That looks like the Milton Friedman, Adam Smith-style definition of unrestrained capitalism. I don't think that exists anywhere in the world, let alone the USA.Originally Posted by UTEopia
That looks like the Milton Friedman, Adam Smith-style definition of unrestrained capitalism. I don't think that exists anywhere in the world, let alone the USA.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
That's my point.
And uteopia, as an employer I've frequently sacrificed personally to keep people employed through hard times, allowed extra time off for illness of themselves or family members, done what is best for the customer at a cost to myself, etc.
The truth is while there are always going to be bad actors, the vast majority of the economy is powered by small and medium-sized businesses who do just that and that is powered by capitalism too. In short, what I do is done by executives big and small all the time.
And whether your like it or not, you and AOC are benefactors of capitalism. There is something strange about the most prosperous nation on earth at any time having people complain about what go them there on devices most people in the world don't have (globally we are the 1%).
Meanwhile this prosperity forces corporations to be competitive with their employees with enhanced benefits like unlimited time off, meals, in house exercise facilities and daycare, paid maternity leave for both mothers and fathers, stock options, and even allotted time to do whatever they want.
That is the reality of employment for many people today.
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There's always been tension within capitalist economy nations, explained by the GINI index, the CIA's economic measure of inequality within economies. From a material standpoint, most of the poor have little to complain about, especially compared to the hardship the pioneers went through. But there's increasing levels of dissatisfaction, manifested by the rise of Sanders/Trump/AOC, a plummeting birthrate, increases in mental health issues, suicide rate, opioids, etc. It tracks with widening inequalities.
Human beings are social creatures, subconsciously deriving their self-worth from comparing/ranking themselves to others in society. It's not some Democratic plot, it's not AOC preying on lazy Millennials. It's just human nature. People in poor nations often feel more connected to each other, their happiness is measurably higher, even though their material plight is tougher.
When a lot of people in the US see overt evidence of immense inequality, they sense injustice, feel like failures, etc. Their kids sense it, too. The GINI index predicts the distrust Americans experience.
Epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson has been able to accurately predict rates of preventable diseases - diabetes, heart disease, some cancers - *between* US states, based on data on economic inequality. The same measures the CIA uses to assess social stability in other nations.
(I'm not pushing socialism or soaking the rich. I'm just explaining an economic epidemiological perspective.)
I think my mom's scientific term for this was "the green-eyed-gazongas" aka keeping up with the joneses, which is powered by jealousy of the Rothschilds.
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I think this is why so many people are repulsed by the college admissions scandal that is blowing up right now. It will be interesting to see how that disgust expresses itself politically.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
Rage against the elites! (Elites = anyone you perceive as richer than you, better "connected" than you, smarter than you, more educated, healthier, nicer clothes, more famous, the liberal/conservative enemies, etc.)
A reaction I sense will be more common - "I'm surprised anyone is surprised". (Ie, "besides the fireworks, why do we really care about the 4th of July?")
From the right, focus will be on the hypocrisy of the Hollywood liberals. From the left, reinforcement of AOC's simple sincerity that "the system" is fundamentally broken and needs to be thrown out.
How that gets manifested politically will be different from the different tribes, but it will also cause more general disengagement, waiting to "throw them all out", and for some: "F-it, hand me another beer".
America will never have equality of outcome. But poor liberals support "elite" liberals who speak their language, just like poor conservatives cherish Trump. (Each tribe accuses the commoners of the other tribe as being - or supporting - hypocrites, or of being dupes.)
What we need is greater sense of equity, of common ground. Like "my brother went to college with that Astronaut Mark Kelly. Smart dude. We need people like him to lead us, inspire us, fight for the common man, prod us to strive for better".
This is from last July. I think it's now time to say "Never."
President Michael Avenatti? Never say never!
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
I don't doubt that many employers do what you do. I also don't doubt that I have benefitted from it. I'm suggesting that for many people, AOC's description of capitalism, correct or not, is what they see.
