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The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Present Crisis


lord_casek

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Greed is part of human nature.

It's difficult to control.

Ultimately we are all individuals with our own opinions, thoughts, values, etc. Some will be more greedy than others.

 

I'm not talking about human nature, I'm referring to the inextricable link between unregulated commerce and avarice.

 

If there's nobody minding the store, then who's to say what can happen? People are advantageous by nature, it's an unavoidable fact. That's why simple rules and consequences should be in place from the top down...what exists now is byzantine, riddled with loopholes and exceptions you basically need a degree in economics to understand.

 

If that's the way the system was meant to be, it was fucked from the start. You can't play fair with a stacked deck.

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  • 5 months later...

thats a great talk. i remember laughing my ass off when i first saw it on mises.org and he was saying...'you know, used to be you worked hard so you could afford a house. but it soon became, if you have a house, you dont need a job. and if you lost your job, you didnt worry, you just bought a vacation house.'

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People are advantageous by nature, it's an unavoidable fact. That's why simple rules and consequences should be in place from the top down...

 

And what's the "top"? Govt?

What makes up Govt? People.

So you want to give these advantageous people powers that no one else among society has? This is the biggest temptation for the greediest of the greedy.

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Greed is part of human nature.

It's difficult to control.

Ultimately we are all individuals with our own opinions, thoughts, values, etc. Some will be more greedy than others.

 

Greed is not a product of human nature, it is a product of certain human cultures. Not all cultures have been egocentric, some believe that you can only be as wealthy as your community... reading a quick ethnography on the Canela people of Brazil would be a good start on your quest to learn more about the diversity of humanity and the many different ways of perceiving the world (and people) around us.

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Greed is not a product of human nature, it is a product of certain human cultures. Not all cultures have been egocentric, some believe that you can only be as wealthy as your community... reading a quick ethnography on the Canela people of Brazil would be a good start on your quest to learn more about the diversity of humanity and the many different ways of perceiving the world (and people) around us.

 

I think greed as a concept is over represented in its relationship to capitalism and modern society. Self interest is key to capitalism and greed may be an aspect of self interest, yet many other forms of behaviour may be initiated from a position of self interest as well. For example, I may give my friend a gift out of self interest, knowing that giving the gift will give me a personal sense of satisfaction.

 

But anyway I thought I would take a look at your example, and it seemed that this paragraph seemed to capture the issue quite nicely (my emphasis added);

 

The Canela in earlier times were outstanding for their generosity of spirit through which they shared most possessions upon request. Not sharing freely was being stingy, which was the same as being evil. This sharing was relatively easy to do, because they had so few and such simple possessions such as bows and arrows and baskets made of plant materials. These days, however, due to the seduction of vast quantities of urban material goods, they have lost much of this compulsion to share. They cannot simply give away to others their items of significant monetary value such as steel axes, cast-iron caldrons, and shotguns. They have developed instead a need to acquire household goods to satisfy a sense of well-being.

 

http://anthropology.si.edu/canela/environmentfr.htm

 

This would seem to suggest to me that a society without highly developed technology may have less difficulty maintaining altruistic relations. In this case this is demonstrated as those lending the goods to others in the society are not so concerned of significant loss if their goods are damaged or lost, this is as these goods do not hold such a great value. When goods are introduced that they could not produce themselves this culture of easy loans is disrupted as the person who owns the steel axe. for example, would be more considerably disadvantaged at its loss.

 

Another contributing factor in this could be the size of the society. I would argue that the larger the numbers in the society the less robust an altruistic system becomes. But that is another discussion.

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Thanks for taking the time to do that. Yeah, the ethnography I read a bit ago was from the late 70's, and it appears now they have become much more stingy. What you argue about "the larger numbers in in the society the less robust an altruistic system becomes" is true and has been covered extensively in cultural anthropology. Yes generalized reciprocity only really works in smaller communities, but the point I was really trying to make to KMART was that you can't generalize the entire human species by looking at just one culture. Generalizations can only be made through cross-cultural and comparative studies.

 

Marx argued that you can not change an economic system without changing the culture. The Apache were an egalitarian culture before they acquired guns, horses and started hunting buffalo in the Great Plains of America. Once their economic system changed they stopped worshiping female deities based upon the land and started worshiping male warrior gods. Furthermore, they became brutally patriarchal to the point where they treated their horses better than "their" women.

