[quote]The Mage wrote:
First (and I have said this before) capitalism works because it is the most similar to nature. Survival of the fittest. If you have a few companies competing, and one is screwing the customer left and right, they will not be in business very long. Also if a company is selling crap compared to the other companies, they will fail.[/quote]
That’s not capitalism. It’s competition within a free market economy. Yes, you can argue that capitalist countries usually have free market economies, but one does not necessarily always imply the other.
For example, oil companies do not really compete; they work in a cartel. They are still capitalist.
Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision. Its prices, production, and the distribution of goods are MAINLY determined by competition in a free market, but the truth is there are plenty of cartels: oil being the most obvious one.
Anti-trust laws are specifically designed to keep the market as competitive as possible, however one can argue that the concept of anti-trust laws is one of social engineering, i.e., socialist.
[quote]The Mage wrote:
It does not sound very nice, but the weakest of the heard will be picked off. Just realize that you are the predator.[/quote]
Are we? Should we? Does that work within the same species? Isn’t it a negative-sum game, when we have predators and prey within the same species?
[quote]The Mage wrote:
The biggest problem with capitalism is actually ignorance. […]
Interestingly when I hear about the successful business people being interviewed, the term integrity comes up quite a bit. I just heard Dave Ramsey on the radio talking about this subject.[/quote]
The biggest problem with HUMANITY is ignorance and lack of ethics. Capitalism’s failures cannot be excused by that, because any political system has to be designed TAKING that into account.
Think about this: can’t the exact same thing be said about socialism? That the biggest problem with socialism is ignorance and lack of ethics?
Look at Germany, for example: it has been an essentially Socialist country since WWII; strong social security, strong labor laws. What failed? Ignorance and lack of ethics! People started abusing the social security system. They started abusing labor laws. They stopped being productive, because they felt there was no incentive to be productive (rather than seeing that ETHICS dictate that you should do your job, rather than be lazy and whine about it).
This is actually the epitome of ignorance. Only an ignorant person feels that they can get away indefinitely with not doing their jobs. So, Germany’s economic problems can also be attributed to the ignorance (and lack of ethics) of its population.
Now, what you can indeed argue is that it requires more ignorance (i.e., a deeper level of ignorance) to screw up capitalism. That might be true, but that means Americans are more ignorant than Europeans. Which they are, as I am going to cover a little bit later. But the problem is: it’s exactly the deeply Capitalist, technocratic, utilitarian culture of the US that creates that ignorance. So we have a catch-22 – each political system requires the level of ignorance that is just enough to keep it afloat – and since people tend to use the laws of least effort, the same system actually breeds that level of ignorance (regression to the mean!).
[quote]The Mage wrote:
A great misconception about business people is when you listen to the news, and hear stories such as Enron. But you never hear the good stories, only the bad. Also these stories are of these people getting in trouble, which should be further proof that it is harder to succeed if you have no integrity.[/quote]
The most “successful” people in a capitalist environment (as defined by capitalism as the ones that accumulate the most wealth) are the ones that have no real integrity but are good at creating the illusion they do, by selecting very carefully when they choose to be unethical (when they lie, when they cheat, etc.). People with full integrity – the ones that never lie, cheat, etc. – go absolutely nowhere in the business world. They probably won’t even be able to get a job (because these days, people routinely lie in their job applications, and people who don’t lie are at a disadvantage).
People that show or admit they have no integrity – i.e., they lie and cheat all the time – will indeed also be in trouble because they’re transparently “bad” people.
But people that say they have integrity and are really good at picking when to lie and cheat (it can be quite rarely, but you have to be willing to lie and cheat when it’s useful) will become very successful very quickly.
[quote]The Mage wrote:
Also capitalism works best with intelligence. In other words if you do stupid shit, you will probably fail. Luck will only carry you so far.[/quote]
Again, you can also argue that socialism works best with intelligence. Remember that intelligence is one’s ability to learn and adapt to the environment; hence, if the environment is socialist, if everyone learns and adapts to it, it will be successful. Exactly as capitalism. Or communism. Or even anarchy.
Point being: if everyone was highly intelligent and, hence, learnt and adapted to their environment, ANY political system – even the absence of one – would be successful.
[quote]The Mage wrote:
As far as studies showing how people in other countries are all happy wonderful people, while Americans are loathsome angry bitter people, I call foul. [/quote]
I never said that. I said that Americans are the unhappiest; that does not mean or imply what you are saying. 50% is higher than 49%, for example, and having 49% of extremely unhappy people does not mean you have a happy wonderful population.
You’re exaggerating and distorting my point to maintain your delusion…
[quote]The Mage wrote:
It is very hard to gauge a subject like happiness. And when it comes to comparing people from one country to another, politics comes into play too easily.[/quote]
So, even without knowing anything about the studies I mention, you make that assessment. I guess you’re psychic.
Anyway, you can tell yourself whatever you want if that makes you happy… It doesn’t change the reality of the problem, it just makes it easier for you to cope with it.
[quote]The Mage wrote:
An example are comparing American school intelligence to other countries. Our country takes the whole of the school population, while many other countries only take their brightest students. Many countries do not want negative information coming out about their people.
