After Capitalism?
nplusonemag.com
nplusonemag.com
Harnessing the energy of people across the planet by letting them trade with each other has so clearly been a disaster for everyone, has it? Essentially, isn't this capitalism with all its fault lines? One way or another it can be got to work for everyone's advantage.
tl;dr: the freer the market the better capitalism works. Just have a look at the top freer economies here, they're also the wealthiest http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
> Nearly 1 billion people have been taken out of extreme poverty in 20 years
But it has been done without generating the sort of full-time blue collar employment that is implied behind all sorts of economic policies around the globe. China has gone from feudalism to post-industrial robotization in one generation, skipping most the wealth-building industrialization phase Western Europe and North America went through in the last century.
The global creed is "you're not worth something without work", yet we are, for all purposes, running out of work. The computer revolution is optimizing away all its menial jobs already – just how much have trends like virtualization, clouds, infrastructure orchestration and so on reduced the demand for warm bodies to throw at hardware issues in the last few years? – while education systems still haven't finished ramping up the creation of more and more menial labourers. The earlier industrial revolutions have, quite soon, created more jobs than they destroyed, but this does not seem to happen any more.
We've reached the point where we have, globally, more people of working age than we can possibly need to satisfy all global needs, and this trend is not going to reverse.
And the problem is: We have no idea what to do about it. The left is blabbing "muh robots" and "muh basic income", but nobody has a consistent, practicable theory of what a post-full-employment society (which is something entirely different from a post-employment-at-all society) could look like. We're still going to need menial labour, blue collar work, white collar… but not enough. What do we do with all the excess population?
To avoid that would take substantial further reductions in birth rates beyond that which is baked in based on current trends.
EDIT: Let me adjust this a bit. UNs World Population Prospects 2015 [1] says "Continued population growth until 2050 is almost inevitable, even if the decline of fertility accelerates." and their middle and top estimates shows continued growth until 2100, though rapidly shrinking growth. The low end estimate shows a reduction in the latter half of the century. Almost all of this growth is expected to be in developing countries, however.
[1] http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Publications/Files/Key_Findings_W...
Awesome!
Seriously, which is it? Either capitalism is going to fail because there aren't enough workers, or it's going to fail because robots are taking all the jobs. Can't have both!
Because, of course, having both would be fine... no catastrophe, life continues as normal as it has in the face of every prediction of imminent disaster. We have less workers due to demographic changes, but that's cool because we need less workers. We sort out the political problem of how to stop all the money going to to <1% of the population, we're all good.
I wouldn't call the circumstances in Europe 1815-1945, when the last massive societal upheavals happened, "life as normal".
We're still going to have a lot of jobs in the mid-term, probably even long-term. 70%, 60% of the working populace in the mid-term maybe, and not too few of those in menial/blue collar jobs. We still need to fill these jobs, and a generous basic income would make these jobs highly unpopular. So we can either set a basic income that is not high enough to solve the problem it was trying to solve, or we create a situation like in Saudi Arabia – where all the undesirable jobs are taken by foreign jobbers (from nations without basic income, or war zones, or…), while the natives grow fat and lazy.
Not exactly an economic policy I'd have expected from the Left.
Or we could just let the wage for those undesirable jobs rise to a level that someone will take them, even though they're getting the basic income.
Why shouldn't someone get paid a lot of money for (e.g.) trimming my toenails? Someone else would have to pay me a lot of money to do that.
Imagining this future doesn't seem too outre.
Just speculation but isn't that already the case? I don't have the numbers but I wonder what percentage of the human population is in the working force or, better yet, what percentage of our collective "waking hours" is spend working, with or without monetary compensation.
Model 1) There's a finite amount of work out there. Computers will replace mental jobs just like robots killed physical jobs. We're all heading towards unemployment.
Model 2) Employment is determined by the value of an employee. Technology makes employees more valuable, not less. Employees will get more bargaining power as technology improves, not less.
The economic consensus is with #2, because feedback systems appear to drive down high unemployment over time (though bad governance can definitely interfere). One feedback system might be: idle people will eventually conspire to discover and meet the wants of others.
