Tax the rich and feed the poor until there are no rich no more

This thread is a great example of why America is stagnating.

Too many young people believe that you can "tax your way into prosperity." Back in the 60's, artists and hippies just talked that way; now the youth of today have accepted it as fact.

Capital, wealth, is created by someone creating a good or service and then selling it at a profit. Whether it means raising cattle on grass and selling the meat, or devising faster software, WEALTH is created by the application of human effort to create or increase value.

TAX doesn't create anything. It only takes capital from one person and gives it to another. Instead of creating something new and enlarging the economy, it actually diminishes the gross national product, by providing a disincentive to work.

If you want to build a better society, your FIRST decision must be to reward individuals for innovation and effort. If you punish them, they will work for the black market, or for foreign states, but not for you.

Every tax is a punishment.

Did you know that more than half of american millionaires are first generation rich? Of the rest, most millionaire families have only had that status for 3 generations or less. Do you know why? because immigrants generally have a much stronger work ethic than Americans born here.

Second, most trust fund babies deplete their trusts within two generations. Sure, if you are the idle rich, you can hire accountants and investment analysts, but they don't outperform the markets, and you will lose your wealth over the course of decades.

So the myth of "unearned wealth" is largely a myth. Sure the rockefellers are rich, and have been for 6 generations. But do you know the single most common occupation of US millionaires? It's being an auctioneer. Not exactly celebrity, but it's where american wealth comes from. Second is owner of a janitorial services company. Third most common is . . . licensed welder. THATS whom you'll tax out of existence. The rockefellers and Hiltons will flee to monaco, while you drive welders and janitorial companies out of business. lovely.

(All this info can be found in a couple of books, "The millionaire next door" which I've cited numerous times on ATS, and "the Millionaire Mind" another great read.)

Ask yourself: How many times have you been hired by a poor person? Seriously. Every time I've gotten a job, it was a rich person, or rich people, who hired me. People who had the money to risk on starting a new business.

The whole problem with the "tax the rich" theme is that you'll wind up with a few megacorporations like Walmart, and no mom and pop businesses. Kind of where we are heading now. That's what a mere 40% capital gains tax will get you.

thanks a lot.

.

reply to post by dr_strangecraft


Well said.

That is the logical basis for the argument against taxation.

However since the left wing are only interested in emotional discussions rather than ones rooted in logic, I still think a better tact is to just say "If you want it, come and get it...".

You're right about the widening gap between rich & poor... it's absolutely
shameless, and getting worse!

First, a necessary caveat: I am not writing this in an argumentative, let alone hostile mood.
(Although there will always be people who see ANY question as an attack against them, I suppose.)

But... do you actually see that gap "widening"?
If so, when did you start to notice it? On what do you base your observations?

Because I know that, while I can hear and read about that practically everyday (in the media, which I am closely familiar with), I am yet to see evidence that the gap is really "getting worse".

If I am not mistaken (but I might be), the thought and now formulaic expression of "the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer" came from Karl Marx - in or around 1848.
That was his prediction for the industrialised society.

What REALLY happened was the advent of a society rich enough to start affording the work force (AKA the "poor") not only better pay but also an unprecedented "perk": leisure time. The 40-hour working week was introduced; and if I am not mistaken, it was a capitalist country which in 1936 first introduced paid holidays, another unprecedented achievement.

Karl Marx was no prophet, and his dicta aren't necessarily the Gospel truth. History took care of demonstrating it abundantly enough.

Again, just to be perfectly clear: obviously, I am not saying that the gap doesn't exist - or that it isn't terrible, for that matter.

What I am asking is: is there any evidence that said gap is really worsening?




[edit on 21-4-2008 by Vanitas]

This is an attempt to state it simply, because if you understand the problem, then you're going to see the solution clearly as well. If it doesn't make sense the first time you read it, try reading it again. Eventually, the whole picture will sink in...


A quick history of money

1) Once, gold and silver were considered the only ''real'' money, but it was heavy and risky to carry around...

2) So people paid goldsmiths to store the money, and got paper receipts for it...

3) After a while, people used the receipts like money, and left the gold in the bank most of the time. So the bankers got clever and came up with a scam...

