Why my mind is closing towards Capitalism

Originally posted by ProgressiveSlayer
reply to post by petrus4

 

It seems we agree about quite a bit. Rockefeller is a(n) [insert expletive here]. He was what I refer to as a conservative progressive, and was instrumental in moving America's economic system further toward corporatism, which is not what I advocate at all.

But, would you not say that he was the unavoidable result of capitalism? Now, free market capitalism sounds great but isn't it obvious that at some point someone will have made an amount of money that let's them drive a wedge between free and market. That is what he and others have done. From that point on you could call them progressives, corporatists or whatever, but lets be honest, capitalism (pure and unregulated) is what got them to that point.

reply to post by Skyfloating


No, there is competition-less collective, there are likely several competing factions that would try to seize power for them selves. They all necessarily have a lot of money and are very good at manipulation. They commonly seek to implement socialism because both nationalized and anarcho-socialism are relatively easy to infiltrate/overthrow to gain power. A pure Capitalist system can be, with a little manipulation, turned into corporatism and then fascism.

I am able to advocate Capitalism with certain restraints inasmuch as it is in my reasoning the most difficult system to manipulate into despotism. It is also the only system in which complete respect can be given to the Natural Rights of the Individual, given what I believe those Rights are.

reply to post by AwakeinNM

This is a rather simplistic view of Socialism and it does not address the issue raised by the OP - the simple inhumanity, predatory world view associated with capitalism.
Make that like some people never even get a drop of beer.

Or change your metaphor to a lifeboat. You try to get on because the ship has sunk.
You grab the edges. But those already on the boat slap your hand away with the paddle.

That is how I see it.

Everyone has a chance - come on. That is white middle class ideology.

Plus, I find your epithet "artsy-fartsy" insulting and anti-intellectual.

reply to post by daskakik


Rockefeller did not respect the Rights of the Individual. He was the result of corporatism, not the system I have consistently championed on this thread. Do not consider my concession of a good point to be anything other than an acknowledgement of a well made point, and do not try to twist to reflect anything other than my respect for Petrus4's civility.

Originally posted by ProgressiveSlayer
reply to post by daskakik

 

Rockefeller did not respect the Rights of the Individual. He was the result of corporatism, not the system I have consistently championed on this thread. Do not consider my concession of a good point to be anything other than an acknowledgement of a well made point, and do not try to twist to reflect anything other than my respect for Petrus4's civility.

I never said that he viewed capitalism the same way you do. I said that capitalism allowed him to get to where he was. In this way, he was a result of it.

His disregard for the Rights of the Individual allowed him to implement whatever was necessary once he was at that point, to further his own interests.

The only part of capitalism that bothers me is that it allows people to profit from evil. ie. wars, guns, drugs, etc

reply to post by omarm1984

To be fair, this isn't unique to capitalism. I think that profiting from these activities would and has happened in every type of system.

This is an interesting discussion on capitalism and would be more interesting if Capitalism existed anywhere.

I think the 2007 economic crisis in the US was sufficient to show that Capitalism does not exist in that country.... just a form of totalitarianism that masquerades as Capitalism.

When Ben Bernake tossed 400 billion plus to his cronies to bail them out of financial difficulties they got themselves into, he displayed definitively how the "system" really works.

Laissez-faire is a myth contrived to convince the underclasses that everyone shares the same risks... that everyone alike has the opportunity to sink or swim as chance and skills dictate.

Its not Capitalism... its the rich helping themselves.

reply to post by Skyfloating


Not necessarily. Not with the way capitalism has a limited amounts of jobs so you have to compete to get a job you may not want. The workplace is of authoritarian structure too so you don't have the options of "how to work, how long to work, what to work on." So in reality, you are born without a choice into a system you have to partake in with limited jobs available so you must sell your labour to work somewhere which 9/10s of the time you don't care for.

reply to post by ProgressiveSlayer


Free-market capitalism isn't voluntary either. You have to partake in the system otherwise you can't survive. That isn't a voluntary system, every system is involuntary.

Originally posted by danwolf
This is an interesting discussion on capitalism and would be more interesting if Capitalism existed anywhere.

I think the 2007 economic crisis in the US was sufficient to show that Capitalism does not exist in that country.... just a form of totalitarianism that masquerades as Capitalism.

I think we need a reminder of the definition of capitalism...

cap·i·tal·ism
   [kap-i-tl-iz-uhm] Show IPA
noun
an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.

dictionary.reference.com...

The world is most definitely capitalist. Even if there is some socialism within some countries, the overall economic system is capitalist, in that the majority of the means to produce are owned privately.

That is all capitalism is. Whether it is 'free-market' is arguable, and it is not the only system that has free-markets.
I would argue an economy that is owned communally is far more free than one owned and controlled by private entities who manipulate the market for own needs and desires.

It was socialists that invented the term and it is their definition that is the true definition. The right has appropriated and changed the definitions of terms to their benefit. That is like rapists changing the definition of rape to something positive in order to rape, and have you think it's good thing.

