"Capitalism is about socities cannibalizing themselves"

[dixiegrrrrl]

From interview with Chris Hedges in Moore's movie Capitalism:

Practically every sentence Hedges said packs a punch.

Here...
"When capitalism is the dominant ideology...it turns EVERYTHING into a commodity, including human beings".

"It exploits these commodities until they are destroyed".
"Built into capitalism is a form of annihilation".

"this economic collapse is going to disrupt the social, cultural, economic life of ordinary Americans"
"what is so tragic is they are trying to sustain an unsustainable system ( capitalism".

"It comes from being an imperial power...all imperial powers end as we end, that the tyranny they impose on others they finally impose on themselves".

Huge thank you to Mira for insisting I see this film.:pals:


If you have not seen it yet, I do encourage a viewing, especially on the dvd which has EXTRAS,
including the interview with Hedges. The interview alone is worth the dvd, IMHO.

[Taverner]

1. Well yeah, thats why when a Capitalist State has laws against prostitution, its REALLY hypocritical

[WinkyDink]

2. Who doesn't intuit this?

[paulsby]

5. anybody with a brain

and who can look at history realizes that capitalism is better at building wealth, incentivizing innovation and efficiency, and improving quality of life.

almost all the things that make our lives better, from modern medicine and disease control (black death anyone), to modern conveniences, etc. came from innovators in capitalist societies.

show me a system that works BETTER than capitalism. god knows socialism has proven a miserable failure.

and fwiw, france, etc. are solidly capitalistic.

when the means of production and distribution are overwhelmingly in private hands, its capitalism - the greatest economic system ever invented by man

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. So, you ok with how it has turned out so far, eh?

[paulsby]

8. capitalism has its warts

but it's turned out way better than socialism has - scores of millions killed in purges & pogroms, famine, and misery

[inna]

9. "purges & pogroms, famine, and misery" have nothing to do with socialism.

[paulsby]

11. yea, but darnit they seem to happen quite frequently when socialists take over a country

but of course they have nothing to do with socialism

lol

how many dead last century from socialist regimes?

[eridani]

21. The only difference with socialism is that that happens in the imperial center

Under capitalism, empire imposes those costs on the underdeveloped periphery.

[Warpy]

23. The problem is that socialism feeds a new form of aristocracy

of party insiders that is every bit as inheritable as the aristocracy of wealth. Party insiders also give themselves the trappings of great wealth so that it's impossible to tell the difference in practical terms from an aristocracy that arose through grabbing market share.

That's why the old liberal economy was such genius, the progressive tax system ensuring that capitalist greed would be a numbers game, only, and that such massive wealth would be recirculated for the common good.

I doubt we'll ever see it again, the present crisis inadequate (so far) to force such dramatic changes in our system and the abandonment of Reaganism.

Any pure system is likely to be a brutal one, with a few men at the top reaping the benefits while the vast majority live in misery of one type or another. That applies equally to socialism and capitalism, I'm afraid.

Only a truly messy, mixed system full of checks and balances can be humane and equitable, as well as competitive.

[patrice]

18. Some warts: Genocide of Native Americans, Slavery, 1,000,000 Dead Iraqis.

Also: Inherent tendencies toward imbalance and disadvantage incentivise only selected kinds of motivations. That alone is maladaptive enough to lead to the kinds of intellectual and social inbreeding that could result in extinction.

[golfguru]

25. more people want to immigrate to USA than any other country

when people vote with their feet, it is the best proof.

[reggie the dog]

10. If Socialism is such a failure can you explain how France, Finland

Sweden, and Denmark seem to be doing so well. Socialized trains, medecine, 32 to 35 hour work weeks.... Socialism is just regulated capitalism. It permits accumulating wealth but limits the top and raises the bottom. The way socialism or social democracy has been implemented in western Europe seems to be a model to follow. You socialize services of vital importance and leave other services to capitalism.

[paulsby]

12. can you explain your lack of reading comprehension?

as i said, in my OP, france et al are not SOCIALIST

the means of production and distribution are overwhelmingly in PRIVATE HANDS.

and yes, that's true even in sweden

your defintion of socialist is on par with beck's

france is NOT socialist

it's capitalist.

hth

france, sweden, etc/ are social democracies. they are NOT socialist economic systems

period

why do i feel like i'm talking to a wingnut when i have to explain this. they are usually the ones that claim that a country that has socialized medicine is SOCIALIST

lol

[reggie the dog]

13. wingnuts mean it as a bad thing, i mean it as a good one

I live in France, I took a socialized train today. I have public health insurance, my electric company is two thirds govt. owned, the gas company is half public, and we are working on having the municipality re take our drinking water service. In countries where I see Socialists getting elected democratically I tend to see this as actual socialism as can work in a democracy. We implement socialism when it is needed by the people and let others accumulate wealth out of respect for the people who did not vote for the socialists, our right wing in Keyenesian and does not go extreme right out of respect for those on the left.

