"What do you mean 'do they deserve it?'"

What the hell do you think we mean, man?

Talk about entitlement!

^ I'd actually like to know what is meant by 'deserving it', expressed clearly.
I think that endeavour would uncover some interesting assumptions about value.

I'm only being slightly cheeky, and mostly serious; I actually think it's an interesting question.

^ So am I!

I mean, you ask a pirate "Hey, do you think you really deserve all that booty?"

And he'll say "What the hell are you talking about? It's mine now, isn't it?"

The problem with our financial markets, and the bond scams in particular, is that it doesn't create a damn thing. All it does is push money around, and according to some invented mathematical hocus-pocus, people either make money or they lose money.

And that pretty much sums it up.

It's not good for our country and it's not good for our world.

A common ditch-digger is more deserving of his paycheck than those bastards at Goldman Sachs et al., and a hooker in Las Vegas is deserving of more respect.

"Deserve" is such a humanist/humanities thought. Fairness is something we make up to imagine a better world. There is having or not having, trying to factor fairness into it is a frivolous exercise.

In a Marxist society, afaik, you can measure a man's worth by his amount of work. In a capitalist society you can measure a man's by the amount of paper in his wallet or bits in a bank computer. Which is fairest? Does it matter?

There is only power and those who are afraid to wield it!

The financiers who pushed money around to grab huge payouts wielded their power proficiently and robbed people blind without them ever knowing it. They gamed the system and won cash. I blame the system as much as the people who used it (arguably abused it).

^Voldemort quote. Nice

I agree that fairness it often an abused term when it comes to real-life issues (such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict).

I'm not sure that's the issue here, though. I think Lewis is working from the basic assumption of Capitalism everywhere: It's voluntary, therefore it is fair (this is where the pirate comparison becomes problematic).

If I win the lottery, I don't deserve the winnings. Same goes if I sell a mint condition comic book for tens of thousands of dollars. I don't have to worry about the buyer's reason for paying that price, it may be because he's a sucker, or because he really sees that much value in it (or because he knows he can resell it for even more later, which is probably the usual case).

So, there is a disconnect between buyer and seller, that allows for a lack of compassion for mistakes, I guess, but it's on a solid moral footing (voluntary, presumably rational actors) , so it's hard to change.

nor should it be changed, but that's just my own Capitalist opinion

>> ^Crake:
If I win the lottery, I don't deserve the winnings. Same goes if I sell a mint condition comic book for tens of thousands of dollars. I don't have to worry about the buyer's reason for paying that price, it may be because he's a sucker, or because he really sees that much value in it (or because he knows he can resell it for even more later, which is probably the usual case).
So, there is a disconnect between buyer and seller, that allows for a lack of compassion for mistakes, I guess, but it's on a solid moral footing (voluntary, presumably rational actors), so it's hard to change.

What you say there is pretty much why us lefties like the idea of a progressive tax structure, a social safety net, and a body of regulations designed towards limiting the ways in which asymmetry between buyers and sellers can be exploited (and protecting people who are affected by the transaction who are neither the buyer nor seller).

Incidentally, it's pretty easy to see most economic success as being equivalent to winning the lottery. Hard work, intelligence, talent, and perseverance alone aren't enough to make you a billionaire. Hell, those things might not even land you a job that could support a family anymore.

"assymetries between buyers an sellers" is the basis for having an economy in the first place, though

I think I can see what you think should be rewarded: "hard work, intelligence, talent and perseverance". However, the only thing that Capitalism rewards is how useful or valued your product or service is to someone else.

This is judged entirely subjectively, thus allowing for weird examples like insanely expensive collectible comic books.
In my opinion, a system that rewards the values you mentioned (which are labour-focused), does not guarantee that any value is actually produced.

Take a hyperbolic example: Einstein might spend 100 hours working on making a single pizza, but all his talent, hard work, intelligence and perseverance won't change the fact that it ends up an inedible, simultaneously soggy and charred mess.
Should he be guaranteed pay for the pizza? No! He should look at this strengths and weaknesses, and figure out where he can be the most useful to the people around him (or, to put it a more critical way: how he can create the appearance of usefulness in their minds, so they'll give him money - either way, they'll be happy and he'll get paid).

