Capitalists sincerely want you to be rich. Because that means there’s more money they can bastard out of you, obviously. Which is a bit of a problem for that Marxist claim that the capitalists want others to be poor, isn’t it?
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Samizdata quote of the day – capitalists sincerely want you to be richApril 27th, 2024 |
 19 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – capitalists sincerely want you to be richLeave a Reply |
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Small quibble: It’s not the number of dollars I have that makes me rich, it’s having more dollars than anyone else (which allows me to outbid everyone for the things I want) that makes me privileged.
Same reason UBI fails, I think. Give everyone an extra million per year, and I end up having to bid against all the other millionaires. Give only ME that million, and all the chocolate is mine.
But, yeah, the basic nugget of that quote is correct.
Carry that thought one step further: if you lower the costs of chocolate production through gains in efficiency or by innovating new processes, if you bring more chocolate factories online in order to meet market demands and make a profit, then everyone can have millionaire levels of chocolate consumption.
And that’s capitalism.
Good news bobby b & Ferox, the government has decided your chocolate ration will be increased to 20 grams per week from its earlier 30 grams.
Bill: is despicable reactionary misinformation. Chocolate ration has always been 20 grams!
Mars bars have shrunk from 62.5g to 51g over the years, which chocolate makers have said is a move to ensure people eat more healthily.
John:
That might work if the price dropped proportionately. Strangely, that never happens.
bobby b’s small quibble isn’t all that small really. Obviously everyone likes to have good food, a pleasant home and all the comforts of modern life. But where you are in the pecking order matters too and not merely for reasons of envy.
The most important feature of human life (also beetle life) is absolutely a competitive sport and what matters is where you stand in relation to the competition.
Would that be Tim’s older brother?
I’ll get my coat . . .
llater,
llamas
@bobby b
Small quibble: It’s not the number of dollars I have that makes me rich, it’s having more dollars than anyone else (which allows me to outbid everyone for the things I want) that makes me privileged.
Small quibble with your small quibble. We aren’t rich just by comparison with others, there are some objective standards of richness. For example, if we have all the food we need we are rich historically, if we have high quality, reliable shelter, we are rich historically, if we have decent healthcare we are rich historically. Even if everyone else has the same, or even higher levels of these things, we are still rich, historically anyway. The simple fact is that most middle class people in the West today are objectively much richer than Kings and Emperors of the past. And, today, one of the biggest problem the poor in the west suffer from is obesity — an idea that would be laughable just a hundred years ago.
Dollars are a terrible measure of wealth because the government is constantly devaluing them, I think this is best illustrated by the idea of “millionaire”. It wasn’t long ago that a “millionaire” was considered a super rich person, but today? A person with a million dollars in capital excluding real estate, well invested can lead a comfortable life off it, but certainly there are no yachts, Lear Jets or Bugattis involved.
However, the greatness of free markets is that it makes everyone richer, even if rich people get richer faster. The “I’m rich if I have more than my neighbor” thinking is actually pretty toxic and leads to a lot of bad political outcomes.
I think that it is significant that those greedy capitalists got rich when people voluntarily handed over their money in exchange for something that they wanted. The emphasis is on the word voluntarily, if people didn’t like what was on offer they could keep their money in their pockets. Contrast this state of affairs with the government which sticks its hands in your pocket and helps itself to your cash whether you want what it is selling or not.
Took me a few minutes to figure this one out. 😉
“Rich”, to me, is a relative term. Sure, we’re all much better off than we were 300 years ago, but there’s still that bell curve representing wealth, and “rich”, to me, is what we call the far right end of it. We all eat like the rich used to eat, but I still need a bigger pile of cash if I want to buy Panama and I’m bidding against Elon.
And, the drive to surpass others may be toxic, but it is also a wonderful goad for innovation and work and progress.
@bobby b
And, the drive to surpass others may be toxic, but it is also a wonderful goad for innovation and work and progress.
Yes, as long as it is productive. However, most people don’t have the drive, opportunity or luck to be very successful. And that leads to that worst kind of toxicity — where they start talking about “the rich paying their fair share”. The non rich always greatly outnumber the rich, and in a democracy that can lead to the transfer of wealth from producers who store capital and consequently grow the economy, to consumers whole piss it away on crap. FWIW, it is why I think a bit of corruption is a necessary part of democracy, where the rich can bribe the politicians to not steal their stuff. Spend a bit on bread and circuses and we get less Russian revolutions and more productive use of capital.
Here’s an issue nobody is really considering: Traditional economic systems that the Marxists denigrated by terming them “Capitalist” are based on allocating scarce resources the most effectively.