[paulsby]

14. it's incorrect no matter whether it is said as a compliment or a putdown

do you really think the participants in the bolshevik revolution or other socialists would recognize modern france as a SOCIALIST country?

get real.

every country with a capitalist economic system has SOME portions of the economy in public hands - we do too.

france has a greater percentage but nowhere near even 50% .

it is NOT a socialist country.

i really don't want to get into a semantical wank about the definition of the word socialist, but i think if you actually study the meaning and origin of the word and then compare france etc. to the concept you will see that france is not correctly called a socialist country, whether that attribution is made by beck or you.

socialism is and was a miserable failure.

france is not socialist and is quite successful as are we, i might add. capitalist systems both

[golfguru]

26. I have traveled extensively in Europe

and their standard of living is pathetic. My wife's family
is from Sweden and I saw at first hand their lifestyle by living with them for weeks. No thanks!

[tama]

20. Capitalism is insane

Capitalism imagines that material world is limitless (unlimited growth on limited Earth).
Capitalism imagines that immaterial world - knowledge which is produced collectively and grows by sharing - should be limited (patent rights, copyright, intellectual property).

Let us heal.

[ncguy]

3. And a good alternative is

. . . . . .

[My Good Babushka]

6. A equitable mixture of socialism and capitalism

There would probably have to be a lot of give and take, our legislators would have to be more responsive and actually pay attention to move the dials in the right directions.

[MindandSoul]

4. Sounds about right!

[jtuck004]

15. Driven toward reward without regard for consequence? One might be a

Psychopath?

http://wellness.blogs.time.com/2010/03/15/driven-toward-reward-without-regard-for-consequence/?hpt=T2

I was just looking at the DVD on Amazon... ;)

[patrice]

16. You beat me to it!

[jtuck004]

19. Just lookin' for that reward ;)

[patrice]

17. Addicted to rewards, driven to progressively more damaging gratifications

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7920563

[Odin2005]

22. K&R

[charlesb]

24. Beginning With the Poor!

Beginning with the working class and the poor, who too often seem to be one and the same demographic.

[snot]

27. There's a great article at Volatility analyzing this subject,

at http://attempter.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/the-limits-to-racketeering :

According to Joseph Tainter’s theory of imperial collapse, . . . . at the late imperial stage, the complexity of the power structure, the military infrastructure, the bureaucracies, all the rents involved in maintaining an ever more bloated parasite class, their luxuries, the police state required to extract these rents and keep the productive people down, and the growing losses due to the response of the oppressed producers, everything from poor quality work to strikes to emigration or secession to rebellion, reaches a point where the system can only cannibalize itself and eventually collapse.

Julian Assange’s theory of the secrecy tax he’s trying to impose through Wikileaks is one example of these diminishing returns on imperial complexity. All the indications are that Wikileaks has been successful in this.

* * * * *
This is a welter of parasites battening on the same host. They’re in a zero sum game, not only against the people, but among themselves. Each has an interest in just exploiting the host, not killing it. But together they are killing it and therefore themselves. It’s clear none is capable of organizing or regulating the others. The federal government isn’t capable of doing it. If one big bank tried to do it, it would be subverted by the others. Each racket, from highest to lowest, is going to maximize its bloodsucking until there’s no blood left.

The competition devolves from who can produce the most of the best, into who can loot the most the fastest. I'd speculate that the non-transparency tends to result in something even worse than a zero-sum game, since not only are opportunities for growth wasted, but even resources already in existence may be at least partially wasted, since each actor is motivated to grab what it can even at the cost of spoiling portions of the remainder for possible use by others.

[GliderGuider]

28. It's a macabre version of the "Tragedy of the Commons"

In this nightmare version we (the commoners) are the commons, the banks and investment houses are the sheep grazing on us, and the oligarchy are the farmers who turn out ever more sheep to graze. The story always ends with an overgrazed, denuded and barren commons...

[dixiegrrrrl]

29. I am so glad you added to this post. Thanks.

Zero sum game indeed.

I guess there was a reason that the fable of killing the Golden Goose had to be created, eh?