Economic systems and morality: should mixed economies be the norm?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Per Mormont’s request let’s pull the Capitalism/Socialism discussion to this locale.

[Rippounet]

Capitalism is inherently immoral. Socialism isn't.

Not sure there's that much to discuss, because it's pretty much impossible to convince people who don't already agree with you on this.

[Liffguard]

I mean, all else aside, capitalism is threatening the long-term habitability of the planet itself. And I think that's an inherent feature of the system that can at best be restrained somewhat through regulation, but never completely solved, because capitalist economies must grow or collapse.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Scot, I'm hoping this leftward shift continues for you and in 20 years you'll be excoriating us all here as "lumpenized anti-social nihilists" for our death-grip on liberalism.  And speaking with long, relevant passages from Marx, Derrida, Foucault, etc like our other resident southern barrister.  

  

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Liffguard said:

I mean, all else aside, capitalism is threatening the long-term habitability of the planet itself. And I think that's an inherent feature of the system that can at best be restrained somewhat through regulation, but never completely solved, because capitalist economies must grow or collapse.

Yeah I haven't caught up with the entirety of the thread blow up over the past 12 hours, but this is one aspect I wanted to mention because I don't think it was until now.  One of the bedrocks of capitalism is constant growth, and this ethos is directly at odds with combating climate change.

Anyway, I find it interesting that some of the discussion involved the "capitalist" Scandinavian systems.  The irony, from a US standpoint, is that the American right does not portray these as capitalist countries, but rather as Kal mentioned they are described as "Eurocommies" or at least socialist hellscapes whose policies would destroy the great capitalist beacon that is the United States.  This is why I tried to emphasize yesterday that "mixed economy" is a preferable way to avoid the intractable false dichotomy of the "capitalist vs. socialist" argument.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

11 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yeah I haven't caught up with the entirety of the thread blow up over the past 12 hours, but this is one aspect I wanted to mention because I don't think it was until now.  One of the bedrocks of capitalism is constant growth, and this ethos is directly at odds with combating climate change.

Anyway, I find it interesting that some of the discussion involved the "capitalist" Scandinavian systems.  The irony, from a US standpoint, is that the American right does not portray these as capitalist countries, but rather as Kal mentioned they are described as "Eurocommies" or at least socialist hellscapes whose policies would destroy the great capitalist beacon that is the United States.  This is why I tried to emphasize yesterday that "mixed economy" is a preferable way to avoid the intractable false dichotomy of the "capitalist vs. socialist" argument.

Yes.  A thousand times yes.  There is no purely capitalist or socialist economy anywhere on Earth.  

LtI,

I’m highly unlikely to ever like Derrida and as much as I enjoy Soligdin he and I disagree on much.  I appreciate him all the more because we disagree.  

[Mr. X]

27 minutes ago, 1066 Larry said:

Scot, I'm hoping this leftward shift continues for you and in 20 years you'll be excoriating us all here as "lumpenized anti-social nihilists" for our death-grip on liberalism.  And speaking with long, relevant passages from Marx, Derrida, Foucault, etc like our other resident southern barrister.  

  

I'm imagining a return of "Become Another Boarder Week" (or whatever it was actually called) where Scot and solo switch accounts.

[Liffguard]

14 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yeah I haven't caught up with the entirety of the thread blow up over the past 12 hours, but this is one aspect I wanted to mention because I don't think it was until now.  One of the bedrocks of capitalism is constant growth, and this ethos is directly at odds with combating climate change.

I only skimmed the thread myself, so maybe I missed it, but I don't recall seeing climate change mentioned either. Which surprised me, because talking about economic systems in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries without addressing climate change is a bit like talking about ship design without addressing watertightness. It's frankly the single overriding issue to which all other issues should ultimately be subservient.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, Mr. X said:

I'm imagining a return of "Become Another Boarder Week" (or whatever it was actually called) where Scot and solo switch accounts.

That could be fun.    That was actually Cocomaan mocking me with my permission.

[Mr. X]

2 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

That could be fun.    That was actually Cocomaan mocking me with my permission.

Oh wow, Coco.  I kind of remember that whole thing happening but completely blanked on who was involved.

