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Lonestar
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AECCP Dark Lord of the Sith
Aug 2000
time: 00:35
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quote:
Originally posted by Agathon
Only because they are ripping off others.
Besides, you should know better than to use the tired old "human nature" argument. Communal living was the norm over most of the history of our species - if anything is natural it is that. |
So, you're advocating a return to Hunter-Gatherism? Because that's Damn near the only way you'd be able to pull it off, and they fought and bickered with each other as much as the last guy. Remember your Hobbes (the Englishman, not the Tiger); Man is a beast without a society to help them out.
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And any student of Marx could tell you that what counts as "human nature" at any one time is largely a social construct.
Save the bad arguments for somewhere else. |
Wow, just, wow. So a student of Marx, who, by the way, complained in his Communist Manifesto that the reason for recessions were...
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Originally written by a pompus jackass
Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce |
Would somehow have a better grasp on human than everyone else? Gotcha. We better trust the guy who also thinks;
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Marx said:
Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists |
As well they should. It is a disgusting concept! Karl Marx believed that the family structure was inherently exploitative, with capitalists treating their wives and children as property and bequeathing their accumulated assets to their children (he saw the concept of inheritance as a horrible evil). His solution? Children should be raised by the state, marriage and inheritance should be eliminated, and noncommital sex should be the only form of relationship.
The man was a lunatic, and most people don't even have any idea how extreme and unrealistic some of his views were, because they've never bothered to read his Manifesto.
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mrmitchell
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Claims to be a member of secret police. Has threatened to kill his political enemies, especially Communists. Has called for a military takeover in Spain. Used pro-Nazi propoganda as an avatar. Has only supported dictatorships.
Damn...
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Giancarlo
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Los Angeles
Apr 2000
time: 02:35
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quote:
Originally posted by joncha
I have never done anything to indicate that I support Stalin or his methods. Stalin is pretty much diametrically opposed to my view of socialism.
You, however, had until minutes ago a Waffen SS avatar, and have made many pro-fascist statements on these boards.
It seems to me that you are either a neoNazi or a Hitler fanboy. Which is it? |
I removed it because I was requested to by several respected posters. If you were the one demanding me to remove it I wouldn't because you are neither a decent poster or a respected poster. I do not make pro-fascist statements on these boards, in fact I said things about race that are quite the opposite.
You are a fool, I'm not a neo-nazi nor am I a Hitler fanboy. If you got over your brain damage, you would understand that me having that as my avatar was just recognizing what happened in history. I did not endorse it. You can scream your lungs out the opposite, but that was just not my intent. Go ahead and try to say the opposite.. how the hell do you know anyways? I do not like Nazis, fascists, Hitler, Stalin, commies, socialists.. I think they are all scum.
MitchBSer:
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Claims to be a member of secret police. Has threatened to kill his political enemies, especially Communists. Has called for a military takeover in Spain. Used pro-Nazi propoganda as an avatar. Has only supported dictatorships.
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I'm not a member of secret police, I was just joking around with the people here. I have not threatened to kill political enemies, again joking around (with plenty of smilies). The call for a military takeover was done at a time of extreme anger... I accept the results of the election and the fact that Zapatero is prime minister. I am not Nazi, I just recognize history... as I also happen to be an antiques collector.
"Has only supported dictatorships?" what are you braindead or something? So Aznar was a dictator even though he was elected?  Berlusconi was a dictator even though he was elected?
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mrmitchell
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D'oh. Word slip there. I meant has "OFTEN" supported dictatorships.
I'm sure a brother can understand. Apologies.
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mrmitchell
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anymore
Bam! Thank you very much.
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:35
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quote:
Originally posted by Lonestar
So, you're advocating a return to Hunter-Gatherism? Because that's Damn near the only way you'd be able to pull it off, and they fought and bickered with each other as much as the last guy. Remember your Hobbes (the Englishman, not the Tiger); Man is a beast without a society to help them out. |
Typically FOS - just like all the other AECCPs.
