Realism - not capitalism - is the reason behind the success of western democracies.
Capitalism is easily given undue credit for the obvious success of democratic countries - as if it existed only in these countries. At least in conversations among us laymen. Of course there are different flavors of capitalism, and different definitions, but let's not care about that. What I would like to do is to highlight another perspective.
Capitalism is a powerful force for a society, since it harnesses the greed of man in a race for progress. However, it has lots of downsides, which are obvious in all kinds of societies. There are societies that have tried to avoid the downsides by completely forbidding capitalism. What seems to happen is the opposite. They miss out on the benefits, while getting most of the problems.
Socialistic/Communist societies aren't failures per-se , but have failed in that they have tried to neglect the existence of a fundamental force, and thus haven't built the systems to take it into account. Since capitalism has continued to exist in these societies, they haven't had the mechanisms in place to contol it - and as a result it has gotten out of control.
Successful societies are the ones that have acknowledged the existence of capitalism
These societies have systems in place to limit the most extreme effects of capitalism - both bad and good. Capitalism is like fire. It isn't good or bad in itself, but depends on it being recognized and controlled to the benefit of society.
The bottom line is this: It is clearly beneficial for a society to acknowledge reality, and use reality as a basis for all systems. This might sound obvious, but just look at history - and even present day in unsuccessful societies. What if developing countries could acknowledge "the law of the people", and incorporate it into their frameworks? What if democracies never acknowledge that governments tend to grow without limits? How will it end?
It is not that capitalism breeds democracy (just think who invented democracy), quite contrary capitalistic nations are often far away from a democracy.
It is more that democracy leads to more freedom, and that includes economic freedom. After all it's hard to have a thriving (non-slave based) economy without allowing your workers to get together and to exchange ideas.
Good point! So capitalism works better for the good in a free society, like a democratic one. I think a democracy without realism will fail eventually, at which point capitalism will be like uncontrolled fire quickening it's demise. The less realism, the shorter lived the democracy.
It's the opposite: democracy usually leads to more socialism which will cause horrible suffering for everybody.
Now I really want to see some examples of this.
First how democracy leads to Socialism.
Second how Socialism causes horrible suffering, especially for everyone.
Especially I want to know that in light of the simple fact that there never was Socialism.
You could argue state socialism was as close to existing as pure capitalism. But the only instance I know of where this causes horrible suffering for everyone (as in more then 50% had heavy problems) is when the USSR tried to produce more agrarian goods then the US back in the 60s(?) which causes farmers to slaughter all their livestock to meet the quota, leading to very high prices.
But I put that in the same area as capitalistic the food speculations that cause prices to rise.
The only "socialism" I know of that really existed (and often still exist) are the community -build -maintained and -managed systems like the water distribution of this UNESCO World Heritage that exist for several hundreds of years which often failed horrendously in providing suffering for all.
Some argue FLOSS software is socialism too, but I don't know if I should see software as a "means for production"
He might be thinking of welfare countries like the Scandinavian ones, where the majority of voters support transferring money from the rich to the poor. This is a degree of socialism, a side-effect of democracy, fueled by capitalism. It creates a spiral of lowering productivity and ever growing governmental overhead. At some point, what was meant to increase the welfare of the lower class, starts strangling the poorest. We see this in Finland, which is supposed to be a free and equal welfare society, but where we just can't maintain the standard. In order to support the public sector, the government must tighten it's grip on normal people. This isn't a development one would like to see in a free, democratic country. And it doesn't look like it will stop any time soon.
I have never seen a lower productivity in those nordic countries. Example?
Same for the overhead. afaik all countries have lowered their government employees in the last years (as in ~2decades).
How do you define standard?
And then, how do you know it is the result of "socialism" and not the result of A) international competition e.g. from China or B) result of the still ongoing! economic crises resulting in the bank's speculations, which lead to states "having" to save those banks for extreme sums, upping their debt and crushing the economy.
The net productivity keeps rising, but that is because of improvements in other areas like tech. How increasing bureaucracy impedes productivity is just plain obvious, at least how I see it. I work for the government, so I see it from the inside.
I don't know :-). I guess I'm thinking about some recent phenomenons like the 10 year stagnation in the building sector, increasing insovency of youth, degrading road network. Also the apparently desperate need of the government to tax everything just to bear the weight of the public sector full of people doing nothing - or worse, introducing more friction into the economy.
They are certainly a part of the equation. The economic crises arise from inability to see or acnowledge reality - otherwise we could have avoided them. And we have the same problem with this welfare socialism. We don't acnowledge that it isn't sustainable as such.
You seem to know more than me, and if that's true it's a good thing. I just recall seeing a statistic where the public sector workforce bypassed that of the private sector. The public sector peaked during WW2, after which it was like 1/5 of the private sector workforce, and now it is more than 1:1. I couldn't find the chart anymore.
So you propose you get kicked out of your job?
There is an easy solution for all of this: Just start to build!
building sector booms, youth get jobs and can pay, nothing-doer have things to do ;)
The question now is why does that not happens? The neoliberal dogma of provide and it happens surely has a problem here, since workforce and companies willing to work are there.
Why is it not sustainable? All things you need to sustain it are produced - or, in worst case, could be produced with all the free workers and companies you mentioned.
Don't confuse number of public workers with overhead!
For example, the food inspector who goes around in the restaurants and makes sure you don't get poisened is a public worker but no overhead.
If he uses a car that is used by a diverse set of other public workers, then that car is overhead, but not the worker.
Also the number of public employees is a bad measurement. Would it be good for the economy if you slash infrastructure work? Or is closing hospitals good for your health?
This is a public thread, but I could acnowledge that in a private company I would produce an order of magnitude more value.
Yeah, I know it's not a good measure, but I just wanted to provide a quantitative indicator of what seems obvious to me, that there is heaps of unnecessary friction. Of course the public sector provides invaluable services, but it's very inefficient. Don't you agree with me? Or do you see the public sector as very efficient?
Maybe more like horrible suffering for some, and some suffering for everybody? Or do you actually think things will end up so bad?