"The end of capitalism has begun"

 
More Than Mortal
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This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.
Title taken from this fucking awful, rambling Guardian article.

I'm not entirely sure how to disagree with this article, because it's pretty much horse-shit. What can you say to "the postcapitalist era has begun" besides "No, it hasn't you batshit lunatic".

He claims that postcapitalism has been made possible by three factors in information technology:
  • Technology has reduced the need for work, and decoupled wages from productivity. I used to think that automation would indeed usher in an economy where humans wouldn't need to work, but I'm pretty convinced now--after reading labour economists like David Autor--that this is a long way off.
  • Information is corroding the markets ability to form prices.
  • Third, we’re seeing the spontaneous rise of collaborative production: goods, services and organisations are appearing that no longer respond to the dictates of the market and the managerial hierarchy. The biggest information product in the world – Wikipedia – is made by volunteers for free, abolishing the encyclopedia business and depriving the advertising industry of an estimated $3bn a year in revenue.

Words can't express just how much of that is fucking nonsense. This is why I stay away from mainstream media sources; this is why we shouldn't listen to non-economists on economics when they don't provide fucking sources.

To take each point in turn: no, wages have not significantly decoupled from productivity. This phenomenon is largely overstated. This claim usually leads back to one EPI paper, which relies on a highly selective reading of the labour market which excludes almost half the work force and doesn't account for total compensation. When it comes to automation abolishing the need for human work? We'd probably need to reach a point where automated labour has an absolute advantage over human labour, which would probably require general intelligence. The biggest problem for automation in the coming decades will be unequally distributed gains as some groups of workers are made more productive while others are not. Until this point, automated labour is a complement to human labour, not a substitute.

Secondly, the idea that information is somehow hampering the economy's ability to form prices is just shockingly incorrect. Incomplete information is probably one of the main reasons prices don't perfectly reach the equilibrium.

Thirdly, since when was Wikipedia anti-capitalist? Claiming Wikipedia is an example of a company which hasn't responded to the market is just ignorant; there is huge demand for information and Wikipedia has provided it so effectively that it can essentially survive on a voluntary user fee. For some reason, however, he goes on to claim this:
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Today, the thing that is corroding capitalism, barely rationalised by mainstream economics, is information. Most laws concerning information define the right of corporations to hoard it and the right of states to access it, irrespective of the human rights of citizens.
Who knew? You apparently have to work for Goldman Sachs to get information.

And, of course, there's this little gem:
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The modern day external shocks are clear: energy depletion, climate change, ageing populations and migration. They are altering the dynamics of capitalism and making it unworkable in the long term.
No, those aren't examples of why capitalism isn't sustainable over the long-run. It's pretty easy to demonstrate that an omniscient, benevolent social planner would choose to keep the market system which slight adjustments in pricing mechanisms rather than have another system, like a centrally planned economy, for instance.

Claiming these things makes capitalism unworkable just shows a distinct lack of understanding when it comes to the economy in question.



rC | Mythic Inconceivable!
 
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ayy lmao
just you fucking wait, money will be obsolete when i can print an onahole and a cheeseburger from the comfort of my own basement


aREALgod | Legendary Invincible!
 
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>Taking The Guardian seriously

lol


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"A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, 'You are mad, you are not like us'."
-Saint Anthony the Great
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Turkey | Mythic Inconceivable!
 
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Quote
Information is corroding the markets ability to form prices.

I'm just trying to imagine what kind of mind a person has to have, to think that an abundance of information would somehow make it harder to predict consumer behavior.


Mordo | Mythic Invincible!
 
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emigrate or degenerate. the choice is yours
The problem here is that it's the Guardian.


Genghis Khan | Heroic Unstoppable!
 
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Capitalism hasn't been practiced in America for over 100 years.


Super Irish | Legendary Invincible!
 
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If I'm not here, I'm doing photography. Or I'm asleep. Or in lockdown. One of those three, anyway.

The current titlebar/avatar setup is just normal.
Wikipedia doesn't necessarily abolish paid encyclopedias, for another thing.

It's strength is also it's downfall: the volunteers (and also relatively free access there is to edit the pages). You can't trust wikipedia as a reliable source of information given that is totally down to the writer(s) with their own bias, as well as the admins who may dispute facts and rollback pages when the information was correct. Don't even get me started on the "fake wiki" pages on things that are entirely made up. Paid sources of information I'd like to think have done actual research on the topics and make an unbiased source of info for the price, which is usually the case if you consider academic journals as well other than just Encyclopedia.
Last Edit: July 19, 2015, 12:13:33 PM by SuperIrish


 
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I DONT GIVE A SINGLE -blam!- MOTHER -blam!-ER ITS A MOTHER -blam!-ING FORUM, OH WOW, YOU HAVE THE WORD NINJA BELOW YOUR NAME, HOW MOTHER -blam!-ING COOL, NOT, YOUR ARE NOTHING TO ME BUT A BRAINWASHED PIECE OF SHIT BLOGGER, PEOPLE ONLY LIKE YOU BECAUSE YOU HAVE NINJA BELOW YOUR NAME, SO PLEASE PUNCH YOURAELF IN THE FACE AND STAB YOUR EYE BECAUSE YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A PIECE OF SHIT OF SOCIETY
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My stupidity is self evident.
Lol