Why my mind is closing towards Capitalism

Originally posted by NoHierarchy

Originally posted by aravoth

Originally posted by ElectricUniverse

Originally posted by JimmyNeutron
Oh no... I've read the whole thread and have been following along. Those of you promoting socialism keep beating the same statements to death. I mean really? Is Spain the only shining light of "true" socialism you can hold up?
...

Spain?... is Anok trying to use Spain as an example?...

I have family in Spain, and lived there for almost 10 years.

BTW Anok, the PEOPLE of Spain voted the socialists OUT OF POWER... Just in case you didn't know...

no he's pointing to a three year block of time during the great depression/WWII in spain where a bunch of people banded together and created an Agrarianistic society, for a whole three years. He think it will work for making cars, iphones, medical equipment, and airplanes.

Who said we NEED iphones or many other consumer goods just recently introduced?? We live on a FINITE planet. And most of those products are created on virtual slave labor in despotic countries with "open" markets.

It's not up to you to decide what is needed, that is up to individual. If there is a demand, it will be filled, one way or another.

We have cell phones, but we still rely on oil for fuel?

Doesn't that tell anyone anything?

The priority of capitalism is not to improve society, but to exploit it.

We get fancy modern toys, while living in an infrastructure that has hardly improved in decades.

We could have free-energy, we could have more sustainable living systems. We could have so much, but our real progress is stunted by the desire to make profit, a direct result of private ownership.

reply to post by NoHierarchy

TextWho said we NEED iphones or many other consumer goods just recently introduced??

Exactly. It says alot about the world when people tell us that Steve Jobs was one of the greatest minds of our time.

Great at exploiting people maybe. What did he give us? An updated walkman?

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi

I take it that you've never been to a university where studies revolve around society and not making profit- or perhaps you've never been to university at all.

Obviously you don't know what a University is... in a university you don't learn to "better society" you learn to THINK FOR YOURSELF and learn something that you can use in real life. It CAN include learning things that would help those around you, and it CAN include things that don't help those around you... it is a PERSONAL DECISION...something you probably have no idea what it means....

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi
I take it that you'll save all of your excess wealth in a bank somewhere while people strive to survive around you, and then when you die you'll pass on your excess wealth to some pampered child who will take over the reigns on your business without any real experience of working from the bottom, and will excell at making even more profit at the expense of his workers.

It is called PERSONAL DECISION, obviously something you have no idea what it means... Of course people like you would rather FORCE everyone to do your will...

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi
This is my main contention with capitalism- I'm fine with it until people hoard money and their next generation takes over without any real experience of knowing what it is like to be a worker with nothing.

Capitalism, and free markets, when they WERE free, actually helped people, not only did it help people personally better themselves, but when you better yourself and other people better themselves EVERYONE betters themselves...

Native Americans, and tribal cultures better themselves, and helped others better themselves through a FREE MARKET where they exchanged skills, and or products... That is part of a FREE MARKET which is what capitalism really means...

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi
Just in case you didn't know, NATO and Spanish nationalists have promoted right-wing terrorism to terrorize and undermine socialists for over half a century. And the reason why the socialists just got voted out of government? Because the EU pinned neo-liberal deregulation on them, the people naturally responded negatively to it, and then they voted in the pro-austerity government who would be happy to deregulate more of the Spanish state so other EU countries can buy up its own assets.

wow... Nice TRY to twist the truth around...

ETA, or Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, are the socialists who have been bombing Spain ever since they founded their group... It hasn't been NATO...it has been ETA.

ETA, normally targets military, and police stations but citizens also have died and the ETA terrorists don't give a crap if civilians also die.

BTW EU is/was nothing but a socialist idea, but try to claim it is a "rightwing ideology"...

You see, in "rightwing ideology" we want LESS government control, MORE individual liberty, and the RIGTH TO CHOOSE...

It is leftwing/socialist/communist ideology which seeks to centralize power, restrict individual liberty and take away the right to choose...

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi


Socialism is a social institution that can be integrated, politically, by varying degrees. It doesn't even have to have anything to do with politics. It's more of a function designed to keep disparity levels from becoming too excessive. It is also essential to implement within a faltering country to save it from economic collapse (ie, Keynesism).

Yes, you are correct, socialism is social engineering, which never allows anyone to fall to short, or anyone excel to far, it keeps everyone nice, stupid, and mediocre, always catering to the lowest common denominator.

Usually that includes people that think John Maynard Keynes was smart, and that Keynesianism "saves" anything from collapse, when it's actually Keynesianism that caused the collapse in the first place.

