Capitalism doesn't and IS NOT working, it's destructive and creatives poor social incentives

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: LittleByLittle
a reply to: NoRulesAllowed

Can you give me an example on a class less communistic country that did not have an implemented power pyramid system both politically and economically?

Cuba is a bit on the socialistic side but it is not classless, China had their party and Russia had Ukraine as the place where the important "some people are more equal then others" could have fun as tourists.

Maybe your perception of "class" is wrong.

Communism's doctrine of a classless society really only implies having a single class. In every other social paradigm, there has always been two fundamental classes: those who own the means of production, and those who do not. Under the doctrine of communism, all people own the means of production.

However, under Communism there will be classes--those higher in the party, those who manage "the people's", means of production, those who are smart and can manipulate the system for their own benefit. There never will be a "single class" society and Communism will never, ever reach it's stated goal for the simple reason that people are not insects. Some people have more ambition, or talent, or intelligence,or beauty, or drive than someone else. People have greed and jealousy and anger and love and lust and compassion--all in different balances in every individual. True communism is only possible if you have mindless automatons and will always fail if society is comprised of human beings.

Have you ever stopped to look around you in your capitalist society? Have you ever really talked to people casually about the bigger picture?

We definitely live in an insect-like society where our status is typically determined before we are even born.

As for natural hierarchies, they exist no matter what, because that's a human thing. What communism provides is a different set of laws to provide social guarantees of social equality. Universal rights are guaranteed by the state, especially the right to equal opportunity.

The communist doctrine that Lenin set in place in the USSR had various steps. Needless to say, it did not make it all the way. The pinnacle step of communism is the abolishment of the state as a redundant institution, because as Lenin describes the state in any previous paradigm becomes separated from the people and exploits the people. However, the USSR could not abolish the state when it was continuously in a state of war with capitalist forces.

Nonsense. We have a very upwardly mobile society for those who put in the time and talent. The majority of our wealthy are first generation--they made the money themselves. You can rise from a grocery bagger to business owner in the US still.

The Soviet Union failed because their founding premise and steps are flawed. Communists like to blame everyone but themselves.

So you're a navy man, eh?

How many billions do you have from putting in your "time and talent"?

How many enemies have you killed overseas to protect your country?

EDIT:

And as for your country, it will fail because you and your people only blame yourselves for not working hard enough.

(Of course, in realityland, being a billionaire wouldn't mean anything if everybody was a billionaire, would it)

I don't have billions--yet. I started out dirt poor and worked hard and got an education and built myself up and now am highly educated, successful, and own several businesses. Your premise is not just misguided, it is patently and demonstrably false.

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: Wrabbit2000
a reply to: Vovin

Please show me where you can support the idea there were more people than my list claims. My list is fairly representative of what I can attest to being taught in American colleges right now, as I've pretty much been through finals testing in part on everything that list covers.

Like they say...History doesn't record the happy times in bold, just the horrors and conflict. So, it's what gets taught and that's what I know to be roughly factual to history. It's what I'll present and stand behind...roughly...as historic fact until I see something credible to correct something on it.

I'm a student of history. I'm sincere in being interested if something solid contradicts or corrects a number in a substantial way.

At least that one does note many to die under Mao's communism weren't outright shot the way it happened more in Russia. Mismanagement of food and land by the CCP and Mao is what I think it's referring to there.

Considering this isn't an academic forum, I don't have to waste my time trying to prove anything. Explain to me why I should waste my time, when most people in this thread have a severe mental inability to even define what ideologies are and instead blather on about the same old anti-Russian fearmongering crap that was cool way back in the 1960s?

There is no point in putting any serious effort to try and prove anything to anyone here. And you know that too, so why ask it of me?

LOLZ. So basically you make # up and have no proof. Gotcha.

a reply to: Vovin

Considering this isn't an academic forum, I don't have to waste my time trying to prove anything. Explain to me why I should waste my time

To be quite blunt about the matter, no one has any obligation to back or support anything. However, without sourcing what we say? We're voicing 100% strict personal opinion.

If I claim that Stalin and Mao collectively oversaw the elimination of 60 MILLION people during their radical reformations under communist ideals? It would be nothing but 100% pure opinion, open entirely to what anyone thinks of my personal credibility. I like to think I have a lot of that...but I like to think a lot of things, and know what is true is a small % of what I'd like to think.

