I'm against socialism, apparently I'm an idiot. Ask me nothing.

a reply to: DBCowboy

See they are just think about you and want to make sure you get that free government cheese.

a reply to: Raggedyman

Well you see that is NOT socialism. It was once called philanthropy and was practiced by all those evil rich people all the "Socialist" hate. Seems it's not good to donate things to what you want, you are suppose to donate to what others what you too.

Do some research on how much these people gave to the arts, sciences and medical causes.

a reply to: cody599


The idea IS great for a small area or small amount of people. The issue is that it does not scale up to a desired outcome. The problem is that once you reach the level of not KNOWING the person you are helping you lose the focus required to make the system work.

Kind of why the Founding Fathers wanted to leave a lot of control at the state or local level. An idea that may work great where you are may be a complete disaster in my area.

originally posted by: ForteanOrg

originally posted by: GodEmperor
a reply to: Fishy

Economic activity can still take place without money.

It is more troublesome, trading bundles of wheat for steel or whatever. Still happens.

No economic activity takes place with people who work for food and lodging?

Interesting.

It depends on your definition of "economy". Money is almost always a factor in such definitions, e.g. "the state of a country or region in terms of the production and consumption of goods and services and the supply of money." Another one is "Economy is the large set of inter-related production and consumption activities that aid in determining how scarce resources are allocated. This is also known as an economic system."

Note that in the first definition "money" is mentioned, in the second it is not. It all depends on your definition of "economy".

About money / "scarce resources": the underlying idea is that there is scarcity, so people need to compete for these scarce resources. I loathe this: we should not compete for scarce resources, but either help to create them (and eliminate scarcity) or learn to live without them (if that is possible and it often is). Also, we should ask ourselves if we should not stop our race for efficiency when we already produce more than we can consume. Did you know that many resources that have some "monetary" value don't even have that value at all - and that the value is created artificially by DESTROYING already produced goods? For example, perfectly fine food is being destroyed just to keep the price at a minimum, while there are still people starving on this planet. A shame.

So, IMHO economic activity can exist without money, but the current state of affairs is that all economists will say it can't.

Yes, the monetary price of something is a very poor indicator of value or worth. The monetary system itself is primitive and outdated, at least in its current form, where it is completely disconnected from the actual scarcity (as well as future scarcity) and importance (usefulness) of the thing being priced.

Also, the monetary system and the current economic system is not a solution for scarcity, as those on the right and economists tout. The solution to the scarcity of something is either to increase the supply of it or find an adequate and more bountiful replacement.

The solution to the scarcity of a commodity is not allocating it in some way or another. That's management or scarcity, not a solution to scarcity.

And those on the right seem to be believe that the proper way to manage scarcity is through as unequal a distribution as possible. I can't see how one follows from the other.

And you are right, economic activity can exist without money. But not if it is encumbered by private ownership of the means of production. You'd just have a resource based economy.

Just like people manage resources in computer strategy games such as Starcraft, a computer + software + sensor system can and does manage resources and commodities in the real world, inside of corporations.

For instance, inside just-in-time manufacturing practice based electronics or vehicle manufacturing plants and factories, you don't see money and monetary transactions being used at all along the assembly line. And yet they manage just fine, thank you.

Moreover, the monetary system and market economy does not take in account in pricing the actual scarcity of natural resources and their rate of replenishment.

The price of natural resources is not 'negotiated' with nature. Which is why raw material and fossil fuel are complete externalities to the price system.

Moreover, how can you even have a price system which correlates prices to actual value worth a damn at all when the money supply keeps growing geometrically and the new money which is continually injected into the economy is created out nothing, distributed basically arbitrarily and rather randomly and is not redeemable for anything of substance at the issuer?

Yet people on the right, with a straight face, maintain that we can't manage without a monetary system and a monetary price system and that it's optimally efficient and generally the best thing since sliced bread.

I should think they think so, since it allows stealth redistribution of wealth from the workers to the parasitic owner class. It enables some people to acquire a lot for very little at the cost of many others working their asses off for peanuts.

What could be better if you happen to adhere to the right wing point of view and worldview?

originally posted by: TheTory
a reply to: Fishy

No that’s not an assumption; it is a logical consequence. If Trump didn’t hire those people, or if they did not choose that job, they would not have that job, just like any human relationship in which people are free to take part or not. I’m not saying they couldn’t go work somewhere else or go start a commune in the woods.

You said they wouldn't be working. Not that the wouldn't be working for Trump.

Transportation costs money. There are no woods left you can go live in without trespassing except, possibly, national parks.

originally posted by: TheTory
a reply to: Fishy
Wealth isn’t just money.