What people see is that the 6 top executives from United Healthcare (my insurer) had compensation in 2017 ranging from a low of $7.5 million to a high of $18 million, while I pay $1k per month for coverage and many people cannot afford any health insurance. They also see IHC, my wife's former employer, cap nurses hourly rates over 10 years ago at $40 per hour, while significantly increasing the patient to nurse ratio (which adversely impacts the patient and employee), requiring nurses to work mandatory on-call shifts to cover shortages during certain time frames, automatically deducting 30 minutes for lunch from the paycheck whether the nurse actually takes the break or not, significantly increasing the employee cost for health insurance (provided by its own insurance company), etc. Because this is how IHC does it and IHC dominates healthcare in Utah, this is the status quo for all hospitals in the State. In fairness let me also take a shot at the legal profession, my former profession, which has priced justice beyond the means of most of us to afford.
The irony in all of this is that Trump essentially won by appealing to a group of people who have been left behind by capitalism and telling them that he is somehow going to take them back to a time when they are not left behind. The other irony is that they continue to believe it.
Didn't someone say democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others? I feel like you can say something similar about capitalism. Rocker mentioned some good things, UTEopia mentioned some things on the ugly side. There is a lot of cutthroat ugliness all around. A lot of inequity, a lot of greed. Upward mobility is not easy. There are some regulations that are desirable, but there are also many that are just rent seeking. The only incentives towards environmental protection come, as Rocker described, from the good of the people. That's a slow and unreliable mechanism if climate change really is an imminent catastrophe.
Capitalism + Democracy requires regulation & programs to mitigate the extremes.
An obscure, but topical case in point from this week: The Boeing 737 Max issue thought to be at the heart of the Indonesian and Ethiopian crashes involves an ancillary flight control system called MCAS - "Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System" - which is supposed to help avoid stalls (in addition to the standard "stick shaker" system on almost all jets that does the same thing).
Disclaimer: I'm a (private) pilot and aviation junkie, so I've been digging into the news on this issue.
There is some debate about why Boeing implemented the MCAS on the Max, but in the "self-certify" regime the FAA uses to certify new aircraft, Boeing didn't tell the FAA about the system at all. (They admit they didn't cover MCAS with the FAA, because they didn't think it was important for pilots to know about. The FAA had a "no comment" response.)
By contrast, Brazil's aviation regulatory body inspected the Max and documented 60 operational changes, including the MCAS. Their regulators required an interactive course for pilots, where the FAA's section for "unique handling or performance characteristics" remarked none, "no specific flight characteristics". Airline pilots need no specific training for the Max, an attractive cost-saving feature of this new model.
Between budget cuts and perhaps our built-in suspicion of government overreach, the self-certification program was launched to allow manufacturers to certify their own aircraft, but the DOT's Inspector General found the program to have serious deficiencies in three successive reports, including a lack of training for manufacturers to evaluate which technologies in new aircraft are critical. These problems went back to 2011, so it's not a "R" vs "D" issue.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/how-the-faa-allows-jetmakers-to-self-certify-that-planes-meet-us-safety-requirements/2019/03/15/96d24d4a-46e6-11e9-90f0-0ccfeec87a61_story.html
Another example from the Max issue that suggests an erosion in the credibility of US federal aviation safety: Ethiopia sent the black boxes to France, who has developed an impressive reputation for sleuthing aviation accidents. (Lack of expertise in the understaffed NTSB? Debatable, in the aviation world they're known to pull it together impressively for airliner accidents. Maybe a perceived political bias - or pro-business indifference? - in the DOT/FAA/NTSB in the current era? That's the kind of corruption we expect from the 3rd world.)
In the stormy sea of endless partisanship and ongoing political drama of 2019, I'll be pleasantly surprised if we get the full story from our government. Maybe these accidents and the omelette on Boeing's and America's face will prompt solid bi-partisan attention. We'll see.
The headline is over-wrought but he makes some solid points.
The McCarthyite, Anti-Christian Campaign against Chick-fil-A
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/...=NRDaily-Smart
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
This is the "cake for a gay wedding" all over again, but the characters are flipped.
What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
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