The stock market is a great example of this: It's a race to see who can 'play' the stocks enough to get rich quick at the expense of everyone else playing the stock market.

Technically playing the stock market is a race to see who can get rich quick with no regard for anyone else; a symantic, but important, difference.

[quote name='Luckless' timestamp='1353935263' post='5004182']
They could always move to a practical form of communism, where the focus is on efficient use of resources and labour to meet the requirements and desires of an entire population in a fair and well organized fashion, and having the side benefit of 99.9% employment and probably around a 20 hour work week in most fields, which would leave far more time for the population to engage in art, sciences, and general education or travel. A problem of debt only ever exists when two parties assume one exists. If one party finds a way where they no longer have to be bound by it, well, then it magically goes away.

I don't see how you can magically handwave away the issues. If the amount of things that people want from the Government is more than the amount the Government receives, then that kind of problem is still faced in communism, just that you now have the state providing all the services, and everyone working for the state. So rather than questions like how much should people be taxed, and what should the Government spend money on, you now have the question of what work should people be doing.

[/quote]

Which is the point.

Under the current system you get the problem of having enough resources to meet the needs of the people, but because tax revenues aren't high enough, governments can't provide the services (people doing a job) that are required. How many of you know someone who is qualified to work as a teacher, but is unemployed or working some other job till they can get a full time position?

Society has the food, the clothing, the housing, and nearly everything else these people want, but I personally know half a dozen people working part time jobs in places like coffee shops and the like, because the government can't 'afford' enough positions to have them doing something far more useful. Why? Because they don't have the money.

Unplanned economies are gambles. They are bets, where millions of people are secretly making plans and trying to figure out how they can pull a win out of their ass before someone else does and ruins their chance. With a planned economy you sit everyone down, figure out what is actually wanted, decide who are the best people to address a given want, and have them figure out what they need in order to fulfil those requirements. There are no wasted resources because someone else brought their product to market a few weeks before you did and killed your sales. Less duplication of R&D efforts, because everyone working in a field would be expected to share information and developments. Sure, you get fewer product choices over all, but in theory all can be higher quality because open planning is more likely to go with the better options.

I've spent a lot of time talking with older Russian and Ukrainian immigrants, and not one of them blamed the failure of their economies on communism, but rather mismanagement, corruption, and greed. And the truth is that we now have the telecommunications and computing requirements to make a go at a Real planned economy a viable thing.

But no, commies are bad, lazy, and horrible workers. They're evil and smell bad too apparently.

Writing numbers on slips of worthless paper, and then individually gambling what they are really worth is such a better systems.

Just a note: the longest lasting governments historically are dictatorships / monarchy .

How many of you know someone who is qualified to work as a teacher, but is unemployed or working some other job till they can get a full time position?

The US school system isn't exactly capitalist either. It's actually a big part of the many problems with the US education system.

[quote name='Luckless' timestamp='1353968499' post='5004336']
How many of you know someone who is qualified to work as a teacher, but is unemployed or working some other job till they can get a full time position?

The US school system isn't exactly capitalist either. It's actually a big part of the many problems with the US education system.
[/quote]

Though it bears noting that it's not necessarily the lack of capitalism-like organization that causes the school system to contribute to failures of the US education system as a whole.

Look, the problem isn't just capitalism. Modern history has demonstrated very well that communism doesn't work either. The problem is people. If people are perfect, then sure... communism is the way to go. If everyone contributes their fair share, and everyone exhibits perfect compassion, then yes, all problems will magically go away. Let me know when that momentous evolutionary shift happens.

If you want to generalize about the people, then modern democracy is entirely flawed because people aren't perfect -- yes, if everyone is educated on the matters being discussed in the legislature, then most problems go away, but otherwise it's all just marketing.
Or -- capitalism only works in theory when all the agents in the system have perfect knowledge and all act equally ruthlessly in their self-interest, resulting in perfect balance. As soon as any agent has misinformation or compassion, the balance is forever lost.
If we're judging economies on their ability to economize, then capitalism is a complete and utter failure. Where's the cost of using up stores of non-renewable resources in it's equations? Where does reduction in biodiversity fit into it's models? Why are we ok with the fact that we choose to have a poverty class, and choose to have less than 100% employment as a matter of economic policy?