That's abstract though, it might be helpful to look closer to home.
Consider the fear that software will take over everyone's work. It's easy to forget that programmers know exactly how this goes. They have already cannibalized a lot of their work with software. The last fifty years of programming language (IDE, engine, ...) development has been a steady progress of finding ways to get software to write software, to do all the annoying grunt work of the job.
As programmers became more efficient, and crank out more and more complex tools over time, has the demand for code steadily decreased? Have we now solved all the world's problems that can be solved through code? Or has the problem space expanded to meet our capacity? Has the demand for programmers increased because their time is now much more valuable than it was in the era of punch cards?
Note more broadly, jobs are picking up right now as part of the recovery, despite continual technological improvement.
I think the economic consensus is with #2 because so much of the available data so consistently points that way, so it's easy to dismiss the other model as just natural human pessimism about the future. Maybe the pessimistic model is right and we just don't know it yet, but I think it currently has the weaker case.
Capitalism generates capital. Yay for us, we now have lots of capital. But once you've generated all the capital, and maximised all the profits to the point of driving surplus value to 0. What then?
* Also a major nitpick, most of that billion were brought out of poverty in China in the 1950s at the peak of Maoism/Communism... so you're point is kind ironic, no? The majority of the remainder were also in China during DengXiao ping driven state run capitalism or "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics"... So even if you weren't missing the point, the point you are making is still very moot.
You're assuming you will be able to keep this capital forever. History demonstrates that most of even the richest families don't stay such after 3 or 4 generations.
Ask any Family Office managing finances for HNW investors and they'll give you examples.
* Decreasing marginal utility of wealth.
* Difficulty investing as wealth increases. Capital accumulation lowers rates, incentivizing individuals to spend (h/t Reisman)
* Empathy and philanthropy (one can't just ignore this, it's human action all the same).
* The calculation problem builds in inefficiencies as organizations grow (h/t Peter Klein).
Intergenerational differences in ability and goals and the squandering of inheritances.
Entrepreneurship and innovation. Punctuated equilibrium (h/t Schumpeter).
The fact that we'll probably squander that too, or it will decrease in value, only strengthens the questions... so what do we do after that?
Wealth creation through creativity, like we do every time, that's what we do next.
This article was wasted time
Catchy one liners "Wealth creation through creativity" might help you sleep at night, but seriously, our creative endeavours have never produced anywhere near the amount of capital the resource sector has... What happens when we either get so efficient at resources that they cost nothing, or we run out of the resource?
There is no ultimate conclusion to Capitalism, the system continues to create more prosperity, and capital continues to seek higher forms of productivity and profit, which perpetually raises the standard of living for any nation that deploys Capitalism with its well understood requirements (which include a strong judicial system, property rights, et al). New innovations and breakthroughs perpetually lead to new industry and expansion, creating perpetually greater numbers of jobs (which is why America doesn't only have 500,000 jobs available today; and America isn't even a properly functioning Capitalist nation, it's a poorly functioning highly regulated mixed economy).
More generally, Malthus had much more historical support for his thesis (that population would quickly grow to consume all the food available). But the rules changed.
http://www.forbes.com/global2000/
Only four of the top 20 could reasonably be described as "resource" companies (oil companies, in every case).
It certainly isn't a natural resource like oil or iron ore.
What would you call it?
If you're talking about the "Great Leap Forward" years (late 50s-early 60s), somewhere between 18 and 45 million Chinese people died, most of them by starving to death. The Chinese economy did not grow during that period. It shrank.
That's an odd definition of "brought out of poverty".
Yes. Mining and drilling have obliterated the natural resources of hundreds of millions of people around the world. That's why oil spillage in Nigeria is called an environmental disaster.
> Essentially, isn't this capitalism with all its fault lines? One way or another it can be got to work for everyone's advantage.
Not when capital is turned into a commodity that has necessarily less value, which are then still traded on the market as securities with no regulation. Then you end up with scenarios in which political intervention is the only method for preventing the entire global economy from collapsing. That's already happened once, which is evidence that this article's fairly milque-toast thesis is correct.
