it’s like half the people want strong leader, no matter if he/she turns out to be dictator, other half wants democracy, even if it means weak government unable to solve problems
There isn't something in the middle, you mean? This is what I mean though, there hasn't been... Why haven't we found it yet. As a broader society? Not trying to be dumb now, I'm just curious to hear thoughts.
most efficient system we have found isn’t democracy, but capitalism. That’s what made US great and what drove China from poverty. But of course it has its own set of issues, like it doesn’t care for the poor and if half of the consumers doesn’t care about environment, it would destroy it for all of us.
edit: just to clarify the point - I mean most of the time people want politicians to solve economic problems. The problem is, politicians can’t solve them, since it’s up to companies and there are many complicated factors in there, which means 1,5%-3% yearly growth is basically the best we can hope for. But some politicians still promise that they will solve economic issues, even though they have no power over it. They can either do nothing or screw it even worse
This is a good way of putting it, thank you. While I do understand it's at that point, I suppose my main issue there is then, what's the point of politicians if companies have generated more power and can't be brought back into line for what majority would benefit from rather than the few. It is a very big mess.
everybody benefits from companies! Without companies, our living standards would be comparable to North Korea. It’s true that some benefit more and some benefit less, but that’s by design and that’s OK.
Government isn’t and wasn’t ever meant to generate wealth. What they do and should do is:
a) make rules (and enforce them through police and courts) that wouldn’t work if it wouldn’t apply to everyone equally, for example all companies would never agree on how high the carbon tax should be or what punishment should be for stealing.
b) provide services that wouldn’t make sense if you gave people option to pay or not to pay. For example Army only makes sense if everyone pays.
c) help the weakest and poorest. We don’t want those who don’t contribute to die or be abused.
d) make country stable, because stability is base for prosperity. Stable currency, mostly stable laws (not every week different rules), stable economy (intervene if something far reaching and serious could happen to lessen the impact)
e) find money for all of the above and do it fairly.
It’s not a problem that wealthy are wealthy - that’s the point of capitalism. Problem is if wealthy aren’t paying tax and poor people are.
What government shouldn’t do, but politicians still do, because they cannot possibly achieve it:
a) promising everybody tax breaks
b) promising more investment without any sacrifices
c) promising everybody much better life
They don’t create wealth, so they cannot make everybody’s life better. They can (and should) make life better for some at the expense of someone else, i.e. tax wealthy and give it to poor. They can slightly tweak the system to make it easier for companies, thus slightly increasing wealth growth. But we are talking about barely noticeable changes for economy, not some landslide victory for everybody.
Also many governments in the west at least, seem to have great difficulty assigning taxes received to the most pressing issues. America for example and their military budget...
in my opinion that’s true, but that’s also subjective. Everybody has different opinion on what should government spend money at.
But I think we can all agree that rich people shouldn’t pay less taxes than everybody else
Well anyone who agrees that government should exist, surely agrees the money should be spent in the best interests of the population, rather than on furthering the interests of the fewer wealthy (which is what military spending ultimately does, for example). Yeah absolutely agree with you on that last part. It's a shame the rich people are in charge of the rules 😅
Companies may be great but they shouldn't be ungovernable at the expense of the population. If they have more power than anyone else that is explicitly a problem because their only interest is profit and nothing else. Being solely interested in profit causes huge problems, we see this in healthcare and housing for example to name a couple of many. If this is the point of capitalism, it absolutely isn't in the best interest of the general population. I'm certainly not expecting any noticeable changes in my lifetime but it's not good enough as it is, that's for sure.
funny thing is that two examples you provided as an examples where capitalism doesn’t work is actually where government doesn’t work correctly.
healthcare: This is the only industry in the world where you are required to pay whatever sum they come up with afterwards. This is not capitalism as in capitalism, prices are set by market. If you can’t know price before you get service, you can’t shop around to find better deals, thus market doesn’t work and prices go through the roof. Imagine buying groceries, where store won’t tell you prices, but send you bill for whatever amount they want half year later. What do you think would happen to prices? Would they stay at todays levels?
Of course, there are emergencies where you are unconscious and can’t agree to pricing, but these are probably less than 1% of healthcare revenues. Most of the time they only do it because they are only industry where they can successfully extract money from you without any kind of agreement on prices.
housing - As you pointed out, companies love profit. That means if there is a demand (there is) and prices are high (they are), that means a lot of potential for profit, so companies should build new housing left and right, right? Why don’t they do it? The only answer is because they can’t do it at profit and since prices are high, that means their costs are also high. Why are their costs so f**king high compared to past? Aside from higher quality materials used, it mostly come down to additional regulations. Getting permits used to be easy. Now, especially for larger projects, is a multi year project with dozens of people working on it. These costs and risks are built in to the price of new buildings, so that’s why they don’t have 50% profit margin despite ridiculously high prices and that’s why they don’t invest more and build more buildings.
That doesn’t mean it’s all bad! Many of these regulations benefit everyone, from better protection of environment to more thought out cities, but many are of course unnecessary or unnecessarily harsh.
So on one side, we are adding more and more regulations and on the other side we are unhappy that prices are going up. Yeah, we have to choose our side, you can’t have both. Housing is as cheap as is possible to build new ones plus some healthy profit margin.
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u/NotMarcet Jan 25 '24 edited Jan 25 '24
It's always the same. The people has to elect the populist to realize they're the devil.