Capitalism!

[Q The Third]

I am shocked Paradox! SHOCKED! That my fanatic individualist, materialist, democracy does not allow for capitalism. It is clear that no matter your ethos or government type, you will always be a communist empire with varying degrees of personal freedom. This would be fine... if you were a fanatic collectivist nation. But as an individualist or fanatic individualist empire your government should wield little power over the people. And having it any other way would be unrealistic not to mention bad for roleplay.

But dont fret Paradox! I propose a solution. The following suggestions would only apply for individualist nations.

-You cannot build any buildings other than government buildings, federal monuments, and military facilities.

-Other buildings would be built by the pops on a planet or by a major corporation in your empire.

-You can change your policy regarding subsidization so that, for example, if you wish for mines to be built, you could subsidise the production of minerals.

-You can also manage the government relationship with major corporations and try to please their interests.

-You cannot build colony ships or space mines and research facilities.

-You can build a special ship that will construct a military outpost on an alien world that you can colonize.

-Individuals and companies will build the proper colonization ships that will populate these worlds with their pops. (like migration but physicaly represented)

-Occasionally civilian colony and scout ships will get sent out to explore

-Companies and individuals will also build the space facilities wich produce minerals and research. They will then ship these resources to their HQ or to a trading hub. (like EU4 trade nodes but constantly changing and expanding)

-The government does not directly research techs but instead contracts this work to companies who do it more efficiently then normal but at a price.

-Recources flow freely between individualist empires, democracies, and nations with civilian access. Via civilian transport ships.

-Corporations can go from being planetary to empire wide to international over time along with random events and government support

Feel free to add to these suggestions in the comments so that maybe Paradox will add them into the game.

[Stelar Seven]

Originally posted by Mosey:

I wonder how many people in this thread have:

A) Taken an actual class on micro & macro economics.

B) Have a job where they actually pay taxes.

Capitalism as a system of voluntary trade with anti-trust protections is fine. In fact, it has to date been the most effective vehicle for the betterment of man than any other system yet devised.

Your typical college student has just discovered Marx though, so they usually haven't learned about how centralized command and control of an economy, through either over-regulation or fiat, always results in more inefficiency at best or widespread shortages/death at worst. (All systems are vehicles to control what we call scarcity, as all resorces are finite.)

Certainly some regulation of a free market is required to ensure transparency and enforce baseline fair trade, but over-regulation is just as obviously a path to economic destruction.

Either way, there is in fact zero capitalism in this game. As a smart guy pointed out, trade in this game is a barter system. This isn't a trade simulator, after all. It's a political wargame.

So are you a Keysian?

[Xcorps]

Originally posted by Azunai:

ok you didn't get it. we don't "trade" for that energy. the fossil fuels were provided by natural process over many millions of years. we are now using up all that stored energy. our wealth is NOT based on human labor but on exploitation of natural energy sources.

capitalism is just a system of distributing that wealth. nothing more. and it's an antisocial system since a small minority of people actually controls most of the energy (ie. people like you and me, living in the first world).

They don't "control" it. They exploit it and sell it. To you and me. So we can have cool stuff. BP and Shell aren't trying to make you do anything. They aren't reducing your standard of living. They aren't infringing on your rights. They put stuff you want on the market. They want you to buy it so their own wealth increases. The bad practices of any particular person or group of people does not make any system inherently bad or good. That's why capitalism can't exist without regulation and oversight.

"we don't "trade" for that energy"

Yeah, we do. Just like we traded for coal, just like we traded for whale oil, just like we traded for wood. If a person decides to forego the convienances of modern life and go off the grid, they still trade labor for resources to maintain a standard of living.

[Mosey]

Originally posted by Apostate:

Originally posted by Mosey:

I wonder how many people in this thread have:

A) Taken an actual class on micro & macro economics.

B) Have a job where they actually pay taxes.

Capitalism as a system of voluntary trade with anti-trust protections is fine. In fact, it has to date been the most effective vehicle for the betterment of man than any other system yet devised.