Indeed, there are present day countries serving as examples. Unless I've misunderstood your point?
Capital has always and will always be a traded good. Nothing about that can ever change. Unless you plan to return humanity to the most basic of existence, living day to day, scrounging, trying not to starve without reserves.
No regulation? Please point me to the industrial economy without financial regulations on any major specific thing.
What happened with the global financial meltdown was very obviously not due to lack of regulation. It was caused by the Fed encouraging reckless behavior by intentionally inflating asset bubbles as an attempt to accelerate recovery from the 2000/2001 recessionary economy. Hint: they're doing the exact same thing all over again right now, they're doing it on purpose and have been for over half a decade, and they're openly admitting it.
And even if capitalism did deserve much of the credit, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be criticized or that we should stop looking for better. Feudalism may have lifted more humans out of poverty than any other system that came before it by leaps and bounds. It's a good thing we didn't decide to stop there.
Communism, oligarchy and dictatorships (the first really being a special case of the latter two) are supremely harmful and stupid. I wish people would stop using them as straw men to prove that capitalism is great.
Looking at it this way, you're quite right that The Enlightenment, science, egalitarianism and democracy deserve the credit because they are choices we make. They are motivating and organisational forces we have control over and so can be credited with achievements. When an Engineer builds a bridge we celebrate the skill of the engineer and the educational and organizational forces that made the project possible, not the laws of physics.
In this way of thinking, there is no such thing as an end to capitalism. Anyone talking about the future in that way is simply asking the wrong questions. They can't see the wood for the trees.
But if capitalism isn't private property and business ownership, what is it? That's certainly what Marxists* mean by it. If anti-capitalism isn't about abolishing those things, what do it's proponents advocate? A political or economic agenda characterised purely in terms of being anti-something with no proposed alternative is just nihilism. What are anti-capitalists for? What do they propose? What is their actual agenda? I've yet to see that coherently laid out. I can understand anti-corporatism for example because that still allows for alternatives. But other than actual honest to goodness communism, what is the alternative to capitalism that it's critics want to replace it with? Some pointers on that would be greatly appreciated.
*Of course it would help if Marx had actually given an account of how he thought a communist economy would function. Other than vague pronouncements that production would be regulated by 'society' and that individuals would have complete freedom as to what pursuits they engaged in from day to day, he never to my knowledge actually gave an account of how it would function either. But at least he gave a very clear and specific account of what he was against.
Marxists (and more specifically, Marx) certainly meant more than the mere existence of private property and business ownership, he meant the system organized around a particular model of private property rights. (Both private property and privately owned business existed in the pre-capitalist feudal economy from which capitalism emerged, but under a very different model of property rights and very different economic relations between participants in the economy.) [0]
> If anti-capitalism isn't about abolishing those things, what do it's proponents advocate?
Mostly, altering the conception of property rights and economic arrangements to de-emphasize the role of profit to be captured by capital in some significant (but not always all, or even most) economic interactions, increase social control of some of the rights associated with ownership in the capitalist system (though not necessarily to the exclusion of private ownership rights) of productive capital.
Anti-capitalists are a fairly diverse lots, so the differences will be fairly stark without a lot of commonality. Opposition to capitalism doesn't mean supporting the same alternatives to it. (Strictly speaking, supporters of the modern mixed economy are a kind of "anti-capitalists" who support a particular -- and currently dominant -- replacement of capitalism.)
[0] This provides a basic rundown, though its perhaps less clear which of these elements are consequences and which defining features, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_mode_of_production_...
10000 years ago hunter gatherers lived in primitive communism. Then slave empires arose in the fertile crescent. After Rome was sacked, decentralized feudalism became dominant. We still see its vestiges, England and Japan are ruled by royals, officially. Capitalism began taking hold only a few hundred years ago. It may be permanent in our lifetime, but it will surely be replaced in time. I doubt production will be for the purpose of enriching heirs 10000 years from now, or even 1000 years from now (perhaps even sooner).
