The inefficiencies of Capitalism

[Marduk]

58218, For reference.

Consider this not necessarily an assault on Capitalism, more an indication of the inefficiencies. Those of my more leftward-leaning friends might consider it what a utopia we could have under Marxism or Communism or Socialism, those more religious might consider it what utopia will exist when Christ returns.

If everyone were good, there would be no:
1.Militaries. The U.S. military employs 1.2 million. With no war, there is no need for military. 1.2 million added to the workforce.
2.Police. No criminals, no police. Or, for that matter, no jails or the upkeep there.
3.Retail attendants. Ok, some are there to stock, some are to help you find things, but one of their main jobs is to ensure that things are paid for before you leave. Without theft, many of these can be put to better use.
4.Management. There would still be some upper eschelons of management, to ensure things are done efficiently, but a lot of them are just there to ensure that employees keep working. No sloth, no need for this kind of micro-management.

Those are just a few I thought of. What else is there?

[Waldorf and Sauron]

Hm. I'll bite. I'm not saying there are viable alternatives for these... and outside any well-formulated economic framework, these don't really make sense. But here they are anyway. Before anyone argues with me about these saying I'm a commie, please read my board response first.

The food, alcohol, and tobacco industry. If we all followed the letter and spirit of the Word of Wisdom, the fast food and snackertainment industry would be replaced with nutritious foods, which would in turn stop causing so many preventable—and expensive—health problems. Cutting costs of healthcare starts with healthy eating, drinking, and avoidance of drugs. Tobacco and alcohol industries are worthless.

Unemployment. With much of our world underdeveloped, there's enough work for everyone to do. If everyone had the resources (i.e. capital) to pursue needful, productive work, everyone could make jobs rather than find them. Creating jobs would be as easy as creating new callings in a ward.

Debt, finance, interest, investing, wall street, banking, etc.
Many people get rich by predicting value fluctuations rather than by producing value.

Luxuries. Why a huge mansion for one family when the same resource investment could house 10 needy families? Gaudy living siphons off much of the community's resources.

Humans vs. machines. Many mundane assembly-line positions are performed by humans but could be done by machines. These machines would be the best long-term investment, but human workers are used to save on short-term capital. Put people to work building machines instead and it will pay off.

[Damasta]

Ooo, let's not leave out pornography, prostitution, etc. The sex industries are a major failing of capitalism. However, Marx's views on women and marriage would make pornography, at least, allowable under Marxist communism. So Marxism fails on this one, too.

Also, I don't think the movie, television, video game, and music industries would be as large (even more so than the loss of advertising revenues would account for).

I'm going to disagree, though, that war and crime are failings or inefficiencies of capitalism. They are failings or inefficiencies of human nature—regardless of the political or economic system in place. Sure, it's posited that global Marxism would eliminate war. But so would global capitalism. Communism, as it has been practiced historically, has always required a bloated bureaucracy and a heavy police and military presence. Anarcho-communism, as far as I'm aware, has never really been practiced on a significant scale.

I will say this, contrary to the assertion of anti-socialists, the prevalence of open-source software, wikis, and community-produced material (e.g. YouTube videos) suggests that people are willing to do work—even substantial amounts of work—without any promise of monetary gain.

[Yarjka]

I will say this, contrary to the assertion of anti-socialists, the prevalence of open-source software, wikis, and community-produced material (e.g. YouTube videos) suggests that people are willing to do work—even substantial amounts of work—without any promise of monetary gain.

And the prevalence of sexting and amateur porn tells me that people are willing to engage in pornography for no monetary profit as well.

[Tao]

I will say this, contrary to the assertion of anti-socialists, the prevalence of open-source software, wikis, and community-produced material (e.g. YouTube videos) suggests that people are willing to do work—even substantial amounts of work—without any promise of monetary gain.

And the prevalence of sexting and amateur porn tells me that people are willing to engage in pornography for no monetary profit as well.

I seem to remember reading a study linking the various pornography institutions with major developments in every media. (new methods of recording, publishing, distributing etc.)

As for the rest of the topic, I'm not sure how I feel. I actually tend to think that capitalism is one of the more efficient of real systems, as efficiency often equates to profit. Many of the problems crop up in the number of alternative means of profit that work against efficiency. (If OPEC is paying automakers more than they'd make by producing efficient vehicles, for example.)

One of the biggest inefficiencies that comes to my mind is the government. The quote from the Federalist papers comes to mind about if men were angels, no government would be needed. The problem is, where do we stop our imaginations? or rather: to what end would we like this topic to lead?

If men were perfect, our medical field would be greatly reduced, both in emergency and palliative care. Construction would likely boom, then curb to lower numbers as people would take better care of what they have. Not sure if luxuries would increase or decrease, to be honest. If we're freeing up that many jobs (say 80% of govt, 40% of medical, 90% of police, 95% of military, some middle-ish % of business = a lot of people, robots notwithstanding) what are our newly freed angels going to be filling their time with? Would the entertainment industry shrink or boom with so many free-lancers? (and again, what direction would quality go? I've seen some dang good Indie films, and others that could have been done better by the Board in 100 hours.) I think the quality of education would increase, as less people are forced to go to get a job, and more are freed to pursue their passions.

Realistically speaking, I think the Pareto principle (also called the 80/20 law) would crop up under any non-angelic system. Stallman's statement about giving away free pens instead of packaging them in more expensive wrapping would end up with 80% of writing utinsils in the hands of 20% of the people and scarcity would still be an issue. (Think of any time you've given away free stuff, there's always that one guy who will take a handful, even if he'll never use them all.) I think Stallman's point is best applied when he sticks with digital information, as scarcity is less of a factor.

