03-01-2018, 09:31 PM
I recently watched a 45 minute interview style documentary on YouTube. It was titled 'abolishing capitalism' and starred the opinions on Peter Joseph. Below is the full interview if you are interested in watching it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HwFOo5rbZA
Some interesting facts are given in this interview, but the overall tone of the interview is very pessimistic. Joseph also continuously uses phrases similar to "what people don't get is", which can be annoying in my opinion as it seems to imply that he believes he is smarter than anyone who believes in capitalism as an ideal approach.
His view is that capitalism is something which has eroded our capacity for empathy. We realise there are winners and losers in capitalism and accept that as a natural occurrence. To Joseph this is wrong. He also mentions advertising, the stock market, class divisions and debt.
Joseph implies advertising is a menacing thing which plays on people's weaknesses and makes people believe they need things for social inclusion reasons. To a certain degree I agree with this, however I do not think this is the only point of advertising, as implied. I think advertising serves a purpose in a less pessimistic manner - informing people about things that can improve their life.
He also argues that competition and patents is a problem when it comes to companies. He believes that most scarcity is because of this, and we would actually have an abundance of most things, alongside better, more productive, products if all companies operated on an open source approach. This again, sounds great in theory and would likely be true. But getting rid of competition and patents would ruin business in my opinion, as entrepreneurs wouldn't have a reason to take the risk and invest money into something which can be copied by anyone and won't earn a good return on investment. Joseph talks about incentive's for open source collaboration of businesses, but stops short at explaining how he would go about doing this - which I believe is the main issue here.
There is no counter arguments in this interview, and the host - Abby Martin, asks questions which tend to help aid his opinions as opposed to actually asking things which work against his beliefs and asking him to explain negatives with the approach and so on.
It seems Joseph believes in the system of the trickle up effect, that wealth is created by poor people taking up debt and the money flows up to the rich only. Whether this approach is correct or not is open for debate I guess, but I don't think it is the only source of wealth creation.
Joseph also says that the stock markets are creating more money from money rather than actually doing any good, he says 83% of the stocks are owned by 1% of the population - which is an interesting statistic. However I fail to see how businesses would function on the scale they do without stocks. He advocates loans from banks which I don't think would cover the type of investment some companies require.
Overall, Joseph brings up some interesting statistics, some good ideas - but a rather limited reasoning or explanation on how this can actually occur in a real world - or how it would actually work and be better than capitalism. Some ideas he suggests can easily be implemented in the capitalist system, with some work done by governments to push the ideas. Which is what I think is the more possible and likely solution. The world isn't a perfect place and I don't think any amount of thinking can be done to make that different, I think we can work towards improving capitalism - which has been done in the past, and making things more fair and equal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HwFOo5rbZA
Some interesting facts are given in this interview, but the overall tone of the interview is very pessimistic. Joseph also continuously uses phrases similar to "what people don't get is", which can be annoying in my opinion as it seems to imply that he believes he is smarter than anyone who believes in capitalism as an ideal approach.
His view is that capitalism is something which has eroded our capacity for empathy. We realise there are winners and losers in capitalism and accept that as a natural occurrence. To Joseph this is wrong. He also mentions advertising, the stock market, class divisions and debt.
Quote:The average person often fails to recognise the cancer of capitalism. By design, the process is covert and muddied in complexity. The movers and shakers of the financial industry in the United States - the Wall Street traders and tycoons - create nothing. They merely make money from money. The elite line their pockets with increasing bundles of wealth while the lower and middle classes continue to struggle. Corporations are equally ruthless in their attempts to exploit the vulnerable masses. In one such scenario, Joseph exposes a major company that takes out life insurance policies on its employees. Every aspect of the financial sector is driven by profit, including the sanctity of life and death itself.Source.
Joseph implies advertising is a menacing thing which plays on people's weaknesses and makes people believe they need things for social inclusion reasons. To a certain degree I agree with this, however I do not think this is the only point of advertising, as implied. I think advertising serves a purpose in a less pessimistic manner - informing people about things that can improve their life.
He also argues that competition and patents is a problem when it comes to companies. He believes that most scarcity is because of this, and we would actually have an abundance of most things, alongside better, more productive, products if all companies operated on an open source approach. This again, sounds great in theory and would likely be true. But getting rid of competition and patents would ruin business in my opinion, as entrepreneurs wouldn't have a reason to take the risk and invest money into something which can be copied by anyone and won't earn a good return on investment. Joseph talks about incentive's for open source collaboration of businesses, but stops short at explaining how he would go about doing this - which I believe is the main issue here.
There is no counter arguments in this interview, and the host - Abby Martin, asks questions which tend to help aid his opinions as opposed to actually asking things which work against his beliefs and asking him to explain negatives with the approach and so on.
It seems Joseph believes in the system of the trickle up effect, that wealth is created by poor people taking up debt and the money flows up to the rich only. Whether this approach is correct or not is open for debate I guess, but I don't think it is the only source of wealth creation.
Joseph also says that the stock markets are creating more money from money rather than actually doing any good, he says 83% of the stocks are owned by 1% of the population - which is an interesting statistic. However I fail to see how businesses would function on the scale they do without stocks. He advocates loans from banks which I don't think would cover the type of investment some companies require.
Overall, Joseph brings up some interesting statistics, some good ideas - but a rather limited reasoning or explanation on how this can actually occur in a real world - or how it would actually work and be better than capitalism. Some ideas he suggests can easily be implemented in the capitalist system, with some work done by governments to push the ideas. Which is what I think is the more possible and likely solution. The world isn't a perfect place and I don't think any amount of thinking can be done to make that different, I think we can work towards improving capitalism - which has been done in the past, and making things more fair and equal.
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