News Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg: A Comparative Analysis

[WheelsRCool]

Which proves absolutely nothing. Hong Kong has implemented price control like schemes and all corporations owe and alligence to the government, and the government regularly intervenes in order to keep prices as high as the cartels want them, and yet, they are regularly regarded as one of the "freest economies" according to the CATO institute.

Hong Kong's free-market economy has been damaged and hampered by the Chinese government. And you cannot artificially raise prices without causing a surplus of the product. As for cartels, cartels cannot form unless you have extensive government regulation.

The railroads formed a cartel after the Interstate Commerce Commission was created. The meat-packing industry formed a cartel after the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug act. The cigarette industry got themselves a cartel with the legislation increasing regulation and taxes on them. The drug industry has a cartel thanks to the FDA, etc...

That does not prove that Roosevelt was basing his policies off of Nazism, especially when Reagan's "corporatism" is a hell of a lot closer to Nazism anyway.

Reagan was about as far from Nazism as one could get, as Reagan was completely opposed to price controls, wage controls, infringing on free trade, etc...

 

[OrbitalPower]

The Hamilton quote is at 184-188.

There are different publishers of the "Federalist Papers." 184-188 is meaningless, and why would a quote take five pages to cover? What is he doing, taking a word from each page and meshing it together? The Federalist Papers are online so show me where it is there.

You two are absolutely hilarious.

 

[OrbitalPower]

The article doesn't support the conclusions of the von Mises homepage. First of all, von Mises says that socialism is Nazism; the article disagrees in the abstract.

Second, it says that Nazism operated under the framework of privatization. This is not at all what you two were claiming earlier, so the article doesn't support your conclusions. Nowhere in the article does it say a substantial portion of a majority of corporations' profits were transferred to the Nazi government; and the Nazi government had less social spending than the US.

The Nazis did not stand for "price controls"; they stood for protected private property at the barrell of a gun (anybody who questioned it was sent to a concentration camp), they stood for imperailism, they stood for war mongering, prejudice, and racism, and favortism to the rich.

Again, from my reading, this is closer to Reaganism than an FDR, who was the opposite of corporatism, rich favortism, and so on.

 

[WheelsRCool]

There are different publishers of the "Federalist Papers." 184-188 is meaningless, and why would a quote take five pages to cover? What is he doing, taking a word from each page and meshing it together? The Federalist Papers are online so show me where it is there.

I highly doubt the Supreme Court of the United States would use a fake quote in their analysis. That is the page number (s) listed if you Google the quote. However, the Federalist papers can be read online, so one can check them as well.

 

[OrbitalPower]

You are showing a severe lack of understanding of basic economics here. Saying that the price system must regulate resources by itself is not some radical Austrian theory. It is a proven fact.

LOL. This has to be one of the funniest claims in here, as economics can't prove anything. History has proven that the greatest progress has come when many resources were controlled by the government, or had a government hand helping along the market.

It's ridiculous to assert that one's own rules are just "the way things ought to be," with, of course, no evidence, and that this system is the most free, even though the problems with capitalism are well known and there are people in poverty around the world now than ever, with capitalism having supposedly "won out."

 

[WheelsRCool]

Second, it says that Nazism operated under the framework of privatization. This is not at all what you two were claiming earlier, so the article doesn't support your conclusions.

Since when did I ever claim Nazism didn't operate with privatization? That is the primary reason it was despised by the Marxists.

Nowhere in the article does it say a substantial portion of a majority of corporations' profits were transferred to the Nazi government; and the Nazi government had less social spending than the US.

The Nazis did not stand for "price controls"; they stood for protected private property at the barrell of a gun (anybody who questioned it was sent to a concentration camp), they stood for imperailism, they stood for war mongering, prejudice, and racism, and favortism to the rich.

They stood for price controls; it was a modified version of socialism. Favoratism to the rich requires socialist, big government policies. Capitalism is hostile to the rich, because their businesses are subject to competition, which can fail. It isn't like socialism, where once the rich control an industry, it is permanent.

Again, from my reading, this is closer to Reaganism than an FDR, who was the opposite of corporatism, rich favortism, and so on.

I would say you are right in that FDR was, as a person, for the little guy. He was no favorer of the rich. But the symptoms of his policies cause favoratism to the rich because they allow big business to take over markets.

 

[OrbitalPower]

I highly doubt the Supreme Court of the United States would use a fake quote in their analysis. That is the page number (s) listed if you Google the quote. However, the Federalist papers can be read online, so one can check them as well.

It's possible they either made a mistake, or a conservative is lying they ever said it. That's around "Federalist 29," which makes absolutely no sense because it's about regulating the militas.

If it truly exists, it should be easy enough to find the quote online, in an online copy, such as here:

http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa00.htm

 

[OrbitalPower]

Favoratism to the rich requires socialist, big government policies. Capitalism is hostile to the rich, because their businesses are subject to competition, which can fail. It isn't like socialism, where once the rich control an industry, it is permanent.

Comedy gold.

Socialism means worker controlled factories; a capitalist by definition is a "rich person."

You've lowered this argument down to arguing with the dictionary.

 

[WheelsRCool]

LOL. This has to be one of the funniest claims in here, as economics can't prove anything. History has proven that the greatest progress has come when many resources were controlled by the government, or had a government hand helping along the market.

HAH? Let's see, Soviet Union, about 100 million people at least starved to death, with billions more in poverty; the agricultural industry was so bad when collectivized in the Soviet Union that it was the one industry they partially privatized; millions starved in Communist China, with many more stuck in poverty. North Korea, a horrible dictatorship. Cuba, a horrid dictatorship. Socialist East Germany had to put up a wall to stop people from escaping to capitalist West Germany, etc...what's so difficult to understand about these?

It's ridiculous to assert that one's own rules are just "the way things ought to be," with, of course, no evidence, and that this system is the most free, even though the problems with capitalism are well known and there are people in poverty around the world now than ever, with capitalism having supposedly "won out."

People are people. Socialism fails for the same reasons capitalism works. Each system just provides different incentives and different ways to ration resources. And yes, capitalism is the most free. No other system has even provided the level of freedom of capitalism. You are free to go and do and become whatever you want. You are typing on a computer on the Internet, with access to tremendous wealth in this nation, from food to clothing to homes to information to music, whatever, it's available. You can sip a cappacino while watching a video on your computer, and listen to Beethoven. That is an amazing thing, considering humanity's history.

The reason there is so much poverty in the world has nothing to do with capitalism, but because capitalism has no succeeded in most of the rest of the world, which is because capitalism itself can't work without a proper legal system, financial system, political system, etc...all of these things must be in place.

It took America over 100 years to get things down right.

Look at how resource use has skyrocketed. Why? Because China and India, now adopting capitalism, have a thriving middle-class forming, which wants the same things we in the Western world use.

The parts of the world stuck in poverty are mostly socialist, or quasi-capitalist, in that they tried switching to capitalism without having a proper legal, financial, and political system, which is very harmful.

Read the book: The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else

 

[OrbitalPower]

There was never any "100 million people" who starved to death in the Soviet Union.

 

[WheelsRCool]

It's possible they either made a mistake, or a conservative is lying they ever said it. That's around "Federalist 29," which makes absolutely no sense because it's about regulating the militas.

If it truly exists, it should be easy enough to find the quote online, in an online copy, such as here:

http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa00.htm

Yep, I was just at that same website. I'll re-read the Federalist papers to find it. I was actually just checking Federalist 29, but didn't see it, however, there are other sections on the defense of the nation as well that might have it.

 

[WheelsRCool]

Comedy gold.

Socialism means worker controlled factories; a capitalist by definition is a "rich person."

You've lowered this argument down to arguing with the dictionary.

Socialism is nothing of the sort, unless you are still believing in the Marxist fantasy. Socialism is government ownership of the means of production. This is how every dictatorship gets into power, by promising "worker control of the factories," then becoming dictator and nationalizing the economy, and thus taking over control of everything, as Hugo Chavez is currently trying to do.

 

[BWV]

The article doesn't support the conclusions of the von Mises homepage. First of all, von Mises says that socialism is Nazism; the article disagrees in the abstract.

I only posted from the article what Von Mises was quoted as saying by the author - which is the exact same thing as the Bel paper. I don't care or necessarily support whatever the author of the piece said himself

Second, it says that Nazism operated under the framework of privatization. This is not at all what you two were claiming earlier, so the article doesn't support your conclusions. Nowhere in the article does it say a substantial portion of a majority of corporations' profits were transferred to the Nazi government; and the Nazi government had less social spending than the US.

I said that state control of the economy was an essential feature of Fascism.
It is simply not true that the Nazi Regime had a lower level of social spending. If you look at Table 3 in the Bel Paper Public Spending was 29% of National income in the 1937-38 period wheras it was 18% of GNP for the US in the same period (http://www.bea.gov). I don't know how the article (not an academic, peer reviewed source BTW) is defining social spending, but clearly the Nazi budget was aimed at creating employment for their political base, the German working man, while also gaining the support of key industrialists. This is the definition of fascist economic policy - certain large corporations are allowed to exist but are subject to extensive regulation and control by the state.

To reiterate Bel:

The Nazi regime
rejected liberalism, and was strongly against free competition and regulation of the economy by
market mechanisms (Barkai, 1990, p. 10). Still, as a social Darwinist, Hitler was reluctant to totally
dispense with private property and competition (Turner, 1985a, p. 71; Hayes, 1987, p. 71). Hitler’s
solution was to combine autonomy and a large role for private initiative and ownership rights
within firms with the total subjection of property rights outside the firm to state control.

In general terms, the main characteristics of Nazi economic policy were (1) the
growth of government fiscal intervention in the German economy through ambitious programs
that involved huge public expenditure, and (2) a tightly regulated economy, through more intense
restrictions and controls on markets. The first shock of public expenditures came in public works
–particularly the construction of highways– intended to fight unemployment. Soon after these
projects were in place, expenditures on armaments began their growth. According to The Banker
(1937, p. 114), increased expenditures after 1933/34 were basically taken up by armament
programs. These are the main policies that explain the evolution of public expenditure in Nazi
Germany.
40

Bel also mentions funding military and other public expenditures as a motive for the sales:

As early as in April 1934, The Economist reported that military expenditures were forcing the
Minister of Finance to look for new resources. At that time, “Railway preference shares are to be
sold to the extend of Rm. 224 millions. The Reich property, which is to be ‘liquidated’ to yield Rm.
300 millions, is not identified.” 42

From table 3 it is clear that the increase in public expenditure caused a sharp reduction in the
ability of fiscal revenues to cover expenditures. The public deficit as a percentage of national
income increased to exceptional figures. This evolution put the German Treasury under intense
pressure. Nathan (1944b, p. 41-ff) distinguished three different periods in pre-war Nazi financial
policy: (1) The period of short-term financing, 1933-35; (2) The period of “Debt Consolidation”,
1935-38; and (3) The period of maximum mobilization. Of the two ways to proceed with debt
consolidation, one was turning short term debt into long term debt. The second was to obtain
additional resources from, for instance, the sale of state-owned shares in firms. Indeed, it was
42 The Economist, April 7, 1934 [118 (4728), p. 763]
20
during Nathan’s second period (1935-38) when the sale of state-owned shares in most public
enterprises toke place.
government shares. For instance, when commenting that in the fiscal year 1935/36 the demands
on the Treasury increased rapidly because of the huge increase in the expenditure on armaments,
The Banker (1937, p. 112) wrote that “about 500 million marks was obtained by contributions from
the unemployment insurance, by more or less forced gifts, and by the sale of government shares”
(p. 112). Later in the same issue (1937, p. 131) the report added that, “Now that the control over
the banks is complete and final the Government is no longer interested in holding their shares.
Rising prices have enabled the Government to dispose of large amounts of Commerzbank shares
and the Golddiskontbank has sold some of its Deutsche Bank shares.”

 

[BWV]

There was never any "100 million people" who starved to death in the Soviet Union.

So how many people did die in the famines in the 1920s and 1930s? (you are right in that it was not 100 million) But tell us how many in your estimation and how this compare to famine deaths during the Tsarist period.

How many people died during the Great Leap Forward?

Why has there never been a famine in a country with democracy and capitalism?

 

[WheelsRCool]

There was never any "100 million people" who starved to death in the Soviet Union.

The number varies in estimates, but it was a far larger number than Hitler and the Nazis killed. If you create a severe food shortage, which collectivization of farming does, you will starve millions. Nothing kills massive numbers of people like a good old-fashioned mass-induced starvation.

Another thing that caused food supply problems was the Soviet central government rationing. There was no way to really know how much of this potato to grow or that tomato to not grow, or what livestock to raise and slaughter, etc...thus foods that needed to be grown often were under-supplied, meanwhile warehouses filled up with meat that ended up rotting, etc...

When Mikhail Gorbachev went to see Great Britain, he said to Margaret Thatcher, "How do you see to it that people get food!?" To him the idea of the market doing this by itself was unfathomable.

When Gorbachev saw the supermarkets in the United States, he lamented over how much more prosperous the capitalist system was than the Soviet system of socialism.

 

[OrbitalPower]

The number of people who died was around 20 million, not 100 million, and they starved, they were not in an execution program. Stalin's incompetence and forced murder are not the same thing.

Stalin was trying to rearrange the system to increase production, which actually happened, as much as 100-300% in areas such as steel production, agriculture, etc. They moved from the "third world" to the "second world," and now with 20 or so years of capitalism they've gone right back down into the third world and poverty is still massive there, with a high infant mortality rate.

Millions had always been dying in Russia and China, yet they were able to increase and turn their economy around far faster than economic systems would have allowed, and had the nationalists come to power the situation likely would have been more dire.

That is why many elderly Russians actually preferred life under Stalinism than under capitalism.

 

[OrbitalPower]

So how many people did die in the famines in the 1920s and 1930s? (you are right in that it was not 100 million) But tell us how many in your estimation and how this compare to famine deaths during the Tsarist period.

How many people died during the Great Leap Forward?

Why has there never been a famine in a country with democracy and capitalism?

I suggest you read Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze's book on poverty which claims that because India was implementing a market system for the distribution of health care and food resources, India "manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame". The book also claims women were better able to take care of themselves in China than in India.

That's about 50 million people every 8 years, far greater than even the Great Leap Forward let die or "murdered."

 

[OrbitalPower]

Also, you should really count up the deaths in Latin America and so on that resulted from the US not allowing them to run their countries like they wanted; as well as the problems of colonialism in Africa, adding up the total of capitalist deaths to be over 200 million.

The black book of capitalism estimates 100 million people murdered by capitalist systems, so anybody can throw out numbers. (And the black book of communism, which does not, by the way, suggest russia killed 100 million, was denounced by its fellow co-authors as Courtious had fudged the numbers regarding china.)

 

[WheelsRCool]

The number of people who died was around 20 million, not 100 million, and they starved, they were not in an execution program. Stalin's incompetence and forced murder are not the same thing.

20 million, 100 million, whatever. The Nazis are considered horrid and they "only" killed about 10 million people.

And so what if it was not an execution program? He took away people's private property and forced them to do engage in collectivism against their will, and the result was a massive food shortage that killed millions.

Stalin was trying to rearrange the system to increase production, which actually happened, as much as 100-300% in areas such as steel production, agriculture, etc. They moved from the "third world" to the "second world," and now with 20 or so years of capitalism they've gone right back down into the third world and poverty is still massive there, with a high infant mortality rate.

Modern Russia is not capitalist. Like I said, without a proper legal system, financial system, and political system, capitalism will not function properly, which is exactly what has happened in Russia, one problem being that the people there also are enormously distrustful of capitalism still, not understanding the fallacies of socialism. Thus much of the country is run by the Russia mafia and ultra-wealthy businessman who got lucky at the end of the Cold War and used their connections to get monopolies in industries like oil, steel, etc...and corrupt politicians.

