If Capitalism is Immoral what System of Economics is Moral?

[Shryke]

Oh, sweet Social Darwinism. Where would we be without you?

That is false.

My brother's friend's father grew up jack poor but worked way hard and now owns a manison with an indoor swimming pool, an indoor baskeetball court, and a tennis court. He became a neurosurgeon and was the son of an umemployed alcoholic.

This girl my grandma taught in high school came from a rich family. She got into the bohemian lifestyle and nw waits tables up in new jersey.

The rich don't get richer. The meritorious get rich. People who work hard make it easier for their children to work hard.

It's hilarious that you believe this. Because your anecdote proves the opposite. Your friend has only succeeded because of socialized programs put in place to make gains like his possible.

[felice]

My brother's friend's father grew up jack poor but worked way hard and now owns a manison with an indoor swimming pool, an indoor baskeetball court, and a tennis court. He became a neurosurgeon and was the son of an umemployed alcoholic.

The rich don't get richer. The meritorious get rich. People who work hard make it easier for their children to work hard.

And what happens if everyone tries to become a neurosurgeon? Either nobody is left to do the many crappy low paid jobs and society collapses, or most of the would-be neurosurgeons fail to achieve their goal no matter how hard they work. The system relies on the majority not getting richer (relative to the average).

A good start for a moral economic system would be one where the only way to earn money was from your own work (with generous welfare for those unable to do so for whatever reason) - the ability to earn money from other people's work is one of the big flaws in capitalism, and the reason the rich get richer. Another important trait would be for economic decisions to be made taking into account the interests of society as a whole, including all externalities, rather than based on maximising profits (unavoidable under capitalism).

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Felice,

People don't earn money, or priviledge, from other people's work in socialist systems?

[Commodore]

this would be hilarious if it wasn't so horrifically tragic.

Why is it hilarious? Ridicule is a poor substitute for reason. It's tiresome and is too common in these types of threads.

all of them. as a more concrete example: the ex-warsaw pact after capitalism reestablished itself.

Watch, the per capita GDP of those countries go up after the pact was dissolved in 1991. Just set the year and push play. Also, I would question the degree to which private property rights are protected and contracts are enforced in those countries.

what? this statment makes no sense whatsoever. of course the outcomes it produces are relevant. that is the most relevant thing about it.

That depends on your morality. The right thing morally isn't necesarily that which produces the most beneficial outcome. That's how benevolent dictators justify their actions.

it doesn't though. you are entitled to your existence only insofar as you are able to afford the necessities of life.

You are entitled to your existence, not to have others sustain it.

you are only entitled to the portion of the fruits of your labor that the people who pay your wage decide to toss you.

You're entitled to what you agree upon with another party. The alternative to someone "tossing you a wage" (i.e. a contract) is to have it forcibly taken from them and given to you, i.e. theft.

your are free to act only insofar as your accumulated wealth and the police state attendant to capitalism allow you to be.

Circumstances can limit your choices (all choices are limited), but not your free will. People with more wealth often have more choices, nothing wrong with that, if they came by that wealth freely.

[Shryke]

You are entitled to your existence, not to have others sustain it.

There's no difference. What good is the "right to exist" without the ability to do so for any meaningful period of time.

Circumstances can limit your choices (all choices are limited), but not your free will.

Again, there's little difference. What good is free will when you have no meaningful choices?

People with more wealth often have more choices, nothing wrong with that, if they came by that wealth freely.

And there's the rub. Once you take into account reality (and hence the vastly different starting states of people), this whole fantasy land ideal falls apart.

[Andriy Czarchenko]

Watch,, the per capita GDP of those countries go up after the pact was dissolved in 1991. Just set the year and push play. Also, I would question the degree to which private property rights are protected and contracts are enforced in those countries.

Completely useless statistic for this discussion. Per capita GDP will almost always go up if rich get richer and poor get poorer. Median income would be much better, if you could find that.

[The White Wolf]

You are entitled to your existence, not to have others sustain it.

So you are in favor of repealing child neglect laws laws?

[felice]

Circumstances can limit your choices (all choices are limited), but not your free will. People with more wealth often have more choices, nothing wrong with that, if they came by that wealth freely.

Does it count as "freely" if only people who are already wealthy have access to choices that will increase their wealth?

[felice]

People don't earn money, or priviledge, from other people's work in socialist systems?

Nope. Any system that allows that isn't socialist. Some proportion of people's work does go to collective goods (healthcare, education, welfare, etc) rather than directly to their own personal wealth, of course.

[一方通行]

Watch,,, the per capita GDP of those countries go up after the pact was dissolved in 1991. Just set the year and push play. Also, I would question the degree to which private property rights are protected and contracts are enforced in those countries.

probably from selling all those coffins.