4) The banks printed off receipts for more gold than they actually had, and ''loaned'' those receipts out to charge interest on it. As long as everyone didn't redeem their receipts gold at the same time, this let them make a lot of money charging interest, because they could charge interest on MONEY THEY DIDN'T HAVE.


An analogy can be made using property and titles. Here's the scam in another way:

Step 1: Acquire a vacation home,
Step 2: Sell the title to the home to one person,
Step 3: Sell the title to the home to a DIFFERENT person,
Step 4: Hope they both don't show up on the same weekend!


Fractional reserve banking lets a bank say to a depositor that all his money is safe and sound at the bank, while at the same time they get to loan most of it out to someone else to charge interest on it. So there are two people with a legitimate claim to the same pile of money. So whose is it, really? And where is it?

It gets stranger: When you receive your loan, if you deposit it into a bank, this bank can loan your loan money out again. This process can be repeated indefinitely, and if you do the math you find that much more money is on deposit in all the banks than existed in the first place. This begs the question... where did all this extra money come from? It had to come from somewhere, right? This would be true if all money were physical objects, but today money is a concept, an idea, a number. The answer is... it is created by the bank!

What does this mean?


1) Loaning money while claiming it is still on deposit increases the money supply, essentially creating more money (otherwise deposits would vanish). In essence, for the bank to have your cake and loan it too, it must create more cake. This increase in money supply is the cause of inflation.

2) Almost every dollar that exists is owed to a bank somewhere, because at some time in history, it was created when it was loaned out.

3) The amount of money owed to banks is more than all the money in existence! So we cannot possibly get out of debt under this system. The bulk of this debt is in the form interest, which is an arbitrary amount of money banks demand in return, but never gave.

4) There is no money, in the real sense. Just checks, data stored on computers, and promises. It is all created by typing on a keyboard, and signing signatures. The only tangible assets in regard to money anymore is the collateral we pledge when we ask for a loan. The money they loan you comes from nowhere, but the assets you lose in foreclosure are real!

5) Because the US government borrows from the Federal Reserve, bankers have the power to influence our society and government by controlling finance. They decide to create (or not create) money depending on who's asking, and for what. They choose what projects get funded, and let other needs wither on the vine by starving them of working capital. This subtle yet immense power is more than enough to undermine democracy, and guide the course of a nation's history.


So what's the solution?

Simple. The public must demand that money must not be created by loaning it into existence. It must be something that is openly and publicly controllable, issuable, accountable, and interest-free.

Otherwise, a class of parasites will rise to power in society by cleverly disguising the fact that the money they are creating, spending, and buying the world up with is... money that isn't even real.

reply to post by Vanitas




* The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) reported in 1998 that the world's 225 richest people now have a combined wealth of $1 trillion. That's equal to the combined annual income of the world's 2.5 billion poorests people.

