Otohiko wrote:My attack on capitalism is more sociocultural than economic. Again, some of the more farfetched forms of socialism have it just as wrong, but I have a serious problem with the commodification of everything that American culture especially has been excelling at.
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It's all good while you have a relatively healthy middle class (or, alternatively, a morbidly obese ex-working class which has been successfully retrained as a new proletariat of tasteless, poorly-educated, easily-manipulated consumers, creating a ticking time bomb for when their feed runs out). Sadly, I've seen first hand what happens when any semblance of middle class collapses in an aggressively capitalist society. Noone is safe from it, even in the most developed Western societies, especially when those societies are increasingly reliant on mostly-fictional capital to keep their formerly-working classes afloat.
I only quote this part because I agree with you on the others. Pure unregulated capitalism is a stupid idea, fortunately no nation follows such a model. Regulation is clearly needed and it's a fair debate on how much is necessary. I don't even really disagree with these statements, the stereotypical American is far too materialistic and consumerist in my opinion. However I think you don't grasp just how dominate the US economy is or how long it can sustain loses before it become merely equal to the such economic shitholes as Japan, China, Germany, or France (#2 through #5 largest economies in the world).
I could quote figures, but once you start talking trillions of dollars no one has a good idea what that means. The numbers are just too large. So lets put this another way, imagine if in 2010 on May 1st every single American decided to honor May day by not working anymore that year. No American built a single thing, no one bought anything for the rest of the year, no one provided any services, the entire nation totally shut down for May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and December. Every single American took an eight month vacation to go skiing on the Alps or visiting Japan trying to pick up 12 year old lolis. At the end of the year, America would have the highest GDP production in the world that year. No other nation in the world working all year long can beat out an America that only worked four months.
Or lets put it another way, imagine if tomorrow China was able to take over the entire continent of Asia. Japan, Russia, India, both Koreas, and every other country in Asia just magically fell under China's control. This new supersized China which controlled the entirety of the largest continent on the earth would *STILL* be second fiddle to the US, it'd be a bit less than one trillion dollars smaller. To put that into perspective, there are only 14 countries currently with over a trillion dollars in GDP, four of which would be part of this new continent spanning Chinese empire. In fact, this continent wide joining of economies has happened. It's called the EU, and those twenty seven nations combined (five of which are in the top 10 economies of the world) just barely beats out the US. If the US finished it's manifest destiny and took over just two countries, Canada and Mexico, then it'd be #1 again.
Now hopefully that gives some scale of how dominate the US really is economically, lets take a look at what that means in the fall of the US. It's no secret things have been tough recently. Last year the US lost roughly 7% of our GDP. This year we'll probably lose around the same. Next year it's expected we'll start recovering, or at least not going down as fast. But lets ignore predictions. Lets pretend this rate continues with out change for years. In about twelve years of the economy being just as fucked as it has been recently, the United States economy would have shrunk so much that we'd be, well, Russia today. If would take nearly fifteen years of government bailouts, job loses, unemployment, and an economy that at times has been described as being in freefall before we'd be at the level Russia was in the 90's. I understand why you base your comments on the Russian meltdown in the 90's, but it would take a decade and a half of economic devastation before that comparison would be valid.
I should note that while I may be acting patriotic by claiming the US is best, I actually have facts behind me on this. It's not blind patriotism. It's also not saying America couldn't be better. I'm just saying that the American style of capitalism has produced an economy that is almost impossible to grasp the size of. The doom scenarios of the US falling apart economically just don't seem to grasp how large America's economy really is. Despite it's failings, I can't agree with summing up the capitalism, the factor that made the US successful almost beyond imagining, as 'bad'. It could be better, but we're talking the difference between 'great' and 'HOLY FUCKING JESUS THAT'S ASTOUNDING' here. By no means is capitalism bad overall.
tl;dr version: regulation of capitalism = necessary; US style capitalism = so successful it's on the verge of being unbelievable; Americans = fat and can't sustain their artificial middle class forever, but can sustain it far FAR longer than you'd think; godix = going to bed
(Unless you live in Japan or Europe)