"We live in a capitalist society."
Who said so? It's not so stated in the Constitution; and Slavery used to be legal, and now it's not. If that could go from acceptable to unacceptable, so can 'capitalism' as practiced today. It's a matter of education, desire, solidarity and voting.
So don't hand me the "corporate line", even if you believe it yourself. One reason we don't have Socialism in the US is because the moneyed interests have attacked the notion mercilessly since the time it entered the public's consciousness (circa early 1800s! Marx was a latecomer to the discussion!) Since Capitalists control the media, you will simply never hear (a) that socialism is straightforward and (b) obvious or even (c) that ECONOMICS TEXTBOOKS ADVOCATE IT in certain (common) circumstances, e.g. Health Care. So I am totally unimpressed to "be told" what this country is - as if someone else got the entitlement to define "what it is" and then the rest of us are merely born to fulfill a role as passive consumers of laws and society defined by others (also known as "the institution of slavery".) The country's economic system is what WE decide it should be - when the country operates as the Democracy "they", the vested interests, claim to us that it is. Tell the 80% of registered voters polled who said they WANTED SOCIALIZED MEDICINE why they can't get it under their supposed Democracy, and you begin to see that whether "America is a Capitalist Country" is less a fact than the preference of those (fewer) who like things the way they are - with them in power (the 0.1%) and us out of power (the 99.9%.)
So - it's a capitalist country - until it's not. Nobody ever asked me - or asked you - what we wanted for an economic system. They told us in school that Capitalism was "proven superior" but if you were an enterprising student with your wits about you, you had merely to ask "proven? By whom? Show me the books that prove it," and you would find that no, it was never "proven" and in fact cannot be "proven". Some works have argued that either Capitalism OR Socialism can "do well to serve the people", but the burden on Capitalism to do that requires much more observance of the laws - and we simply don't have observance of the laws once anyone out for money has enough money to buy the laws off so they can make more money.
I will go a step farther and challenge you to find a technological reason to reject socialism in favor of capitalism - and tell you in advance (to spare your time and effort) that you cannot do so. So quit confusing the POLITICS surrounding the economic system with the ECONOMICS of the economic system. (I am, here now, not even arguing that we should convert America to a "socialist economy" - only that we should accept economic reality and socialize those SECTORS of the economy that need it. And so for now I am only arguing for a 'hybrid socialist capitalist economy' such as Sweden and Norway now have (along with the HIGHEST LIVING STANDARDS IN THE WORLD AS A RESULT.))
"Companies exist to make money."
Actually, no they don't. FOR-PROFIT companies exist to make PROFITS. COMPANIES exist to PROVIDE SERVICES, another thing our capitalist education failed to reinforce for you. BTW, St. Thomas Aquinas agrees with this statement, for what it's worth.
"Facebook and Google offer free services. They don't force people to use those services. People use them because they find them useful and in exchange for that useful service they get served ads and give up their data."