>> ^Crake:
I think I can see what you think should be rewarded: "hard work, intelligence, talent and perseverance". However, the only thing that Capitalism rewards is how useful or valued your product or service is to someone else.

Or, in the kind of extreme cases we've had so clearly demonstrated over the last years, how well you can -hide- your manipulations of other people's money. Or do you think the Wall Street bankers are actually selling value?

They destroyed well over a trillion dollars...and yet they're collecting huge sums again. I think that rather obviously puts the lie to the idea that they are supplying value or usefulness. Call it what it is...stealing.

>> ^Crake:
"assymetries between buyers an sellers" is the basis for having an economy in the first place, though
I think I can see what you think should be rewarded: "hard work, intelligence, talent and perseverance". However, the only thing that Capitalism rewards is how useful or valued your product or service is to someone else.

By asymmetries between buyer and seller, I'm not talking about division of labor and economies of scale -- those are definitely good asymmetries. Instead, I'm talking more about market power and differences in information. If I own all the gas stations within 100 miles of a city, and I charge $9/gallon, I'm going to make a lot of money, but I won't have done it by "providing a service", I'll have done it by stamping out competition. If I do something like this, I'm taking advantage of people with low levels of market information (and low brain cell counts).

I agree that capitalism isn't a system that rewards people on the basis of personal merit, but instead their ability to convince people to give them money by convincing them that they got something of equal value out of the transaction. Some people do that by trying to provide a good or service that's actually valuable, some people don't.

What I don't understand is why people act as though it's some sort of righteous meritocracy where resources accumulated in someone's hands is always "hard earned" (and therefore should never be taxed), when most evidence indicates that the people with the most resources generally haven't done anything hard to accumulate it at all. Then you look at the people who wind up needing assistance from charity or the state and you find they usually haven't done anything wrong, and work harder than a spoiled brat like me ever would.

I agree with the premise of your hyperbolic example. I'm not saying we should abandon markets, but that "free markets" leave a lot to be desired when it comes to social justice. For now the best game in town seems to be a mix of mostly-free markets with a social safety net, and a regulatory framework aimed at maximizing the number of people trying to provide actually valuable goods and services, rather than exploiting the imperfect nature of real-world markets.

>> ^Crake:
^Voldemort quote. Nice
I agree that fairness it often an abused term when it comes to real-life issues (such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict).
I'm not sure that's the issue here, though. I think Lewis is working from the basic assumption of Capitalism everywhere: It's voluntary, therefore it is fair (this is where the pirate comparison becomes problematic).
If I win the lottery, I don't deserve the winnings. Same goes if I sell a mint condition comic book for tens of thousands of dollars. I don't have to worry about the buyer's reason for paying that price, it may be because he's a sucker, or because he really sees that much value in it (or because he knows he can resell it for even more later, which is probably the usual case).
So, there is a disconnect between buyer and seller, that allows for a lack of compassion for mistakes, I guess, but it's on a solid moral footing (voluntary, presumably rational actors) , so it's hard to change.
nor should it be changed, but that's just my own Capitalist opinion


I think you're wrong.

Capitalism is not voluntary. It's mandatory.

The pirate comparison is not out of line. You've heard of T. Boone Pickens? You've heard of hostile takeovers?

And lastly, the fairness question is not "an abused term" -- it is the heart of the issue.

Any system that considers fairness as being something that need not be adhered to, that need not be included in decision-making, and that need not be a goal of policy is, at heart, a criminal system.

Well, rougy, any ideology that has a 'monopoly' is mandatory, same goes for the Social Contract idea where people 'agree' to pay taxes in order to get a safety net of welfare.
You're right that it's not really a choice if there is only one choice.

I hope you'll agree though, that there is an aspect of voluntariness in Capitalism, in that the individuals choose between competing providers of goods & services, or even choose to set up shop themselves.