 

Where do you stand? Do you think the Capitalist economic system based upon self interest and competition is the only economic system that could manifest from a culture of greedy people? Or do you think our culture of competition, self interest and greed is a manifestation of the capitalist economic system?

 

(note: I am in no way condoning state socialism, communism etc. I happen to dislike any centralized power or economic system based upon production, consumption and competition with ourselves and other nations. Call me a libertarian socialist or perhaps a borderline anarchist..)

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Thanks for taking the time to do that. Yeah, the ethnography I read a bit ago was from the late 70's, and it appears now they have become much more stingy. What you argue about "the larger numbers in in the society the less robust an altruistic system becomes" is true and has been covered extensively in cultural anthropology. Yes generalized reciprocity only really works in smaller communities, but the point I was really trying to make to KMART was that you can't generalize the entire human species by looking at just one culture. Generalizations can only be made through cross-cultural and comparative studies.

 

Marx argued that you can not change an economic system without changing the culture. The Apache were an egalitarian culture before they acquired guns, horses and started hunting buffalo in the Great Plains of America. Once their economic system changed they stopped worshiping female deities based upon the land and started worshiping male warrior gods. Furthermore, they became brutally patriarchal to the point where they treated their horses better than "their" women.

 

Where do you stand? Do you think the Capitalist economic system based upon self interest and competition is the only economic system that could manifest from a culture of greedy people? Or do you think our culture of competition, self interest and greed is a manifestation of the capitalist economic system?

 

(note: I am in no way condoning state socialism, communism etc. I happen to dislike any centralized power or economic system based upon production, consumption and competition with ourselves and other nations. Call me a libertarian socialist or perhaps a borderline anarchist..)

 

I don't find either of the two options you have presented as particularly satisfying. First of all I don't see that capitalism and greed have a direct relationship at all. Secondly the notion of greed is problematic in itself, here’s why;

 

What is greed exactly? When do you know when an act is motivated by greed and when is it not? It seems to me that the only real gauge for greed is a relative one measured against a subjective standard. For example; I could charge Bill Gates of greed since he has far more stuff than I do and I know I am living fairly comfortably. But my standard of living may also be viewed as a product of greed compared to our friends in less developed countries. It also seems that greed loses meaning when viewed over time; by the standards even a westerner living 100 years ago, my lifestyle would be viewed as one of lavish excess due to the technology I have available to me. So for these reasons, and a few others, I think it is better to avoid discussions of greed as the concept is illusory.

 

I think it is also fairly difficult to nail down what exactly capitalism is as well. However, I am happy to make this statement;

Capitalism is an economic product of the nexus formed between a liberal society and self interest.

 

So would you say you are a social libertarian in the vein of Chomsky? I find this brand of libertarianism almost as problematic as centrally controlled socialism. I quite like a lot of the Neo-Marxist writing, but mostly because I think they built a great discourse for deconstructing the current paradigm of corporatism, I think they fall waaaayyy short when they start to make positive statements about how things ‘should’ be.

Out of interest, would you argue that the ownership of property equates to theft?

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  • 2 weeks later...
Capitalism is a necessary evil. Greed is not.

 

The last frontier is collectivizing everything on a planetary scale and the human race is nowhere near evolved enough (or fucked enough) for that to be viable.

Nor do I think laissez faire can work at this point. It's a little late in the game (by about 200-300 years) to not have some kind of system of checks and balances in place, but that system should be lightweight and impartial. What exists now is far from ideal.

 

smart man.

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  • 6 months later...

(note: I am in no way condoning state socialism, communism etc. I happen to dislike any centralized power or economic system based upon production, consumption and competition with ourselves and other nations. Call me a libertarian socialist or perhaps a borderline anarchist..)

 

Yo Cuntsauce. You may or may not be aware of this 'left libertarian' data base put together by Roderick Long. Great theorist, great resource. Enjoy.

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  • 3 weeks later...
competition is the justification for a lawless form of mercantilism in which slaves are taken the masses exploited and manipulated the earth obliterated not for profit or pursuit of happiness or equality but for the establishment of a unilateral standard of evil death and destruction.

 

If free market suposed to prevent concentration of power than explain to me wheres the diversity in the media, in the private distributors of power, and energy, communications?? there isnt one. Where the fuck is your cellphone company homeboy? youll never own one in your life.

 

But i feel you man. go ahead and defend slavery toby.

 

uhh our current economic system is NOT capitalist, more like corporatist (Keynesian)

I'm okay with the voluntary socialism, but you're spouting nothing but empty statist rhetoric.

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