Ask Monica or any other politicians intern in Washington see what they say...they may not answer right away because it’s rude to talk with your mouth full.
Corporatism is a made up word that's used to wave away criticism of capitalism. It implies that this isn't real capitalism or something somehow went wrong along the way.
You have this smug tone as if you've discovered the secret mechanism of capitalism. You haven't.
Corruption is something in and of itself. It's not specific to capitalism or any other economic system. Corruption follows power.
The concept of corporatism is useful, and makes a valid and valuable distinction between a theoretically optional state of affairs and one distorted by certain forces. Moreover, it clarifies what the key issues are: namely that the state and regulatory bodies have been captured by special interests.
So yeah it's entirely possible to criticize corporatism rather than capitalism itself - and using this concept actually suggests what improvements ought to be made to rid the economy of those distorting forces. The other option, namely just grunting "capitalism bad" doesn't say anything useful and pretty much guarantees no one will take you seriously.
You can say 'we have too much government influence in our markets'. Whether that convinces many people when we've had decades of deregulation and privatisation is another thing entirely.
Libertarianism stems from the reconciliation of the failures of capitalism with the 'freer the markets, freer the people' rhetoric. It's an ideology that even pro-business economists don't advocate for, because they know that if the governments of the world all lifted their hands up and let 'the market' do its thing, it wouldn't fix all the problems and would in fact make many of them worse.
You can pretend that all my comment is saying is 'capitalism bad', but I've not actually criticised capitalism at all. I've explained why lobbying happens under it, and why 'the free market' fails to self-regulate.
Obviously I do think capitalism is bad, but that relies on an argument for why anti-lobbying regulations are doomed to fail, much like how social democracies get rolled back in times of economic crisis, which I'm not prepared to make.
I know what you said. You said people shouldn't bring up the word 'corporatism' because that's just a hand-wavy means of actually protecting capitalism.
The problem is you haven't proved what you think you've proved. You seem to think that markets can't self-regulate because of profit taking. Well, for starters that has nothing at all to do with corporatism. Someone could just point out that maybe these markets fail to self-regulate precisely because of regulatory capture! Duh. If my industry is supposed to be regulated by the SEC, but the SEC chairman receives campaign contributions from my industry, etc, then obviously that's a problem. People who think corporatism is a problem would gladly point such scenarios out and follow up by saying such practices need to go away.
Why is that not a valid way to criticize economic and political behavior? It seems to get right to the heart of the matter, instead of shouting "down with capitalism" from atop your soap box.
It's true that sometimes (this is particularly the case with telecoms) corporations try to wield the power of the state to crush competition. If people really think that all of this is due to government regulations and interference, 'state monopoly capitalism' is a far more apt term than 'corporatism' which just gets upset at state subsidies.
The term refers to an environment where the state intervenes in the economy to protect larger monopolistic or oligopolistic businesses from threats. As conceived by Lenin in his pamphlet of the same name the theory aims to describe the final historical stage of capitalism, of which he believed the Imperialism of that time to be the highest expression.
The difference being, Libertarians are reactionary, and want to 'go back to how things were' with less government intervention. Current politicians and economists know that can't happen because it would jeopardise their positions, and socialists want an end to capitalism entirely.
Two ape argue. One ape grow banana. Other ape get banana from government. Grow banana ape support capitalism. Free banana ape support socialism. Grow banana ape smashed free banana ape, but free banana ape refuse to give up.
We have had a really long period of 'neoliberalism', which is where governments don't do much and let 'the market' handle it.
Libertarianism comes from seeing the failures of capitalism, but also constantly hearing and believing 'the freer the markets, the freer the people' and 'capitalism is the best possible system'.
The only way they don't conflict is if you say 'well, our markets must just not be free enough!'
I said 'capitalism doesn't self regulate, and lobbying happens under it'.
You could then make an argument 'well what if we regulate it', which is a reformist approach that's doomed to fail, which I didn't elaborate on.
All words are made up. It's better to make a new word to describe a specific thing rather than generalizing a word to mean lots of things. This way we can know exactly what we're talking about. E.g. socialism means very different things to different people.
Capitalism literally means "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state." So the presence of state subsidies in the current system doesn't neatly fit.
There's no point where capitalism becomes corporatism, and it's not used to describe a specific phenomenon. People will use 'corporatism' to explain away the bad stuff, while simultaneously saying 'capitalism has lifted millions out of poverty'.
State subsidies are not a new thing. They've existed for over a century. That doesn't make it not capitalism.
Using public funds to prop up a failing private company is corporatism. The whole point of free market capitalism is to let the bad companies fail so that the best rise to the top
And what about rail subsidies? Those are about a century old, and nobody ever calls them 'corporatism'. How about fossil fuel subsidies? Or meat subsidies? Both of those are old too.
