Well, attempting to regulate and somewhat control it is what politics have been saying they were doing for a decade or more now, nothing moves... Here in Europe, every "attempt" at regulation by the political cast ends up being just a delay, rendered null and void a few months later, fiscal evasion is a pain in the ass, billions of loss every month. People start being fed up with the bs ; I know a large part of my generation just accepted the fact it's not going to get any better and alternatives already appear.

I don't think it's going to happen like "throwing the house out with the kitchen", it's just going to fade while people re-adjust and re-appropriate their economy and politics at a smaller scale. Here we see more and more "cooperative markets" where customers can buy directly to local producers, and short-circuit the supermarkets. Better products, they know where it's coming from, if it's ethical production etc...
A couple of cities decided to become autonomous food-wise, they bought back fields to local farmers and the inhabitants of these cities produce food for the local market, unemployement pretty much disappeared in these cities, people would rather be involved in something concrete than struggle to find a shit jobs for big companies.

Also thanks for taking over in the discussion with Surfings, he writes so many absurd stuffs I don't know where to begin with, it's a tiresome exercise.

It's pretty embarrassing how bias the questions were leaning towards Hillary. Only lobbed soft ball questions while trump gets hit on the birther stuff and the looks.

I watched the whole thing, felt like Trump had a terrible showing. I'm not sure if it's because of the moderator, but he got bogged down on trivial stuff while he could have roasted Hillary a lot harder on certain points (when she said she's taking full responsibility for the emails, for example, that was a high ball).
Hillary's reaction-laughter was pretty spot on to be honest, coming after mostly cringy rants from the other side. She didn't have to do much, took a few jabs at Trump's unpaid work stories (which he didn't even deny, what the fuck) and then delivered some seemingly rehearsed lines about nothing in particular.
I wouldn't be surprised if Trump and Hillary had a deal, at this point.

Free market leads to oligarchy. The better player eliminates the competition and is allowed to do so because of a lack of regulation and competition laws.

They also said Hillary won because when the votes came in, a big portion of the people who watched the debate were democrats

I'm going to try explaining something fairly complicated I learned in a 'development and inequality' subject I took.

Capitalism is really beneficial if you live in a country that has an advanced economy. If you live however, in a place that has a 'traditional/backwards' economy, you reap less benefits and the system takes advantage of you in order to sustain the advanced economies. To be at the top rung of the 'development ladder' requires somebody else being at the bottom.

Advanced countries like ours take advantage of the lesser developed countries. Sure, it's voluntary. Both sides agree to it. The terms and conditions of these deals weigh heavily in the favor of the advanced countries though. Because of their 'advanced' status, the advanced countries have more bargaining power (more carrots and sticks) to employ against the 'traditional' countries. This results in some parasitic deals in which the advanced countries suck the life (resources, environment, loans with crazy unfair conditions) from the traditional countries.

This isn't that hard to picture. Every time primitive values and societies come in contact with modern/advanced society, the primitive loses. Traditional locals aint about to stop that beach hotel on the island from being built.


Now, all of that is at the international level. At the level of the country, capitalism breeds inequality in both similar and different ways. If you want me to get into it, I will, but for now I'll just say that it has to do a lot with ever-increasing income inequality which leads to social fragmentation (people hating on people - rich vs. poor, black vs. white, socioeconomically oppressed identity group A vs socioeconomically privileged identity group B, etc. etc. etc.).

So that's why it's a problem, at the international and country levels.

A mix of positive and negative reinforcement, yes. Sending people to the gulags is not at all humane, but it was the first example to come to mind.


I have anecdotal personal examples of all of them so.... it exists. Obviously, I can't speak on scope with anecdotal evidence. That said, I live a perfectly normal life so a reasonable person should expect this to be a bit more widespread.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...e-unhappy.html
Believe this or not, it's by dailymail so it's probably biased, but either way ,you are living in a fairytale.[/QUOTE]
If you'd read the actual study instead of just the article (as well as maybe what I said, since there are a few irrefutable things in there), you'd know that both can be true at the same time. The scope of the study provides interesting insight into using money to make decisions but is pretty limited.


Financial markets are an extreme but obvious example. I read an article the other day that marked a switch from investing in risky ventures to create profits to timing markets in buying and selling assets. That's not really generating value, I'd say. Overall you're right, but such confidence and strong language is probably uncalled for.


Of course it sounds ridiculous. It is. That's like saying the endgame of government surpluses is the elimination of the money supply. Extrapolating to infinity is never logical.


Well, saying it simply, it depends. Everything is relative.

Something I feel is telling is stagnant middle and lower class wages in the US over the last 20 or so years, at the same time that the country is heavily de-unionizing. Decisions are made from positions of strength and positions of weakness, and bargaining power has effect on the free market like other supply/demand forces do. That's why when the little men get together to try to get better working conditions/compensation from the big man, it works. That's also why when the little men don't get together, they get lower wages and decreased benefits. Same with imperfect information. You're willing to shop at a place that sells bread for $8 if you don't know that there's somewhere else that sells bread for $5 within the same area. The first place can likewise get away with selling bread for $3 more because you don't know about the second.

