There is no misunderstanding it, capitalism is a law of gravity, people will always seek to maximize their utility, you were absolutely correct when you said capitalism is nothing more than economic freedom, that is completely accurate.

Freedom is not in and of itself good; it is a pre requisite for good; but it is also a pre requisite for evil. I am much more concerned with what people do with their freedom, than the mere presence of it. Capitalism sees nothing wrong with price gouging, as it's merely an exercise in signaling ensuring scarce resources get to where they're most valued. If you have a man dying of thirst, and you have a bottle of water and he will buy it for $10,000,000, that's the market price. If you choose to pour it on the ground instead of give it to him, it's your water you can do what you want.

Your idea seems to be that we have to take both the good and the bad, whereas my position is to maximize the good and limit the bad. Economic purity spiraling doesn't allow that sort of flexibility.

But that's the problem, if you ask what the guy should do with his water, capitalism doesn't offer an answer beyond - it's his water and he is free to do what he pleases. Which is true, unless someone else forces him to do something else. It doesn't say what he SHOULD do. Just like engineering doesn't say what you SHOULD design. You can use it for good things or bad things.

Blaming capitalism for greed is misplaced. Bad people who have bad morals do bad things. The economic system isn't the culprit of those bad things. It's a different axis.

If you want to maximize the good, you must have freedom AND virtue. In the end, in the absence of virtue freedom reverts to slavery anyway. And virtue with the absence of freedom does not and cannot maximize the good.

Zobel said:

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But that's the problem, if you ask what the guy should do with his water, capitalism doesn't offer an answer beyond - it's his water and he is free to do what he pleases. Which is true, unless someone else forces him to do something else. It doesn't say what he SHOULD do. Just like engineering doesn't say what you SHOULD design. You can use it for good things or bad things.

Blaming capitalism for greed is misplaced. Bad people who have bad morals do bad things. The economic system isn't the culprit of those bad things. It's a different axis.

If you want to maximize the good, you must have freedom AND virtue. In the end, in the absence of virtue freedom reverts to slavery anyway. And virtue with the absence of freedom does not and cannot maximize the good.

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I blame Satan for Greed, I blame capitalism for saying it's rational and completely fine, and I blame free marketers for saying we have to accept the good and the bad because if try to curtail its excesses we're committing the sin of free market heterodoxy. I do not care about theory or principles for the sake of theory or principles, I care about practicality. If I was a King and saw a person haggling with a dying man over the cost of a drink of water, I would clap him in irons not say "we have to let him leverage the man's impending death because it's actually worse if we physically make him give that man water". It's senseless

Again, this is misplaced. Capitalism doesn't say greed is fine, it says people should be free. It does not judge their choices, right or wrong.

When you decide to clap that man in irons it isn't because you're judging capitalism saying he has the freedom to make a choice, you're making a judgment on his choice.

You're not talking about curtailing the excesses of capitalism, because deciding whether or not to give someone water is not a decision informed by capitalism. It doesn't say whether you should or should not.

But, at any rate, here we have the bottom line. You don't like someone's decisions, so deep down you don't want people to be able to do things you don't agree with. That actually is anti-capitalist. So, congratulations, I guess? Welcome to statism.

Am I supposed to arbitrarily hate statism as tautology? I have an end in mind, and will apply statism or freedom depending on the circumstances. Good kids don't have curfews bad kids do. It isn't the curfew that makes them good or bad. It's why I'm able to champion the banning of porn, but not the Bible; some things are good some are bad and it's okay to treat them differently

Yeah, dude. Statism is bad. The only reason you think it's good is because in your fairy tale land you're the King and not the serf.

If you don't like some of the choices people make as free individuals just wait til you hear about what they do when they have the power of the state behind them.

Zobel said:

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Yeah, dude. Statism is bad. The only reason you think it's good is because in your fairy tale land you're the King and not the serf.

If you don't like some of the choices people make as free individuals just wait til you hear about what they do when they have the power of the state behind them.

