Last night on some show, there was a guy, a Republican I assume, talking about the current financial situation. He offered that the whole bailout thing was a bad idea. Why? Because he thinks that how capitalism learns is by seeing failure. Let's set aside for the moment that capitalism is an abstraction and thus can't "learn" anything. Clearly what he's driving at is that capitalists learn from failure.
Does this work? Do we have any historical examples to go on? What he's saying is that if we bail out the banks and such, nobody will learn, it's a free handout. Essentially what he's getting at is that if the economy has to collapse, oh well, because that's how capitalism learns, by seeing failures happen. If capitalism doesn't have failures it'll essentially get too big for its britches and assume it can do anything with no consequences. I'm extrapolating a bit here but I don't really see that there's another conclusion to be drawn from the statement that capitalism learns by seeing failures happen.
OK, so, back to the question at hand. Do we have anything to examine to find out whether he's correct, that capitalism learns by seeing failures occur? You know it's coming. Of course we do. It's called the Great Depression. Now seeing as how some are saying that if we don't do something, we might have another Great Depression or something even worse, I have to conclude one of two things.
The first is that he's simply wrong, capitalism doesn't learn by failure in any way whatsoever. Left to its own devices, it'll just keep doing the same thing, because that's exactly what seems to have happened here. However, there's another conclusion, and I think this one is even scarier.
The other conclusion is this. Capitalism indeed learns from seeing failures happen. But if this is so, how do we account for the current situation, which seems to be repeating similar mistakes? Quite simply, the Great Depression is too far in the past. Capitalism hasn't seen a failure happen recently enough, and it's forgotten what it's learned.
OK, so why is this scary? You might say the same thing about a person. Because what it basically suggests is that every generation or so, roughly speaking, capitalism just needs to see another failure happen in order to learn. Keep in mind we're not saying that this failure will probably happen and then capitalism will learn something new. The conclusion is that capitalism forgets its learning, and has to be reminded every so often by another failure. Is that really an ideology we want to support? In order for capitalism to function properly, every generation or so we need another Great Depression or something nearly equivalent, perhaps confined to a single market if that's even possible, in order for capitalism to learn the same damn thing over and over and over again?
On a similar note, ideology dominating sensibleness, some Republican woman was talking about the current bailout too. House Republicans decided to propose their own plan, and what she kept saying about it over and over again was, they're being strong, because the other plan's socialism, and we don't want socialism! We don't want socialism at all! Shades of fundamentalism here. We're not concerned about what's best for the people, we're just all jazzed up that it might be socialism? Which of course means that the good Republicans must stand strong against it.
Keep in mind here, I'm not saying that the other plan is what's best, as such. But both of these statements strike me as pretty frightening. In the latter all we're concerned about is that we have the correct political ideology. In the former, it's as though we're saying, don't stop your child from playing with the fan, he needs to break a finger to see that's a bad idea. What? Yes I know he did it just a month ago, but apparently he didn't learn or he forgot. Now leave him alone so he can do it again and maybe he'll learn this time.
I'd like to add something here concerning capitalism and generations. People who argue that failures are teaching tools will say something like the following. No, we're not encouraging failure, nobody wants failure, and you have to understand that these are "market forces" causing this to happen, the failures just occur, so we may as well learn from them. Let's get something straight here. Remember how I said that capitalism is an abstraction, and thus can't "learn" anything? This is vitally important to understand.
I don't believe there are market forces, in the usual sense. That is, when people speak about "market forces" what they mean is something like, here is how the market works, and these things just happen. It's like saying that nobody's responsible for your house getting destroyed in a tornado. This is true. However, people are responsible for the market. In a tornado, wind conditions occur, just so, and the tornado just so happens to hit your house, as opposed to your friend's house two towns over.
When people talk about "market forces", they're saying the same thing, it just so happens that, due to the "market forces" acting in just such and such a manner, your company just got destroyed, or you just lost your house, or so on. Notice BTW that rarely are "market forces" invoked for anything good. It's the opposite of "God helped us win this game", nobody ever says "damn it God, thanks for making us lose!" Similarly, if things go wrong, it's "market forces", but if there's a stunning coup in the business world, why that's whoever had the gumption and initiative and drive and .... to go make it happen!
This is why I find the rabbid opposition to "socialism", without considering the effects on the people, and the idea that capitalism just has to see failures happen to learn so scary. We're totally removing people from the equation. What? You lost your house and your business? Oh well, sorry, but capitalism has to see failures happen in order to learn. What? You lost your house and your business? Yeah, but at least our plan to help wasn't "socialist"!
