I wouldn't bank on it

[JohnSkelton]

It isn't in the DNA of business that it should seek to maximum profit, let alone make a not wholly proverbial killing, rather than simply being a functional and human way of enabling people to survive.

No, but business and capitalism aren't synonymous. Your grandmother's business isn't applicable generally and would never have been applicable generally. The history of banking isn't the history of high street branches and bank managers of good repute. It's entirely possible that the attitudes you outline were more general in the period you detail: but in terms of capitalism those attitudes are an aberration, rather than the other way around. And in terms of global capitalism, which has been with us since the C18 and became dominant as 'early' as the C19, they don't apply.

[Lateralthinking1]

No, but business and capitalism aren't synonymous. Your grandmother's business isn't applicable generally and would never have been applicable generally. The history of banking isn't the history of high street branches and bank managers of good repute. It's entirely possible that the attitudes you outline were more general in the period you detail: but in terms of capitalism those attitudes are an aberration, rather than the other way around. And in terms of global capitalism, which has been with us since the C18 and became dominant as 'early' as the C19, they don't apply.

I think they were possibly something of an aberration even in that era. My grandmother was the most naive person I ever met - and the one of best character - but it does go to show what is possible without ability, let alone any tendency to be card sharp. We discussed 'outcomes' the other day. Her 'outcomes' were consistently stronger than those emanating from clever-cleverness. While never making a profit beyond basic living expenses, she was never during that 30 year period in debt. It seems to me that there is huge scope for such a strand to be introduced into modern business practice. People speak of 'caring capitalism' but, other than thinking about making high and mighty charitable donations, they are entirely clueless as to what in humility that means.

[amateur51]

No and how many more times do we have to tell you.. It is called Globalisation. Nothing to do with Margaret Thatcher.

Of course.

The forensic evidence of her hands all over the tiller count for naught

As a sage of these boards commented earlier: "All it requires is a change in outllook and objectives. Greasy-poles are only there because they are man-made."

Interesting use of 'man-made' but it does not reflect on Mrs Thatcher

[ahinton]

No, but business and capitalism aren't synonymous.

Indeed they are not - or, at least, not necessarily. Likewise, whilst capitalism undoubtedly enables and facilitates greed, avarice, profiteering et al but it does not make any of these compulsory (provided that the last of them is understood to be deliberate creation of profit against the interests of others rather than merely the creation of profit for the benefit of others).

Consider the latest bank scam to be investigated by FSA - that of interest rate swaps; closely related as these inevitably are to bank interst rate fixing (and I hope that their respective investigations will not be carried out too separately from one another), the products offered by banks as insurance against the effects of interest rate increases have been (mis-)sold to businesses, one of whose purposes in life is indeed to make a profit - so is this not an example (among other things) of capitalism against capitalism, despite the banks not being in commercial competition with their client businesses to whom they sold these products? FSA's intent here is to prove that those who sold them (whom they'll presumably then name and shame) did not explain them and their risks properly; one problem with this approach, however, is that it's a case of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted; effectively, the process is predicated upon FSA being able to exonerate itself from any responsibility for licensing these products for sale in UK in the first place - and it's not the first time that this kind of thing has occured. If FSA devoted more of its energies to regulating products before expending them on investigating inappropriate sales of such products - i.e. if it propritised developing into a more effective product licensing policeman - some of today's financial woes might not be as grave as they are now.

[ahinton]

While never making a profit beyond basic living expenses, she was never during that 30 year period in debt.

Oh, dear! Cursed on two fronts at once, then! Firstly, banks and other lenders really don't like businesses which are never in debt and, if most people were able to run their businesses as your grandmother did, the banks would be in even more serious trouble (albeit for quite different reasons) than they are now! Secondly, "never making a profit beyond basic living expenses" means never developing and expanding one's business so that it could employ people who would pay taxes and be able to spend moeny on other businesses' products, thereby reducing the unemployment figures and increasing the amounts of tax paid by the businesses from which those employees would purchase products. Of course I'm not suggesting that your grandmother or anyone else who runs or ran a business as she did is in any sense "wrong" to do so in that way - it's entirely a matter for personal choice and, in a capitalist society, such people are permitted to make such choices and stick with them if so they choose, provided that their businesses can at least sustain themselves without reliance or dependence upon expansion.

[JohnSkelton]

Indeed they are not - or, at least, not necessarily. Likewise, whilst capitalism undoubtedly enables and facilitates greed, avarice, profiteering et al but it does not make any of these compulsory (provided that the last of them is understood to be deliberate creation of profit against the interests of others rather than merely the creation of profit for the benefit of others).

That's untrue - capitalism is structurally about the creation of profit against the interests of others. Against the interests of workers - it's in the interest of capitalists to get people to work as long as possible for as little as possible with as little regard to safety of the employee as possible (at least it is in a labour market where there's a good pool of unemployed labour and people who fall into machines or get worked to death sitting at computers or go mad answering the telephone are easily replaced; and, similarly, where collective action for improvement of wages / conditions is easily dealt with by sacking striking employees), or to develop machinery / technology which means employees can be laid off or put on short wages. Against the interest of other capitalists; the idea is to drive other capitalists to the wall, to gain a monopoly. Why would a capitalist want 'healthy' competition, when a capitalist can have the whole market and all the profits for their own enjoyment?