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The only reason I think it's good, is because sometimes it's good. I love when the state outlaws things that are bad, I don't like when they outlaw things that are good. History is littered with the carcasses of bad kings who overstepped and were violently deposed; I have yet to see a liberal democracy overthrown.

Maximize the good, don't maximize freedom because sometimes freedom is bad.

What angels are you going to get to run the state? If you don't like the choices of individuals, why do you think they're going to get better when aggregated or amplified?

And what do you do when someone else is in charge who doesn't have the same ideas about bad and good as you?

Zobel said:

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What angels are you going to get to run the state? If you don't like the choices of individuals, why do you think they're going to get better when aggregated or amplified?

And what do you do when someone else is in charge who doesn't have the same ideas about bad and good as you?

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Then you depose them, as I said it is much easier to overthrow a king than a liberal democracy. When you have a king you may get Herod but you may get Charlemagne, the madden crowd always chooses barabbas

I think basically all of history says this is a bad take. But what's revealing is in none of these scenarios are you don't content to let others be. You either are their king or killing their king to replace him with yourself.

Or I could just be a dude living in Chile after a strongman deposed the elected communist government and created the strongest country Latin America ever knew

CrackerJackAg said:

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one MEEN Ag said:

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You are right that there isn't an 11th commandment to buyback stock when commodity prices are down.

You are misguided that that there isn't any macro economic or political systems that Christians should endorse and see to be implemented (or not).

Of course, Christianity has no army, no use of force, no rebellion, no subversion to bring about these types of changes.

You live in a democracy. You have a share in authority. God wants us to see to it that we use authority well.

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You perceive capitalism and democracy to be part of the Christian faith. I disagree with that assertion just as I would that any other political system (outside monarchy potentially) or economic system is part of Christianity.

Not much else to talk about. No point in a nuh huh, uh huh, nu huh argument.

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I say that there are foundational elements of capitalism and democratic freedoms from God. Not that Christianity endorses Modern Capitalism (TM) or Democracy (TM). Heaven is not a democracy. If anything, replicating heaven through a benevolent and strong king has the most backing. But benevolence is such a rare trait among kings and dictators. Don't get me confused with a Protestant who thinks Jesus would embrace America here.

Again, go tithe until you're broke. Live communally out of love. But if you ever aspire for office, don't look to implement that communing aspect out of the barrel of a gun. And those who would caucus with you under the banner of implementing a communing utopia only seek to enslave and silence you.

As a side note, i would like to plug one of my favorite books/political science research: "The Dictators Handbook" it discusses why democracies and brutal dictators are stable but nothing in the squishy middle is. It is not a Christian book. It's a poli sci majors phd and life work.

Here's a YouTube video recap by CGPGrey.

I've just gotta drop this absolute cracker of an all time quote here. Not a fan of the guy, he was red as all get out, but this is an all time quote

What about complex constitutional oligarchies like that of ancient Sparta? Boom, nerded.

Zobel said:

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Just a reminder, this is not the first time you've said that employers have less of an obligation to unskilled laborers than lords or slaveowners had to their serfs and slaves. Basically saying that if you want to guarantee basic necessities, then you're better off being a slave or a serf. That doesn't sound like a resounding endorsement for capitalism, especially when you're saying that capitalism generates more wealth than all these other systems. It seems like capitalism is very good at generating a lot of wealth for a very small number of people. If everyone else starves, then you shrug your shoulders and blame the market.

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If you want someone else to take care of you, it isn't that you're better off being a serf, it's that you're willing to trade your freedom for security. Freedom comes with responsibility. Likewise, when people don't have freedom, the people that are controlling them have a responsibility toward their wards. Like, for example, people who are in prison. I don't know why anyone would want to make employees wards of their employers. It seems to suggest that they are incapable of providing for themselves.

Imagine a line item bill of sale for a laborer. You agree there's a market value for a certain kind of labor, but perhaps that doesn't cover "basic necessities". Let's say it is $10/h for the one, plus an additional $5/h to gross up to cover the other. Your paycheck breaks the rates out - $10/hr for labor provided, $5/h for ... what? What are you buying there?