[Larry of the Lawn]

7 minutes ago, Mr. X said:

I'm imagining a return of "Become Another Boarder Week" (or whatever it was actually called) where Scot and solo switch accounts.

Lol.  Could even do one of those body swap movies.  I nominate @Myshkin to write it

[Zorral]

This is certainly political and political current events! But now we have an economics/money/banking/currency thread!

Banks unite to destroy Biden's nominee to the OCC:

"No, Joe Biden Did Not Just Nominate a 'Passionate Communist' to the OCC
The bank lobby goes McCarthyist."

https://zacharydcarter.substack.com/p/no-joe-biden-did-not-just-nominate

Quote

 

....  The Tarshis episode is important to understand in light of the ongoing right-wing mania surrounding President Joe Biden’s bank regulatory nominee Saule Omarova — a case of modern-day McCarthyism in the strictest sense of the term. According to this chorus of dim demagogues, Omarova — a former Treasury official under President George W. Bush — is actually a “passionate Communist” bent on overthrowing American capitalism. Any Senator who feigns to give credence to this rot is insulting the dignity of their office.

We should not be overly serious about the details of the policy claims being made in this disgraceful display. One hit piece in the Daily Mail claims Omarova stiffed a college roommate for fifty bucks back in 1987 — proof, apparently, that she rejects the sanctity of debt contracts.

But the bad-joke quality of the assault from outlets including The Wall Street Journal, National Review, Fox News and broader QAnonia does not mitigate its political gravity. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) has made himself the face of the crusade in Washington, assailing Omarova in a confirmation hearing on Wednesday for attending Moscow State University as an undergraduate and writing a paper on Marxism. Virtually the entire bank lobby is involved in an unusual and aggressive attempt to kill her nomination. American Bankers Association President Rob Nichols has accused Omarova of seeking to “effectively nationalize America’s community banks,” while Independent Community Bankers of America President Rebeca Romero emphasizes that Omarova is bent on “eliminating the banking system as we know it.” Both groups donate heavily to swing-state Democrats, and in a 50-50 Senate, they need only break off one to torpedo Omarova’s nomination.

Bank lobbyists think Omarova will be a serious regulator, and they are enlisting the most toxic wing of the conservative movement to block her nomination, using whatever wild denunciations they can muster. The rhetorical battery comes in two stages. First, Omarova is denounced for being born in the Soviet Union. Then her academic work on financial reform is cited to prove she is and always has been an Ultracommunist. Her more cautious defamers carefully insist they are not interested in Omarova’s birthplace or background — only her persistent, dirty beliefs.

All of this is outrageous. Omarova grew up on a street named after Vladimir Lenin and attended Moscow State University because she was born in Kazakhstan when it was part of the Soviet Empire. She fled to the United States in 1991 to complete her education, took a job at a corporate law firm and worked in the Treasury Department during the George W. Bush administration before moving into academia, where she writes papers on bank reform. She is 54 years old. This is not the career of a Bolshevik saboteur. 

But she does write papers on bank reform, and most banks don’t want to be reformed. She is best known for a proposal that would move deposit-taking away from commercial banks and into the Federal Reserve. This would indeed be a significant change to the banking system — Omarova boasts that it would “effectively ‘end banking’ as we know it” in her paper — but this is cheeky academic bravado, replete with a footnote clarifying it as a play on words. In truth the scheme is more like a reimagining of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act for a post-2008 world. ....

 

 

[Ran]

26 minutes ago, DMC said:

The irony, from a US standpoint, is that the American right does not portray these as capitalist countries,

Which is funny since The Heritage Foundation ranks Finland and Denmark as more economically free than the U.S., and Sweden is just a tenth of a point behind the U.S. in the ranking as well. 

I don't think there's any real economic system that does not define growth as a goal. Economic stagnation is rarely good. 

[Rippounet]

Ok, I caught up on the other discussion (hadn't seen it).

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I see your point and disagree.  If nations can, and do, run Capitalist economies in a fair and equitable way it is because they are bringing morality to their systems.  If it can be done in one place it can be done in another.

Unfortunately, this is no longer true.

As I understand it, socialism has retreated in Scandinavian countries just like it did in France. Inequality is rising there, like everyhere else. Or, to put it differently, neo-liberalism has corrupted the political sphere everywhere, and left a handful of socialist-ic programs here and there - most of which are under some form of attack by the right.
We're actually moving away from mixed economies, especially in the EU.

