The point I was making was that if creative types, artists and musicians etc, all use Apples then they do so for a very good reason, they work in that environment better than a PC. Just because you disagree with the market doesn't make it wrong, there is a strong argument to say that the market is always right (even when it is wrong), if it is left to its own devices.
i hardly think that the 3rd world is exactly prospering at the moment do you? its not in the 'developed' worlds interests to emancipate these countries..its a threat to profits. i would welcome your so-called dark ages of self sufficiency (thats an oxymoron if ever i heard one) for developing nations. the one thing that they are not is self sufficient. even 'right on' attempts at dark age self sufficiency like Fair Trade have corporate exploitation behind them. Huge companies such as the huge supermarkets exploit these people for a pittance. youve inadvertantly agreed with me with your remarks about corporate greed. this is my point exactly you cannot defend the indefensible when you attempt to defend banks for offering paltry savings rates conveniently forgetting the mess that they intentionally created. you talk about the 120k staff laid off but neglect to mention that their combined salaries are less than the combined bonuses of a handful of investment bankers. the bankers make money from nothing..literally nothing. they invent things like share options..an opportunity to a possibility of owning something intangible. the technology exists to make things as good as possible that could potentially last indefinately..certainly long enough to outlive a human..but this is not profitable..ergo, its not 'good' business. Think about people like Prescott Bush (George dubyas grandpaw) who was an oil exec in WW2..selling crude to the Luftwaffe AND the British Army...it was in his interest to fuel the war because it was very profitable..thats 'good' business. no offence, but wake up to the realities of the world and do some research. maybe open your mind and look into things such as the Venus Project. It IS possible to have a non monetary world economy, its just that for the most of us, were not sufficiently evolved to think beyond worthless bits of paper upon which we impart some sort of value. And whilst i finish my little soapbox diatribe, think about your remarks about the dark ages of self sufficiency and see if somehow you can square the circle with things like blood diamonds in south africa (look it up), or illegal wars in places like Afghanistan..or if you prefer, why somewhere like err....i dont know, the amazon, is being cut down an area the size of wales every year and ask yourself, maybe in 1000 years if we live that long due to the wonderful progress were making, maybe humankind will look back on this as the dark ages of wage enslavement, or the dark ages of inequality For once, humans have the power to distribute the earths resources, but no, the 1% will always want to keep it..dont fool yourself that youre liberated...who owns your house, you or the bank...are you thinking about pensions and savings plans?? why?? in case the crap hits the fan one day?? How many months of unemployment would it take for the bank to want their asset back?? 3?? Dont even get me started on so called health 'care' systems like Americas..No thank you..lose you no claims bonus and youre in the crapper mate...my recent op would have cost in excess of $60k in the states..thats IF you can get it..most insurance companies wont touch it....not 'good' business..my ex bro in law lives in the states..the entire family have to stump up $1500 p/month to pay for his mother in laws medication, meanwhile he lives with his 2 kids under hefr roof because he cant raise the money for a deposit because he's spending so much on keep his mother in law alive, and cant get a loan from the banks because theyre so busy screwing everybody...lets hope no one else in the family get ill eh? Seriously..look up the Venus Project and the material that i referred you to...were not sufficiently evolved for it yet, were too greedy and stuck in the dark ages..but maybe one day. fyi: Bank of England base rate is 2.5% at the time writing..average savings rate is about 1% (half), average mortgage rate is about 5%..(double base rate) therefore the arguement that the banks somehow cant afford to raise savings and investments rates is bollox..not to mention the wonderful deregulation that sees a myriad of charleton companies advertising ad nauseum on TV with smiley faced ppl getting their payday loans at interest rates in the region of 3000%....yes, 3000%...ffs man, lets get a bit real here!
