I think we will eventually find how to tweak the system so recessions no longer happen, or no longer happen with such severe consequences, but we are not there yet. Also, we need to find ways to stop the adverse effects of the recessions without losing the vital stimulus of creative destruction. To some extent we have to think of recessions like wolves in an ecosystem - nasty but keystone.
Socialism won't work because it never has all the other times it has been tried. If it was going to work some country would have found a way by now that didn't result in poverty, slavery and horrific levels of oppression and want. And those aren't unfortunate mistakes because people have been doing socialism 'wrong', they are inevitable structural results of the system. Marxism/communism/socialism has been responsible for over 200 million deaths already, I'm not willing to give it another field test in the naive belief things would turn out differently next time. I put it in the box marked 'evil' and hope we can persuade enough other people it never gets taken out again.
Although this partly depends on how you define socialism of course - the Scandinavian countries are often called socialist but they rely on very free markets to support the high levels of social support. So that can work but it doesn't count as a replacement for capitalism since they rest on very firm capitalist foundations.
If there is a system that is better than capitalism, it certainly isn't far-left socialism and it probably hasn't been invented yet. My own feeling is that when you look at the amazing achievements of capitalism - the truly astonishing reduction in global poverty, improvements in health, education, access to clean water, and all the rest of it - then one has to be mad to say there is anything wrong with capitalism beyond a few problems at the edges.
I assume you are familiar with the elephant curve? (Although the most recent work has disputed some of it.) We need to look more closely at what is going on at the bottom of the trunk - that is the lower paid people in advanced countries. We need to work out why their growth has stagnated when everyone else is doing so well. Probably the answer will involve reducing immigration of the low skilled (not PC to say it, but there it is) and measures to help the training and flexible skilling of that sector of the workforce. Welfare transfers will also have a part to play but they need to be better targeted and avoid creating poverty traps. I am an optimist, I am positive it can be done. But the danger is that the people will grow impatient and be attracted to the seductive easy answers being dangled by the hard left. Without a proper knowledge of history and economics (and sometimes even with those things) they are dangerously alluring.
But a lot of people can be hurt, if you don't have governmental regulations and controls on housing, bio-tech, and environment. For managing common resources like the environment and safety, I find some of the latest ideas about commoning systems quite exciting. The idea is to find a half way house between private and public ownership, so you can get the best of both worlds. In traditional common systems, ownership was not public because it was restricted to a fixed group of commoners, but that group of commoners was large enough to manage the resource as a whole. This maintains a sense of property rights and thus avoids the tragedy of the commons for resources that cannot actually be held privately.
You could almost say you can see that happening at the moment with the individual U.S. states responding to the Paris climate change agreement. Each state is essentially becoming a commoner management group for its own energy generation, and can proceed to conserve regardless of what its neighbours are doing.
There is hope. Humans are infinitely adaptable and very clever so there is always hope. But we really do need to learn from history or what is the point of keeping records.
no subject
Socialism won't work because it never has all the other times it has been tried. If it was going to work some country would have found a way by now that didn't result in poverty, slavery and horrific levels of oppression and want. And those aren't unfortunate mistakes because people have been doing socialism 'wrong', they are inevitable structural results of the system. Marxism/communism/socialism has been responsible for over 200 million deaths already, I'm not willing to give it another field test in the naive belief things would turn out differently next time. I put it in the box marked 'evil' and hope we can persuade enough other people it never gets taken out again.
Although this partly depends on how you define socialism of course - the Scandinavian countries are often called socialist but they rely on very free markets to support the high levels of social support. So that can work but it doesn't count as a replacement for capitalism since they rest on very firm capitalist foundations.
If there is a system that is better than capitalism, it certainly isn't far-left socialism and it probably hasn't been invented yet. My own feeling is that when you look at the amazing achievements of capitalism - the truly astonishing reduction in global poverty, improvements in health, education, access to clean water, and all the rest of it - then one has to be mad to say there is anything wrong with capitalism beyond a few problems at the edges.
I assume you are familiar with the elephant curve? (Although the most recent work has disputed some of it.) We need to look more closely at what is going on at the bottom of the trunk - that is the lower paid people in advanced countries. We need to work out why their growth has stagnated when everyone else is doing so well. Probably the answer will involve reducing immigration of the low skilled (not PC to say it, but there it is) and measures to help the training and flexible skilling of that sector of the workforce. Welfare transfers will also have a part to play but they need to be better targeted and avoid creating poverty traps. I am an optimist, I am positive it can be done. But the danger is that the people will grow impatient and be attracted to the seductive easy answers being dangled by the hard left. Without a proper knowledge of history and economics (and sometimes even with those things) they are dangerously alluring.
For managing common resources like the environment and safety, I find some of the latest ideas about commoning systems quite exciting. The idea is to find a half way house between private and public ownership, so you can get the best of both worlds. In traditional common systems, ownership was not public because it was restricted to a fixed group of commoners, but that group of commoners was large enough to manage the resource as a whole. This maintains a sense of property rights and thus avoids the tragedy of the commons for resources that cannot actually be held privately.
You could almost say you can see that happening at the moment with the individual U.S. states responding to the Paris climate change agreement. Each state is essentially becoming a commoner management group for its own energy generation, and can proceed to conserve regardless of what its neighbours are doing.
There is hope. Humans are infinitely adaptable and very clever so there is always hope. But we really do need to learn from history or what is the point of keeping records.