Genetic engineering, creating the PERFECT BANANA!: http://thefruitblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/perfect-fruit-good-breeding-bad-seeds.html
Guise,
I said “perfect banana”, not “a perfect banana”.
Perfect banana is a state of being.
PS Banana is also a synonym for economic depressions.
That banana isn’t long enough to be considered perfect
Precisely. Capitalism can be an obfuscatory word. Capitalism is really two ideas, property rights (beginning with self-ownership) + original appropriation (entailing unrestricted exchange). Capitalism considered descriptively - economics - merely describes how the market works. Good economics treats the State endogenously, not exogenously and, as a result, tells us a lot about the larger problems that the State creates in its supposed aim of correcting “problems” with capitalism. Public choice theory is a mainstream discipline which has made major inroads in this area. Capitalism considered normatively - ethics - is really nothing more than a consistent application of the principle of universalizability* to economic activity. Dr. Hoppe is the expositor par excellance of this idea. Clayton - *Universalizability is a property that an ethical proposition has if it holds regardless of the identity of the individual to which it is applied
Perfect what?
Perfect banana? No, capitalism is not perfect banana.
Haha thats so funny
Don’t argue with your proffs you need marks and recommendations…just the way it is!
No capitalism is not perfect, because human action is based on uncertainty about the future. However, government intervention is also imperfect and you can not compare a real life results of capitalism with the perfect ideal of government intervention. First, under capitalism men are always adapting and looking for better ways to satisfy human wants. Second, government does hire angels, but humans and Public Choice scholars have studied in depth how government fails.
I could have sworn the entire point behind the market as process is that capital allocation is always imperfect at any given time, based off incomplete information and imperfect perception of circumstances. The idea isn’t that free market capitalism is perfect but rather that it’s the form of economic organization most able to correct itself, moving closer to an ever elusive state of fulfilling all given demand perfectly as successful entrepreneurs are rewarded with profits and unsuccessful ones removed from the market process by business failure.
It seems your Keynesian friend would move the goalposts from here to Pluto as long as he could get you to admit that capitalism won’t eat your spinach.
Perfect competition does exist in the world… when there is no government interference.
The best response is that Capatalism isnt perfect but its the best system we know of(at least nobody has been able to demonstrate a better one), and is far far superior to any sort of Government intervention.
I also think its reasonable to argue that when it comes to economic/social structures ‘perfection’ is reletive(perfect for what? For whom? What does that even mean?)
“Perfect competition does exist in the world… when there is no government interference”
Perfect competition is impossible so long as knowledge is limited. Period. You can say that “the most perfect competition possible is possible in the free market” but unless you defined this as perfect some reason then no, perfect competition will never and can never happen.
NOTHING in this universe is perfect
Pure hypothetical, capitalism is the perfect system, assuming perfect (ideal) circumstances. Since such perfect/ideal circumstances do not exist, all states that still are capitalistic in nature, have always and out of necessity intervened in capitalism (the last major intervention was the massive bail-outs of the privately owned financial institutions - without that intervention the world economy would already have collapsed totally, and we would not be having this discussion now, but instead we would see revolution taking place and actions of struggling empoverished masses for socialism!!).
But even the above is not true, since at the basis of an abstract (near to ideal) analysis of capitalism, owned to Marx, capitalism still suffers from the ‘internal contradictions of the capitalist accumulations’ - which in short just explains that all capitalist profits emerge from underpayment of wage labour, yet at the same time the capitalist owners of production need effective demand (people buying the stuff and goods produced, and they can not consume the production themselves) which is at the same time made impossible by the inbalance between production (the total value of produced goods/services) and consumption (which can only be paid for at the basis of wages, but which need to be lower then the value produced by labour, in order to accumulate profit). The fact that we are having a credit crisis, is the direct consequence of that imbalance, because the financial institutions were serving the capitalist mode of production by providing credit services, in order to increase effective demand. This only works temporarily, but ultimately will lead to a credit crisis, at the basis of the impossibility of retrieving all the money lent out.
Ergo: capitalism, even when considered as a hypothetical system in an ideal world (perfect market conditions, no natural limitations, maximal competition, no state interventions, no social benefits or social services, etc.), does not and can not function, it is fundamentally flawed.
@von Vodka
<< In the real world, yes, capitalism is perfect. In some fantasy land, we’d be better off with the Garden of Eden.>>
In other words, you think the govt. really should not have bailed out the banks, and really should have let the “free markets” (= greedy bankers) do it’s work??? Do you really believe that?
I think you are completely mistaken. If that had been the case, the total collapse of the world economy would have now been a fact, and would have resulted in massive revolts against the capitalist system and the govt. which refused to act, and a socialist revolution in several countries would have already taken place…
In other words, you think the govt. really should not have bailed out the banks, and really should have let the “free markets” (= greedy bankers) do it’s work??? Do you really believe that?
We’re all “greedy”. And yes, we do. The rest is merely conjectural histrionics. 
Assuming ideal circumstances will make any system “perfect”. Perfect for you is not perfect for somebody else, so that’s the biggest problem.
First things first, capitalism has no inherent or necessary purpose. It’s a model of interaction. What people are asking when they say, “which system is the best?” is really dependant on the people involved. An autocracy could be perfect if everybody preferred being serfs. Anarcho-syndicalism would be perfect if everybody preferred the ability to work in co-ops over the ability to create businesses as independent entrepeneurs. So it really depends on who we’re dealing with.
After he asks, “is capitalism perfect?,”
Simply reply, “A geese in the pot’s worth two in the bush.”
Then when he says, “what?” … you just say, “huh?” and give him a puzzled look like nothing happened.
@mgmcintyre, I’m going to use that someday