Where did I say that I endorsed a return to huntergathering, or even to small agrarian communities? Of course I didn't say that, you just set up a straw man because you don't have half a brain to argue with.
I said, that there was more evidence to support the idea that communal living was more "natural" than competitive systems. If you read anything more than Archie comics you would that people from more primitive societies have a great deal of trouble fitting into capitalist societies because they instinctively find the capitalist brand of selfishness to be objectionable.
Even people like us, who have been inculcated into capitalism still find the selfishness it requires objectionable. You see this all the time in people who will only accept a "fair price" when they could have earned more, or the widespread objections towards price gouging, even though the market would function more efficiently in these cases if we were more selfish.
Either come up with some real argument instead of an obvious straw man or stop wasting server space.
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Wow, just, wow. So a student of Marx, who, by the way, complained in his Communist Manifesto that the reason for recessions were... |
Yawn.... so we have to accept everything written by Adam Smith and David Hume at face value? Once it is written down, it remains forever the truth. Get off the grass.
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As well they should. It is a disgusting concept! Karl Marx believed that the family structure was inherently exploitative, with capitalists treating their wives and children as property and bequeathing their accumulated assets to their children (he saw the concept of inheritance as a horrible evil). His solution? Children should be raised by the state, marriage and inheritance should be eliminated, and noncommital sex should be the only form of relationship. |
So if someone is wrong about one thing, then he's wrong about everything. What an astonishing inference.
Besides, in Marx' time women were effectively chattels. Don't you object to that?
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The man was a lunatic, and most people don't even have any idea how extreme and unrealistic some of his views were, because they've never bothered to read his Manifesto. |
Obvious you didn't because most of Marx's worthwhile stuff is not in the Manifesto.
And calling him a lunatic is ridiculous. Loads of scholars disagree with Marx, but they don't stoop to calling him a lunatic. I disagree with Milton Friedman, but I don't think he's a lunatic.
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Lonestar
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AECCP Dark Lord of the Sith
Aug 2000
time: 00:35
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quote:
Originally posted by Agathon
Typically FOS - just like all the other AECCPs.
Where did I say that I endorsed a return to huntergathering, or even to small agrarian communities? Of course I didn't say that, you just set up a straw man because you don't have half a brain to argue with.
I said, that there was more evidence to support the idea that communal living was more "natural" than competitive systems. If you read anything more than Archie comics you would that people from more primitive societies have a great deal of trouble fitting into capitalist societies because they instinctively find the capitalist brand of selfishness to be objectionable.
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What do you have to base that by? Even Ishi, the "Last Indian" readily integrated into a industrial, capitalist culture. The Plains Indians had no trouble using industrial weapons against others.
Only the most primative cultures have trouble with capitalist societies, and even that is iffy. Go read Guns, germs, and Steel, the New Guina Highlanders had no trouble of grasping the concepts of free-market. Nor, I might add, did the Maori.
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Even people like us, who have been inculcated into capitalism still find the selfishness it requires objectionable. You see this all the time in people who will only accept a "fair price" when they could have earned more, or the widespread objections towards price gouging, even though the market would function more efficiently in these cases if we were more selfish.
Either come up with some real argument instead of an obvious straw man or stop wasting server space.
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Alright, how's this: Communism cannot work in the modern world. Not anywhere near "the ideal" sense. Marxism itself would fail utterly. Humans have been too affected by the past several thousand years or so of complex social organizations for it to work.
Humans won't work as hard without self-interest to motivate them. The collective self-interest of a nation of millions is much too remote and abstract to have the emotional immediacy necessary to strongly motivate most individuals. An economy of millions or hundreds of millions of people is not simple enough to predict and control from a central bureaucracy.
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Yawn.... so we have to accept everything written by Adam Smith and David Hume at face value? Once it is written down, it remains forever the truth. Get off the grass. |
Hell no. Didn't I say that there can be some regulation? Like, say, breaking apart monopolies to ensure fair buisness practices and fair treatment to consumers?
