Noah smith, liar or dumbass?

[DQ12]

I would say capitalism is based on a form of morality

Yeah, the idea that you ought to be compensated at an agreed-upon sum for the value of work and property seems pretty moral compared to the alternative.

fair enough, i guess i should have been more precise with my wording, instead of saying capitalism as in like the theoretical version, i instead should have said capitalism as in the (inescapable) reality of how it is exists in reality today. Just because a sum is agreed does by no means imply that the sum is not exploitative.

As they say, and it bolsters what ss7 just said, "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" and i yes i realize you didn't say ethical you said moral, however i would argue that the way you are using the word moral there is a tremendous amount of overlap with ethical

I don't know what any of this means but I also don't really care to have some further deep theoretical, semantics driven argument about it.

I'm going to go buy a burrito and not wrestle with the ethics/morality of the transaction.

sounds good, enjoy your burrito!

it was excellent 

[star seed 7]

I also just burrito(bowl)'d, also excellent.

[catastrophe]

This reminds me of an interesting point I had never really considered. I was watching a streamer doing one of those political quiz type things and the question was something like "does a business have any ethical responsibility beyond making money" and the guy basically argued that no, they have no ethical responsibility except following the law. The state has the responsibility of not letting businesses be lawfully unethical. In essence I fully agree with that, and asking businesses (or people) to act ethically without legal framework is a pipe dream.

I agree with this as well, and in fact I would say that’s one of the greatest benefits to capitalism is that it encourages creativity and competition up to the very brink of what is not explicitly prohibited.

[BIG APPLE CAT]

This reminds me of an interesting point I had never really considered. I was watching a streamer doing one of those political quiz type things and the question was something like "does a business have any ethical responsibility beyond making money" and the guy basically argued that no, they have no ethical responsibility except following the law. The state has the responsibility of not letting businesses be lawfully unethical. In essence I fully agree with that, and asking businesses (or people) to act ethically without legal framework is a pipe dream.

I agree with this as well, and in fact I would say that’s one of the greatest benefits to capitalism is that it encourages creativity and competition up to the very brink of what is not explicitly prohibited.

Not gEing here, just curious what is a modern day (as in, the last 5 years or so) example of competition that benefited the consumer? I do believe there probably are some, but every kind of common good/service I can think of off the top of my head all of the companies that should, in theory, be competing for my business all just keep raising their prices/lowering the quality of their product bc as long as they all do it together the consumer doesn’t really have many options

[wetwillie]

 

[star seed 7]

Maybe he doesn't know about the weight loss drugs

[catastrophe]

This reminds me of an interesting point I had never really considered. I was watching a streamer doing one of those political quiz type things and the question was something like "does a business have any ethical responsibility beyond making money" and the guy basically argued that no, they have no ethical responsibility except following the law. The state has the responsibility of not letting businesses be lawfully unethical. In essence I fully agree with that, and asking businesses (or people) to act ethically without legal framework is a pipe dream.

I agree with this as well, and in fact I would say that’s one of the greatest benefits to capitalism is that it encourages creativity and competition up to the very brink of what is not explicitly prohibited.

Not gEing here, just curious what is a modern day (as in, the last 5 years or so) example of competition that benefited the consumer? I do believe there probably are some, but every kind of common good/service I can think of off the top of my head all of the companies that should, in theory, be competing for my business all just keep raising their prices/lowering the quality of their product bc as long as they all do it together the consumer doesn’t really have many options

5 years seems like an arbitrary timeframe to pick, but off the top of my head I’d say a lot more places offer free (or near free) grocery delivery or 2 day delivery to compete with Amazon and others. Lots of restaurants offer pretty good deals and easy mobile ordering. Internet and 5G is improving because mobile companies realize it’s a necessity to keep customers. TVs keep getting better while generally getting cheaper. Same with phones overall.

And for things that have gone down in quality, a lot of that is due to consumer demand too. We still have access to higher quality versions of most products, it’s just that the vast majority of Americans prefer the cheaper stuff.