Your last paragraph is just the marxist lie. Capitalism generates more wealth for everyone, not a limited few. This isn't an opinion. The point is - everyone else doesn't starve. And again, none of this opines whatever on the morality of charity. I don't understand why you think that there's some evil in recognizing the difference between fair compensation and charity.

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And I'm trying to tell you there is a more important law at work than supply and demand. Supply and demand need stable markets to be effective, and stable markets need stable societies. A society where people can't support themselves with full time labor is not a stable society. A hungry group of commoners is the origin story for nearly all bandits, brigands, pirates, warlords and revolutions in history. When that happens, you don't have stable markets anymore where you can treat labor like any other commodity. There is a lower boundary to labor wages because markets are just one part of a larger society. Again, if the value of unskilled labor in the society drops below a living wage then you won't have a society for long. Eventually you'll keep going around and around with coups, civil wars, and revolutions until you finally end up in a society that provides the absolute minimum to the unskilled laborers.

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Ok? What do you propose to do about that, exactly? This isn't a capitalism problem.

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And when there is plenty to go around, but it's not going around? When labor is productive and profitable enough to provide a living wage, but automation is cheaper?

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Again, what do you propose? You ignore the bottom line - these are all free exchanges, where by definition both parties derive mutual benefit. Do you think we should force people to engage in charity? Because that's the only alternative.

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I disagree that this is not a capitalism problem. As you've acknowledged, all other economic systems come with reciprocal social obligations. King/vassal, lord/peasant, lord/serf, master/slave: these are the historical analogues to full time employment. Even in capitalism you'll see this type of relationship. In post WW2 Japan, full time employment at a company was a mutual commitment to the well being of both the company and the employee. Layoffs almost never happened and employees were rarely fired for any reason. In addition, the companies would often pay for the schooling of their employees' children, and they would grow up to work at that same company. In return, the employees didn't hop around to different companies for better pay, and they would work insane amounts of hours when necessary. Even the horror of communism acknowledges interdependence of economics and social stability.

The capitalism you describe is completely asocial. It's merely one individual making a simple transaction with another individual. So if that system leads to social unrest because it is entirely neglecting the social component of labor, then it is absolutely at fault. And if you want to insist that capitalism is entirely asocial and unable to fix the social unrest caused by itself, then for a stable society you need some outside power, like the state or the church, to fix those problems by imposing obligations and limits that capitalism won't or can't impose on itself.

It's also a bit disingenuous to talk about individual labor transactions as equal and free. Imagine Jeff Bezos negotiating with his undocumented migrant housekeeper. Maybe she values her time at $20 per hour and a bare minimum living wage would be 13 per hour. Maybe he only wants to pay $5 per hour and the entire town is full of ultra wealthy people that only want to pay 5 per hour. For employers, this is an afterthought. Housekeeper, no housekeeper, no biggie either way. Jeff Bezos, his girlfriend or a kid cleans the house, or no one cleans the house. Big shrug. For the housekeeper, this is life and death. She doesn't work and she doesn't survive. (I'm being a bit over the top for the sake of the point, but I'm certain similar situations have happened). This is not an equal, free exchange. There is an element of coercion that comes with such a huge power differential, especially when one person's survival is on the line and the other's is not. Desperate people don't have market freedom. This combined with lack of any social responsibility makes a fatal flaw for the social stability of absolute free market capitalism.

Now I think that with an outside support like UBI you'd see the free exchange of labor you envision. In that scenario, both parties are gauging personal profit. Not one party gauging profit while the other gauges survival

Man, Japan is not an has never been an example of a capitalist economy. Having worked for a traditional Japanese company, I think you're absolutely off the mark in how you see them… how they see themselves.. within the system.

I don't understand what you want here. I tell you that all capitalism represents is freedom, and your answer is immediately that something needs to impose obligations and limits. I hate to sound like a broken record, but all you're saying is you don't like what other people do when left to their own devices, so you want someone else to control them.