* The wealth of the three most well-to-do individuals now exceeds the combined GDP of the 48 least developed countries.
* While global GNP grew 40 percent between 1970 and 1985 (suggesting widening prosperity), the number of poor grew by 17 percent.
* Although 200 million people saw their incomes fall between 1965 and 1980, more than 1 billion people experienced a drop from 1980 to 1993.
* In sub-Saharan Africa, twenty nations remain below their per capita incomes of two decades ago while among Latin American and Caribbean countries, eighteen are below their per capita incomes of ten years ago.
* UNDP reported in 1996 that 100 countries were worse off than 15 years ago.
* Three decades ago, the people in well-to-do countries were 30 times better off than those in countries where the poorest 20 percent of the world's people live. By 1998, this gap had widened to 82 times (up from 61 times since 1996).
* In 1998, that 20 percent of the world's people living in the highest-income countries accounted for 86 percent of total private consumption expenditures while the poorest 20 percent accounted for only 1.3 percent. That's down from 2.3 percent three decades ago.
* At present, 3 billion people live on less than $2 per day while 1.3 billion get by on less than $1 per day. Seventy percent of those living on less than $1 per day are women. With global population expanding 80 million per year, World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn cautions that, unless we address "the challenge of inclusion," 30 years hence we will have 5 billion people living on less than $2 per day.
* Two billion people worldwide now suffer from anemia, including 55 million in industrial countries. Given current trends in population growth and prosperity-hoarding, three decades from now we could have a world in which 3.7 billion people are anemic.
* These related phenomena led UN development experts to observe that the world is heading toward "grotesque inequalities," concluding: "Development that perpetuates today's inequalities is neither sustainable nor worth sustaining."
* UNDP calculates that an annual 4 percent levy on the world's 225 most well-to-do people (average 1998 wealth: $4.5 billion) would suffice to provide the following essentials for all those in developing countries: adequate food, safe water and sanitation, basic education, basic health care and reproductive health care. At present, 160 of those individuals live in OECD countries; 60 reside in the United States.
* As of 1995 (the latest figures available), Federal Reserve research found that the wealth of the top one percent of Americans is greater than that of the bottom 95 percent. Three years earlier, the Fed's Survey of Consumer Finance found that the top one percent had wealth greater than the bottom 90 percent.
* From 1983-1995 only the top five percent of households saw an increase in their net worth while only the top 20 percent experienced an increase in their income.
* Wealth projections through 1997 suggest that 86 percent of stock market gains between 1989 and 1997 went to the top ten percent of households while 42 percent went to the most well-to-do one percent.
* Stock market participation is broad but remarkably shallow. Though more American adults own stocks and stock mutual funds than at any time in history, 71 percent of households own no shares at all or hold less than $2,000, including mutual funds and popular 401(k) plans.
* Adjusting for inflation, the net worth of the median American household fell 10 percent between 1989 and 1997, declining from $54,600 to $49,900. The net worth of the top one percent is now 2.4 times the combined wealth of the poorest 80 percent.
* The modest net worth of white families is 8 times that of African-Americans and 12 times that of Hispanics. The median financial wealth of African-Americans (net worth less home equity) is $200 (one percent of the $18,000 for whites) while that of Hispanics is zero.
* Between 1983 and 1995, the bottom 40 percent of households lost 80 percent of their net worth. The middle fifth lost 11 percent. By 1995, 18.5 percent of households had zero or negative net worth (an average -$5,600, down from -$3,000 in 1983).
* By 1995, the middle quintile of income-earners had only enough savings to maintain their current standard of living for 1.2 months (i.e., if they lost their jobs). That's down from 3.6 months in 1989.
* Household debt as a percentage of personal income rose from 58 percent in 1973 to an estimated 85 percent in 1997.
* In 1997, 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy. That works out to roughly 7,000 bankruptcies per hour, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.
* Though average household income rose 10 percent between 1979 and 1994, 97 percent of that gain was claimed by the most well-to-do 20 percent.
* In 1998, weekly wages were 12 percent lower than in 1973 on an inflation-adjusted basis. Productivity rose 33 percent over that perioo. Had pay kept pace with productivity, the average hourly wage would now be $18.10, rather than $12.77. That translates into a difference in annual pay of $11,000 for a full-time, year-round worker.
* Between 1970 and 1990, the typical American worked an additional 163 hours per year. That's equivalent to adding an additional month of work per year - for the same or less pay.
* In 1996, the Census Bureau reported record-level inequality, with the top fifth of U.S. households claiming 48.2 percent of national income while the bottom fifth gets by on 3.6 percent.
* In 1973, the income of the top 20 percent of American families was 7.5 times that of the bottom 20 percent. By 1996, it was 13 times.
* Business Week reports that in 1999 top executives earned 419 times the average wage of a blue-collar worker, up from 326:1 in 1998. In 1980, the ratio was 42:1.
* In 1982, inclusion on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans required personal wealth of $91million. The list then included 13 billionaires. By 1998, $500 million was required and the list included 189 billionaires. Note, however, that Forbes 1998 figures were based on a September 1, 1998 Dow-Jones Industrial Average of 7827. The Dow topped 10,000 in early 1999.
* The combined net worth of the Forbes 400 was $738 billion on September 1, 1998. That's up from $624 billion in 1997. That's an average one-year increase of $285 million per person. That works out to $780,000 per day or $32,500 per hour ($541 per second).
* Microsoft CEO Bill Gates has more wealth than the bottom 45 percent of American households combined.
* Spending on luxury goods grew by 21 percent from 1995 to 1996 while overall merchandise sales grew only 5 percent.

reply to post by ianr5741



Strip all those rich people of their wealth and the poor will increase ten fold. But the rich will never be stripped of their wealth, the envious people have tried for thousands of years and seldom have succeeded.

