The End of Capitalism

[DrZoidberg]

Here's an interesting talk about the upcoming death of capitalism and also democratic elections. His argument is that since computers track all our opinions and consumption patterns we don't care about advertising anymore. We use algorithms with which be base our shopping on. These are mostly outside the control of corporations. Humans have learned to use the tool of the Internet and we're using it... very effectively. The people have taken power. Capitalists know exactly what consumers want and it's cheap to learn it. That lowers the risk of investement. It'll even out the need for big investors. Killing big capitalists. Democratic elections are increasingly unnecesary. The US Senate and the National People's congress of China both know everything they need to know to make their underlings happy. Instantly and cheaply. The need for having a government at all is being eroded. It can all be replaced by algorithms. It already is to a large extent. Politicians are increasingly reduced to trained monkeys pushing whatever buttons the algorithm tells them to push. Journalism is becoming unnecessary. By the time a journalist has finnished writing an article, the world already knows, have responded to it, and moved onto the next thing. He also predicts the death of academia. We no longer learn things at university. We learn things through alternative channels today. The only thing universities do now is hand out certificates to prove that the stuff you learned on your own was the right thing. At this point we require a minimal shift in culture to wipe out academia in its entirety. Which isn't great considering the very necessary basic science they are doing.

He's not saying this as only a good thing. He's presenting it as a fact and that we need to adapt. He's saying that we have pre-Internet values and we still think a lot of things should still be valid, that isn't. The sooner we wake up and adapt our values to the new rules the quicker we are positioned to reap it's benefits. He also says that their will be a lot of losers in this new world. People too slow to adapt.

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X02NKiY38Kg
[/YOUTUBE]

Thoughts?

 

[rousseau]

Anyone who decries ''..the end of" anything is likely over-simplifying what's actually happening. When I see a bunch of broad claims about government, economics, education, and then I see it coming from a 'cyber-philosopher' with no expertise in those domains, I get a bad smell about his arguments.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Anyone who decries ''..the end of" anything is likely over-simplifying what's actually happening. When I see a bunch of broad claims about government, economics, education, and then I see it coming from a 'cyber-philosopher' with no expertise in those domains, I get a bad smell about his arguments.

He was a professor at Sweden's most prestigious business school before becoming a pop-star, then self made business billionaire and later philosopher. He knows how to make money. Did you listen to the talk?

 

[rousseau]

Anyone who decries ''..the end of" anything is likely over-simplifying what's actually happening. When I see a bunch of broad claims about government, economics, education, and then I see it coming from a 'cyber-philosopher' with no expertise in those domains, I get a bad smell about his arguments.

He was a professor at Sweden's most prestigious business school before becoming a pop-star, then self made business billionaire and later philosopher. He knows how to make money. Did you listen to the talk?

Being a professor at a business school, successful businessman, and philosopher doesn't tell me he has credentials in economics, political science, education, or much else. I skimmed through the video and got a sense of it - his claims seemed to be vague and broad enough that if you apply them selectively through time some of them could be seen as correct and prescient, while not exactly specific enough to make any meaningful predictions about what the future will actually look like.

All due respect it sounds like arm-char philosophy to me - a bunch of somewhat coherent ideas that don't really indicate anything with any measure of precision.

 

[DBT]

Capitalism, as it is currently practiced, is unsustainable. It most likely crossed its used by date decades ago.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Capitalism, as it is currently practiced, is unsustainable. It most likely crossed its used by date decades ago.

Seeing the impact that the printing press and industrial revolution had on how investments were made, I'd say that was the least controversial statement this year. Obviously the IT revolution will transform capitalism. I mean... it has already. The current list of the top 10 richest people in the world is in one way or another IT billionaires. Nearly all of them came from normal middle class families and had nothing just 30 years ago. If you go back 50 years, unless you started rich, you'd never get rich. That's a tremendous shift. A person with an idea can transform the world today. That was the ideal of the 19'th century free market capitalism, but was never true... until now. You've never needed as little capital as today to start a company. Aka "unicorns", is even a thing in investment banking.

Too big to fail, isn't a thing anymore. A massive corporate size is instead often a hindrence to grab the good ideas.

What this means is that the fact that you were born rich today is no guarantee you'll stay rich. Social mobility is just sa much an oportunity to rise to the top, as to sink to the bottom. Giants are going to go bust at an increasing rate. That's what this new age of capitalism means.

But it's not more fair than before. There's a lot of luck involved. No self made billionaire is self made. It's just more random. Less stable at the top. Less security. It's also less obvious how to tax. And with mass unemployment following the robot and AI revolution... It's going to be an interesting ride. Not necessarily fun.