But wait! Marx was For monopolies!
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Originally written by a person who never worked in a factory in his life
Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly |
Monopoly and state control are the mantra of communism, but monopolies are always destructive. Without competitive forces to ensure quality and efficiency, monopolistic entities, whether they be corporations or government agencies, invariably descend into wastefulness and sloth. This is why Microsoft was brought up on charges by the Justice Department: competition is nature's way of ensuring the strength of the species, and it has proven to be a good way to ensure the strength of an economy as well. Furthermore, competition means choice, and choice means that the buying public has power.
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So if someone is wrong about one thing, then he's wrong about everything. What an astonishing inference.
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Yep. I guess I should be ashamed that when he also lays down stuff like this as how a communist society should be:
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Originally written by a person who never worked in a factory in his life
Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state |
Why, that almost sounds like something a Dictatorship would do!
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Marx said:
Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture |
What sounds better to you? Being paid to work, or being forced to work? Choosing an employer based on pay and benefits, or being forcibly conscripted into an "industrial army?" The phrase "obligation to work" sounds better than "being forced to work by threat of punishment", but without the possibility of positive incentive, it means the same thing. Marx would take away your freedom to choose not to work. Suppose you decide that you would rather move to a small cabin up north, live largely off the land, and do just a little bit of occasional work for spending money? In a capitalist society, you would be forced to adopt an austere lifestyle, but no one would stop you. But Karl Marx would accuse you of not pulling your weight, and you would be forced to go work the same way as everyone else.
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Originally posted by someone with a skewed view of the world
Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels |
- Marx targeted emigrants (presumably with something stronger than the general confiscation of land; he probably meant that they should lose everything but their underwear), because the free movement of people, goods and services is anathema to Marxism. This is a reminder of a serious problem with communism- it can only exist in isolation. A communist society will be "contaminated" by contact with a capitalist society, due to the capitalist habit of broadcasting images of its wealth and materialism. Those images act as a magnet for the "best and brightest," who will be rewarded like princes under capitalism but treated no better than the ignorant and useless under communism. However, a society will not fare well if the "cream of the crop" leaves. So what can they do? They can restrict access to capitalist broadcasts and they can criminalize emigration. And of course, this is precisely what real communist states have done. I think we all recall the infamous Berlin wall.
- Marx wished to persecute rebels, but how does one specifically target rebels? In free societies, a rebel is only arrested if he commits an act which violates one of the general laws, such as shooting a police officer or bombing a government building. The fact that he is a rebel is not, in itself, considered illegal. There are no special laws designed to target rebels, and in fact, numerous forms of public protest, demonstration and civil disobedience are actually protected by law. So we return to the question of: "how do we specifically target rebels"? Well, one can hardly single them out by waiting for them to break a general law- this is what we do for all citizens. The only way to single out rebels is to target their political beliefs. This is exactly what real communist states have always done, and although some of you claim that this isn't what Marx intended, you can't explain how he planned to persecute "rebels" without resorting to such measures.
And the more famous tenets of communism....
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More rambling
Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes |
In other words, seizure of all real estate. No more worrying about saving money to buy that house ... the government will take it away!
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Yet more rambling
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax |
(emphasis mine)
After taking away your real estate, the government will take away most of your income too. Wonderful.
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Even more rambling
Abolition of all rights of inheritance
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How charming. It's one thing to tax inheritance, particularly for the wealthy, but to confiscate it entirely? That's simply unconscionable.
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Besides, in Marx' time women were effectively chattels. Don't you object to that?
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Sure I do. But if you would apply his ideology to any western country today, personal freedoms would go down the crapper real fast.
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Obvious you didn't because most of Marx's worthwhile stuff is not in the Manifesto.
And calling him a lunatic is ridiculous. Loads of scholars disagree with Marx, but they don't stoop to calling him a lunatic. I disagree with Milton Friedman, but I don't think he's a lunatic. |
So, closing argument is that Das Kapital somehow vindicates him?