Millions had always been dying in Russia and China, yet they were able to increase and turn their economy around far faster than economic systems would have allowed, and had the nationalists come to power the situation likely would have been more dire.

That is why many elderly Russians actually preferred life under Stalinism than under capitalism.

How would these elderly Russians know? They've likely never lived under real capitalism.

 

[OrbitalPower]

Using "it's not real capitalism" is the equivalent of Christians claiming the millions slaughtering by Christianity was not "true christianity" or the communists claiming it was "not real communism."

Stalinism was indeed a twisted form of socialism, trying to force equality. But at least they could industrialize.

Anyway, capitalist tragedies, according to certain economists and the black book of capitalism, are even worse.

Both Stalinism and capitalism are failures in my opinion for these reasons.

Also, fudging numbers for the sake of political argument is offensive to the people who already did die.

 

[WheelsRCool]

I suggest you read Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze's book on poverty which claims that because India was implementing a market system for the distribution of health care and food resources, India "manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame". The book also claims women were better able to take care of themselves in China than in India.

That's about 50 million people every 8 years, far greater than even the Great Leap Forward let die or "murdered."

India hasn't used a market system for healthcare or food up until very recently. If the market system failed with food, we would see starvation and food shortages in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, etc...which we don't have.

Also, you should really count up the deaths in Latin America and so on that resulted from the US not allowing them to run their countries like they wanted; as well as the problems of colonialism in Africa, adding up the total of capitalist deaths to be over 200 million.

Colonialism in Africa was very wrong, but was not capitalist. Death and poverty continue to occur in Africa precisely because it is not capitalist.

The black book of capitalism estimates 100 million people murdered by capitalist systems, so anybody can throw out numbers. (And the black book of communism, which does not, by the way, suggest russia killed 100 million, was denounced by its fellow co-authors as Courtious had fudged the numbers regarding china.)

The book is wrong. Capitalism has proven itself the world over for bringing millions of people out of poverty. No one can deny that. The book blames World War I and II, colonialism, anti-communist military wars (I am guessing the Korean War and the Vietnam War), and so forth, which are supposedly the fault of capitalism, something completely untrue in all these instances.

And BTW, the Ron Paul Libertarian capitalist types are completely opposed to war unless absolutely necessary.

 

[WheelsRCool]

Using "it's not real capitalism" is the equivalent of Christians claiming the millions slaughtering by Christianity was not "true christianity" or the communists claiming it was "not real communism."

No it isn't. Capitalism, and a free society, requires things like the rule of law, protection of private property rights, enforcing contracts, etc...one needs a proper political, legal, and financial system for all of this. You need the government and legal system to establish businesses and protect intellectual property, and private property. You need a sound financial system so that the banks remain solvent, and can do things like give out loans to entrepreneurs to start businesses.

We do not have such a nice system in places like Africa, Russia, etc...

Stalinism was indeed a twisted form of socialism, trying to force equality. But at least they could industrialize

Of course, it's always the "they got socialism twisted that time, we'll get it right the next time around." Every socialist things THEIR plan will work. Millions of dead people later...

Anyway, capitalist tragedies, according to certain economists and the black book of capitalism, are even worse.

What economists these days are still against capitalism? I know of know credentialed economist who seriously argues for socialism; high taxes and big government maybe, but not outright socialism. The new rising living standards in China and India even refute this idea that capitalism fails. The so-called "capitalist tragedies" as I've pointed out, were not due to economic failures of any kind, but to wars or colonialism, which are not caused by capitalism.

Both Stalinism and capitalism are failures in my opinion for these reasons.

The United State is a capitalist society, one in which the central government plays a very small role in the affairs of the economy in comparison to most other nations, and in which most things are in private control. It leads the world economically, politically, culturally, financially, scientificially, and militarily.

We now live at such a high standard of living that you can get any book you want overnight via Amazon, you can Google books, read the reviews on Amazon, download music of any type, carry a cellphone, a laptop, drive an SUV, eat whatever you want, etc...how can this possibly be considered a failure??

 

[BWV]

I suggest you read Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze's book on poverty which claims that because India was implementing a market system for the distribution of health care and food resources, India "manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame". The book also claims women were better able to take care of themselves in China than in India.

That's about 50 million people every 8 years, far greater than even the Great Leap Forward let die or "murdered."

I have read Sen, and he is hardly a socialist (and of course I paraphrased him about no famines occurring in a democratic country). What he has campaigned for are social safety nets and public healthcare and education in the context of a market economy (things I happen to agree with). The context of the quote is in regards to economic reforms (i.e. more capitalism - creating market incentives for farmers) taken in China in the late 1970s combined with better education and access to healthcare (China is used as an example precisely because it is bad, not good). This is contrasted with poor healthcare and education in rural India where the millions are extrapolated from excess mortality rates. However, from independance up until the liberalizations of the early 1990s India had an essentially socialist economy. Locals have referred to it as the "licence raj" after the paralysis imposed on the economy by bureucratic control.

And find me the numbers for a famine that killed more than a million people during the 19th century in Russia - there was no such thing. The average person had a much lower chance of starving to death or being murdered by the state under the worst of the Tsarist oppressions than they did under Lenin or Stalin. 1891-1892 famine in Russia caused 375,000 to 500,000 deaths which was the only 19th century famine of record in the country.

 

[OrbitalPower]

India started its market reforms in 1949, sure there was red tape, but all those other systems had red tape as well.

You just said Russia went capitalist, now you're saying they aren't capitalist, and you said regulation was anti-capitalist, yet all countries, including the US, have a vast amount of regulation.

You're not making any sense.

The failures of capitalism all over the third world is closer to laissez-faire capitalism, because they are making market reforms and they aren't doing it with the "Conservative Nanny State" backing their industries. I don't agree with the numbers, but I do agree that capitalism has killed millions as well.

And there are more people in poverty now than ever, esp. in Latin America where they have also been implementing numerous reforms. If you add up all "unnessary deaths," I would agree with the authors that capitalism, because of starvation and various wars among privatized states (such as Nazi Germany and the US), is far greater than the amount that starved in both Russia and China.

As usual, I do not see any scholarly refutation that Sen and Dreze are incorrect. I've read the book, and their arithmetic seems accurate.

This "true capitalism" nonsense has never existed; true socialism has existed, in the Israeli Kibbutzim, the Italian Haymarkets, and in the Spanish Civil War. These were far freer systems than that of the US, and were merely crushed by outside fources. However, at least they existed, and are proof that real freedom and democracy is attainable.

 

[BWV]

India started its market reforms in 1949, sure there was red tape, but all those other systems had red tape as well.

No they went socialist in 1949 (remember they were a capitalist British colony before that?).

As usual, I do not see any scholarly refutation that Sen and Dreze are incorrect. I've read the book, and their arithmetic seems accurate.

They are making a polemical point about excess mortality from poor healthcare in rural India compared to what in fact are the effects of market-driven reforms in China.

This "true capitalism" nonsense has never existed; true socialism has existed, in the Israeli Kibbutzim, the Italian Haymarkets, and in the Spanish Civil War. These were far freer systems than that of the US, and were merely crushed by outside fources. However, at least they existed, and are proof that real freedom and democracy is attainable.

So you hang your hope on those three pitiful examples as you type on a piece of technology that is a product of free enterprise and free markets over a network developed by a small group of elites that has been democratized and made ubiquitous by market forces? What is the freedom in the Israeli Kibbutz or the anarchist / communist cell for the non-conformist? There is none - if you try to replicate the structure at the state level you get totalitarianism (which is of course what Hayek said). So go on and live your fantasies, fortunately so few true believers exist anymore. It is amusing to run across one now and then (but the dogmatism does get tiring).

 

[WheelsRCool]

India started its market reforms in 1949, sure there was red tape, but all those other systems had red tape as well.

You just said Russia went capitalist, now you're saying they aren't capitalist, and you said regulation was anti-capitalist, yet all countries, including the US, have a vast amount of regulation.

You're not making any sense.

That's because you're not reading what I write. I said Russia tried to convert to capitalism, but without a proper political, legal, and financial system, it doesn't work.

And I said in general excessive regulation doesn't work. Some regulation is always needed, but at most a small amount, and only for certain industries.

The United States only has "massive" amounts of regulation because it has a massive economy; in comparison to most other nations, the U.S. government still plays a very small role in the U.S. economy.

The failures of capitalism all over the third world is closer to laissez-faire capitalism, because they are making market reforms and they aren't doing it with the "Conservative Nanny State" backing their industries. I don't agree with the numbers, but I do agree that capitalism has killed millions as well.

Capitalism hasn't killed millions. And no, the failures of the attempts at capitalism in the Third World are not laissez-faire capitalism. Laissez-faire means no government interference in the economy, which is impossible, however, we aim to keep the government as much out of the economy as possible. However, even with a laissez-faire system, the government still must enforce the law, keep the financial system solvent, and the political system must work properly. Laissez-faire does not mean anarchy. Doing the latter three does not require excessive meddling with the affairs of the economy. These systems in the Third World do not have proper legal, financial, or political systems, so their attempts at capitalism go haywire and do not work.

And there are more people in poverty now than ever, esp. in Latin America where they have also been implementing numerous reforms. If you add up all "unnessary deaths," I would agree with the authors that capitalism, because of starvation and various wars among privatized states (such as Nazi Germany and the US), is far greater than the amount that starved in both Russia and China.

Again, the amount of poverty now has nothing to do with capitalism. It is because most of the world is not capitalist.

Capitalism has not starved people, so I do not know what you are talking about there. And wars from "privatized states" is a silly example as well. The Soviet Union itself went into Afghanistan and engaged in war there. Whether countries engage in war has little to do with whether or not they're "capitalist." Switzerland is very capitalist and not a military power. The difference is that with a capitalist country, if the people don't like the war, and it's unnecessary, they can vote the politicians out. With socialism, one cannot. Most of the wars of the 20th century were to counter socialist or fascist enemies of some type, such as Germany and Japan in WWII, North Korea and China during the Korean War, which was to prevent South Korea from falling to communism, the Vietnam War, which was to stop South Vietnam from falling to communism (and could have succeed to if they'd done it right), etc...the U.S. has not gone and engaged in major wars of imperialism throughout the 20th century to conquer nations to steal their resources.

This "true capitalism" nonsense has never existed; true socialism has existed, in the Israeli Kibbutzim, the Italian Haymarkets, and in the Spanish Civil War. These were far freer systems than that of the US, and were merely crushed by outside fources. However, at least they existed, and are proof that real freedom and democracy is attainable.

How are you not free in the U.S. What can you not do? The only things you cannot do are buy drugs legally and kill people, for the most party, or lie, cheat, steal, etc...seems pretty free to me, unless you want these things included. You claim you want freedom, yet you ardently are against the people owning firearms.

Why should the state only own weapons but not the people if you think the workers should be the owners of the factories? If the workers could own and operate the factories in your ideal model, they should be responsible to own guns. Yet you stand against the people being able to own arms, one of the most fundamental requirements for the preservation of freedom.

The only reason people in America can't do certain things like buy drugs legally or whatnot, is because the majority of the population disapproves of this. If the population was okay with it, it would become legalized because such people would be voted into power.

The United States is very free.

 

[quark1005]

Sounds like a crap sensationalist book that Ann Coulter would write... slipperly slope arguments, reductio ad absurdum etc...

 

[OrbitalPower]

Sorry, I had to go to sleep for a while.

Anyway, the issue is capitalist tyranny, and I think I can finalize my points as the capitalists have resulted to petty and irrelevant personal inquiries.

No they went socialist in 1949 (remember they were a capitalist British colony before that?).

They were not "capitalist" during the British rule. They became democratic-capitalist in 1949. The first five year plan that the Indian government implemented (1951-55) called for the planned development of just a few industries, the ones they believed private industry could not control. In the first five year plan all other industries were left to the market.

They were not "socialist" in the least. There wasn't a single factory in India that was ever controlled by the workers, nor were egalitarianism and equality promoted, what Socialism means. As they implemented more market reforms, more people started dying, probably 200 million in total.

They are making a polemical point about excess mortality from poor healthcare in rural India compared to what in fact are the effects of market-driven reforms in China.

You misread. As I quoted Sen, he was talking about the "Great Leap Forward," i.e., Mao's plans, which were not "market reforms," although totalitarian Stalinism is even closer to capitalism than it is to socialism.

So you hang your hope on those three pitiful examples as you type on a piece of technology that is a product of free enterprise and free markets over a network developed by a small group of elites that has been democratized and made ubiquitous by market forces?

As capitalism is tyrannical system, so will capitalists make arguments that are in their very nature tyrannical. I don't even know what exactly he is being implied here, but I'm guessing it's either that I'm a hypocrite to oppose capitalism and use the internet, supposedly a "product of the free-enterprise system," or I should support capitalism because I use the internet. Either "argument" is a fallacy.

I of course wouldn't be a hypocrite for using the internet; I believe in using technologies to further advance the issue of decentralized economics and to openly promote software that is anti-hierarchical, and anti-capitalist in their rejection of property concepts as well, such as GNU/Linux where there is not an emphasis on patenting and monopolizing code. I use it to survive in a capitalist society.

And of course, I don't have to support capitalism if the internet was capitalist; that's just like saying you should support everything the government does if you use public roads or other public resources. The fact is that this is simply how resources came to be owned, and because I merely use them does not mean I'm in any way obliged to support the system.

This of course all assumes that the internet was actually developed by the market system, which it was not. The concept of the internet was made by J. C. R. Licklider in August 1962, who headed the first computer research program at DARPA, a program funded to support military and computer science research. It went online in 1968, connecting four computers in California and in Utah. It was under DARPA's leadership and funding that things such as e-mail were developed, which was done in 1972 by Tomlinson I believe.

When ARPANET moved away from the military it was funded and supported by the National Science Foundation, and was called NSFnet. So this was just another technology that was developed by the government, like fiber optics and jet planes, and then handed over to government supported corporations like the phone companies, who have, historically, always been backed by the local municipalities.

Sockets were also developed at Berkeley, a publicly funded University. The market system had little to do with it outside of the contributions made by the RAND corporation (who I'm sure have seen money from the government).

What is the freedom in the Israeli Kibbutz or the anarchist / communist cell for the non-conformist?

What freedom is there in any corporation for a non-conformist? There is none.

In the Kibbutzim, you were free to leave any Kibbutzim that you did not want to participate in.

However, the whole idea was that you were free to do what you wanted, which is not available in today's modern capitalistic society, so why anybody would even want to leave is beyond me. You could do the same thing in the Kibbutzim as you could outside of it (except things like murder, which you couldn't really do outside of a Kibbutzim anyway); such is the nature of a true free society.

So go on and live your fantasies, fortunately so few true believers exist anymore. It is amusing to run across one now and then (but the dogmatism does get tiring).

This is another funny analysis, as it insinuates that just because something is unpopular, it is wrong and doesn't exist.

Well, by that standard, Galileo was wrong. By that ridiculous standard, I shouldn't be an atheist either because atheist are a small minority and more despised than Muslims in the United States. I should believe the world was created all at once by god 6 to 10,000 years ago as that's what a majority of people believe; and I should reject evolution as a majority of the population does as well.

It's a terrible point, it's not an argument, and it's a fallacy.

Furthermore, it's hilarious because the Green Party, who base their ideals on the principles I believe in, Kropotkinesque-decentralized economics, actually has more registered members than the Libertarian Party, who support hierarchical, tyrannical Hayek-like economics. Tens-of-thousands of more registered members in the GP.

Plus, positive, there are more people who read and study, and have been influenced by, libertarian-socialists and true libertarians like Chomsky, Zinn, Einstein, Russell, etc., than ever were influenced by the slave supporters and tyrants like Hayek and Buchanan and other crazies like Friedman. And given the choice between allying with Tolstoy, Bakunin, Dostoevsky, Einstein, and the numerous other brilliant socialist writers, artists, craftsmen (Proudhon), scientists, and so on, and the unproductive libertarians, I'd take the former any day.