So ...Sourcing is all that gives that 60 million figure anything more than my opinion. Hence..I sourced it and if needed, can source it back further for credible places it's been researched and published within margins of error for totals.

You don't need to support anything .....but when you attack other people's data directly, then offer nothing but pure personal opinion to support the attack on material? It's not something likely to be taken seriously by anyone, either.

originally posted by: amfirst1
Corporatism only happens with centralize government power to pick winners and loser.

Decentralize the government and corporatist can no longer cheat and use lobbyists.

That's why the oligarchy is afraid of the Tea Party and Libertarians because their message is limited government.

Talk about drinking the koolaid. Who is funding the Tea Party - Oligarchs. Jeez

New solgan from another member (I try to find the name)

Confront Ignorance.

originally posted by: onequestion
Yes I am saying it,

CAPITALISM DOESN'T and IS NOT WORKIG

Ok I know what your response is going to be, it's not capitalism it's an oligarchy, it's crony capitalism, it's everything else. But guess what, capitalism is what brought us into the oligarchy it's what got us into this mess.

It creates social incentives for greed and wealth and does not benefit humanity as a whole it benefits the top percentage of greedy wealthy sociopaths at the top who understand it best.

We need to come up with a system that doesn't require people to starve, doesn't pollute the earth and destroy the rainforest, that doesn't enslave Africa and South America.

So people any suggestions ?

It's working perfectly. It's a perfect system in play. (Only if you think of it this way)

The rich keep getting richer, while the middle class is becoming poorer. What a better way to have total control over someone.

originally posted by: Vovin
a reply to: MarlinGrace

And you talk about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Billionaires who made their billions from exploitation. Funny how the richest people make their money from the poorest people, eh?

Almost as if money is actually a representation of social capital, and those with it are powerful because those without must become dependent on labouring their whole lives.

Tell me Mr. American Dream, what is so great about being a billionaire? Why are you trying to tell me that being a billionaire is a great success of capitalism?

The only thing being a billionaire means is that you know how to play the system, how to accumulate the wealth from many others for yourself. Over half of America lives paycheque to paycheque, and lose everything if they miss it once.

I don't know if being a billionaire is great or not I am not one, but the opportunity is there if you have the brainpower, work ethic, and luck to make it. No one handed them this they worked and worked hard for it. I am sure they both woke up one day and knew how to play the system from a dream, I just wish I could have that dream so I could wake up and play the game at that level. I feel sorry for you living in another country and harboring this jealousy about the opportunity this country has. Maybe if you had the intestinal fortitude to leave your place of residence you to could then have the same opportunity as I.

The success of capitalism lies in the fact you would have the same opportunity as I do, and through your efforts not the efforts of the collective you can be afforded the riches of your hard work. The place you will fail is the contentious attitude you display in casual conversation with other people on complicated topics where you need to speak from the educated brain based on experience instead of the emotional heart clouded by tears of failure..

a reply to: onequestion

lets try something that doesn't end in "ism" next time around. I think the best way would be to abolish all forms of centralized power over large groups of people and land masses and go back to community rules.

Sure lots of details to work out but large centralized power structures always lead to corruption and collapse.

Then people would have a say in what goes on in their community and and not even care what goes on 500 miles away. Basically mini democracies small enough for those in power to always be held accountable.

oops

originally posted by: FyreByrd

originally posted by: amfirst1
Corporatism only happens with centralize government power to pick winners and loser.

Decentralize the government and corporatist can no longer cheat and use lobbyists.

That's why the oligarchy is afraid of the Tea Party and Libertarians because their message is limited government.

Talk about drinking the koolaid. Who is funding the Tea Party - Oligarchs. Jeez

New solgan from another member (I try to find the name)

Confront Ignorance.

Most tea party members have never seen a cent from the koch bros.

Just because some people are throwing money at some tea party people does not mean that the tea party people work for the contributors. I would take george soros's money and the koch bros. money and spend it all to make sure neither can influence the gov or the people any more.

This is a tired old line you are using. The people who want to bring this monster down are the good guys. The people who mindlessly slander the good guys are the bad guys.

a reply to: begoodbees

Then people would have a say in what goes on in their community and and not even care what goes on 500 miles away. Basically mini democracies small enough for those in power to always be held accountable.

That's an outstanding thought. If you look at a U.S. map, you'll also notice states run 200-400 miles across, except for Texas..and hey, they're Texans. What can ya say? Always gotta be different.