[BIG APPLE CAT]

Maybe he doesn't know about the weight loss drugs

I bet DBT would agree with you the prescription drug market is practically a race to the bottom

[BIG APPLE CAT]

This reminds me of an interesting point I had never really considered. I was watching a streamer doing one of those political quiz type things and the question was something like "does a business have any ethical responsibility beyond making money" and the guy basically argued that no, they have no ethical responsibility except following the law. The state has the responsibility of not letting businesses be lawfully unethical. In essence I fully agree with that, and asking businesses (or people) to act ethically without legal framework is a pipe dream.

I agree with this as well, and in fact I would say that’s one of the greatest benefits to capitalism is that it encourages creativity and competition up to the very brink of what is not explicitly prohibited.

Not gEing here, just curious what is a modern day (as in, the last 5 years or so) example of competition that benefited the consumer? I do believe there probably are some, but every kind of common good/service I can think of off the top of my head all of the companies that should, in theory, be competing for my business all just keep raising their prices/lowering the quality of their product bc as long as they all do it together the consumer doesn’t really have many options

5 years seems like an arbitrary timeframe to pick, but off the top of my head I’d say a lot more places offer free (or near free) grocery delivery or 2 day delivery to compete with Amazon and others. Lots of restaurants offer pretty good deals and easy mobile ordering. Internet and 5G is improving because mobile companies realize it’s a necessity to keep customers. TVs keep getting better while generally getting cheaper. Same with phones overall.

And for things that have gone down in quality, a lot of that is due to consumer demand too. We still have access to higher quality versions of most products, it’s just that the vast majority of Americans prefer the cheaper stuff.

You might need to start a thread on where to find all these discount goods. With the exception of tvs I believe every category you listed there the price increases are outpacing inflation. Literally just this morning on the Today show they were talking about how fast food customers were starting to revolt from McDonald’s bc their pricing is getting ridiculous, I think they said Burger King and Dominoes were getting an uptick in sales bc they haven’t been raising their prices as severely as the competition.

Also, regarding phones, I’m not sure how the concept of planned obsolescence can thrive in a capitalistic society. Intentionally designing your stuff to fail should be the death knell of any company but instead it’s an incredibly successful profit strategy.

Last, I’m putting an * next to your grocery delivery example, since that is part of their business plan to intentionally take a loss for the first few years to eliminate all competition and then once they are the only game (or 1 of a small handful of like-minded games) in town they can jack the prices up with impunity. So like, short term competition with the long term business plan of not having to be competitive at all.

Oh well, at least I can still get event tickets at reasonable prices

[wetwillie]

The cable company and Verizon and the new fiber company that just got installed are engaging in fisticuffs for my internet dollars near daily. I think soon they might be paying me to use it.

[Stevesie60]

Possibly the start of a new thread, but the grocery store is insufferable these days. Self check out when you have a lot of produce takes forever, and even if you do wait for an employee to ring you up, they don't bag it for you anymore so you have to watch all your stuff get smashed at the end of the conveyer belt while you're pulling out your credit card, or getting your club card, or whatever. Then make the rest of the line wait on you while you're bagging everything.

So clearly they're pushing for pick up or delivery. But those apps' interfaces need a ton of work for me to feel confident that my order is going to be correct. And to take less time to complete than to just go to the store myself.

[DQ12]

This reminds me of an interesting point I had never really considered. I was watching a streamer doing one of those political quiz type things and the question was something like "does a business have any ethical responsibility beyond making money" and the guy basically argued that no, they have no ethical responsibility except following the law. The state has the responsibility of not letting businesses be lawfully unethical. In essence I fully agree with that, and asking businesses (or people) to act ethically without legal framework is a pipe dream.

I agree with this as well, and in fact I would say that’s one of the greatest benefits to capitalism is that it encourages creativity and competition up to the very brink of what is not explicitly prohibited.

Not gEing here, just curious what is a modern day (as in, the last 5 years or so) example of competition that benefited the consumer? I do believe there probably are some, but every kind of common good/service I can think of off the top of my head all of the companies that should, in theory, be competing for my business all just keep raising their prices/lowering the quality of their product bc as long as they all do it together the consumer doesn’t really have many options

5 years seems like an arbitrary timeframe to pick, but off the top of my head I’d say a lot more places offer free (or near free) grocery delivery or 2 day delivery to compete with Amazon and others. Lots of restaurants offer pretty good deals and easy mobile ordering. Internet and 5G is improving because mobile companies realize it’s a necessity to keep customers. TVs keep getting better while generally getting cheaper. Same with phones overall.

