Quote from: Karolus on June 20, 2016, 09:21:37 PM

I'll take crony capitalism. I don't advocate limitless cronyism. But I also don't trust utopian theories. Crony capitalism is what happens when there is freedom of association. There will always be people associating for profit.

But the more modern Western republics do a decent job of encouraging competition and restraining anti-competitive practices. Again, it's a messy market. But it's very functional for the overwhelming majority of people.

WRT utopian theories, I can see how one might lose hope in their success sometimes, but I don't see a problem with 'trusting' them. Perhaps you have some insight?

WRT associating for profit, true, it's human nature to take when you can -- as long as it doesn't go too explicitly against the values you claim to espouse. But the whole point of having institutions and rules is to protect the public (ie you and I) from this taking. It's true that neither the public nor the elites easily win totally -- the back-and-forth has gone on for eons. That is no excuse to declare defeat unilaterally.

This is especially so since all that separates us from major progress is a little more understanding of how the system works.

The current system is 'functional for the overwhelming majority' only because most of the economic pain of financial busts is offloaded from people at or near the top of the system (ie those who are most responsible for, and benefit the most from, creating the crisis condition) to people further down. In the most severe busts, such as the Great Depression and since 2007/2008, even many people high up in the pecking order, e.g. US and European citizens, are suffering, and a huge amount of pain did and will go to vulnerable populations, such as prewar Germany, China today, the Mideast, etc. through lack of demand.

It's no surprise, then, that war and terrorism are objectively an integral part of how the system works. War and terrorism also, eventually, help bail out the Western system as these countries ride in glory to fight evil forces, reshape the world to their liking after their victory, and blame any financial 'irregularity' on the cataclysm. (In fact, the Western elites have the incentives to stoke the flames of conflict beforehand -- and I'll stop there for now.)

Another facet of the system is that, since the elites are constantly issuing money, debt and financial assets to benefit themselves, they need real economic growth to provide demand for these assets, or the system will eventually implode from lack of trust in the assets. So, led by the elites, everyone in the economy is incentivized to pursue profit at all cost, and here you see the roots of pollution, social alienation, addiction and psychological problems. (Now I'm not claiming I or anyone knows or should dictate the proper work/life balance for anyone -- I'm only saying the system creates a real bias away from what people would normally do, in favor of making money.)

I'm guessing a good part of what you perceive as 'functional' is based on this artificial need for economic growth. In pursuit of growth, many systems must function better (this piece is closely related to what is known as supply-side economics.) But, as we can see, the core mechanism is pretty ugly, to say the least.