I'm not saying here that there's any way to save everybody. I'm not saying that sometimes you don't have to make hard decisions. What I am suggesting is that these abstractions, much like "collateral damage", simply illiminate any connection to the real consequences. These decisions don't become something to be deeply and morally considered, they don't become a situation where we try to limit as much as possible the unfortunate consequences, they essentially become writeoffs. What? No no, we didn't kill civilians, that's "collateral damage", you can't make an omlet without breaking some eggs. Let me change my previous sentence. These decisions should be deeply and morally *agonized* over. I want people who realize the extreme gravity of war, or the economy, or such, to be making these decisions, not people who are writing them off as failures from which capitalism learns, or at least it's not socialist, or oh well shit happens in war. For instance, if war is hell, and we know this, and we know that morality pretty much goes out the window for both sides to a perhaps greater or lesser degree, shouldn't we really use it as the *last* option, when everything else has truly failed? Yet another case where whatever hasn't learned from "seeing failures happen"?
P.S.
Pretty sure I misspelled omlet, I don't feel like looking it up. Deal with it.
2 comments:
There's a least three of four major confusions with your argument here, but then again, pretty much everybody who says anything on these topics is fuckin' stupid except me, so what should I expect (smirk) :)
No, seriously.
1. You assume that the system we have is "capitalist". I'm not going to do the typical, Randroid speil about how this is a "mixed economy", primarily because EVERY "economy" in history has been "mixed" (in that some form of Government and/or over-arching social structure conditions what sorts of transactions and exchanges are allowed to take place, and what counts as money, etc.) So every culture's economy is "mixed", and, realistically, nothing but complete and total anarchy will prevent that.
What I'm getting at here is: you're operating on the other side of Objectivism's coin, here: you actually believe that businesspeople really like having to compete with one another, or that they don't want to "corner the market" and control everything. In other words, you seem to be tacitly accepting Rand's notion of the UberCapitalist, who freely competes on a genuinely free market.
This isn't a situation of that kind, and probably nothing like that has -- or ever will - be allowed to exist, primarily because businesspeople don't want it.
That's why corporations exist: primarily, to insulate the investors/CEO's "personal" assets from being impacted if their business venture fails. Corporate "personhood" is all the evidence we'll ever need that "businessmen" absolutely loathe the idea of genuinely free competition.
Add to that patents and copyrights, which are nothing but ways to punish "illicit" competition, and you see where I'm going here.
Republicans are scum, and pretty much every apologist for so-called "free markets" is, at base, a mindless corporate shill. Examine their stance on "corporate personhood" and "intellectual property" and it's clear as day.
As far as "socialism": you should know that this word is used by Republicans/Conservatards in the same way they used to use "commie":
The Soviet Bloc was an "Evil Empire", but those nations under United States military domination were the "Free world".
Orwell was right.
Last, this is about bankers: banking has never been a legitimate "business": rather, it was a "no-effort" path to aquiring vast wealth without actually having to make products or provide services. Then, Bankers were able to buy up vast amounts of REAL stuff (houses, factories, real business establishments etc.), and lie to people about that fact. Nobody with a mortgage really "owns" their home, it's basically equivalent to renting, but they were able to convince vast amounts of gullible people that they were becoming "homeowners".
Then it collapsed, and all of those poor, misguided "renters" get what they THOUGHT they "owned" taken from them. Yet another no-effort path to real wealth for the scumbags who really run things.
Whether the bailout goes through or not isn't really the issue: the issue is why the fuck aren't people out hanging bankers and corporate CEO's from lamp-posts.
1. I am not assuming anything. He used the term capitalism to describe the current economy, so I too use it.
2. Aside from banking being a legitimate business or not, the fact is that we've got shit going down, and we have warring ideologies.
Something I forgot to add BTW, is that this doesn't make "capitalism", whatever it is, look very good. Much like your comment on competition and such, which I pretty much agree with BTW, it belies the whole rational economic actor idea. Apparently, economic actors are moronic and need repeated failures to go, oh, oops, I guess we oughtn't to have done that.
Anyway, my post wasn't about capitalism as such, ssuming it even exists, no seriously!, but rather over the fact that these terms, X is socialist and thus bad, capitalism just needs to see failures so we shouldn't do anything, etc., those are the problem. Which probably doesn't make sense because the screen reader isn't letting me read what I wrote, heh! Anyway my point is regardless of the economic system and such, these ideas are used to write off the actual consequences, just like "market forces", it's not people doing that to you, the actions of people, it's just like, you know, the tide.
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