Marx said capitalism will run its course, until its doing more harm than good. Then it will be replaced by a different system of production.
Capitalism as in money, trade, loans and private property date back at least to ancient Babylon. If you wish to include "modern" banking in the mix with currency exchange rates, then you go to 1157 Venice or Genoa.
What happened hundred years ago was income tax.
Capitalism is simply the codification of a monetary transaction to which both parties agree. As long as there is supply and demand (finite resources) there is capitalism.
We have democratic socialism to make capitalism less brutal (read: less efficient but more humanizing) but demand is too fickle for most economies to be centralized much beyond that.
That depends on your definition of "capitalism" and "economy".
If you use "capitalism" in contrast to Mercantilism and feudalism – which seems to be a rather unpopular view in English-speaking countries for some reason –, then it makes perfectly sense.
Although it would help to actually read it.
Not really. A lot of today's capitalism is based on concepts such as copyright, patents and trade secrets, which are definitely not "natural" - in fact, they are directly opposite of "free market".
Personally, I believe that a capitalistic system where these three are eliminated or at least severely restricted would be much preferable to what we have today.
Could you please elaborate on how the world would look like without these three concepts?
Ownership is a form of monopoly as well.
Just because a resource is rivalrous doesn't mean more than one person couldn't be permitted to use it, particularly when you're talking about capital goods.
They are not "the" rights of ownership, they are a particular set of rights of ownership.
Once upon a time people were included in the set of things people had a right to own, and ideas weren't. These things can change. The rights we have now are just those we currently think of as most correct.
No, that's just a market. A necessary, but by no means sufficient condition to label an economy capitalist. That's why the new word "capitalism" has been introduced to describe the difference.
You could imagine (as a quick, not particularly explored example) a society where there's only a market for labour, and the state leases all durable goods, and sells or provides all consumables.
Yes, absolutely. For a system to be capitalistic, you also have to have at least capital intensive means of production (hence the name), a real labor market and more or less free access to the market both as a consumer and a producer. Capitalism only started existing with the onset of the industrial revolution.
Reductio at absurdum: A Greek citizen in 200 BC is buying fish from a fisherman, with coins, at freely decided prices. Thats the market at work, but no capitalism at all.
It's actually more of a critique of current leftist ideas (from a Left perspective) than anything.
quote:
Getting less work seems unlikely to come about without the fight for solidarity, the chief intellectual achievement of the workers’ movement, and one that none of the accelerationists see fit to mention as an ideal worth preserving or even renovating. This is despite the fact that automation—or, more broadly, the increasing precariousness of labor through technologically assisted means—has always been dialectically connected with it. What tech enthusiasts call“disruption” is in fact almost always directed at forms of organization that preserve a modicum of workers’ control over knowledge and the products of labor. Because London taxicabs are controlled by people who have built up impressive maps of one of the world’s most complex cities in their brains, they ought to be replaced by self-driving cars operating on Google Maps. Because high school teachers have professional systems of accreditation and training and have unions to protect these, they must be replaced by lower-paid short-term Ivy-League graduates and cyber charters.
Automation isn’t a neutral, inevitable part of capitalism. It comes about through the desire to break formal and informal systems of workers’ control—including unions—and replace them with managerially controlled and minutely surveilled systems of piecework. An entire political and legal infrastructure has been built up to make these so-called tendencies seem like the natural progression of capitalism, rather than the effects of fights—sometimes simple, sometimes violent—to deprive people of whatever sense of control they have over their work. The only reason such work has ever not been totally shitty is that some attempt to preserve such control was made. This — not some implausible notion of a fully automated postwork future—still remains the surest of utopian impulses, the one most likely to deliver the things we want.
Though the times are bad, the accelerationists presume that the state of the left will get better simply because it can, in principle, get better. An imaginative (if implausible) account of the future, accelerationism is a weak account of how anyone might be persuaded to get there. We recall Lenin’s comment about how communism would be “Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.” The accelerationists seem to be telling us: forget about the Soviets, the electricity will do that work for us! But politics can’t get done by machines.