Seen a lot of posts about Capitalist psychopaths....well check this out.

The confirmed death toll of communist rule, so far is:

USSR (Lening, Stalin): 61,9 million
China (Mao): 35,2 million
Germany (Hitler): 20,9 million
Mao Soviets iN CHina: 3,4 million
Combodia: 2 million
Vietname 1,6 million
Yoguslavia: 1 million

Suspercted:
North Korea: 1,6 million

Added up:

~129 million dead in the 20th century.:

Still think socialism/communism is cool? I guess y'all have your facts wrong on the psychopaths.

Originally posted by Siberbat
Seen a lot of posts about Capitalist psychopaths....well check this out.

The confirmed death toll of communist rule, so far is:

USSR (Lening, Stalin): 61,9 million
China (Mao): 35,2 million
Germany (Hitler): 20,9 million
Mao Soviets iN CHina: 3,4 million
Combodia: 2 million
Vietname 1,6 million
Yoguslavia: 1 million

Suspercted:
North Korea: 1,6 million

Added up:

~129 million dead in the 20th century.:

Still think socialism/communism is cool? I guess y'all have your facts wrong on the psychopaths.

Glad you pointed this out.
Neither Bolshevik rule nor Maoism was substantially better than Hitler.
If anyone has doubts, just watch the online film The Soviet Story.

However, Western Socialists and Social Democrats and other critics of capitalism are not all on this path of the psychopathic, totalitarian mass murderers. In fact most of them aren't.

A good example of a moderate halfway Socialism was Sweden in the 70's-80's.
I personally believe in building human systems from the bottom up and not from the top down.
And not forcing down any ideology on anyone's throat.
Including excessive capitalism.

Originally posted by Siberbat

Still think socialism/communism is cool? I guess y'all have your facts wrong on the psychopaths.

It's already been explained those countries were not communist, or socialist.

So that argument is not going to work.

Unless the workers democratically own and control the means of production, and distribution, is not a socialistic economy. If resources are not communally owned, and distributed according to need, it is not communism. No matter what it calls itself. For example the German Democratic Republic was not democratic.

Being state owned is not socialism. Even in Marxism's state-socialism the workers still own the means of production.

It's a bit naive to take words used by despot governments so literally. If I claimed to be a Christian, and then started killing people, it wouldn't mean the original definition would have to change to accommodate my actions, it would simply mean I'm not what I claim to be. The same with so called communist countries. Both sides use these terms for propaganda reasons, the so called communist countries use the term to make the people think the government is for them. The capitalist countries use the economic problems of those countries to demonize both 'communism', and the country they can't exploit.

Basically, we've all been had.

Originally posted by Skyfloating
Genocide is conducted on the basis of the belief that a certain group of people need to be erased. This thread alone contains hundreds of calls for capitalists, corporatists and other successful people to be removed. Because so many "Zeitgeist" and "Zion Protocols" and "OWS" followers call for such, it will certainly happen in the future, just like it has been happening in the past few thousand years.

I think we need some changes in the way we do things. I also, however, think that mass murder would be extremely counter-productive.

Behavior is caused by ones ideologies, beliefs, thoughts. In 1939 people kept talking about the evil jewish capitalists and the evil jewish bankers. They disseminated and promoted the "Protocols of the Wise Elders of Zion", just as you are doing it.

I have no idea who wrote the Protocols. It might have been Jews, but for all I know it might have been someone else. The point is, that to me there is a lot in there, which is very consistent with what I'm seeing happening in contemporary society, on close to a global level.

The fact that I have read the Protocols, and also consider them to be insightful about current politics and economics, should not automatically lead to the assumption that I am an anti-Semite. You might be able to make that conclusion if I definitively believed that the Protocols were written by a Jewish author, or if I said that the cabal was exclusively Jewish in origin. I have not made either of those claims.

The implication here is that genocide is not the result of false ideologies but again of those vague "powers that be" that socialists always refer to.

There is nothing vague about them whatsoever. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot; they were not in any way vague. They were exceptionally prominent in the public eye. Those who are behind them might not be so prominent, perhaps; but they are still not vague. Learning about them is entirely possible.

Lest you have also drawn the conclusion that I myself am an advocate of Marx, I will remind you of what I have already said, that Marx himself was a puppet of the cabal. They have played both sides. The problem is that the average Capitalist advocate (including yourself, apparently) has no difficulty viewing Communism as a malevolent conspiracy, but insists that Capitalism is not.

Apart from Zeitgeist, OWS and Protocols-of-Zion, contemporary marxist brainwashing tries to indoctrinate the idea that anyone who denounces Communism/Socialism is a conservative. All across this discussion board, anti-communists are referred to as "conservatives", automatically, without thinking. Thats how far gone marxists are.

I will accept this, and I apologise if you have been so labelled by me.

Originally posted by Siberbat
Seen a lot of posts about Capitalist psychopaths....well check this out.

