Freedom and Capitalism

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Freedom is a basic human right.
Total and true freedom is impossible, freedom from consequence. If you jump off from somewhere high, you're likely to die. This is why we usually talk about freedom as a freedom to live your life the way you want, not being told how to live. A freedom to explore opportunities, a freedom to learn. A freedom to be your unique self. This is a basic right, given to all people when they are born. There are other rights, such as the right to life. Governments secure these rights, and they are also allowed to violate these rights to secure them to more people. In times of war, for example, governments can restrict individuals from doing certain things to keep the country safe.

The amount of these rights and how well they are taken care of depends on the type of the society. In a extremely socialistic system the individual's rights are always under the state's intrests, the society as a whole matters. In extremely capitalistic system people have the basic right to breathe... unless someone owns the air, of course. In a capitalistic system it all boils down to money. This is the case in every capitalistic system. The more money you have, the more important you are.

No extreme capitalisms exist at the moment. In every current system people have some basic rights. These basic rights hold capitalism back... they prevent people from maximizing the profit. And there is always people who would advance capitalism. These people are part of the highest layer of the society, the richest. Not all of them, but some. Greed is in the basic human nature.

The easiest way to increase profit is to lower the costs. Examples of lowering the costs are getting cheaper materials, optimizing the processes and reducing the amount of money spent on the workforce. The easiest to reduce from these is the amount spent on the workforce. The people. The results of spending less on the workforce are that the people either work for less money or their advantages are removed.

This money reduced in costs, this extra profit... where does it go? Who get it? The owners, the people who are rich already. And this increases the already huge gap between the rich and the poor.

If something isn't provided by the society, the people must get it themselves. Healthcare in America is a good example. Healthcare is expensive, so people must work to get it. Nothing wrong with working for something. The high class, the owners, decide how much the others are paid. The people must work to secure their lives, and they must work at the places where they can get a job. They either work at the low-pay jobs that don't have much benefits, as much as they are required, or they leave themselves at the mercy of the government. And when the government doesn't support healthcare, for example, you can live as long as you don't get ill. If you get severely ill... well, that's too bad, isn't it?

The result of this is that there is a multi-layered society... the top layer of owners, those who own the places where other people work. Several middle layers, depending on how rich people are. And the poor. The bottom layer.

The rich are protected, they have the freedom to live their way. But this has it's other side too. The poor. They have the freedom to work for the rich. The rich are protected at the expense of the poor. The poor are exploited in benefit of the rich. The black were the slaves back then... the poor are the slaves of today.

 

First of all, let's make one reservation: I hate communism. I hate everything commie. I wouldn't even wear red until recently.

However, I don't believe that the right to private property is absolute.

I don't believe in any right of those who have more to have yet more at the cost of those who have less.

Amassing virtual money that doesn't even physically exist while people die because they don't have the very physical cash to pay for food or medicines, which is loose change compared to the amount of the virtual cash.

I'm strongly against commie-style institutionalised theft (nationalisation etc), but I find it outrageous when the country is in debt, its people fight for daily bread and some fat capitalist gets more and more tax breaks while plotting to get rid of the competition and become the monopolist who can charge as much as he wants. Sorry, that kind of world is a bad world. I don't want that to happen.

Fortunately, we're done with the more aggressive forms of capitalism. Cartels, monopolies... they still are, but they don't have the same relative power level as, let's say, a hundred years ago. Now, however, we have more subtle forms of achieving more or less the same, anyway.

I believe that more strict anti-monopoly regulations are needed, that adhesion contracts need to be restrained, that smallprint needs to be outlawed totally. It's beyond me how one can speak things about good faith while putting smallprint in a contract form, really.

We also need strong anti-corruption laws and ones that are actually enforced. Especially here in Poland. A fine line needs to be drawn between business and politics, as well.

Patent laws and copyrights are the next target. Those prevent progress in the shape in which they now are. Also, they allow units to amass artificially high amounts of money. Basically: you have the patent/copyright, they can (and will) kiss your butt. That's bad.

A radical step would be establishing a limit to profit margin, ie some maximal difference between costs and retail prices.

Capitalism was intended, at least in theory, to bring universal well-being through creating an infinite number of relations where everyone is the provider in some and the recipient in some others.

