reply to post by poet1b
...In his tedious tome Das Kapital, Marx is so obsessed with elaborate and minute detail that either he inadvertently or very cleverly obscures the
fact that he engages in lies of omission in order to present his own distinctions as academic and intelligent rather than being what they truly are
which is a repetitive style that lacks internal consistency of thought. There are numerous volumes of Das Kapital where Marx rambles on and on in
attempt to appear as an intellectual but his ramblings are flawed at best when it comes to actually understanding economics. Marx is infamous for
inventing phrases that have little to do with actual economics. Phrases such as "cost price" and "variable capital" and "surplus value" are
nonsensical terms that do little to explain prices of commodities as they rise and fall in a market place. When Marx addresses "costs of goods
sold" he is not at all consistence with his own definition of "cost price" and when he refers to the very real elements of "wages" and
"profits" he again is not at all consistent with his own definition of "surplus value".
Marx will teeter totter between his own invented terms and universally accepted phrases such as "profit" and in volume 3 of Das Kapital actually
attempts to broaden the definition to become synonymous with "surplus value". But it is telling that in both volumes 1 and 2 Marx goes out of his
way to avoid using the term "profit" and very rarely uses the word, instead continually uses the phrase "surplus value" instead of "profit."
What Marx has done with Das Kapital is go to extraordinary lengths to present nothing more than trivial data that is banal and nonsensical in order to
portray the capitalist system as being less flexible than it is, attempting to paint a picture of a system that is incapable of being managed and
responsive to the needs and desires of the people.
It is also worth mentioning that the brief excerpt posted from rationalrevolution.net above makes the point that Marx embraced industrialization.
Indeed, Marx's entire theory is predicated on the events of the "industrial age" which is an age long since gone. The industrial age was the age
of factories and manufacturing goods on assembly lines that still has a place in the modern world but is by no means the primary factor in wealth
production. While it is true that Marx and Engels predicted a "stateless" environment they advocated a system that necessarily demanded a
gargantuan state in order to implement their theories and then somehow, some would say naively, believed that gargantuan state would somehow just
voluntarily go away once the their theories were turned into reality. It is just more misdirection to suggest that free market advocates are the
same as communists because of a belief in this "stateless society". The primary difference between the free market advocate and the communist is
that free market advocates do not at all advocate relying upon the state in order to see their theories borne out. This is a crucial difference
between the two ideals and one should not be mistaken for the other.
In a free and unregulated market those who wish to create insurance schemes that offered some form of insurance for health care can do so, and those
who wish to purchase this insurance are free to do so but being a free and unregulated market no one is required to provide the insurance and no one
is required to purchase it. Good health is a primary factor in any persons ability to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and in this
regard it is a universal necessity, it does not, however, make medical services and medicine a public commodity. People should be free to act in ways
conducive to good health and should be able to earn the money necessary to ensure that health. People also should be free to live unhealthy lives if
they so choose.