The confirmed death toll of communist rule, so far is:

USSR (Lening, Stalin): 61,9 million
China (Mao): 35,2 million
Germany (Hitler): 20,9 million
Mao Soviets iN CHina: 3,4 million
Combodia: 2 million
Vietname 1,6 million
Yoguslavia: 1 million

Suspercted:
North Korea: 1,6 million

Added up:

~129 million dead in the 20th century.:

Still think socialism/communism is cool? I guess y'all have your facts wrong on the psychopaths.

We could talk about the death toll coming from the various colonial/neocolonial adventures of the European powers and attribute those to the Capitalist side of the scale, if we wanted to, including Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq...but to do so would be boring, and fairly pointless.

The only thing I will say here, is what I've said before.

Genocide has nothing inherently to do with ideology. It has to do purely with the psychopathic 4-7% of the human population, and the fact that the non-psychopathic majority continue to allow themselves to be sucked into playing the psychopaths' games. Said games always have genocide as their end result, regardless of ideology, because that is a major part of what the psychopaths want.

Catholicism slaughtered probably hundreds of thousands (and possibly up into the millions) of people during the Crusades. Mass murder also wasn't one of the things which Jesus encouraged during the Sermon on the Mount.

The "non-Capitalism (in whatever form) automatically equals genocide," argument is, in short, both reflexive and entirely logically infeasible, although I am aware that there are numerous people in this thread who won't accept that, no matter what I say.

It's a complete, pure strawman. I haven't considered it logical in the past, and I am not going to start now.

There is nothing stopping capitalism being practiced in a totalitarian state system.

Capitalism in China is not exactly freedom for millions of workers.

The attraction of doing business in China is undeniable. The country's low labor costs, in particular, enable companies to manufacture apparel, footwear, toys, and many other products very cheaply. China is also emerging as a large consumer market for many goods. At the same time, terrible labor rights and human rights conditions persist even as China's economy develops. Foreign companies must address these conditions if they wish to operate in a socially responsible manner....
....In practice, however, the rights of Chinese workers are routinely violated. Workers are often required to work far more than 40 hours a week, have few days off, are paid below the minimum wage, and are not paid required overtime. Improper deductions from wages are common. Some Chinese workers must pay a large sum of money as a "deposit" to their employer, and they may have to pay a "recruitment fee" in order to be hired. These payments can prevent workers from leaving jobs where their rights are violated. Physical abuse of workers, and dangerous working conditions, are also common....

www.chinabusinessreview.com...

Chinese workers are not benefiting from the lower cost of manufacturing, the end consumer is not benefiting, the only ones benefiting are the foreign capitalists.

Capitalism only looks good from your perspective of it.

reply to post by Siberbat

Seen a lot of posts about Capitalist psychopaths....well check this out.

If you really want to get a good grip on the amont of deaths from capitlism ask yourself this question. How many wars have been funded by the banking elite and how many have died as a result. The figures youare a drop in the ocean.

reply to post by Siberbat


I've always wanted to play this game because the argument is ridiculous...
Lets have a look at the number killed by the crimes of capitalism...

The Atlantic Slave Trade, roughly 30 million slaves died Source
World War One, 37million soldiers and people died. Source
Irish Famine, 1 million. Source
War on Iraq, 1 million. Source
World War Two, 48 million. Source
Vietnam War, 1.7 million. Source

118 million in total, and this is just being nice.
You counted Hitler who wasn't a communist. So taking 20million of your death count you have 108 million. Oh, wait, that's less than the communist regimes! Oh god!

Slave trade, capitalist.
World War One started thanks to imperialist policies, so capitalist.
Irish Famine, England took what food the Irish had so it could stir up the English economy. Capitalist.
War On Iraq, imperialist policies of the US, capitalist.
World War Two, caused by Hitler and the great depression, both capitalist faults.
Vietnam War, the US bombing the Vietnamese as well as agent orange, capitalist crime.

I could keep going...

reply to post by ANOK


so far, having read several pages of this thread, you seem to be the only person here that has a full grasp of the actual definitions of the terms "capitalism" and "socialism". a friend of mine who i went to school with linked me to this site after i posted a quote from Murray Rothbard where he admitted that capitalists hijacked the term "Libertarian" from left-wing anarchists and i just wanted to let you know that your comments in this thread are the main reason i signed up. glad to see that there are people who are of similar political persuasions to mine on this board.

reply to post by petrus4


I agree with what you are saying but believe that we will not change anytime soon! Mostly because those of us reaping the benefits of todays society control the flow of information or i should say disinformation. With all the safety nets taking the rap for the taxes that most pay! We blame those with the least. calling them lazy useless eaters who need to support themselves when in reality we are all this selfish species who foolishly believe any cooperation would lead to being taken advantage of! So we build our materialistic world around waste and excess, we Limit our empathy and replace it with chemical apathy through for profit pharmacutical companies. We are fools for these masters, slaves for our own greed and destined to destroy ourselves! this will happen unless we learn to live as united, civil and selfless people living in a true utopia before it's too late!