(1) Those services are NOT FREE. What you mean is that they don't cost CASH MONEY, but that is NOT the same thing as FREE. Look up the word FREE in a Thesaurus, for example, and you find that FREE means UNENCUMBERED. So if I use "gmail" and my email to my correspondent contains an ADVERTISEMENT, I have PAID Google by allowing my correspondence to be POLLUTED FOR THIRD-PARTY COMMERCIAL GAIN and not only that, I have SPAMMED my correspondent - a serious breach of Internet Etiquette at best. {As an Internet Service Provider handling email for his clients since 1996 and having had to try to block SPAM to the extent possible, I know SPAM when I see it: it's SPAM if it got shoved in your face without your asking for it. We take that lesson from the Internet and voila! We recognize that the ads we get on TV and radio are in fact SPAM.}
(2) Force isn't needed when you rely on passive self-serving behavior predicted by your well-paid Public Relations consultants (viz. "Propagandists.") Some quick points to make: (a) people don't REALLY believe in Capitalism if they SEEK FREE SERVICES; if they really believed in Capitalism they would be CLAMORING to pay for the services, and for well-defined reasons; (b) It doesn't seem to have registered with you that Google et. al. are DUMPING ON THE MARKET - a favorite tactic of capitalists to ELIMINATE COMPETITION in round one so they own your ass and control your prices completely in round two. You cannot show that the tens of thousands of small ISPs around the nation provided less UTILITY than Google; they are only losing out because they cannot DUMP ON THE MARKET AS GOOGLE DOES. So Google gets to DESTROY THE INDEPENDENT ISP MARKET - and that seems to pass without notice on your part. Would you call that PROGRESS or a GOOD OUTCOME? If so, it means you really don't use the Internet much at all - in fact. (c) GIVE UP THEIR DATA. Well, that's a HUGE HOLE IN OUR SOCIAL FABRIC, isn't it - because that VIOLATES COMMON SENSE and STANDARD PRACTICE. That is a MINDSET (it's alright to let others in your underpants) that is being ENGINEERED UPON US by - the same people who have fed you your belief that "captialism was VOTED to be the economic system of this country." It is NOT alright to "share your data" with a corporation in a time when the ambient news complains of security breaches and large-scale commercial abuses of the gathered data. >>I<< never voted for a society that ASSERTS that the life of all individuals in our society is to be constantly bombarded with ADVERTISEMENTS as a WAY OF LIFE and I will remind you once more that "they" will NEVER ASK US IF WE WANT THESE THINGS BECAUSE THEY DARE NOT RISK HEARING "NO!" How many people WOULD DO AWAY WITH THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY IF THEY COULD; arguments about that being a bad thing quite aside.
You can keep pounding on this "being" a Capitalist Society ONLY if you wish to admit that it is NO LONGER A DEMOCRACY as well. Because if this WERE a TRUE FUNCTIONING DEMOCRACY, we would ALREADY have SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and we would NOT have WALL-TO-WALL PROPAGANDA to support an economic system that POLITICALLY enfranchises just the few.
"At this point, just about everyone understands the quid pro quo that goes on for those free services, so this is not a secret nor is it illegal."
Well, it seems to be "obscure" to you if not a secret - that capitalism as practiced today is CONTRARY TO and INIMICAL TO DEMOCRACY. How many institutions have had their catalogs raided by Google on the pretext that "the world deserves to know", where actually Google is just expropriating OTHER PEOPLE'S PROPERTY (in a process known as "theft".) The money-empowered have much more POWER than those without money - and I have said many times now that I don't give a rat's ass what Larry Page and Sergey Brin think I should do next with the Internet; it's NOT THEIR CALL and NEVER WAS. But tell that to them now - now that they've reached the "Bill Gates" stage of "I'm so f**king rich I can push anything I want to push on people and stop anything I want to stop." Who ELECTED them to make such decisions for us? Nobody. NOBODY.
So you choose: (Laissez-Faire Monopoly) Capitalism OR Democracy; but you can NOT have both.
"I believe their should be more laws to let individuals have more control over their own data (as there are in the EU)."
How about the law that says the owner of the data is ALWAYS the owner and ALWAYS has to give permission? How about the law that says that ANY third-party use of MY DATA has to REMUNERATE ME? How about asking the fundamental question: WHO IS TRYING TO ENGINEER THE RAPE OF OUR DATA AND WHY? Oh - for MONEY. To "sell" more goods. But that leads to the companion question: WHO ENTITLED PEOPLE WHO ARE ONLY EVER SEEKING PROFITS - to DEFINE AND ENGINEER OUR PEOPLE, OUR CULTURE, OUR SOCIETY - AS BEING A PLACE WHERE THE PURPOSE OF LIFE IS TO LIVE IT TO SUIT THE DEFINING CORPORATIONS? In plainer english: once again: >>I<< never gave my assent to have my entire society ENGINEERED so that my HUMAN INTERACTIONS WITH OTHERS ALWAYS HAVE A COMMERCIAL BASIS. WHO GAVE THOSE PEOPLE (ANY PEOPLE) THE RIGHT TO DEFINE WHAT THE PURPOSE OF LIFE IS?