However, it didn't work out this way. Instead, a small group of providers dictates terms to masses of recipients. Living is more and more expensive. Jobs are less and less profitable. Where does all the missing money go? Yeah, corporate accounts.

Billions of dollars that aren't used and simply "lie" there on virtual accounts creating inflation... or that are used to multiply themselves in an infinite circulation process.

Socialism or communism won't work. Plus, I don't believe in giving too much to people for free, anyway. Guess consumer rights and fair laws independent from corporate dictate are the way, while still maintaining a large level of capitalism prevented from going rampant.

Capitalism isn't a natural order. As every system, it's created by men. A certain way in which the society works. As such, it actually owes to the society rather than is entitled to anything.

Someone pays taxes to make it all work. To have all that property protected and to make it able to multiply.

 

Communism, capitalism. Two absolute extremes, both won't work. There needs to be balance.

 

A balance between such would eventually drift towards either side. Whether communism or capitalism, it'll still become irrevalent. I completely agree with both of your comments (Taza and Chev), but in general, the world prefers to remain as it is. I know that there is a majority of people not as well-off, due to the "group" of power-holding wealthy.

However, unless someone actually does something, instead of parading around on TV as the US President, accusing the opponent of having fathered illegitamate (sp?) children, nothing will be done. Bush nd the other world leaders need to take action, not take a seat on their couch.

 

Freedom is overrated. Modern society holds freedom to be one of the highest virtues. But freedom does not bring happiness or contentment, nor does it meet physical needs. We value freedom for freedom's sake, freedom for the sake of individual power, freedom for the sake of independence. "Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven" would seem to be an apt motto for much of modern society, just as it was for Lucifer in Paradise Lost. Odd that modern society perceives Lucifer as the hero of that poem -- Milton did not perceive him as such.

I prefer a benevolent society, a connected community, one in which people devalue freedom in favor of kindness and charity toward others.

 

@Bombur: I firmly believe freedom of one person ends where freedom of another person begins. And that rule should be applied equally to all. Including business relations on which the running of the society is based.

@Va: Yeah, the word tends to be better left alone as it is. I'm distrustful towards any group proposing any radical changes. Especially towards any "new better order" zealots. The October revolution started with social justice and all and we all know how it ended.

 

As a simple defintion, this is essentially what we might call a "libertarian" approach to freedom. It is quite popular in morally and religiously conservative circles, as well as in more licentious ones. I myself used to be a registered Libertarian, though I am no longer.

One of the problems I see with it is that there are no clear boundaries between the freedoms of one person and the freedom of another. Nearly every freedom that I have somehow impinges upon the freedoms of someone else, and vice-versa. Practically speaking, the question always becomes one of which freedoms get sacrificed for the sake of whom.

But my bigger problem with the libertarian model is that many other moral virtues are more important and more valuable than freedom. Because these other virtues are more imporant and more valuable, our politics and economics should emphasize them more than they emphasize freedom.

I think we probably agree that there are proper limits to freedom, based on your first post's comments on extreme capitalism. And I don't completely devalue freedom. The issue, as I see it, is one of priorities. Which values are the highest? Which should have more influence on our system of politics/ethics/economics, and which should have less influence? What are the most fundamental values to which other values must be accommodated?

My own impression of much of world opinion these days is that freedom is one of the highest values, and that many other values must be accommodated to freedom. One of the next highest values is probably greed, but I won't get into that right now. At any rate, practically, philosophically and theologically I am convinced that the general trend in our current society is to place too much emphasis on freedom and too little on more important virtues.

 

I'm not a big fan of liberty emphasis, actually. I simply believe that no one's freedom is justification to infringe on rights of other people. For instance, I believe abortion to be wrong and removing the kid's right to life in the name of the mother's liberty is a plain murder for convenience for me. For the same reason, I hate adhesion contracts and many things related to corporate dictate like strange licensing terms, overinflated prices, strategies bent on obtaining the monopoly etc etc. That's because they have no right to do that.

Plus, there are things I'm not going to suffer just because someone feels like being free. Let's say, loud ****ty music for instance.