Of course, I'm not defending the actions of the wall street people who (among others) caused the crisis, in my opinion they should not have been bailed out... I can see the politicians' reluctance to do so though, since a big market correction is not a pretty thing. The crisis is being used to attack the foundations of Capitalism though, which I don't think were at fault.
Like Michael Lewis explains, they basically forgot that they cooked the books (and ratings agencies and so on), and fell for their own con. That's stupidity, which is a danger in any system.

And Netrunner: Capitalists can feel morally outraged about taxation, because no matter how little they worked for the money, taking it by coercion is more despicable still, and in addition leads to ill effects like corrupt politicians and counterproductive incentives.

Also, I may be over-analyzing here, but when you say: "...convincing them that they got something of equal value out of the transaction." i actually disagree slightly.
If i have $15 in my pocket, and the seller has a CD that i like, i make an exchange because, to me, the CD is worth MORE than $15. Otherwise I'd keep my money instead. The possibility of mutually benefiting from a transaction is something you don't often hear about from the liberal side of the debate, to put it mildly.

>> ^Crake:
Netrunner: Capitalists can feel morally outraged about taxation, because no matter how little they worked for the money, taking it by coercion is more despicable still, and in addition leads to ill effects like corrupt politicians and counterproductive incentives.
Also, I may be over-analyzing here, but when you say: "...convincing them that they got something of equal value out of the transaction." i actually disagree slightly.
If i have $15 in my pocket, and the seller has a CD that i like, i make an exchange because, to me, the CD is worth MORE than $15. Otherwise I'd keep my money instead. The possibility of mutually benefiting from a transaction is something you don't often hear about from the liberal side of the debate, to put it mildly.


Eh, I'm somewhat tired of the coercion argument. Think of it this way: if I build a condominium, and sell out the individual units, do I have the right to compel the residents to pay a maintenance fee for the common areas of the condo that I'm responsible for?

You're not really over analyzing, I think we're just trying to highlight different aspects. I agree that when markets work right, both parties gain from the transaction. I would even argue that this happens with a lot of things people buy.

However, I think there's a lot of emphasis in the modern corporate culture on "creating demand" and finding "new markets", and essentially spending a lot of time and money convincing people that they need/want things they don't need, or at least try to boost their perception of the value of a product so that they can jack up the price.

For example, take brand-name OTC drugs. They're not really any different than generic substitutes, but companies spend a lot of money on marketing to convince people it's a product worthy of its price premium, when often it's not.

@Crake:

"...a big market correction is not a pretty thing."

This is what bothers me about people who treat capitalism as if it were a deity, and most capitalists do.

That "market correction" is a nice, sterile way of summing up the core, recurring flaw of a model that cannot live unless it is in a constant state of growth. Capitalism must be in a constant state of growth, or it fails. And it fails repeatedly.

What you call a "market correction" is in fact hunger. It is poverty. It is homelessness. It is rampant unemployment. It is pain. It is suffering. It is about real people enduring real hardship that, more often than not, was beyond their control.

Please, never, ever say "market correction" without putting a human face on just exactly what that means.

^ ^ Netrunner, there are some things about your example I don't understand. Why bring up an example that could turn out a hundred different ways depending on the contract in question? Do you mean whether you should have a right to make the tenants pay? How would you enforce it? Payment of common areas is up to the parties in question I guess?

Then there is the other specific example of current corporate culture, which is arguable very different from theoretical Capitalism, and succeeds largely because of political cronyism and going beyond voluntary action into coercion by government proxy (lobbying for legislative influence, bailouts, exclusive contracts etc).

I'd say that as soon as you do that, we're no longer talking about capitalism, but something akin to fascism (i.e. heavy governmental-industrial integration and protection of mutual interests by any means necessary).

And how can you be tired of the coercion argument ? It's totally central, and is one of the reasons why half of the US population keeps voting against your ideology. Shouldn't that be reason enough to understand it?

^rougy, I did say that it's not a pretty thing.
And does your description of the evils of a market correction imply that you were for the bailout?

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