There is the idea, that I believe goes back to Galbraith, that mixed economies offered some kind of "Keynesian bargain" to the masses whereby production would benefit everyone. To quote Marvin Waterstone:

Quote

A grand bargain, particularly on wages and working conditions, was established between capital and labor. Began during World War II with this kind of agreement by labor not to strike and so forth, not to make excessive demands during wartime, bur then it was retained afterward. There was a bigger pie. There was rising productivity and more equitable sharing in that pie. Opposition to the bargain came mainly from small businesses. That is, big business had no trouble paying union wages. They had no trouble acceding to government programs. For example, for worker protection, for environmental protection (internalizing some externalities), and so forth.

Thing is, whatever the nature of this "grand bargain," it was obliterated. At some point during the 1970s, the 1% decided that they'd been too chill, and class warfare resumed in the 1980s with a vengeance. With the -timely- demise of the Soviet Union appeared something even worse than uninhibited capitalism, what we have today.

[maarsen]

I think the only way forward in this argument is to separate the system of government from the economic system in place. No economic system is invulnerable to gaming. Give me any economic system and I can show you how to win the 'game'. The only way to prevent me and others like me, well not really me as I do try to be ethical, from gaming any system is to have a strong constitutional democracy that does not favour any one system but has very strong protections of human rights. 

Easier said than done but this is what we should be aiming for. I do realize that any system of government  can be gamed also but separating the control of the economic system from government may be the way forward. Before anyone thinks I am advocating unfettered capitalism, I consider unfettered to be the absolute right to unionize to be one of the most important features. Only people can regulate other people in any kind of consistent way. 

[DMC]

16 minutes ago, Ran said:

I don't think there's any real economic system that does not define growth as a goal. Economic stagnation is rarely good. 

Well, the age-old critique is that capitalism is dependent on perpetual growth - and that's the problem.  State intervention is necessary to mitigate this and ensure sustainability.  Another way to put it:

Quote

But we should also not overlook the underlying engine that has driven rising prosperity, slowing population growth rates, and increasing resource efficiency. Standing before the offices of the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, DC, is a sculpture depicting a heavily muscled man trying to restrain an even more heavily muscled workhorse. The horse represents the massive power of trade; the man represents the obligation of government to tame and bring into the service of society this wild and vibrant power. This sculpture could have been placed just as meaningfully in front of the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Environmental Protection Agency, or indeed any government entity in any country charged with harnessing and guiding the forces unleashed by capitalism. But the Federal Trade Commission sculpture also implicitly conveys a forceful warning. Tame it as you will. But don’t kill the horse we need to ride into the future.

 

9 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Thing is, whatever the nature of this "grand bargain," it was obliterated. At some point during the 1970s, the 1% decided that they'd been too chill, and class warfare resumed in the 1980s with a vengeance. With the -timely- demise of the Soviet Union appeared something even worse than uninhibited capitalism, what we have today.

Indeed.  The historical trajectory of the past century is Keynesianism saving capitalism from itself, and then right came along ~ the 1970s armed with the Chicago school to destroy that bargain.

[Zorral]

Quote

  @ DMC Keynesianism saving capitalism from itself, and then right came along ~ the 1970s armed with the Chicago school to destroy that bargain.

Yes.

Additionally, capitalism always seeks for monopoly -- not competition, as the mythology has it.  Which is why capitalists need to control the government so it will enable that drive to drive out competition.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Rippounett, Zorral,

Are you arguing against mixed economies?

[sologdin]

scot--

the premises of this thread are pre-capitalist, to the extent that the morality of an economics is a pre-capitalist inquiry, almost gemeinschafty.   some seed in the pre-capitalist order permitted the supersession of this question--that is, what once were ethical relationships between community members became market relations between citizens. it's a cool question--how the pre-capitalist mind transformed--but what permitted it to stop thinking feudal and start thinking liberal?

that said, the last unmixed economy was in the dark ages. am accordingly invoking cloture.

[DMC]

8 minutes ago, sologdin said:

that said, the last unmixed economy was in the dark ages. am accordingly invoking cloture.

Seconded.