Why centralization

therefore efficiency as a metric is useless?

Well, the whole efficiency metric is based around the assumption that we can and will eventually understand the important costs which are involved. Even a rough measure is useful, and the assumption is that measure gets evermore accurate, which is reasonable.

it's like arguing that we can't use PI because we don't know all of the infinite digits. but 3.14159 is still a useful measure.

besides, he goes on to say that everyone should support X because it's efficient. well, no! it's efficient in some respects in terms of others, according to an individual's tastes and preferences. that is the beauty about choice, and hell, you want more choice, right?

don't get hung up on semantics, you

I should quickly point out that government intervention and welfare statism =/= socialism.
However, those things are still far better than laissez faire.

Well, capitalism isn't about being a slave, dummy. What I'm suggesting isn't unreasonable if you're smart enough. Why not take out a loan and start your own business instead of whining pathetically?

No. It's the fact that efficiency, as understood by the capitalist, isn't in anyway efficient.

Chances are, in the current system, that some larger business, less ethical and more exploitative than he could possibly be, would put him out of business.
That's assuming that he can just get a loan all willy nilly in the first place- most people don't have the kind of credit to get the kind of loan you need to start a decent business, and most of them sure as hell don't have the money to pay it!

Just face it: that kind of wealth is out of the reach of all but those who are already extremely rich, or those who just get stupid lucky.

Because it has innate, destructive contradictions. youtube.com/watch?v=8UD-QqYFJqY.

It legitimately only managed to get us here because it has been severely band-aided and constrained by regulations via Keynesian economic policy. The second the world went full neoliberal, starting in the early '80s, the world economy has seen recession after recession with little to show for the masses but everything for the few, especially those in the third world to which all the industry moved to for the entire operations to even be profitable.

Literally 90% of developed technology used in computing was developed in the public sector, using funds from the public sector.

>CRONY capitalism
AKA "my wife never cheats on me, because when she does she is no longer my wife!". Pure bourgeois deflection. This is the same shit tankies pull when excusing the 20th century socialist experiment; "it wasn't real socialism" or "it was state capitalism!".

KYS.

Of course "efficiency" is a nebulous word, and yes, it is somewhat subjective.
But that doesn't make "efficiency" lose its usefulness as a metric defined as measuring the least amount of material to produce the greatest amount of product for 100% consumption. what's your point, that that measure is useless? have you produced anything before?

I appreciate your honest response, thank you.
1. how can any "planning" plan for the everyday needs and wants of individuals who's thoughts and physical bodies change over time? This task is impossible, but of course the accuracy of the plan increases as less and less people are planned for ex. a family unit. your answer sort of validates my point, the closer you narrow down to the individual, the more efficient that plan becomes in terms of reducing waste.

2. A free market can provide for welfare, (private charities) enforced work safety standards, (individual choice/compliance with a 3rd party companies seal of approval) product regulation (validation by 3rd party companies for seals of approval)

Environmental protection is a gray area, but that being said, a carbon tax or something of the sort would just mean people would burn fuel somewhere else, so it's futile until a free market finds a better fuel that doesn't fuck everyone up. Companies don't put toxins into the ground just for the shits, you know. so if there was a viable alternative, they would use it of course. Look at how TESLA is doing.

Welfare gets very messy because it causes fucked up incentives and can waste resources and create a harmful dependency on government. The problem is that no one has a checks and balances for it, but a private charity does. again, wouldn't you rather have the chance to donate to 1000 different charities to find the one that matches with your personality rather than your bank account be drafted to support someone who may or may not ever contribute regardless of capacity?

Isn't your private microchip good enough? why does public money not just go to defense of the nation and civil liberties, etc? why doesn't government support everything? because it's too expensive and waste and fraud occurs that is not easily corrected… that's why.

3. right but read between the lines. the reason why your computer is so advanced is because someone was motivated to redesign the chip to make it faster than the competition. Besides, wouldn't you rather choose from 1000 companies who produce microchips rather than one?