It's going to be interesting living in a world where the people who run the world know that very soon they won't be. If people sucked at long term planning before. They'll do so more now, because they will have no incentive to. They'll take their chances to grab as much as they can while they have the chance. In earlier ages the rich could relax a bit about their greed. They knew they'd have plenty of time to make up for it.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Capitalism, as it is currently practiced, is unsustainable. It most likely crossed its used by date decades ago.

Seeing the impact that the printing press and industrial revolution had on how investments were made, I'd say that was the least controversial statement this year. Obviously the IT revolution will transform capitalism. I mean... it has already. The current list of the top 10 richest people in the world is in one way or another IT billionaires. Nearly all of them came from normal middle class families and had nothing just 30 years ago. If you go back 50 years, unless you started rich, you'd never get rich. That's a tremendous shift. A person with an idea can transform the world today. That was the ideal of the 19'th century free market capitalism, but was never true... until now. You've never needed as little capital as today to start a company. Aka "unicorns", is even a thing in investment banking.

Too big to fail, isn't a thing anymore. A massive corporate size is instead often a hindrence to grab the good ideas.

What this means is that the fact that you were born rich today is no guarantee you'll stay rich. Social mobility is just sa much an oportunity to rise to the top, as to sink to the bottom. Giants are going to go bust at an increasing rate. That's what this new age of capitalism means.

But it's not more fair than before. There's a lot of luck involved. No self made billionaire is self made. It's just more random. Less stable at the top. Less security. It's also less obvious how to tax. And with mass unemployment following the robot and AI revolution... It's going to be an interesting ride. Not necessarily fun.

It's going to be interesting living in a world where the people who run the world know that very soon they won't be. If people sucked at long term planning before. They'll do so more now, because they will have no incentive to. They'll take their chances to grab as much as they can while they have the chance. In earlier ages the rich could relax a bit about their greed. They knew they'd have plenty of time to make up for it.

As an entrepreneur myself, you're probably not surprised to learn that I don't agree! Despite the fact that Covid has dealt the US economy with one of the greatest crises in modern history, capitalism is stronger than ever. Trump is the worst president in history. He's a crook. Everyone knows this. It's shocking but he has a very good chance to win next Tuesday. And the only reason why is because he's convinced many that the economy runs better under him than the democrats. That's the only reason. The simple reason why is that capitalism provides the incentives to encourage people to work their butt off. Whereas socialism doesn't. I do think that we should have lower barriers to entry. We could do a better job of encouraging people; lower barriers, increase the safety net, and etc. But there certainly no socialist example that comes close to any capitalist economy.

BTW: I think that you're one of the best posters on this forum. I look forward to you educating me on socialism!

 

[DBT]

Some of the problems with Capitalism.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Some of the problems with Capitalism.

Totally agree. Tons of problems with capitalism. There are more than what you listed above. What alternative system do you prefer?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Some of the problems with Capitalism.

Duh! The problem is everything else that has been tried has fared worse.

 

[skepticalbip]

Some of the problems with Capitalism.

Duh! The problem is everything else that has been tried has fared worse.

Indeed... there is no such thing as a utopia. Capitalist systems certainly do not provide the idealistic dream of everyone living in luxury but they have lifted the poorest to a standard of living that is the envy of those living under different economic systems.

 

[DBT]

Totally agree. Tons of problems with capitalism. There are more than what you listed above. What alternative system do you prefer?

Whether there are alternatives to capitalism or not does alter the fact that capitalism as it is being practiced in many nations has serious flaws. Flaws that most likely make unbridled capitalism unsustainable in the long term. Plus capitalism as it's practiced in the US is not the same as in Denmark, which has a larger blend of democratic socialist policies and a higher happiness index than the US.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Totally agree. Tons of problems with capitalism. There are more than what you listed above. What alternative system do you prefer?

Whether there are alternatives to capitalism or not does alter the fact that capitalism as it is being practiced in many nations has serious flaws. Flaws that most likely make unbridled capitalism unsustainable in the long term. Plus capitalism as it's practiced in the US is not the same as in Denmark, which has a larger blend of democratic socialist policies and a higher happiness index than the US.

Systems must be compared to the alternatives, not to utopia. And if they're really happier why do they have a higher suicide rate?

 

[skepticalbip]

Totally agree. Tons of problems with capitalism. There are more than what you listed above. What alternative system do you prefer?

Whether there are alternatives to capitalism or not does alter the fact that capitalism as it is being practiced in many nations has serious flaws. Flaws that most likely make unbridled capitalism unsustainable in the long term.