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:35
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quote:
Originally posted by Lonestar
What do you have to base that by? Even Ishi, the "Last Indian" readily integrated into a industrial, capitalist culture. The Plains Indians had no trouble using industrial weapons against others. |
I see. Using guns means that they had become capitalists.
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Only the most primative cultures have trouble with capitalist societies, and even that is iffy. Go read Guns, germs, and Steel, the New Guina Highlanders had no trouble of grasping the concepts of free-market. Nor, I might add, did the Maori. |
Really, I take it you have lived in New Zealand? I've read GGS and one example does not a general claim make. The Maori tended to buy and sell, but as communes not as individuals. The settler farmers were quite pissed about this as they couldn't compete effectively.
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Alright, how's this: Communism cannot work in the modern world. Not anywhere near "the ideal" sense. Marxism itself would fail utterly. Humans have been too affected by the past several thousand years or so of complex social organizations for it to work. |
That's a BAM.
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Humans won't work as hard without self-interest to motivate them. |
Sure they will. They just have to believe in what they are doing. Wars are the primary example of such behaviour.
You are presuming that our culture, which forces unnatural behaviours upon us (the like of which our ancestors would have found obscene) has no effect.
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The collective self-interest of a nation of millions is much too remote and abstract to have the emotional immediacy necessary to strongly motivate most individuals. An economy of millions or hundreds of millions of people is not simple enough to predict and control from a central bureaucracy. |
Again, wars disprove this first supposition quite effectively. Moreover one doesn't have to be committed to a planned economy to be a communist. Any communist worth the name is committed to outcomes, not means.
But that's hardly the point. The communists think that capitalism is inherently self destructive and looking at the environmental evidence it is hard to argue. The flipside of your assertion is of course that a decentralized economy finds it very hard to solve collective action problems such as those that cause pollution.
Of course the right wing solution is to sit around and pretend it isn't happening, all the while living a ridiculously unsustainable lifestyle and dooming our descendants to the inevitable reckoning.
Capitalism is like a wheel spinning freely without any friction with the real world. Unfortunately, that is not sustainable.
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Hell no. Didn't I say that there can be some regulation? Like, say, breaking apart monopolies to ensure fair buisness practices and fair treatment to consumers?
But wait! Marx was For monopolies! |
Oh yeah, of course it is the same thing. In one case you have a private company aiming to enrich itself, on the other a public service. But I guess you don't live in a civilized country with a public health care system - so you've never seen a public monopoly work.
Foreigners laugh at you guys because you can't for the life of yourselves provide health care for your people at a reasonable cost. Canada manages to provide world class health care for all its people at a fraction of the amount the US spends on health care because private markets simply cannot provide efficient health care.
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Monopoly and state control are the mantra of communism, but monopolies are always destructive. |
1. No they are not. The central concept is public control - people disagree over what that means . Some are statists, others would devolve to local communes.
2. Private monopolies are always destructive. Public monopolies can be if badly run, but are not necessarily so. Of course in the US you live under the perverse impression that government can't do anything right (except spend billions on weapons). But if I compare the state run primary school system and health care system I grew up with, with the joke that most of you guys call education, there's no comparison.
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Without competitive forces to ensure quality and efficiency, monopolistic entities, whether they be corporations or government agencies, invariably descend into wastefulness and sloth. |
This is total bullshit. Our health care and education systems work just fine and have done for years. The only thing that has made them slightly worse is idiotic market fundies meddling with it. Any organization faces these problems. It behooves the shareholders to hire efficient management. In the case of public monopolies it's the government's job to make sure there is less waste - people will quickly biff them our if it isn't working properly.
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This is why Microsoft was brought up on charges by the Justice Department: competition is nature's way of ensuring the strength of the species, and it has proven to be a good way to ensure the strength of an economy as well. |
It also has perverse consequences by sometimes encouraging "races to the bottom". But I'm glad you brought up Microsoft because it shows up one of the problems with capitalism - people with enough money can simply subvert the system and will do so at every opportunity.
