Socialism crushes the economy

Originally posted by Oouthere
My uncle explained about nature, work, and reward in very simple common sense terms. When a bird is young its mother takes care of it, feeds it, and protects it. When the bird is grown enough to be on it's own, the bird either leaves the nest or is pushed out of the nest forcibly.

You make people earn a living and they will. You let them get free phones, free houses, free food, and many will not work.

Pretty simple,

Rich

edit on 28-5-2013 by Oouthere because: (no reason given)

The only problem with this is the other birds aren't hoarding all the nesting places, materials and food sources.

Originally posted by ThirdEyeofHorus
Von Mises Austrian School of Economics

What those people who ask for equality have in mind is always an increase in their own power to consume. In endorsing the principle of equality as a political postulate nobody wants to share his own income with those who have less.

From Wikipedia, the article on "misers":

Freud attributed the development of miserly behaviour to toilet training in childhood. Some infants would attempt to retain the contents of their bowels and this would result in the development of an anal retentive personality that would attempt to retain their wealth and possessions in later life.

Says it all.

If we look at Europe which countries do well and which countries do not so well? Those which are referred to as socialist, or countries where the government is hardly felt or seen?

Originally posted by Merinda
If we look at Europe which countries do well and which countries do not so well? Those which are referred to as socialist, or countries where the government is hardly felt or seen?

There are, currently, ZERO socialist countries in Europe, so I fail to see the point to your question.

2nd.

Originally posted by Merinda
If we look at Europe which countries do well and which countries do not so well? Those which are referred to as socialist, or countries where the government is hardly felt or seen?

Socialism has nothing to do with governments in modern Europe, none at all.

Socialism is an economic system, not a form of government, or social services.

The media you get your education from does not use political nor economic terms correctly.

They do that to keep the idiots in their place.

Frederik Engels...

"A kind of spurious socialism has arisen…that…declares all state ownership…to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the state of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon…must be numbered among the founders of socialism. The transformation…into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalistic machine, the state of the capitalists…The more it proceeds to take over productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The capitalist relation is not done away with, it is rather brought to a head." Frederik Engels, author of the Communist Manifesto rough draft, talking about liberalism masquerading as socialism.

reply to post by Merinda


Well your first mistake is to assume that whatever a politician says has a rationale behind it; it doesn't. Politicians are just puppets of the super rich and they usually parrot what the american masses want to hear. The general population is just retarded and anything with the word socialism in it is directly equated with communism and all that hyper propaganda. It's just a drama to garner votes and make the sheeple public brainwash into believing that the USA would remain on top no matter what, despite the continous decline that the country is going through.

Originally posted by Lamegame
reply to post by Merinda

 

Well your first mistake is to assume that whatever a politician says has a rationale behind it; it doesn't.

The generalization is not correct, in my opinion. There are many that really work hard, try to make a change.

Politicians are just puppets of the super rich and they usually parrot what the american masses want to hear. The general population is just retarded and anything with the word socialism in it is directly equated with communism and all that hyper propaganda.

Even communism or anarchy is not to be feared, not even by Americans ;-P, but I agree that the average American seems to be unaware of the meaning of the words and associates communism with oppression and poverty and anarchy with chaos and lawlessness.

It's just a drama to garner votes and make the sheeple public brainwash into believing that the USA would remain on top no matter what, despite the continous decline that the country is going through.

I often wonder if we are REALLY in decline - compare the standard of living today (even in America) with that of 100 years ago, and I believe you'll see that things have much improved since then. We still do not have managed to discard stupidities like "the State" or "The Nation", but borders are becoming less and less important and sharing of information is easy nowadays. The complaint that the masses are uneducated sheep is nothing new and the answer to that problem is as old as at least the Greek civilisation.

Wikipedia: "An idiot in Athenian democracy was someone who was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private—as opposed to public—affairs. Idiocy was the natural state of ignorance into which all persons were born and its opposite, citizenship, was effected through formalized education. In Athenian democracy, idiots were born and citizens were made through education."

Seem to me that all the idiots of the world should not be labeled sheep, but should be educated. Problem is: by whom..

The closest thing to a true socialist economy is the Mondragon cooperative in the Basque Country.

Tuttle
reply to post by Merinda

 

Socialism crushes the economy

Being that as the case, can you tell me why socialism did so well for the American economy during World War Two?.

Just curious to know what your thoughts are on that.

The title of the post isnt actually the point I am trying to make but the point I was arguing against, by laying out how the interests of an economic system and the interests of ones own bottom line are not diametrically opposed, but run into conflict for sure.

MarioOnTheFly
even though on paper, as many other ideologies, capitalism sounds nice...if it weren't for the motif ingrained in the ideology. It is not the pursuit of happiness, it's the pursuit of profit. It puts profit first. This is especially true for the corporations.

The problem with starting off with capitalism, is the starting point...which is the question..."how can I earn money ?", and not "how can I contribute to society or a local economy?". In order to sell more (because without constant increase in sales the ideology would crumble) one needs to speed up production, reduce expenses. What this brings is a reduction in quality of products and reduction in wages for the working class. Examples of this is contained within all too well known social meme..."made in China" or "made in Taiwan".

Capitalists are playing dumb...without the second/third world countries which are used as cheap labor, there wouldn't be any capitalism. There wouldn't be any corporations.

First off Socialism or what is called socialism in Scandinavia is really capitalism with a twist. You could argue America is a socialist country with an exclusive focus on defense, rather than diversifying over a broad sector that might benefit Americans in other areas than defense.

With that said capitalism is great to motivate people to be productive and to achieve. Also, Capitalism can run afoul when 2 scenarios are met, money passes from being the tool to being the solemn and only goal. The distribution of money becomes top heavy causing money in the economy to dry up causing talent and resources going unfunded and therefore unused. The space race saw a lot of spending with the focus on a goal money was spent and brought many fruits in the form of manifold innovations. Of course beating the Soviets to the race to the moon is a goal sexy as hell and the spending was questioned by only a few, unlike other goals like providing universal healthcare (not talking Obamacare here, which is actually shifting the costs of health care AWAY from the state) . When money is the goal you have a lot of people thinking hard how they can transfer digital dollars originating from the central bank into their own accounts, preferably with as few stops in between as possible. Thats when you get the brightest people working on algorithms playing the forex markets rather than being out there and being productive.

I do believe this article is realted.

www.salon.com...


To summarize when powerful people set out with the singular goal of making money, no matter the cost to society, then its trouble, a lesson Germany learned the hard way (and even then before they pocketed their money they had to provide arms and supplies in return so at least something was produced). This is not meant as an attack on capitalism, but as a caution, that a system which saw unprecedented progress needs direction and regulation to function as intended, just like any sport needs a referee and drug tests, not deregulation.