4. Inefficient in this case is more referring to checks and balances. if someone is spending a seemingly infinite hose of money, they are likely to spend more than they need if that money were strictly his/hers.

besides, you can only tax people until they have no money left, since the government can give only what it first takes. it's like a blood transfusion from your right arm to your left except you spill a percentage of the blood in the process. if you tax enough, the producers and general populace will go broke and they leave your country. "tax people more" will not cause things to be magically better, ever.

also, spending != good economy. an economies backbone is production, not consumption. you're putting the horse before the cart. there could be a million people who want to consume something but there must be someone to supply it first. in order to supply it, people must first save and lend money to finance the entrepeneur who then creates the possibility for that production to occur.

my question to you is this: at what tax amount would the country be best at? 10%? 20%? 50%? 99%?
similar; what minimum wage would the country be best at? 10$? 25$? 100$?
the answer is, the lowest, of course, approaching zero.

If people believe they are being exploited, they will flock to another company for work. Why don't you set up a better alternative by pooling your savings with your buddies?
besides, working is not exploitative if someone works there at their own choosing. if it was slavery, then it would be illegal, since one member is being denied his rights.

So many memes in one post…

Kek okay then lets just becomes the capitalits u guise i never thort of that 1

But do I choose to work? I might get some limited choice in which capitalist I work for, but not in whether I work for a capitalist or not.

As historical precedent has evidently demonstrated…

1. please summarize
2. how can constraints (regulations) possibly help buisnesses innovate?
ask yourself why did companies move to the third world.. they do it to avoid those constraints imposed by people with a mindset like you. the economy has been failing because buisnesses are constrained so heavily, combined with the actions of the federal reserve (surprise, government) who are launching QE and inflating bubbles within the US economy which burst, unsurprisingly. the recessions have nothing to do with capitalism, and everything to do with government intervention and central banking. ask yourself – why the fuck is the FED aiming for a 2% inflation rate? WTF? they are evaporating your savings overnight, and every other country who has federal reserve notes as their reserve currency. who knows if we will have negative interest rates and QE4 coming soon before the election…
the 08 crisis was because of fanny mae and freddie mac, gambling with public money granted to them by the government in case their housing bets go bad! it was government who poured the liquor the banks drank without restraint! i wanted those banks to fail and no bailout money to be given… ironically what you're supposing is the solution (more government) caused the problems that you're compaining about (recent 08 recession)
3. "90% of developed technology was developed in the public sector" [citation needed] and besides, (assuming this is true) aren't you happy that companies took heed of this great invention and started innovating to make these products faster in order to turn a profit? otherwise we would have still been using the old technology the public sector produced with little enthusiasm…
4. capitalism should not lead to more government. crony-capitalism is the unification of big government and capitalism, which leads to corporate favoratism, eg HALLIBURTON. the solutions you propose only excacerbate the source of the problems, centralization.

1. what?
2. >do I choose to work?
i don't know, are you retarded and/or disabled? are you seriously contemplating if you have free will?
- you ignored the option of working for yourself or with your buddies.
- if you don't want to work then start a patreon and have your buddies or the public support you BY CHOICE. I don't want to be imprisoned to fund your masturbation on internet forums, and conversly, I suppose.

3. a charter of individual rights is essential for capitalism. too bad it wasn't inforced because of racism, otherwise things could have been better today.

I question the usefulness of an "efficiency" that produces largely worthless goods in excess and then justifies itself by systematically forcing people to engage with it. You see this often with consumer goods that are planned for obsolescence or that follow short-term trends. I often see shit tons of clothes from places like Target ending up in thrift stores in bulk; no one buys them. What was the point of such "efficiency"? How "efficient" is it to maximize profits by producing something as simple as t-shirts all the way across the globe, polluting the world and perpetuating slave wages and child labor all the while? Say you restrict your definition of "efficiency" enough for it to be useful, it still says nothing about its sustainability or ethics; restrict the scope and you miss the bigger picture. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Leave "efficiency" to physicists and engineers, and keep it out of economics.