Your typical college student has just discovered Marx though, so they usually haven't learned about how centralized command and control of an economy, through either over-regulation or fiat, always results in more inefficiency at best or widespread shortages/death at worst. (All systems are vehicles to control what we call scarcity, as all resorces are finite.)

Certainly some regulation of a free market is required to ensure transparency and enforce baseline fair trade, but over-regulation is just as obviously a path to economic destruction.

Either way, there is in fact zero capitalism in this game. As a smart guy pointed out, trade in this game is a barter system. This isn't a trade simulator, after all. It's a political wargame.

So are you a Keysian?

Hmm, I'll respond but only to say that no government actually follows Keyes though he is often quoted. Personally I respect Milton Friedman. I only answer to encorage people to read more on the subject and to give them a place to start to discover more if they want to. This isn't the forum for this, so I'm not very interested in being flamed by Marxists or by Progressives and I would expect many here to reflect those precepts by their estimated age alone.

[Azunai]

Originally posted by Xcorps:

...

They don't "control" it. They exploit it and sell it. To you and me. So we can have cool stuff. BP and Shell aren't trying to make you do anything. They aren't reducing your standard of living. They aren't infringing on your rights. They put stuff you want on the market. They want you to buy it so their own wealth increases. The bad practices of any particular person or group of people does not make any system inherently bad or good. That's why capitalism can't exist without regulation and oversight.

"we don't "trade" for that energy"

Yeah, we do. Just like we traded for coal, just like we traded for whale oil, just like we traded for wood. If a person decides to forego the convienances of modern life and go off the grid, they still trade labor for resources to maintain a standard of living.

i was not referring to some oil corporations. *we* are that small minority that takes the lions share of all the wealth. of course the industrialized world is not homogenous, either. wealth isn't evenly distributed within the first world.

regarding the comment about trade: you still don't get it. those vast amounts of stored energy are just there. we didn't contribute anything to it. no human trading or other actions were involved in their creation. we basically hit a jackpot. if it weren't for those easily exploitable energy sources, our civilization would still be - for the most part - an agrarian society with most of the economy revolving around subsistence farming. whether capitalism played any role in the development of our industrial world is irrelevant - the foundation of our wealth are the resources we exploit. if there were no natural energy resources, there would be no industrial society.

[LAG]

Originally posted by Xcorps:

How did the Industrial Revolution create capitalism when capitalism predates the Industrial Revolution by 300 years? Capitalism evolved with the Industrial Revolution, but the Industrial Revolution was an evolution of the market expansion from mercantilism and merchant capitalism.

there are a lots of reasons to why the industrail revolution happened; high worker payment, steam engine invention, pumps to remove water from coal mines.

Capitalism and mercentalism are two different things. Simple trading is not capitalism, capitalism involves capital accumunlation, wage labour and money.

We did not have paid labour prior to the indstrial revolution at the neccesary scale. Most people were farmers that made what they themselves needed. People traded in items, not money.

not until 1834 was a competitive labor market established in England, hence industrial capitalism as a social system cannot be said to have existed before that date.

Pre-industrial revolution there was only so much wealth you could get from land. Regardless of who worked it, an acree of farmland gave an acree of food. Hopefully if the wheater was good.

Investments were rare, mostly in the case of an army. People expanded their bussines through force of arms. There was little to no competition in the market and little to no market, people did not rely on buying what they needed.

You can call it some "pre-historic" capitalism or "Mercantile Capitalism" if you want, but todays capitalism did not bring about the industrial revolution despite how much people who support capitalism want it too.

Market economics are not capitalism. Capitalism does take market economics into it's ideology however. Though all use of money and trade can't just be called capitalism as if nothing has ever changed in the world.

Market forces have existed since the first trade, at a much smaller scale. Capitalism happens first after the industrial revolution.

[Xcorps]

>We did not have paid labour prior to the indstrial revolution

You are kidding right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Labourers_1351

[LAG]

Originally posted by Xcorps:

>We did not have paid labour prior to the indstrial revolution

You are kidding right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Labourers_1351

We had paid labour, they were paid in chickens and wool. Or more specificly, they were taxed less and got to keep more of what they made.

