Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

[Svartalf]

Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hatred, and hatred leads to making Snow White eat a poisoned Apple

[Scot Dutchy]

Yep, Scott. But I do have an Apple Mac (somewhere in the house!) running dual OS - Apple & Windoze. I'm not sure if you can do that with a PC.

Apple never allowed it.

[Alan B]

I'm not sure if it was a question of 'not allowing it' - it might be due to the von Neumann bottleneck...

[Hermit]

Actually you can run macOS Sierra (10.12), OS X El Capitan (10.11), OS X Yosemite (10.10), OS X Mavericks (10.9), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8), OS X Lion (10.7), Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) and Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) on a PC. Check out Hackintosh.com.

Not that any of this is relevant to the topic, though I do agree that capitalism inherently leads to oligarchies, then cartels and finally monopolism. I also agree that historically capitalism has always been the best solution to to poverty. This will not continue to be the case, though, and it never has been if or when Milton Friedman's model of it has been implemented. The capitalist systems in western and northern Europe, particularly the Scandinavian models, involving government policies and interventions have always been more effective. Even very conservative politicians like Benjamin Disraeli and Otto von Bismarck knew that. The people in the lower economic strata of their respective societies was significantly improved by that knowledge.

[Forty Two]

Once you buy into one major operating system you are caught. You cant say tomorrow I am going to change unless you buy another machine and that is not monopolistic?

I don't think so. When the PC was first invented, it needed an operating system. When buying a computer, I expect it to come with an operating system. I don't see why if someone builds a computer with an operating system that they also created or own, that they have to include other operating systems with it. It's like Nintendo selling a game system that doesn't play Playstation or X-Box games.

Apple in fact is even worse. You have no choice of make of machine.

That's not what a monopoly is.

The same is true of Amazon. And these are not monopolies?

What do you mean "the same is true of Amazon?" Amazon is a website and retailer. Amazon is no different than a shopping mall. They sell products in their store. And, Amazon is not a monopoly. Monopoly relates to a person or business that has exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service. Without reference to "exclusivity," Amazon is hardly even close to that. People buy most things from places other than Amazon.

They are in their niche. In a proper world you would be able to buy any machine fitted with a universal operating system.

What's a "universal" operating system? One operating system for every computer? A perfect world is that any machine must have the same operating system? That doesn't sound perfect, or free. If someone wants to build a better operating system, how do they do it, if the machines must be fitted with a universal operating system?

So where is the free market? Which is why I use Firefox as my browser as it is an open system. Linux would be an obvious choice but it is still to much work for me these days. I did live off the Microsoft tit when I was a programmer so I owe it something.

The free market in computers seems to be keeping the price down. If there was a monopoly, then the monopolist restricts supply to raise the price. Nobody can do that right now, because there are too many manufacturers and sellers of different computers. Apple can charge more, because they sell what people think is a premium brand - a better machine with fewer problems and the brand. Microsoft can charge what they charge because they also have a brand and a level of quality, and stores at the mall, etc. But, their machines are not as high priced as Apple. Then a host of other companies sell computers at every price range. When I buy a new laptop, I go to Sams Club and pick up a new machine for less than $500.

These machines come installed with what they come installed with, and that's on the label. I can go to any of 100 stores in the region where I live and someone will build me a computer with whatever I want in it. I don't have to have any particular operating system installed. I can get all the parts and put it together, or have the store put it together. I can have Linux or some other system installed.

As far as browsers are concerned, I can use several browsers at the same time.

When I buy a car, it comes with a computer on board, and that computer has an operating system, and it operates computer programs all the time for all the things shown on the display, diagnostics, sensors, etc. Is it a monopoly because it doesn't come with a universal operating system or allow me to use a different program to display things on the dashboard?

When people buy cars, not all options are a la carte. When we were buying our last car, we had to choose "packages" of options. I.e. I could only get the leather seats if I got a bunch of other stuff, some of which I didn't want. Was the company being a monopolistic?

[Brian Peacock]

Once you buy into one major operating system you are caught. You cant say tomorrow I am going to change unless you buy another machine and that is not monopolistic? Apple in fact is even worse. You have no choice of make of machine. ...

..cough...

[pErvinalia]

Once you buy into one major operating system you are caught. You cant say tomorrow I am going to change unless you buy another machine and that is not monopolistic?

I don't think so. When the PC was first invented, it needed an operating system. When buying a computer, I expect it to come with an operating system. I don't see why if someone builds a computer with an operating system that they also created or own, that they have to include other operating systems with it.

Microsoft didn't build computers. The hint is in the name.

[Scot Dutchy]

Once you buy into one major operating system you are caught. You cant say tomorrow I am going to change unless you buy another machine and that is not monopolistic? Apple in fact is even worse. You have no choice of make of machine. ...

..cough...

I said why I did not bother about Linux.

[Forty Two]

If a Dutchman can't be arsed with your product, what he can be arsed with is a monopoly.

[Tero]

Starlings Join Welfare State
http://karireport.blogspot.com/2017/08/ ... state.html

[Forty Two]

[PsychoSerenity]

So much bullshit, so little time.

[Forty Two]

So, what's the first bit of bullshit you came across when you listened to the talk?

[PsychoSerenity]

The first thing he said. The claim that we've "run an experiment", the idea that we can simply look at the countries of the world, see which ones have wealth (based on a very vague definition of the word) and say that one system of economics is better than another because of it, - ignoring the fact that history has only been run once, that all countries are connected rather than individual test cases, ignoring wealth flows between countries, ignoring the effects of military conflicts, political influences and a myriad of other confounding variables, making no attempt to actually analyze how wealth is created and moved around and how different economic systems influence that. It's not science. It's not an experiment. It's not even the beginnings of an attempt at proper observational research. It's a post hoc just so story.

The second thing he said that was bullshit was a conflation of capitalism and markets.

[Forty Two]

Well, capitalism, according to Merriam-Webster, is an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market. So, where trade and industry are privately owned and run for a profit, doesn't that imply a market? How do you have "capitalism" without markets?

With regard to the first point, he's making his introduction there, and notes the "running the experiment," he's talking about the trying of different courses of action that same world that you describe, with all the competing forces you describe. He notes that we had as close as we came to pure free market capitalism in the 19th century western countries, and that we've tried nearly pure statist/nonfree options, and we've tried various options in between. He says that where we've seen the most wealth creation, the highest standard of living and the least poverty are in the capitalist countries that have more free market capitalism, allowing private people to pursue their own interests and buy and sell for a profit. That doesn't become not the case because wealth flows between countries and we have military conflicts. The statist attempts have also taken place in that same world, and they've plainly had worse results, right?

I suppose you could say that if we had a world where there were not separate countries or military conflicts, and no political influences and confounding variables, etc., that a non-capitalist solution would be best, but there would be no way to test that, since that's not the world we live in. I think he's meaning to talk about the real world practical results of the various systems that have been tried over the centuries.

I suppose one might say that we would have seen the real glory of a non-capitalist system, had it been allowed to flourish unmolested by political influence, confounding variables and military conflicts, but how does that render what he said "bullshit?"