More people are also democrats than republicans and democrats only support capitalism because they believe it is the best system yet, not because it is "natural" or "god-given" or other tyrannical arguments conservatives use.

Finally, a majority of people believe corporations have too much power, not too little, like what people like Hayek believe. A majority of people polled in businessweek showed that even the people they polled said corporations have too much power. So I believe the anti-corporate battle, which has been advocated by leftists in the US for a long time, is something that can be won, even before the battle against religion is won. It's not anti-american either as Thomas Jefferson opposed corporations and industrialization as well.

That's because you're not reading what I write. I said Russia tried to convert to capitalism, but without a proper political, legal, and financial system, it doesn't work.

Yes, originally I thought you tried to imply that they got better after they implemented capitalism, but they had never experienced capitalism. My mistake.

However, your posts are still contradictory. You say that Russia didn't implement capitalism, and call the US capitalist, even though Russia has implemented even more capitalist reforms than the US such as a flat tax and they have the second highest amount of billionaires in their country. Plus, the US has certainly backed every single industry in the country, through regulation, exploitation of third world resources, tariffs, protectionism, corporate welfare, and R&D expenditures (typically, half of all R&D comes from the federal government).

Plus, by your standard, all the European countries and the US would be socialist, which doesn't jive with your other arguments.

Capitalism hasn't killed millions. And no, the failures of the attempts at capitalism in the Third World are not laissez-faire capitalism. Laissez-faire means no government interference in the economy, which is impossible, however, we aim to keep the government as much out of the economy as possible.

This makes little sense and is your own definition, not the definition of capitalist scholars. Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, all use different definitions of capitalism, although this is the first time I've heard yours.

Any amount of "government" will vary from individual to individual, my idea of a small government is a lot different from yours, as I would protect individuals, not corporations; but even capitalists would have a different definition of government, such as not protecting intellectual property or patents (yes, some capitalists do oppose these even though it would destroy capitalism).

The fact is that capital means "to make capital" off of someone else's labor. Any system that allows such a thing, with an emphasis on private property, the ability of corporations to control resources, the use of money to purchase goods, and so on, is capitalist.

The Soviet Union itself went into Afghanistan and engaged in war there.

The US tricked the USSR into invading Afghanistan, which Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security advisor under Carter, has bragged about several times.

The Soviet Union was more state capitalist than socialist. There were no worker run factories, and they also traded in money. The structure of the soviet union was like that of a corporation, with Stalin being the CEO, and all the managers underneath him running the factories. I would read up on how the Leninists destroyed the Soviet revolution and it was even a criticism of the USSR that they were state socialist.

They were a "private dictatorship," in other words, and you have to wonder why Libertarians don't boast about their cousins Stalin, Hitler, Pinochet, and other private, not public rulers.

 

[OrbitalPower]

Sounds like a crap sensationalist book that Ann Coulter would write... slipperly slope arguments, reductio ad absurdum etc...

Yes, it certainly is quark. Fallacies are common in right-wing arguments, and sensationalism helps dumb everybody down so they'll support anything, including Bush-like policies. The book obviously is just a money maker and really isn't meant to be taken seriously.

The real achivement here is to devalue the meaning of words to the point where they don't mean anything. To believe in "one" ideology, such are Americanism (I hesitate to call it "capitalism"), and everything else is about the same thing, like monarchy, democracy, egalitarianism, utilitarianism, and socialism, they are all the same thing according to this rhetoric.

There are actually some extreme libertarians out there now claiming that socialism and capitalism are the same thing, and market socialism is market capitalism (anarcho-capitalists have twisted the words of Proudhon) around. They even make youtube videos of these claims. Here, you kind of have the inverse of the above, where rather than all ideologies being opposed to capitalism, all ideologies (particuarly progressive ones like liberalism) become capitalism.

I've heard conservatives tell me they are the true conservatives, liberals, libertarians, and socialists, all at once.

It's actually a tactic out of Orwell - to devalue the meaning of words.

They drag real political literature and journalism through the mud in the same way creationists drag the respected field of biology through the mud.

 

[WheelsRCool]

Yes, originally I thought you tried to imply that they got better after they implemented capitalism, but they had never experienced capitalism. My mistake.

However, your posts are still contradictory. You say that Russia didn't implement capitalism, and call the US capitalist, even though Russia has implemented even more capitalist reforms than the US such as a flat tax and they have the second highest amount of billionaires in their country. Plus, the US has certainly backed every single industry in the country, through regulation, exploitation of third world resources, tariffs, protectionism, corporate welfare, and R&D expenditures (typically, half of all R&D comes from the federal government).

The U.S. tax system is considered more primitive than the Russian system in that sense, which is why many argue for a flat-tax. As for billionaires, that means nothing. Most of the Russian billionaires come from having garnered a monopoly of resources, not from creating jobs and producing wealth.

And no, the U.S. does not "exploit Third World resources." There is not any empirical evidence to back that up. The uses of regulation, tariffs, and protectionism the U.S. had through much of the twentieth century was opposed by the Austrian economists, and much of it was ended with Ronald Reagan.

To say that Russian has implemented more capitalist reforms than the U.S. is laughable, considering their economy is about the size of New Jersey's.

Plus, by your standard, all the European countries and the US would be socialist, which doesn't jive with your other arguments.

No they wouldn't. Again you show a very minor understanding of economics. You are thinking in absolutes: no regulation = capitalism, regulation = socialism/fascism. That's not what I've been saying.

This makes little sense and is your own definition, not the definition of capitalist scholars. Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, all use different definitions of capitalism, although this is the first time I've heard yours.

That is the definition of laissez-faire capitalism. And it makes perfect sense.

Any amount of "government" will vary from individual to individual, my idea of a small government is a lot different from yours, as I would protect individuals, not corporations;

And this is where you show zero knowledge of the subject: in your zeal to protect individuals, you would end up protecting corporations. How would you protect individuals? Create a government agency to regulate certain industries. The nature of a government agency is to grow bigger and bigger and bigger, and rather than resist it, the big businesses in the industry encourage said agency to create extensive regulations to cut out the small businesses, so that the big businesses can form a monopoly/oligopoly.

This has been proven time and time again. It is a fact.

but even capitalists would have a different definition of government, such as not protecting intellectual property or patents (yes, some capitalists do oppose these even though it would destroy capitalism).

And they're idiots who do not understand capitalism. A capitalist system can't work if the law is not enforced.

The fact is that capital means "to make capital" off of someone else's labor. Any system that allows such a thing, with an emphasis on private property, the ability of corporations to control resources, the use of money to purchase goods, and so on, is capitalist.

What capitalism means is that the market is allowed to control the rationing of resources, rather than a central bureaucracy. Any system that infringes on this is ultimately anti-capitalist. What capitalism also means is that individuals engage in private contracts with each other. That's how a free-market works. You want to start a factory, you have to obtain the capital to build one, then you hire workers (i.e. engage in a contract with them: you work for me, I'll pay you). With a monopoly, you can do what you want to the workers, but with capitalism, there is competition, so the wages naturally get driven up and working conditions improved. With socialism, no such thing happens.

The US tricked the USSR into invading Afghanistan, which Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security advisor under Carter, has bragged about several times.

Must have been one heck of a "trick" to get one of the world's superpowers to invade a nation and fight the war so hard that it partially bankrupted them.

The Soviet Union was more state capitalist than socialist. There were no worker run factories, and they also traded in money. The structure of the soviet union was like that of a corporation, with Stalin being the CEO, and all the managers underneath him running the factories. I would read up on how the Leninists destroyed the Soviet revolution and it was even a criticism of the USSR that they were state socialist.

That is what socialism is. It is as if one corporation runs each and every industry. The difference with capitalism is capitalism forces corporations to work efficiently and treat workers properly and raises the standard of living for everyone because of competition. You contine to believe in this socialist fantasy of worker-run factories. It has never worked. It never will work, because in order to try and convert people to it, you have to create a powerful central government first to force people to convert; the problem is this government does not end after being put into power.

This is also why fascism is ultimately the equivalent of socialism. You define the Soviet Union as "state capitalism," (a silly term really, because the state doesn't allow the rationing resources through the price system) because the state has a monopoly over each industry; fascism allows corporations to gain a monopoly or oligopoly over each industry as well, thus resulting in the same type of society ultimately.

And what do you mean "they traded money?" How else do you expect people to trade? How would you expect to ration resources anywhere in the economy?

They were a "private dictatorship," in other words, and you have to wonder why Libertarians don't boast about their cousins Stalin, Hitler, Pinochet, and other private, not public rulers.

They were "public" in the sense of the government owning everything.

There are two things about capitalism you seem to not understand:
1) Capitalist societies CREATE wealth. Socialist societies confiscate it.

2) Capitalism works for much the same reason evolution works, termites can build great structures, open-source software works, and computers can design great electric circuits: by constantly trying what works and what doesn't.

You laugh at people who believe in creationism, the idea that a central creator designed all the lifeforms, rather than life just "evolving" over time, thus resulting in the fantastically complex creatures we see today.

The same thing applies to an economy. An economy does not require a central planner or designer. It organizes itself through the rational decisions of millions of individuals. Trying to centraly plan an economy is like engineers trying to build an artificial version of the human body with artificial cells. Too complex.

Or termite mounds; some termie mounds in South America or Africa are about twelve feet high I believe, fantastically engineered. Yet, again, there is no central designer.

Or open-source software. You'll have thousands of programmers all work on a piece of software, developing it, with really no central direction whatsoever, yet the open-source movement has produced software that exceeds the quality of that put out by software firms with multimillion-dollar budgets for their developers.

Or electric circuits. Computers, simply through processes of trial and error, can design electrical circuits that rival those designed by the best engineers.

The fact that you think the "workers" could somehow "own" the factories, without owners of any kind and there would be no money, shows that you have a completely amateur view of economics. You might argue that the workers would collectively own the factories and appoint managers throughout. Well we have such a system already. It's called capitalism. Money and the price system are always needed. Even Karl Marx noted that. How would all these workers in your socialist fantasy know what to produce and how to produce it? How would they know where to send it? How would products be sold? How would the workers know if they were wasting resources or in need or more resources with no money? How would any decisions be made in the factories?

This tired old argument has been used innumerable times throughout history to create some of the most horrendous dictatorships known to humanity.

Money is just an invention that naturally occurs, in order to trade. No one actually said one day, "Hey, let's invent money."

And how is capitalism not allowing the workers to own the factories? As I said, we have such a system in place already with public corporations. Workers are not slaves. They choose to work in the factories. They can leave when they want, or go to a different factory, or get an education to work as something like an accountant, lawyer, doctor, engineer, etc...what right do the workers even have to the factory that someone else owns? The workers engaged in the contract. They are not entitled to the company's profits, they are entitled to what they agreed to be paid in the contract. If the workers want a factory, they can start their own.

If I work hard to organize resources, build a factory, and hire workers, that is my business. I own the factory, and I produce a lot by organizing resources and labor, and engaging in contracts with the workers. If they don't like the terms of the contract, they won't work for me.

That is how capitalism works. It's a free-market where individuals engage in contracts with each other, build businesses, etc...whatever they want, so long as you do not harm anyone else.

It isn't like socialism where workers are slaves to the government.

You also still haven't answered how you are exactly "not" free in the United States, or why the people, who you assume are responsible and capable enough to own the factories (which they are, but the mechanics for this only work in a capitalist system), couldn't also be responsible enough to own guns? Workers use tools, and a gun is just a tool. Responsibility is responsibility, especially when working in manufacturing.

Nor have you given any real proof whatsoever that capitalism has killed anyone except one book that claims wars like World War I, World War II, etc...were capitalism's methods for killing people, which is a silly claim. Capitalism is an economic system.

Yes, it certainly is quark. Fallacies are common in right-wing arguments, and sensationalism helps dumb everybody down so they'll support anything, including Bush-like policies. The book obviously is just a money maker and really isn't meant to be taken seriously.

The real achivement here is to devalue the meaning of words to the point where they don't mean anything. To believe in "one" ideology, such are Americanism (I hesitate to call it "capitalism"), and everything else is about the same thing, like monarchy, democracy, egalitarianism, utilitarianism, and socialism, they are all the same thing according to this rhetoric.

And this is the standard argument you keep reverting to, because the fact of the matter is that you cannot actually support your own viewpoint. You do not even understand how your own ideology could be workable.

The fact is that "right-wing" arguments, regarding economics, for the most part work. Socialism never has, and it never will. You will notice not one critique has even produced a credible debunking of Goldberg's book. BTW, have you even bothered to read it?

You claim people "de-value" the meaning of words, yet when questioned about words which you just toss out there with no definition (like equality, egalitarianism, etc...) you fail to make any attempt to describe them.

An economy can only pay people according to what they produce. Those who produce more, get paid more. Your zeal for "equality," (i.e. equality of outcome) to pay everyone the same, would result in taking by force from those who produce more, to give to those who produce less, something that goes completely against freedom. It would also kill any incentive to produce. After all, why work when the guy not producing much gets paid the same?

Has it ever occurred to you that every attempt to create a socialist paradise fails for a specific reason?

Tell me, how would your society be so free if you expect everyone to end up with an equal amount of stuff in the end? How will you incentivize people to produce more so you can then take from them and re-distribute it to those with less?

That's like working hard for a 4.0 GPA and then the teacher taking two points off to give to the guy with a 1.0 so you both end up with a 3.0. Why work at all then? Just fail, get the 1.0, and they'll take by force from the people who do work. Thus all incentive dies, and the economy fails, and people starve.

BTW, the Alexander Hamilton quote is in Federalist paper 29, and it reads:

"Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped;"

The other quote being the same, but having a slightly different wording: "The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."

 

[OrbitalPower]

The U.S. tax system is considered more primitive than the Russian system in that sense, which is why many argue for a flat-tax. As for billionaires, that means nothing.

It means a lot. It shows that after their capitalist reforms, inequality in Russia has skyrocketed with a capitalist class at the top, and millions of people at the bottom. Since their capitalist reforms Russia has been driven back into the third world.

And no, the U.S. does not "exploit Third World resources." There is not any empirical evidence to back that up.

Unfortunately, you are ignorant of history. The US has over 700 bases around the world and has intervened in Latin America hundreds of times in the past century. One of the most blatant examples is the United Fruit Company encouraging the US government to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala, in order to open up their markets for exploitation. The US has repeatedly intervened in Haiti, Brazil, Chile, and other third world countries, supporting the dictatorships of Videla, Pinochet (who murdered tens of thousands of his own citziens of which there is now a wall memorial in Chile to all the victims murdered and/or all the people who "went missing") and some of these countries, like Haiti, a starving island, have shipped more food to the US than they were consuming.

The US also killed about 3 million in Indochina through their support of Suharto and the disastrous Vietnam war.

Reagan/Nixon were not the only ones as well, Coolidge was also a fascist who intervened in Nicaragua. Such actions by Smedley Butler prompted him to claim:

I have spent 34 years in active service as a member of the Marine Corps. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.

I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras "right" for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested…. Looking back on it, I felt I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents."

Smedley Butler was one of the most decorated generals in US history, and when he saw how capitalist tyranny actually worked he became a socialist who opposed capitalism and opposed an effort by capitalists and fascists (their allies in any industrialized country) to overthrow the government of FDR, also noting the first and second world wars were struggles among the capitalist classes, also accurate.

There are thousands of documents, testimonials from defectors, and so on that confirm this to be true. Numerous US elites even admit they believe we have a claim to the land, such as Henry Stimson, former secretary of state, who claimed Latin America was "our little region over here which has never bothered anyone."

The US even employed Nazis strategies to overtake the third world, employing individuals such as Klaus Barbie (the " Butcher of Lyon"), Reinhard Gehlen, and so on. CIA defectors such as Philip Agee and John Stockwell estimate that the "third-world wars" the CIA started up were the third bloodiest wars of all time, totaling about 6 million people killed.