If it really is unsustainable then I hope that whatever replaces it is a better system than the systems that have been tried in other nations in the past (and currently) and have failed the overwhelming mass of population in those nations.

Plus capitalism as it's practiced in the US is not the same as in Denmark, which has a larger blend of democratic socialist policies and a higher happiness index than the US.

Purely anecdotal but, the last time I was in Denmark (and Sweden), I worked with several people who were trying to immigrate to the U.S... They had quite a few bitches about their system. They wanted some tips on navigating through U.S. immigration but I had to tell them that they knew more about it than I did since I have never had to deal with immigration authorities.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Totally agree. Tons of problems with capitalism. There are more than what you listed above. What alternative system do you prefer?

Whether there are alternatives to capitalism or not does alter the fact that capitalism as it is being practiced in many nations has serious flaws. Flaws that most likely make unbridled capitalism unsustainable in the long term. Plus capitalism as it's practiced in the US is not the same as in Denmark, which has a larger blend of democratic socialist policies and a higher happiness index than the US.

The Danes have a larger safety net and pay more in taxes. Have more business regulation. But they are still very capitalist. There's no collective ownership of the means of production. Danes are good competitors in the business world.

 

[DBT]

Totally agree. Tons of problems with capitalism. There are more than what you listed above. What alternative system do you prefer?

Whether there are alternatives to capitalism or not does alter the fact that capitalism as it is being practiced in many nations has serious flaws. Flaws that most likely make unbridled capitalism unsustainable in the long term. Plus capitalism as it's practiced in the US is not the same as in Denmark, which has a larger blend of democratic socialist policies and a higher happiness index than the US.

The Danes have a larger safety net and pay more in taxes. Have more business regulation. But they are still very capitalist. There's no collective ownership of the means of production. Danes are good competitors in the business world.

I didn't say that Denmark is a socialist nation. There are no fixed rules or hard divisions. There is nothing to say that you can't have the best of both, a blend of capitalism and socialism. CEO's only get paid a fraction of their US and other western nation counterparts, taxes are higher....but so is the social happiness index. People are happier.

 

[Jokodo]

Totally agree. Tons of problems with capitalism. There are more than what you listed above. What alternative system do you prefer?

Whether there are alternatives to capitalism or not does alter the fact that capitalism as it is being practiced in many nations has serious flaws. Flaws that most likely make unbridled capitalism unsustainable in the long term. Plus capitalism as it's practiced in the US is not the same as in Denmark, which has a larger blend of democratic socialist policies and a higher happiness index than the US.

Systems must be compared to the alternatives, not to utopia. And if they're really happier why do they have a higher suicide rate?

Why invent alternative facts? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Systems must be compared to the alternatives, not to utopia. And if they're really happier why do they have a higher suicide rate?

Why invent alternative facts? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

Strange--I had just looked it up and found different numbers, with Denmark ahead of the US. You have a substantially different rate for the US than I got in a quick search. I think your data is right, though, Google seems to have served me up bad data.

 

[DBT]

If it really is unsustainable then I hope that whatever replaces it is a better system than the systems that have been tried in other nations in the past (and currently) and have failed the overwhelming mass of population in those nations.

Plus capitalism as it's practiced in the US is not the same as in Denmark, which has a larger blend of democratic socialist policies and a higher happiness index than the US.

Purely anecdotal but, the last time I was in Denmark (and Sweden), I worked with several people who were trying to immigrate to the U.S... They had quite a few bitches about their system. They wanted some tips on navigating through U.S. immigration but I had to tell them that they knew more about it than I did since I have never had to deal with immigration authorities.

There are always some who are not satisfied. That some want to emigrate says nothing about the overall wellbeing of the society.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If it really is unsustainable then I hope that whatever replaces it is a better system than the systems that have been tried in other nations in the past (and currently) and have failed the overwhelming mass of population in those nations.

Plus capitalism as it's practiced in the US is not the same as in Denmark, which has a larger blend of democratic socialist policies and a higher happiness index than the US.

Purely anecdotal but, the last time I was in Denmark (and Sweden), I worked with several people who were trying to immigrate to the U.S... They had quite a few bitches about their system. They wanted some tips on navigating through U.S. immigration but I had to tell them that they knew more about it than I did since I have never had to deal with immigration authorities.

There are always some who are not satisfied. That some want to emigrate says nothing about the overall wellbeing of the society.

Some always want to move, what counts is the balance of how many want to move.

Also, look at inter-country marriages. That generally gives the couple the ability to pick either country, which one do they pick?