[Tao]

Humans vs. machines. Many mundane assembly-line positions are performed by humans but could be done by machines. These machines would be the best long-term investment, but human workers are used to save on short-term capital. Put people to work building machines instead and it will pay off.

I'm intrigued. I wonder if the situation is only compounded by mechanizing things. Let's look at a micro-example: what would happen if we automate driving? (not too far of a reach, methinks) Say the Dept of Trasportation moves to automate, providing complete site-to-site automated transportation.
- Obviously taxi and bus drivers would no longer be needed.
- There'd be less accidents (hopefully none, but I used Vista; I'm not that trusting).
- We could eliminate much of the highway patrol and replace them with a much smaller number of upkeep mechanics.
- We'd also free up no small amount of the highway repair force.
- Fuel consumption would drop. (moreso if we could figure out an effient way to auto-car pool I envison more individual-sized vehicles. ooo! Perhaps with the ability to couple! or piggy-back!)
- Automotive production would drop.
- Auto engineering even more after everything gets ironed out.
- Automotive sales would be eliminated all together as the DoT would be the only purchaser.
- Parts dealers, tire stores, etc. would be largely streamlined.
- Gas stations and truck stops would no longer be needed.
- Toll personel would no longer be needed.
- Depending on how storage worked, housing costs could potentially drop (in my experience, a garage costs 50-66% per square foot of insulated housing, still a sizable chunk of closing-price.

And that's just primary results. Each would have secondary reductions. (Steel production that is no longer needed for cars, etc.)

So, what would that mean? Looking at the automotive industry alone, say it frees up 50% of production/ servicing resources, and retail sales is eliminated entirely. That's over 2 million people freed up right there.

That's just with one major sector of the government. I presume others would be similar. (The DoA? My hometown and surrounding farms produce and process millions of pounds of food in a day, with about 1,000 people in the workforce. If we were to truely streamline things, I'd say that could be cut by 80% at least.)

What would that be like?

(If this seems too much like a thread hijack, feel free to splinter it off; I'm just allowing my thoughts to wander on the screen)

[Damasta]

I thought of another: professional sports. What a waste.

[Marduk]

I thought of another: professional sports. What a waste.

I for one think these would still exist, but not at the extravagant level that they currently do. I see nothing wrong with entertainment in the form of sport, or even for folks to be paid to do it for a living. But perhaps $50,000 a year, instead of $5 million.

[Marduk]

Also, I see the intense levels of production for "stuff" dropping drastically. There really is no need to put out a new operating system or model of car every year. It doesn't change that much.

[Indefinite Integral]

So, pardon me for asking if this is completely irrelevant, but what is the point in adding another 1.2 million people (or some other number) to the workforce? To me, it seems that an economy would have somewhat of a "critical mass" and that increasing efficiency would just add more people to the list of unemployed, at least in our current state. Maybe I'm totally off-base here. I've never really studied politics or economics in any sort of depth, so feel free to correct me, but I think it's a legitimate question.

[Waldorf and Sauron]

Right, in capitalism efficiency is a two-edged sword: if you increase efficiency in a business so that you can do the same thing with 20 people instead of 100, 80 people lose their jobs. The benefit is that the business owners (the capitalists) increase profits and the prices of the commodity created by the business are driven down for everybody else in the economy—meaning that theoretically people have more money to spend on other products, meaning other sectors of the workforce expand and gain jobs. So, in theory, massive increases in efficiency create short-term unemployment but long term growth.

This thread, however, is exploring a fantasy economic system which is not capitalistic—in other words, resources are allocated to whatever industries which are most valuable to society in some alternate way besides the profit motive. So I, at least, have been assuming that millions of newly unemployed in such a system would be an opportunity rather than a liability. In capitalism, profit motive means resources are allocated to first produce things for those who already have money—and then (again theoretically) the poor hopefully get a better quality of life as a nice side-effect. But a fantasy economy that's goal is to benefit everyone—especially those who need most—would use those newly freed-up workers in radically different ways.

One specific area for growth is the third world. Put those millions of workers to task building homes, roads, schools, infrastructure. The housing industry crisis right now is tied to how many people can afford homes, not how many people can afford them—take affording out of the equation, and you could employ 10, 20 times as many house builders in the world, and have houses for people.

Of course, if I were to be any more particular, you'd easily see flaws and drawbacks in any concrete economic system I proposed, so I have to be vague.

[FauxRaiden]

If we're talking about a philosophical utopia, I can only imagine that it would breed socialism by it's very nature.

For a utopian society to exist there has to be no difference is class or stature in a community, and as such we'd all have to be on the same level of wealth and living. I can see absolutely no way that one man could have a multi-million dollar mansion while his neighbor is living in a one room cottage and not have it breed animosity between the two. They will always feel that their job is more important in some fashion or another.

One man may be a construction worker, he feels that he works much harder for his living.

The other man is a general practition doctor, he may not be outright saving lives in emergency but he's still providing a much needed service.

I can only foresee both as feeling they're on higher ground and thus require at least equal to or greater pay.

Maybe this isn't a strong argument, but I've had 5 minutes to think about it. Forgive me of the inconsistencies.

[Laser Jock]

One specific area for growth is the third world. Put those millions of workers to task building homes, roads, schools, infrastructure. The housing industry crisis right now is tied to how many people can afford homes, not how many people can afford them—take affording out of the equation, and you could employ 10, 20 times as many house builders in the world, and have houses for people.

Just to clarify, I assume you meant "The housing industry crisis right now is tied to how many people can afford homes, not how many people need them"? (Sorry, I'm not trying to be obnoxious, but I'm not completely clear on what you meant there.)

[Waldorf and Sauron]

Laser Jock,

Yeah, that's what I meant. Sorry, I typed it out with wild abandon.

or something.