How? In your view, maybe, but the reason is was produced was because the producer made a reasonable estimate on the demand. It's trying to self-correct.
How can you make value judgements about what things are excessive for people? Especially CLOTHING of all things? Do you think your genius or a government entity could possibly say what was excessive and what was not for a populace that is constantly changing? How about the idea that internet should be taxed because some people believe masturbation on web forums is excessive.
I understand your general idea that companies will produce lower quality goods to degrade faster, but there are companies that don't produce shit goods that do just fine. Besides, why are you to stop a voluntary transaction between someone poor, say, trying to buy cheap clothing??
Target does not force people to buy their clothing, WTF. "engage"? You mean "*look at while shopping at Target?*"??
Well, that's not efficient! That means that the company will take heed to the message and produce less next quarter! I'm happy that the government didn't produce those tshirts because you know what? that incentive to produce less would be reduced to nothing because it's "free money" that comes from a void source. At least a company will dial back soon after it produces too much.
Again, companies would much rather use a better alternative that the free market will eventually provide, look at the great leaps that TESLA is doing for electric cars. That will also happen for renewable energy, except if you strangle the emerging company with government regulation. How about the tshirt company 10 tree, tentree.com/ca/ ? They are doing well because they weren't blindsided and constricted by government regulations that just assumed that they were evil!!
You got me, some countries are shit and allow slavery to happen, sure, that's a problem. But that's a problem in other countries. If individual rights were respected there then this wouldn't be a problem. Working should be voluntary, and when this is not the case we have problems, yes, of course.
Companies want to be sustainable. Look at 10 tree. Do you sincerely think loading 10 tree with government regulations would HELP sustainability? Besides, producers leave your country if you tax the shit out of them anyway, your system is not realistic in the slightest.
Maybe if you actually produced something tangible you would understand the importance of the word efficiency. (oh wait the US is a service economy, you're probably a waiter or bartender who got a college degree in art history and political correctness and has loads of debt thanks to _government loans_ that universities were happy to steal in exchange for a useless degree because they wanted to lower standard to broaden the amount of kids who go in loaded with gov. cash)

WEW

The problem with the neoclassical concept of efficiency is one of perspective. You can never be sure whether or not all the eventual consequences or causes of something have been accounted for and the efficiency or inefficiency of something could change wildly depending on what you take account of.

Maybe if you understood the arguments behind why what the Soviet Union did after the '50s was largely state capitalism you wouldn't call this a deflection. The Soviet Union didn't pay enough attention to the relationship between workers and production at a micro level and consequently ended up with the same exploitative relationship between worker and overseer that existed in private capitalist enterprises. Only the overseer was a state official, and their accumulation of wealth was a breeding ground for corruption and thus instability of the government.

Not a tanky btw.

Why do anything in that case? Who knows if when you're driving you're going to kill someone? You're basically arguing about how probable the butterfly effect is, and I'm saying that people should and will get ever closer to understanding that probability.

The point is that you make reasonable choices everyday, the same way companies do.

Your point is the same point the unabomber made. Being a luddite who taxes the shit out of everyone isn't a good solution.

What I find facinating is the reliance on an opinion that companies are oppressive, and that labor workers are consistently being victimized and must be saved by a "loving and benevolent" government entity.

1. Companies produce goods and services that precisely match demand and that the general populace are willing to reach into their pockets to buy. This is good. Companies undercut each other by offering better products at lower prices, which translates to less input per measure of output. A government couldn't care less about the amount of money it takes, since it has money that comes from a void. You want choice anyway, you want to flip a coin 1000 times to get something you want. (tails) trusting in one source that you can vote on in 4 years in much less useful than one you can vote on everyday, multiple times. You want choice, statistically, let that choice occur.

2. A company receives labor in exchange for a wage, this is a voluntary transaction that is beneficial, a government should only intervene if this violates either individuals' rights. Otherwise, who's to say what is good for another person other than the person himself? Would you rather be designated as being a worker in job X instead of choosing for yourself? Would you rather that job not exist at all to strangle that company and that worker?

3. The bigger victims are not those who bought a product or who exchanged their labor voluntarily for a wage, but those who involuntarily were effected and restricted in choice by the result of bad government policy, say, the 08 crisis or the fed manipulating interest rates and printing money, or a minimum wage law (which hurt the poorest class the most because you price them out of the market. if you agree with the minimum wage laws then where should we price them? 10$? 20$ 100$? They were created for the labor unions, not for the workers) and mounting taxes? How could you put more responsibility into government given its terribly history of wastefulness, corruption, and exploitation?

