European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 1089

On May 07 2018 23:51 Nebuchad wrote:
I understand consumerism to mean that people want to acquire stuff, not just a general wish to have stuff. I don't think these people under soviet rule are a great example for that conversation.

On May 08 2018 00:09 Acrofales wrote:

What's the difference between wanting to buy stuff and wanting to have stuff? I think the main point about consumerism is wanting "frivolous" stuff, and the whole marketing engine behind it that convinces you that you not only *want*, but *must have* the next iteration of *random item*. Consumerism is the problem of people who have a telephone that does absolutely everything they could possibly want to do with a telephone that they need to buy a new telephone. And it is all planned. If all you do is word processing and browsing the internet, there doesn't seem to be any reason why a PC from 2005 running Windows XP shouldn't work just fine for you. However, nothing will actually work on it. Running Linux works a bit better, but even then you will run into problems. A PC is planned to be obsolete after approximately 5 years. Phones' planned lifecycle is even shorter... but most people don't last that long. Look how many people replace their phone gadget every year, don't wear last year's clothes because they are "out of fashion", etc. etc. etc.

Consumerism isn't simply wanting to buy stuff.

On May 07 2018 01:24 Big J wrote:


Well it is 50% of wealth that is transferred by inheritance these days, so 5/10 sounds like rather an argument FOR that theory, not against. But really, it is not that easy. Where do IT firms get their money from? From investors. Where did they get it from? From a free trade to satisfy each others needs? In parts. In large parts from inheritance mechanisms. In large parts that money they get from "free" trades they only get because they have a valueable resource - money - to trade with to begin with.

The only function of money is that of a databank. To store information on prices and market weights. It's the oldest IT technology we have. It is not surprising that now, that we have the means for centralized planning through automation and big data, these technologies are getting to the top. Knowledge is power, and we hand a lot of it exclusively to very few people. Thing is, most people do simply not understand the true meaning of a "possibility". A possibility is only a possibility if you actually know about it, in detail. (reason why the homo oeconomicus is a correct assumption - but the realm of possibilities for the individual is quite small at every point in time, as every one of us is quite limited in their capabilities)
Example: People that cry about not getting into Bitcoin when it was getting big, "because they didn't knew"... They actually didn't have the possibility to even get into it, because they didn't know about Bitcoin. The reason some people got into Bitcoin is, that they invested a ton of time reading up on it, or stumbling upon it because it fell into their field of interest.

On May 08 2018 04:25 LegalLord wrote:
Far as I know pretty much everyone everywhere in the Warsaw bloc used black markets. I don't know a single person who could've but didn't. Not sure what the point is that xmz is trying to make, though.

On May 08 2018 04:46 Archeon wrote:

50% shows that our market isn't totally controlled by a new aristocracy, but partly by people who started with very limited budget, good marketing abilities and good instincts.
I'm not denying that rich families exist and that some of the richest people just inherited their wealth or that being rich makes acquiring greater wealth a lot easier, but the fact that they have to compete with others who can achieve similar levels of wealth means that they can actually fall from their throne if they are incompetent. Of course they have an easier road ahead of them, but it's not like that's any different in any other system.

And I'm not sure how your bitcoin example and possibility specification prove that wealth in capitalism is static in any way, they show that wealth is often a mixture of luck as well as instinct/willingness to risk. I never claimed that capitalism is a fair system of equal chances, I claimed that it's a fairer system than any other we know of because you can become the richest man in the world by starting out in a garage.

On May 08 2018 04:08 Dan HH wrote:

For me the point of this discussion was about state determination of needs and how counter-intuitive it is that a different economic model would dictate people's wants any more than culture or even nature.

On May 08 2018 05:22 TheDwf wrote:

Ah, capitalism and its "self-made man" myths. Anyway, whether the wealth is inherited or not, past some threshold—say, more than a few millions—it can only be built through exploiting the work of thousands of others, and that's what makes it illegitimate. As for "risk taking," when you consider all the situations in which capitalists merely privatize public goods or the results of public research, or passively take advantage of a monopolistic rent, or directly milk the State by selling it stuff (e.g. weapons)... Not to mention "too big to fail" banks and the hundreds of billions of public money to cover their failures and mistakes.

On May 08 2018 05:56 Nyxisto wrote:


The self made man might be mostly a fiction but it is still a useful fiction, or put otherwise, even by the standards of a socialist society, capitalist mixed economies succeed to a higher degree in achieving egalitarian outcomes than anything else. So whoever is upset about the myth of the great man should note that societies that have propagated it are less likely to end up with them than anyone else. No country is more egalitarian than developed capitalist societies running mixed economies with a welfare state.

There are many mechanisms that increase inequality, but not all of them are the consequence of illegitimate rent seeking. Paul Graham has a really good essay on this.

The "this works better than any other system" almost always neglects to mention that the capitalists will illegally assassinate democratically elected/ and otherwise selected leaders, kill countless civilians, and apply inhumane economic sanctions in order to keep it that way.

On May 08 2018 06:23 Nyxisto wrote:


The reason every shoddy communist system failed wasn't because people were assassinated by the evil West, it's because the systems suck so hard at processing information and creating wealth that the countries had to build walls around them to keep their own citizens in. Even the communist party of China recognised this 30 years ago. I can't believe people still peddle this stuff, you can't be this naive

On May 08 2018 05:56 Nyxisto wrote:


The self made man might be mostly a fiction but it is still a useful fiction

or put otherwise, even by the standards of a socialist society, capitalist mixed economies succeed to a higher degree in achieving egalitarian outcomes than anything else. So whoever is upset about the myth of the great man should note that societies that have propagated it are less likely to end up with them than anyone else. No country is more egalitarian than developed capitalist societies running mixed economies with a welfare state.