Anyway, what you describe is precisely what our Republic form of Government was supposed to be and was supposed to accomplish. The only variation is in accepting not all 7 billion people, or whatever population had been at that time, will care for that same concept and most will kill without restraint to avoid it being pushed. So... Federal was and is needed for that messy international stuff way out past our borders...not for the matters of the people living within the United States. Very little internal was to be the jurisdiction of the Feds.

Hell...Harry Truman agonized over the segregation issue because, rightly so, he didn't have the power by the office to correct it. He did what he COULD do, which was desegregate the US Armed Forces. Also rightly so, IMO.

I think a major point that isn't really made clear by anyone. Media included. The Constitution doesn't enumerate the central control we now live under, and enumerate in the 10th Amendment sense.

A couple clauses, like the Interstate Commerce Clause, have been stretched like Gumby on the Rack, and well beyond to impose whatever the whims of Washington become, whenever the feeling moves them. Even founders who were Federalists...didn't want what this monster has now become. Not in my readings of things of the time.

Much of our system would work and likely work very well....if the intended system really were what we had to work with.

Here's Albert Einstein, a communist, on capitalism (from his paper "Why Socialism?"):

"The economic anarchy of capitalist society is the real source of evil.‎ Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of the smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organised political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature."

As most of you know, our entire global central banking system, which hinges on debt issued currency and interest is a giant Ponzi scheme (80 percent of the world is poor - that is normal for the system). But even if you were to get rid of this, it wouldnt change anything. Any system which runs on private profit will be more or less zero sum. Libetarian cultists, capitalists and classical economists like to talk about nonsense like "individualism", "freedom" and "private property, man!", when capitalism does the complete opposite, removing freedoms, preventing you from owning property (it must concentrate land in fewer and fewer hands, whilst turning everyone into morgage slaves) and restricting individualism.

During the French Revolution, the ENTIRE WORLD (the feudalist loving monarchs) ganged up against the revolutionaries and crushed the movement. A dictator like Napoleon had to rise up to save the revolution - perverting it in the process - and he got crushed as well.

In the 1900s, during the German and Russian Revolutions, the ENTIRE WORLD (nowthe capitalist class) ganged up against the revolutionaries and crushed worker movements. The elites even went so far as to support Hitler until 1939. After all, he was killing communists and unionists! Yay for the rich! A dictator like Stalin had to rise up to "protect" the revolution - perverting it in the process - and of course he got crushed as well.

Anytime the masses push and fight for social change, they lose, and the result is a move further toward the right.

Why dont Westerners care? Because we've had it good for a long time. Why did we have it good? As all other countries were ruined after WW2 except the US, the US has managed to con its citizens and others into thinking that "capitalism works". This was simply beause everyone else had been bombed and because it put massive exploitative trade strictures on the third world (as well as invading, killing and assassinating anyone who stood up against US neocolonialism in the 3rd world).

Today, the third world is growing its own middle class, and as it does so, more and more Americans will get poor. The whole planet cannot be middle class. It's impossible. Cause and effect. You have something, someone else doesnt, and money only has value if it is scarce.

Then there are all the environmental problems with capitalism and the way its need for constant growth is warming the planet, causing massive destruction and is generally unsustainable (without massive death sprees now and then).

The solution is produce less, share more, cut worker hours and demand full employment (which capitalism inherently cannot provide, as it adores 15 percent unemployment). We have a name for this, but the elites tell us it's a dirty word.


By the way, capitalism killed 1.8 billion "free" Indians under the British Empire. It is a system which has more blood on its hands than any other social system, from the holocausts in Belize to the Congo and back.

a reply to: EC666

hes just lacking in education

come back when you have an opinion from a modern economist who has millions of dollars tied up in the system in the form of various investments

i understand people are just trying to protect what they have invested in the current system (time, money, energy, selling out their own ideals, etc.)..... however that does not make them any less short sighted, greedy, or foolish
in trying to protect their investments by defending a failing system (that was never intended to deal with the modern world we live in) they damn well guarantee they will lose the entire investment rather than simply losing a portion and reinvesting the rest

if they werent so blinded by greed they would see theyre about to lose it all

Capitalism cannot cause anything but the production of products and services, which increases the total wealth in the world. Capitalism makes wealth where no wealth existed before. That is the only thing it does.

All economic injustice is a consequence governmental regulation; which disrupts capitalism-- i.e., the creation of more wealth for everyone.

Regulation has made all cartels and unwanted monopolies. Unregulated competition dissolves cartels and underprices unwanted monopolies.