4. It is unreasonable to assume that a government is uncorruptible. It's about minimizing the ability for individuals to leverage a governments power over someone else, not to bolster that. Adding regulations increases the possibility of one lemonade stand using the government to become a state monopoly.

5. Good thing my individual rights are protected here on 8ch, otherwise your soft brains would never hear a dissenting opinion in the first place. If you believe that the group should not hold power over the individual, then you must agree with an individuals rights, and not side with the lynch mob.

Exercise your freedom and fucking neck yourself

Thanks for bumping the thread! I hope you learned something new today

this is your brain on ideology

Please tell me about the efficiency of a capitalism that drives humanity and the planet to an ecological crisis while the capitalists in control of production are living comfortably. Please explain the efficiency of destroying a community when a transnational corporation outsources production to China to increase profits. Articulate the efficiency of a capitalism that by design continually depresses wages worldwide while simultaneously expecting those being squeezed to continue buying at historic levels. Is the fact that the entire world has been driven into debt on a massive scale as a means of coping with stagnating wages since the '70s efficient?

Crony capitalism

Socialism doesn't have a monopoly over centralization or even state ownership. Granted, some centralization is necessary in the absence of private property relations. You could probably split the US up into several different regional planning ministries but dozens would be too much. How is New York supposed to know what goods need to be shipped to San Diego? But even with that considered centralized-planned coordination of the economy is hardly unthinkable. Such an economy existed in the Stalin-era USSR and though mismatches of supply and demand were far from uncommon it generally proved to be a functional method of organizing an industrial society of nearly 200,000,000 people. Mises' calculation problem has been destroyed by history, but more mild criticisms from Hayek and non-Austrians were partially vindicated. I'll just post C&C's book for this. It's generally accepted they've proven modern technology solves any problems that used to exist in regards to economic complexity.

Capitalism has brought a lot of progress for society. In 19th century Europe and now more recently Asia we've seen backwards, agrarian societies transformed within decades to economic powerhouses and in Europe at least this coincided with increased political representation for working people. This leads some like yourself to think we've reached the endgame of property rights. However, some of us have noticed that this growth has come at a price. And although we've seen progress poverty and war have never been eliminated under capitalism. We've seen the changes capitalism has made, but the evidence that it's the eternal way forward just isn't there. There are still class contractions. We still have the elites, and the commoners compelled to work on their party. The elites now have an incentive to provide them with some luxuries, but the idea that capitalist markets are turbo-competitive and never exploitative is the stuff of fantasy. The propertied class no longer directly holds political office, but they've nonetheless retained the inherently plutocratic parliament to give themselves an edge in political matters. Do you really think this is the best we can do?

At any rate, I doubt we'll be able to convince you of anything, but then again it doesn't really matter much because we're not trying to win your type over. The overwhelming majority of people on this planet want strong welfare states to ensure their economic security. You turbo-liberals can worship the free market all day if you want but people are never going to buy it.

their property, I meant

I've addressed the issue of pollution in

Basically, people should be able to vote with their dollar to support the companies that don't pollute and give back to the environment, say, for example, tentree.com/ca/

>outsourcing and slavery
Yea, slavery is bad, I've addressed the issue of slavery here:

Outsourcing would be much less of an issue if taxes and government intervention were lower in the host country. Have you run a buisiness before? I would expect you would find it really hard to comply with the mounds of government regulation your mindset seems to encourage. The numerous government policies create barriers to entry, making it harder for the smaller guy to compete with the massive corporations who enjoy economies of scale. Ironic that you hate the big corporation but support the tools neccessary to a state run monopoly by making new barriers to entry. You make it ever harder for a new company to offer you what you want, the way you want it.

at least i am trying to rationalize my pov, unlike yourself who sits in the corner and doesn't contribute anything to the thread. Besides, haven't you learned already that Windows = Government? Linux is an excellent operating system that is backed by who? By companies! It is essentially a private charity, do you want to use a government operating system? No! Not Windows, Apple OSX or redstar! (unless you dont care, then go ahead!)
Ironic!!

nice strawman. clean the cum off your keyboard and maybe you could contribute more other than just a bump to the thread.