 

Communism works if everyone feels a social need to keep equality. That is, it literally makes them feel pain when they see a homeless guy, or a druggie, or someone that's starving.

The problem is, right now, you have to have the army to enforce communism.

This is where Marx failed. It looks good on paper, when you're sitting in a university lecture room, smoking a pipe and patting your full tummy. But it doesn't work out in the world, when you have people that enjoy power for the sake of power, and not just a tool.

Capitalism is about motivation and morale. Some people like to collect and refurbish classic cars. Some just hoard them in a garage, and show them off to their friends. Others like to go out driving with their wife, remembering the days of old. Some like to build a shack onto their home, and hoard carpender tools to make shelves and dog-houses and lawn chairs. Then there's people that want to buy $7000 dollar computers that have 2 cpus and 2 Radeon X800's, along with waterblocks and a raid0 across a bunch of Raptors.

And still other nutballs like to load up rockets with peroxide, and stand not 20 damn feet from the launch pad with all the bliss of a capricious schoolboy and a backpack full of transformers, while their rocket fires for 15 seconds on full burn.

It's part of freedom. It's a means toward freedom, but when it's used as freedom itself, that's when the anti-trust lawsuits are supposed to curb the behavior. It's not perfect, but there's some leeway that is designed to prevent revolutions.

 

I tend to agree. That may be why America does not have a "pure" capitalistic economic system. Social security, medicare, unemployment insurance, these are all socialistic schemes. Any system has to have the freedom to be flexible enough to insure the welfare of the people at large. Some would treat an economic system as if it is a religious dogma, and follow its every rule as if it is a holy relic. But this has been proven to be unworkable in most cases. While some of us tend to treat communism, or democracy as political systems rather than as economic systems, and capitalism as purely an economic one, others may not see a difference and instead tend to view government as an institution that is an advocate for a particular economic system. But government should be an instrument of the people before it is anything else.

 

The beauty of capitalism is that it taps naturally into each individual's natural instinct to look after Number One. As stated above, communism only works in its purest sense if you can somehow 'convince' everyone to work for the common good. But game theory would clearly show that whilst that works if everyone works for the common good, there is too much individual incentive in that case for people to work for personal gain instead until such time as the economy reaches some sort of natural equilibrium.

 

While I agee with that, it is more than just incentive, but individual talent as well. Some people will always be better at some things than others. There is nothing wrong with that, or that those who work harder and are smarter gain more wealth as a result. The problem is that wealth sometimes equals political power, and when it does, it gives those with with more wealth an unfair advantage over those who, for various reasons, may have something else on their minds other than the attainment of material wealth.

It is the charge of government to see that all the people receieve the same "equailtiy" of representation, regardless of their skills, talents or wealth. Ben Franklin, after living for many years in England, and returning to America on the eve of revolution noted: "American representaives worked so hard at government because they wanted their government to be great; English officials worked hard only if they were bribed by their rich patrons to do so."

 

"Devil's Advocate" Question:

Why should someone with less money be given assistance to become more 'equal' with the person who has more money? How is wealth any different to intelligence, strength, good looks, or any other factor that provides one person with a perceived advantage over someone else? How mcuh "equality" can we reasonably expect? If I've got myself into a position where I have more power than someone else, I don't want to the government coming along and pulling the rug out from underneath me and telling me I now have too much power.

 

Inequality is the norm, and is not evil in and of itself. It is gross inequality coupled with lack of charity that is problematic. Governmental pushes towards "equality" are often attempts to redistribute wealth in order to accomplish the same ends that should have come about through charity but did not.

One side effect is that the blindness and frequent ineptitude of legal solutions also benefit those who do not deserve charity (due to their own laziness). Nevertheless, being charitable to too many people is better than being charitable to too few.

 

Harbourboy - I was not sure if your question was directed at my comment on the "representation" issue or not. But the meaning of my comment is about representation and has nothing to do with the redistribution of wealth, except that government is obligated to give equal weight to the concerns of the poor in its policy decisions.

But, since the issue of redistribution has been brought up, as most always, the rich still benefit most from such welfare redistrubution programs. Those advocates of the so-called "trickle down" theory of economics feel that by making the "rich richer" it somehow benefits the poor. But the 1990s economic boom largely discredited that approach.