Big government, by definition socialist government, has made all of the wars and famines in the 20th century. Without big government all resources and manpower stay local.

Unlimited fiat money has made all of the big government power. The governments of the world would have had to collect a 100% sales tax to pay for World War 1 without the 100% inflation created by the central banks.

a reply to: Wrabbit2000

Not that I agree with anyone just having an opinion without discussing probable fact to be judged, as such, but he may be right, for the wrong reasons.

www.countercurrents.org...

It really depends on your perspective. To pretend we do not have the same amount of blood on our hands is foolhardy. Here, any one murdered in war, is justifiable, to our accepted paradigm, including those who had nothing to do with our silly little war to begin with. Innocent people are being murdered today via drones. Long live, the perpetual war. It is great for the scheme errrr, I meant the economy.

Would you like that here, when we decline further into third world status?

www.washingtonsblog.com...

I have considered what you said earlier. Capitalism, needs a serious reevaluation. It has failed to protect, and cherish this tiny blue dot. It is not able to stand on its own.

a reply to: Not Authorized

As you've noted...We've not seen capitalism, so we would condemn what we've not seen fail. That's not a logical basis to work from. It's a faulty hypothesis to base anything on, given the lack of actual outcome to the question. Assumptions make weak sauce. Ignorance makes dangerous policy change.

Now I actually resent someone being SO Anti-American, in the case of another post you referred to, that they could equate the murders of 60+ million non-combatant civilians through outright ordered purge/murder and reckless disregard with anything that happened here.

The site you linked me is outright propaganda and at a level I consider vile for how far from reality it is.

- The U.S. is directly credited with the killings of the Khmer Rouge? Really?? What history is that from?

- The entire Colombian civil war is our fault? From 1960's to present?? Wow... That's some mighty creative figuring and hasty rewriting of history to give us ALL the credit for everything Colombia has had happen.

There was another worthy of mention tho.. This is rich...

- The US "Lured" the U.S.S.R. into invading Afghanistan. So...We get FULL credit, according to your source, for every death resulting from both sides of the Soviet Afghan occupation.

I think on that note..I'll find some other threads.. I'm afraid I've lost my assortment of civil ideas to share, after that is offered as something beyond pure comedy.

I'm American and frankly, I'm a proud one...quite anxious to help see change come from WITHIN the system my nation has. Not tearing it apart to the amusement of others.

a reply to: OrphanApology

Saying we've not had free-market capitalism is like saying we've not had a four-sided triangle. Yes you're technically correct, but it's only because two of those things are mutually exclusive. Without the force of government, nobody would submit to the system of wage slavery that capitalism engenders.

"In the country, this conflict is not so apparent; but, in cities, such as Baltimore, Richmond, New Orleans, Mobile etc; it is seen pretty clearly. The slave-holder with a craftiness peculiar to themselves, by encouraging the enmity of the poor, labouring white men against the blacks, succeeds in making the said white men almost as much a slave as the black slave himself. The difference between the white slave, and the black slave, is this: the latter belongs to ONE slave-holder, and the former belongs to ALL the slave-holders, collectively. The white slave has taken from his, by indirection, what the black slave had taken from him, directly, and without ceremony. Both are plundered, and by the same plunderers" (p.309, My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass).

oops

a reply to: Semicollegiate

You're equivocating. Socialism = worker ownership of the means of mass production. i.e. instead of bosses directing labor, the laborers direct it themselves. capitalism = private ownership of the means of production. Capitalism is the imposition of a layer of bureaucracy that is unnecessary and antithetical to the creation of wealth.

Workers create all wealth through the investment of their life-time, owners steal it.

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.

originally posted by: freakwars
a reply to: Semicollegiate

You're equivocating. Socialism = worker ownership of the means of mass production. i.e. instead of bosses directing labor, the laborers direct it themselves. capitalism = private ownership of the means of production. Capitalism is the imposition of a layer of bureaucracy that is unnecessary and antithetical to the creation of wealth.

Workers create all wealth through the investment of their life-time, owners steal it.

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.

If that were true, socialist factories would have popped up all through out the economy in the last 100 years. There would be no more privately owned factories anywhere on Earth.

Socialism has made nothing on it own.

a reply to: Wrabbit2000

Eloquent if true. I consider murder, as murder. What do you consider it as?

Did we fund, yes or no? Did we scheme? Yes or no? Why? What makes us so special?