Its natural to want to be a capitalist under capitalism, the reason is stability

[The Wiseman]

I was just thinking, I have 3,000 in the bank but I'm still iffy to kind of loan out money because I'm trying to get my shit stable and get my own apartment. But what about people that get 100,000 or 200,000 and still want to accumulate more because they never think its enough in the case of a financial crisis or to be completely stable to retire. Does capitalism really produce greed in people or does the personal financial instability of the market cause people to continue to accumulate because they never know when they have enough to truly be stable? The middle class won't truly rebel until the system is in absolute crisis and they are unsure they can meet their needs on a day-to-day basis with their income and savings. I think the natural human impulse towards stability and meeting needs is the true cause for middle class accumulation while it seems that greed is definitely the cause of the unlimited accumulation of the upper class. The middle class wants to become the upper class because only then they believe they can truly be stable while the individual capitalists want to continue to climb up the ranks of the bourgoriese for greedy purposes.

[Alloy]

Well personally I think people over here generally don’t know how to handle there money and end up buying useless shit on impulse (AKA My sisters). Me I save up my money and just buy the necessities for the most part and get myself a treat here and there. I know people that are really greedy and just want money to HAVE MONEY and not necessarily have a good use for it.

[Drizzle]

Some people just want balance, but at a certain point it becomes greed.
Posted on: December 17, 2007, 05:29:56 pmAnd if you don't fit into the system as a corporate slave, then you are left behind.

[The Wiseman]

The system could give a fuck about the individual financial stability of anybody besides the ones that control it. They want people to have the financial stability to purchase excess consumer goods but could careless if somebody has the ability to successfully meet their basic needs. Advertising and consumer culture is proof of this, purchasing worthless shit on impulse is a direct result of status quo ideology. If somebody wants to be "up on this" or part of mainstream society they must have this or that regardless of the impact on one's needs or stability. Most people do not do this as some sort of "want" to be poor or see it as directly impacting their financial stability, they consider it normal. So as much as people want to attack the "irresponsibility" of the underclass in purchasing certain items, the mindset is a direct result of consumerism produced and encouraged by corporations owned by the most lavish consumers, the capitalist class. They want to act as if consumer irresponsibility makes people poor ignoring the fact that their lack of wealth and underpaid income makes the unlimited consumerism of the market impossible. People want to replace the big gap in their lives with anything they can whether it be religion or consumerism; the boredom and alienation of the working class under capitalism weakens feeling for creativity and self-worth so people fill this missing aspect of personality with the "extacy" of purchasing.

My point is that consumerism is a cultural value propagated from above that doesn't necessarily reflect greed of people on the bottom. The whole purpose of this post is about contemplating whether capital accumulation is a result of greed or instability. Capitalists constantly argue that greed is human nature and we argue back that capitalism makes greed human nature but I'd like to take it to another level and insist that most people don't incline to accumulation for greed but for stability.

[piercehawkeye45]

For many people it isn't greed but different standards of living and the thought that you never have enough money for economic stability.

If you are making $60,000 a year in the inner city and if you are making $60,000 a year in a high class suburb, your views on economic stability are much different. Many people in some areas are just worried about paying next month's rent while others are worried about retirement. The norms are different as well. If the norm for one place may be $20,000 for a car and the norm for another may be $40,000 and that has a strong effect on one's budget as well.

While the middle class is a/the problem on many issues, this is not one of them. Wise has hit it right on the nose in his concluding sentences. Greed is not the leading drive for many of these people and economic stability is not just a problem of the lower class, but the middle class suffers from it as well, just in a little different form.  They are in a position where they are comfortable where they are in the socio-economic level but don't have enough money to feel true economic stability. In order for a revolution in the middle class to happen, the comfort level will have to disappear and a line will have to appear between the upper class and the lower and middle classes.

[The Wiseman]

Thanks for that pierce, I'm starting to contemplate more on the nature of capital accumulation in capitalism. Greediness is an institutional mechanism, not just an unlimited individual desire for wanting more and more. Saying that a working class person who is attempting to accumulate non-exploitive capital to have wealth is greedy is utter nonsense. We have to look at the whole capitalist argument that workers are greedy with high skepticism. The ruling class has not only created a widespread cultural value but enforced a market that makes it a necessity to own wealth in order to be stabile. On the other hand the ongoing wealth accumulation of the bourgoriese in not only greedy but exploitive and due to non-productive ownership.

[piercehawkeye45]

I agree. This is very similiar the discussion about who is to blame for black women spending a large sum of money to get a trait that is considered a standard of beauty. For those who read the thread, it isn't so much the woman's fault, but the social norm saying that tightly curled hair isn't a trait of beauty in the western world.