Thanks for the reply, and the PDF. Nice to know someone on here can stand on two legs.
1. Assuming economic complexities can be indeed solved by machine, who's to say that power will not be corrupted to skew the amount of public dollars to go towards a particular company. There is no algorithm to account for corruption, and you must agree that ciphening off taxpayer money and using it irrationally is an easy, "victimless" crime to get away with for the people in power. It is up to the people to choose who they want in power by voting with their dollars. Certainly that would hold companies accountable because the company is beholden to their investors and their customers. A state however has the power to lock people up if they don't pay taxes. Bottom line is that it's a moral hazard.

Cheers.

War is unfortunate. Who causes war? Governments, on the behalf of the people who feel for their own national safety. This has little to do with capitalism, but everything to do with crony capitalism, as in, the military complex pushing governments to destabilize countries for profit. Yes, that is utterly unethical.
Poverty, well, capitalism makes goods and services more available because over the long run products and services become cheaper as efficiencies in production are discovered and used to select out the most efficient production methods from the least. The whole reason you're not out hunting food with your bare hands is because you can shine shoes for an hour and eat 10 hamburgers in exchange.

Of course they can be exploitative and/or wasteful, the point is that the market consistently will correct itself. Take for example a cartel trying to consolidate power and drive up prices. Yes, this is a problem, but the solution is already an incentive for the parties involved. Increase wages to steal away labor from your competitors. Or, decrease prices and start producing more to steal away profits from your competitors. Either way, the cartel situation is much like the prisoner's dilemma. The problem is when governments support such a monopoly, because then the corporation has the power to imprison someone who goes against whatever massive corporation is conspiring to drive up prices by restricting supply.

There will always be variation in the human condition, people are not the same. Thankfully people strive to find ways to help humans excel for profit in terms of education, physical safety, emotional wellbeing, etc. People are smart, they will find ways to better themselves and others. Eventually I hope the capacity in all humans will be exploited so that our young minds will eventually aide the arrival of great advancements that will help his fellow humans progress and that gap between the capacity of the haves and the have nots to shrink. But if you take away that motivation, to better your own self by accumulation of profits, then you remove the incentive for people to innovate and the human condition to get better.

Talk about welfare. Welfare is unfortunate, because it causes dependency on government, where private charities could do the job better. It is a shame that a young man, with little – but something – to offer in terms of his labor, must rearrange his life to qualify for welfare, which will give him more money by doing nothing and spawning kids than helping in the production of something that is useful. Why should your bank account be drafted to "help" someone who has the capacity for work _by way of force_? You and I would much rather see some transparency and some control over who you give to and why. At least Basic Income does not force someone to qualify for arbitrary rules to get compensation, thereby undermining their own productivity.

What else is? pretending that the economic and political elite will have the restraint to not inprison you if you have a product/service/idea that can aid others at their expense? Of course everything has its problems, so it's a matter of going towards the one with the least amount of potential downfall, of course. I assume that people are benevolent and can think for themselves. If you really assume the opposite, nothing will ever work, because everyone is human at the end of the day.

If anyone is wondering why I have so much free time today it's because my house and job got burned to a crisp during the Fort Mac. fire. I'm waiting for my insurance company to help me for something I had the good fortune to predict as a possibility.

Federal Reserve Notes are the world's #1 reserve currency. The Federal Reserve is responsible for maintaining a 2% interest rate so that "prices don't rise"
The US is a huge debtor nation that is experimenting with QE (money printing) stimulus programs and interest rate control. The US is broke because of government intervention in the market, not because companies are producing something tangible. It's because politicians can't repay the debts their successors owed and instead take the "easy way out" of inflating the money supply and giving the economy monetary heroin to keep it from crashing completely. This is a bubbled economy, and things are going to crash, but Obama doesn't want it to because it will hurt the Hillary campaign, so interest rates are extremely low. The US is a huge debtor nation, and currently more broke than Puerto Rico! The government is to blame, not the companies who are busy creating real, tangible products.
Ironic you talk about the 70s, nixon nixed the gold standard because the government printed too much money! this is the founding father's worst nightmare and will only lead to disaster. The US needs to quit being a service economy and start producing like the advanced nation it used to be. China and other countries are subsidizing US consumption, and that is going to change.

Whew, lad. You realize it's 2016 right? Not the age of mercantilism anymore?