Didn't say it was. I said that money has NO intrinsic value.

originally posted by: TheTory
a reply to: Fishy

I don’t view money as an enabler. I view it as an intermediary for the assessment of value. It’s a medium of exchange. In any exchange both parties can agree on a set value.

I don't know what 'intermediary for the assessment of value' is. Are you saying it's a unit of (measurement and/or representation of) value? It's one thing most people think it is so by virtue of that alone, I suppose you can claim it is. Although it really isn't.

You can't say something is a unit of measurement when you keep re-adjusting it continually. In the case of money, the re-adjustment is made through money supply expansion which causes inflation when the new money is not invested into growing the manufacturing or general production capacity of the economy.

Money can only be said to be a unit of (measurement and/or representation of) value if the money supply doesn't change. Which is not possible in a capitalist, market economy. Because without a perpetually geometrically expanding money supply there is nowhere for businesses' expenses, let alone profits, to come from.

originally posted by: TheTory
a reply to: Fishy
If I do not agree with the terms I do not have to engage in the contract, and neither does the other party. Anything else is coercion, and that’s what socialism is at its core.

Private property, especially over means of production, is itself coercion. The chain of ownership is only as legitimate as its most illegitimate link. Which is usually the very first owner simply arbitrarily claiming the property for themselves or some potentate or monarch (King or Queen etc.) when it was part of the commons previously. Or someone else buying it with money created ex nihilo by some banker.

How is any of that legitimate, at all?

Also, even if we were to overlook that, why should private property rights survive the proprietor? Why should dead people have property rights?

originally posted by: dismanrc
a reply to: Raggedyman

Well you see that is NOT socialism. It was once called philanthropy and was practiced by all those evil rich people all the "Socialist" hate. Seems it's not good to donate things to what you want, you are suppose to donate to what others what you too.

Do some research on how much these people gave to the arts, sciences and medical causes.

A tiny fraction of the wealth they accrued by other peoples' labours.

I hear people say that socialism will take away freedoms and make us dependent on government.

Yet what freedoms do we really have? We have the freedom to get a job or suffer the consequences. We're already dependent on the government to facilitate our economy, and they're dependent on someone else to print the money. I laugh when people talk about leaving their parents and becoming independent. You are not nor have you ever been independent, you traded your dependence on one person or group for another.

I hear people moan about how bad it will get under socialism yet things already seem pretty #ing terrible to me. I knew 10 years ago at age 16 that this country and the society that inhabits it were screwed beyond all recognition and that I would never add my work and sweat to its continuance.

a reply to: corvuscorrax

Evil corporate capitalistic, authoritarian now.

Add socialism?

If you add socialism to a corrupt, authoritarian, oligarchical, crony-capitalistic system, then you might as well just call it communism.

a reply to: DBCowboy

Oh, wow, seriously???? People actually sent messages like that??

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. These days, if you don't tow the party line (maybe that should read Party line..), you get labeled as ignorant, and all sorts of other nastiness.

Well, I guess those that are so pro-socialism can label me, too, then, because I won't ever agree with it! Ever.

originally posted by: LadyGreenEyes
a reply to: DBCowboy
Well, I guess those that are so pro-socialism can label me, too, then, because I won't ever agree with it! Ever.

Be careful with that kind of statement - it signals that you're suffering from dogma.

One good side-by-side example is East and West Germany, the former being free-market while the latter being centrally planned. The people in both were similar in culture, talent, education, values and history, yet one side was free market and the other was not. Which ended up being the better to live in?

originally posted by: TheTory
One good side-by-side example is East and West Germany

Wow great example, now can you show us where anyone has actually proposed an East German type government?

originally posted by: ForteanOrg

originally posted by: LadyGreenEyes
a reply to: DBCowboy
Well, I guess those that are so pro-socialism can label me, too, then, because I won't ever agree with it! Ever.

Be careful with that kind of statement - it signals that you're suffering from dogma.

I'll risk it.

originally posted by: daskakik

originally posted by: TheTory
One good side-by-side example is East and West Germany

Wow great example, now can you show us where anyone has actually proposed an East German type government?

One being propped up by the US (itself propped up by the petrodollar and reserve currency status even before that - and basically every western nation's gold reserves - , following the Bretton Woods agreement) and the rest of the western European nations, themselves propped up by the Marshall plan, and the other one hardly being propped up by anyone, including the USSR because of post-war spite (and understandably so).

Moreover, the US did not have its homeland ravaged by war at all. Whereas all the countries in the Warsaw pact had been savaged by the war.

Sure, seems like a perfectly legitimate comparison.

While we're at it, socialism / communism took a backwards, feudal, primitive, poorly industrialized agrarian country like Tsarist Russia and made it into a industrial superpower which was the first to put a man in space. Inside of what? Less than 45 years? Within 41 years it was making nuclear submarines capable of launching nuclear ICBMs.