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This is not an equal, free exchange. There is an element of coercion that comes with such a huge power differential, especially when one person's survival is on the line and the other's is not.

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If both parties are free to walk away, there is zero ability to coerce. If all the rich people only offer $5 the only way it becomes value is if someone takes it. You keep ignoring that it is by definition a two party transaction. If someone takes it for $5 then they believe it is to their benefit.

In the end it's always the same. You don't want people to be free to make their own choices. You don't want Bezos to be able to offer $5 and you really secretly don't want someone to accept $5.

I love how it's never "without someone to tell me otherwise I'm going to cheat these poor people and underpay them". How come you want to tell bezos and his housekeeper what to do? Who gets to decide how much you pay for the things you buy and sell?

I feel like I shouldn't have to explicitly say that society doesn't function when everyone does whatever they want, whenever they want, without any limitation or regard for other people. But apparently here we are. So I'm clearly not a freedom absolutist or a laissez faire capitalist. A functional society requires social bonds. Neither absolute freedom nor pure capitalism provide for any social cohesion. Both are useful as abstract goals and ideals that are only restrained for good reasons, but sometimes there really are good reasons.

Are you an anarchist? Asking seriously. It doesn't seem like you like the idea of law. It would make discussions much simpler if that was the case

Capitalism doesn't say there are no social bonds, or that there are no societal rules. It means people have freedom of exchange and own their own property. You can wrap that idea into any number of social structures.

You keep wanting to accomplish the goals on the social / moral axis on the economic axis. You can't get there from here. Limiting people's freedom does not make them more moral, it just concentrates power in the hands of fewer people.

Again, where are you going to find these angels to run your system? There is no alternative other than instituting control. If you don't like what people do by themselves, why do you think you'll like it better when certain people have control not only over themselves but over others?

Do YOU need someone to tell you what to do with your time and money? Or are you exempt from your own medicine?

Dies Irae said:

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Are you an anarchist? Asking seriously. It doesn't seem like you like the idea of law. It would make discussions much simpler if that was the case

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Not at all. I have no problem with laws at all. You both keep wanting to accomplish moral ends by controlling economic means. That is a fools errand. Virtue produces good action, not coercion.

Zobel said:

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Dies Irae said:

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Are you an anarchist? Asking seriously. It doesn't seem like you like the idea of law. It would make discussions much simpler if that was the case

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Not at all. I have no problem with laws at all. You both keep wanting to accomplish moral ends by controlling economic means. That is a fools errand. Virtue produces good action, not coercion.

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Then why do we punish people who break the law?

Not to produce virtue. Or do you think convicting people for theft is didactic?

Do you really think the minimum wage law or all of our various welfare laws make people more charitable?

Zobel said:

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Not to produce virtue. Or do you think convicting people for theft is didactic?

Do you really think the minimum wage law or all of our various welfare laws make people more charitable?

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Where does the prohibition against stealing come from? All law is a moral code, why are you fine with some and not others

In the most basic sense laws protect natural rights - life, liberty, and property. In other words they ensure freedom by preventing people from taking the freedom of others. Locke is a pretty decent read, though what he wrote wasn't exactly original, just clear. You want to go further than protecting, and proscribe people's freedom further to coerce them to do things you think are right. That is a completely different exercise. In order to do that you stop ensuring freedom and actively begin limiting it.

Zobel said:

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In the most basic sense laws protect natural rights - life, liberty, and property. In other words they ensure freedom by preventing people from taking the freedom of others. Locke is a pretty decent read, though what he wrote wasn't exactly original, just clear. You want to go further than protecting, and proscribe people's freedom further to coerce them to do things you think are right. That is a completely different exercise. In order to do that you stop ensuring freedom and actively begin limiting it.

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Locke is way closer to me than he is to you, he specifically notes the difference between liberty and license. You're drawing arbitrary lines and saying yours are right and mine are wrong; "Life, liberty, property ok…anything else, not ok".