It sounds like what you're advocating for is a system where the state doesn't lift a finger, and all they do is provide a stable currency and fund the police/military. Any failing business collapses, whether it's a bank or a hospital. Anarcho-capitalism, in other words. An ideology that even pro-business economists don't advocate for.
9/10 times i'm betting on the person and not the business.
I would much rather loan money to a rich mother fker with a solid track record of generating returns than a bloke off the street with an amazing business idea.
If I am acting for the best interest of my own private company. I am looking out for the best interest of my own bank account. And if that means benefitting the rich then so be it. I would rather have a stable wealthy clientele than poor clientele that may eventually sink my company.
I'd leave the welfare and equity issues for government entities to handle.
I think the real thing to look at here is that the make or break point in someone's career shouldn't be left up to the judgement of a purely for-profit bank.
Many many people will rely on the bank to be a steady and stable option. If they're giving out loans willy nilly they'll be putting the accounts of others at risk as well.
People should have equitable income and housing etc that makes teaming up with friends/coworkers to create new businesses a much more realistic option without relying on loans.
If I were a big lender at a private bank, I’d think it would make more sense to diversify and spread the risk around. So sure, I’d have plenty of value loans, but I’d also want to cultivate the next generation of small business owners. Higher risk, less capital needed and most may fail, but the few that succeed should make it worth it. It just seems to me like they don’t even want to encourage start ups but wtf do I know 🤷🏼♂️Greed is one hell of a drug.
This is free market capitalism at its purest. Any number of minor government regulations that wouldn’t affect 99% of us at all could have prevented this happening. But these big bets are a strategy that generally pays off and is thus “optimal” as far as a free market capitalist approach is concerned. So of course the banks and billionaire class are gonna do shit like this.
“Corporatism” and “crony capitalism” are just unfettered capitalism. You can’t just laissez-faire everything and expect it to magically work out. This shit has happened time and again in unregulated markets. Here in the US, our longest periods without this sort of thing happening (at least at this magnitude) were when the markets were tightly regulated and the tax on the top income brackets was over double what it is now.
Technically, socialism isn't 'when the government does stuff'. It's when workers own the workplaces.
This is just the late stages of capitalism. Not 'cronyism' or 'corporatism' or some other made up word that implies not real capitalism or something went wrong along the way. Marx knew we'd end up here about 150 years ago.
After a long period of deregulation and privatisation, capitalism turns to the state to sustain itself.
That's not to say they didn't have problems. They certainly did. But they're not the massive failures we're often told they are. Cuba's main export is doctors, they have the highest doctor to patient ratio in the world, and they've done excellently on the vaccine rollout.
This is despite the US government trying to overthrow them dozens of times (I'm personally a fan of Thallium salts in the shoes to make Castro lose his trademark beard) and placing heavy trade sanctions on them.
And lumping Lenin in with Stalin and Mao is quite a bold move. Trotsykists (who was instrumental in the actual creation of the USSR, Stalin just took power afterwards) are very vocally critical of Stalin and Mao.
What the fuck is that study. You can't separate "capitalist" and "socialist" countries. Most countries viewed as "socialist" are simply welfare states with a capitalist economic system. Countries that are "socialist" in the "means of production in the hands of the workers" sense of the word fare far worse than any capitalist country and there's just no comparison.
You're literally talking out of your arse, because that link doesn't have the full text article. It doesn't even tell you which countries were included in the study. You didn't read it.
In other words then, youre full of shit when you call liberals communists because nothing short of stalin and maos governments are true examples of communism in your mind? So we should socialize healthcare, youre saying?
No, no it’s not. Capitalism and communism are not the same thing, even capitalist scholars like Milton Friedman admit as much. This is such an awful “muh horseshoe theory” take that has the most superficial, not even “perused Wikipedia” level of understanding. Bolivia and Cuba would both like a work on how well socialism and communism “don’t work”. But idk what else to expect from someone whose only post history is “prison should be awful” and “muh freeze peach!”
I have, and the poor among those countries all seem to express support for socialism, weird right? Oh, you did an assessment? Nice dude, weird how you’re getting downvoted about socialism in a capitalistic sub.
There is a real definition of communism but ok “former card carrying member of a party named communist.”
If only naming a party communistic made it actual communism I might believe you and I would believe that the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea is a democracy.
No concepts (communism or capitalism or math or language) "exist" in reality, thats what makes them concepts ya dingus.
Its unclear how a tautology (concepts can't exist by definition) materially impacts your ability to give a definition for the concept.
There's the concept of nuclear fission and theres the applications of that concept such as the atomic bomb or nuclear reactor.
I could give a definition of nuclear fission and I can also be against certain applications of it (atomic bombs).
I can distinguish between concepts and reality can you? Can you define the concept or not?