Yeah, no. Look at the way gold skyrocketed after the 08 crisis. It's the canary in the coalmine, and it's starting to spike again. It's the indicator that people have no confidence in their currency. But go ahead and let your savings melt while inflation goes through the roof :)

The US is broke because of 40 years of tax cuts for the wealthy while attempting to force the poor and middle class to foot the government bill while they're already being squeezed with stagnant wages and throttled by the debt they're forced to go into to do things like own a car or house.

Addendum: tax cuts and tax loopholes.

lol no. It would be impossible to sustain living wages here if you were competing against the wages you'd find in third world shitholes.

I don't know how people like you delude themselves into thinking less regulation "frees up" anything. It only opens the doors to collusion, monopolies, and even more absurd levels of exploitation of both workers and consumers. There's no point in "voting with your dollar" if all companies limit your purchasing choices to things you don't agree with but acquiesce to anyway because there's no other choice, and don't think that a small company would just pop up and take up all of their profits by doing the alternative; everyone avoids the alternative precisely because it's more cost-effective. Also, don't think that in a truly free market, alternative options wouldn't be suppressed; they're ALREADY being suppressed by virtue of dominance over production, distribution, and advertising channels.

How about during the industrial revolution? There was so little amount of taxes back then, and people made incredible strides in productivity over 50 years! I'm not saying we should go back to racism, child labor, slavery, or the tech that was available back then, I'm saying that freedom allowed to them to contribute and then be rewarded for his contributions.

Again, government spending is like a blood transfusion from your right arm to your left. It only spends what it first steals.

Tax cuts for the wealthy is a way for a crony-capitalist to leverage tight government control over competitors. By reducing taxes, you allow more choices for you, which is what you and everyone wants. If you encourage government control and centralization, that ability will only be more attractive to leverage.

The industrial revolution was also marked by deplorable living conditions and regular depressions.

You know what made truly incredible advances in productivity and modernization in less than 50 years? The Soviet Union and People's Republic of China.

Sure, third world shit-holes will be exploited, but that doesn't mean people will neccessarily choose that product.

Collusion and cartel behaviour was already covered here:

If a small company making a profit is impossible, how about 10 tree, a company that popped up in such a saturated market such as clothing? tentree.com/ca/
People sure voted with there dollars to keep it in buisiness. Good thing the government didn't just assume it was an evil company and needed to be squashed by insane taxes.

Sure money can help in advertising a product or to help enjoy economies of scale, but in a true free market, it cannot be used to outright kill. If people want the product, as long as there is a supplier, they will get it, whether it is through word of mouth, the internet, etc. When others figure out there are profits to be made, copying will occur, of course. We have the internet, and many companies are turning to it precisely to combat the conventional pathways of finding a product because they realize that people aren't able to find them due to saturation. The market finds ways around the problems you present.

Bro, China is practically state capitalism, lol. It's what the North Korean leader also wants to move to because he realizes his country is starving to death. cato.org/policy-report/januaryfebruary-2013/how-china-became-capitalist
BTW the soviet union is defunct if you haven't gotten the memo yet lol it hasn't lasted forever bud :))

Exactly, so much for the efficiency of a free, unregulated market. State capitalism blows it away.

Also due to state capitalism.

I'm not endorsing anarchy, I'm talking about economic freedoms. China right now has more economic freedoms than the US, that's why they're doing so well.

It's foolish to isolate exactly what caused what to fail in a massive country, but certainly it's hard to argue that corruption has no small part to blame in its downfall. If you were presented with loads of taxpayer money i'm sure you would love to take it and hide it away too. I blame the source, government. Why blame the corporation that has earned its profits by helping its customers and giving jobs to its employees and had no buisiness in leveraging government or taking taxpayer money?

Anyway, thanks for the conversations, I've had a good time validating my own point of view. Cheers

...

FREEDOMS!

… … END MY LIFE! I DON'T WANA LIVE ON THIS PLANET ANYMORE!

firms do it all the time.
walmart is the largest centrally planned economy in the world
central planning worked well in the ussr (look at their economic growth and development even with a totally corrupt and non democratic government)
imagine central planning with the power of information technology the ussr never had

If we can't trust a government bureaucrat to run everything from the top down, how can we trust a CEO?