of itself, is worthless. You need the entire market structure, a reason for it to be the agreed upon medium of exchange (viewed reliability, legal tender of a reliable country, etc), people paying in it and people buying in it in an at least somewhat free market for it to work. Prices in of themselves are not magic, they are just approximations of the present value of goods found through the interactions of about eight billion people.
Somewhat related to this - one thing that's always annoyed me about people who spend their time complaining about fractional-resevere banking and the like, is that they tout the gold standard as some kind of utopian vision. "All the money you've got is worthless paper!" as if gold has any value expect what the market applies to it at a given time.
A gold standard isn't exactly the ideal, the ideal would be competition amongst privately issued currencies.

However, a gold standard is still far and away better than fiat currency. True, it varies depending on what value the market applies to it, but the value the market applies to it is generally fairly stable, far more so than fiat currencies (which, in turn, effect the value of gold which is used as a hedge against inflation).
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Re: My theory/rant on capitalism and associated concepts wor

Post by DaveW »

OneLastBattleFGJ wrote:
DaveW wrote:
OneLastBattleFGJ wrote:Note how I didn't say "money", I said "market mechanisms".

Money, in of itself, is worthless. You need the entire market structure, a reason for it to be the agreed upon medium of exchange (viewed reliability, legal tender of a reliable country, etc), people paying in it and people buying in it in an at least somewhat free market for it to work. Prices in of themselves are not magic, they are just approximations of the present value of goods found through the interactions of about eight billion people.
Somewhat related to this - one thing that's always annoyed me about people who spend their time complaining about fractional-resevere banking and the like, is that they tout the gold standard as some kind of utopian vision. "All the money you've got is worthless paper!" as if gold has any value expect what the market applies to it at a given time.
A gold standard isn't exactly the ideal, the ideal would be competition amongst privately issued currencies.

However, a gold standard is still far and away better than fiat currency. True, it varies depending on what value the market applies to it, but the value the market applies to it is generally fairly stable, far more so than fiat currencies (which, in turn, effect the value of gold which is used as a hedge against inflation).
The problem is that (by design) it gives government practically no control of the economy. Personally I think that for all bad things that brings, government control is mostly positive in providing a stable economy.
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Re: My theory/rant on capitalism and associated concepts wor

Post by OneLastBattleFGJ »

DaveW wrote:
OneLastBattleFGJ wrote:
DaveW wrote:
OneLastBattleFGJ wrote:Note how I didn't say "money", I said "market mechanisms".

Money, in of itself, is worthless. You need the entire market structure, a reason for it to be the agreed upon medium of exchange (viewed reliability, legal tender of a reliable country, etc), people paying in it and people buying in it in an at least somewhat free market for it to work. Prices in of themselves are not magic, they are just approximations of the present value of goods found through the interactions of about eight billion people.
Somewhat related to this - one thing that's always annoyed me about people who spend their time complaining about fractional-resevere banking and the like, is that they tout the gold standard as some kind of utopian vision. "All the money you've got is worthless paper!" as if gold has any value expect what the market applies to it at a given time.
A gold standard isn't exactly the ideal, the ideal would be competition amongst privately issued currencies.

However, a gold standard is still far and away better than fiat currency. True, it varies depending on what value the market applies to it, but the value the market applies to it is generally fairly stable, far more so than fiat currencies (which, in turn, effect the value of gold which is used as a hedge against inflation).
The problem is that (by design) it gives government practically no control of the economy. Personally I think that for all bad things that brings, government control is mostly positive in providing a stable economy.
The government has many ways to control the economy besides monetary manipulation, and interventions in the monetary supply have a very nasty habit of making things worse (Notably, the Great Depression was preceded by about a decade of the Federal Reserve going to town with easy loaning policies).
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