Greed is surpassed only by envy as a human weakness. Envy creates nothing but pain and want, greed creates wealth and prosperity. Wealth creates opportunities for the most people. Envy creates hunger and misery for those who have it and those who wish to spread it.

The rich will always be with us and so will the poor. The rich have no obligation to share, but often do. The poor have no right to envy but often do.

The reason we have poor is because of bleeding hearts that create more problems with misguided leftwing ideology. It's really that simple.

Originally posted by ianr5741
* The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) reported in 1998 that the world's 225 richest people now have a combined wealth of $1 trillion. That's equal to the combined annual income of the world's 2.5 billion poorests people.

And compare the two "halves." What are the rich doing with their share? Do they keep it stuffed in their mattresses? Do they have it hidden in a sock they buried in the garden? Do they have it locked in a vault, where they sneak in, and let it trickle through their fingers with maniacal glee?

Of course not. They have most of it in Treasury bills, where it underwrites government payrolls and expenses for the quarter. A lot of the rest is underwriting insurance and private loans. Some of it has been paid for stock in companies that make tractors, dumptrucks, cigarettes, gasoline, or video games.

What are the poor doing with their collective wealth? Buying food. Sadly, what little money they get will be used to buy food, or farm implements, or maybe to pay union dues so they can get a job in the city. At any rate, their money will get used up in living. It will be gone, literally down the toilet, and they will need more tomorrow. They don't spend much, because they don't earn much. Sadly, there's little hope for them, unless economic opportunities are available.

Giving each poorest person $400 dollars in cash will stimulate inflation, but it won't solve their problems. If a family tried to use that money to buy a goat for milk, the price of local livestock would quickly skyrocket out of reach.

Again, this is why simple resdistribution won't change anything. What I've learned from working among the (far more affluent) homeless people in the US is that what the poor need is life-skills and opportunity, not a handoiut.

To tax the rich and feed the poor until there are no rich no more, that was king of the Idea behind communism wasn't it? Don't get me wrong I think communism is a good Idea in theory. Me and my brother had a long discussion on this a while back. While we don't see eye to eye all the time in the end we both agreed that communism in and of it's self is a noble idea, a noble idea that might work sometime down the road if there was a vast change in human nature. The problem is is that communism takes oversight, it takes bean counters who oversee that everyone gets their fair share. The problem is that human nature (more so greed) takes over and the bean counters end up buying fleets of mercedes for the bean counters while the people putting up the beans starve.

Don't get me wrong, I like to see people as a whole taken care of better than they are right now. I just don't feel that taking everything from the rich is a valid proposal. I mean what incentive would you have to do better if you knew that you were not going to get more. In the same token, I think there are people with so much money you could take half of it in taxes and they could still buy their gulf stream jets million$ homes and keep their families set. Of coarse any time you start to talk about it they start to cry about getting by on only 6 billion dollars. There is a certain point where there is no real need for any person to have that much money.

In the middle ages, landowners were a very small part of the population. They were the "privileged class". They were the ones who owned the castles and the hillsides. They were the ones which could afford to send their children to universities. They kept all the secrets about how the world runs, they had the knowledge of science and technology, and owned all means of production.


The rest of the population, the peasants, were permitted to farm the land. The products they gathered were put up for sale for the landowner. What the farmer got in return was permission to keep living day after day, with minimum provisions for survival, but very few freedoms other than that. They were not permitted to learn to read, or have any eduction. Healthcare was only provided to the extent that it was cost-effective. Workers were replaced as easily as a bolt or screw on a machine. Names didn't matter, people were commodities, even though they look similar to the rich. The rich saw themselves as better because, after all... they were clean, smart, and their will affected great change throughout society, where the poor did not.


Over time, the landowners grew wealthier and wealthier, but the peasants only grew in number. Now and then, the peasants would try and revolt, but the rich also had the advantage of hired armies used to suppress the masses. They owned all the guns, could bribe most people, and kill the rest to retain their power.


