Originally Posted by roadkill

They were normal state of capitalism in the Western world from 1945 to 1985 (some interregnum!) and are still the case in continental Europe and Japan.

Yes. Thats only 40 years, not even a single human lifetime. Not exactly a huge counterweight to the land clearancess, or slavery, or the "dark satanic mills", is it? Nor is it much comfort to those places to which the West exported poverty.

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Keynes did not proclaim that Marx was an idiot, but simply demonstrated that the world economy had moved on. Regrettably some of Marx's adherents are seemingly unable to do so.

That demonstrates a remarkable ignorance of the argument.

Affecting to patronise someone when you don't actually know what you're talking about is hardly a credible stance.

Originally Posted by contracycle

That's pretty much like showing white South Africans as demonstrative of the economics of South Africa. Let's see what else modern capitalism has to offer, shall we? So yes, in fact, they look very similar to me indeed.

Oh yeah? Same % too, I am sure. C'mon, this is ridiculous!

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Hero worship. I'm afraid I don't do that

Marx and Lenin? And not really Hero worship although I do admire the guy. Keynes expressed ideas and formulised a theory but it is circumstances that led to its political relevance. That part was somewhat random and the General Theory, despite its name, is, like Marxism, extremely era-specific in terms of the problems it addresses...

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Even if it was true, it just meant a temporary change, as I asserted, with capitalism reverting to normal afterwards.

That's assuming there is a 'normal' - rather than a spectrum of possibities. I'm afraid I don't do 'predetermination'...

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Well then don't complain about the speedup or your lack of a pension or anything else. It's all legit, you say.

You're making an effort to NOT understand. Those things aren't occuring under normal competitive pressure, which, as Adam Smith would tell you, is the magic ingredient needed for capitalism to work as intended. It's because we no longer have enough competition between corporate giants and far too much amongst labor and even nations themselves (tax cuts race to the bottom) that we are seeing these things.

As I said, rent exploitation is NOT legit.

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

Oh yeah? Same % too, I am sure. C'mon, this is ridiculous!

Why is it ridiculous? You're just ignoring data that doesn;t support your argument. It has been shown again and again that Western companies drive down wages in the third world; that they have not increased the proportion of wealth owned by ordinary individuals in the West, they have simply cheapened products produced by the blood, sweat and tears of the Third World.

Just like white people in South Africa were bribed into acquiesecence by the super-exploitation of blacks, Westerners have been bribed by the super-exploitation of the East. Capitalism needs poverty, manufactures poverty just as surely as it manufactures anything, and all it did was ship it out of sight and out of mind.

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Marx and Lenin?

What about them? They make sound and credibale arguments that explain the world as it actually exists more completely and compellingly than anyone esle. It's just sound science.

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And not really Hero worship although I do admire the guy. Keynes expressed ideas and formulised a theory but it is circumstances that led to its political relevance. That part was somewhat random and the General Theory, despite its name, is, like Marxism, extremely era-specific in terms of the problems it addresses...

Hero worship because it attributes world-spanning, society-reshaping significance to one individual. Many "Keynesian" measures predate Keynes anyway. I don;t think that the argument of one persuasive voice is anywhere near as convincing as the kind of societal pressures created by the war.

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That's assuming there is a 'normal' - rather than a spectrum of possibities. I'm afraid I don't do 'predetermination'...

Shrug. Neither do I. But if you build a system to do a certain thing, then I'm not surprised when it does that thing.

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You're making an effort to NOT understand. Those things aren't occuring under normal competitive pressure, which, as Adam Smith would tell you, is the magic ingredient needed for capitalism to work as intended. It's because we no longer have enough competition between corporate giants and far too much amongst labor and even nations themselves (tax cuts race to the bottom) that we are seeing these things.

As intended? As intended by who? Nobody, not even Smith, formulated the capitalist model and handed it down to us like Moses from the mount. There is no baseline "intention" from which you can claim we have deviated. But as Smith certainly WOULD have told you, there is a tendency toward monopoly and connivance in capitalism. Indeed without it there would be no capitalism, becuase capital wouldn't accumulate in concentrated nodes.

