Quick rant: Not to be taken too seriously

[gyges_ring]

I love the phrase "failure of market capitalism." It's such a brilliant phrase. Because, of course, as it currently seems to be being used, it's actually wrong. Market capitalism has spectacular failings in its theories at times, but human crisis and catastrophe aren't among them. Crisis and catastrophe are supposed to be part of market capitalism

Comments

[ataxi]

Rudd's essay (which must be the prime target of your admonitions) mostly rants about neo-liberalism, taken to refer to "those who err on the side of deregulation" as far as I can tell. The phrase "extreme capitalism" gets used, but neo-liberalism gets more play."Blame can't simply be pared off, and attributed to those terrible free-market economists"
Absolutely not. Where blame can be assigned to groups, it should be assigned to those parasites of the financial system who ignored clear market signals in search of one more quarterly pay incentive; those who presided over the mis-rating of vast quantities of debt securities; those who simply pirated off with vast sums of cash, or built illusory investment schemes like Madoff; and that vast cohort of borrowers, commercial and private, who took on dubious debt without consideration, without sense, and without the ultimate means to repay it in good order

[gyges_ring]

Not so much the Rudd essay. At least, not directly. It was mostly about a group of people I know who got into a discussion that turned into something along the lines of "omg Kevin Rudd is so right (just like he always is). We should totally become a socialist republic and burn the bankers." I wanted to vent, but not at them, because they are basically the kind of people who changed their political beliefs on Facebook to "Social Democrat" last Thursday or whenever it was that the essay was formally announced. I could not see venting at them ending well

[ataxi]

I absolutely agree. "Regulation" eh? What specific regulation? It's about as clear as "keeping the bastards honest". The Glass-Steagall "thing" (as I'm going to refer to it, lacking deep understanding) where commercial and investment banking were separated in the US seems to have been a key area, because ordinary people give two shits about investment banks (well, to some extent) but commercial banks that lend to ordinary people need state guarantees

[ataxi]

Returning to my last paragraph: Obama introduces cash salary cap. With Grauniad editorial discussion here and here (with reference to further bonus claw-back provisions). The type of thing I'm talking about.

[infamyanonymous]

tldr

RSVP

[nicholii]

What does "failure" mean?

[ext_3201]

http://failblog.org/

[gyges_ring]

I would call failure the attempt to do something that does not go as intended.

Contrast class: success.

[nicholii]

Whose intention?

[alias_sqbr]

Not to go into your argument deeply since (a) you said not to and (b) I know very little about economics, but I think the sort of free market economics which can be said to have failed is the sort that says that capitalism doesn't cause catastrophe and does cause happiness, and thus argues that governments (who tend to be anti-catastrophe and pro-happiness) can just let the market run and everything will be fine.

[gyges_ring]

Part of the reason for the post is that I think that's a really popular view of capitalism and a great staw-man argument, because I know there are positions that sound quite close to that, but I'm not sure that there are actually that many really neoliberal economic theorists who'd say that capitalism leads to happiness. The closest I can think of is the conjoined set of claims along the lines of: unrestrained markets maximise productivity and efficiency; maximising productivity maximises preference satisfaction; and maximum preference satisfaction is not-incompatible with the possibility of equal satisfaction distributions. Which looks like markets = happiness. But those same ideas aren't disproved by unequal distributions. I think a better characterisation of pure free-market capitalism would be "unrestrained markets are the only systems that can lead to the maximum possible happiness." And you can see where the obvious problems would be, but it's not clear that those problems are the same as failures of the ideas.

[alias_sqbr]

I have no idea if any actual economic theorists believe that either, but I've met some regular people who do, and they are provably wrong. Of course I'm sure my own crappy "I'm not an economic theorist" pseudo-socialist theories are fill of holes too. Hmm.

While I managed to get further than slantwisehumour my brain is starting to go "OH GOD ECONOMICS MAKE IT STOP" so I will :)

[wyldeboye]

Oh hello, you stole my brain thoughts

"but I still want to hit people over the head with a book of economic theory in the hope that they either die or learn something."

[gyges_ring]

Is that at me, or in general? :P