Don't confuse what people do "blindly" or "out of necessity" with what "people want." One reason people use gmail is because the wonderful Capitalist Economic system refuses to pay them sufficient wages to PAY for such cheap and simple things. If you're a member of the "middle class" I'll suggest you have absolutely no idea how many people are doing much more poorly than you and you have no feel either for the financial tightness of their lives. I would hardly call it a "choice" when people use free services because they MUST. That you don't know any of those people does not mean they don't exist.
"But regardless of what you think of the business model, Facebook and Google provide a free service that requires they run expensive data centers. In order to continue to grow, they buy and sell stock in the company."
They could simply CHARGE for their services - and that would be the HONEST and CAPITALISTICALLY ECONOMICALLY CORRECT THING FOR THEM TO DO. In fact, thanks for making that point, which I will simply throw back at your "capitalism": if these companies were producing USEFUL SERVICES then people should CONSUME THEM THROUGH PURCHASE. Don't they say the only way you can tell if you're on the right track is to set a price and watch your client base? So - hint, hint - is it REALLY capitalism if they EVADE THE MARKET by proffering various services as "free"? Again: what INCENTIVE does Google or Facebook have to do a DAMNED THING for ANYONE? There is NO RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MONEY INPUTS FROM CONSUMERS AND WHAT THE "PRODUCT" IS. Using "ad revenues" to pay for something else somewhere else is a DISTORTION OF THE MARKET. So your "exemplars" of 'successful capitalist entities' are in fact VIOLATING THE (Classical and Neoclassical) RULES OF CAPITALISM. They're in a much later stage (Neoliberalism = reassertion of the divine right of the Rich) - that I would suggest is about one and a half steps short of actual FASCISM, but I'll drop that part of the discussion for now.
I always offer the same example: if I am a plumber, under "real" capitalism, when I advertise to the public, I will be found by search engines according to my worth AS A PLUMBER. Under Google's version of "capitalism", I will be found on the web because I PAID GOOGLE TO HIKE MY RATINGS and now the public can no longer tell if my services are worth a damn; I say "I could be the most successful Plumber on the Internet" and still not know a pipe from a wrench. This DISTORTION OF INFORMATION is hardly DOING NO EVIL. It is in fact a HORRIBLE LIE and once again makes people with MONEY more important than people with SKILLS OR KNOWLEDGE.
"End users are of course free to buy that stock too. I do like your idea of asking the end users to invest, something that many smaller companies are doing with crowd-sourced funding."
Let us not confuse "success" (in the sense of 'size of user base') with whether the product is genuinely useful. Ubuntu Linux is "free" and a much better system than anything Microsoft can ever do. It is the platform for which for-profit software should be written. But it's not being adopted. Why? Certainly not because it is not "good enough"; but because it doesn't have Microsoft's MARKETING behind it. So here's an INNOVATION the ENTIRE SOCIETY WOULD BENEFIT FROM SWITCHING TO - and why do we not? Because we are tied into so much Proprietary Junk. Because the executives at Microsoft have not read books on Economics to understand that now that their day is (long) over they should EXIT THE MARKET. Ah - but no - forget the RULES of Capitalism; if we're still making money, let's make the last mil on old stale software (just like the Telcos refuse to deliver FTTH while extracting the last mil from old stale copper) and the public can keep paying high rates for old crap. Capitalism itself might be just fine; it's all the PLAYERS who SUCK and are GREEDY THIEVES. But under Capitalism it doesn't PAY to follow the rules; it's cheaper to BUY the rules. And while human behavior and human culture refuse to punish the greedy - we will have to SUFFER them.
"I would dispute the idea that Google and Facebook aren't doing anything useful. Google's engineers are coming up with useful tools all the time"
so are lots of other people we never hear from ...
"and I use many of them on a daily basis."
Your choice. I do fine without them.
"Facebook is so popular almost a billion people are using it across the world. It lets you stay in touch with people. It lets you share photos and links. In short, it provides a place to communicate and share. That is in and of itself useful."