In these countries there can be people who think that their answers to a question will be taken to the government, and they don’t want that.[/quote]
This is not a China vs USA competition. You cannot possibly think that fear of political persecution is a factor on Western European students?! Also, why, again, are you assuming the studies were flawed, e.g., that they compared students living in the US? Actually they compared randomly picked students in their own environment.
Both my wife and I are professors and, trust me, it’s quite obvious that American students are far more ignorant than, say, German or Dutch students. And we don’t say that based solely on what we’ve observed here at Stanford, because, indeed, that would be skewed (only the best students from Europe come here) – it’s based on our observations teaching IN The Netherlands and Germany and then coming back to Stanford.
Note that I highlighted more ignorant – not less intelligent. Why? Because intelligence is extremely hard to measure, even in an academic environment, so I can’t say I have any reliable stats about it. Also, it’s much more interesting to us (as professors) the number of highly intelligent people rather than the average (one can have a very good average but everyone average, but one can also have a very poor average but a handful of brilliant people that all happen to be our students).
A very clear proof of what I’m saying is the fact that, for example, students with African ancestry have, on average, lower SAT scores than students with Asian ancestry, but if my wife or I were to pick a roster of our most brilliant students (from Stanford or from Europe), there wouldn’t be a single one with Asian ancestry (they’re all average, none brilliant), but plenty with African ancestry. What does that mean? SAT averages mean very little.
So, to highlight what I mean by ignorance, I’ll give you the simplest example my wife uses, as a first-class-in-the-quarter test she gives:
… if you say this is true:
“If I had studied for the exam (p), I would have received a good grade (q)”
Is this true?:
“If I didn’t study for the exam (~p), I wouldn’t have received a good grade (~q)”
Well, no, it is not true.
p => q (~p V q) is NOT equivalent to ~p => ~q (p V ~q)
Not only the majority of US students gave the wrong answer, when she explained it, they never understood what the heck she was talking about – they even claimed not only they had never heard about it (again, we’re talking Stanford students here), they were pretty sure it was “illogical”!!! Yes, they actually use that phrase: “that’s illogical”.
I ended up incorporating this little test in my own tests, with identical results (note that I teach MBA students, which have even less of an excuse for not knowing this).
If you try this experiment in Europe, most students will give the right answer. And the few that do not, will invariably “get it” quickly after it’s explained.
There are many other examples from my experience teaching in Business School – just ask for a subject (even History) and I can give you plenty of examples where US students showed a lot more ignorance.
If you ask me the reason for this phenomenon of ignorance amongst American Students, I’ll give you a very simple explanation: culture; Americans do not value knowledge for the sake of knowledge; we value knowledge for its purpose. Most American teenagers feel that knowing Math beyond basic arithmetic, for example, has no real purpose in their life, especially if they do not want to become scientists. On the other hand, Europeans have pride in amassing knowledge even if it’s ultimately “useless” to their jobs. They learn for the sake of learning – for the pleasure of knowing.
Because Americans are so focused they can become hugely specialized in their knowledge, and often extremely good at what they do. That’s, theoretically, good, however in today’s world, where people often have to change careers in the middle of their adult lives, it’s a huge problem.
It also creates a huge problem for people who retire, and, according to many scientists, explains why degenerative mental illnesses are so much more prevalent in the US than in Europe (it’s easier for Europeans to keep their minds busy after they retire). One can argue that’s easy to fix – don’t retire – but we all know that not everybody has the option of not retiring.
Note that this is not a recent phenomenon; if you look at Physics history, for example, you can easily see a multitude of examples where scientific breakthroughs in the US, were inevitably utilitarian (they had the objective of actually building something useful and commercially viable), while scientific breakthroughs in the realm of theory were almost inevitably made in Europe (Relativity, Quantum Mechanics).
The problem is that if it weren’t for the theoretical breakthroughs of Europe the US would never had the basis to come up with any of the useful, practical breakthroughs, and even today (with the CERN being in Europe) US scientists are completely dependent on Europe to lay out the foundations of any great discovery… On the other hand, of course, Europe is completely dependent on the US to give it commercial value.
Or, to quote Thomas Edison, in possibly one of the biggest embodiments of American capitalist culture (there’s no better one-liner about how Americans think…):
“My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant – but misdirected – ideas of others…”
Before somebody turns one their flamethrowers, I’m not saying that Edison was not a great inventor, and I do have the utmost respect for his accomplishments. After all, he did create the first economically viable system of generating and distributing electric light and power (contrary to popular belief that is his greatest invention – the incandescent light bulb was not invented by him!). I’m just saying that his quote and contributions embody a cultural choice that has its consequences, namely a dependence on somebody else having the brilliant ideas – in this case, James Clerk Maxwell’s “brilliant ideas”. I just feel that calling Maxwell misdirected is, somehow, unfitting. Much like Ampere, Faraday, Cauchy, Fourier or Poisson, all Europeans (most of them French!) all pivotal in enabling Edison, were all far from misdirected. If they were misdirected, why did Edison need them? This is a symbiotic relationship – the US needs those misdirected Europeans, with all their thirst for knowledge for the sake of knowledge, as much as Europeans need the US to find a way to help them pay their bills… 