[SergioCQH]

It's downright silly sometimes reading the economics discussions on this board. The vast majority of the posters on this board don't have a formal education in economics. They don't really know what capitalism is, just what the media and society as a whole depicts to them. Likewise, the vast majority of the posters on this board don't have a formal education in philosophy, and don't really understand what morality is either. So, a thread to discuss the morality of an economics system is difficult to engage in without a background explanation of what we are talking about.

Before discussing whether or not capitalism (or laissez-faire economics, the more technical term) is moral, we have to decide what particular system of ethics we are using. If we subscribe to deontology, the system of ethics that is associated with Kant, then it can be argued that capitalism is the most moral of all economic systems. If we follow deontology, then the more laissez-faire a capitalist system it is, then the more moral it is. Why is this?

Well, deontology is an ethical system that stresses action according to duty, not action in response to incentives or coercion. Therefore, in a laissez-faire economic system, any "good" done (income redistribution) will be done out of duty, not out of desire to avoid taxes or out of fear of sanctions if taxes are unpaid. A politico-economic system that provides incentives for or coerces income redistribution is one that negates any morality resulting from that income redistribution.

On the other hand, utilitarianism is an ethical system predicated on overall utility. Because overall utility does not equal GDP, it is not necessarily the case that laissez-faire economics is the most moral system according to utilitarianism. Laissez-faire economics has proven that it is the best system for overall production, but production doesn't translate into happiness, which is the crucial factor for utilitarians. Perhaps incentivized or even coerced income redistribution becomes moral.

So, in conclusion, under deontology, purely laissez-faire economics is the most moral economic system because it does not reduce the morality of any income redistribution. But under utilitarianism, purely laissez-faire economics is probably not the most moral economic system. Under utilitarianism, the only question is how much income redistribution results in the most utility to society?

In effect, since there are no purely laissez-faire politico-economic systems extant in the world, every politico-economic system is immoral to some extent under deontology. One of the many mixed systems out there may be the most moral according to utilitarianism, but I doubt any system can ever reach the pinnacle.

Finally, under no widely accepted ethical system is a communist system moral. To deontologists, communism is particularly reprehensible because it removes all duty from income redistribution. To utilitarians, communism fails because it is very inefficient, and therefore produces smaller levels of utility than more laissez-faire economic systems.

[Lord Mord]

SergioCQH,

If I'm hearing you rightly, you're basically talking about process concerns. Nobody is following the right process, so the content will suffer. To what extent is that demonstrable?

[SergioCQH]

SergioCQH,

If I'm hearing you rightly, you're basically talking about process concerns. Nobody is following the right process, so the content will suffer. To what extent is that demonstrable?

I'm doing nothing more than combining basic economics with basic ethics. If by "demonstrable," you mean empirical, then I think you're looking in the wrong thread. One cannot study morality empirically, because morality is not quantifiable except on a theoretical basis when framing the concepts of utilitarianism. This is especially true if the morality we're discussing is deontological morality.

Deontology is certainly an ethical philosophy which focuses on the actions themselves, not the result. So, a result-oriented view of morality clashes with deontology. Purely laissez-faire economics is not result-oriented, but is founded upon the principle of freedom. Free exchange allows for the greatest potential for right action according to duty, and not right action according to incentive or coercion.

Only consequentialism, or utilitarianism, is concerned with morally correct outcomes. I think that the vast majority of people in this thread are thinking along these lines. What system of economics will deliver the morally correct outcome? My answer is that the approach most Western nations are taking is in the right direction. A mixed system of regulated capitalism and incentivized and coerced income redistribution should deliver the best possible utilitarian outcome. The only questions (and the hardest of course) remaining have to do with how and how much to regulate and redistribute. The answering of those questions is the great debate of our day.

[felice]

A politico-economic system that provides incentives for or coerces income redistribution is one that negates any morality resulting from that income redistribution.

Deontology is seriously messed up.

To utilitarians, communism fails because it is very inefficient, and therefore produces smaller levels of utility than more laissez-faire economic systems.

There's nothing intrinsically inefficient about it. And even if it was inherently less efficient overall, I'd argue that it's still better if it provides a higher median utility for individuals, while capitalism provides a higher mean utility. And I very much doubt that communism would provide lower mean utility even if it was less economically efficient, since for example the utility of an extra ambulance that will save hundreds of lives is rather higher than that of a luxury yacht that will provide a marginally novel venue for a few parties.

Also, capitalism is economic cancer, and while cancer itself isn't a moral agent, deliberately inflicting it on people certainly is immoral.

[SergioCQH]

Deontology is seriously messed up.

There's nothing intrinsically inefficient about it. And even if it was inherently less efficient overall, I'd argue that it's still better if it provides a higher median utility for individuals, while capitalism provides a higher mean utility. And I very much doubt that communism would provide lower mean utility even if it was less economically efficient, since for example the utility of an extra ambulance that will save hundreds of lives is rather higher than that of a luxury yacht that will provide a marginally novel venue for a few parties.