It's a big bulletin board that a handful of highschool kids could have done just as well. The Telephone Companies have also reengineered our society so that you cannot walk down the street to find one person actually looking at anything but their handheld device. I am sure SOME of the transmitted messages are useful: I'll be late. I had to take a different plane. But having observed traffic "in general" on services such as IM and IRC and seen what people post to Facebook, I hardly think the traffic and services "useful." Facebook is not necessary in order to present oneself to the world. I made the point that when one graduates from "Kindergarten" = Facebook, one will try to "define oneself online more professionally", and Facebook will be seen as the place where people exchange recipes and pictures of their dogs - not the place to find "those in the know."
"I'm not sure if you're serious about your so-called delicious hint of an idea, but why would that's about the worst idea I ever heard of -- letting the government run a popular social network. "
I'm not afraid of the Government running it - when "we the people" run the Government. You're right; as of today when all the administration wants to do is pass one Fascist law after another and lie, lie, lie about where next we'll need a war; when anti-war protesters are eligible to be snatched off the street to be sent to Guantanamo "because George W. Bush said so and Barack Obama refused to take it back"; when any attempt by the people at large to get relief from predation by corporations is rebutted by the reactionary legislative, judicial and executive branches. Yes, during these times, to "trust" the government is to sign away one's life to the NSA.
I believe we will be able to turn all that around - with time, effort and education. I think in terms of a society where "common decency" and Democracy have been restored, and the people in general understand the purpose of life to be to live life well - not anything to do with money wealth, mind you, but social wealth and welfare.
And in that society I will put you in charge of the "Government-run International Internet Phonebook" with a charter you are to enforce that guarantees certain sorts of privacy; and now I ask: can you do it (without corruption)? Or, at least, can you think of anyone you know who could? I am sure you can answer affirmatively.
"You have a lot of passion though, I'll give you that."
I decided to educate myself as to why things in our society are as they are (people disenfranchised from their democracy with an embarrassing unreasoned sycophancy to the economic system that causes that disenfranchisement.) I have never believed that a person having more money makes them any more special. I was raised in a society that promised me I could call the President an asshole in public if I felt like it - where we all get to tell others whether we think they're doing a good job or not. At least that was the promise, and it's true to a point: I can call the President an asshole. And that's where my power ends. So it's NOT a Democracy, except in name only. I have never believed that something so broken as our Democracy cannot be fixed for the BEST PART, so I engaged in a program of study to nail down ALL the arguments on ALL sides so that I could rebut the FALSEHOODS that are used to keep things the way OTHERS want them for us. Specifically my goal is (ultimately) to write a book to rebut, "once and for all time" (ho ho), the philosophies of Ludwig Von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand. However, the scope of what there is to know before I can do that is extraordinarily wide and includes History, Sociology, Psychology and SocioEconomic Philosophy as well as all the economists from Smith (1776) to Friedman (1976), including about 6500 pages of Marx on Economics, which I haven't started yet.
Yes: I'm a Militant because I believe the promises I was made in school about what a "great country" this is - and I intend to do whatever I can to MAKE THEM KEEP THOSE PROMISES. No, this is NOT a "Capitalist Country" any more than it is a "Christian Country", another lie we had to live with but have largely defeated. This country is what WE THE PEOPLE vote for it to be, starting with OUR RIGHT AS CITIZENS TO SOCIALIZE THOSE SECTORS OF THE ECONOMY WHICH NEED AND DESERVE IT - starting with HEALTH CARE, but not ending there. To my surprise in my reading I FOUND early on that yes, Capitalism CAN SERVE(*) - but only if RULES ARE FOLLOWED, and those who extol Capitalism REFUSE TO ABIDE BY THOSE RULES - so as to rig the "game" in their favor. (*) See Oskar Lange in my bibliography. I'll tell you that not even people who call themselves 'Capitalists' in this country understand the rules of Capitalism; it's kind of like the self-honesty creed of Libertarianism: there are rules and if you play them fair, everyone wins. If the self-called "Capitalists" in the world had actually read the books! Then THEY WOULD GLADLY GRANT WAGE INCREASES TO WORKERS, FOR EXAMPLE. The fact that they try to keep all the money in their own pockets - means THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW CAPITALISM IS SUPPOSED TO WORK!! And their behavior is WHY it's not working as it should. Capitalism is NOT the problem. It's ANIMAL GREED that is the problem, coupled with about 300 years' worth of crap written by the rich telling themselves why they deserve to run the world. Thomas Malthus: maybe it's better that the poor should all die off since I claim to have proven we cannot help them. Herbert Spencer: if you are unemployed then it must be your fault alone and society won't miss you if you vanish, listeners take the hint (to kill them or drive them out.) Note how easily these people deny life to others - out of their seflish and venal philosophies.