Oh, and it did that despite fighting two horrendous world wars. Both of which killed scores of Russians and other USSR citizens and the second of which pummelled its industry, infrastructure and cities.

Yeah, I'd say socialism showed itself to be pretty darn efficient.

And the competition from it and the power of its example is the only thing that made life in the west as good as it was until its collapse. As it forced staunchly laissez-fair capitalist countries like the US into being social democracies with very progressive taxation and strong social safety nets and welfare programs. Things unheard of before.

Which were done for fear of people rising up and outright overthrowing capitalism.

That's what capitalism does when push comes to shove, when it feels its existence is threatened. It makes concessions to prolong its odious and objectionable existence. It makes as big concessions as it has to. Then it tries to claw them back as much as possible as soon as possible, when the people forgot why they fought for those concessions and how hard they fought for them.

Good thing most people nowadays have been so well trained and indoctrinated since early childhood to deify and worship the upper class and their interests rather than their own class and interest. And to be class traitors, to renege their own class and social status.

That's why concessions from capitalism are hardly necessary nowadays. That and socialism having been brought down by lecherous traitors from within and systematic, concerted effort from without.

Name one socialist country the US and its close allies haven't tried to make a negative example out of or overthrow through thoroughly sabotaging it, sponsored or even conducted coups or outright invasions.

It's a well known fact that many in the US political leadership, administration and MIC had wished that nuclear bombs had been dropped on Moscow instead or in addition to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that the war in Europe had not ended in Berlin.

It's ok, everyone will eventually understand that socialism is the only rational and humane way forward, when robots and computers do all the work and people are starving homeless left and right in what could otherwise be a cornucopia of abundance. It's just that some people will need more time than others to overcome their indoctrination. Especially the old folks, who tend to be real stubborn and steadfast in their indoctrination.

Regardless, those who cannot grasp it or accept it will eventually die of old age, making room for an idea whose time had long since come. And the world will indeed be socialist by the end of this century, I predict.

Good thing we don't live forever.

a reply to: daskakik

Wow great example, now can you show us where anyone has actually proposed an East German type government?

Are you saying east Germany wasn't socialist?

originally posted by: TheTory
Are you saying east Germany wasn't socialist?

No, what I said was that that isn't what people are proposing.

a reply to: daskakik

Then what are they proposing?

originally posted by: TheTory
Then what are they proposing?

I keep seeing people point at countries with more social programs but hardly anyone says lets bring back the eastern bloc.

a reply to: daskakik

I would hope not, but that is what socialism has given us this far.

We can talk about India, Venezuela, China, Cuba? Maybe African socialism?

We can talk about social programs and taxes, if you'd like.

originally posted by: Kangaruex4Ewe

The following is my opinion as a member participating in this discussion.

I agree with you 100%.

These folks pushing for socialism should put their thoughts into actions and just do it themselves until it catches on.

Work 60 hours a week, get your paycheck and on the way home stop by your local crack house (even the best neighborhoods have at least one). Go in and hand most all of your paycheck to the person of your choice, smile, tell them to have a nice day and go home.

Ride by every day on your way home from working your arse off with the simple joy of knowing that you helped crack head stay high for a bit longer. Smile and wave and relish in that warm, mushy feeling. At least someone got to sleep in today, right?

Do this every week. Spread that love around. It doesn't have to be a crack head. It can be a perfectly healthy person who just has better things to do than you do, so they just choose to do that instead of working.

At the end of the month when your bills roll around and you can't afford to eat, keep your lights on, pay your mortgage, etc. go outside and stand for a bit and wait for the other socialists to come along and help you out.

Until then, use those warm fuzzy feelings to stay warm, and feel full until the bank comes with the sheriff to foreclose on your house.

Sign me up for that sh!# like yesterday...Maybe a little hyperbole.

For a full blown socialistic society to work everyone has to participate and unfortunately, everyone does not. So then that brings everyone else down instead of just those individuals. In a utopia, it would work amazingly well. Right now there is no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody, somewhere is going to have to pay for it.

As an ATS Staff Member, I will not moderate in threads such as this where I have participated as a member.

Thanks for that macro-rant: and you can sign me up for that first time
in almost 42 years of working FDR's plan and do my own for a change.
Retired now, the war is over for me... but a casualty no less of USSA.

I'm not working for all of us anymore because I'm retired.. but if you
come by the house I'll make you deaf, happy and a little sauced. I'm
getting to do what I'm really good at and love without being taxed
32%. What that means to the PTB is of course nothing-- because
they've already got my money, which is all they care about.
They lose, they'll never have me... for we the people are the prize.