Also, capitalism is economic cancer, and while cancer itself isn't a moral agent, deliberately inflicting it on people certainly is immoral.

Nothing except the disastrous failure of every single experiment ever attempted at it. It's not just a little less efficient. It's FAR less efficient overall. And people who lived under communist regimes weren't looking for yachts. They were looking for food. Millions of people have died to starvation due to attempts to form a communist economy. Read up on the Great Leap Forward and the Holodomor and the entire history of North Korea. It's not just naive to advocate communism, it's plain evil. Utilitarianism is all about results, and communism simply hasn't delivered them.

[felice]

Every experiment? Has there been more than one? I was under the impression that it was just the USSR and it's offspring. And given the state Russia was in at the time of the revolution, it's not exactly surprising that it didn't turn out all that well. Certainly, the "communist" states that have existed in the real world bear no resemblance to what socialism is supposed to be. You could argue that it's not possible to create a socialist state, but that's an entirely separate issue from how efficient it would be if it did exist. The question of how to bring about socialism deserves a thread of it's own.

[SergioCQH]

Every experiment? Has there been more than one? I was under the impression that it was just the USSR and it's offspring. And given the state Russia was in at the time of the revolution, it's not exactly surprising that it didn't turn out all that well. Certainly, the "communist" states that have existed in the real world bear no resemblance to what socialism is supposed to be. You could argue that it's not possible to create a socialist state, but that's an entirely separate issue from how efficient it would be if it did exist. The question of how to bring about socialism deserves a thread of it's own.

What's this interchangeable use of socialism and communism? Those things have different meanings. A society can be socialistic and still have a capitalist economy. It's called a mixed system, and every functioning country in the world uses it.

You said that there's no inherent reason why communist economies are less efficient than capitalist economies. That statement betrays your lack of economic understanding. Communist economies lack what is called price information. In a market where prices are fixed by bureaucrats, resources are inefficiently allocated because the people who need a certain resource more have no way to pay more for that resource.

Let's take for example a city preparing for a hurricane. Plywood will be a limited and valuable resource in this scenario. There isn't enough plywood to protect every house in this city, so it is critical that the houses that need plywood most get them. In a free market economy, the price of plywood will increase so that the people who own the houses that will be most at risk will be the ones buying the plywood. Those who live further inland will be priced out of the market and won't take away plywood from someone who lives right on the beach. But in a command economy, there will be either be a shortage of plywood because everyone will want to buy it, regardless of how little risk they face from the hurricane, and plywood will be allocated based on first come first served, regardless of the respective risks of the buyers. Or if the price is set too high, there will be a surplus of plywood and people who need it won't be able to buy it.

We don't live in fantasy worlds, so I won't even consider a hypothetical where some omnipotent supercomputer is able to set perfectly efficient prices at all times. We live in the real world, and in the real world, efficient communist economies cannot be achieved because they cannot exist.

[Shryke]

You said that there's no inherent reason why communist economies are less efficient than capitalist economies. That statement betrays your lack of economic understanding. Communist economies lack what is called price information. In a market where prices are fixed by bureaucrats, resources are inefficiently allocated because the people who need a certain resource more have no way to pay more for that resource.

And this is different from a Capitalist economy ... how?

[SergioCQH]

And this is different from a Capitalist economy ... how?

Because in free market economies, those who need a certain resource more have the option to pay more. Whether they have the ability to do so is not the question. In communist economies, those who need a certain resource more have no option of paying more for it, regardless of ability. And because communist economies are less efficient, it is without doubt that needed resources will be produced at a smaller level because there is no price incentive. Therefore, even fewer people will get needed resources regardless of willingness or ability to pay for it. Witness Great Leap Forward, Holodomor, North Korea, etc.

Interlude: This brings up another failing of communist economies. Not only do they fail at allocation, they also fail at production. Without functioning markets, it is impossible to produce efficient quantities of necessary goods. How can a central bureaucracy determine how much of each and every single item that a modern society needs and wants? The short answer is that it can't. The only way to determine production is through free markets and prices.

Communism. Fail at allocation. Fail at production. Just plain fail.

Shryke, just out of curiosity, what economic education have you had? If you had to ask that question, it means you don't understand the basic concept of price allocation.

[Shryke]

No, rather I was calling into question the part you point out here:

Whether they have the ability to do so is not the question.

Which seems funny considering you discard Communism because you refuse to consider fantasy hypotheticals, but keep this one.

I also find it amusing you use a disaster scenario as your example, considering that's pretty much the perfect, textbook case of where capitalism completely utterly fails in real life. Most countries handle disaster relief in a very uncapatilistic way for a reason.