On May 08 2018 07:19 TheDwf wrote:
Useful? Useful for who? Conservatives who lie about "rewarding the hard work of ordinary people" and exploit this myth to make standard people think they can all be winners?

Well, ironically the labour/socialist movement—by appearance or threat—prevented capitalism from completely collapsing because of its very cannibal inclinations, thanks to regulations. Guess what the ruling classes are rolling back for 4 decades?

As for the "there's always worse elsewhere" argument...

On May 08 2018 08:10 Nyxisto wrote:


It's generally a good mindset to have for everyone even if success isn't guaranteed. Societies don't tend to do so well when everybody is a miserable cynic who only think the world is getting worse when in fact it is not. When the social model someone is complaining about creates better outcomes by the standard of that person, then something is seriously off about the worldview. In this libertarian zealots and communists are united, they both do rarely recognise that the very values they advocate for are routinely realised in societies that aren't libertarian or socialist.



And it's a good thing that they brought that about, but it wasn't the result of a crazy man standing on a soapbox riling up the people. The single most successful group of socialists in the 20th century were the British Fabians. That was because they were thoroughly bourgeois and knew how to navigate around existing powers, they set their eyes on goals that were realistic and achievable, and they didn't take themselves all that seriously and kept a big tent.

That's what socialists should emulate today. Get in positions of power through established institutions, develop progressive concepts that are tenable in the future and not just a copy of past events, and stop claiming that communism died because capitalists bullied them too strongly. Then maybe the left could get a majority of people behind the cause again.

On May 08 2018 03:42 Silvanel wrote:
I am not going to presume i know how things were in Romania back then. But i am old enough to remmeber last years of communist Poland and my family fills the earlier years. My dad actualy used to buy things aborad and bring them back home for sale. That was his line of work. It was sometimes legal and sometimes not. Most of theborder gurds looked the other way. He was buing stuff in other communist countries (Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, DDR, Bulgaria) and Turkey.

The things he bought he would sell from a car in many different marketplaces across Poland but mostly in Warsaw. Who was buying? Ordinary people. The rich and Party people had no need for it since they had other ways of accessing goods.

Was it legal? Sometimes. Mostly not. But it was very common, many people were doing it. Police and border guards were looking other way. Sometimes for money, sometimes just because they couldnt care less. Those goods were mostly smuggled accross the border hence i refered to it as black market. They wernt stolen though. You can call it grey market if You prefere.

This practice was super common in communist Poland especialy in late 70 ties and 80 ties. Every Pole old enough to remmeber it will confirm it.

Also my mother bought her first jeans skirt for her first (full) monthly pay as shop asistant. On black/grey market (whatever You prefere). My family is not rich by any means and it was luxury item back then. So yes ordinary people could afford to buy those things it was just hard.

Romania recorded a 7% economic growth in 2017, the national statistics institute announced on Wednesday. The growth rate, which was higher even than China’s 6.9% economic growth in 2017, surpasses even the most optimistic scenarios. Romania’s Prognosis Commission has the highest growth estimation for 2017, namely 6.1%.

In the fourth quarter, the local economy grew by 7% (in seasonally adjusted terms) compared to the same quarter of 2016, according to INS. Compared to the previous quarter, the growth rate was 0.6%, Romania Insider reported.

The European Commission expects Romania’s economic growth to slow down to 4.5% this year and 4% in 2019, according to the winter forecast released on Wednesday. However, Romania’s estimated economic growth remains the highest in the EU this year.

“Economic growth in Romania accelerated in 2017, with real GDP estimated to have grown by 6.7%–a post-crisis high. The main driver of growth was private consumption, supported by indirect tax cuts and wage hikes both in the public and the private sectors,” reads the EC’s report on Romania.
...
However, private consumption is expected to continue acting as the main growth driver while investment is forecast to strengthen on the back of higher EU fund absorption.

On May 08 2018 04:50 Acrofales wrote:

As is so often the case. His original point was that the existence of markets (black, grey or otherwise) in communist countries wasn't evidence that "consumerism" is inherent to human nature. He denied markets were commonplace, but that rather they were only available to the elite.

On May 08 2018 08:10 Nyxisto wrote:


It's generally a good mindset to have for everyone even if success isn't guaranteed.

Societies don't tend to do so well when everybody is a miserable cynic who only think the world is getting worse when in fact it is not. When the social model someone is complaining about creates better outcomes by the standard of that person, then something is seriously off about the worldview. In this libertarian zealots and communists are united, they both do rarely recognise that the very values they advocate for are routinely realised in societies that aren't libertarian or socialist.

And it's a good thing that they brought that about, but it wasn't the result of a crazy man standing on a soapbox riling up the people. The single most successful group of socialists in the 20th century were the British Fabians. That was because they were thoroughly bourgeois and knew how to navigate around existing powers, they set their eyes on goals that were realistic and achievable, and they didn't take themselves all that seriously and kept a big tent.

That's what socialists should emulate today. Get in positions of power through established institutions, develop progressive concepts that are tenable in the future and not just a copy of past events, and stop claiming that communism died because capitalists bullied them too strongly. Then maybe the left could get a majority of people behind the cause again.