It was not significant to the wealthy that it was only by the work of the "laboring class" that the wealth of the landowners existed in the first place. They were beasts of burden. Oxen. Cattle.


Today, it is not much different. The "privileged class" today owns the corporations, land, and factories. You and I do not own these things, we are merely permitted to work in them. What we get in return is minor compensation compared to the value of all the wealth we create when we work there. We spend this minor compensation renting our little apartments, paying for the car which takes us to work, and feeding ourselves so that we can work another day.


Take a good long look at the situation we are living in. In earlier decades in America, wealth distribution used to be a bell-curve, with most people near the middle. This is what drew people to this country from around the world.

Today is is a very shallow line over most of the graph, rising abruptly vertical near the very end.


We are in a new form of serfdom, all over again.


"I've been around the ruling class all my life, and I've been quite aware of their total contempt for the people of the country..." - Gore Vidal

Google Video Link

"In our dream, we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational conventions fade from our minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or science. We are not to raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply."

- Rockefeller Foundation Director of Charity, Frederick Gates, 1913




[edit on 21-4-2008 by ianr5741]

Originally posted by ianr5741

Today, it is not much different. The "privileged class" today owns the corporations, land, and factories. You and I do not own these things, we are merely permitted to work in them.

If you don't "own the corporations," that is merely because of the choices you've made. You've spent your money on consumer items, but it was your choice, not someone forbidding you to own them.

Here in the USA, you can buy stock with as little as one hundred dollars. You don't need to hire a broker, either. There are online companies that will sell you a fraction of a share for as little as 10$ - 50$. You can buy any company traded on the NYSE or NASDAQ. You can even pay with paypal.

Even if you don't live in the USA, you can, via the internet, buy and own stock here.

Nothing keeps you from becoming a capitalist other than your own decisions. There are no laws that forbid you from owning things the way there were in the middle ages.

Blaming the rich because they were the ant while you are the grasshopper will not make your life any better, it will just give you a rationalization for not seizing your own destiny and doing something about it.

Who am I to lecture you? I was born and raised in South, by poor people who didn't even own a car when I was a youngster. I am one of the few Americans who actually went to bed hungry because we had no food.

When I had part time jobs in high school, they weren't so I could buy a car or go to the movies. My parents needed my money to buy groceries and clothes.

I have been homeless, and still volunteer at homeless shelters in part to repay the help I received there. But I also got an education, went to college, went to graduate school.

I paid for college by working on farms and ranches, literally shovelling cow poop and digging ditches for it to drain into. I started buying stock because I was interesting in how some people, rich people, made money without busting their buts.

I eventually got a part time job in a brokerage, because I quickly learned that a lot of lazy rich people LOOSE money in the markets, to poor nobodies who have the gumption to really learn how the economy works.

I don't know what country you live in, but I'll tell you how it really works in the USA. Children of rich families quickly lose the money their grandparents socked way to carefully for them. I leaned this by working in the financial institutions where the rich pay people to mismanage their money for them.

check out this thread for related info: Do the Illuminati pay their bills?

If you live in America or a similar western nation, the limits on personal wealth are largely your own lack of initiative, and the consequences of unthinking consumerism, rather than "the man" holding you down.
I'd be a millionaire already, if I had realized this stuff before I was 30. Sadly, I spent most of my youth as an unreconstructed potsmoking leftist who was convinced that my lack of achievement was someone else's fault. I started to notice in college that the leadership of the left were not poor people like me---they were a bunch of "trust fund babies" who were not about to let actual working-class kids have any real say in how their advocacy groups were run.

I'm sure you won't be swayed by the things I post here. But it'll be your loss; time spent blaming other people, instead of figuring out how to make a real difference in the world. But at least you'll have an overwhelming sense of self-righteous indignation to console yourself with.

all the best.

reply to post by ANOK

What is wrong with you owning your own means of production? In other words you all become business owners, which seems to be what you all want, no? Only difference is EVERYONE you work with is also a part owner of the company, cooperative, collective, whatever you want to call it.