The problem with those kind of statements is that you use a very selective kind of history. Firstly, you ignore any kind of gift economy or tribal group, or even the modern family (which is a small tribal communism). But more importantly, you ignore any kind of communism that doesn't fit into the brutal Stalinist dictator model, such as those that you'll find in rural parts of your own country, or any that was working until America decided to blow them up, like Vietnam, or those that they assisted in the genocide of, like Bali.

The American military aggression against Vietnam ended in 1975, with Nixon having promised $3.25B in repatriations. However, that grant was never actually given, and instead all offshore Vietnamese assets were frozen, and all exports to Vietnam (including Aid programmes) were restricted under "trading with the enemy" laws. They were economically isolated under a 10 year siege, until in the mid 80's they eventually gave in to the aggression and allowed the IMF to come in and help them re-write their laws to follow the capitalist model.
Before handing the country over to the IMF, people had the right to farm the land around their villages, which was used to supply the schools, hospitals, rural co-operatives and emergency store, which meant there was always more than enough food to go around. They had free education and some of the highest literacy rates in their region.
After the transition, land must be bought from the state before it can be farmed, and crops must be sold for the best price (which means export), which has resulted in half the population being malnourished, even when there is a 'rice surplus'. Further, much of the prime agriculture land has been sold to foreign developers to build resorts, permanently reducing the ability for communities to feed themselves. Now, 70% of the population are in 'absolute poverty' (world bank's wording).

But yes, history has shown that if you dare free yourself from the free market, you won't last long.

a system that coldly enforces a false compassion through the application of state force upon a populace ... enforcing a system of taking from someone to give to someone else ...

Side note -- the above statements can be applied to the IRS
There's the obsession on Stalin again... What about the Amish - they do work simply because there's not much else to do in their culture. What if they used modern technology and only had to do 1 hour of work a day?
What about the cultures who produce what they can, take what they need, then give the rest to the store? There's no taking and there's still enough to go around...

[hr]
Personally, if I was writing a sci-fi story 100 years in the future, I'd see things being much the same, with most of the general population living in poverty and struggling to get by, and the few uber-rich on top living well... but with the middle class living in "communist" corporations -- You get a job at a company, they give you an apartment within their secure campus, near your office. There's company guards to keep the rabble out of the compound, there's free company transportation to get you around. There's a company supermarket with all the items you need, which are all free for company employees to take as needed. While living on the campus, you don't need money at all. Your paycheques are pretty much your 401K contribution, being saved away in case you're ever let go from the company and ejected back into the real world. You raise your kids on the campus, and they're looked after by the company daycare and company schools. They're educated and trained in some skill-set that is useful to the company, and if they succeed, they're given a job in the company. Entire generations could go by without ever leaving the company's comfortable protective bubble from the harsh reality of capitalism, but the threat of being "let go" would be ever present.

It won't get fixed because despite various systems being 'broken' (capitalism and western model of democracy) any attempt to fix or change the system is met with the old retorts of 'communism doesn't work' and 'democracy is the worst form of government apart from all the rest'.

So instead of trying to come up with something NEW we instead stick with the broken model, invent large sums of "money" to prop up the mistakes of others (while failing to punish the others) and continue with a democracy which is nothing more than a popularity contest with no real connection to the real world or anything going on in it to the extent where even if you think your opponent has a good idea you don't dare agree with him for fear of losing your power.

All this is against a back drop of falling education and a worrying backslide on science in some places, the continued loop-hole exploiting of large companies (which would be closed if people didn't fear them just packing up and going to the next lax country), the 'little people' losing jobs and money while the rich continue to get 'tax breaks' to make jobs (and then failing to), an inability to help your fellow man (a concept which seems like 'the worst thing ever' to many in the USA) and conflicts continuing to kick off around the world killing those who have nothing to do with it and putting people into power who then make their own power grab.

The system is fucked gentlemen but instead we just continue onwards as though it will sort itself out at some point....