Also, you're acting if my moral code is some newfangled bespoke theory I have personally assembled, rather than traditional western ethics which have been in place for thousands of years. I can assure you "don't prey on the weak" isn't an original invention of mine.

My system doesn't promote preying on the weak. That's what I don't get, y'all see freedom and say that promotes greed or predatory action or whatever. Do you apply that to yourself? You talk about how you pay for things with your employees based on some moral sense, but that's not legally required. Why do you get that opportunity but others don't?

You seem to think that liberty precludes consequence. It doesn't.

You mentioned telos. Freedom's telos is salvation. You can't force people to salvation. Coerced charity gains nothing - it erodes the character of the one receiving as it destroys humility and gratitude by calling it an entitlement, and eroded the character of the one giving as it turns it into an obligation rather than a voluntary act. To cultivate virtue you must have the freedom of choice. Maximizing freedom requires curtailing of activity that enslaves or harms others and their freedoms, precisely so they can be free to pursue salvation and virtue. The only reason to justify that curtailment is to say that some are incapable of handling freedom and it's responsibilities, which is to invite slavery. This, incidentally, is Plato's position in the republic. I think it's flatly wrong, and unchristian.

Zobel said:

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I reject the idea that capitalism runs on greed. Self interest and greed are not the same thing.

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They sure do rhyme, though.

Zobel said:

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My system doesn't promote preying on the weak. That's what I don't get, y'all see freedom and say that promotes greed or predatory action or whatever. Do you apply that to yourself? You talk about how you pay for things with your employees based on some moral sense, but that's not legally required. Why do you get that opportunity but others don't?

You seem to think that liberty precludes consequence. It doesn't.

You mentioned telos. Freedom's telos is salvation. You can't force people to salvation. Coerced charity gains nothing - it erodes the character of the one receiving as it destroys humility and gratitude by calling it an entitlement, and eroded the character of the one giving as it turns it into an obligation rather than a voluntary act. To cultivate virtue you must have the freedom of choice. Maximizing freedom requires curtailing of activity that enslaves or harms others and their freedoms, precisely so they can be free to pursue salvation and virtue. The only reason to justify that curtailment is to say that some are incapable of handling freedom and it's responsibilities, which is to invite slavery. This, incidentally, is Plato's position in the republic. I think it's flatly wrong, and unchristian.

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Isn't this just a classical foundationalist position? It looks like you are just assuming natural rights.

I am taxing as my axioms that man a was created in the image of God, and the teaching of the Faith regarding free will and the necessity of faith to salvation. Everything else flows from there.

one MEEN Ag said:

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CrackerJackAg said:

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one MEEN Ag said:

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You are right that there isn't an 11th commandment to buyback stock when commodity prices are down.

You are misguided that that there isn't any macro economic or political systems that Christians should endorse and see to be implemented (or not).

Of course, Christianity has no army, no use of force, no rebellion, no subversion to bring about these types of changes.

You live in a democracy. You have a share in authority. God wants us to see to it that we use authority well.

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You perceive capitalism and democracy to be part of the Christian faith. I disagree with that assertion just as I would that any other political system (outside monarchy potentially) or economic system is part of Christianity.

Not much else to talk about. No point in a nuh huh, uh huh, nu huh argument.

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I say that there are foundational elements of capitalism and democratic freedoms from God. Not that Christianity endorses Modern Capitalism (TM) or Democracy (TM). Heaven is not a democracy. If anything, replicating heaven through a benevolent and strong king has the most backing. But benevolence is such a rare trait among kings and dictators. Don't get me confused with a Protestant who thinks Jesus would embrace America here.

Again, go tithe until you're broke. Live communally out of love. But if you ever aspire for office, don't look to implement that communing aspect out of the barrel of a gun. And those who would caucus with you under the banner of implementing a communing utopia only seek to enslave and silence you.

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You're a weird dude. I think you have something in your head I'm not saying. Going on about utopias and communing and running for office with barrels of guns…strange. I didn't say anything like that. You need to relax.

