What's gone wrong with free-market capitalism?

In the drive to reduce costs and increase profitability, companies screw their employees wherever they can. This results in almost everyone being just above the misery threshold in their jobs. Doesn’t make for a happy society!

Well, employment is a market too. If your skills are in a market where supply exceeds demand, then companies will work hard to hire and retain you. If not, then yes, the reality is that you’re easily replaceable, and so that’s how companies will treat you.

I believe that capitalism works much better with smaller companies. Where employees can clearly see the link between their efforts, the success of the company, and getting paid at the end of the month, this generally results in very positive behaviour, and a positive attitude, even if the employees have no direct financial link to the success of the company (other than retaining their job).

Capitalism does not work well where the only thing you compete on is price. Where you have industries that are completely dominated by price comparison websites, you can’t really act surprised that none of the participants compete on service.

supply exceeds demand demand exceeds supply

Doh.

Well, employment is a market too

With a few differences. Supply is constrained, but also because it’s people’s lives we are talking about not some commodity.

The main problem with capitalism is that to work it needs to be all or nothing. If the unregulated markets, as they’re meant to, ‘find their own level’, like an ecosystem, then they need to be truly unregulated. No half measures

But the people who are the most evangelical about the unfettered wonderfulness of the free market model, are the ones who constantly undermine it, and prevent it functioning, if it happens to suit them at the time to do so.

So we have them preaching that competition is the holy grail, then they hand enormous taxpayer-funded, formerly state run enterprises over to their mates to run as private monopolies, with no competition in sight. How is anyone meant to benefit from that? Apart from them and their mates, obviously.

Or surely the most offensive to everyone. The banks who constantly howled that they were over-regulated, and needed to be freed from the constraints imposed on their fantastic economic model by state interference. The state has no roll in banking!!!!! they endlessly wailed.

Yep, no place at all!! Until right up to the point where it had to write the ****ing lot of them and endless stream of blank cheques, with our money, to stop their greed and stupidity dragging the lot of us down with them. At that precise point something looking dangerously akin to socialism was suddenly perfectly acceptable to them.

Don’t worry though… we’re back to business as usual now. Phew eh?

Capitalism is fine, it’s when you remove the risk that there is a problem.

MLEH the problem is that its about winning and to win you must have losers and we are talking about people here, the losers in the west dont fair to well the losers in the third world do very poorly with, if they are lucky, direr working conditions and if they are unlucky shanty towns and stealing from tips to survive.

its the global equivalent of us being trapped o a island , me finding a ship and then claiming its all mine and then making you work to unload it and giving you enough food to not die whilst you build me a palace

When you complain i note that I am a striver, risk taker and that without me you would be worse off etc

It will create vast inequities that are morally reprehensible and indefensible

In some limited areas it can produce some good results v competition if all you GAS abou is th eprice you pay – Amazon cheap as chips but dont pay tax and have stressed workers with 27 seconds to pick each item for example] but it is not a panacea for all our ills

no one really would trust it to operate unregulated so no one really thinks its works

“In some limited areas it can produce some good results v competition if all you GAS abou is th eprice”

In lots of business models you can charge more by adding value, particularly in small businesses where its not about about churning volume and the customer GAS about more than just price.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23239764

State sponsored monopolies (id include the banking sector in that) are not examples of free markets, they do make good examples of state interference, corruption, rigged markets and state sanctioned barriers to entry.

Nothing has in theory gone wrong with it. We haven’t had “free market capitalism” yet, so we wouldn’t know whether it works or not.

I’d suggest that proper free marker capitalism would be **** scary, ( drugs trade anyone? ) and the people whod stand to loose the most are currently those 1-3% of folk at tge very very top of the pile, which is why, I suspect, well never find out either.

No, the more free the market the more the top few percent would gain. I think wealth disparity correlates with lack of regulation. See history for more information.

Oh, my post makes no sense( nothing new there) there’s a whole chunk missing about why the system we have now wont change much….

Sorry

Well, employment is a market too

With a few differences. Supply is constrained,[/quote]

No, that’s common to lots of markets.

but also because it’s people’s lives we are talking about not some commodity.

That doesn’t alter the fact that it’s a market.

You asserted that free-market capitalism necessarily results directly in employees getting “screwed” and working just above the “misery threshold”.

My point is that this only happens where supply exceeds demand in the employment market. Where this is not the case, it results in the exact opposite: employees getting treated well, as companies compete to retain the best staff.

In lots of business models you can charge more by adding value, particularly in small businesses where its not about about churning volume and the customer GAS about more than just price.

This.

We haven’t had “free market capitalism” yet

And this.

If you want a good idea of what a proper free market economy then Freidman’s “Free to Choose” and Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” are the standard texts – or watch a couple of their lecture on youtube.

I think that a full-on free market society as they set out wouldn’t be acceptable to most people – it’s way too extreme, almost no role for the state beyond police, army, contract law and contrary to what many see as an underpinning morality to society. I actually think there are technical problems with the model too.

However, the efficiency of markets in allocation of resources is orthodoxy in economic thought at the moment and this is why forcing market reforms into all sorts of public services is going on. I am still yet to be convinced that some half-arsed pseudo market in eg education or health produces a more efficient service than local/central planning.

Al, what has pfi got to do with price of cheese in the context of this thread and airports? You are hora and I claim my £5!!