But communism doesn't work, not on a national scale. I challenge you to come up with one single model from history that would work to fix the US, rather than causing a mess even worse than what we have. And don't bring up the Amish or Vietnamese farmers again, because that's pretty hilarious that anyone would think that a small, close-knit, low-tech, basically agrarian society where the lifestyle of each member is largely the same as the next (or at least not very far removed), is in any way, shape or form analogous to a large, complex, heterogenous society such as the whole of the entire US. A communist form of government works great on a small scale, where people can be held personally accountable, and where the social and geographic distribution of the members doesn't cause imbalances in the supply/demand of food and vital services. But on a large scale? Large enough to cover an entire nation of urban and rural areas? You build the infrastructure to take the food surplus that the rural areas produce and distribute it to the urban consumers, and you open up a lot of places for the same kind of top-level corruption and graft that exists today, only now you've dis-incentivized the producers from playing along because what's in it for them? They have the food they need, they can exist on a significantly lower level of tech than the urban consumers can. From their point of view, the consumers are parasites taking what they haven't earned and giving what, exactly, in return? Without seeing how the society operates at all levels (which any member of a small Amish community can see in their own society) there is no way to know that you aren't supporting any number of folks unwilling to work for themselves and content to drink the work-sweat off the brow of people who are willing. You can't see all the ties that bind the community together; in truth, there are no ties. It's an unworkable system, at least without Servant of the Lord's benevolent dictator-for-life sacrificing himself to keep those communal bonds tight and keep the infrastructure honest and clean.

^ ^ ^
46 million people collect food stamps in the US ....

You can't see all the ties that bind the community together; in truth, there are no ties

Maybe that's the problem? The last 30 years have been built on the phrase "There is no such thing as "society," only individuals and families". It's socially acceptable to be isolated and only care about yourself or your family (a position that would be abhorrent in other cultures), and some vague sense of belonging to the nation as a whole. As you pointed out, the kind of societies where less cut-throat policies work fine are ones where people actually interact with each other socially.
Maybe economic models are completely irrelevant if the root cause of the problem is actually in social organisation?

I challenge you to come up with one single model from history that would work to fix the US[/quote]Even including hypothetical non-historic models, that's a challenge comparable to fixing all middle-east conflicts... It's going to take a great disaster to push the US into something more sustainable.

Yes, it's inconceivable that 300 million people, largely in urban areas, could suddenly transition to a completely different form of economy based on sharing without causing complete chaos. That would take magic. That's why realistically I see these kinds of communities emerging on corporate campuses.
A smaller, more realistic, but meaningful change might be to actually implement the Full Employment Act (as has been done before -- Australian unemployment used to be measured in thousands of people, not percentage points -- but was abandoned to allow greater exploitation of labour resources by private entities).

there is no way to know that you aren't supporting any number of folks unwilling to work for themselves[/quote]Same goes with paying tax though, right?
As long as there's an abundance, do you care?
Pretend that we built a magical techno-utopia, complete with urban farms, etc, where we had robots to make everything we ever needed, and as long as everyone put in 1 hour of volunteering a week to maintain the robots, everything would be fine --
* do you really think that the majority of people would avoid volunteering and instead just sit on their arse practicing their crocheting?
* even if half of people did so, do you think the other half wouldn't be ok with doing 2 hours of work a week?
* would some people even work 'full time' just for the sense of purpose, even though there's no economic incentive to?
* if the robot/human population was segregated, so that say 100 people shared the same robots to maintain (and collectively suffered if they failed to), and these people all interacted socially, do you think that would increase people's chances of pitching in?
* what if groups could banish anti-social members?

Personally, if it meant that I was free to pursue my mastery of programming, I'd definitely be happy to volunteer a large part of my time to the mundane tasks involved in maintaining such a techno-utopia, and I'm optimistic enough about humanity to think that most people would also do what needed to be done without being forced to, and without being preoccupied as to whether the efforts of others are equal to their own efforts or not. Yes, when the machines break down and food becomes scarce, things would change, but, assuming abundance..?

However, if you were a bazillionaire with the capability to build such a place, where a community is completely self-sufficient and able to export surplus products to surrounding communities for free, you'd have to be pretty naive to think that the current powers that be wouldn't try to destroy you for doing so. The very idea that we have the ability to reject money is a threat to those with a lot of money.