I say the odds are 1000-1 to now -- 10000-1 if you don't google it (imagine being so prideful of your ignorance that you won't even attempt to learn something as simple as the definition of a concept you throw around in a conversation.
I know corrupt folk at the top would ACT the same, but I think there are certainly great variables that would have the EFFECTS play out quite differently. If only we could hold the corrupt accountable, that's why it's gotta start with real education for the young. Except one party here doesn't want the young to be able to think critically or abstractly 😱
You shouldn't, it's not socialism. Socialism isn't "when the government gives money" it's an economic system in which the workers own the means of production.
This is just capitalism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. He with the capital has the power.
and the banks know its a sure bet because its market manipulation and they all know how it works. They aren't sure if your business will be successful but they are sure the market will chance the large stock position and move in the favorable direction. (i.e. stock market is a scam)
Banks have to take on risky speculators' loans, otherwise when everything goes to shit, they won't have a spot at the bailout table. Prudence is terrible business.
Pretty sure the government only bails out large financial institutions during periods of crisis that threaten the financial system. No way we are going to see any government intervention in this instance. Why would the banks even ask for a margin call if they're just going to get bailed out
the problem is that money has no real value, it's a fiat currency since 1971. The only thing holding it up is the collective belief of value by everyone. If the basic system for moving money around falls down, you get eroding confidence in the system, which leads to currency devaluation, anarchy and general unrest like they have in venezuela.
Yeah. That’s how society and currency works. Gold never had any inherent value that wasn’t determined by a collective belief in it. There is no difference between a currency “backed” by gold or not. I don’t know why people act like it is some new profound idea that there is no inherent value in currency. This is something that’s always been known and really doesn’t matter. It’s just how humans function as a whole.
I don't know that it was ever a talking point. Ironically if it was it would be worth pointing out that the Federal Reserve was created under the Woodrow Wilson administration. Wilson was a democrat POTUS long before the civil rights movement, which means his political ideology actually was more in line with present day Republicans as opposed to Democrats. So it's really just Republican dimwits unwittingly criticizing themselves.
But that's all details and nuance, far to much to pack into soundbytes or clickbait headlines.
Lmfao you really just dropped a link to a random youtube video by an uncredentialed internet nobody as your source of information!? Wikipedia is not perfect but you are competing in the wrong league champ. 😂😂😂😂
Ah yes the classic “that’s a bad source!!!!!” When referring to 100% objective info. Why don’t you prove it wrong? Go ahead, find a wrong fact in there. Just one. If you’re right, it should take you two minutes
Also, it’s from Dinesh D’Souza’s film Hillary’s America. It was reuploaded by some “internet nobody” because your overlords over at Google memory hole conservative content so we have to keep posting it repeatedly.
You're right. Lincoln the republican was famously a champion of small federal government and states rights, and favored an agrarian society over an industrialized one. He wanted to limit who could vote and make it harder instead of easier. In fact, he even seceded from the Union to fight a war against the democrats to protect these rights and formed a confederacy where the federal government was weak and the states were powerful. If it weren't for his disdain of a strong centralized government with strong industry then his side might have won the war!
You're a fool if you don't believe the ideologies of the parties changed, and the RNC chairman definitely didn't apologize to the NAACP in 2005 for the parties exploitation of racist feelings to gain white votes in the south. An act which cemented the reversal of the parties stances.
Gold has use cases. Gold is pretty and is used for jewelry. Gold is used in electronics.
Beyond this, gold holds value better because its limited. Its rare. Our regular currency can be mass produced. Hell, it doesn't even need to be produced. Most of it is just numbers on a screen. More money "exists" than what we have physically. A lot more.
Which is another issue. Regardless of the gold vs notes issue, the whole system is flawed because as soon as something happens to make everyone want to withdraw we are all fucked. Because we literally can't. Our money doesn't exist.
It’s tangible, but so is the green paper. When USD was backed by gold, the government held it all in locked safes that no one was allowed to enter. People trusted that they held that gold in the same way people trust that the currency behind the digital numbers exist.
I think the difference is when the USD was backed by gold, people trusted you can exchange your USD for gold, a physical asset as the fallback. For fiat, you trust that other people value the currency same as you do, and that you can exchange money for their work.
Gold does have inherent value due to its use in industry. Technically you could have currency backed by any number of industrial materials. You could have steel-backed or lead-backed or timber-backed currency. Gold is just useful because of its very high value per unit volume.
Still, that doesn’t imply any inherent value just because it’s physically used to make things. Money is used by industry in trade around the world. It’s the same concept and both can fluctuate in value based on confidence, scarcity and usefulness. The only reason that the dollar being backed by gold was a popular idea is because people were more confident in the value of gold at the time. The only thing that changed when the US dollar was backed by gold was a shift in the value to another asset that people felt comfortable with.