Cool story though...

Originally posted by ANOK
Yep capitalism creates artificial scarcity, which makes it very difficult for people to better their lives.

All we need is the means and the labour to make everyone fat and happy, and we have an abundance of both.

Scarcity is an artificial creation of capitalism.

The Cold War propaganda era has been very successful. People really fear to look at socialism in a different light.

Technologically we are much more advanced then 1930's. With what we have now no child would need to be hungry.

Another thing that capitalism does is oppress technological advancement. Any technological development that is truly holistic, positive, cheap, therefor un-profitable is immediately removed.

edit- I scrolled back and noticed you said exactly this while i was typing this. So, whatever.

...and there is nothing wrong with parents leaving their children financially secure for life... for mine did it but watched their two sons grow up needing no assistance other than LOVE and watched them grow!

...and I am tired as well although very entertained by all of you here.

see y'all tomorrow same time same sandbox!

Originally posted by ElectricUniverse

Originally posted by Tea4One

Those "10 planks" are the motions of society in the transition to communism from socialism. The state in this context refers to the now proletariat controlled state or the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is coupled with the ownership of production.

You see, socialism and communism both are nothing but oxymorons, if no particular person CAN OWN ANYTHING how in the world is the proletariat in control of anything or owns anything?...

I actually lived and experienced the BS you are trying to sugar coat, and I know what I am talking about...

The "dictatorship of the proletariat" is nothing but constant WAR against anyone who doesn't want socialism/communism, which is why socialist/communists have murdered over 110 million people in less than 100 years, and that's without counting what Hitler, who was a national socialist, did...

I think he was talking about non-state-Communism, NOT state-Communism. State-Communism (via dictatorship of the proletariat) IS OPPRESSIVE and concentrates power (and ultimately wealth) into the hands of the few over the many. THIS IS NOT WHAT MOST LEFT-WINGERS WANT. Most left-wingers are more active against authoritarian Communist regimes than right-wingers are. This is about LIBERTARIAN leftism, not authoritarian. Communism is AUTHORITARIAN leftism.

As for Hitler, he was a FASCIST. His party was called the "National Socialist Party (Nazi)" but that DOES NOT MEAN that they were Socialists. IN FACT, every reputable historian explicitly states that the Nazis were a RIGHT-WING Fascist movement. Fascism is authoritarian RIGHT-WING ideology, nobody who is educated on this disputes it, period. Now the Nazis (like any regime) were a complex mix of different things (even from different wings), they were overwhelmingly right-wing. In their beginnings, Hitler exploited Socialist rhetoric to gain popularity (because Socialism was popular, and rightfully so), he then PERVERTED it towards his own aims, cut ties with it, destroyed unions, killed union leaders, hunted Socialists/Communists/Liberals/Gays/Jews/etc., and gained dictatorial power.

Calling the Nazis a Socialist party is like calling the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (aka NORTH KOREA) a Democratic peoples' Republic... it just ain't so! It's all BS.

Originally posted by ANOK
We have cell phones, but we still rely on oil for fuel?

yeah, and that happens because people want to artificially control prices so that things can be "affordable and fair to everyone". So we subsidize oil so everyone can have access to it, because thats apparently the "fair thing to do right? Everyone sharing the burden?

Don't even blame that crap on capitalism, you have no idea what you are talking about. Had there been none of this B.S. "Fair Prices" and "access for everyone" the market would have pushed out electric cars in mass years ago. It was, and still is in demand. But none wants to lift the subsidy, because then "poor people would be left out".

Capitalism has nothing to do with that. Not even close.

reply to post by aravoth


so the only way to have technological innovation, and progression for the human species is to have a lot of people poor and dieing?

Textyeah, and that happens because people want to artificially control prices so that things can be "affordable and fair to everyone". So we subsidize oil so everyone can have access to it, because thats apparently the "fair thing to do right? Everyone sharing the burden?

reply to post by aravoth


?? They actually decrease production if they need to to keep prices up.

Originally posted by aravoth

It's not up to you to decide what is needed, that is up to individual. If there is a demand, it will be filled, one way or another.

But demand is artificially created also. The desire for a certain product doesn't just happen. I don't ever remember when I was younger not being able to manage without a cell phone, or wishing there was such a thing. Actually I still don't, hey call me a Luddite.

Workers are exploited at both ends. Workers produce more than they are paid for, and then they have to pay the owners profit on top of that when they buy goods at a store.

The only reason products are so expensive is because so many take their profit from the sale, from the pay check of the worker who should receive the full value of their labour.