We can get the imagined benefits of techno-communism by getting better at systems integration through wider adoption of improved common technology platforms. For example, what if web assembly had a registry and semantic versioning like Node.js, and that became the standard for integrating B2B, government, and IoT? This would be a programming-language agnostic system. Systems for things like digital democracy, smart contracts, etc. could be easily deployed, integrated, and evolved.
See http://www.reddit.com/r/rad_decentralization and http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage
I've just started reading Matt Ridley's book and so far an enjoyable read.
Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-...
But I can't write a tl;dr - it would not sink in my brain. Part overview of the area, part, something else, I really have no idea what the author was trying to say
Please enlighten me
> Several crashes later, the gloom has returned, and the signs of autumn are once again most recognizable in the pronouncements of free-market capitalism’s erstwhile boosters.
I tried to read this sentence 3 times now, and I still do not know what it means. The same holds for entire paragraphs.
IMO the author needs a healthy dose of http://web.princeton.edu/sites/opplab/papers/opp%20consequen...
> I tried to read this sentence 3 times now, and I still do not know what it means. The same holds for entire paragraphs.
Is that sentence really that hard to read? I mean, it's definitely overly flowery, but it means almost word-for-word "After many financial crises, there is a lot of economic pessimism around again, even among free-market capitalism's biggest proponents."
The whole article is like this. Misunderstand one flowery phrase, misunderstand the entire sentence, misunderstand the whole paragraph. It's like the author hates convincing people.
https://www.google.com/search?q=define+booster
/shrug If those are familiar words to you, then I think it's a little harsh to say that they "hate convincing people" because they use them. Totally agree that a good author edits out rarer words to reach a broader audience, but I think that's a very weak vector of critique for the article as a whole.
My interpretation: Capitalism is on its last legs, but the "new left" has no idea what will be next, other than there will be robots, there is basic income and it's better than what we have now, just because.
Can't it?
Democracy is simply voting, which can easily be handled by machines.
There's quite a lot more to politics, and politics in democracy, than just the act of voting.
Voting is simply voting. If you insist on inventing a new definition, Democracy is a specific mode of a) gathering and representing the political will of the population; and b) a specific mode of forming that political will by the civil society. Voting is just the rather banal part of making the present aggregate political will visible and quantifiable. The most defining part of Democracy happens before the vote.
Its in most political science textbooks, and even on wikipedia, hidden in point 2 of the 4 point definition at the top.
Have a look at most socialist eastern european countries in the 1980s. You had multiple parties, and you could vote. But surly we both wouldn't describe that as democracy. What was missing? Formally, there wasn't much of a difference. Sure, you often had compulsory voting, but Australia has that too.
The missing part was the lack of an independent civic sector. You had no politically relevant NGOs, no independent unions etc. You couldn't simply create a new political party at will. The government was the only actor able to meaningfully influence the political landscape.
Just because you are used to the current legislative system doesn't mean it isn't replaceable.
* The editors point to previous boom/bust cycles, and the tendency of strong workers movements & chains of strikes/riots/unions to emerge during the bust periods and demand an economic shift towards greater workers rights / less control by capitalists.
* They then point out that no such strong workers movement is emerging in this bust cycle.
* They claim that this is because there is a strong line of "accelerationist" thinking among the modern left (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism). TL;DR on accelerationism: most of HN's libertarian leftism -- embrace automation, adopt basic income, make everyone their own producer (3D printing, off-the-grid electricity, etc.).
* The article claims that this movement will not succeed without significant political change alongside its technological advances, and that no such political effort is currently happening, as far as the editors can tell. "The potential alone for this sort of mass liberation isn’t a guarantee that it will ever take place"
" The old divisions of left and right seem to be falling apart and we don't know what's going to replace it yet"
The right is now collapsing into isolationist farce (Trunp being the epitome of what has happened across the Western world), the left is, well we aren't sure what. I agree with the final ideas - utopia is not destiny.
Thanks