It sounds great and definitely more fair then the upgraded "slavery" we have now, but there are a fundamental problems with those ideas - all will own, but who will make decisions? Who will be manager? And who will take responsibility for mistakes?
When everyone ones something together - that means nobody really owns it.

reply to post by gdeed


No eco-political system is perfect but when we have an ultra-wealthy 5-10% of a population holding all the land in south & central america while the other 90% are serfs then we definitely know there is something wrong.

I suppose the same is true in africa and central asia. Not to mention the illeiteracy rate which is beyond pathetic. Oh I forgot we have UNICEF...

Sorry guys/gals but I prefer communism over capitalism any day even if it does not work. We could make it work but some prefer that it does not. More than half the european companies are now owned by american and far eastern super-conglomerates. The trend keeps getting worse and worse. If you own a small bussiness you are doomed to fail because a walfmart, praktiker, carrefoure...pick any giant will open up and force the little guy out of existance!

Also from a theoretical perspective why should we work to make the shareholders wealthy instead of making everybody wealthy? Profits should be national wealth and distributed equally. Does it not make more sense than allowing a few people to profit of your sweat?!

I think the best system is western european socialism but unfortunately it is becoming more capitalistic(actually monopolistic) than socialistic. Mild capitalism is ok but at least enforce the anti-trust laws so we don't all get choked to death.

Originally posted by dr_strangecraft

If you don't "own the corporations," that is merely because of the choices you've made. You've spent your money on consumer items, but it was your choice, not someone forbidding you to own them.

I have nerve damage in my spine from a car accident 9 years ago, which prevents me from sitting in a chair. I can't even drive without severe pain. I spend most of my day trying to do work from home over the internet to make an extra buck but it is not easy, especially in today's economy. My girlfriend works, but she only makes about 18k a year.

Please tell me what choices I have made that prevent me from owning corporations? I went to graduate school, I have a high IQ and I am educated, but today I am just not physically able to do very much but lie around like a bump on a log. I wanted to become a physician. I CAN'T. I struggle with severe pain in my legs due to a damaged set of nerves in my spine. It's hell, all day long every day... so how am I making bad choices here? What should I be doing to expedite my ownership in a corporation?

The company my girlfriend works for doesn't pay enough for us to keep our head above water, and have anything left to invest with. Don't you think that's stacking the deck against the poor? Why shouldn't every employee who works for a corporation get some amount of stock in it? Why should the wealthy be the primary profiteers of the working man (and woman's) labor?

Please explain how a person who inherits nothing, or simply has bad luck, is on a level playing field with people who run a business counterfeiting money (International banking families and Federal Reserve owners) in the game of acquiring access and ownership to corporations?

Or are you one of those people who still thinks the Federal Reserve is a completely neutral branch of the government working hard to ensure good economic conditions for America?

This world is NOT an equal opportunity world. Just because there's an example of rags to riches in this country doesn't mean that the game isn't fixed and the deck isn't stacked against the poor masses. INTENTIONALLY, I might add...

To use an analogy...

You say that if you're a fish in water not getting to where you want to go, it's because you're not swimming. Yes, swimming is a good idea, but what if the place you need to go is upstream but the river is flowing faster than you can swim? It isn't for lack of effort, or bad decisions (to swim or not to swim) that you don't get ahead, it's because the flow is working so hard against you.




[edit on 22-4-2008 by ianr5741]

Originally posted by ZeroKnowledge
...all will own, but who will make decisions? Who will be manager? And who will take responsibility for mistakes?
When everyone ones something together - that means nobody really owns it...

You are thinking this in an authoritarian way, which is what we are against. You can have 'managers' but they won't be authoritarian.
COOP businesses can be managed by a comity made up of the workers/owners of the coop. Decisions can be made democratically by all the workers/owners. Everyone takes responsibility for their workplace. One of the problems we have now is no one wants to take responsibility because we are so used to someone else doing it for us, often to our detriment.

The social and political structure of anarchy [libertarian socialism] is similar to that of the economic structure, i.e., it is based on a voluntary federation of decentralised, directly democratic policy-making bodies. These are the neighbourhood and community assemblies and their confederations. In these grassroots political units, the concept of "self-management" becomes that of "self-government", a form of municipal organisation in which people take back control of their living places from the bureaucratic state and the capitalist class whose interests it serves.

