Today's trending post has been @cryptogee's "A Quick Fix For A Broken Capitalist Society"(@cryptogee/a-quick-fix-for-a-broken-capitalist-society)
I read it at work, and chewed on it for the rest of the day. Also, at work, I ran into a discussion about whether people save or "hoard" money - and what, if any, is the difference between the two. The discussion was your typical, tired rich vs. poor internet discussion, but it revolved around the concept of rich people sitting on their money, which the people on the left called "hoarding" - with "hoarding" having a definite negative connotation to it.
This triggered some people on the pro-freedom side of things, including me, to jump in and say that it's kind of a scary situation if saving your money is now actually called hoarding, and being painted as a negative thing. This, of course, has been going on since forever, usually around the times of recession and overall market stagnation.
The two topics are connected, and I decided to talk about my thoughts here.
I consider myself pro-capitalist and a voluntaryist, but I'm always get excited to run into some intelligent, thought out criticism of what we call capitalism, or the market, which isn't just socialist punchlines copied and pasted together. It gets me stimulated - intentional choice of word, since we are about to discuss keynesianism - to try and come up with ways to answer those criticisms and find ways in which the market could potentially solve the issues stated. Now, I'm just one person, I don't claim to know everything, but a platform like Steemit makes it possible for a lot of smart people to come together and come up with ideas.
First of all, the idea of "hoarding" money.
This is an idea brought about by keynesian economics, which ecourages all economic actors to live in here and now, instead of investing in the future. The idea being that when money is in circulation, more people have access to it, unlike when rich people sit on their money, which makes it inaccessible to many. At face value, many people seem to think that this is the case, and on the surface it kinda makes sense. However, when you look into it deeper, you can see the flaws.
And this is not even taking into account the moral side of it, which, in my opinion, is that of course you have every right to use or save your money any way you see fit, as far as you don't fund violent crime. That's done by your tax dollar anyway.
"Hoarding" money doesn't even really exist, unless money is just completely taken out circulation, perhaps by shooting it to the moon. A dogecoin joke here feels almost obligatory. This, though, does not hurt other people in the market, but on the contrary, the money in circulation now increases in value since the money supply has been reduced. Money saved sitting on bank accounts actually is in circulation, because the banks use their money in the market, that's the purpose behind them letting you keep your money on their accounts in the first place.
The government, of course, hates you for saving money, because they can't directly tax your consumption as long as you are holding on to your money. This attitude is also supported by the overall keynesianism of the current west, with the belief being that savings hurt the economy, and to combat this governments have no choice but to raise taxes. So, you hear this all the time. It's repeated in schools and by the media, and probably by people you know.
But how does this all tie into @cryptogee's post about short-termism?
My claim is that what he called short-termism is a direct result of the government.
The government printing more money into the circulation decreases the value of money, through inflation, as we all know, which leads to people valuing saving money less and consumption in the here and now more. Corporations are pressured by the shareholders to pump in more and more profits, because even if you make a lot of money today, it's nowhere near a guarantee that you're set for life because of decreasing value of existing money. As funny as it is, saving money costs you money, since the purchasing power of the money I make today will not be intact next year - let alone five or ten years from now.
It's often capitalism that gets a bad rap for what people call overconsumption and general superconsumerism, where people just rush to basically get rid of all the money they receive, leading to environmental woes, among other things, and also for keeping people running the endless treadmill of making more money, always more money, just to consume and consume and consume until the end of time, never stopping once, and definitely not saving or making long term plans. Instead, if they lose their job or source of income temporaily, they are screwed because they had not made any sorts of savings.
I think this is false, though, at least partially. Capitalism itself can't really be blamed for controlling people, since it's not really a mechanism that does that. The way I see it, capitalism just adjusts to how people are behaving, not the other way around. Since capitalism is just the market among people, the people are in control of capitalism.
The problem, however, is that currently, the governments are in control of people; ergo governments are in control of capitalism.
Here's something I sometimes say to people:
Imagine you were a parent - and I'm sure some of you are - would you teach your child to
A) Put some money on the side, spend money responsibly, plan long term and not to consume too frivolously.
or to
B) Spend all the money you receive, take massive loans to cover what you can't afford, and when you can't afford to pay your loans, take more loan to cover for them, and continue the process infinitely, until you no longer can't.
I'm sure most of you see why B would be a bad idea, and not something to teach your kid. Yet, B is how governments generally operate today. B is why western countries are virtually all in debt, why there is a neverending pressure for the government to tax people's income, their houses, their cars, everything they own, everything they consume, everything they do, and to drive people to consume more in the here and now, by making saving money less effective, or even counter-productive, by constantly printing out more money to inflate the money supply, driving down the value of the money people own and earn.
And yes, I believe this to be a major factor in the short-termism. Don't get me wrong, I'm not naive enough to believe that all people live in the short term due to some calculative effort based on studying the inflation and tax rates, but rather that it's how our society has been built, from the ground up, after decades of keynesianism being accepted as the norm. It affects all economic actors from companies needing to make more profit all the time, to shareholders needing to demand more profits all the time, to aggressive marketing needing you to consume more all the time. It's all around us, all the time.
Even when I was at school, what was described to me was keynesian economics.
Even as someone who is pro-capitalist and all for the right to the high life, I'm also someone who just has this natural disdain for overconsumption. It may be the inner Finnish person in me, who just wants a cabin in the woods, but my friend @samupaha actually wrote a really good piece of text the other day on a Finnish blogging site about our lack of roots and values in modern western society. I think this also ties into this whole topic, because taxation and the difficulty to gather wealth by saving if you're in the middle or lower class as a member of the work force or a non-corporation business owner, has made it a battle for many to make it through the month. So, a lot of our daily existence goes to worrying about surviving. There's no time to spend thinking about your values, meanings or even cultural roots, since we're all in such hurry to live in the short term.
The funny thing is, to some, I may be sounding a lot like a left winger right now, speaking up against overconsumption and living in the short term and stuff.
The fact is, though, that what appeals to me about the free market is the idea that people would have so much more control over their lives, as opposed to right now, when a lot of us exist merely as cash cows to the government. This whole topic is something I'd like to, and have tried to, point out to left wingers who are into things like downshifting that it's not the free market that is the big, bad enemy here, it's the government'd meddling with the market that is underlying cause for a lot of the woes - also a lot of the woes brought up by @cryptogee in his post.
So, while I can agree with the worries brought up in the post about short-termism, I'm not sure I'd attribute it to capitalism, per se, though, and that's where I disagree with @cryptogee. The post was still well-written and enjoyable, so I don't mean to put his work down at all. I enjoy reading texts like the one he produced.
And I do agree that long-termism is possible, as well as encouraged. It's clear that acting in the short term has lead to countries sink in debt, with no hopes of a recovery, and the current system is simply not sustainable - the collapse is a question of when, not if.
Just remember: whether you spend your money, or save your money, the most surefire way to truly waste your money is paying taxes. If you blow your money on hookers and drugs, you at least you employ hookers and drug dealers. Nothing good comes out of paying your taxes, if there ever was a guarantee in this world. This is why I encourage investing in crypto and avoiding taxes as much as you possibly can. It's an investment in long-termism.
If you agree or disagree, feel free to go at it in the comments, since this is a topic that interests me, and I'd like to discuss it further.
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