And for things that have gone down in quality, a lot of that is due to consumer demand too. We still have access to higher quality versions of most products, it’s just that the vast majority of Americans prefer the cheaper stuff.

You might need to start a thread on where to find all these discount goods. With the exception of tvs I believe every category you listed there the price increases are outpacing inflation. Literally just this morning on the Today show they were talking about how fast food customers were starting to revolt from McDonald’s bc their pricing is getting ridiculous, I think they said Burger King and Dominoes were getting an uptick in sales bc they haven’t been raising their prices as severely as the competition.

Also, regarding phones, I’m not sure how the concept of planned obsolescence can thrive in a capitalistic society. Intentionally designing your stuff to fail should be the death knell of any company but instead it’s an incredibly successful profit strategy.

Last, I’m putting an * next to your grocery delivery example, since that is part of their business plan to intentionally take a loss for the first few years to eliminate all competition and then once they are the only game (or 1 of a small handful of like-minded games) in town they can jack the prices up with impunity. So like, short term competition with the long term business plan of not having to be competitive at all.

Oh well, at least I can still get event tickets at reasonable prices

What’s the non-capitalist, uncorrupted, inflation-proof alternative you’re implicitly advocating for?

[star seed 7]

Not answering for BAC, but in my opinion capitalism is great but similar to our militias it needs to be well regulated.

[CNS]

Not answering for BAC, but in my opinion capitalism is great but similar to our militias it needs to be well regulated.

This is correct.  It is also why it seems like quite a bit of things suck lately because powers that be aren't doing a good job of regulating things like meta, google, or really anything else that exists mostly or totally on line, imo.

[BIG APPLE CAT]

Yes, exactly what ss7 and cns said.

But to take DQs question a bit further, I think we need more socialized components to our system. Just as it would be silly for private funding to finance an interstate highway, there are several things that I believe should be common goods that we all pay for.

And economics aside, there is no debate at all that the wealth inequality gap is widening at an alarming rate, and with that lack of wealth comes a lower quality of life. And I guess my philosophy is, we (as a society) should be trying to improve the quality of life for the population rather than actively making it worse. And no, I do not think that the quality of life delta for the billionaire that just became a trillionaire outweighs the tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands depending on how you want to look at it) of ppl whose quality of life took a hit so that one guy could have even more money

[DQ12]

Yes, exactly what ss7 and cns said.

But to take DQs question a bit further, I think we need more socialized components to our system. Just as it would be silly for private funding to finance an interstate highway, there are several things that I believe should be common goods that we all pay for.

And economics aside, there is no debate at all that the wealth inequality gap is widening at an alarming rate, and with that lack of wealth comes a lower quality of life. And I guess my philosophy is, we (as a society) should be trying to improve the quality of life for the population rather than actively making it worse. And no, I do not think that the quality of life delta for the billionaire that just became a trillionaire outweighs the tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands depending on how you want to look at it) of ppl whose quality of life took a hit so that one guy could have even more money

You think quality of life in the US has gotten worse?  Over what time period?  I'm fairly certain the data would disagree with you, even (especially?) for the poorest segments of the population.

[BIG APPLE CAT]

Yes, exactly what ss7 and cns said.

But to take DQs question a bit further, I think we need more socialized components to our system. Just as it would be silly for private funding to finance an interstate highway, there are several things that I believe should be common goods that we all pay for.

And economics aside, there is no debate at all that the wealth inequality gap is widening at an alarming rate, and with that lack of wealth comes a lower quality of life. And I guess my philosophy is, we (as a society) should be trying to improve the quality of life for the population rather than actively making it worse. And no, I do not think that the quality of life delta for the billionaire that just became a trillionaire outweighs the tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands depending on how you want to look at it) of ppl whose quality of life took a hit so that one guy could have even more money

You think quality of life in the US has gotten worse?  Over what time period?  I'm fairly certain the data would disagree with you, even (especially?) for the poorest segments of the population.