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Furthermore, competition means choice, and choice means that the buying public has power. |
I believe Che Guevara once said "competition is a means of increasing production" - it's not as if a communist system must completely abandon it.
The power remark is of course complete rubbish. Sure, in a capitalist economy, everyone with money has some degree of power to determine what gets produced, but of course in vastly unequal amounts.
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What sounds better to you? Being paid to work, or being forced to work? |
Unless I live off capital I must sell my labour or starve (or eke out a living on welfare, which would be abolished if your friends had their way) - you can quibble, but that sounds like being forced to work.
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Choosing an employer based on pay and benefits, or being forcibly conscripted into an "industrial army?" |
Who says you can't have some choice in a communist society? As I said, most people don't have any choice but to work and most people have to put up with jobs that they may not like but which are available.
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The phrase "obligation to work" sounds better than "being forced to work by threat of punishment", but without the possibility of positive incentive, it means the same thing. |
I don't see any real difference for the average working Joe. If I were rich it would make some difference, but most people aren't.
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Marx would take away your freedom to choose not to work. |
A freedom which does not exist for the vast majority of people other than the parasitic layabouts who live off investments.
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Suppose you decide that you would rather move to a small cabin up north, live largely off the land, and do just a little bit of occasional work for spending money? |
Phhhtt! Ever tried doing that? Rich people have bought up most of the nice places.
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In a capitalist society, you would be forced to adopt an austere lifestyle, but no one would stop you. But Karl Marx would accuse you of not pulling your weight, and you would be forced to go work the same way as everyone else. |
I don't see why. Where do you get this perverse idea from? If people don't want to work they won't get paid. If they want to work only a little, they will get paid a little.
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[*]Marx targeted emigrants (presumably with something stronger than the general confiscation of land; he probably meant that they should lose everything but their underwear), because the free movement of people, goods and services is anathema to Marxism. This is a reminder of a serious problem with communism- it can only exist in isolation. A communist society will be "contaminated" by contact with a capitalist society, due to the capitalist habit of broadcasting images of its wealth and materialism. Those images act as a magnet for the "best and brightest," who will be rewarded like princes under capitalism but treated no better than the ignorant and useless under communism. However, a society will not fare well if the "cream of the crop" leaves. So what can they do? They can restrict access to capitalist broadcasts and they can criminalize emigration. And of course, this is precisely what real communist states have done. I think we all recall the infamous Berlin wall. |
Oh blah blah. And of course we know how "true" those images are. Everyone in the west lives in a huge house and has all the latest clothes. But no one ever sees the 10 year old Indonesian children who make them.
Apart from a very few people, capitalism tends to reward the docile.
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[*]Marx wished to persecute rebels, but how does one specifically target rebels? In free societies, a rebel is only arrested if he commits an act which violates one of the general laws, such as shooting a police officer or bombing a government building. The fact that he is a rebel is not, in itself, considered illegal. There are no special laws designed to target rebels, and in fact, numerous forms of public protest, demonstration and civil disobedience are actually protected by law. So we return to the question of: "how do we specifically target rebels"? Well, one can hardly single them out by waiting for them to break a general law- this is what we do for all citizens. The only way to single out rebels is to target their political beliefs. This is exactly what real communist states have always done, and although some of you claim that this isn't what Marx intended, you can't explain how he planned to persecute "rebels" without resorting to such measures. |
Suits me. I couldn't give a **** about people whose only desire is to screw others over for their own benefit.
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In other words, seizure of all real estate. No more worrying about saving money to buy that house ... the government will take it away! |
Suits me. Although I really don't see anything terribly destructive about allowing people to own their own homes.
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After taking away your real estate, the government will take away most of your income too. Wonderful. |
You assume it's yours by right.
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How charming. It's one thing to tax inheritance, particularly for the wealthy, but to confiscate it entirely? That's simply unconscionable. |
Awwwwww........ boo hoo.