Note how your little article says "wages" without ever actually saying what the wages were.

Of course, there were some who were paid in money. However money was not of such import as it is today. Saying that people were paid wages when they could only buy 10% of what they needed while the rest they had to make themselves would be a half-truth.

[Miro Laaksonen]

Originally posted by LAG:

Originally posted by Xcorps:

>We did not have paid labour prior to the indstrial revolution

You are kidding right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Labourers_1351

We had paid labour, they were paid in chickens and wool. Or more specificly, they were taxed less and got to keep more of what they made.

Note how your little article says "wages" without ever actually saying what the wages were.

Of course, there were some who were paid in money. However money was not of such import as it is today. Saying that people were paid wages when they could only buy 10% of what they needed while the rest they had to make themselves would be a half-truth.

Of course there were also craftmen and merchants working for money without self-producing things like food, but your point is that that's still not a society structured around capitalism, right?

[Stelar Seven]

Originally posted by tomasoltis:

Originally posted by Apostate:

Dude, that rant is even more absurd than your religious absurdity.

Gay people are not a communist conspiracy, they are just people trying to be less oppressed. .
..........
your hate is evident. I am free to express myself. What you believe is none of my business, what I do is none of yours. However, I will not lower myself to your level.

Yes, defending people is hatred. Keep running staying here might result in education.

[Radene]

You know, the point of a discussion is to gather new information, not to stubbornly insist the other guy is wrong.

[Stelar Seven]

Originally posted by Radene:

You know, the point of a discussion is to gather new information, not to stubbornly insist the other guy is wrong.

If someone insists that the LGBTQA community is evil, or a communist plot, or that defending them is hatred. They are just wrong. Reason and compromise only work with people who are reasonable.

It's just like how we can't have a serious discussion for the best cannibal cookbook.

[Von Faustien]

Originally posted by Apostate:

Originally posted by Radene:

You know, the point of a discussion is to gather new information, not to stubbornly insist the other guy is wrong.

If someone insists that the LGBTQA community is evil, or a communist plot, or that defending them is hatred. They are just wrong. Reason and compromise only work with people who are reasonable.

It's just like how we can't have a serious discussion for the best cannibal cookbook.

Avoid clown meat it has a funny taste

[Xcorps]

Originally posted by LAG:

Originally posted by Xcorps:

>We did not have paid labour prior to the indstrial revolution

You are kidding right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Labourers_1351

We had paid labour, they were paid in chickens and wool. Or more specificly, they were taxed less and got to keep more of what they made.

Note how your little article says "wages" without ever actually saying what the wages were.

Of course, there were some who were paid in money. However money was not of such import as it is today. Saying that people were paid wages when they could only buy 10% of what they needed while the rest they had to make themselves would be a half-truth.

Well, here's a wage chart http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html

But let's summarize:

The development of capitalism is directly tied to and commensurate with the development of markets with is directly tied to andn commensurate with the development of technology that opened new markets.

Capitalism is the natural evolution of trade and is part of the evolution of civilized societies. We have seen laissez-faire capitalism and rejected it. We reject caveat emptor. When we find and recognize crony capitalism at work either through exposure of bad practice or in economic catastrophe like the subprime crisis we reject it as well. The Hank Paulsons, Larry Summers, the AIGs and Morgan Stanleys are dinosaurs propped up by corruption in the regulatory scheme. They will expire.

[LAG]

Originally posted by Miro Laaksonen:

Of course there were also craftmen and merchants working for money without self-producing things like food, but your point is that that's still not a society structured around capitalism, right?

My point is that modern day capitalism hasn't existed since time immemorial.

it's changes through history. It will probably keep changing.

[Stelar Seven]

Originally posted by tomasoltis:

Apparently heartfelt nonsense.

Tom,

This isn't the place but you can friend me if you wish and we can talk about gods and myths and why they are the same things.

The sort version is, yes that looks very much like something you could come up with, especially in a evangelical community.

No, it isn't convincing. No, most atheists are not ignorant or hate filled.