The US also has armed the Middle East, such as Iran and Iraq at various times, overthrowing a democratically elected government in Iran in the 50s which many foreign policy experts say contributed to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, as the Shah of Iran killed off a lot of moderate opposition. Of course, the problems with Saddam, Saudi Arabia, etc. are about oil as well.

So there is all kinds of evidence that this stuff went on, it's outlined in documents such as NSC-68, and is even taught in some colleges now and is beginning to become standard history, much as the atrocities of Columbus are now being more admitted.

Some good books on the subject:

The Washington Connection and Thurd World Fascism, Political Economy of Human Rights volume I Chomsky and Herman.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805077383/?tag=pfamazon01-20 by Greg Grandin

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1567511945/?tag=pfamazon01-20 William Blum

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805087281/?tag=pfamazon01-20 by Chalmers Johnson, who also recently published an excellent article on the Military Industrial complex published at CommonDreams:

Some critics were alarmed early on by the growing symbiotic relationship between government and corporate officials because each simultaneously sheltered and empowered the other, while greatly confusing the separation of powers. Since the activities of a corporation are less amenable to public or congressional scrutiny than those of a public institution, public-private collaborative relationships afford the private sector an added measure of security from such scrutiny. These concerns were ultimately swamped by enthusiasm for the war effort and the postwar era of prosperity that the war produced.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/28/10645/

Hegemony or Survival -- Noam chomsky

some are published by the American empire project

So there are actually hundreds of books on the subject, thousands of pages of documentation backing them up, numerous documents released through the FOIA confirming it all.

Such actions are simply the "ways of capitalism."

There is not any empirical evidence to back that up. The uses of regulation, tariffs, and protectionism the U.S. had through much of the twentieth century was opposed by the Austrian economists, and much of it was ended with Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan was one of the most protectionist presidents in US history. He is one of the biggest corporate violators of "corporate welfare of all time," spending billions of dollars in things such as the S&L scandal. His corporatism was indeed a form of "price controls" as it rewarded companies for failure.

Like any fascist, he also intervened in other countries, such Nicaragua, Guatemala, even tiny little Laos.

No they wouldn't. Again you show a very minor understanding of economics. You are thinking in absolutes: no regulation = capitalism, regulation = socialism/fascism. That's not what I've been saying.

That is what you've been claiming, even though socialism removes all protections of corporations from the government and eliminates them, and is about worker control, whereas something like fascism is merely an extention of capitalism, as shown.

That is the definition of laissez-faire capitalism. And it makes perfect sense.

Your definition of laissez-faire capitalism contradicts the definitions of other Libertarians I have heard, who claim that it's "socialist" or "corporate fascist" to be protecting patents and copyrights. So, according to them you would be the socialist.

Your only response is that they're "idiots" and that it's "proven" in economics that society must have copyright laws.

Who is right? There is no way of telling. What's certainly is true is that neither of your systems have ever been implemented.

And this is where you show zero knowledge of the subject: in your zeal to protect individuals, you would end up protecting corporations.

No, by calling for more public oversight, you promote social democracy and thus a freer and more open system.

When you promote privatization you allow things like Enron where the government and the corporations work together in secret, as the only thing the government is to do is to regulate the economy on behalf of the corporation. Thus, with such a public policy maneuver you're simply shifting power into the hands of private tyrannies.

This has been proven time and time again. It is a fact.
[Plus some other vague claims about economics being "proven."]

I didn't realize economics had passed even science in its ability to prove things.

Where are all these "proofs" that you have to have money, copyrights, and patents in an economy? Human society lasted for thousands of years without these things, furthermore, as shown, capitalist societies alone have not been successful, they've only been successful through government regulation, like fascism, or social democracy, not the "corporate regulation" of society that capitalists promote.

Even most modern economists do not claim these "proven facts of reality" and merely social constructs, much like slavery was, which also still exists in the form of wage slavery, as well as third world slave factories known as sweatshops. That doesn't mean it's "natural," however.

That is what socialism is. It is as if one corporation runs each and every industry.

There would be no corporation in socialism. Show a socialist author who has ever supported corporations, "money," and copyrights.

There are two things about capitalism you seem to not understand:
1) Capitalist societies CREATE wealth. Socialist societies confiscate it.

2) Capitalism works for much the same reason evolution works, termites can build great structures, open-source software works, and computers can design great electric circuits: by constantly trying what works and what doesn't.
quote]

Circuits were thought up by a British Radar scientist and software and Unix were originally developed at public universities, not the market. GNU also had its beginnings at MIT I believe, or at least the X Window System did, and linux was also a university project, based off Minix, which was another pedagogical OS.

GNU/Linux is like the internet itself, nothing is meant to patented, and there are no "owners" of the software except the Linux kernel itself. It has been worked on by people all over the world, some in settings that have no relation at all to the "market." The greatest inventions have always been done by people either isolated from market forces, or working in monopolies, such as at AT&T, which were also isolated from the market.

Capitalism has never worked on its own, and I would say has only succeeded because of either fascist like structures, or social democracies like that of Europe. The US is really between the two, with plenty of economics that could be considered more "corporatist," and others that are considered more "social democratic."

And even if capitalism did work, and socialism hadn't been tried (both unture, as I've shown real socialism has existed whereas real capitalism has not) that is not an argument really a rationalizing for capitalist tyranny, and it certainly doesn't prove that capitalism is "inevitable." You could give that argument for any system.

BTW, the Alexander Hamilton quote is in Federalist paper 29, and it reads:

"Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped;"

Yes, the quote is not how you originally quoted it on the forum (and there is no reason foro this as it is not a translation for his works) and he is arguing with himself at that area and openly calls for regulation of the militia in the next few paragraphs.

 

[WheelsRCool]

It means a lot. It shows that after their capitalist reforms, inequality in Russia has skyrocketed with a capitalist class at the top, and millions of people at the bottom. Since their capitalist reforms Russia has been driven back into the third world.

I'd have to disagree. Russia isn't capitalist. You can't have a "capitalist class at the top" when the whole way one becomes wealthy with capitalism is buy creating products and services to improve the lives of the masses.

That is one of the keys of capitalism's greatness: You get rich by providing for the masses. Providing for the masses improves their living standard when entrepreneurs start doing this (and competing for your dollars!) in every industry.

Unfortunately, you are ignorant of history. The US has over 700 bases around the world and has intervened in Latin America hundreds of times in the past century.[/quote

Having bases around the world does not mean the U.S. has conquered the world like the British once did or Rome or Alexander the Great. The U.S. doesn't force those bases on any nation, and many of them were created because the U.S. had to protect much of the world during the Cold War.

One of the most blatant examples is the United Fruit Company encouraging the US government to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala, in order to open up their markets for exploitation. The US has repeatedly intervened in Haiti, Brazil, Chile, and other third world countries, supporting the dictatorships of Videla, Pinochet (who murdered tens of thousands of his own citziens of which there is now a wall memorial in Chile to all the victims murdered and/or all the people who "went missing") and some of these countries, like Haiti, a starving island, have shipped more food to the US than they were consuming.

I will not deny that certain things America has done throughout its history are correct. America had slavery for quite a while and also what we did to the Native Americans was inexcusable. But OVERALL, the U.S. has been one of the most benevolent empires in history. If we were REALLY a truly warlike empire, we'd probably have conquered Britain, and Central America, and Europe.

But see here again, the greatness of capitalism shines through. In the old days, to get wealthy, a nation, or a person even, had to go and take wealth, by force, from someone else. Thus nations fought constantly for lands, jewels, etc...whereas with capitalism, a nation can create wealth.

Look at Russia versus Japan. Is Russia richer than Japan, in terms of natural resources? YEAH. They ahve more coal, oil, natural gas, etc...then anybody. But is Russia WEALTHIER than Japan? NOPE. Japan is a far wealthier nation, because of capitalism, allowing it to create wealth.

Thus capitalism ends much of the incentives for wars, not encourages it. Yes, occasionally, if you're talking about a major resource with global implications, it will attract attention (such as oil), but overall, capitalism gives incentives not to go to war.

The US also killed about 3 million in Indochina through their support of Suharto and the disastrous Vietnam war.

Vietnam was essentially a one year war that was fought about ten times over. It was only disastrous because of the policies of folks like Lyndon Johnson, who would not let the military bomb Northern Vietnam. The U.S. also would not bomb Cambodia, acknowledging Cambodia's wish to remain neutral. Of course, this simply resulted in the Northern Vietnamese using Cambodia for many of their supply lines and as a safe haven for recovery and rest. There were targets begging to be hit all throughout Cambodia and Northern Vietnam throughout the entire war.

It wasn't until Nixon came in and opened up both North Vietnam and Cambodia to bombing that the North Vietnamese suddenly wanted to negotiate. The kicker is they had been considering negotiation back in 1965, but since the American media portrayed to the American public that America had lost the Battle in the Idrang Valley, American public opinion turned against the war. Ho Chi Mihn decided to just hold out, so that when America left, it would appear as a victory for North Vietnam.

But America did not pull out, and thus thousands of American and Vietnamese, Northern and Southern, died fighting. All of which could have been avoided if they'd just bombed Cambodia and N. Vietnam from the beginning.

America in Vietnam was like Mike Tyson in the ring with his hands tied behind his back.

Would bombing Cambodia or N. Vietnam have killed people? Sure, but if they'd just done it in 1965, it would have been one heck of a lot LESS dead people than resulted. Instead, they ended up dragging out the conflict and bombing those areas anyhow.

Smedley Butler was one of the most decorated generals in US history, and when he saw how capitalist tyranny actually worked he became a socialist who opposed capitalism and opposed an effort by capitalists and fascists (their allies in any industrialized country) to overthrow the government of FDR, also noting the first and second world wars were struggles among the capitalist classes, also accurate.

Again, fascism was not capitalist, as I've shown before. Smedley Butler ultimately sided with the system that killed more people than any single war in history.

There are thousands of documents, testimonials from defectors, and so on that confirm this to be true. Numerous US elites even admit they believe we have a claim to the land, such as Henry Stimson, former secretary of state, who claimed Latin America was "our little region over here which has never bothered anyone."

Wouldn't surprise me. No one ever said the U.S. government didn't have corrupt people in it.

The US even employed Nazis strategies to overtake the third world, employing individuals such as Klaus Barbie (the " Butcher of Lyon"), Reinhard Gehlen, and so on. CIA defectors such as Philip Agee and John Stockwell estimate that the "third-world wars" the CIA started up were the third bloodiest wars of all time, totaling about 6 million people killed.

Again, that wouldn't surprise me. You have to remember though that certain of these things occurred simply because of the Cold War, to counter the Soviet Union.

The US also has armed the Middle East, such as Iran and Iraq at various times, overthrowing a democratically elected government in Iran in the 50s which many foreign policy experts say contributed to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, as the Shah of Iran killed off a lot of moderate opposition. Of course, the problems with Saddam, Saudi Arabia, etc. are about oil as well.

Yes, overthrowing that government was very wrong; as for arming Iraq and Iran, that was again because of the Cold War. And you are correct on oil, whether directly or indirectly, the Middle East is always about oil. No one would care much about them if it wasn't for the oil. But oil is the lifeblood of the global economy, so its a hot issue.

So there is all kinds of evidence that this stuff went on, it's outlined in documents such as NSC-68, and is even taught in some colleges now and is beginning to become standard history, much as the atrocities of Columbus are now being more admitted.

Sure, but very little of it has to do with capitalism as a system. You're dealing with the atrocities more of the United States government, a government that was greatly limited in power because of capitalism. For example, the fact that the American oil industry, for example, was privatized served as a severe limit on the growth of government throughout the twentieth century.

Imagine the corruption of the U.S. government if the United States had been like the Soviet Union. This is why government must be limited.

And these evils committed by the U.S. government still do not compare to the atrocities that have resulted from socialism (although that doesn't excuse them).

Some good books on the subject:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0896080900/?tag=pfamazon01-20 Chomsky and Herman.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805077383/?tag=pfamazon01-20 by Greg Grandin

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1567511945/?tag=pfamazon01-20 William Blum

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805087281/?tag=pfamazon01-20 by Chalmers Johnson, who also recently published an excellent article on the Military Industrial complex published at CommonDreams:



http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/28/10645/

Hegemony or Survival -- Noam chomsky

some are published by the American empire project

So there are actually hundreds of books on the subject, thousands of pages of documentation backing them up, numerous documents released through the FOIA confirming it all.

Thanks, I'll check them out. Check out the books I recommended in previous posts too. And be careful of Chomsky books on subjects outside of linguistics, IMO.

I really recommend you also read Thomas Sowell's "Basic Economics" as well and some of Milton Friedman's works.

Such actions are simply the "ways of capitalism."

Government is government. Capitalism has nothing to do with it. You think the U.S. government would've been any different if the entire U.S. economy had been socialist like the U.S.S.R. (Soviet Union), i.e. the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics? Government is corrupt.

Ronald Reagan was one of the most protectionist presidents in US history. He is one of the biggest corporate violators of "corporate welfare of all time," spending billions of dollars in things such as the S&L scandal. His corporatism was indeed a form of "price controls" as it rewarded companies for failure.

If Reagan was such a protectionist, than why was he so despised by so many of the working class? Why did the unions hate him? He opened up America to free-trade and ended protectionism in many areas. The S&L scandal, like I've said, the financial system, simply because of the nature of the economy, must be kept solvent.

Sort of like Long Term Capital Management, the $100 billion hedge-fund that had to be given money for a bailout. Why? Because if it had failed, it might have brought down the world financial system.

Like any fascist, he also intervened in other countries, such Nicaragua, Guatemala, even tiny little Laos.

Cold War.

 

[WheelsRCool]

That is what you've been claiming, even though socialism removes all protections of corporations from the government and eliminates them, and is about worker control, whereas something like fascism is merely an extention of capitalism, as shown.

Capitalism IS worker control, as I've shown. Socialism isn't. Never has been, never will be. It simply isn't workable. And in pure socialism, there are no corporations, everything is government-owned, except for maybe state-owned corporations, which are the same thing.

The German National Socialist party, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, both failed attempts, along with many others, at socialism.

Your definition of laissez-faire capitalism contradicts the definitions of other Libertarians I have heard, who claim that it's "socialist" or "corporate fascist" to be protecting patents and copyrights. So, according to them you would be the socialist.

They're idiots if they think a market economy could function without the protection of intellectual property. You invent a product, you patent it so others cannot steal your idea. Otherwise, how would the economy work? You going to go and shoot the people copying your inventions? With the rule of law, you bring a lawsuit against them.

Your only response is that they're "idiots" and that it's "proven" in economics that society must have copyright laws.

Who is right? There is no way of telling. What's certainly is true is that neither of your systems have ever been implemented.

Take a look at the problems with running a business in China where they don't protect intellectual property enough.

No, by calling for more public oversight, you promote social democracy and thus a freer and more open system.

If only that was true. In reality, you just help the corporations more and more.

When you promote privatization you allow things like Enron where the government and the corporations work together in secret, as the only thing the government is to do is to regulate the economy on behalf of the corporation. Thus, with such a public policy maneuver you're simply shifting power into the hands of private tyrannies.

Private corporations can only get government regulation in their favor when you create big government agencies to "regulate" those very corporations; the corporations and government then get cozy with each other.

Pure privatization in a market economy with limited government creates no such thing.

I didn't realize economics had passed even science in its ability to prove things.

Where are all these "proofs" that you have to have money, copyrights, and patents in an economy? Human society lasted for thousands of years without these things, furthermore, as shown, capitalist societies alone have not been successful, they've only been successful through government regulation, like fascism, or social democracy, not the "corporate regulation" of society that capitalists promote.

Capitalist societies work plenty well with a small minimum of government regulation where it's needed. They do not work with heavy-handed government regulation, doing things like controlling prices, wages, hours worked, production quotas, etc...

And I hope you aren't serious in your suggestion that humans cannot have money in an economy. Money is a fundamental element for an economy to function, for people to trade.