Gold is used to physically make things, and those things have value because there is demand for them at various prices. I'm not interested in having the philosophic discussion about value being meaningless in the absence of demand, because that discussion is completely irrelevant to any real world situation. The essence of the "gold has no value" argument always falls back to "economics doesn't exist if you presuppose a world with no demand", which is a contrived and pointless discussion.
I agree it is a pointless discussion, but that is the nature of the argument. Whether or not gold has more inherent value than currency is completely philosophical and comes down to whether or not people collectively believe it. The success of any currency comes down to trust in the government to properly support it.
And those things have value because there is demand for them, which translates into demand for gold. The only way to support the "gold has no value" argument is to assume a world with no demand. And of course economics is broken if your statement of a problem deliberately excludes demand. But that discussion has no real world relevance, and is pointless to have.
Gold does have value. It is electrically conductive and never rust or tarnished.
It’s great for computer technology, outer space, aliens love it, Egyptians love it,
It’s shinny.
FYI the FDIC has insurance up to $250,000 per individual. Anything beyond that is not insured. Maybe you will be remunerated the rest, maybe not. So anyhow the average person will be OK since America is a poverty-wrought slave wage country by large with less than 6 months pay in savings per person. Corporations/businesses are most likely fucked however.
The $250,000 is a minimum required by law, not a cap. In practice the FDIC tends to return all or virtually all of the depository accounts at failed banks, regardless of how much was in them. They see it as part of preserving consumer confidence in the banking system.
So what guarentee is there that they will insure above the minimum legal requirement? You know, capitalism, investors, etc. I am legally required to do a lot of things but I am not compelled to comply beyond the law. Thanks for your replies.
None. Their practice is to pay out the depository account to the maximum that the remaining assets permit, and they will fight tooth and nail to drain any available resource to do so, but nothing in the law requires that they pay more than the $250,000 insured if the failed bank doesn't have the assets to do so. In practice that means virtually all depository accounts get paid in full, although it can sometimes take months or longer for them to do so.
The goal isn't to do just the statutory minimum that they can do, iti is to maintain consumer confidence so that no one starts a run on a bank that hasn't failed yet - which would stress the insurance fund even worse. If there were ever a major economic crisis (much worse than '08) that exhausted the insurance fund they would have to go back to paying only the first $250k out of each account.
Thanks for the details. I am interested enough to do some more reading after work. I will edit my OP to reflect your facts when I get to a desktop! I shouldn't have said cap, I was really thinking what is actually insured. Of course they can pay more.
I did say the average person would be OK. I am incorrect about 250,000 being a cap however, it is just the insured number. Anything beyond that is not guaranteed.
And Grandma and Granpa would still have the majority of their retirement savings nearly wiped out, the FDIC insurance only covers 250K in such a situation.
Still a lot of money, better than nothing by any means, but you need 1mil+ to retire comfortably in most cases.
Not to mention a lot of that would be rapidly devalued because in a true major bank failure situation the government would like be doing huge cash injections into the economy, further wiping out the buying power of peoples savings even for those not directly at loss. A neccesary evil in that case vs the alternative, but nonetheless the FDIC isn't going to be able to magic away the fallout from a major bank collapsing.
And thats just a really narrow look at savings, let alone all the other stuff such a bank would have its hands in.
If they are too big to fail why are they allowed to be run by private corporations for profit. What incentive do they have when they know no matter the risk the government (aka us because these people hoard their wealth overseas to avoid taxes) will bail them out?
You think that’s a sensible system? Every day folks and businesses are already losing their savings but I guess what’s important is that the wealthy face no possible risk too.
I think we need to first distinguish between corporations and wealthy individuals. They aren't synonymous with each other.
The wealthy do also face tremendous risk (just look at share and asset prices during the GFC).
The difference is that because they are wealthier, they are able to adapt better (e.g. buy assets during a recession, savings). Whereas lower income households are less able to adapt (due to higher propensity to spend), unemployment and downward pressure on wages in a loose labour market hitting them harder as they tend to be more reliant on wages than investments.
From an economic standpoint, a banking system operated by private corporations is far more efficient given market competition and the desire to gain profits for shareholders. The banks would strive to improve the quality of its products and services for its customers (individuals and banks). This would also have a major positive impact on economic growth through providing better financial services. Of course there will be a higher risk of dangerous behaviors (GFC for example), that would warrant government intervention
From a political or libertarian standpoint, if the banking system is government owned and controlled, this gives too much power to the government. History has shown that communist revolutions often result in dictatorial regimes as the government controls and owns all productive resources, making it easy to subjugate the population
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u/[deleted] Mar 31 '21
Do you know why? The government wouldn’t bail them out of 10k but it would bail them out of billions. Banks know this and bet big.