User talk:BernardL/Sandbox5

Introduction to Inequality

I will be removing material which I feel is poorly done or does not belong. I have removed the following introduction to the section on Inequality because it contains no references and largely consists of strawman argumentation. There is no notable critic of capitalism that I know that argues for absolute equality.

It is reasonable to expect that some disparity in wealth and income among individuals would exist in a capitalist system as this is determined through market forces rather than by centralized governmental authority. Some view a significant disparity and concentration of wealth to be a problem and that such is endemic to capitalism, while others do not have such egalitarian concerns. Some opponents of capitalism assert that there should be no inequality in wealth and earnings among individuals commensurate to their inheritance, skills, abilities or efforts. Defenders of capitalism respond that since free market capitalism distributes wealth and earnings among individuals commensurate to their inheritance, skills, abilities and efforts, it provides inherent incentives for human beings to hone their skills, improve their abilities, and make strong efforts to meet the needs of each other, incentives that are missing or significantly less present in any other type of economic/political system.BernardL (talk) 22:21, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that the introduction should attempt to specify why critics believe that the issue of economic inequality is important. There are ethical considerations to take into account whenever inequality cannot be morally justified; and given this ethical consideration as well as the power imbalances resulting from inequality there are practical considerations, since gross inequality may affect the effective functioning of democratic institutions, including the media. BernardL (talk) 22:21, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

more, Inequality Section

I removed the following point-form presentation of the advantages and disadvantages of economic equality from the inequality section because a) it is totally unreferenced and b) these are hardly the strongest and most up-to-date arguments...comments?

Other points of view on capitalism's unequal wealth distribution include:

• Anti-Capitalist:
  • The capitalists gather their wealth by exploiting employees. An employee is not paid according to the true worth of his labor but according to what the employer is willing to pay him. The employer pays him less than what his labor is worth so that the employer can make a profit when he sells the produce. In this way, the employee's labor is being exploited.
  • Wealth and unequal distribution can create social problems (such as higher crime rates). These problems affect both poor and rich.
  • Government interference in markets can be skewed to benefit the wealthy. In particular, wealthy people have the financial means and incentives to influence or corrupt government officials and to lobby for favourable legislation.
  • Many people have little wealth left over after living expenses, so they can't make it grow quickly. This further deepens the disparity between rich and poor.
  • Persistent long-term inequality of wealth undermines the motivation of the poor to improve their stance. This creates not only direct but perpetual sociological inequity.
  • Wealthy people save relatively more than poor people. Hence some economists believe that an unequal distribution of wealth undermines an economy's mass buying power, effectively leading to lower aggregate sales, reduced wealth production, unemployment and crises. (see Keynes) Economists, however, argue that saving is also necessary in an economy, since it provides the means for investment into new technologies and processes.
  • Wealth is defined and judged incorrectly, in many different ways. In particular, people may attach value to things for seemingly irrational reasons (sentimental value). Some may also value spiritual development more than material wealth. Capitalism's focus on absolute monetary value thus undermines the legitimacy of alternate paradigms.
  • The wealthy may not put their wealth to productive use. For example, they may buy land just to deny access to it to others, for personal or environmental reasons. Other critics of capitalism, however, would ask whether or not capitalistic production narrowly-defined is a good thing, especially if it is seen as damaging the environment, and such an action of denial may be seen as the lesser of two evils.
• Pro-Capitalist:
  • Robert Nozick has argued that no condition of perfect equality could be maintained for very long. If all agents possess the same amount of wealth, they will immediately begin investing it in different ventures which will pay off to varying degrees. But if voluntary economic exchange is seen as leaving both parties (since both would not be trading unless the outcome of the trade was mutually beneficial), even if the resulting distribution is not even, it is better than if there were no trading.
  • Lack of established property rights force the poor to operate in extralegal markets, keeping them from unlocking the capital in their assets. When only the politically privileged can leverage capital, the division between formally and informally owned property is an unbalancing barrier to the benefits of a modern market economy.
  • Wealth tends to be directed toward individuals in proportion to how productive they are in terms of creating and providing goods and services that others value, therefore the possibility of becoming wealthier than others can be seen as an incentive to benefit society. A limit on freedom of individuals to reap a disproportionate amount of wealth would dampen incentive. Technological progress would stagnate or at least significantly decrease, and, as a result, the standard of living would suffer.
  • The inequality of consumption is far less than the inequality in wealth, since most of the wealthy do not consume all their wealth. To the extent that they consume their wealth, they are redistributing it to others. To the extent that they are not consuming it, they are generally either managing it to create more wealth or giving it away.
  • Many rich give significantly to charity (see also philanthropist). Some argue that charity is more efficient than state welfare.
  • The economist Thomas Sowell has attributed factors such as geography, climate, culture, and natural resources as contributing factors to inequality inside of and between nations.
  • The income share of the poorest 10% do not decrease with higher economic freedom but the absolute income of the 10% poorest, prosperity, economic growth, democracy, and freedom from corruption increase, see Economic freedom index.BernardL (talk) 22:27, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

BernardL (talk) 22:27, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Looks good

Great idea making this. The organization generally looks good -- much better than currently exists. I'm thinking that everyone can edit a section, and then go back and edit the other's. I'll be out of town until Thrusday with limited internet access, but I'll jump in when I get the chance.Njfuller (talk) 23:25, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Welcome. I think your idea about each editing a section is very good. At the moment I guess my preference would be to write a section on oppression which would discuss capitalism's inhibitions of freedom and discuss capitalism as a social system of class domination. BernardL (talk) 00:09, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

A section for links

maybe the following quickie has some ideas that might exercise your minds. [[1]] BernardL (talk) 00:11, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

here is another link to an article about the critiques of Marx and Weber: [2]

For those that are not already aware of it, the following paper is very interesting. [3] BernardL (talk) 03:33, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Random Quotes section

Make this ection for any quotes that you comes across that you find particularly stimulating and may want to work into to the article.