I think both of your examples are flawed. The first is flawed in the sense that we don't particularly preclude selling oneself into slavery - we outlaw slavery, period, as a universal. The explanation is that human life is above value, and therefore cannot be priced. However! There is nothing preventing anyone from working for room and board for as long as they like. The only proviso under our current system is that the price of room and board has to exceed minimum wage (I hope you can see the absurdity of this), and is considered income for tax purposes.

The second isn't really an economic question. The "right to vote" is a privilege granted by the United States to its citizens, and collectively the United States chooses not to buy or sell that privilege, nor permit its sovereignty to be bought or sold. In other words, you don't own your vote in order to be able to sell it - it is licensed to you through your citizenship, which is not a natural right but comes through the social system. This is the same reason the state can suspend your right to vote.

You might add bankruptcy to your list. But this is less of a pricing mechanism and more of a fault clearing mode, much as slavery and debtor's prisons were fault clearing modes.

At any rate, I don't have any problem with individuals choosing to cede freedom to secure liberty. This is the essence of society - the idea of law and sovereignty is rooted in the idea of individuals ceding the use of violence to the state. The distinction should be made in where, and why, those freedoms are ceded.

You idea seems to be "in order to keep the poor from rising up and killing us all we have to give them more money." That seems like a bad premise to operate under.

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Lastly, you seem really hung up on this idea of compelling virtue. You are correct that compelled virtue is no credit to the one compelled. But that's not the end of the issue. Some amount of compelled virtue is required for a society to function. In ours, taxation and jury duty come to mind. These are integral to our society and mandatory. We compel people to do both whether they wish to or not. Attending jury duty against your will doesn't make you a good person, but it does help your society run smoothly.

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You have it backwards. Compelled virtue is not required for a society to function, actual virtue is. Society is based on implicit and explicit trust between people, and this is and can only be based in a functional minimum level of virtue. Freedom and virtue exist in concert - the more virtue a people have, the more freedom can be sustained. Without virtue, there can be no freedom. As coercion negates virtue, the more you coerce, the less freedom you get.

It is not virtuous to pay your taxes or go to jury duty because they are coerced. There is no virtue in doing something at the point of a proverbial gun, or to avoid being thrown into prison. Which, incidentally, is one of the problems. People who don't understand suffrage or public virtue make the same mistake you're thinking here. If you read Aristotle's Politics you'll find several examples of how to sort people to find those with public virtue and ensure that they have citizenship and suffrage. Voluntarily choosing to undertake civic duties, like specifically jury duty, are means of electing oneself to citizenship. We would be far better off failure to answer a jury summons put one's suffrage at risk. You would align public virtue and suffrage.

Our jury system runs smoothy ostensibly because the jurors have some sense of civic virtue. Our jury system fails because every person on most juries is only their because they couldn't get out of it. Not exactly a ringing endorsement, nor a strong securing of "smooth" society.

At any rate I'm not sure the US qualifies to enter into any discussion about stability as a government. We haven't been around for very long and have already had a bloody civil war and wholesale changes made to our system of governance which would have been unthinkable to our founders. Comparatively in history I'm not sure we have much to say.

You also didn't address my questions. If people in general can't be trusted to make good / moral decisions, how can people in particular be trusted to do the same?

And - do you need someone overseeing your buying and selling to prevent you from hurting other people?

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You have it backwards. Compelled virtue is not required for a society to function, actual virtue is. Society is based on implicit and explicit trust between people, and this is and can only be based in a functional minimum level of virtue. Freedom and virtue exist in concert - the more virtue a people have, the more freedom can be sustained. Without virtue, there can be no freedom. As coercion negates virtue, the more you coerce, the less freedom you get.

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No society has ever had that much virtue, and yet you insist it is necessary for a stable society. There have been many stable societies through history, and I can't think of a single one with a preponderence of virtue. They all have plenty of compelled pro-social behavior, though.

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You idea seems to be "in order to keep the poor from rising up and killing us all we have to give them more money." That seems like a bad premise to operate under.

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To respond in the same tone: your idea seems to be that working people should be happy being homeless and starving, because capitalism is always right.