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Sure I do. But if you would apply his ideology to any western country today, personal freedoms would go down the crapper real fast. |
Yes the freedom to starve, the freedom to exploit others.... etc.
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Tattila the Hun
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Tornio
Oct 2002
time: 07:35
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I was under the impression, that US and USSR combined could have glassed the earth five times over....
Why don't you accuse fez of being pro-shooting people, or NRA fanboy? I mean that's M-16, or CAR-15, designed to kill.
I like german WWII era equipment, Tigers, SturmVogels, etc.
I think they're neat. And propaganda has never been as good as it was in WWII era Germany. (Goebbels was genious in his area of expertice. )
As these are products of the Third Reich, or Nazi-Germany, does that mean I'm a neo-nazi?
Well, I don't believe the state of Israel should exist, either. (Should not have been created, to be precice. It's there, can't do nothing about it.) So, maybe I'm an anti-semite too. (Though I have nothing against jews.)
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Sir Og
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Lurking in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria
Jun 2001
time: 07:35
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quote:
Originally posted by Lonestar
You'll noticed I very carefully said that believing in the ideology of communism is stupid.
And, it's further worth noting that the track record of capitalism ( albeit, at least a little regulated) indicates that the quality of life for the average joe is a lot better than it is in communist countries. |
The average joe in 19th century Britain for example wasn't doing great and if you add the hundreds of milions from the colonies the picture doesn't look that bright for capitalism. Only after capitalist countries became more "Social" the average joe's quality of life was on the rise.
I am not sayng that socialism was great though. The planned economy sux big time and without strong economy it is hard to get anything going.
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Sir Og
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Lurking in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria
Jun 2001
time: 07:35
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Just want to add that the fact that socialism was invented and had many supporters in the most devoloped capitalist countries should tell you that capitalist societies were not that great.
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Lonestar
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AECCP Dark Lord of the Sith
Aug 2000
time: 00:35
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quote:
Originally posted by Agathon
I see. Using guns means that they had become capitalists.
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They had to get the guns from somewhere. But how? By possibly...trading Goods and services? Sounds like they had the basic concept down.
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Really, I take it you have lived in New Zealand? I've read GGS and one example does not a general claim make. The Maori tended to buy and sell, but as communes not as individuals. The settler farmers were quite pissed about this as they couldn't compete effectively.
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Maori also had the concept of Property down, as they went out of their way to raid other, less technological advanced tribes. You see that sort of thing everywhere. Certainly not communal.
I'll make a concession here; I have no idea what that means.
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Sure they will. They just have to believe in what they are doing. Wars are the primary example of such behaviour.
You are presuming that our culture, which forces unnatural behaviours upon us (the like of which our ancestors would have found obscene) has no effect.
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Culture certainly does have a large effect on motivation, but in cases where there's a strong disincentive to work over a long time, the work ethic will slowly be errorded away. As people see others shirk without reprocussion they will be inclined to shirk as well, even if they were taught not too. Eventually you get a situation like that of Russia where "They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work."
Of course you can use negative reinforcement instead of positive reinforcement, and hand out beating with the same regularity that capitalists hand out pay raises. This was how slavery worked after all. This is also generally how conscript armies work.
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Again, wars disprove this first supposition quite effectively. Moreover one doesn't have to be committed to a planned economy to be a communist. Any communist worth the name is committed to outcomes, not means.
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Gotcha. Streets red with Blood. 
Next time, just come out and say it.
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But that's hardly the point. The communists think that capitalism is inherently self destructive and looking at the environmental evidence it is hard to argue. The flipside of your assertion is of course that a decentralized economy finds it very hard to solve collective action problems such as those that cause pollution.
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I call Bullshit. Marx believed that it is historically inevitable that wealth will concentrate in fewer and fewer hands, until the world is divided into a small number of wealthy capitalists and the large mass of the proliteriat, with no middle class at all anymore. The proliteriat will only be paid enough for them to survive (as they were in Marx's time)
And, as anyone can see by looking around them, the middle class has not been disappearing, but has instead grown. Also, workers no longer are at the starvation point, and in fact their lot has been getting better steadily. Thus, the law of "increasing wealth and misery" is not in effect, and there is no reason for the revolution ever to occur.
