Not that I agree with the premise that capitalism is what drives people to produce things to begin with.

Generally the people I've met who work hard to develop themselves and develop skills society needs end up doing quite well for themselves, although I admit that as an Australian my experience is probably different from the US. Here we have more socialised education and healthcare, so anyone with motivation can go to college.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_...

The good news is everyone is getting richer (rising tide), the bad news is inequality is increasing and low mobility is nothing to be proud of. Like logicchains I'm Aussie and we fare better at the moment, though we're also starting to head in the wrong direction by these measures.

Fortunately they are not very competent and do not have full control of the parliament, so most of their bills have been blocked by minor parties.

The not very competent people who wave snowballs around in congress, send bitchy letters to Iran and Israel, and squawk about #OBAMANET have full corporate sponsorship and the propaganda machine that is our media keeps getting these imbeciles elected.

The US is definitely treading water right now. I remain hopeful, but not optimistic.

* Destroying our earth with a pathetically broad plan for stopping (read: we won't).

* We're creating technological systems that pose the greatest threat against freedom ever.

* We're killing hundreds of thousands in the middle east because they pose threats to our Saudi oil fields.

Yay, productivity.

What I'm saying here, is that it doesn't have to be this way. Capitalism drives a population to productivity in the same way meth does: destructively.

The problem is breaking down the "rights" of corporations.

* eliminate corporate taxes * establish structures that allow corporations to hold on to underutilized/unutilized assets (follow through on this) * reduce intellectual property rights assigned to corporations * create a non-living entity legal classification with explicitely reduced rights * remove speach rights from corporate entities (employees, shareholders, etc still have those rights, companies don't) * restrict any propaganda spending by corporations

With those checks in place corporations can still exist, but would be geared towards growth (like Amazon) with continuous reinvestment, or towards paying dividends to those shareholders who are paying taxes.

With those checks in place, a basic/living wage and flat tax could be put in place, no loopholes, no tiered taxation.. everyone is taxed at 50%, everyone gets the same base wage check... the revenue is split between federal govts and state.. 25% to base wage, 25% to federal govt, 35% to states based on population, 15% to states based on land mass (perserve public lands).

Beyond any of this, there are way to utilize capitalism to serve the public interest.. just because this hasn't been done doesn't mean it can't be... and with appropriate checks in place (mainly in political finance which require the first steps outlined), stand a far better chance of succeeding than any alternative that has been tried.

I have no good answers for you. If the atrocities above bother you, you can do your part and opt out from the sides of society that requires you to be a part of it.

We just need a cultural shift to stop being such consumers. Stop buying a new phone every year, your current one can easily suit you for the next 10 years. Don't buy a new laptop. Start being cognizant of the influences brand names have on you and try to resist them where possible. Most importantly, we need to strengthen unions and support our local coops.

Start being aware of where the money you spend ultimately ends up.

</actual-advice>

<shill> I'm a libertarian, and I use that in the non-US definition of the word, which is to say I'm an anarcho-syndicalist. Unfortunately anarchism is widely regarded as unrealistic, but if it weren't for the Soviets mucking around in Spain in the 30's, it might be a very different story.

What is anarchism? Here's how Noam Chomsky, (the same Chomsky you know from your compilers / CS theory course) describes it:

""" Well, anarchism is, in my view, basically a kind of tendency in human thought which shows up in different forms in different circumstances, and has some leading characteristics.

Primarily it is a tendency that is suspicious and skeptical of domination, authority, and hierarchy. It seeks structures of hierarchy and domination in human life over the whole range, extending from, say, patriarchal families to, say, imperial systems, and it asks whether those systems are justified. It assumes that the burden of proof for anyone in a position of power and authority lies on them. Their authority is not self-justifying. They have to give a reason for it, a justification. And if they can’t justify that authority and power and control, which is the usual case, then the authority ought to be dismantled and replaced by something more free and just. And, as I understand it, anarchy is just that tendency. It takes different forms at different times.

Anarcho-syndicalism is a particular variety of anarchism which was concerned primarily, though not solely, but primarily with control over work, over the work place, over production. It took for granted that working people ought to control their own work, its conditions, [that] they ought to control the enterprises in which they work, along with communities, so they should be associated with one another in free associations, and … democracy of that kind should be the foundational elements of a more general free society. And then, you know, ideas are worked out about how exactly that should manifest itself, but I think that is the core of anarcho-syndicalist thinking. I mean it’s not at all the general image that you described — people running around the streets, you know, breaking store windows — but [anarcho-syndicalism] is a conception of a very organized society, but organized from below by direct participation at every level, with as little control and domination as is feasible, maybe none. """

One big misconception is that anarchism means that there should be no laws, and that murderers should be allowed to wander the streets. What a lot of people don't know is that anarchism, just like communism, was also a victim of the propaganda machine that we now call the red scare.

I think that a lot of people in tech, who can directly see how open source killed proprietary software, are the people who are most open to the idea this shift can happen.

Anyway, that's just my $0.02.

If you made it this far into my comment, give this a read: http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/noam-chomsky-kind-an...

And also read On Anarchism by Chomsky, it's fantastic. </shill>

That's a tacit acceptance that the solutions youre porposing have absolutely no chance of ever happening at a scale that will ever matter. Politics, and economics, are the art of the possible.