Capitalism rapidly latched on to a banalised version of Darwinism. Capitalism becomes survival of the fittest = natural selection = a natural phenomenon (in essence, human nature). A lot of people who don't think it's a good thing for people to fall into machines or for banks to rig interest rates believe that capitalism is in some way a part of 'human nature'. That's the problem - people either don't want to face up to the logical implications of what they believe, or like many capitalists and politicians maintain a pretence of believing in good as against speculative capitalism, in Big Society, in welfare reform as a way of ending dependency etc. Instead of admitting that they want to break any form of resistance from the poor by making them entirely dependent on a labour market where the power again resides with the capitalist (as it doesn't in eras of so-called full employment; now long gone with the advent of a global labour pool), by destroying collectivities (ideologically now is perfect - perfect to fuel anxieties about immigration and multiculturalism, especially in the context of rationing / privatising public health provision).

The FSA is useless because there is no genuine political will for the FSA to succeed, even if it had much chance of collectively anticipating / detecting 'abuse' in a system that is predicated on speculation (the idea that speculation is bad capitalism is nonsense. Speculation drives capitalism). At least Boris Johnson is more open about his hostility to regulators sticking their noses into City institutions' business than his parliamentary colleagues. But I imagine if he ever becomes leader of the Tory party he'll have to change his tone somewhat. Fortunately for libertarian capitalists it will only be a change of tone (as with Cameron and Osborne's moral outrage and shock and disappointment at something they may - may - not have known about as such, but whose general idea is entirely familiar to them) though as yet no mainstream politician has gone anything like far enough for the libertarian capitalist. But, despite storms like this, things remain headed in their direction.

[Lateralthinking1]

Oh, dear! Cursed on two fronts at once, then! Firstly, banks and other lenders really don't like businesses which are never in debt and, if most people were able to run their businesses as your grandmother did, the banks would be in even more serious trouble (albeit for quite different reasons) than they are now! Secondly, "never making a profit beyond basic living expenses" means never developing and expanding one's business so that it could employ people who would pay taxes and be able to spend moeny on other businesses' products, thereby reducing the unemployment figures and increasing the amounts of tax paid by the businesses from which those employees would purchase products. Of course I'm not suggesting that your grandmother or anyone else who runs or ran a business as she did is in any sense "wrong" to do so in that way - it's entirely a matter for personal choice and, in a capitalist society, such people are permitted to make such choices and stick with them if so they choose, provided that their businesses can at least sustain themselves without reliance or dependence upon expansion.

Yes I think the point there is not so much that no one gained from her enterprise in an economic sense, other than the landlord, the van drivers and the wholesalers, but that no one suffered from it as people suffer from others' enterprise now.

There is also the fact that the money she had initially was just sufficient to pay for the first produce and rent. Those who start with, say, a couple of million or even £500,000 could measure the dimensions of their boxes before rushing into debt.

As I say, it isn't a blueprint for everyone but currently it is absent when it should be a significant strand.

[ahinton]

That's untrue - capitalism is structurally about the creation of profit against the interests of others.

As I tried to put forward, it does not have to be only about that and, indeed, it has not always been about that and that alone.

Against the interests of workers - it's in the interest of capitalists to get people to work as long as possible for as little as possible with as little regard to safety of the employee as possible (at least it is in a labour market where there's a good pool of unemployed labour and people who fall into machines or get worked to death sitting at computers or go mad answering the telephone are easily replaced; and, similarly, where collective action for improvement of wages / conditions is easily dealt with by sacking striking employees), or to develop machinery / technology which means employees can be laid off or put on short wages.

Again, it doesn't have to be about that all the time and without exception; furthermnore, if machinery / technology is indeed developed that can dispense with the need for some workers, then those workers will no longer be exploited or put at risk, will they?! Most of those in senior positions at the banks and other financial institutions that we've been discussing, as well as FSA, are also employees, so I think it rather important first to draw appropriate distinctions that enable a clear definition of "worker" to emerge, for it's obvious that, byt the use of that term, you are not referring to such employees but to those at or near the bottom of the working scale. What if there were no more menial work to be done and thus no opportunities for unprincipled employers to take advantae of those who used to do it? That would hardly militate against the continuation of capitalism, would it?!

Against the interest of other capitalists; the idea is to drive other capitalists to the wall, to gain a monopoly. Why would a capitalist want 'healthy' competition, when a capitalist can have the whole market and all the profits for their own enjoyment?

Whilst I understand what you're writing here, it doesn't fit the example that I gave, which was that of big banks screwing their own client businesses with whom they are not in competition by mis-selling them insurance products osensibly designed to protect those businesses against interest rate rises while at the same time engineering interest rate falls; it's not as though those banks could gain or would even seek a "monopoly" by ruining and then absorbing those businesses, is it?