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Of course the right wing solution is to sit around and pretend it isn't happening, all the while living a ridiculously unsustainable lifestyle and dooming our descendants to the inevitable reckoning.
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That's the view of some rightwingers. I'm a bit on the treehugger side.
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Oh yeah, of course it is the same thing. In one case you have a private company aiming to enrich itself, on the other a public service. But I guess you don't live in a civilized country with a public health care system - so you've never seen a public monopoly work.
Foreigners laugh at you guys because you can't for the life of yourselves provide health care for your people at a reasonable cost. Canada manages to provide world class health care for all its people at a fraction of the amount the US spends on health care because private markets simply cannot provide efficient health care.
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Here's another concession, I've heard both good and bad things about the Canadian health care system, and I can't make a comment on the American Health Care system because all my life I've either been in the MIlitary, or a military dependent. I won't comment on what I don't know.
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1. No they are not. The central concept is public control - people disagree over what that means . Some are statists, others would devolve to local communes.
2. Private monopolies are always destructive. Public monopolies can be if badly run, but are not necessarily so. Of course in the US you live under the perverse impression that government can't do anything right (except spend billions on weapons). But if I compare the state run primary school system and health care system I grew up with, with the joke that most of you guys call education, there's no comparison.
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The thing is, though, that private monopolies that are badly run tend to disapear, while public monopolies that are badly run tend to go on and on and on. I mean, take Standard Oil. Yeah, they were a monopoly, but they didn't charge much more than what later companies did, and they lost their monopoly even before the government intervened. For situations like oil where there's no good reason for somebody to have a monopoly, you can either wait for them to disapear by themselves, or have the government break them up, all without resorting to socialization. When the government tries to socialize an area like this, they generally also have to cut of trade in that area or resort to huge subsidies to keep the industry competitive.
On the other hand, there are some industries where there is a natural tendancy for a monopoly to form. Take operating systems, the most popular operating system has an intrinsic advantage based solely on its popularity, because developers will tend to make more products for the most used systems. Here it is possible to make a case for a government monopoly, but they have costs as well. For instance, if the conditions that make a natural monopoly disapear, as they did for train travel at around the turn of the century, the government monopoly will continue chugging along, since it exists through government fiat, not the working of the market.
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It also has perverse consequences by sometimes encouraging "races to the bottom". But I'm glad you brought up Microsoft because it shows up one of the problems with capitalism - people with enough money can simply subvert the system and will do so at every opportunity. |
News, I'm sure, to those Enron Execs whose company was not bailed out.
Also, graft tends to be directly porportional to the amount of government intervention in an industry. If people are getting subsidies all the time, who's going to scream "bribe!" when this or that company gets one? The sort of things that would get the media in a tizzy if they happen in America don't even make the papers when they happen in France or Germany, let alone China, which has an almost unbelievable amount of graft.
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I believe Che Guevara once said "competition is a means of increasing production" - it's not as if a communist system must completely abandon it.
The power remark is of course complete rubbish. Sure, in a capitalist economy, everyone with money has some degree of power to determine what gets produced, but of course in vastly unequal amounts. |
*sniff, sniff* sounds like Horseshit to me. If a product is shoddy the company can either improve it, or go under. Even Hyundai has grasped that.
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Unless I live off capital I must sell my labour or starve (or eke out a living on welfare, which would be abolished if your friends had their way) - you can quibble, but that sounds like being forced to work.
Who says you can't have some choice in a communist society? As I said, most people don't have any choice but to work and most people have to put up with jobs that they may not like but which are available.
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Sound's like you're *****ing about having to work for your own self-interest. Sounds...lazy.
How would most people work in a Communist Society? Are they all brainwashed into working voluntarily? How is that good? Do many refuse to work? How would society function?
