To ALB and Alan Johnstone. I
To ALB and Alan Johnstone. I agree that monetary reform is only one part of reforming the system. Land value tax for example may have a part to play. I also agree that there are many flaws with Capitalism, and that it needs constant intervention by regulators in many cases, so consumers don't get a raw deal. The trend is always towards more wealth being concentrated in fewer hands, whether it is banking, supermarkets, or energy companies.ALB wrote"In the ensuing slump, the demand for bank loans falls off and interest rates fall. As long as it remains unprofitable to invest as much as before, the government can encourage banks to make loans as much as it likes but this won't have any effect. Nor is there any way that the banks can force businesses to take out loans they don't want. The initiative for a recovery has to come from profitability being restored by events in the real economy (such as the clearance of unsold stocks, the decline in real wages due to increased unemployment, the weeding-out of unprofitable firms which their assets passing cheaply to their rivals)." I don't disagree with this ALB, however easy credit in the boom years magnified the boom with banks being over confident, and the reverse is true today.If we move entirely away from a market orientated, profit motive economy, how do we ensure that the correct goods and services are supplied to meet the needs of society, and that technological progress is made ? We cannot have a situation as existed in Soviet Russia where there is a shortage of bread production for example, but an over production of refrigerators. Not everything about Soviet Russia was bad, for example the Moscow metro was superb. The Soviet Union had to devote a large part of it's resources and energy to it's armed forces during the "Cold War", when the society there could have been so much better if this had not been the case. I remember in the late 1970s when BT only supplied 3 types of phone, and they would take 4 weeks or more to install a phone line. British Road Services were the only show in town for getting a parcel delivered, and both BT and BRS were expensive, slow and inefficient. I accept that the Capitalist economy does the same in being wasteful, in that there is no shortage of places to buy a car, eat out, or buy almost any product or service. Items are not made to last because there is usually no profit in it. The other problem with Capitalism is that it undervalues useful activities like nursing or social care, and overvalues frivolous activities like playing football. Like you, I have devoted much time in recent years thinking how we move to something better beyond Capitalism (In fact we now have Corporatism where most markets are dominated by a few very large businesses and cartels and they have the politicians in their pockets). Technical advance, and the infrastructure built up by our ancestors should mean we all have to work very much less. Instead society is becoming more unequal, with more wealth than ever concentrated in fewer hands, and computing and technical progress have accelerated this problem as fewer workers are required to be employed in the business, and the owners can cut costs and increase profits. However, I am not entirely convinced that a committee can best decide which products and services are needed to serve the needs of society, unless producers are incentivised in some way. I imagine that Tescos for example, if it was publically owned, could still use the marketing data it uses now to provide the wide range of items in the required quantities,and on time.