Baron Von PWN wrote:
Great depression came about as an economic hangover from WW1. Most of the big purchasers in Europe had been wiped out. The dust bowl was bad but it wasn't the primary cause of he great deppression.
This is a HEAVILY disputed bit. Also, I would put some ecological/biological causes as adding to WWI.. but that will wind up spinning off into a huge other topic, so I will leave that as just something highly debated.
Baron Von PWN wrote:
Besides the dust-bowl came about due to ignorance, not profit motive.
Damage comes because people pursue profit ... and decline to investigate the full impacts or deny them. You cannot seperate the two.
Or, to put it another way, did the BP disaster happen due to profit or ignorance? In truth, it was a lot of both.
I
Baron Von PWN wrote:
t doesn't necesseraly mean that they will ditch the profit motive, it is just that a valid criticism of "state capitalism" is that since they have the backing of the state they could ditch the profit motive to the detriment of the rest of the economy. If it works its awesome, but if it goes bad its really bad because the state keeps it alive when really it should be dead.
Except, you ignore the point that regardless of that, there IS a fundamental reality to the world. You can only push and damage so much before the system breaks. There is nothing inherent in capitalism that forces or even encourages people to see that. In fact, look at all the disdain given to "environmentalists". Yet.. it is not garbage.
I know I harp on this a lot, but it is critical to much of the country right now. Most of Western PA, Ohio and western New York are now inundated with fracking operations. Obama is touting it as the new energy future. Yet... already, in just the roughly 3-4 years these things have been around full swing, (there was stuff before, but not on this scale) I can point to over a hundred pretty serious incidents -- cases where people's water have actually been contaminated, where municipal systems have been contaiminated. The wells will never be restored, not without some serious technological improvements. The municipal incidents,
so far, have been relatively minor. The contaminants have been contained before they completely destroyed the systems. In one case I know well, the municipal system had to be shut down for a few days and the company is facing fines and penalities. It could have been a disaster, but luckily there was no giant fire, the incident was caught and warnings sent out (as far as anyone knows) before anyone with serious illnesses drank it.
If I wanted to start any other business and put so many people at serious risk, I would be prohibited. BUT, because its mining and energy.. those concerns are put aside.
Note... I am, personally, not in favor of completely eliminating gas extraction. I want much more mitigation and better restrictions, though.
Anyway, that is my whole point.. you cannot just say "its about profit" and just dismiss the rest as "ignorance". When it comes to the world around us, it is imperative we KNOW that we are ignorant fundamentally and therefore act with that knowledge in hand. We must act in a manner that does not destroy before we are able to understand. Yet.. that is what capitalism very much does, whether state or private.
The advantage of a top down system is that if you have intelligent people at the top, they can make those decisions and, as i noted to Woodruff, actually lead people to the good answers. BUT.. right now, the "leaders", the "leadership" is ALL about profit. There is a complete disdain for most of science, except that which they feel to be "useful".
BUT.. and here is the other thing. Why limit this to state run versus private capitalism? Niether of those really fits what we need. Nor is either what has ever really existed. We are moving closer and closer to a fully private capitalistic system, not just in this country, but on a world basis. .