Good capitalism / Bad capitalism and recent events

Some people argue that the current state of capitalism is negative, and that under serious management and oversight, capitalism could be a properly functioning system, suggesting that political choices should be made in this direction. It is necessary to remind these friends that such irregularities we are experiencing are neither momentary occurrences nor images unique to a single country. We remember that once, in the world's most developed capitalist center, the USA, it was revealed that a company that appeared profitable on its balance sheet was actually losing money and that the dividends distributed were being paid out by consuming capital; in the end, the firm went bankrupt, and the profits taken were distributed to creditors in the bankruptcy proceedings. We also remember that one of Germany's most famous automobile brands made an adjustment to its cars to enter the US market, allowing exhaust emissions to appear low, but after this fraud was discovered, the matter was somehow hushed up.

In the past, that issue of TIME magazine, which wrote that an American aircraft company had engaged in some irregular relationships in Turkey, was not allowed into the country. Interestingly, we later learned from newspapers that the same firm had entered into a similar relationship with the royal family of a northern European country. Capitalism is an order that adds the label of "profit" to labor exploitation, adding wealth to the wealth of exploiters, and legitimizing this immoral situation through the legal system they themselves have created. Even the deaf sultan has heard and knows that even Keynes called the system a "casino economy" in some cases. In short, capitalism has bad and exploitative versions at different settings, but there is no good one. Neither politicians nor any institution has a hand in capitalism being a bad system; the result is directly related to the logic and operational dynamics of the system and cannot be prevented in any way.

Let's come to the farces recently staged in Turkey. On one hand, beauty salon owners, and on the other, gods of the football world who can reach up to the President, have now started playing with money in Turkey, and the world has been turned upside down. What can we say? An administration that advises its people to convert from dollars to Turkish lira sees no harm in the blatant conversion of billions into dollars, even without complying with some procedures set by institutions like the BRSA (BDDK)! The situation does not end there; when things go awry, talented individuals who run directly to the President are not politely told that such matters will be handled at the level of the justice mechanism rather than at this level, but rather an order is issued to the relevant authorities to help resolve the situation!

When the amount is large, it hurts a lot, and in this panic, one may start looking for support from every circle, and one does not hesitate to resort to violence immediately, with social manners acquired from TV series. My dear readers, let us think for a moment: if a small segment of society almost displays the high-level standard of living seen in the USA, and if the demand for luxury cars worth billions is rising in a society where there are people collecting food from the trash, it means there is something wrong here. The fact that a behavioral model that even industrial bosses refrain from displaying is seen in the strange community reflected in the media should not be surprising at all. In short, how can this ostentation, this standard of living of the upper echelons of the US or European bourgeoisie, exist in our country, which has not even overcome the middle-income trap yet? Let us question this anomaly by bringing it into the economy: despite such a collapse, how is it that there is no panic among politicians, and the public continues their business quite reasonably?

A mass of people who have lost themselves enough to play with such money cannot emerge from among the wealthy of the normal business world. Such an extremely distorted and continuing-to-deteriorate income distribution implies, in one respect, the collapse of the economy as a result of the exploitation of refugee slave-laborers and tax evasion. People whose language is not even clear, primarily Syrian laborers, are both melting within the economy like true slaves and melting the economy itself. Foreign laborers, who are employed without unions and without guarantees, will perhaps end their lives here in miserable conditions without ever being able to return to their homelands. The matter does not end there; capital, which relies on cheap labor, not only erodes public revenues by being free from obligations on labor, but at the same time, it does not take any path toward increasing productivity.

To put it more technically, to the extent that labor exploitation can rise, the organic composition of capital in production shifts in favor of labor; that is, labor is employed instead of machines. The continuation of the organic composition of capital in favor of labor negatively affects productivity. It is unimaginable for an economy with this structure to make an economic leap, escape the middle-income trap, or close its current account deficit, let alone place the economy among the top ten largest!

The latest act of what is being experienced for now consists of media-savvy suspects. Media-savvy suspects are different from the above, but they are representatives of the same category of events. All such crimes are the operating model, or rather the management model, of an economy that is unsupervised, has not been able to establish a registration system, and is trying to do things on a global scale with the naivety of an inefficient economic structure. The issue is the problem of black money, making money from money, and the ambition to become wealthy by remaining off the books. In other words, the issue we are facing is the effort to create artificial prosperity, that is, to create artificial bubbles, at a personal and even national level with black money. At the core of the matter, it seems to consist of maintaining informality, masking or suppressing national problems at the macro level, while in the meantime, those who act as brokers for this business, regardless of their position or office, ‘lick their fingers’ like the saying goes, and then spew their arrogance after doing so.

Great thefts or certain political murders can certainly not be committed by an individual or the initiative of a few people. Because everything is seen and recorded under the sun. So, when we look at why all these frauds cannot be uncovered, I think this situation is related to where the end of the matter goes. Both simple labor exploitation and massive wealth exploitation are products of the same dough, even if their dimensions are very different. Although the issue has a context of capitalism and socialism, to cut a long story short here, it can be said that by staying within this system, there can be at least partial solutions, provided that the problems are handled in the context of “the fish rots from the head!”. Even so, the issue cannot be fully resolved. In short, if a person has a price, regardless of their position or office, their level becomes a matter of debate. What matters is not having a price! This is where we enter the system issue, and that is enough for this article!