Yes humanity lasted for thousands of years without these things, humanity also suffered through brutal hardship through most of that period and only lived to be forty years-old. Things like money, double-income accounting, law, engineering, etc...were the things that got the invention of civilization off the ground.

Sort of like language. Humans survived for thousands of years without language too, but we do one heck of a lot better now that it is invented. You can't engineer without language. No society could actually thrive without language. We'd still be caveman grunting at each other.

Or mathematics. Humans had to invent, or discover, that too. Without it, yes humans survived, but they were very limited in their abilities.

Money is an essential component for an economy to thrive. Money in itself is worthless. It is simply the medium we use to trade.

Even most modern economists do not claim these "proven facts of reality" and merely social constructs, much like slavery was, which also still exists in the form of wage slavery, as well as third world slave factories known as sweatshops. That doesn't mean it's "natural," however.

Wage slavery is virtually impossible in a capitalist economy though, because of competition. Especially nowadays, where unlike during most of the twentieth century, where people worked for one company all their life, people now change jobs frequently.

Third world countries that are capitalist will start off with sweatshops, but eventually capitalism ends this. South Korea is a perfect example of this. Third World nations that are socialist, with no competition, sweat shops can have a monopoly.

There would be no corporation in socialism. Show a socialist author who has ever supported corporations, "money," and copyrights.

I never said socialism has a corporation. You understand what a bureaucracy is, right? You think a corporate bureaucracy with a monopoly is any different than a government bureaucracy, which is another ubreaucracy with a monopoly? My point is with socialism, it's equilvalent to letting one corporation run each industry.

Circuits were thought up by a British Radar scientist and software and Unix were originally developed at public universities, not the market. GNU also had its beginnings at MIT I believe, or at least the X Window System did, and linux was also a university project, based off Minix, which was another pedagogical OS.

Sure, and many of these professors at said universities go and start companies. Look at Silicon Valley. SUN Microsystems, Google, Yahoo!, etc...all got their start at Stanford University. Many great inventions and discoveries occur at universities, and many entrepreneurs get their start from universities.

And oftentimes, there is an incentive there too. A professor who does groundbreaking research or creates or discovers new things, gets research grants, book deals, publicity, a lab, etc...science is a career today. It's supposed to be a profession done solely for altruistic reasons, and not money, but that isn't the case. Again, people respond to incentives.

GNU/Linux is like the internet itself, nothing is meant to patented, and there are no "owners" of the software except the Linux kernel itself. It has been worked on by people all over the world, some in settings that have no relation at all to the "market." The greatest inventions have always been done by people either isolated from market forces, or working in monopolies, such as at AT&T, which were also isolated from the market.

When AT&T had a monopoly, the telecommunications industry offered lousy service. That's one reason the monopoly has ended.

And yes, some great things have been invented outside of market forces. But so what? That doesn't mean all things are going to be good when invented outside of market forces. What incentive is there to invent great things with no competitive pressures? Competition drives innovation. Perhaps I should say incentives drive innovation, and competition is one form of an incentive. University professors have the incentive of competing for Nobel Prizes, competing for research grants, etc...

Companies want your money! So they compete to give you a better product then the other guy, so that you will buy THEIR product.

Sure, throughout history, occasionally devoted scholars invented great things without capitalism, but pretty much all of the great inventions have required freedom and/or an incentive.

Remember, it depends: if you are a rocket engineer working in the Soviet Union, if you love your job, you will likely engineer great rockets. But even then, there's an incentive; if you engineer bad rockets, you lose your job, and in the Soviet Union, that wasn't good.

But what about much less exciting products? Who is going to create great shoes, great clothes, great lamps, great phones, great furniture, great foods, great this and that without an incentive?

I read about a guy who got wealthy building a business that mass-produced golfing equipment. What engineer or scientist is going to devote themselves to inventing great golfing equipment? Who will be passionate about something like that?

For those types of things, you need to provide incentives, which capitalism does.

EVERYTHING you use, your computer, the cup your drink coffee from, the coffee product itself, your pens and pencils, clothes, house, furniture, car, cellphone, IPOD, etc...it all comes from a capitalist economy, not a socialist economy.

The very few things that do come from socialist economies, like Cuban cigars, are manufactured by workers stuck in horrible working conditions.

You also need to remember the rationing aspect. For example, the Soviet Union engineered, on paper, some much better military equipment than America, but because of the nature of their economy, the stuff was shoddily built. You can engineer the best things in the world, but if your economy can't ration the resources to build them, you'll suffer.

Linux is a piece of open-source software, a movement that people contribute to because they like to. It's an altruistic thing. But that's because to develop software in the open-source movement, one doesn't need to be able to turn a profit. You can just develop the software and then put it up for download. It isn't like most other products and services, where you need to turn a profit in order to survive.

Capitalism has never worked on its own, and I would say has only succeeded because of either fascist like structures, or social democracies like that of Europe. The US is really between the two, with plenty of economics that could be considered more "corporatist," and others that are considered more "social democratic."

Capitalism works best with small, limited government and a strong legal, financial, and political system. The United States, Canada, Switzerland, the UK, Japan, Australia, etc...are all proof of this.

Like I said, stop thinking in extremes. It is not capitalism = no government regulation and fascism = government regulation. Capitalism has to have some government regulation, but a very small amount. When you get so much regulation that small businesses and startups start dying off, and entrepreneurs cannot form new companies, and monopolies and oligopolies start forming, and/or price controls and wage controls are introduced everywhere, you've reached fascism.

And even if capitalism did work, and socialism hadn't been tried (both unture, as I've shown real socialism has existed whereas real capitalism has not) that is not an argument really a rationalizing for capitalist tyranny, and it certainly doesn't prove that capitalism is "inevitable." You could give that argument for any system.

Capitalism works. That is undeniable. Socialism doesn't, and I know of no "real socialism" that has ever existed. Tribal cultures are not socialist. One cannot have tyranny with capitalism.

And I never meant to imply that capitalism is "inevitable." If only it was! Socialism, and tyranny, are the normal human condition, which is why most of humanity has always existed in horrible poverty and most of it still does. It thrives only in those few areas where capitalism has developed.

Yes, the quote is not how you originally quoted it on the forum (and there is no reason foro this as it is not a translation for his works) and he is arguing with himself at that area and openly calls for regulation of the militia in the next few paragraphs.

He also questions what kind of a society are we if we cannot trust our own brothers and sisters and sons and daughters with the ownership of firearms.

 

[OrbitalPower]

Capitalism IS worker control, as I've shown. Socialism isn't. Never has been, never will be. It simply isn't workable. And in pure socialism, there are no corporations, everything is government-owned, except for maybe state-owned corporations, which are the same thing.

You haven't shown or proven anything.

Socialism does not promote government ownership of the means of production. Some variants that were called socialism promote this, but it has nothing to do with actual socialist theory. Even Lenin didn't refer to his reforms as socialism.

Capitalism does not support worker owned factories; in fact it is written into law that the corporation has to make profits for its shareholders.

The fact that millions have been murdered by capitalism is not evidence of a working system.

They're idiots if they think a market economy could function without the protection of intellectual property.

Patents are arbitrary monopolies of certain features of an economy. They do not protect the little guy as corporations like IBM and Microsoft hold thousands of patents, thus any new computer software developed and sold is usually coerced into submission through oppressive contracts or licensing fees.

In reality, you just help the corporations more and more.

This makes no sense. The FCC just prevented Comcast from further monopolizing the internet by blocking bittorrent traffic. How is allowing Comcast more control, and tyranny, actually opposing them?

Capitalist societies work plenty well with a small minimum of government regulation where it's needed.

There has never been a successful capitalist economy without a strong government. The evidence above shows capitalism has used military intervention to support itself in the US, even during its Golden Age.

Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea are not examples of free-markets. South Korea actually emerged from a fascist state. Japan is a heavily controlled, socialist economy according to your standards, and social democracy by everyone else's. Certainly they more socialist than the Nazis were who had only a minor amount of social spending compared to Europe and Japan. Taiwan is a similar story.

Again, you're making no sense, these European countries, and Japan, were far more regulatory than the Third Reich. The US is also the most powerful government in history.

These are not "weak governments" and they're not what the anti-federalists had in mind when they were talking about constructing a government. Jefferson would be appalled at today's modern capitalism.

And I hope you aren't serious in your suggestion that humans cannot have money in an economy. Money is a fundamental element for an economy to function, for people to trade.

I'm still waiting to see these "proofs" that money is essential to existence. I say, democracy and freedom are essential, as they give people something to strive for.

Yes humanity lasted for thousands of years without these things, humanity also suffered through brutal hardship through most of that period and only lived to be forty years-old.

Humanity also evolved during that period. It is interesting humanity hasn't evolved since tyranny came into the picture.

Or mathematics. Humans had to invent, or discover, that too. Without it, yes humans survived, but they were very limited in their abilities.

Mathematics was mostly "discovered" and mathematical theorems or laws mostly held on the basis that they could be shown in reality. The Greeks did some highly abstract mathematics, but the theorems were proved a lot differently than today. It was an analytical method of proof that began by assuming that the theorem or problem is solved, and then deducing a result, which, if true, would be a synthetic "proof" of the theorem (and if it’s false the theorem is false or the problem is incapable of solution).

Math then went on to more proofs and when it tied in with logic it became more about invention, I guess, although it's debatable and many debates are ongoing right now on the subject even here at this forum.

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything but math is provable, political systems are not provable there is only analysis, and there is no way to prove that humans couldn't exist or be happier under other systems. History certainly supports the conclusion that most societies based on gold or money, all end, often in disaster.

Sure, and many of these professors at said universities go and start companies. Look at Silicon Valley. SUN Microsystems, Google, Yahoo!, etc...all got their start at Stanford University

They also get grants and loans, usually, for doing things like this and the point is through representative democracy is how corporations come to exist. Corporations are merely constructions of the government anyway, so the government does have a large role in regulating them, as they are creations of the government.

EVERYTHING you use, your computer, the cup your drink coffee from, the coffee product itself, your pens and pencils, clothes, house, furniture, car, cellphone, IPOD, etc...it all comes from a capitalist economy, not a socialist economy.

These things all have areas that were not developed under market systems, making them "socialist" according to your own earlier standards.

Writing utensils have been around for tens of thousands of years.

Capitalism works. That is undeniable. Socialism doesn't, and I know of no "real socialism" that has ever existed. Tribal cultures are not socialist. One cannot have tyranny with capitalism.

Again, this is not a very good argument for capitalism. There is no where it has existed as "true capitalism," and the capitalism that exists does indeed exist under a social democracy.

Yes, it social-capitalism "works," but that is not an argument for continuing it. Slavery "worked," and existed far longer than capitalism has been around. Feudalism "worked," and so on. These systems ended because of opposition to their tyranny, and such is the way capitalism needs to be dealt with.

Indeed, the history of humanity is that of tyrannies like monarchy, feudalism, colonial slavery, fascism, and capitalism, of groups such as the Barbarians, the Vikings, warriors, the Visigoths, and so on.

As Aristotle, who invented political analysis, said, there are really two systems, between democracy and oligarchic systems (all of the above could be classified as oligarchic system, or oligopolistic, in the case of capitalism).

However, for thousands of years, since Aristotle, democracy has been challenging tyrannies, and the classical liberals actually dipped into this and invented what is called "modern democracy" with egalitarian principles, such as Smith, who, in the unedited editions of the WoN, condemns the division of labor and so on.

I have no doubt that there is a crisis between democracy and capitalism, and that democracy will win out, and is to some degree winning in the Third-World and in some parts of Europe, as well as Japan.

The capitalism you advocated was already tried and failed in England and the US, so if it continues it should continue by existing under social democracies (which are not truly "socialist" either, and which are still moderately right-wing because they have as the basis of their economy an inequtiable system).

The fact that democracy has held for 2,000 years, challenging everything from oligarchy to capitalism, is reason enough to continue to fight for freedom.

 

[OrbitalPower]

Capitalism works. That is undeniable. Socialism doesn't, and I know of no "real socialism" that has ever existed. Tribal cultures are not socialist. One cannot have tyranny with capitalism.

I already told you where it existed: in the Israeli Kibbutzim and during the Spanish revolution, on the large scale.

And I never meant to imply that capitalism is "inevitable." If only it was! Socialism, and tyranny, are the normal human condition, which is why most of humanity has always existed in horrible poverty and most of it still does. It thrives only in those few areas where capitalism has developed.

All those systems continued prosperity, wealth, and so on as well, just as capitalism did. These are not arguments for the systems, and capitalism has also created more extreme gaps between rich and poor than has ever existed, making it even more tyrannical than some of those other systems.

The advance of science, which didn't even develop in capitalism, is what created modern technologies. It had absolutely nothing to do with market forces, and still doesn't, as science does not apply the rules of capitalism to itself, only engineering does, which has obviously been hampered by it, especially in computer science where the fast advancement of OSs came to a standstill after intellectual property was brought into the picture. The government inevitablely has played a role in every major industry.

And that was why the GNU OS was even created, to return to the days of pre-intellectual property, and as shown these kind of socialistic models are quite successful (and Linux isn't an enemy of the government, either, it's been used, promoted, and funded by governments as well).

 

[WheelsRCool]

You haven't shown or proven anything.

Socialism does not promote government ownership of the means of production. Some variants that were called socialism promote this, but it has nothing to do with actual socialist theory. Even Lenin didn't refer to his reforms as socialism.

Has it ever occurred to you how socialism works in theory and how socialism works in practice are two completely different things?

for most of the twentieth century, economists looked to the Soviet Union as the model for the United states to copy. Claiming that capitalism was the best system was considered ludicrous. But the Soviet Union failed, horribly. theory and reality are two different things.

Capitalism does not support worker owned factories; in fact it is written into law that the corporation has to make profits for its shareholders.

And in many corporations, the workers are shareholders. It depends on the company.

The fact that millions have been murdered by capitalism is not evidence of a working system.

What millions? Capitalism is a system that produces wealth. It has never killed anyone.

Your claims for deaths supposedly caused by capitalism refers to wars that are completely un-related.

Patents are arbitrary monopolies of certain features of an economy. They do not protect the little guy as corporations like IBM and Microsoft hold thousands of patents, thus any new computer software developed and sold is usually coerced into submission through oppressive contracts or licensing fees.

The computer and software industries are some of the most competitive in the world. Microsoft did manage to form a near monopoly, but theirs had little to do with intellectual property, but because Windows was designed for the IBM PC, and the IBM PC was easily copied by many other companies, which thus all bought Windows as well. It had nothing to do with intellectual property.

If IBM had never made that mistake of allowing Microsoft in the contract to be able to sell Windows to all PCs, instead of just IBM ones, Microsoft never would have grown to what it is.

As I've said before, monopolies can occasionally form, but they are the exception, not the rule, and even Microsoft, despite its near monopoly power, STILL has much competition in many industries, from other companies and free software as well.

This makes no sense. The FCC just prevented Comcast from further monopolizing the internet by blocking bittorrent traffic. How is allowing Comcast more control, and tyranny, actually opposing them?

I said in a previous post that companies such as utility companies can form a near monopoly. Something like cable is too capital-intensive an enterprise for there to be a large amount of competition. Sort of like the electric company or the water company. If a monopoly naturally forms, as I said, you have no choice then but to have the government step into stop them if they abuse it.

If you have noticed, much of cable TV flat-out stinks too.

The fact remains that for the vast majority of industries, excessive government regulation only creates monopolies and oligopolies, as we saw with the trucking industry, railroads, airlines, telecommunications, the drug industry, the insurance industry, the food industry, etc...

There has never been a successful capitalist economy without a strong government. The evidence above shows capitalism has used military intervention to support itself in the US, even during its Golden Age.

I never said a strong government isn't needed. I said a LIMITED government is needed. Of course the government must be strong. But it needs to be very limited in its scope, size, and reach. No capitalist economy has ever thrived with large government intervention. One look at France, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom during the 1970s is all one needs to see that.

Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea are not examples of free-markets. South Korea actually emerged from a fascist state. Japan is a heavily controlled, socialist economy according to your standards, and social democracy by everyone else's. Certainly they more socialist than the Nazis were who had only a minor amount of social spending compared to Europe and Japan. Taiwan is a similar story.

Now that is just silly. These are some of the freest economies in the world. By my standards, socialism requires government ownership of all the industries. The Japanese economy does not have government ownership of all the industries, so I don't know what gives you that idea.

Again, you're making no sense, these European countries, and Japan, were far more regulatory than the Third Reich. The US is also the most powerful government in history.

These are not "weak governments" and they're not what the anti-federalists had in mind when they were talking about constructing a government. Jefferson would be appalled at today's modern capitalism.

Japan during WWII was equal in regulation to the Third Reich. Afterwards, it became a free-market capitalist economy.

And again, we're not talking about "weak" governments. I am talking about limited governments. There is a difference. As for Jefferson, we would have been conquered long ago if he'd had his way, as he wanted us to remain an agrarian society. It was Hamilton who recognized that we needed to industrialize.

I'm still waiting to see these "proofs" that money is essential to existence. I say, democracy and freedom are essential, as they give people something to strive for.

You have absolutely zero understanding of basic economics. An economy cannot function without money. How would people trade? If you are a lawyer, and you want to buy a home, what are you going to do, offer legal services to the home seller? What if the home seller is a lawyer? What if they don't need any legal services? What if you are a factory worker? How would anyone trade anything?

Especially in a modern economy with millions of products and services?

The burden is on you to explain how an economy could function without money. Money has always existed, in all economies, capitalist, socialist, feudalist, etc...they had money back in Roman and Greek days.

Humanity also evolved during that period. It is interesting humanity hasn't evolved since tyranny came into the picture.[/quote

Humanity didn't "evolve" for thousands of years, until civilization was developed. Humanity came around 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. Only in the last eight thousand years or so, with the development of civilization, has humanity "evolved" to create more advanced social structures.

You also still haven't explained how this is a tyrannical state when you are essentially free to read, write, watch, do, eat, etc...whatever you want. What is your idea of freedom? Being able to kill people with no repercussions?

Mathematics was mostly "discovered" and mathematical theorems or laws mostly held on the basis that they could be shown in reality. The Greeks did some highly abstract mathematics, but the theorems were proved a lot differently than today. It was an analytical method of proof that began by assuming that the theorem or problem is solved, and then deducing a result, which, if true, would be a synthetic "proof" of the theorem (and if it’s false the theorem is false or the problem is incapable of solution).

Math then went on to more proofs and when it tied in with logic it became more about invention, I guess, although it's debatable and many debates are ongoing right now on the subject even here at this forum.

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything but math is provable, political systems are not provable there is only analysis, and there is no way to prove that humans couldn't exist or be happier under other systems. History certainly supports the conclusion that most societies based on gold or money, all end, often in disaster.

It has to do with the fact that humanity existed for thousands of years before math was discovered, but the discovery of it greatly improved the human condition.

And political systems are very provable, unless you have been living in a cave for the last 100 years. They just take much longer to experiment with and you play with people's lives in the process.

They also get grants and loans, usually, for doing things like this and the point is through representative democracy is how corporations come to exist. Corporations are merely constructions of the government anyway, so the government does have a large role in regulating them, as they are creations of the government.

Corporations are created by private individuals, not government bureaucracies, and are fundamentally different in structure from the government. They are in no way "constructions of the government." The government's only job is to enforce contracts between individuals and corporations. The government has no responsibility whatsoever to regulate them except in a few minor instances. Government is simply a necessary institution to recognize and prove the existence of a corporation.

These things all have areas that were not developed under market systems, making them "socialist" according to your own earlier standards.

For the most part, nope. There are very, very, very, VERY few things invented by government agencies.

Writing utensils have been around for tens of thousands of years.

That's like saying wheels have been around for thousands of years, and ignoring all the advances capitalism has made in their design. Writing equipment, toothbrushes, shaving equipment, etc...have all been around a long time, and all have been greatly improved under capitalism, along with myriad other things.

Again, this is not a very good argument for capitalism. There is no where it has existed as "true capitalism," and the capitalism that exists does indeed exist under a social democracy.

Capitalism exists under a republic, or representative democracy.

Yes, it social-capitalism "works," but that is not an argument for continuing it. Slavery "worked," and existed far longer than capitalism has been around. Feudalism "worked," and so on. These systems ended because of opposition to their tyranny, and such is the way capitalism needs to be dealt with.

You again completely ignore that capitalism only can function by providing for the masses, the complete opposite of systems like slavery or feudalism, where the masses provide for the few.

Indeed, the history of humanity is that of tyrannies like monarchy, feudalism, colonial slavery, fascism, and capitalism, of groups such as the Barbarians, the Vikings, warriors, the Visigoths, and so on.

You mean the history of tyrannies like monarchy, feudalism, colonial slavery, fascism, and socialism. Socialism is the one with the undeniable history of killing people.

If this wasn't the case, then all the economists who were socialists during the Cold War would not have given up on socialism with the fall of the Berlin Wall as they did. No serious economist anywhere argues for socialism anymore, because of its so blatant failure.

As Aristotle, who invented political analysis, said, there are really two systems, between democracy and oligarchic systems (all of the above could be classified as oligarchic system, or oligopolistic, in the case of capitalism).

However, for thousands of years, since Aristotle, democracy has been challenging tyrannies, and the classical liberals actually dipped into this and invented what is called "modern democracy" with egalitarian principles, such as Smith, who, in the unedited editions of the WoN, condemns the division of labor and so on.

Democracy is a form of tyranny in itself; it is the rule of the mob, which never works. Representative democracy, or a republic, is what tends to work best. And the WoN is one of the most infamous defenses of free-market economies ever written, and was strongly criticized by Karl Marx.

I have no doubt that there is a crisis between democracy and capitalism, and that democracy will win out, and is to some degree winning in the Third-World and in some parts of Europe, as well as Japan.

We live in a representative democracy in which there is no crises whatsoever between capitalism and democracy. And capitalism is what is on the rise globally, and as such, living standards around the world are going up. No one can deny that. Even Leftist economists do not deny that. You are stuck in the past. If you cannot see this, there is no way I can help you.

The capitalism you advocated was already tried and failed in England and the US,

Wrong. Completely. Capitalism never, ever failed in its history. If you are thinking of the Great Depression, that was not a failure of capitalism. It was a failure of the Federal Reserve.

so if it continues it should continue by existing under social democracies (which are not truly "socialist" either, and which are still moderately right-wing because they have as the basis of their economy an inequtiable system).

Again, what is your definition of equality? How is this idea of "equality" you have no a form of tyranny, when you will take wealth produced by some, by force, to re-distribute to others? And how will this not kill all incentives to produce?

The fact that democracy has held for 2,000 years, challenging everything from oligarchy to capitalism, is reason enough to continue to fight for freedom.

And it continues to hold, thanks to capitalism.

Explain to me why every dictator of the twentieth century, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Mihn, Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, and now Hugo Chavez, all socialized their economies, using the same rhetoric about the "evils" of capitalism and "egalitarianism" that you are mentioning?

The FACT is that all the capitalist economies have the highest standards of living and the freest societies. No one denies this.

 

[WheelsRCool]

I already told you where it existed: in the Israeli Kibbutzim and during the Spanish revolution, on the large scale.

Those were not any paradises.

All those systems continued prosperity, wealth, and so on as well, just as capitalism did. These are not arguments for the systems, and capitalism has also created more extreme gaps between rich and poor than has ever existed, making it even more tyrannical than some of those other systems.

And here we encounter your socialist tendencies. What, exactly what, is wrong with inequalities of wealth? Where does it say that we are all supposed to be equal? If you provide for the masses, increasing their standards of living, there is nothing wrong with getting wealthy.

Again, the pie is not fixed in size. For one guy to get wealthy does not mean someone else has to become poorer. A gap between rich and poor is fine when the living standard of the poor continues to increase, so much so in America these days that our "poor" are rich by most of the world's standards.

There is nothing "tyrannical" whatsoever about capitalism. What IS tyrannical is when people such as yourself go and try to take, by force, the wealth created through other people's hard work. And then you destroy all incentive to produce in the process.

The advance of science, which didn't even develop in capitalism, is what created modern technologies. It had absolutely nothing to do with market forces, and still doesn't, as science does not apply the rules of capitalism to itself, only engineering does, which has obviously been hampered by it, especially in computer science where the fast advancement of OSs came to a standstill after intellectual property was brought into the picture.

Now that is truly laughable. The United States leads the world in scientific development, precisely because we have the world's best corporations and the best universities. And you know why the universities are the best? Because of PRIVATE GIVING, you know, those wealthy people you hate so much, they give lots of money to universities.

The advance of science depends a great deal on capitalism and so does the development of modern technologies.

The government inevitablely has played a role in every major industry.

The government plays virtually no role in the computer/software industry.

And that was why the GNU OS was even created, to return to the days of pre-intellectual property, and as shown these kind of socialistic models are quite successful (and Linux isn't an enemy of the government, either, it's been used, promoted, and funded by governments as well).

Software, as I've said, is unique in that it does not require a profit to develop. This socialistic dream model cannot be applied to other products and services.

 

[OrbitalPower]

Has it ever occurred to you how socialism works in theory and how socialism works in practice are two completely different things?

Yes, and how capitalism works in theory and how capitalism works in practice are two very different things as well. But at least pure socialism has been shown to work.

And in many corporations, the workers are shareholders. It depends on the company.

But they have little public input or knowledge of what's going on, such is the structure of the corporation. Enwrong was an example of this kind of attempt at making corporations semi-humane, and it failed miserably.

What millions? Capitalism is a system that produces wealth. It has never killed anyone.

It has produced wealth under social democracy; and there is obviously an incentive for more resources, even more so because of the profit motive involved. Thus, capitalism has forced other countries to open up their markets for exploitation, often at the barrel of a gun.

Since corporations are such large institutions, they are the ones who pressure the government into these kind of things, and in order to keep society functioning, the government acts on behalf of the capitalists, and intervenes.

Plus, millions have died under capitalist systems.

The computer and software industries are some of the most competitive in the world.

This is ridiculous. Microsoft is a virtual monopoly that runs on 90% or so of all home PCs. They engage in monopolistic practices, such as refusing to release their APIs to those who do not sign a contract, forcing the software industry itself to always rely microsoft. They also can team up with intel and release a bloated OS at the same time Intel is coming out with a new processor.

There was never anywhere near such a monopoly at the time all the variants of Unix existed, nor was there ever a corporation in the industry so powerful as Microsoft that could bully all software developers and force them into their oppressive "contracts" or threaten them with their "patents."

Microsoft, intel, are the perfect examples of monopolies.

And it's the same thing in any industry with deregulation. There used to be dozens of car manufacturers, now there are only a few, and they aren't any good anyway and produce crap and anti-technology that has created a lower MPG standard than it was during Reagan's reign of terror.

If IBM had never made that mistake of allowing Microsoft in the contract to be able to sell Windows to all PCs, instead of just IBM ones, Microsoft never would have grown to what it is.

The story is far more involved than this, but this just proves monopolies develop in capitalist tyranny that end up basically siphoning off money that is flowing into their corporation, and add it to their vaults, only payinmg the workers a small percentage of it, this is a plantation slave system and should be replaced with economic democracies.

Wal-Mart is another example of this.

If you have noticed, much of cable TV flat-out stinks too.

Yes, the quality of programming plummeted after it was deregulated.

Of course the government must be strong. But it needs to be very limited in its scope, size, and reach. No capitalist economy has ever thrived with large government intervention. One look at France, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom during the 1970s is all one needs to see that.

And this is simply incorrect. An accurate study will show that there would have been similar government interventions in both periods, with Thatcherism shifting the government protections and resources to corporations more. This has been disastrous for England in terms of education, child infant mortality rates, and so on.

In the US, the economy was stable during the 50s and 60s, but not stable at other periods which were more "free-market".

Now that is just silly. These are some of the freest economies in the world. By my standards, socialism requires government ownership of all the industries.

No such a system has ever existed really outside of the USSR, and even then things were delegated to the matters. It isn't "silly," Japan had all of its oil imports controlled by the US, they use heavy regulation over there as well.

The build of Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong ,was not free-market, just as it wasn't in the US.

Afterwards, it became a free-market capitalist economy.

It never practiced "laissez-faire" economics, it practices a "mixed economy."

You have absolutely zero understanding of basic economics. An economy cannot function without money.

Numerous economies have existed without the concept of money, such as Spartan society which actually banned money.

Economics has never proven that "money" is a de facto standard of an economy; economics means, the study of what to do with limited resources, which does not require a money to operate.

There can be a thousand ways to work with such an issue.

Humanity didn't "evolve" for thousands of years, until civilization was developed. Humanity came around 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. Only in the last eight thousand years or so, with the development of civilization, has humanity "evolved" to create more advanced social structures.

Humanity certainly did evolve within the last 100,000 years. Cro-magnon, the closest ancestor to modern humans, is only 45000 to 10000 years old. Human kind has existed for hundreds of thousands of years, our nearest ancestors, however, are more recent.

It has to do with the fact that humanity existed for thousands of years before math was discovered, but the discovery of it greatly improved the human condition.

Yes, it did.

And political systems are very provable, unless you have been living in a cave for the last 100 years. They just take much longer to experiment with and you play with people's lives in the process.

No political theory is "provable". You can only look at the evidence, and the evidence is pretty much how I described it.

Corporations are created by private individuals, not government bureaucracies, and are fundamentally different in structure from the government.

They were created by the government, and to exist one must make an appeal to the government to have them legally recognized.

The government's only job is to enforce contracts between individuals and corporations.

That is proof that capitalism is simply another government constructed system, determining who can and can't use force, and how and when people can use resources (and when they can't).

For the most part, nope. There are very, very, very, VERY few things invented by government agencies.

This is simply incorrect. I can think of numerous things either done by the government, or done under the auspices of the government.

Most everything is invented because of ideas and foundations laid out in science, usually at the University level.

That's like saying wheels have been around for thousands of years, and ignoring all the advances capitalism has made in their design. Writing equipment, toothbrushes, shaving equipment, etc...have all been around a long time, and all have been greatly improved under capitalism, along with myriad other things.

Many systems have advanced the development of publication, writing, and so on. I don't see how this means you have to support the system.

You again completely ignore that capitalism only can function by providing for the masses, the complete opposite of systems like slavery or feudalism, where the masses provide for the few.

Feudalism and slavery were very much supported by the majority of people living in those systems, and they probably thought that since a majority supported it was "right." That is not so, however.

You mean the history of tyrannies like monarchy, feudalism, colonial slavery, fascism, and socialism. Socialism is the one with the undeniable history of killing people.

Socialism as I advocate has no connection at all with the "killing of people"; there were no worker owned factories in socialism, and in the USSR the socialists and the anarchists were imprisoned.

Democracy is a form of tyranny in itself; it is the rule of the mob, which never works.

So now democracy is tyranny?

It isn't mob rule. I would say capitalism, which appeals to certain sectors of people in order for corporations to control resources and gain a virtual monopoly over them, rather than to the majority of people through a voting process.

Plus, with democracy, new values and ideas and so on can come to be implemented. So capitalism is clearly closer to mob rule than democracy is.

We live in a representative democracy in which there is no crises whatsoever between capitalism and democracy.

There certainly is a "crisis of democracy" - people are losing the ability to influence their governments as the corporations are beholden to tyrannical, private institutions, without regard to their externalities, without regard to the disastrous effects these things have on local communities and so on.

It used to be that the government was more responsible to public demand, now the government does nothing unless it is in the interests of certain, big businesses.

This is not what the early founders wanted when they said the government should "represent the people."

You are stuck in the past. If you cannot see this, there is no way I can help you.