This sort of historical revisionism amounts to claiming that capitalism has only been "normal" in the brief period we're discussing and has been deviant in some way for all the rest of it's existance. How can it be "normal" if in fact it is so rare?

This is not a distortion of the system, this IS the system.

Originally Posted by contracycle

Why is it ridiculous? You're just ignoring data that doesn;t support your argument. It has been shown again and again [...] that they have not increased the proportion of wealth owned by ordinary individuals in the West...

Data, please. I wonder what income/wealth distribution looked like in medieval, mercantilist, 19C and 20C eras...

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Capitalism needs poverty, manufactures poverty just as surely as it manufactures anything, and all it did was ship it out of sight and out of mind.

I think you'll find out that the 50s to 70s were period of relatively high isolation. The West was consuming what it was producing, by and large.

"We analyze the increase in the world trade of goods in the period 1950 - 2004. We present changes in geographic structure of the continents being the biggest exporters and importers. Our analysis shows that at the beginning of the 1950. the world trade was dominated by Europe and North America. In 2004 Europe still stays a leader, but North America lost its position in favour of Asia, whose expansion of trade is a proof of the high level of its modernization. The other continents (Africa, South America) do not take part in the international labour division and world trade very intensively. However, international trade liberalization under the auspices of WTO/GATT causes their more intensive involvement in the world trade."

Changes in the World Trade in 1950-2004 by Elzbieta Czarny, Katarzyna Sledziewska :: SSRN

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Hero worship because it attributes world-spanning, society-reshaping significance to one individual. Many "Keynesian" measures predate Keynes anyway. I don;t think that the argument of one persuasive voice is anywhere near as convincing as the kind of societal pressures created by the war.

That's what I said. Except I think that the social pressures were really created by the Great Depression, not WWII.

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Shrug. Neither do I. But if you build a system to do a certain thing, then I'm not surprised when it does that thing (...) This sort of historical revisionism amounts to claiming that capitalism has only been "normal" in the brief period we're discussing and has been deviant in some way for all the rest of it's existance. How can it be "normal" if in fact it is so rare? This is not a distortion of the system, this IS the system.

And my stance is that there is not one system but many possible systems...

As an asides,

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As Smith certainly WOULD have told you, there is a tendency toward monopoly and connivance in capitalism. Indeed without it there would be no capitalism, becuase capital wouldn't accumulate in concentrated nodes.

... that's a bizarre take since, with a limited number of iterations, even random luck will create concentrated nodes...

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

Data, please. I wonder what income/wealth distribution looked like in medieval, mercantilist, 19C and 20C eras...

Umm, what the hell? You've seen the graphs demonstrating the concentration of wealth at the top going on right now, what relevance does a historical comparison have? Even if a historical society were more exploitative that wouldn;t be a defence against the thoroughly accurate observation that capitalism moves wealth from the many to the few.

FWIW the most recent academic comparison I'm aware of is this one:

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Medieval Britons were twice as rich as the poor in the Third World today On the eve of the Black Death in 1348/49 the per capital income in England was today's equivalent of £510 The average income per head of some of the poorest countries today are Niger (£328), Central African Republic (£342), Comoro Islands (£350), Togo (£387), Guinea Bissau (£394), Guinea (£401), Sierra Leone (£438), Haiti (£438) Chad (£451) Read more: Medieval Britons were twice as rich as the poor in the Third World today | Mail Online

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I think you'll find out that the 50s to 70s were period of relatively high isolation. The West was consuming what it was producing, by and large.

"Relative" only by the standards of the era of globalisation. These days the West consumes things it DOESN'T produce. It is not clear to me what is supposed to indicate.

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That's what I said. Except I think that the social pressures were really created by the Great Depression, not WWII.

Well it's not entriely clear to me why something that occurred in 1929 should have effects in in 1950, as opposed to something that happened in 1945, but whatever, its basically the same point. Given that doubts had been raised during the Depression as to how ordinary people were benefitting, it was politically impossible to send a huge number of veterans back to living in hovels with no running water or electricity.

Either way, these were particular events, and not some kind of new capitalism. Whatever force Keynes argments had, they failed to transform capitalism overall and it reverted, as we know all to well, to boom and bust.

