You really should do a little research before you present information as “truth”. Let’s deal with your four issues, since in between all of the “garbage” are a few gems worth thinking about.
Financialization has helped everyone. But like any tool can be abused. Those large mutual funds betting on the performance of companies have given me a far better return than government guaranteed CDs. Each of us that wants a chance to retire well needs to be investing in the market unless we have massive incomes that can produce a supplemental income on 2% CD rates.
And of course mortgage securitization has knocked at half percent off what I can get as a mortgage or lease rate on a car. Any reader with a mortgage or a car lease is lucky we have what you call financialization.
If you work for not a “tiny” business, but say one that employs several hundred people, you have access to bank syndications. This is the process by which a loan of say $100 million is shared by seven banks reducing the risk that if your company goes bad, it can put a big hole in the bank. Because of this small banks can participate in loans they could never afford to in the past and businesses can get loans they could never get in the past. I ran a group of 400 physicians and you guys know who you are that are very slow to pay your doctor (but you get around to it eventually). So this loan facility allowed me to finance the operations of the group at far lower prices than taking separate loans to fund accounts receivable, assets, new physicians, etc. Lower costs translated to higher compensation for employees and lower prices for consumers.
Monopolization is an area I agree with you. Monopolies are not always bad, but they do need to be regulated and there are simply to many that are not. There are two purposes for consolidation: cost reduction and pricing power. When consolidation leads to lower prices, then consumers benefit. When it leads to pricing power, then owners benefit. How can you tell the difference? Profit margins. I worked most of my career in health care. I was involved in hundreds of acquisitions and in most cases while we argued the benefits of cost reduction through consolidation, we expected the biggest benefit to come from pricing power.
But when consolidation leads to lower costs for consumers, then it is hard to argue that it is bad in someway. When it leads to pricing power because of the lack of competition, then I think it betrays the “concept” of a “free market” where competition operates to hold profit margins to reasonable returns on risk capital. In my mind, when profit margins (measured as net income plus excess executive compensation) for a business exceeds reasonable levels then some level of price controls in the form of price limits should happen.
An example, might be Google where its profit margins suggest that its rates to advertisers should be regulated just as we do a utility. In that way, the public would benefit from the efficiency of Google to provide cheap access to information and advertisers would benefit from lower advertising costs allowing them to lower their product costs. Google would still be very profitable but the profit would be driven by volume not eye popping margins. The same logic could be applied to patented drugs, where the patent is designed to insure companies make a good return on their investments but in exchange for patent protection, they accept pricing limits on the their product.
Global trade and outsourcing is driven by consumers not companies. You and I have made it happen with a little help (actually a lot of help) from the logistics industry (think shipping containers).
Remember those longshoreman always on strike for better wages (well you can’t blame them for trying), but out of those strikes emerged the container industry. Rather than incur the huge cost of loading and unloading ships, that served as effective barriers to lower cost imports, the logistics industry developed containers which eliminated the loading and unloading costs of shipping.
Suddenly, products could be produced in China and at very minimal cost delivered to distribution points throughout the US. Then it got worse. FedEx, UPS, DHS, even our Postal Service expanded to make small package delivery almost as efficient as their larger container brethren. So now a small company in say India could produce products that would be shipped as part of a container to a FedEx distribution warehouse in the US and when you ordered on line, it could be shipped to you for delivery in two days.
So don’ t blame companies for learning that you are unwilling to pay 35% more for a product made in America. They are responding to what you want. I outsourced my IT programming to India, not because I wanted the hassle of communicating with people whose day time is our night time, but because Americans did not want we raising my prices or they would buy their services elsewhere.
Austerity as the writer below has indicated has yet to impact us, but it will. Not because of the evils of capitalism, but because of the problems with progressive socialism. I define progressive socialism as the process whereby a government decides to offer its citizens entitlements that the taxpayers of that country do not support as evidenced by the countries tax revenues. Long term budget deficits are a sure indicator that progressive socialism has replaced “sustainable” socialism.
Austerity has never been imposed on a country that was “to capitalistic” but only on countries that have become “to socialistic”. Unlike those who believe capitalism and socialism are “either or or” options, I think they can co-exist as long as advocates of socialistic entitlements restrain themselves to the level of income redistribution that the taxpayers of a given population is willing to support. Notice I said “taxpayers” since it does not matter what the population as a whole feels, if the taxpayers that are being asked to fund socialistic entitlements don’t agree.
As for democracy vs totalitarianism every reader should be cognizant that studies have determined over the long run “voting” is a right granted to “taxpayers” not citizens of a country. Governments that get their funding from sources other than their citizenry are generally less willing to give citizens the right to vote.
While government in our minds is supposed to serve the citizens of a country, they tend to serve the taxpayers of a country even more. So those who want more say in government should be insuring that government depends more on its citizens for funding then concentrating that funding in the hands of the wealthy and their businesses. Imagine how much less influence business would have if all taxes were collected through a sales tax on goods and services. Why would business bother trying to influence politicians on tax policy if they didn’t pay taxes?