The systems you advocate are what have failed.

The Gilded Age was a failure, the industrial revolution was a failure and had to be completely reformed by parliament.

I'm advocating a completely decentralized economy, be it "socialism" or "utilitarianism," neither of which ever failed (and socialism showed stability, but was unfortunately crushed by external forces).

You want to take society backwards to a time when workers had no rights and only corporations had rights, even though we know this system already failed in history, thus "democracy" had to alter it.

Again, many societies, especially in the third world, the civilized world, are advancing beyond capitalist tyranny.

Again, what is your definition of equality? How is this idea of "equality" you have no a form of tyranny, when you will take wealth produced by some, by force, to re-distribute to others?

The idea of equality is to prevent transactions from harming other people. In capitalism, people are allowed to control resources and own vast amounts of land, even though the consequences of this ownership affects far more people than the parties involved. By creating an equality of conditions you prevent this, and yet still allow people to be rewarded for their contributions to humanity.

And this means actual contributes, not inherited wealth and so on.

This is the framework Adam Smith wrote about when he said that markets should operate under the conditions of "perfect equality," and the theory of rights elucidated to in the Lectures on Jurisprudence and the Theory of Moral sentiments.

And it continues to hold, thanks to capitalism.

Explain to me why every dictator of the twentieth century, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Mihn, Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, and now Hugo Chavez, all socialized their economies, using the same rhetoric about the "evils" of capitalism and "egalitarianism" that you are mentioning?

They were all anti-democratic, and thus anti-socialist as well, the "lifeblood" of the system.

Socialism and democracy are really the same thing; capitalism is opposed to democracy, as you've now admitted, which is one of your first accurate statements.

__________________________

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations. --Noam Chomsky

[Libertarians] don't denounce what the state does, they just object to who's doing it. This is why the people most victimized by the state display the least interest in libertarianism. Those on the receiving end of coercion don't quibble over their coercers' credentials. If you can't pay or don't want to, you don't much care if your deprivation is called larceny or taxation or restitution or rent. If you like to control your own time, you distinguish employment from enslavement only in degree and duration.
Bob Black, The Libertarian As Conservative

Now, under capitalism we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level -- there's a little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy. --Noam Chomsky

Power over a man's subsistence is power over his will.
Alexander Hamilton

 

[OrbitalPower]

Those were not any paradises.

What was wrong with them?

And here we encounter your socialist tendencies. What, exactly what, is wrong with inequalities of wealth? Where does it say that we are all supposed to be equal? If you provide for the masses, increasing their standards of living, there is nothing wrong with getting wealthy.

The problem with the inequalities of wealth is that, as I noted above, it usually exists in a situation where you have large corporations handed down from generation from generation, without people who are more creative/intelligent being allowed to effectively compete with them. In a more equal society, with a level playing, you wouldn't have this, and their ideas and their access to resources could more easily come through.

Rewarding people is fine; allowing them a monopolization of resources when most of the world's population do not get any share in it is not OK. This is especially true with food resources since there is enough food to feed everybody, yet capialism is very wasteful with food in that our production methods (1) destroy the environment; (2) graze the lands of third world nations, making the land not as arable as it could be; and (3) wastes water, even though about a billion people are without clean drinking.

The problems of capitalism and society are still enormous and nothing has been fixed.

For one guy to get wealthy does not mean someone else has to become poorer.

Certainly it does. There is a limited amount of resources so if you allow a tyrant, a corporation, to control it, you obviously make it that much harder for the other person to get successful, especially if you're on the best land.

Much of human history is the conflicts of land ownership, especially from the Eurocentric idea of running around and sticking flags in the ground. Capitalism promotes this tyranny.

A gap between rich and poor is fine when the living standard of the poor continues to increase, so much so in America these days that our "poor" are rich by most of the world's standards.

It isn't fine and it's not "natural"; there is no reason Paris Hilton should have millions more than a professor of computer science for instance.

Also, that second comment is ridiculous. Americans do not have as good of access to health care in places like Europe, nor access to better options in housing, welfare, education, internet, and so on for the poor.

I'd much rather be poor in Europe than in the US.

There is nothing "tyrannical" whatsoever about capitalism.

All tiered systems are necessary tyrannical.

What IS tyrannical is when people such as yourself go and try to take, by force, the wealth created through other people's hard work. And then you destroy all incentive to produce in the process.

Property in itself is a form of force, especially when it's allowed to be controlled by huge oligopolies.

Now that is truly laughable. The United States leads the world in scientific development, precisely because we have the world's best corporations and the best universities. And you know why the universities are the best? Because of PRIVATE GIVING, you know, those wealthy people you hate so much, they give lots of money to universities.

The United States spends billions of dollars on our Universities; I don't know what you're talking about here.

I don't know that the greatest scientists have come from the US, either. Some of my favorites are from Europe.

The advance of science depends a great deal on capitalism and so does the development of modern technologies.

Name one scientific discipline that works on capitalist concepts of property, "capital," and so on.

The government plays virtually no role in the computer/software industry.

Again, this is just absolutely untrue. The government has always had a huge role in the computer industry, even into the 90s the government was pouring billions of dollars into the computer industry. The thing that allowed the "boom" in the 90s, the internet, was created by the department of defense.

Software, as I've said, is unique in that it does not require a profit to develop. This socialistic dream model cannot be applied to other products and services.

Nothing in science actually requires a profit to develop. Profit and funding is nice, and important, and it's usually provided by the government.

 

[WheelsRCool]

Yes, and how capitalism works in theory and how capitalism works in practice are two very different things as well. But at least pure socialism has been shown to work.

No it hasn't.

But they have little public input or knowledge of what's going on, such is the structure of the corporation. Enwrong was an example of this kind of attempt at making corporations semi-humane, and it failed miserably.

Enron was no such thing. And how, in your socialist workers paradise, would the workers be any more knowledgeable or have any more input? If everythingi s collectively owned, each person has virtually no input.

Shareholders have large input through thingsl ike mutual funds, pension funds, etc...the managers of these funds represent their shareholders in investing the money.

Sort of like a democracy. A large country could never exist as a pure democracy; it has to have representative democracy, electing politicians to represent the people. In this same way, people put their money into funds managed by professional managers, who represent them in investing in various corporations.

It has produced wealth under social democracy; and there is obviously an incentive for more resources, even more so because of the profit motive involved. Thus, capitalism has forced other countries to open up their markets for exploitation, often at the barrel of a gun.[/quote

Wrong.

Since corporations are such large institutions, they are the ones who pressure the government into these kind of things, and in order to keep society functioning, the government acts on behalf of the capitalists, and intervenes.

Completely wrong. That is why government needs to be limited in size in a capitalist economy. When the government is limited in scope and power, it can do no such thing.

This is ridiculous. Microsoft is a virtual monopoly that runs on 90% or so of all home PCs. They engage in monopolistic practices, such as refusing to release their APIs to those who do not sign a contract, forcing the software industry itself to always rely microsoft. They also can team up with intel and release a bloated OS at the same time Intel is coming out with a new processor.

I specifically said Microsoft is an exception to the rule.

There was never anywhere near such a monopoly at the time all the variants of Unix existed, nor was there ever a corporation in the industry so powerful as Microsoft that could bully all software developers and force them into their oppressive "contracts" or threaten them with their "patents."

Microsoft cannot bully software developers or force them into anything.

And there is nothing "ridiculous" about it. The fact of the matter is that the computer and softwarei ndustries are some of the most competitive in existence, which is why the technology continually advances so quickly.

Microsoft, intel, are the perfect examples of monopolies.

No they aren't.

And it's the same thing in any industry with deregulation. There used to be dozens of car manufacturers, now there are only a few, and they aren't any good anyway and produce crap and anti-technology that has created a lower MPG standard than it was during Reagan's reign of terror.

Again, you show a zero knowledge of economics. There used to be so many car manufacturers because there were many startups. The MARKET only supports a few car manufacturers, which is why the others died off eventually.

And the only reason the Big Three have trouble with quality is because of the unions. Fuel efficiency is because most Americans prefer large trucks and SUVs instead of cars. Toyota manufacturers cars and trucks in America with no unionization and builds quality vehicles.

The story is far more involved than this, but this just proves monopolies develop in capitalist tyranny that end up basically siphoning off money that is flowing into their corporation, and add it to their vaults, only payinmg the workers a small percentage of it, this is a plantation slave system and should be replaced with economic democracies.

Now that is just silly. The workers are not entitled to any of the profits whatsoever of the corporation. Those profits belong to the shareholders. The workers work for the company voluntarily having engaged in a contract to work for the company. Market competition controls what wages are paid and the workers can go somewhere else in the market to work if they think the salary is too low. The workers are simply employees of the company, not owners, unless they own shares, in which case, the company's profits do get shared with them.

The comparison to a plantation slave system is also silly. Slaves on a plantation had nowhere else to go if they didn't like the business.

Wal-Mart is another example of this.

No it isn't. Wal-Mart is no such thing. Wal-Mart does not have a monopoly, Wal-Mart offer stock ownership to its employees, and thanks to Wal-Mart's having LOWERED the cost of many products, it has HELPED the poor by lowering their cost of living.

And this is simply incorrect. An accurate study will show that there would have been similar government interventions in both periods, with Thatcherism shifting the government protections and resources to corporations more. This has been disastrous for England in terms of education, child infant mortality rates, and so on.

In the US, the economy was stable during the 50s and 60s, but not stable at other periods which were more "free-market".

Thatcher decreased regulation over the Uk, and cut the power of the coal unions Before hand in the 1970s, EVERYONE went on strike in the UK. There was trash piling up on the streets, businesses shut down, etc...the economy could barely function. Thatcher was arguably one of the UK's greatest prime ministers for her taking the boot of the government off the throat of the economy.

And no, the economy was not "more stable" in the 1950s and 1960s. The economy used to be far more prone to recessions and slowdowns because of the power of unions and more more stringent regulation, which cut the flexibility of the economy. One union strike used to be able to shut down the economy. After the Reagan reforms, this all changed, with the economy becoming, at the moment, the stablest it's ever been, so stable that it has been able to withstand high oil prices and a HUGE blow in the form of a real-estate bubble, yet it still has not entered a recession.

It never practiced "laissez-faire" economics, it practices a "mixed economy."

Japan is a free-market economy.

Numerous economies have existed without the concept of money, such as Spartan society which actually banned money.

Sparta was a military dictatorship that did not produce art or wealth of any kind. They lived for warfare and funded their militaristic state with slavery.

Economics has never proven that "money" is a de facto standard of an economy; economics means, the study of what to do with limited resources, which does not require a money to operate.

And how do you think one makes decisions about supply and demand, i.e. how to distribute resources without money? It cannot be done without money and a price system.

There can be a thousand ways to work with such an issue.

Name some.

They were created by the government, and to exist one must make an appeal to the government to have them legally recognized.

They are created by individuals. The law must recognize a corporation because the rule of law is required for a capitalist economy to function.

That is proof that capitalism is simply another government constructed system, determining who can and can't use force, and how and when people can use resources (and when they can't).

Nope; do you understand the meaning of the term "enforce contracts?" All it means is that if you and I make an agreement, like I will pay you if you build me a home, it is the government's job to force me to pay you if I decide to say no. The government has no say over who uses what resources in a free-market.

This is simply incorrect. I can think of numerous things either done by the government, or done under the auspices of the government.

Most everything is invented because of ideas and foundations laid out in science, usually at the University level.

What great products or services have been created by government?

Feudalism and slavery were very much supported by the majority of people living in those systems, and they probably thought that since a majority supported it was "right." That is not so, however.

The fact remains that in capitalism, the few serve the masses. Feudalism and slavery require the masses to serve the few.

Socialism as I advocate has no connection at all with the "killing of people"; there were no worker owned factories in socialism, and in the USSR the socialists and the anarchists were imprisoned.

Once again, there can be no such thing as a paradise filled with "worker-controlled factories." How are they "worker-controlled?" You have to have a manager. More likely, a bureaucracy of managers. And then how are the resources in the economy itself rationed (especially without money!?). What prevents the managers from cheating the workers out of money?

HOW ARE THE WORKERS EVEN PAID if there is no money?

So now democracy is tyranny?

It isn't mob rule. I would say capitalism, which appeals to certain sectors of people in order for corporations to control resources and gain a virtual monopoly over them, rather than to the majority of people through a voting process.

Capitalism, by its very nature, prevents corporations from gaining monopolies, except in a very few instances. For the most part, formation of a monopoly is impossible. This is textbook economics even. Monopolies are extraordinarily difficult to form for the most part, and when formed, extraordinarily difficult to maintain. There are thousands of different industries. Only in a few, here and there, do monopolies form.

And yes, it is mob rule. Again, if not, then WHY do you not trust people with guns? Why are you afraid of them? You don't trust the masses with guns, but you at the same time claim they aren't a mob?

The average person is responsible enough to handle a firearm. But they're an idiot with when it comes to who to vote for, most of the time. A representative democracy protects the minority from the majority, while at the same time, still preserving the rule of the majority.

There certainly is a "crisis of democracy" - people are losing the ability to influence their governments as the corporations are beholden to tyrannical, private institutions, without regard to their externalities, without regard to the disastrous effects these things have on local communities and so on.

It used to be that the government was more responsible to public demand, now the government does nothing unless it is in the interests of certain, big businesses.

This is not what the early founders wanted when they said the government should "represent the people."

Yes; this occurs because of big government regulation. Also lobbying. Again, more reasons why we want government to remain as small and limited as possible.

The systems you advocate are what have failed.

The Gilded Age was a failure, the industrial revolution was a failure and had to be completely reformed by parliament.

Wrong and wrong. The Guilded Age was one of the greatest periods of wealth creation in history, and immigration, in history. The only "reforms" that had to be doen were things like anti-trust laws, and cleaning up rivers from pollution, and making laws against pollution and harming workers when companies didn't clean up their act fast enough.

I'm advocating a completely decentralized economy, be it "socialism" or "utilitarianism," neither of which ever failed (and socialism showed stability, but was unfortunately crushed by external forces).

Socialism isn't decentralized; it can't be. A decentralized economy is what we have now: capitalism.

You want to take society backwards to a time when workers had no rights and only corporations had rights, even though we know this system already failed in history, thus "democracy" had to alter it.

I told you, repeating myself again, that all capitalist societies start out this way, and that this ends eventually, because of competition among companies for workers, and workers ban together to get legislation passed and so forth.

It is a myth that the majority of the evils of industry were cleaned up by the government. Most of it was done by the market.

Again, many societies, especially in the third world, the civilized world, are advancing beyond capitalist tyranny.

The Third World is moving towards capitalism, and thus the standard of living is increasing for people. China and India are the two biggest examples of this.

The idea of equality is to prevent transactions from harming other people. In capitalism, people are allowed to control resources and own vast amounts of land, even though the consequences of this ownership affects far more people than the parties involved. By creating an equality of conditions you prevent this, and yet still allow people to be rewarded for their contributions to humanity.

Again, this is the socialist fantasy. First of all, you have no right whatsoever to take away someone else's property or wealth. You have a right to own as much land as you can acquire through legal means, and as much wealth as you can acquire through legal means.

Folks such as yourself, who want to use the government to remove such wealth by force, to "enforce equality" instead only create more inequality.

You cannot enforce equality without discrimination of some type and inequal treatment. All attempts to enforce equality only make things more and more un-equal.

This is the framework Adam Smith wrote about when he said that markets should operate under the conditions of "perfect equality," and the theory of rights elucidated to in the Lectures on Jurisprudence and the Theory of Moral sentiments.

What Adam Smith talked about was equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome, i.e. that everyone be treated equally from the get-go, given no special treatments by the government, to go out and do as they please. If some folks are born more rich than others, that's just how it is.

When you try to make the outcome equal, you only succeed in making things more un-equal than before. You discriminate against the wealth producers and builders, and kill all incentive for them to produce. Thus those who already own big businesses see their wealth and positions of power become secure in society, because there is no one to challenge them.

