Wolff Responds: Profit Motives and Competition Often Fail Us 

brilliant. Good analogies like that are fun and efficient! Another one is; when someones claim the virtues of an " unregulated free market ", ask them if they would want to live in an " unregulated, free city "

Some capitalists are honest and understand who drives the market. Socialist are mostly in denial about their own greed.

Russ Chancellor Your comment makes literally no sense. A person who is "honest about who runs the market" is not a capitalist: they are a socialist. Capitalism is based on the illusion that a handful of capital owners is necessary to run a market. This has been proven untrue through the massive success of both worker co-ops and union action. The greed of the bourgeoisie is strong, but the proletarian are strong. Without the proletariat, the bourgeois are nothing: the basis of Marxian socialism. *Socialists* know who drives the market: it's the workers. For this reason, they want the workers to benefit most from their own labor. That is not greed, it is justice and equality.

RR I am union and have been union most of my life. Greed and corruption is just as prevalent in socialist ideology. Capitalist understand human nature and capitalize on it. The smart phone and personal computers are but two examples.

@@MrDangeruss1 I explained to you how greed is endemic to capitalism, not socialism. You simply stating "socialists are greedy, capitalists are understanding" doesn't make it true. By definition, it is _not_ true. If you were in a union, you wouldn't be saying these things. A union member, at least one who takes the union seriously, recognizes that capitalism is a greedy and corrupt system and that it must be combatted. That is *literally* the function of unions.

RR agreement. However if you don’t reward inventors they won’t invent.

6:20 Just left of his head looks like an old double sided wrench. The next two to the left look like old fireplace tools, mainly for stoking a fire and moving hot logs/embers. Edit: the one on the farthest left might be similar to the small one here but I don't know what it's for. Maybe a "key" for an old iron fireplace gate: www.ebay.com/c/1301617655

Horse tools?

Starting up his red room of pain😹

China has been responding to market forces. So have every other company and Country in this world. So, it is not only unfair but wrong to point to China and say, they are bad. It is market forces, in other words capitalism, that are to blame.

@@agreeableanarchist7328 I'm not pro-capitalism, china doesn't need to have such low quality of life for it's population. The people there should demand better working and living conditions. From an environmental viewpoint shipping products around the world is aweful. China should make products for themselves and we should make products for ourselves

please stop blaming China for everything. every time I turn around hear somebody blaming China blaming China blaming China man leave China alone. either you're believing a bunch of lies or it doesn't apply to you either way we need to stop blaming other people for things that we do!

James Pagan Yeah, profit is simply the result of greed. There ought to be a law that all corporations and all businesses have to operate at a loss, right?

Here's another option Claire - they can keep all the profits if they actually pay their taxes, 20% say?

@S. D. H. Competition is supposed to perform that very function ("Capping profits"). Competition isn't always perfect, but it mostly does the job!

@@PerfectPetProductions That's the responsibility of government (congress and the IRS), right? If they aren't doing their job, you need to elect other people, right?

@S. D. H. OK, but that's pure politics, which I don't care spend much time on. I thought we were discussing economics.

Read “Towards a New Socialism” by Cockshott. It addresses all questions concerning the implementation of socialism in the future. I believe there’s an audiobook on RU-vid.

"Its either capitalism, or soviet communism" False dichotomy. Ever heard of market socialism, aka workplace democracy? Let me explain it with a quick example: Jack the jackass owns some machines to turn wood into chairs, and some raw wood. Jack the jackass stares at the wood all day, and shouts 'entrepreneurial spirit" and "innovation" at it, but it still does not turn itself into chairs. So Jack the jackass hires Bob and others to operate the machines. It takes Bob one hour to make one chair. Bob is paid $15 an hour, yet each chair sells for $50, and the wood is only worth $5 on its own. Well then, where's the other $30 of value come from and where does it go? Bob added $45 of value with his labor, but only got $15. Jack the jackass kept the other $30, despite doing no work, just owning stuff. Jack the jackass also keeps the surplus value from all the other workers. Thing is that the workers don't need Jack the jackass, they could own the machines together, and compete with other firms all the same. No central planning needed, no abandoning the market, just abandoning capitalism. Markets are not exclusive to capitalism, hunter gatherer societies had them, feudalism had them, capitalism has them, and a modern socialism has them.

Conclusions around the actuality of "Progress" entirely depends upon the timescale you use to evaluate such claims. The planet is on fire, and workers see and viscerally feel the elitist are captains of a metaphorical Titanic.. If we can try to stay grounded, its easy to see that 20th century history of elitist rule is one case of industrial malpractice after another (as Prof Wolff touches upon during this lecture) ..dotted with episodes of gross covert mad science experimentation by global complex of intelligence agencies and corporate think tanks... Everything about the elitist faith in disruptive technology and innovation has largely been bad for us (workers / the poor / regular people) if you actually honestly interrogate the damage done.. So you have no good reason to defend capitalism... You don't owe this ideology anything.. Renouncing it and fighting against it is what you owe the young, your ancestors your kin..

@Alaskaman15 Probably, well part of the reason I post is so that others reading the comments can see it. It's just a copy paste reply anyway, those guys all think alike, so I just got a notepad of responses.

No parasites. They extract wealth from a society economy and refuse to pay their fair share of the common good (taxes, thriving wage).

They should be!

it's possible, i.e. jack ma.

*Methanol, it's a byproduct in alcohol production which is supposed to be removed, and can be toxic via absorption through the skin. That said, deaths from methanol in hand sanitiser are probably occurring through consumption.

Game theory works when the rules are followed, it seems to me that the lack of legitimate oversight is the root issue...but that takes time, and in a system where time is money, legit oversight is hard to come by...

@@42Mrgreenman The current methods use financial incentives; that are too simplistic, and don't focus on cooperation. The value of using game theory in reform is making the rules systemic. The reason for failure is forcing businesses to produce quarterly returns in all conditions. That's a great expectation; thus it incentivizes cheating. A game theoretical model isn't just a written rule set. It's one that actually punishes cheating; in some way, as opposed to promoting it in desperate situations. A system that forces growth in all conditions is one that works against nature itself; and it's existed since the Neolithic. Tribalism became Nationalism; which became Imperialism, which is now our greatest existential threat. That's nature's game.