I'm perhaps 1000% more radicalized now than I was even just two months ago - because I've now read Philip Foner's 10-volume history of Labor in the US and a book by Art Preis about the CIO. Take this straight to heart immediately: that history is 150 years' worth of employers not caring if the wages they paid even sustained the worker at a subsistence level; of employers rushing to the government to get the Police and Militia to BREAK STRIKES and KEEP WORKERS CONFINED TO INFERIOR WAGES AND ABYSMAL WORKING CONDITIONS; pickets and strikers were ATTACKED AND MURDERED; socialsts and labor leaders were falsely imprisoned to get them out of the way; the government and employers routinely used "Red Scares" to attack labor (and they still do, to this very day.) LABOR called for the NATIONALIZATION OF ENERGY, EDUCATION, RAILROADS and other transportation - just a lot of things, really - and we don't still hear those calls today. WHY NOT? Well - read the history. They called for a 30-hour week even prior to 1953. Do we have a 30-hour work week in this country? NO. So labor never got the 30-hour week despite wanting it since at least 1950 - that's 60 years' worth of NO from the capitalists. What is MAY DAY? It commemorates the AMERICAN LABOR STRUGGLE FOR THE EIGHT-HOUR DAY and MANY PEOPLE DIED TO BRING THAT TO US such as we have now. You HAVE A WEEKEND because LABOR DIED TO BRING IT TO YOU. And still the fight goes on: a Bush signing statement, as I recall, vacated overtime pay for (a segment of) workers - by fiat - one sonofabitch in one signature rips off what workers fought and died for over a period of MANY DECADES. A recurring theme in Labor History is the desire of the workers to have their own party BECAUSE - and they've been saying this SINCE 1900!! Neither Major Party will represent them properly because those parties respond only to - money! All too similar to this very day.
It's not rocket science and it doesn't really have anything to do with "capitalism versus socialism": our problem today (worldwide) is to get the RICH OUT OF POWER and to RESTORE DEMOCRACY. In the United States, that implies that for the FIRST TIME in their lives, a lot of people will be TOLD IN SCHOOL that they have a DUTY to PAY ATTENTION to the RUNNING OF - THEIR OWN SOCIETY. What a novel idea! Only had that one in mind since 1770 or so.
It's not a work of art - I wrote it quickly as a reference tool for my own use, but you can see my bibliography online at http://ecsd.com/books/index.html. There I track my reading and (some) notes I've taken. The "BegFin" sort shows what I've started and finished. I can recommend a number of books on various topics; if you'd like to tune in to the anger I have over the political system I suggest Michael Parenti's "The Face of Imperialism" and his more expensive and thorough "Democracy For the Few", 9th edition (used in some colleges.) That that system (Neoliberalism/Neoconservatism) is intended for world consumption by our elites, see David Harvey's "A Brief History of Neoliberalism". To see why you have a life of any decency today I suggest reading the histories of labor - while long (10 volumes) the Foner series is quite educational and not tedious. My favorite was volume 4 about the IWW, people all schoolchildren in America should be taught about - if anyone was "Heroes" in the labor struggle, they were. Foner died or who knows how many volumes he'd have written; the Preis book on the CIO took up roughly where Foner left off (up to 1964.)
German Immigrants, Socialists and Laborers helped win the Civil War - we don't hear about that. American Labor appealed to Eurpoean Labor, which wanted the North to win anyway - and European Labor prevented various European governments (including the UK) from assisting the South during the war. John Nichols' latest book, "The 'S' Word", has a nice chapter about Lincoln's relation to Labor.
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