Capitalism rapidly latched on to a banalised version of Darwinism. Capitalism becomes survival of the fittest = natural selection = a natural phenomenon (in essence, human nature). A lot of people who don't think it's a good thing for people to fall into machines or for banks to rig interest rates believe that capitalism is in some way a part of 'human nature'. That's the problem - people either don't want to face up to the logical implications of what they believe, or like many capitalists and politicians maintain a pretence of believing in good as against speculative capitalism, in Big Society, in welfare reform as a way of ending dependency etc. Instead of admitting that they want to break any form of resistance from the poor by making them entirely dependent on a labour market where the power again resides with the capitalist (as it doesn't in eras of so-called full employment; now long gone with the advent of a global labour pool), by destroying collectivities (ideologically now is perfect - perfect to fuel anxieties about immigration and multiculturalism, especially in the context of rationing / privatising public health provision).

Very interesting points and well expressed, too; thanks. What bothers me is what should really be thought about the rôle of "speculation" and, to me, it not only is synonymous with capitalist practice but with all business practice (and, as you already wrote, business and capitalism are not synonymous); every desire to achieve anything may involve speculation, to the extent that if an end result of anything cannot be precisely and wholly determined before anything is done to achieve it, speculation is involved. It could therefore be argued that it is speculation itself, rather than capitalism per se, that is "human nature".

The FSA is useless because there is no genuine political will for the FSA to succeed, even if it had much chance of collectively anticipating / detecting 'abuse' in a system that is predicated on speculation (the idea that speculation is bad capitalism is nonsense. Speculation drives capitalism). At least Boris Johnson is more open about his hostility to regulators sticking their noses into City institutions' business than his parliamentary colleagues. But I imagine if he ever becomes leader of the Tory party he'll have to change his tone somewhat. Fortunately for libertarian capitalists it will only be a change of tone (as with Cameron and Osborne's moral outrage and shock and disappointment at something they may - may - not have known about as such, but whose general idea is entirely familiar to them) though as yet no mainstream politician has gone anything like far enough for the libertarian capitalist. But, despite storms like this, things remain headed in their direction.

As I wrote, I believe that speculation drives more than just capitalist practice. FSA closes at the end of this year anyway, to be replaced by two non-new institutions that will almost certainly be populated largely by the same suits.

[JohnSkelton]

As I tried to put forward, it does not have to be only about that and, indeed, it has not always been about that and that alone.

You made an assertion (which you've repeated); that's not the same as arguing the case for something. Of course there are examples of capitalist ventures which aren't especially predatory in nature or effect and not all capitalists are the same (plenty of capitalists are honest, plenty try to do their best by people. Depending on the market they are in that might not be a problem - it can even be a selling point, of course, as in 'Green' capitalism). I'm talking about the structural basis of capitalism which is the extraction of profit, the reduction of cost, and the gaining of maximum market share. Just as feudalism is structurally about status, deference, tribute and protection. I'd suggest the strong likelihood is that a period of relatively benevolent capitalism (1950 - 1970, say) where the benefits were to some extent shared around widely is being definitively succeeded - for, again, structural rather than anecdotal reasons - by a capitalism which increasingly must revert to a raw version of capitalism's basic principles, even while - or because - markets of all kinds become more complex. That's partly to do with a lopsided relation of growth to growing demand (the two can't be balanced; supply exceeding demand, despite 'developing' economies, and also to do with the bubble expansion of financial services and debt services to take the growth slack).

In other words, I don't think that reformist capitalism is a coherent notion now (other than as an ideological cover for what for most of us will become an increasingly grim and nasty reality).

At which cheerful point in the conversation I really will bow out of this thread and I think out of Platform 3, at least for the while. I registered in the first place for the music so I will make an heroic effort to stick with that .

[ahinton]

You made an assertion (which you've repeated); that's not the same as arguing the case for something. Of course there are examples of capitalist ventures which aren't especially predatory in nature or effect and not all capitalists are the same (plenty of capitalists are honest, plenty try to do their best by people. Depending on the market they are in that might not be a problem - it can even be a selling point, of course, as in 'Green' capitalism). I'm talking about the structural basis of capitalism which is the extraction of profit, the reduction of cost, and the gaining of maximum market share. Just as feudalism is structurally about status, deference, tribute and protection. I'd suggest the strong likelihood is that a period of relatively benevolent capitalism (1950 - 1970, say) where the benefits were to some extent shared around widely is being definitively succeeded - for, again, structural rather than anecdotal reasons - by a capitalism which increasingly must revert to a raw version of capitalism's basic principles, even while - or because - markets of all kinds become more complex. That's partly to do with a lopsided relation of growth to growing demand (the two can't be balanced; supply exceeding demand, despite 'developing' economies, and also to do with the bubble expansion of financial services and debt services to take the growth slack).

In other words, I don't think that reformist capitalism is a coherent notion now (other than as an ideological cover for what for most of us will become an increasingly grim and nasty reality).

At which cheerful point in the conversation I really will bow out of this thread and I think out of Platform 3, at least for the while. I registered in the first place for the music so I will make an heroic effort to stick with that .

It will be a pity, however understandable, if you do bow out of here, even if only temporarily; I think that we agree on rather more of what you write above than you might realise - and I certainly appreciate your writings about such issues, even when I may not agree with some of them.