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And my stance is that there is not one system but many possible systems...

There may well be but we're stuck with only one, capitalism, and you're opposed to the use of any other. the reason that capitalism has a wealth distribution that is not particularly different from fuedalism is becuase it is structured to do the same thing - to concentrate wealth in the hands of an exploiter class. The argument that it's has occasionaly, for very limited periods, been forced to be a bit more generous than it would like, doesn't in any way disqualify that observation.

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... that's a bizarre take since, with a limited number of iterations, even random luck will create concentrated nodes...

Eh? No that makes no sense. It's only true in a system based on property rights and on labour exploitation. If everyone controlled wealth according to their individual abilities, there would never be aq class of people who control the bulk of the wealth, because "talent" or whatever is not reliably inherited. Instead what happens under capitalism is that whether by luck or by design, concentrations of capital tend to be self-perpetuating. Without that element of perpetuation any concentration by random distribution would be wiped out by future iterations of randomness.

Case in point: the classic coin toss. It is possible to enconter statistically abnormal run of a thousand consecutive heads or tails, but the odds on the next flip always revert to 50/50.

Originally Posted by contracycle

Umm, what the hell? You've seen the graphs demonstrating the concentration of wealth at the top going on right now, what relevance does a historical comparison have?

I thought you were making an historical comparison, system-against-system.

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"Relative" only by the standards of the era of globalisation. These days the West consumes things it DOESN'T produce. It is not clear to me what is supposed to indicate.

That we could do it again.

Being open is a choice and allowing outsourcing is a political choice, like everything else. It can be a good one but, right now, China is playing us like the idiots we are and winning the race to the bottom. People are not subtle creatures but the backlash against globalisation, while sometimes misguided (when it targets the EU), isn't wrong.

We might want to re-evaluate our degree of openness. And soon.

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Well it's not entriely clear to me why something that occurred in 1929 should have effects in in 1950, as opposed to something that happened in 1945...

Because societal changes take time? From a theory to assume intellectual leadership and then from intellectual supremacy to becoming the conventional wisdom of the political elites take time. WWII was a mixed blessing, in that regard. Yes, it demonstrated what a mobilised state could do when it came to making demand solvent and keeping activity going but it also put things on hold for 5-6 years...

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Whatever force Keynes argments had, they failed to transform capitalism overall and it reverted, as we know all to well, to boom and bust.

Because Keynesianism couldn't explain stagflation. Milton Friedman's theories and criticisms of Keynes' theories started early - in the 50s (and he had been Keynesian before, iirc). The 60s saw the establishment of the monetarist theories. But they had no bite, no punch. However, they eventually came to occupy a meaningful segment within the intellectual elite and, when a crisis occurred, it quickly transited from a 'dominant theory within academia' to 'received wisdom for political elites consumption'. And, once the political elites had been re-educated in Monetarism thinking, well, that was that.

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There may well be but we're stuck with only one, capitalism, and you're opposed to the use of any other.

no, I meant different capitalist systems. i.e. It's still capitalism but there are so many variations within it to choose from.

For example, a society could still be capitalist and have a 100% death tax. Thus, annihilating inter-generation wealth accumulation...

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Eh? No that makes no sense. It's only true in a system based on property rights and on labour exploitation. If everyone controlled wealth according to their individual abilities, there would never be a class of people who control the bulk of the wealth, because "talent" or whatever is not reliably inherited.

Do tell how Bill Gates inherited his wealth.

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Instead what happens under capitalism is that whether by luck or by design, concentrations of capital tend to be self-perpetuating. Without that element of perpetuation any concentration by random distribution would be wiped out by future iterations of randomness. Case in point: the classic coin toss. It is possible to enconter statistically abnormal run of a thousand consecutive heads or tails, but the odds on the next flip always revert to 50/50.

Well, but that's exactly my point - Bill Gates (or any entrepreneur, really) only has to toss the coin a few times in his lifetime. And, as you say, it can take quite a few flips of the coin to get the law of great numbers and statistics to apply. On a short run of, say, 10 flips, you could have 10 heads (or tails) fairly easily - It wouldn't violate the law of great numbers.
With only 10 flips, wealth distribution will be quite nodular... And, sure, our inheritance laws tend to make these results stickier. But inheritance laws are not responsible for the fact that you may only have meaningful business choices a couple of times in your life...

