His model of human nature and projections for capitalistic growth were also totally off.
Correct. The model of human nature proposed by Karl Marx was demonstrably incorrect, and the demonstration continues in the few countries that continue to proclaim allegiance to Marxist thought.
An interesting fact about free-enterprise (Marx might say, "capitalist") economies is that they are based in part on the writings of Adam Smith in the book On the Wealth of Nations. But before Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, he first wrote a book called The Theory of Moral Sentiments, pondering what motivates human beings to behave morally. Smith had deeper insight into human nature even before he began writing about economics proper than Marx ever had.
They aren't in competition. They both were geniuses.
Smith did not advocate laissez-faire capitalism. He was against any kind of cartel, oligopoly, or monopoly, and wanted the state to be more powerful than corporations, not controlled by corporations. Marx was right about capitalism but wrong about incentives.
Both of them should be drawn from in the creation of a next generation economic system.
How do you get a state that is "more powerful" than Corporations? I don't think Government size has anything to do with it. Are you referring to having many strong law enforcement agencies to threaten the corporations? I'd say the US Government already has that, and Corporations still seem to control it. And if you want to give China as an example, that's not an acceptable model.
In a democracy, the best way for the Government to be more powerful than Corporations, is for the people themselves to have more direct power over the Government. The more the people loosen up their grip on the Government, the more one of the 2 things happen:
1. The Government becomes more powerful than both the people and the Corporations.
2. The Corporations become more powerful than the Government, who in turn is also more powerful than the people.
The solution is radical meritocracy and an end to privileged elites (nepotism & cronyism).
Society must not tolerate the creation of an aristocratic class, or that class will engage in anti-meritocratic privilege (nepotism & cronyism).
Meritocracy is the next step from democracy. In a meritocracy, ONLY non-privileged competent people are allowed to hold positions of power.
Corporations control the government through privilege games (cronyism and nepotism).
End the privilege games by outlawing elites from government.
End the dumbocracy (rule by the dumb) in favor of meritocracy (rule by those who have proven scientific credentials)
So the health minister should be elected by all who can prove they are informed about health - they hold medical degrees, biology degrees, or can pass the relevant exams. These educated meritocratic voters from the science community elect the health minister.
The real problem of corporations controlling government is a problem of aristocratic dynasties and privileged super-rich elites gaming the system to consolidate wealth and power. It's simple game theory.
The solution is cutting off the power of elites and placing power in the hands of non-superrich meritocratic highly educated experts who have no sex appeal but do have proven competence in their scientific field. These meritocrats, given power by the votes of informed people, would be able to reign in the out of control disasterous cronyism and nepotism that has destroyed our economy.
The solution is meritocracy. Democracy itself needs to be modified in such a way that a tiny group of elite families no longer dominate it. One big way to remove their power is instituting a wealth cap, say $100 million per person. Another way is through inheritance tax. The tax dollars from the superrich should go to empower the poor through high quality education at the private schools where the superrich send their children currently.
When stupid people ask you how our country is going to get out this mess, you respond, "by empowering scientific experts and disempowering the (a) stupid Christians (b) privileged war-mongers (c) nepotists and (d) crony capitalists"
Meritocracy is the only way out of this broken country. Credible, sensible, rational scientific policies can save us. Dumbocracy and privilege will destroy us.
It sounds very pretty, but our evolutionary heritage is all about exploiting opportunities in order to secure a more advantaged position.
The problem with a meritocracy is that it must be policed in order to make sure that it is indeed operating as a meritocracy. However, all it takes is a little leverage over the watchmen to change it into a meritocracy in name only. All systems requiring policing have this weakness. And since there is a strong economic incentive to subverting the system for personal gain, corruption is an eventuality.
I could never understand that point. Corporations are people everywhere. Corporation is just a group of people (shareholders/owners and management/employees) with a contractual hierarchy owning some property (equity). Same way NGOs are people, HOAs are people, football teams are people... And it's like that everywhere in the world, it's a very basic property of human societies.
That's why corporate donations traditionally include donations from "members" of the corporation as donation from the corporation BTW.
Now, in civilized countries, individuals within these groups are given some legal protection from responsibility for the group's actions. There are certain advantages to that approach (more innovation, risk taking, investment, etc) but most importantly collective responsibility is simply wrong.
The idea of corporations being people goes back to Rome when someone decided that the laws regarding disputes between persons could be applied to an organization as well. Corpus == body, the body of people being treated as a person in considering the accusation. That said, governments have always been able to regulate what corporations can do until the Citizens United decision of 2010. Corporations used to be chartered by the government to meet a specific objective and were only allowed to spend money towards that objective; government regulatory policy was deny-by-default. Aaron Burr's Manhattan Company in 1799 was the first modern corporation in the US that was allowed to spend its money freely.
The problem is the feedback loop: the people who work at the government want money, and the big corporations make a lot of money. My opinion is that we should device a system in which money is meaningless to people who make decisions about enterprise. What should matter to them is how their decisions affect the people.
That is a simple but wrong approach, a next generation system would have to be better at creating wealth than capitalism, not worse (you can't have google at that size, nor Intel, nor Amazon).
It's a question of tradeoffs. Google, Intel, and Amazon are really several independent company's that feed off each other. Google the search engine vs Google the advertizing company. Intel the Chip manufacturer vs Intel the king of the x86. By splitting them you free the most productive parts of the company to thrive without the temptation to feed all the fluff.
More importantly, you reduce the temptation for bribery etc.
I'm curious as to what you think Marx' think human nature was like.
I ask, because most people who make this argument make it out of an assumption that Marx argued for a system based on widespread altruism.
But a central part of Marx' argumentation about the workers movement is that the working class needed to learn to understand the nature of class struggle, and reject bourgeois/capitalist morality, which is designed to support capitalist rule. E.g. the capitalist class supports strong private property rights because they have property and its in their interest to perpetuate it.
In effect, he argues that the working classes are too selfless - they in fact today actively support a system that puts them at a disadvantage.
If anything, he thought it would be easier to get people to pay more attention to their own self-interests than what they have been most places so far.
Marxist socialism is what you get if the vast majority pay recognize that they will never be "the 1%" and decide to band together to gain collective advantage.
Correct. The model of human nature proposed by Karl Marx was demonstrably incorrect, and the demonstration continues in the few countries that continue to proclaim allegiance to Marxist thought.
An interesting fact about free-enterprise (Marx might say, "capitalist") economies is that they are based in part on the writings of Adam Smith in the book On the Wealth of Nations. But before Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, he first wrote a book called The Theory of Moral Sentiments, pondering what motivates human beings to behave morally. Smith had deeper insight into human nature even before he began writing about economics proper than Marx ever had.