In theory, capitalists operate via the market and wish governments to stay out of market operations. In practice, as every capitalist knows, the governments are crucial to their market success in multiple ways - by making possible or impossible relative monopolies, in being large-scale near-monopsonistic purchasers of expensive items, as manipulators of macro-economic decisions (including of course taxation). No serious capitalist can afford to ignore governments, his own and those of any other country in which he operates. But given that politicians must give priority to getting into power or remaining in power, and have great financial needs, no serious capitalist can afford to ignore this obvious source of pressure on governments, or he will lose out to competitors or to hostile interests. Therefore no serious capitalist does ignore governments, and all serious capitalists have in the forefront of their consciousness the fact that politicians have great financial needs. Consequently, corruption is absolutely normal and unexpungeable from the ongoing political life of the capitalist world-economy. (Wallerstein, Immanuel. Democracy, Capitalism and Transformation [4]) BernardL (talk) 02:54, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

``Alongside their work on pure economic theory, the classical political economists engaged in a parallel project: to promote the forcible reconstruction of society into a purely market-oriented system. While economic historians may debate the depth of involvement in market activities at the time, the incontestable fact remains that most people in Britain did not enthusiastically engage in wage labor- at least as long as they had an alternative.`` (Perelman,Michael. The Invention of Capitalism Duke University Press,2000,p.2)

"Karl Polanyi in 1944 pointed out that “in a complex society…the meaning of freedom becomes as contradictory and as fraught as its incitements to action are compelling. There are, he noted, two kinds of freedom, one good and the other bad. Among the latter he listed the ‘the freedom to exploit one’s fellows, or the freedom to make inordinate gains without commensurable service to the community, the freedom to keep technological invention from being used for public benefit, or the freedom to profit from public calamities secretly engineered for private advantage’. But Polanyi continued, “the market economy under which these freedoms throve also produced freedoms we prize highly. Freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of meeting, freedom of association, freedom to choose one’s own job. While we may ‘cherish these freedoms for their own sake’, -and, surely many of us still do- they were to a large extent by-products of the same economy that was also responsible for the evil freedoms’. Polanyi’s answer to this duality makes strange reading given the current hegemony of neoliberal thinking:

The passing of the market economy can become the beginning of a new era of unprecedented freedom. Juridical and actual freedom can be made wider and more general than ever before; regulation and control can achieve freedom not only for the few, but for all. Freedom not as an appurtenance of privilege, tainted at the source, but as a prescriptive right extending far beyond the narrow confines of the political sphere, into the intimate organization of society itself. Thus will old freedoms and civic rights be added to the kind of new freedoms generated by the leisure and security that industrial society offers to all. Such a society can afford to be both just and free.” (Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford University Press, 2005, 37)

“The idea of freedom ‘thus degenerates into a mere advocacy of free enterprise’ , which means ‘the fullness of freedom for those whose income, leisure and security need no enhancing, and a mere pittance of liberty for the people, who may in vain attempt to make use of their democratic rights to gain shelter from the power of the owners of property’. (Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford University Press, 2005, 37)

Discussion on Structure of the article

My original impetus for changing the structure of the article derived in large part from a feeling that the present structure did not allow coherent critical analysis of institutions, which is a mainstay in the critical literature on capitalism. Thus, I attempted to find a way of re-organizing the article into an initial section covering theoretical, analytical and philosophical issues and a section section covering empirical evidence. I think it is vitally important to discuss the critical stances with respect to key capitalist institutions such as "markets","property" and "money" as they take their form in capitalism. BernardL (talk) 03:07, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Branko Milanovic on the silly argument that inequality does not matter, so long as absolute poverty is alleviated

There is ample discussion of the topic here...[5] ... but I want to highlight one particular argument of Milanovic which I think cuts through much crap: "I would be willing to venture an even stronger statement, namely that a very different treatment of poverty and inequality favored by some economists, a sharp distinction drawn between the two, is a way of deflecting possible raising of the issues of social desirability of a given distribution of income into a much more benign channel: ostensible concern with the very poor. The concern with poverty is a price that the rich are willing to pay so that no one questions their incomes. In other words, concern with poverty works like an anesthetics to the bad conscience of the many. It is basically “social money laundering”, an activity engaged into by those who have either acquired wealth under dubious circumstances, or have inherited it, or might have made more money than seems socially acceptable. It could well be that less than savory ways of acquiring wealth are unavoidable and that this is the price we have to pay for progress and civilization. “A world without poverty” is a world that would underwrite all kinds of injustice. Unavoidable it may be—but it still should not stop us from recognizing it for what it is." BernardL (talk) 03:43, 24 March 2008 (UTC)