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

I thought you were making an historical comparison, system-against-system.

I was comparing it to the exploitation of apartheid.

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That we could do it again.

Yes, and we could have 90% tax rates on the wealthy again. None of that is the real issue. Seeing as you have no right to impose such decisions on private businesses politically, you can't in fact maintain that situation at all. It is beyond the scope of any kind of policy you might be able to assemble. It simply doesn't matter what any of us want, it only matters what the wealthy see as in their interest.

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We might want to re-evaluate our degree of openness. And soon.

Maybe so, but here will be something of an irony in saying "there is no alternative" to free market property rights while also saying that that a free market system is incapable of competing with a state capitalism.

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However, they eventually came to occupy a meaningful segment within the intellectual elite and, when a crisis occurred, it quickly transited from a 'dominant theory within academia' to 'received wisdom for political elites consumption'. And, once the political elites had been re-educated in Monetarism thinking, well, that was that.

Quite so. so,just how are you going to stop that happening again? Because if you want to keep capitalism in the specific balance of the 50's, that is what you'll have to do.

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no, I meant different capitalist systems. i.e. It's still capitalism but there are so many variations within it to choose from. For example, a society could still be capitalist and have a 100% death tax. Thus, annihilating inter-generation wealth accumulation...

Yes but describing it as a "different system" is then meaningless. It's got nodes of capital, it's got waged labour, it's capitalism, regardless of trivialities are stuck on the edges. None of this prevents "the commanding heights of the economy" from imposing whatever changes they want.

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Do tell how Bill Gates inherited his wealth.

Gates himself does not constitute a class. The vast majority of his wealth was not created by him, it was created by his employees, and transferred to his ownership (an act of theft). And the only reason that his children aren't going to inherit are that he has chosen not leave it to them. But at the same time, the Murdoch kids are indeed about to take over daddy's empire, and that's by fare the more common pattern.

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And, sure, our inheritance laws tend to make these results stickier. But inheritance laws are not responsible for the fact that you may only have meaningful business choices a couple of times in your life...

Inheritance is a sideshow. It doesn't matter to me whether a concentration of capital is transferred to another generation, or simply transferred to someone else in the same generation. The fact remains that that concentration tends, as I said, to be self-perpetuating. And unless it is buried in a hole in the ground, it will operate every day, through exploitation of surplus value, to become larger and larger. So the problem remains as I described - the tendency to concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands. And as I already pointed, Adam smith fully recognised that this tendency was characteristic of the capitalist mode of production, and that without it there would be nothing that could be termed "capitalism".

Originally Posted by contracycle

Yes, and we could have 90% tax rates on the wealthy again. None of that is the real issue. Seeing as you have no right to impose such decisions on private businesses politically, you can't in fact maintain that situation at all. It is beyond the scope of any kind of policy you might be able to assemble.

In general, I got the tendency to believe that, if it was possible in the past, it also possible in the present... It's a matter of political will. And of cooperation and coordination across states...

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Maybe so, but here will be something of an irony in saying "there is no alternative" to free market property rights while also saying that that a free market system is incapable of competing with a state capitalism.

In general, it is the case that, in game theory, cheating is the best strategy if the "victim" cannot fight back - i.e. when we say cooperation is the best strategy, we assume that players have the will and ability to punish cheaters. Here, the West is getting cheated and cheated again and keep cooperating. This is ridiculous.

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Quite so. so,just how are you going to stop that happening again? Because if you want to keep capitalism in the specific balance of the 50's, that is what you'll have to do.

I made the argument during this very crisis. In one sentence: As we've returned to a 19C style of capitalism (You could take a look at the extensive versus intensive phase of capitalism, Extensive stage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and, again, it's not surprising to me that Marxism developed during the extensive phase. I don't quite agree with the definitions given in wikipedia but let's not waste too much time on this), we are re-discovering the 19C style of crisis - And 1929 was a "19C type of crisis" (just as WWI really mark the end of the 19C, socio-politically speaking).