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A freedom which does not exist for the vast majority of people other than the parasitic layabouts who live off investments.
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News, I am sure, to people who made wise investments, and were rewarded for it.
I wonder if I'll be a parasitic layabout around age 50 or so when that Guv'ment Thrift Savings Plan (kinda like a IRA) I've been putting a hundred dollars a month in since I was 18 kicks in? I'll be a parasite because I had, well, the foresight to get ready?
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Phhhtt! Ever tried doing that? Rich people have bought up most of the nice places.
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If you're running off to live like a hermit becuse of the scenery, then you're one pampered hermit.
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I don't see why. Where do you get this perverse idea from? If people don't want to work they won't get paid. If they want to work only a little, they will get paid a little.
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I think this falls under the first quote, at the top of the page.
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Oh blah blah. And of course we know how "true" those images are. Everyone in the west lives in a huge house and has all the latest clothes. But no one ever sees the 10 year old Indonesian children who make them.
Apart from a very few people, capitalism tends to reward the docile.
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I would argue that someone living in the Haight Ashbury, Compton, or San Diego's Barrio Logan all live an order of magnitude better than most devolping countries, and certainly better than any so-called communist countries.
As an example, Barrio Logan is an economically deppressed, high crimerate "ghetto." (Naval Base San Diego is located here) Yet, it's filled with immigrants, both from South of the Border and Asia. I'm sure many would agree they have a higher quality of life in Barrio Logan than, say, Tijuana. Workers here are treated far better than other places.
And yet, we're a capitalist society!
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Suits me. I couldn't give a **** about people whose only desire is to screw others over for their own benefit.
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Of course, all indications are, that, in a Marxist country, the rebels would be justified by our usual standards.
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You assume it's yours by right.
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Christ, I hope so. I work hard for it. I worked hard to get to the point where I'm making a little more than some people. It's a dangerous job (not so much getting shot at, as working in a pseudo-industrial enviroment), and I think my income is, well, mine.
My Dad was a Marine, and now is a high-ranking civil service in the DIA. Work for him starts at 0530, and doesn't usually end until around 1800, then the drive home in Traffic. Ballpark, he makes $70k a year in this job. Upper-Middle class, to be sure, but he works hard for his money.
Uncle is a civil engineer, has done a lot of work on Dams and whatnot. Makes 6 figure income, and is currently entertain a prospect to work in Iraq for awhile. He worked his ass off to get his degrees, and eventually his PhD. And now he's being rewarded for it.
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Awwwwww........ boo hoo.
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Wasn't the state's to begin with, it was the family's.
Strangely, you can, make the argument that a healthy family is essentially communist.
A father may work hard for the benefit of his family, but he has many motivations which don't apply to a worker toiling for his country. The parental drive to provide for the children comes from instincts hardwired into the human brain after millions of years of evolution. No such evolutionary imperative drives people to toil for an abstraction such as king and country. A father or mother receives also direct benefits from the work they do for the family. The same is supposedly true for communism, but when the size of the "family" grows huge, the connection between work and benefit becomes abstract. There is no immediate perceptible change in the collective fortunes of the state when one worker slacks off, unlike the change in a family's fortunes if Mom or Dad slacks off.
There is one thing which a communist family and a communist state do share: unfettered power for their leaders. If Mom and Dad want to be abusive, the children have no recourse inside the family. And if a communist government wishes to abuse its power, there are no checks and balances to stop them. Parents are (ideally) kept from abusing their power by the rule of law, but there are no credible police forces for the misbehaving governments of the world. If people can't always be trusted to resist the temptations of power over their own children, how can any sane person claim that politicians should be implicitly trusted to resist the temptations of power over a population of total strangers?
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Yes the freedom to starve, the freedom to exploit others.... etc. |
Freedom of personal Property. Freedom of travel, freedom of press.
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31-03-2004 07:11
Irony: WWIII starts in Apolyton during a discussion of a hypothetical WWIII.
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