Comment by mindslight
17 hours ago
> As a leftist, i can tell you that any kind of unchecked capitalism or inequality threatens democracies and their constitutions in the long run.
And as a libertarian I can emphatically agree. A foundation of libertarianism is freedom of individual choice, and when a significant number of are economically disenfranchised such that they face economic coercion while simply trying to exist, it completely undermines that foundation. And looking at the structure from the top, completely ineffective anti-trust enforcement has made it so there aren't even many choices to choose from.
> The decades of lowering taxes for rich individuals and corporations lead to the [pressing] budget pressure on institutions, civic decay and agitated uninformed voters
I agree with your description of this trend, as well. I learned long ago that it's not enough to merely push in one direction and assume any results will be positive by construction. Rather you must look at what actually stands to be achieved, in order to avoid merely being a patsy for entrenched interests.
I do question why diminishing profit rates are relevant though. Even if profits had generally been going up, wouldn't the desire for even more wealth lead to the same lobbying / looting pattern?
I haven't really studied Marx though. A quick reading of your link, and trying to restate what I took away in my own terms: As labor becomes less important to capital, then capital is less inclined to invest in the labor pool? That does basically fit the overall trends.
> I do question why diminishing profit rates are relevant though. Even if profits had generally been going up, wouldn't the desire for even more wealth lead to the same lobbying / looting pattern?
Yes, it would, because the expectations of growth/profit/ROI are baked into the system (eg. by interests rates ticking on everything) but in this case, not necessarily to the detriment of society. The profit drive is the root of the problem. Achieving these profits is the point of conflict.
In early capitalistic societies, economic growth is easier because of untapped resources but once the growth of the economic pie slows down, environmental exploitation becomes societal explotation. Previously the point of conflict was capitalists, externalizing cost onto nature (waste products, side effects), today, it is them externalizing operational cost onto the public. Marxs take is, as i understand it, that this profit margin is physically bound to shrink when the remaining space for cost externalization shrinks too, because free markets eventually propagate the lower product prices.