Therefore, we have to re-apply the kind of solutions that allowed us to overcome said type of crisis...

Frankly, it might be extraordinarily difficult to do in practice but, in theory, it's dead simple.

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Yes but describing it as a "different system" is then meaningless.

Well, I don't know. I guess it depends how you define "system". But, for me, living in the USA versus living in Sweden or Norway feels like living in a different system...

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And the only reason that his children aren't going to inherit are that he has chosen not leave it to them.

I was talking about him inheriting, not his children. My point was that he created his wealth and it accumulated because he got a few vital calls right (and was willing to abuse his dominant position to keep squashing competitors).

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Inheritance is a sideshow. It doesn't matter to me whether a concentration of capital is transferred to another generation, or simply transferred to someone else in the same generation.

No, it isn't - It only might be to you because you think that "the vast majority of his wealth was not created by [an entrepreneur], it was created by his employees, and transferred to his ownership (an act of theft)"...

And, after all these years talking with you, I still haven't gotten how people were supposed to be entrepreneur in your world...

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So the problem remains as I described - the tendency to concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

As I said, just tossing a coin 10x with a pay-off of x if you win and (-x) if you lose will create nodes after these 10 flips. It's purely random but it creates nodes nonetheless...

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

In general, I got the tendency to believe that, if it was possible in the past, it also possible in the present... It's a matter of political will. And of cooperation and coordination across states...

Just because you once convinced turkeys to vote for christmas doesn't mean that you can do so reliably.

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In general, it is the case that, in game theory, cheating is the best strategy if the "victim" cannot fight back - i.e. when we say cooperation is the best strategy, we assume that players have the will and ability to punish cheaters. Here, the West is getting cheated and cheated again and keep cooperating. This is ridiculous.

But that shouldn't even be applicable. "Free trade" didn't require everyone get along and play nice, it was imposed by gunboat diplomacy. Plus, if the virtues of free trade are so strong, one defector shouldn't be able to triumph over the beneficial effects provided to everyone else.

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I made the argument during this very crisis. In one sentence: As we've returned to a 19C style of capitalism (You could take a look at the extensive versus intensive phase of capitalism, Extensive stage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and, again, it's not surprising to me that Marxism developed during the extensive phase. I don't quite agree with the definitions given in wikipedia but let's not waste too much time on this), we are re-discovering the 19C style of crisis - And 1929 was a "19C type of crisis" (just as WWI really mark the end of the 19C, socio-politically speaking).

Yes I know, but the point you choose not to address is that there are good reasons for capitalism going down that route. That it is built into the system by the logic of its own operation. The fact that for one historical moment the tendency was overcome by deliberate intervention doesn't alter the presence of those pressures.

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I was talking about him inheriting, not his children. My point was that he created his wealth and it accumulated because he got a few vital calls right (and was willing to abuse his dominant position to keep squashing competitors).

I don't really think so. Mostly he was lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and the vastness of his wealth has little to do with his own efforts.

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No, it isn't - It only might be to you because you think that "the vast majority of his wealth was not created by [an entrepreneur], it was created by his employees, and transferred to his ownership (an act of theft)"...

That's because I'm dealing with the system as it actually is, not according to the rationalisations and rhetoric with which it is usually described. The best that eliminating the inheritance effect will get you is that the child of exploited person might become an exploiter and vice versa. It doesn't make the process any less exploitative.

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And, after all these years talking with you, I still haven't gotten how people were supposed to be entrepreneur in your world...

Depends what you mean by the term. If you mean, someone who profits from innovation and invention? That's easy, and I have already explained how in some detail. If you mean, someone who builds a large fortune from other peoples labour, that is impossible and intended to be so. Indeed, the possibility of the former depends on the impossibility of the latter.

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As I said, just tossing a coin 10x with a pay-off of x if you win and (-x) if you lose will create nodes after these 10 flips. It's purely random but it creates nodes nonetheless...

Yes, and my point is still that because of the random method those nodes are not self-sustaining. Whereas capitalism clearly is self-sustaining, as anyone who recognises that "it takes money to make money" knows.