We can bat examples back and forth all day. I'm not defending all corporations, nor am I defending every aspect of their behaviour (for that matter I don't know many individuals who are perfect). I simply pointed out that without them the world would be hugely less 'developed'. A blanket statement on either side is ludicrous. I worked for the guy who made the film 'Who killed the electric car', if you haven't seen it it's a fine example of corporations killing development in their own interests. I'm not blinkered.
i'd still disagree with you mate. the world would NOT be less developed without corporations. companies DO NOT drive forward innovation..people do, whether that be science or culture. this is why most scientists and artists arent wealthy. I dont know..Tim Berners-Lee (invented the internet), of Van Gough (died a pauper), or Beethoven (died a pauper, buried in an unmarked mass grave)..by definition, you cant die a pauper if the economy isnt based on money, but im digressing here. Did Van Gough paint just to get rich? Did Beethoven compose just to get rich? Did Tim Berners-Lee invent...you get the idea...they were innovators..innovators innovate. Imagine how great your life would be Bagz if you could pursue your dream, your real dream, without having to worry about working for a faceless something to generate more profit..a profit that YOU dont benefit from (ask those 120k odd bankers about that). you wouldnt have to spend hours and hours every day doing a job for someone else when you could be..i dont know, building a race bike, writing poetry, whatever... How many people end up in jobs they hate? Your dream might be to build motorbikes, but theres some poor sod building motorbikes somewhere dreaming of being a school teacher...but were all trapped, and were all deceiving ourselves that its got to be done..Reliance on money is the single defining factor as to why very few of us truly realise our dreams and as we get older we 'manage our expectations'. Thanks to science, for once in humankinds history, we can feed EVERYBODY, clothe EVERYBODY, share knowledge, interact globally..but we dont..99% of us would love to, 1% don't. The 1% with the power...THEY want to maintain the status quo, as they have sought to do for centuries. Throughout history companies have sought to stifle innovation due to self interest, even if employees within the company disagree..(bottom line and all that) It just so happens that the world model we're currently using is capitalism based on money rather than intellectual capitalism..or to put it another way, a world developed on shared knowledge..shared knowledge without a price tag. This is the very essence upon which internet forums are based...shared knowledge. This is just one of a trillion examples. We only need money to invest in technology because we use a money based economy, not an intellectual economy. Lets say we both have skills that the other could benefit from. We trade our skills, share our knowledge. I dont charge you, you dont charge me...it used to work quite well in the dark ages of self sufficiency..they called it barter... Barter goes back tens of thousands of years. By nature, humans love to help and share information. Other humans like to take advantage of others, although they to, being human, also have a desire to share their knowledge. If companies had their way, nothing would be free, everything would have a price..it would end up like Bladerunner. How much money have we all saved thanks to others' knowledge on these forums? How many friendships have been formed? These are just two areas that companies like to make money. I say fuck them.
Free markets are a wonderful engine of prosperity ... in a theoretical ideal world where buyers and sellers are unfettered and have full knowledge. Unfortunately in the real world, they bring a few problems including: 1. Free markets tend towards oligolopoly, then duopoly, then monopoly - and the monopolist is eventually able to destroy the freedom of the market. 2. Free markets tend towards cyclical fluctuations, which build up to become more and more extreme over time and eventually destroy more than they create. 3. Optimistic expectations often feedback in a loop inflating pricing bubbles, and the bubbles eventually burst catastrophically. 4. The concentration of wealth and power in a few hands, left to its own devices, eventually leads to an ancien regime of a tiny upper class with the rest of the population reduced to serfs, or slaves. If you want to argue that all these features of free markets are "always right", please go ahead. I may take quite a bit of convincing though, given that I support a mixed economy with firm regulation and a democratic polity.
Hang on, hang on. Are you suggesting that there is no simple, nay, simplistic answer to creating a healthy economy? WTH? Do the politicians know about this?
Funky's post is interesting, but I don't agree with all of it. Maybe I don't agree with much of it. I do think that companies innovate - no doubt stimulated by the profit motive, admittedly but, to go back to some of the original thoughts in this thread, would you have an iPhone if you just had a couple of guys (or one) beavering away in a garage? Teams are greater than the sum of their parts, everyone brings something to the mix. Where work is stimulating is where you do what you know how to do and rely on others to do the things that they are good at. Surely in music this is precisely what happens. A great band is where the musicians complement each other. You might be a fantastic guitarist, but you don't have the monopoly of the ideas. You need a great drummer, an arranger, someone who can write lyrics. You get the drift. The more complex a product is, the more people you have to have working on it, the bigger probably the company that is going to make it. I also think that the idea that 99% of people don't enjoy their work is unduly pessimistic. I suspect that most people do enjoy their work - though you can't expect work to be only fun. Someone has to work in sewage works, someone has to mine the coal. Even in a fun job, there is always a load of stuff that you'd sooner not do, given the chance. As for money vs barter: money is a great invention. Imagine if you had to barter your work for everything - hospital treatment, a working phone, the construction of your motorbike, your gas. It would in no way be practicable. Money is simply a way of making barter easy. Also, you'd never be able to own a house without money (unless a load of mates built it for you -and even then). It represents a load of work you haven't yet done, but which you want credited to you now. That's finance, folks. Of course there are going to be downsides to the system, but so far there isn't a better one. A society without money is going to be very basic. You can forget high-performance motorbikes for a start. Sure, we can debate how companies should work and who should own them and what should happen to the profits. But that is the subject of a completely different post.