I suppose that would depend on your metric. Like oh hey you have a smart phone with instant access and connectivity to the world, that’s outstanding! Also, you can’t afford rent. Or the rent you can afford to pay gets you less and less year over year. Home ownership will never be in the cards so I guess that frees up a lot of time you might have otherwise spent thinking about being a home owner.

Since we’re talking about the poor, I’m curious D, how do you suppose the minimum wage has been keeping up with inflation? Probably pretty close, right?

[DQ12]

Yes, exactly what ss7 and cns said.

But to take DQs question a bit further, I think we need more socialized components to our system. Just as it would be silly for private funding to finance an interstate highway, there are several things that I believe should be common goods that we all pay for.

And economics aside, there is no debate at all that the wealth inequality gap is widening at an alarming rate, and with that lack of wealth comes a lower quality of life. And I guess my philosophy is, we (as a society) should be trying to improve the quality of life for the population rather than actively making it worse. And no, I do not think that the quality of life delta for the billionaire that just became a trillionaire outweighs the tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands depending on how you want to look at it) of ppl whose quality of life took a hit so that one guy could have even more money

You think quality of life in the US has gotten worse?  Over what time period?  I'm fairly certain the data would disagree with you, even (especially?) for the poorest segments of the population.

I suppose that would depend on your metric. Like oh hey you have a smart phone with instant access and connectivity to the world, that’s outstanding! Also, you can’t afford rent. Or the rent you can afford to pay gets you less and less year over year. Home ownership will never be in the cards so I guess that frees up a lot of time you might have otherwise spent thinking about being a home owner.

Since we’re talking about the poor, I’m curious D, how do you suppose the minimum wage has been keeping up with inflation? Probably pretty close, right?

It hasn't. 

I never said capitalism was perfect or that i'm against any regulation at all.  I'm just saying capitalism (at least conceptually) is the best we got.  You can say this or that ought to be tweaked (i.e. "we need more socialized elements"), and I won't fight you too hard on the margins.  If you think we need a more robust anti-trust framework and enforcement, power to you.

But when you imply that QoL in the US has gone down over the last 20/50/100 years, I don't know how you're measuring that outside of your vague rent as a percentage of income (which is important, but far from the only QoL indicator).  Do you have any data about what percentage of income rent was for the various percentiles decade by decade?  That would be interesting.

[BIG APPLE CAT]

I know that 30% of your income going to rent/mortgage is where the red flags start going up. And I know that the number of Americans paying more than 30% of their income on housing has been steadily increasing, although I do not know the precise figures.

And look, me boy, I’m fully aware that I am not going to be capturing many hearts or minds with my opinions, least of all yours, but I won’t shy away from pointing out the glaringly obvious problems with our version of capitalism, especially those where the solution is incredibly simple and it’s “hey we aren’t going to perpetuate these policies/laws that only benefit a very select few who already have all the money as it is”

[wetwillie]

What's the solution to reducing housing cost to income ratios?

[Spracne]

What's the solution to reducing housing cost to income ratios?

Build more housing?

[wetwillie]

What's the solution to reducing housing cost to income ratios?

Build more housing?

What's preventing us from doing that right now?

[Spracne]

What's the solution to reducing housing cost to income ratios?

Build more housing?

What's preventing us from doing that right now?

I'm sure there are manifold causes. Nimbyism? Relatedly, zoning restrictions? Interest rates? Cost of materials? Greed? Cost of/supply of labor? Private investment groups snatching up a pretty good amount (16%?) of single-family homes? I don't know, but it seems pretty straight forward that building more housing would ease the supply-side issues we've seen for the past many years.

[wetwillie]

So there is a need in the marketplace and the greedy capitalists aren't beating each other half to death to supply it and profit from it? Maybe capitalism is dying.

[BIG APPLE CAT]

Why bother chasing pennies when you can snatch up all the prime real estate? (Plus, bonus! The artificial scarcity allows you to drive the price up even more)