Economic stability works the same way with the middle class. Just as it is more than possible for a black, or any other color for that matter, woman to be beautiful with tightly curled hair it is more than possible for someone in the middle class to achieve economic stability. But the problem lies with the norms. Many people in the middle class feel that to get economic stability, one has to have money put away for retirement, be able to get their children through school, and have some more put aside if an unexpected crisis happens. I wouldn't blame the middle class for thinking this since they have been molded to believe what the standard is and rebelling against that force can be exceptionally difficult when you have to worry about your husband/wife and kids.

Though unlike the beauty argument, I have a harder time finding whose fault it is if there is even a fault. Even though there is a bloated standard for stability, it isn't as someone really controls what the norms are. Once people from the same economic class live in an isolated area with each other, the norms for being rich and poor revolve around that average, and not those of the rest of the country/world. No single force is needed to start that norm, it is self making.

The only way to solve this problem is to entirely tear down the capitalistic system but these forces can be relieved with more government programs (free higher education, better retirement plans, etc), more mixed income housing, and a lowering of the standard of economic stability (materialism) (this one can be blamed on the ruling class and greed).

[kittenslayer]

I always plan my money

[Bob]

While I agree with anything, I need to point something out.

Consumerism is a socio-economic policy where government promotes consumer surplus over producer surplus. In our nation, we see lower consumer return, higher producer return, and dangerous consumption. This means that consumerism is not even being realized.

We have reached a state where our consumption is promoting individual and communal deficit, and we can see this occurring in so many levels. Negative environmental effects hits our ecology, and humans themselves. For the latter, concentrated power had led to the development of a child prostitution ring to cater those with capital surplus.

Keep that in mind.

[The Wiseman]

Capitalism has an inevitable contradiction of overproduction and when taken to extreme levels where consumption is at a minimal then the system collapses i.e. Great Depression. Since wage slavery necessarily entails less return on your labor than worth of the final product, under consumption is the necessary contradiction. This is why the state had to step in with mild redistribution policies to the mass majority of people. The more labor is exploited and extracted from, the less workers have the ability to purchase the product that they themselves have created. As much as capitalists want to "free themselves" from labor they cannot "free themselves" from consumers and overproduction is the necessary result the more they attempt to do so. This means the business cycle is a just the regular functioning of the system that requires state intervention to prevent massive rebellion.

My point in mentioning all of this is that the middle class is highly susceptible to fluctuations within the system. Meaning that they are working class people who have managed to accumulate a tiny bit of wealth at least in first appearances but actually survive on debt. The middle class is not greedy but highly obsessed with status quo stability that rests on a very shakey foundation.

[piercehawkeye45]

There are what I call real and imaginary expenses. The real expenses are the essentials such as food, housing, transportation, etc. The imaginary expenses are the things that people think they need, and pay for them religiously even though they're not necessary for survival but rather for social integration or social acceptance.
It's this consumerist attitude that I'm concerned with, and I'm inclined to believe that people are concerned with getting more money (apart from stability) because of these imaginary expenses, obsessions with owning a vacation resort somewhere exotic, driving cars and wearing clothes expected of people in any specific class or their circle of friends, etc. I also have to mention that cost of living is increasing while wages aren't keeping up with that increase, so naturally people are alarmed, but I must stress that these unecessary things are costing people a lot more money than it really should.

I agree with the idea but I wouldn't necessarily put 'putting your child through college' as an imaginary expense but one that is imaginary to achieve economic stability.

If you want to get into more detail then we will have to split up the middle class into the upper and lower middle class. I am pretty sure that the group Wise is focusing on is the lower middle class because he is stressing more true economic stability than a bloated norm that dictates what economic stability is, which is more true in the upper middle class.

This summer I worked in a working class job where everyone I worked with, they were all over 30 years old, would be considered in the lower middle class. These people did have to have a tight budget and had to continuously work to stay above water. One person I knew had to keep the job for the health insurance or else her back would give her major problems and she didn't have the extra money to pay a chiropractor. Another person I knew was a self-employed drum teacher and just had a child and self-employed health insurance wasn't enough to cover his daughter and he wanted extra money to save up so she could go to college and get a better job than what he has so he now has two jobs and his wife works full time as well. Three other people were single and this was there only job and they were always tight on money, living paycheck to paycheck. The lower middle class, much like the lower class, is struggling just stay above water and they are constantly worrying about economic stability. These people are usually democrats.

The upper middle class it is a little different. No one is really working paycheck to paycheck unless they are spending a lot more than they have too but that isn't very common. Usually these people have enough money to live a good life but are a bit worried about putting there children through college, retirement, and "rainy day' savings. These people are just the products of a bloated standard of economic stability and even though many will achieve even the bloated economic stability, many will not as well. But, you will see some greedy people in the upper middle class, but it is rare. These people are usually republicans.

[The Wiseman]

The Theory of the Leisure Class, an old but great book for the discussion on consumerism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Class#Thesis

Another thing, many in the general population may wish to enter the capitalist class not just for percieved stability but for the purpose of social prestige given to the wealthy. The status in which the wealthy project of themselves onto the rest of society gives a high desire to emulate their consumption methods and accumulation of capital.