Capitalism coupled to represenatative democracy is the best shot w've got at developing a fair, balanced and sustainable economic system. What we need to do is correctly and rigorously price in environmental costs into the financial costs of our economic activities. Otherwise you get Soviet Russia laying waste to vast swathes of territory with misconceived development programs, or China polluting it's own country and population to death due to zero political accountability. The problem with Anarch-syndicalism is that at scale people will syndicalise back into special-interest blocs and you'll be back where you started.

Tend to agree, but that only addresses the economy. From what I've seen, capitalism cares very little for the advancement of society itself, and quite often works against it (eg, oil companies and global warming). You mentioned pricing in environmental costs, which obviously I would agree with, however I think the only way to achieve this is by banning companies from having any sort of political free speech and this is a tricky line to walk. In our current state, the environmental costs of our activities are a large point of contention because the people doing the damage are able to buy a large portion of "democratic" mindshare through propaganda. How do you regulate this? It's a hard problem.

Also, take something like consumerism (as in, buying a new phone every year). It doesn't make us happier, it doesn't make our lives better, nor does it do the planet we live on much good. However, consumerism and capitalism have grown into a feedback loop. It's an area where we spend enormous amounts of energy to derive very little benefit. The free market here does us no good, and in fact enables what I would consider a bad societal habit. Not that I think there's an easy fix or we should try to control people, but it's an example of capitalism working well but providing little value. It's self-referential existence.

> The problem with Anarch-syndicalism is that at scale people will syndicalise back into special-interest blocs

I am an anarchist, but I do believe this is true. Humans are not capable of this self-organizing yet.

I think the goal is unattainable at humanity's current level of spiritual development (which is, to be blunt, maybe a few millimeters further along than our ape cousins). That doesn't mean that the concepts can't be applied in every day life, however.

Living in the US, it's hard not to be completely disgusted by what passes as a "libertarian." I've grown to hate the word, and avoid most people who parrot it. The "less regulation!" "small government!" "free market!" drum gets beat all too often without addressing the elephant in the room: Corporate America is a wild beast running amok over the entire globe. The last thing it needs is less regulation! All the innovation and progress in the world won't be worth a damn if we're all breathing in toxic air and birthing flipper babies.

A lot of this is driven by the American culture's need for the new (as you pointed out). The sickness of our culture is the fuel of our economy, which is now built upon the backs of third world nations (which, by the way, are starting to equalize...soon there will be no more backs to climb on, what then?). We don't produce anything anymore, we just consume.

Even in SV, where people are constantly crowing about how innovative everything is, there's very little real, actual change happening. An app that deletes photos you send to someone after 15s. Amazingly innovative. Another chat app. Useful? Sure. Innovative? No. In fact, tying this back into the parent comments, I'd argue that almost all of the innovation I've seen comes from open source. 99% of private companies in the valley are doing some that has been done 1000x before, but just slightly better. It makes money, sure, but it doesn't help the world or advance society. Capitalism at its best.

I think there's a strong balance that needs to be struck between what actually advances society as a whole and what allows the individual to prosper. In the US, at least currently, the two seem pretty mutually exclusive.

/rant

The inherent problem in any case is concentration of power, whether it be in the state or in megacorps.

Simple. Both extremes concentrate power eventually (in the state or in megacorps). Somewhere in the middle, you have an open and capitalist market, but the government keeps large cooperations in check, and the population keeps the government in check.

It can be argued that the EU strives to follow this model (although imperfectly). E.g. by enforcing net neutrality, being relatively active at breaking down cartels, regulating roaming costs (since the industry kept them artificially high), etc.

Of course, it's never perfect, because the circumstances are never perfect. So, you have to finetune and adapt.

What in this middle ground would prevent Apple from buying FoundationDB? I can't see this happening in any middle-ground countries like Europe.

What if there were no large corporations at all? What if IP and status/cash-flow were set up as the property of individuals and/or small teams who collaborated on a per-project basis?

You could have a system where IP was still shared in a completely open way, remaining free for non-commercial use, but commercial use would require a per-use payment, and commercial modification would attract a revenue share of its own if it was useful to a market.

This might not be ideal - it doesn't solve the problem of actually making stuff, for example. (There are possible answers to that, but they're even weirder.)

But it shows it's at least possible to begin to think about systems that don't have dinosaur corporations stomping around the ecosystem predating anyone and anything who's small and interesting.

And it specifically solves the problem of useful IP being removed or suppressed just because it can be.

Let alone the fact that we are only talking about economic freedom now, which is only one of many interacting facets of politics that can't really be isolated.

You seem to reason in really absolutist terms. You can have an open economy, where a government can still intervene if the current market situation has an extremely negative effect on society.

E.g. breaking cartels, monopolies or oligopolies where they seriously hurt a population does not throw away all the benefits of capitalism.

The disadvantage of one extreme is that you cannot have free enterprise, the other extreme is that you might end up with a few megacorps who control the market and ultimately society. In the middle you have a situation where there is free enterprise, but as a cooperation you also have to play by the rules that were set up to maintain fair competition and avoid centralisation of power.

The middle situation faces the potential of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture. This state-enforced monopoly is a small-scale manifestation of the complete state monopoly associated with 100% state ownership. The only way to completely avoid regulatory capture is to have no regulatory agencies, but this of course brings troubles of its own. There's no perfect middle.

The argument I responded to was essentially asserting the existence of a non-capitalist solution that would have prevented Apple from buying FoundationDB without negative consequences. If I successfully argue that there are no perfect solutions, than that undermines the argument to which I was replying, and forces the poster to engage with the issue in more detail than just "capitalism is bad".