Pete, the points you make are all happening today but are not the result of unfettered free markets but of governments tinkering in anything but free markets, particularly with interest rates and the money supply, and getting it spectacularly wrong. It boils down to the arguments between Keynes and Hayek, which are currently being examined by Steph Flanders in the BBC series Masters of Money. The fact is we do not live under free markets, they are highly regulated but that regulation has always either failed or been behind the curve because the rules are manipulated not for economic reasons but short term political / personal gain. Hayek argued that truely setting the markets free from goverment control would lead to a better fairer economy. Keynes won the argument and Keynsianism, governments tinkering, has been at the heart of global economic policy ever since, which today is obviously failing. It was Hayek who wrote The Road to Serfdom as a warning and that is where our current leaders are taking us.
BoE rate 0.5% Bank of England Statistical Interactive Database | Interest & Exchange Rates | Official Bank Rate History I didnt inadvertently agree, I made the point the issue is not corporations but greed linked to corporations Imagine a world where no business can make more than 10% of its revenue as profit, where any additional money has to be driven into 3 areas; innovation, employment, social causes. All of a sudden corporations look far more attractive and the comment re dark ages isnt 3rd world countries, this wold be a great way to help them, it's the 1400's I was referring to when we swapped turnips for wheat and chickens for the next door neighbours wife
Our current leaders seem to be taking us down the drain. I don't buy Hayek's thinking for one minute. Funny how the rich are so keen on him. Looks a lot less brilliant when you are poor. One of the major reasons things are failing in the West is that the richer are getting richer, the poor poorer. The poor are seeing their jobs exported to China, the rich are seeing their dividends and bonuses increase as a result. With totally unregulated markets, look where the bankers have taken us. Of course, as a true fan of Hayek, you would have said, don't bail them out. Let them go to the wall. Marvellous. Then the savings of the retired and poor could have gone with them and industry would have closed down as all the loans would have been called in. Governments didn't necessarily WANT to bail out the banks. They felt constrained to as the lesser of evils once the banks had managed to bollocks everything up. And as Pete1950 points out, you'd just get massive corporations ending in duopolies or monopolies. Bad for consumers, bad for business. Hayek's view seems almost fascist to me: let the strongest survive and the weak go to the wall. Likes Spartans putting sickly children on hillsides to die. It may be efficient, but it's a lousy way to run a caring society. The wailing about no society having ever had the balls to really follow Hayek's ideas to arrive at a new utopia seems very much like those arguments that said that no country had really implemented communism properly to arrive at Marx's utopia. Ya wanna take the risk? There's a limit to how much good Smith's invisible hand does. The more societies implement Hayek's thinking, the more divisive the society. The US with it's rampant drug problems, disenfranchised underclass on benefits and crumbling no-go, gun-ridden inner cities doesn't seem like a good model to me. And all the Americans do about it is bleat about there being too comfy a social welfare net and demand smaller government, less controls, more unfettered capitalism. Let's all go an live on The Corner in Baltimore's ghetto and do a dead-end job (if we can get one) and then see how much we like what little government control looks like. You can't make an entire society of budding entrepreneurs. It ain't never going to happen whatever the prevailing politics.