Source

"A new economic phase demands a new political phase," argued Kropotkin, "A revolution as profound as that dreamed of by the socialists cannot accept the mould of an out-dated political life. A new society based on equality of condition, on the collective possession of the instruments of work, cannot tolerate for a week . . . the representative system . . . if we want the social revolution, we must seek a form of political organisation that will correspond to the new method of economic organisation. . . . The future belongs to the free groupings of interests and not to governmental centralisation; it belongs to freedom and not to authority." [Words of a Rebel, pp. 143-4]

You don't need an authoritarian figure to make decisions for you.
Socialism with government is not socialism.

Once the idea of capital and competition are gone then so will the big corporations. Small companies will be able to survive and flourish without fear of losing everything. Coops are similar to corporations as in people own shares of it, but in (lib) socialism the workers will own those shares instead of outside investors. That would motivate workers to produce more and have more respect for their workplace, no matter how lowly the job is.

Also once we get rid of capitalism a big majority of what we produce, purely for profit, would be unnecessary. Many workers would be freed from the factory to pursue their own interests. Resources wasted producing purely for profit would be freed to be put to better use feeding and housing people, or research and development of clean energy etc. The 40 hour week could be reduced significantly as we would no longer need to over produce and waste so much.

Who owns the planet we live on? All of us? Or do you think some have more right to it than others?

[edit on 22/4/2008 by ANOK]

reply to post by ANOK



I like the way you think. This is the type of change I'd like to see.

No, I don't think it will be perfect as you described.


But I think the future of "government" is actually having the people and government being one and the same. Not an us vs. them mentality. Even the word "government" makes me sick, as it implies that someone at the top is giving orders, with no consideration of what the world looks like from where you stand.


I see in the future the world being ordered more like a cooperation, rather than a hierarchy. Much the same way the open-source operation system Linux was developed, the best (and worst) minds gather together to continuously update an ever-evolving framework that continuously adapts and grows more efficient and less problematic over time.


The participation in this new form of social organization would be entirely voluntary. There would be no elected officials. Decisions would be made based on policies the entire country could participate in revising. The best and brightest ideas would rise to the top, but no one would own them. No one specific group could take ownership of any part of the government, it would be spread and diffused throughout the entire population.


When governments live in a clique or class-based bubble, when they work to further their personal agendas at the expense of the masses, when they operate in secret and implement policy decisions without the full knowledge of the purpose, cause, and after-effects of those policies being known to all those whom the policy affects... THAT is tyranny.

Originally posted by ianr5741


I have nerve damage in my spine from a car accident 9 years ago, which prevents me from sitting in a chair. I can't even drive without severe pain. I spend most of my day trying to do work from home over the internet to make an extra buck but it is not easy, especially in today's economy. My girlfriend works, but she only makes about 18k a year.

Please tell me what choices I have made that prevent me from owning corporations?

None. You can use a computer. You have internet access. If you ever eat chips or buy a soda, that's money you could be putting to work to better your life. If you DON'T do so, it's because you choose not to. Which is also fine. But nothing KEEPS you from participating in the free market. Millions of retired people do so, and many of them are not in good health.

The broker who taught me was incapicated by a disease that attacked his joints like arthritis, and has since turned into cancer. He had lost his farm and had to declare bankrupty, watching all his belongings and his family farm auctioned off at the courthouse steps. He became a broker because he was not limber enough to put on clothes and deal with the public (!).

One of my mentors was a Salvadoran refugee, who lost everything in a Hurricane; his homeowners insurance declared bankruptcy, and so he started over with nothing other than the clothes on his back. I'm not capable of that kind of struggle. But I can still make my life better.

It's a lot easier to blame everyone else. But not near as rewarding.

You may feel hopeless and powerless, for which you have my pity.

But even if theres a revolution tomorrow, you can bet that the NEW system will busilly start screwing SOMEONE, and it will probably be you. The poor in Russia starved by the tens of millions once communism became the "in thing." And millions have starved since communism fell.

Humans love to get in power and screw each other. That won't change (much) by removing one group of oppressors and getting a new group and changing all the logos.

Millions of immigrants are coming to the USA by hook or crook. And disproportionately, their children become the next generations millionaires. So someone is making it work.