Thursday, January 30, 2014

Bombshell New Book Argues That Capitalism and Democracy Don’t Mix (via Moyers & Company)

Bombshell New Book Argues That Capitalism and Democracy Don’t Mix (via Moyers & Company)
Few books have been met with as much anticipation at Thomas Picketty’s Capital in the 21st Century. A reviewer in the Journal of Economic Thinking declares it “one of the watershed books in economic thinking.” Picketty, an economist at the Paris…


5 comments:

Roger Erickson said...

Nonsense. That's like saying free radical molecules and sensitive dna don't mix.

Until the right methods regulate radicals within mitochondria and unleash siRNA.

Agile teams can make any methods work, on demand.

We're simply not asking enough of ourselves. The 99% certainly aren't asking jack shit of the 1% honeypots.

Anonymous said...

Not everything economical can be grasped via a biochemical metaphor.

The tendency of capitalism to evolve toward monopoly and oligopoly; to concentrate capital unequally; and to widen gaps between haves and have-nots is a well-established pattern.

And that pattern is on its face incompatible with democracy since in every society or every kind, money talks in real power terms. And so an equal distribution of political power is incompatible with an unequal distribution of wealth.

Roger Erickson said...

Agreed, in theory. We EXPECT that the degrees of freedom in a human culture should eventually exceed the degrees of freedom in biochemical ensembles.

But that doesn't mean that it is, yet.

Most of the feeble topics discussed in economics are rather exceedingly well known, & over-described in biology, biochemistry, chemistry & physics.

That, too, is expected, since every analog computing network (including neural & human nets) reasons by PAST analogy.

Monopoly & oligopoly are called "Phenotypic Persistence" in biology, or, more generally, over-adaptation to a transient context.

To start reaching some of our cultural potential ... we have to start setting some higher cognitive goals for our group intelligence?

We may HAVE a group brain, but that doesn't mean that we're USING it.

Ryan Harris said...

I sort of agree but sort of disagree that capitalism causes the corruption of democracy.

We have corrupting influences because of our social nature whatever type of government or economic system exists.

Consider toxic products that cause harm and suffering to most humans, like fuel or university economics degrees.

We support the people involved in those industries by buying their products every day. One is produced by government the other by 'capitalism.' The people that peddle the toxic products resist change and continue to work on behalf of their customers even after they realize they are having negative effects on the world. It's their job. They would exist and influence any type of government or economic system. They aren't static, they do improve and produce better products with fewer negative externalities, over time. People and voters want instant gratification, instant end to oil and burning all economists at the stake. All governments play a difficult balancing act and get rightly accused of corruption by all sides all the time. Citizens must be suspicious and accusing so politicians think they can't get away with anything. That is the game.

Tom Hickey said...

"We have corrupting influences because of our social nature whatever type of government or economic system exists."

Right. It depends on the level of collective consciousness. Many different systems can work fine if people are enlightened enough, and no system will work well if enough people are set on gaming it.

Virtually all types of system can be configured in many ways. Some of the weaknesses can be reduced but probably not entirely eliminated with out causing other worse problems.

That's why it behooves societies to put in place culture and institutions that raise the level of collective consciousness.