The conversation is veering off to include capitalism in general. I think Glid put it well: " do think that companies innovate - no doubt stimulated by the profit motive, admittedly but, to go back to some of the original thoughts in this thread, would you have an iPhone if you just had a couple of guys (or one) beavering away in a garage? Teams are greater than the sum of their parts, everyone brings something to the mix. Where work is stimulating is where you do what you know how to do and rely on others to do the things that they are good at. Surely in music this is precisely what happens. A great band is where the musicians complement each other. You might be a fantastic guitarist, but you don't have the monopoly of the ideas. You need a great drummer, an arranger, someone who can write lyrics. You get the drift. The more complex a product is, the more people you have to have working on it, the bigger probably the company that is going to make it." FYI, when Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web he did so when working at CERN, building on their pioneering work on the development of the internet (before he joined them).
We have never had totally unregulated markets, what we have had is crony capitalism with governments tinkering for political / personal gain. The banks were allowed or even encouraged to get too big to fail and the highstreet banks allowed to become casino banks. The crisis of 2008 demanded that we intervene to avoid a catastrophic global meltdown but the seeds of that situation were planted a long time ago, it didn't have to be like that. Do you remember 'We have abolished boom and bust', yeah right. Banks that are no longer viable should be allowed to fail but with ordinary depostitors safeguarded and those running the banks held to account. Under the current policies the savings of the retired and the poor are going to take a battering due to the inevitable inflation that will follow. The goverment is effectively confiscating what little wealth we have whilst allowing the rich to stay rich. Governments have failed economically whilst implementing Keynesian policies, more of the same will also fail. It is that failure which keeps the poor poor and allows the rich to get richer. However all of this is academic and I am not a true fan of Hayek, I believe growth as we knew it is a thing of the past, resource depletion, increasing environmental costs and banking instability will see to it. It is something we will have to learn to live with, or not as the case may be, because there is no alternative. The idea that growth as we knew it will return and save us all is laughable because that growth was largely an illusion and we are now left with the bill.
if the economy is great why is every currency in the world in a constant state of perpetual decline. every currency in existence is worth less than it was the week before and this has been the case since its invention. money is based on debt. As such, theres never enough money in the supply to meet demand (inflation). In a few years a bag of crisps will cost £5. Have you ever seen Japanese prices?? its costs about a million yen for a t shirt!
What timescale are you talking about, John? OK, there may be no economic growth in the world for the next year or two. Are you suggesting there can be no growth in the next 10 years ... 100 years ... 1,000 years? That there is something inherent in the makeup of our planet which precludes further growth, ever? If so that is one of the most pessimistic views I have ever heard. I disagree profoundly.
If inflation is at a steady 2% or so, that is just perfect (it's pretty close in UK at the moment). Much higher is bad (hyperinflation), and negative inflation (deflation) is worse. Would you like an explanation why, or is it obvious? Why on earth do you think Victorian-style nil inflation would be a good thing? Why do you think the price of bag of crisps ought to be the same number of £, $ or Yen today as it was 50 years ago? And what difference does it make whether it is called 100, 1,000 or a million Yen - it's an arbitrary convention. Sorry if this thread is starting to look like an Economics seminar!
Pete, we have been here before. I don't think it is pessimistic at all, I think it is realistic. I am not an economist but we can't keep 'growing' and consuming ever more stuff indefinitely on a finite planet, there are natural limits. Our economy requires a return on investment to grow so we can invest more. It is like a snowball running down a hill getting bigger and bigger, the only question is whether it rolls out at the bottom of the hill, hits a tree or becomes too big, unstable and breaks up. Richard Heinberg and others are leading the way in this line of thought. Richard Heinberg | The End of Growth This is not lunatic fringe stuff, it is gaining traction. I believe the only 'growth' we will see in the rest of your and my lifetimes is 'inflationary growth' to help write off debt.
Inflation does two obvious things, it provides an incentive for the holders of capital to invest and grow their wealth, otherwise they watch it loose value, and it transfers wealth from the people to the state, who control the money supply. The 'Great Man' JM Keynes wrote “By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.” I am not sure what world you live in Pete but in my world inflation is more than 2% and likely to get higher very soon. Some impartial (sic) comentators are suggesting double figures within 3-5 years.
I guess it is less of an issue if you have an index linked final salary pension backed by the taxpayer, but I don't, I have a pension pot with a decent wedge but it buys f**k all.
Pension pot? I think mine would be like the one in the expression "not having a pot to piss in". If I think I can retire on that.... Nope, you either retire wealthy these days or you don't retire at all. The alternative is a cardboard box on a High Street.
