Comments by "LancesArmorStriking" (@LancesArmorStriking) on "Afghanistan sits on $3 trillion in minerals" video.
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@EpochUnlocked
No, you're confusing capitalism with markets. Markets have existed for thousands of years, whereas the concept of capital
(I'm referring to assets which not only hold value, but can be used as investment to accrue more value- namely stocks, since the idea of capital first came in the form of corporate stock, pioneered by the Dutch in the 19th century)
-- is relatively new.
Capital can be gained involuntarily.
Again, value accrued from, say, slave or child labor, is still value.
A rigid political system also doesn't mean economic control-- China is a great example. Markets, but authoritarian rule.
The system can reach the point you're talking about, but the areas where centralization works best is with essential parts of a society-- public services.
We obviously can't have an all-private toll highway system, because rural areas- being unprofitable- would just get neglected until they completely get cut off.
Same goes for healthcare and especially public transport- British Rail tried to privatize under Thatcher in the '80s, and it failed miserably.
You are right about the wastefulness of the U.S. gov't, but that's not exclusive to them. Companies are notoriously wasteful, too. Poor management of assets almost killed HP, and Amazon's piss-poor conditions starkly contrast to Bezos' wealth. Not to mention every boss who's ever spent a payraise on fancy things for himself.
Without the taxes you're "burdened" with, the quality of the road you use to drive to work, the air you breathe, the quality of the water that comes out of your tap, your mail, the rights guaranteed to you by your company (no more than 16 hours a day work), would all slowly go to shit.
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@EpochUnlocked
If you don't mind me asking, then, which state are you currently in? Barring geographical advantages (Southern states don't have ice form in their asphalt every year), high-tax states have generally higher quality roads than low-tax ones.
Same with public schools-- my friends from Indiana knew significantly less about history, geography, math, science, etc, than I did. But I only went to a public school, albeit in a more liberal state.
Private school sounds great, until you realize that there is, statistically, going to be somebody who can't afford to go.
And, because somebody needs to do rote labor jobs, telling them to get a better job just passes along the problem to someone else. It's not a real solution.
And as for your crappy employment-- doesn't that sound like the state's job to fix? The company certainly won't-- they still haven't, or you wouldn't have told me that.
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@morefiction3264
So, the Austrian School and 20th-century liberalism?
The former is anthropologically unsound, as the theory rests upon the assumption that macroeconomic activity is composed exclusively of individual, rational choices.
Humans, meanwhile, are self-interested animals— literally. Hominids.
Group dynamics and thinking vastly differ from individual choices, and even then those choices are rarely ever rational.
In fact, one of the biggest issues with the Austrian School of thought (though it has contributed foundational features to economics, such as the ideas of marginal subjective value)
— is its outright rejection of macroeconomics as being distinct from microeconomics— is why I don't wholly believe in it.
Much like Darwin's work on evolution, it is indeed a good start.
But, also like Darwin, several of its core tenets are simply wrong, and mainstream economics is well past the point of venerating outdated information.
I certainly hope you've read past the 20th century section in the library.
As for liberalism, it worked, until it didn't.
The sciences ate away at philosophy, and the idea that humans are Enlightened, rationally-thinking beings. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive for a better world, but the liberalist principles used to justify the pursuit of that better world are simply flawed. The fundamental goal of becoming rational masters of our own destiny shuns the collective side of our existence.
Ironically, Christianity was always contradictory with liberalism. Individual rights? No, they were priveleges given by God. The tribe is most important, etc. Very collectivist.
I suppose with it fading, the counter-balance to liberalism faded too, and we got neoliberalism in its place.
—Precisely the thing that's making younger people reject capitalism.
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@EpochUnlocked
"The private sector is more efficient"
"most often, the lowest bidder are the companies that use the cheapest, shortest lasting material and the perform the poorest work"
See any problems here?
Sometimes, the most efficient (in the company's case, gross profit minus gross expenses) isn't always what a society needs to operate a key service well. Not everything needs to be profitable.
Though, by some metrics, a better-serviced public transport system generates more economic activity in the long run than a cheaply-made one that the private sector magically creates. But that doesn't matter to the private sector, which (unless privately owned) is legally bound to its shareholders' wishes, which are invariably short-term financial gains.
Efficiency, even if that were totally inherent to the private sector
(it isn't; the businesses that survive are the ones that just so happened not to make mistakes, but that doesn't mean companies are immune from being wasteful and inefficient-- the ones that waste cease to exist, so our perception of the private sector's overall performance is skewed)
isn't always the primary aim when providing a service.
Also, "you don't have an argument there"?
We'll let your side of the argument when the state stops taxing hardworking people like you to build roads you'll never use. Axe the Federal Highway System and dole it out to private companies- since they're clearly so efficient. I'm sure zero roads will be left to crumble.
In case I didn't lay it on thick enough, that was about as sarcastic as I could get.
You simply don't know just how poorly roads could get under a private system because companies currently only shoulder the burden of maintaining profitable ones.
If the whole system was left up to them, we'd see thousands of miles left completely unmaintained, to cut costs. I sincerely hope, for your own sake, that the private companies don't get to test that theory out.
Or maybe they should. I just hope your vehicle is offroad-certified.
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