That's an interesting perspective. Why in your mind do business' profit margins take priority over proportionally higher wages and a better off population, especially when constricting wages will cut aggregate demand and redirect more consumer spending to 'necessity' goods instead of innovative ideas? (i.e. living paycheck to paycheck, which currently is pretty high. http://www.offthegridnews.com/financ...k-to-paycheck/ http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/24/pf/emergency-savings/ these are both a little old but are indicative of the current general situation)

Obviously there needs to be more nuance than just "higher wages" and I think businesses obviously need to be considered, but that's not appropriate for the situation in the US.

What you said seems like more of a reflexionary position against things like mandatory minimum wages than a well thought through policy.


Who says that's the whole argument? That's the part of the argument commonly applied since it is relevant to the current reality, but I don't think anybody (mainstream) is arguing for total communism (communists are probably arguing for communism, though). Honestly, I should hope nobody values their time so little as to give a comprehensive description of taxation and consumerism every time they talk about taxing higher brackets more.

I was about to try to give a summary of my own thoughts on the subject, but it got to be too long so I said fuck it and gave up

The real solution is to have no minimum wage to be able to compete with China's children workers, those little fucks are efficient. Then most companies would come back to the US because labour cost would be cheap as fuck and they can make pretty dope margin' and there would be work for everyone ; because that's the heart of the problem : people need to work or they're just useless beings and become a burden for the rest of our productive society and do crime.

It will require a bit of time to adjust the price for necessary supplies like food, water, electricity and housing, but hey, the economy must be performant ! And only then America might become great again.

#deprav4prez

You'll need to elaborate on this. I must be missing something, because I asked if you thought profit margins should be high at the expense of low wages and you answered saying that third world countries disprove basic observable phenomenon, so I can't say I follow. Sorry about that.


Let's also not forget that what I said was an example of imperfect information and leveraging economic superiority distorting markets in a way that could allow someone to take advantage of something else in an ideally perfectly consensual situation, so all of this is basically irrelevant to my original point. It's an interesting conversation to have so I'll bite, but just thought I'd mention it.


Mind if I cut you off here quick?

Person A makes variable amount X of bread products 1 and 2, where product 1 is a food staple and product 2 is a tasty treat (something fun like a cinnamon roll).

Person B works the floor at a car manufacturing plant (manufacturer I), and he purchases finite amount Y bread product 1 from person A. The plant unionizes and they negotiate for M% higher wages. When the higher wages go into effect, Person B feels at liberty to ease up on his spending restrictions a little bit, and begins to purchase Z amount of bread product 2 from person A. He also purchases amount W less of product 1 from person A and instead diverts that spending to person C's meat product 3 (lol). He also ends up being able to save more of his paycheck, and because he's not an idiot, he decides to invest that in common stocks or bonds (quite unlike person C, who forgot inflation existed and put his money into a savings account at his bank).

(Oh look, inflation just drove investment, like it's supposed to).

Now, person B isn't special, and many of the guys who work the floor at the manufacturing plant are in the same situation. En masse, more people follow the same spending patterns as person B and significant changes emerge. After the changes settle, because person A is selling more bread product 2 and less bread product 1, he regularly purchases more raw materials from manufacturer J in order to increase variable amount of bread X. Both of person A's bread products keep roughly the same price, because person A has sufficiently increased supply to support the extra demand.

Manufacturer J can marginally push up production to meet person A's increased demand for their products, but if they were to face more demand they would need to hire unemployed person D to significantly increase production. Instead, they charge N amount more for their products. Because person A has become more profitable with a more stable consumer base, he can support the increased price without significant repercussions. However, person E who runs a bakery a few towns over and also purchases raw products from manufacturer J loses competitiveness when he tries to increase his own prices to compensate, and goes into the red. Sorry buddy.

Well, what about the car manufacturer I? They aren't facing much increased demand, instead they're just paying more in wages! The tyranny! Fortunately, when manufacturer I negotiated wages with person B's union, they negotiated in a way where they won't go under, their profit margin will just take a hit. Their profit margin falls O%, and in an effort to make up for it, they invest in ways to increase productivity with less cost, and restructure their spending to increase business efficiency.

Let's not forget about meat manufacturer K, who also saw increased demand because person B and co. were able to buy meat with their higher wages. They ended up better off as well.


is absolutely true! However, the way capitalism works, production isn't realized without monetary compensation, so none of the above businesses were actually producing as much as they could. When their monetary incentive came, person A increased production, manufacturer J marginally increased production, Of course, that wasn't without cost. Manufacturer I trimmed their excess spending (administrative costs, finding shortcuts for certain tasks, etc.) and even began preparing for ways to increase the efficiency of their business to cope with the extra expense.

Because unionization is decentralized, car manufacturer L who is a much larger entity than car manufacturer I doesn't need to outsource their production, since they have no extra expense.

I'd also like to welcome you to reality, where more than just half a dozen variables and nuance exists. You can't indiscriminately increase wages, but increasing wages isn't always bad. In some cases, it can be good. It can put pressures on businesses to find ways to improve their model, it can diversify consumer spending on things that they didn't prioritize when they needed to be thrifty. It's all thanks to the fact that business' operate on a for profit model, where profit margins exist as a buffer (which you strangely never mentioned...)

I have ambivalent feelings on things like mandatory minimum wages, but unionization is good.