What the hell happens when scarcity goes away? What rules are there to things when you can feed everyone with only a fraction of the labor force working agriculture, when only a fraction of the population can produce enough goods and services to keep everyone more-or-less ticking over in relative prosperity?
All of my reading and study of economics back in the 1980s and early 1990s taught me that we should be well into an economic apocalypse by now. 34 trillion in debt…? WTF? How is that working, and it’s like that around the world. The house of cards should have already come tumbling down, if the old authorities were right, and if conditions haven’t changed in the fundamentals.
So, either the authorities were wrong, or the fundamentals have shifted, at least a little.
I have no idea how it is possible for things to still be working as well as they are. I was really expecting things to have “caught up” a long time ago, and maybe they are still going to, but… What if the things we learned about economics back in the old days, when it took 90% of the population working agriculture to feed everyone, are no longer true?
I still think it horribly ill-conceived that the “authorities” seem to be hell-bent on seeing what the new hard stops are.
In all the econ classes I ever took, the first assumption they teach is “Demand is insatiable.” So that situation never happens; people quit being content with a bowl of porridge a day and start wanting bread with it. And then their kids want meat. And their kids want lasagna. And lattes.
Further, some things can never be plentiful in the Star Trek replicator economy sense, like apartments with a nice view of the beach, or original artworks, or the front row seats at a concert or sporting event.
In all those markets, the state’s guiding hand is clumsy and destructive; setting “living wages” distorts the low end of the labor market, banning the most vulnerable from productive labor (by law!) and increasing the cost of some labor-intensive goods to the point that they can no longer be profitably made. Rent controls cause housing shortages, and the most price-distorted rentals always (somehow?!?) end up in the hands of the politically well-connected.
The state’s worst sin, in my opinion, is fiat currency. As the currency degrades, wealth degrades, and as Paul Marks is fond of pointing out, a sudden rush of inflationary currency concentrates real wealth into the hands of those who are in a position to get their hands on it first – they buy up all the real property using that cheap devalued currency before the prices shoot up. And inflation takes away confidence; consumers (quite rationally) don’t save their money, since their money is literally evaporating as they hold it. That might be good for the economy in the short term, but it creates a lack of real capital, and replaces it with poisonous paper capital with nothing behind it. Then debt comes along behind, and eats up all our children’s lattes, and lasagna, and then their bread and porridge too.
“However, most people don’t have the drive, opportunity or luck to be very successful.”
Are these the people who always look to The State to solve all their problems? I find it interesting that it seems obvious to us that The State only causes and exacerbates problems, this is happening continuously in plain sight, but it still isn’t obvious to everyone.
@Stonyground
Are these the people who always look to The State to solve all their problems?
Not necessarily. I think there are different measures of success than just financial and a lot of people are happy with that. I mean if the state throws money at them they will take it, but they aren’t necessarily looking to the state to save them. Some are, but a lot aren’t.
And for balance it is well worth pointing out that huge corporations are also very ready to look to the state to solve their problems. Trillions of dollars were spent to prop up dreadfully poorly run companies in 2008, and large corps regularly get huge loans and tax breaks from the government. Right here in Chicago the Chicago Bears are building a new stadium and the Chicago tax payers are going to pay for about half of it. Nice to see the government helping out all those poor millionaire players and billionaire owners. What would they do otherwise?
I find it interesting that it seems obvious to us that The State only causes and exacerbates problems, this is happening continuously in plain sight, but it still isn’t obvious to everyone.
I think “only” is too strong. The state does some good things, for example, providing a police force, or a court system and the enforcement of property rights and contracts. Were the state to focus on their core responsibilities and were those responsibilities pushed down to the lowest levels of government through federalism then we’d be much better off.
Stoneground wrote:
Are these the people who always look to The State to solve all their problems?
Not necessarily the state, but eventually people get tired of being stepped by the rich and either turn to the state to rein in the excesses or go to his high-order violence.
We’re getting close today the point where normal people just decide the state has outlived it’s usefulness in dealing with those problems if wealth concentration.
Classical capitalism depended on Real Savings (Capital – the actual sacrifice of consumption) and serving customers well over time, so they kept coming back.
Modern “capitalism” depends on Credit Money (created from nothing) and most shares are controlled by corporate entities (such as BlackRock) who hate and despise customers.
So Mr Worstall comments are, sadly, out of date.
Vast Corporations are concerned with pleasing the entities who “manage” the shares – and pleasing the Central Banks, and being good “partners” to governments in pushing the “Woke” agenda.
Managers who point out that this causes financial losses would be fired – indeed how could honest people became key corporate managers in the first place, the corporate culture would weed them out.