Labour is more important than capital when it comes down to it. But in this system importance, and power to control, comes through wealth. As if wealth makes someone more capable, or intelligent.

Originally posted by ANOK

Originally posted by ollncasino
Adam Smith is the father of economics.

Only in your dreams.

Don't get me wrong, maybe Chomsky is correct. But if he is, it isn't because he has a better grasp of how economic systems work. Far from it.

If I claimed that Smith and Friedman could teach Chomsky a thing or too about linguistics, well people would kill themselves laughing.

I disagree.

Adam Smith was a socialist...

"What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves well fed, clothed, and lodged."

I'm not seeing how you get socialism out of that? He's basically saying people should profit from their work.

"Smith saw the task of political economy as the pursuit of "two distinct objects": "first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and second, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services". He defended such public services as free education and poverty relief, while demanding greater freedom for the indigent who receives support than the rather punitive Poor Laws of his day permitted. Beyond his attention to the components and responsibilities of a well-functioning market system (such as the role of accountability and trust), he was deeply concerned about the inequality and poverty that might remain in an otherwise successful market economy. Even in dealing with regulations that restrain the markets, Smith additionally acknowledged the importance of interventions on behalf of the poor and the underdogs of society. At one stage, he gives a formula of disarming simplicity: "When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters." Smith was both a proponent of a plural institutional structure and a champion of social values that transcend the profit motive, in principle as well as in actual reach." Adam Smith

Umm? You imply this is a quote of Adam Smith by tagging his name at the end of it, but I find it doubtful that Adam Smith spoke of himself in the third person. Whose words are these, really?

I'm going to bed. This discussion has been a pleasure. I shall leave you with something from Marx...

"Capitalism is whack y'all."

Originally posted by ImaFungi
reply to post by aravoth

 

so the only way to have technological innovation, and progression for the human species is to have a lot of people poor and dieing?

income disparities are not created by markets, it's created by a bunch of idiotic societal engineers trying to direct investment into certain areas of the economy which causes disparities in others. Like providing oil subsidies, Sure it helps the poor, but it also keeps everyone locked on oil. Do you want to get rid of the oil addiction or not?

The only way to have the revolution you are talking about is to get out of the way and let it happen. Why are you so fixated on being poor? Are you jealous of what other people have or something?

Originally posted by Tea4One
I'm going to bed. This discussion has been a pleasure. I shall leave you with something from Marx...

"Capitalism is whack y'all."

“The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.”
― Karl Marx

Thats my fav.

Originally posted by ANOK

Originally posted by Tsurugi

The above quotes are from two separate posts of yours. I don't exactly understand though...what is it that the "workers" would be managing?

Their own labour. Workers would maintain the rights to the product they produce.

Within what framework are they producing? Workers produce products by utilizing a system of production set up by someone else.

Never hear of worker cooperatives? Employee owned businesses?

Who builds the business for the employees to own?

reply to post by petrus4

S+F for you petrus4, this is a very interesting thread so far.
I didn't have the time to read everything yet but I will.

If you read Ludwig von Mises you might find Wilhelm Röpke and his model of a social market economy interesting, which was influenced by Mises.

Born in the aftermath of fascism, designed to withstand socialism, aiming for an economic order compatible with human freedom for our young federal republic.

It has it's flaws too, but I think it's probably the best balanced system and arguably the most successfull around today.

Let me know what you think.

reply to post by theubermensch


That was Stalin or Lenin bro. I think my quote of Marx was closer to anything he said than that.

Originally posted by ANOK

Originally posted by aravoth

It's not up to you to decide what is needed, that is up to individual. If there is a demand, it will be filled, one way or another.

But demand is artificially created also. The desire for a certain product doesn't just happen. I don't ever remember when I was younger not being able to manage without a cell phone, or wishing there was such a thing. Actually I still don't, hey call me a Luddite.

Workers are exploited at both ends. Workers produce more than they are paid for, and then they have to pay the owners profit on top of that when they buy goods at a store.

The only reason products are so expensive is because so many take their profit from the sale, from the pay check of the worker who should receive the full value of their labour.

Labour is more important than capital when it comes down to it. But in this system importance, and power to control, comes through wealth. As if wealth makes someone more capable, or intelligent.

edit on 2/2/2012 by ANOK because: typo

So you don't need anything? You don't need clothes, you could make your own, You don't need power, heat, you don't need a grocery store, you don't need phones, tv, blahh blahh.

So you wanna be Amish? Sweet, go away and be Amish, I don't know why you want to drag everyone with you, but that would suck.