 

[WheelsRCool]

The problem with the inequalities of wealth is that, as I noted above, it usually exists in a situation where you have large corporations handed down from generation from generation, without people who are more creative/intelligent being allowed to effectively compete with them. In a more equal society, with a level playing, you wouldn't have this, and their ideas and their access to resources could more easily come through.

For one thing, in a free-market economy if it's a privately-owned corporation, than so what? If it is publicly-owned, this is a lot less likely to happen, because the shareholders watch.

And it was because of the Ronald Reagan financial revolution that really ended this practice of nepotism, making corporate accountability to shareholders a lot larger than it used to be.

Wall Street and corporate America used to be a much more elite place, where you had to come from the Ivy League to break into it. Reagan ended this.

Rewarding people is fine; allowing them a monopolization of resources when most of the world's population do not get any share in it is not OK. This is especially true with food resources since there is enough food to feed everybody,

Monopolization of resources in a capitalist economy is very rare. The rest of the world doesn't use the resources of a capitalist economy because they are so poor, because they produce no wealth, because they are not capitalist.

yet capialism is very wasteful with food in that our production methods (1) destroy the environment; (2) graze the lands of third world nations, making the land not as arable as it could be; and (3) wastes water, even though about a billion people are without clean drinking.

Actually, modern farming, thanks to capitalism, has produced an environmental miracle of allowing us to grow about three times as much food on about one-third as much land as we used back in the 1920s. Thus, forests that used to be cut down to grow food, have been able to grow back; we have more trees per capita today than we did 150 years ago.

The lands of Third world nations get damaged precisely because they are not capitalist. So they cut down lots more forest, and rainforest, to grow food, and also for firewood.

The problems of capitalism and society are still enormous and nothing has been fixed.

In the late 19th century, the average American had no phone, no washing machine, less clean food and water like today, no cars, no computers, no air conditioning, no hot baths or showers, etc...today our "poor" have all this stuff, and you claim nothing has been fixed? EVERYTHING has been improved.

The problems continue to exist in countries that are not capitalist.

Certainly it does. There is a limited amount of resources so if you allow a tyrant, a corporation, to control it, you obviously make it that much harder for the other person to get successful, especially if you're on the best land.

Corporations do not control all the resources individually. There is nothing tyrant about them.

Much of human history is the conflicts of land ownership, especially from the Eurocentric idea of running around and sticking flags in the ground. Capitalism promotes this tyranny.

I said in a previous post, throughout most of history, one had to steal wealth in order to become wealthier. Capitalism CREATES wealth, thus there is no need. Again, look at Russia versus little Japan, Japan being far wealthier, yet Russia having all the oil, coal, natural gas, and so forth.

It isn't fine and it's not "natural"; there is no reason Paris Hilton should have millions more than a professor of computer science for instance.

Yes she should; that is one of the most democratic things about capitalism. Capitalism pays people according to what you PRODUCE. And what you produce is valued by the MARKET, i.e., THE MASSES. The reason idiot football players (not that all football players are idiots, but many are) can make so much more money than a professor of computer science is because they produce something valued highly by the masses, and are thus paid accordingly.

Sure, YOU might not think football is valuable, but many people are willing to fork over large sums of $$$ for football games; they value the entertainment it provides, highly. And in a FREE society, what the masses think is valuable, becomes valuable.

A computer science professor gets paid by the university, or a company. If he wants to become wealthy, he/she needs to create something very valuable and multiply their productivity (i.e. start a company), which many do, and then their product can go and serve millions, or even billions.

The Google guys are a perfect example of this. They became billionaires because the market highly values their product.

Also, that second comment is ridiculous. Americans do not have as good of access to health care in places like Europe, nor access to better options in housing, welfare, education, internet, and so on for the poor.

American healthcare is among the best quality in the world. The healthcare SYSTEM is another matter. And we have far better options to housing and Internet. Education and healthcare in America are both heavily regulated by the government, heck education is run by a government agency, and as such, are of poor quality. European education is better quality because they do what the U.S. doesn't, i.e. allow people to choose what school to send their children to. Here in the U.S., unless you can pay for private school, a bureaucrat decides what school your kid goes too.

Welfare is a pointless program. If you pay people not to work, guess what? They won't. Welfare to poverty is like throwing breadcrumbs on mold. You just get more mold. It's abasic economic principle that if you subsidize something, you get more of it.

I'd much rather be poor in Europe than in the US.

In a free-market, capitalist economy, charities and churches and so forth help the poor, the few that there are because very few poor form in a capitalist system. Poverty, if you notice, skyrocketed in the United States with Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program. When everyone has to work, poverty shrinks and could likely be eliminated completely, with the "poorest" people still having a very high standard of living.

All tiered systems are necessary tyrannical.

So how would workers own and manage factories themselves then? They'd need a hierarchy to manage it.

Property in itself is a form of force, especially when it's allowed to be controlled by huge oligopolies.

Oligopolies form from excess government regulation into an industry.

The United States spends billions of dollars on our Universities; I don't know what you're talking about here.

Yes, and they also get a great deal of money from private donations as well. Why do you think campuses have so many buildings named after different people? Those people are who fund the buildings. For example, at a university up here, a local billionaire recently gave the university millions to build a new computer science building, named after him.

I don't know that the greatest scientists have come from the US, either. Some of my favorites are from Europe.

The U.S. leads the world in scientific research. If the great scientists themselves are outside of America, the immigrate to it because America has the BEST universities in the world.

Name one scientific discipline that works on capitalist concepts of property, "capital," and so on.

I don't understand the meaning of this question.

Again, this is just absolutely untrue. The government has always had a huge role in the computer industry, even into the 90s the government was pouring billions of dollars into the computer industry. The thing that allowed the "boom" in the 90s, the internet, was created by the department of defense.

The U.S. government doesn't really regulate the computer industry at all. It just supplies money for research and development here and there. But the industry itself is privately owned and controlled by various companies, who compete with each other for government contracts for certain forms of software, supercomputers, etc...and yes the Internet was invented by the government, but it was advanced by the private sector.

Nothing in science actually requires a profit to develop. Profit and funding is nice, and important, and it's usually provided by the government.

Science is something that can be advanced by either the government or corporations. I am sure companies like GM, Ford, Boeing, Intel, etc...have scientists working for them, along with certain government agencies.

 

[OrbitalPower]

No it hasn't.

This is not an argument.

Enron was no such thing.

Enron certainly was an attempt at a corporate system where all the workers have investments in the company, such as in stock, yet the company failed anyway.

If everythingi s collectively owned, each person has virtually no input.

If something was collectively owned, everybody would have input. That is why the public utilities in California managed themselves just fine, the but the privatized model failed miserably.

Completely wrong. That is why government needs to be limited in size in a capitalist economy. When the government is limited in scope and power, it can do no such thing.

As the government exists in your "privatized" model, it is only beholden to the corporations, not protecting the citizens at all.

Microsoft cannot bully software developers or force them into anything.

Certainly they can. In order to have access to Microsoft's APIs to certain software you must sign into ridiculous and oppressive contracts that microsoft creates, such as that you can't develop for other companies.

You must not have that much experience with programming. It's a very hierarchical method; however, I do prefer microsoft programming tools, but that doesn't mean I don't under MS tyranny is "natural" or an essential development of the market.

Again, you show a zero knowledge of economics. There used to be so many car manufacturers because there were many startups. The MARKET only supports a few car manufacturers, which is why the others died off eventually.

There is nothing in economics that could ever contradict history, observed, empirical reality.

That is why the "theories" of libertarians are rejected.

Here it should be noted that most economists do not support Austrian economics or laissez-faire economics; only about 10% do. Polls of economists all show them support things a mix of things like UHC, and so on.

So, your own theories are rejected in economics as well all the other social sciences.

And the only reason the Big Three have trouble with quality is because of the unions. Fuel efficiency is because most Americans prefer large trucks and SUVs instead of cars.

The reason they became out of fashion is because the lack of standards the government employed on the car companies in the 90s, whereas in Japan and so on I believe it was continued to progress.

That is why the MPG per year began to slip in the US but in Japan it continued, which, in Japan, the automotive industry is heavily regulated as well.

Now that is just silly. The workers are not entitled to any of the profits whatsoever of the corporation. Those profits belong to the shareholders. The workers work for the company voluntarily having engaged in a contract to work for the company.

It's not voluntary when you have to work to survive and the system has created a large amount of corporate tyrannies that have controlled all the resources. There is nothing "voluntary" about it; everybody should be able to have enough land and resources without having to worry about submitting themselves into slavery, which is why I support a removal of taxes on the poor, or so-called "progressive taxation."

They are entitled to the profits because they do most of the work in a corporation, while the CEOs are wondering how they can run the corporation into the ground while bailing themselves out with "golden parachutes."

And no, the economy was not "more stable" in the 1950s and 1960s.

It certainly was. The economy continued to grow in the 50s and 60s even though the US was taxing the rich at a very high rate.

FDR's New Deal, 30s and 40s, was also one of the fastest turn around in US history, and if you count the amount of people doing government jobs unemployment was down to as much as 5% at times.

Japan is a free-market economy.

In addition, due to the financial flexibility afforded by the FILP, Ikeda’s government rapidly expanded government investment in Japan’s infrastructure: building highways, high-speed railways, subways, airports, port facilities, and dams. Ikeda's government also expanded government investment in the communications sector of the Japanese economy previously neglected. Each of these acts continued the Japanese trend towards managed economy that epitomizes the mixed economic model.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_post-war_economic_miracle

As I understand it, these policies are still in place and japan even has progressive taxes now.

They also have good public education, and I believe a UHC system.

Also, the US controlled their oil imports until well into the 70s, to give the US "veto power" over the Japanese. So they couldn't have been a free-market economy where everything is owned by the corporations.

Sparta was a military dictatorship that did not produce art or wealth of any kind. They lived for warfare and funded their militaristic state with slavery.

But life in Sparta increased for the average citizens and there was far more freedom, leisure time, and so on than in the equivalent, gold based socities.

And that they were based on warfare and militaristic intervention is just like the policies of capitalist countries.

And how do you think one makes decisions about supply and demand, i.e. how to distribute resources without money? It cannot be done without money and a price system.

There is absolutely no evidence of facts that show a monetary system is necessary to trade resources.

Name some.

Socialism, where needs are distributed according to "contribution to the public good." Or communism, where resources are distributed according to need. The USSR didn't attempt this at all, preferring instead a state capitalist model where managers were assigned to run the factories, attempting to fill quotas (as all corporations must do).

Utilitarianism I think could also exist without a monetary system, and again, some systems in history have not used them.

Nope; do you understand the meaning of the term "enforce contracts?" All it means is that if you and I make an agreement, like I will pay you if you build me a home, it is the government's job to force me to pay you if I decide to say no.

A society of contracts would be very oppressive as if you decide not to do something the punishments could be extreme or arbitrary, plus you could be forced into them if you did not have enough resources.

Giving people "contracts" to own land is ridiculous because it does not take into account all the people that are affected by that land ownership.

What great products or services have been created by government?

The internet; circuits; sockets, and so on. Plus, all the scientific theories that come out of Universities are what's great and allows a blueprint for the development and advancement of resources, such as in medicine.

And what I was getting at is that every industry has been supported by the government, including the computer industry, to the tune of billions of dollars, as protection from "market risk."

It is science, not capitalism, that has significantly saved the lives of millions, whereas capitalism, unfortunately, has kept them in poverty.

The fact remains that in capitalism, the few serve the masses.

Capitalism no more serves the masses than feudalism does. A corporation does not need mass support or even popular support to come into existence. Mostly, they were just there, and now most industries, such as the media, computers, agriculture, and so on, are becoming more consolidated, not less consolidated.

The facts of history simply fly in the face of libertarian nonsense.

Once again, there can be no such thing as a paradise filled with "worker-controlled factories." How are they "worker-controlled?" You have to have a manager.

Yes, you may need managers. That is where the process of democracy comes in. Obviously, everybody can't run everything - sum are better than others. So you have democracy determine who is the most qualified, and if they do not get the job done, you can have them removed.

Capitalism, by its very nature, prevents corporations from gaining monopolies, except in a very few instances. For the most part, formation of a monopoly is impossible. This is textbook economics even.

There is nothing "textbook economics" about this and history shows when you don't have regulation and oversight by the government, monopolies inevitably formed, with few people playing any meaningful role in the economy.

And yes, it is mob rule. Again, if not, then WHY do you not trust people with guns? Why are you afraid of them? You don't trust the masses with guns, but you at the same time claim they aren't a mob?

This makes no sense. I don't understand the question.

I support gun control because I believe they do more harm than good by the overall statistics in terms of protection; meaning, a person walking down the street in a society with gun control is more safe than in a society without gun control.

Japan has extremely strict gun control, for instance, and they have a very low gun homicide rate.

If the facts started going the other way and I was convinced of the need of gun ownership, I might go the other way.

Such is the nature of a free system, not capitalism tyranny which places these type of decisions into the hands of people who decide whether it is capitalist or not.

For example, i wouldn't want a meth lab next to my home, either, and thus meth labs shouldn't be able to operate in neighborhoods.

The average person is responsible enough to handle a firearm. But they're an idiot with when it comes to who to vote for, most of the time.

Well, certainly some people are.

Yes; this occurs because of big government regulation. Also lobbying. Again, more reasons why we want government to remain as small and limited as possible.

It has nothing to do with big government regulation; it has to do with the fact that our elections have been hijacked by "free-market" lobbying. The person with the most money gets listened to.

So there should be public financing of campaigns and limited contributions. Kind of like we have now, with the loopholes all closed up.

Wrong and wrong. The Guilded Age was one of the greatest periods of wealth creation in history, and immigration, in history.

I don't know what standard you're using to measure this, but the gap between the rich and the poor was also the greatest it had ever been in the US (up until that time) and the corporations controlled most of the resources, making public oversight more necessary.

Socialism isn't decentralized; it can't be. A decentralized economy is what we have now: capitalism.

Things are becoming more centralized, not decentralized.

I told you, repeating myself again, that all capitalist societies start out this way, and that this ends eventually, because of competition among companies for workers, and workers ban together to get legislation passed and so forth.

There is absolutely nothing natural about a monopolization of resources. It might be natural to capitalism, but it is not natural to survival. The "competition" is inevitably biased towards certain classes, forcing everybody else to accept the outcome. All tyrannies work like this.

The Third World is moving towards capitalism, and thus the standard of living is increasing for people. China and India are the two biggest examples of this.

Not in Latin America. Cochabama, in Bolivia, recently rejected efforts to privatize their water resources. Numerous "landless peasant" movements still exist, and Mexico went into the worst recession in its history after it implemented capitalistic reforms.

Numerous, moderate socialists have been elected to office in Latin America, and China is still a brutal tyranny with absolutely no concern for human rights, who's also "industrializing" through slave labor (just as the US did).

And India has paid an enormous price for industrializing, far more lives than even lost during Stalin.

Again, this is the socialist fantasy. First of all, you have no right whatsoever to take away someone else's property or wealth.

Again, I would argue that it is capitalism, not socialism, that is based on a theft of resources because of the consolidation factor, which I believe to be random and arbitrary, not natural, and the fact that all property inevitably becomes controlled by few hands by "mob like rule," getting just enough buyers to support them, as the mob works, and then establishing a monopoly afterwards.

All capitalist "property" and "patents" are basically based off of someone else's work. Computer programming was heavily influenced by mathematics, yet corporations want to own things that they themselves only partially created. They did not come up with the physics concepts to establish computers either, so why should just a few people be able to "patent" an idea?

Capitalist property is a form of theft in this way.

Absolutely no property or ideas could be said to be "original" or to have no "borrowrs" or usurpers, all land was ultimately taken in some way, making capitalist concepts of property being based on theft.

What Adam Smith talked about was equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome, i.e. that everyone be treated equally from the get-go, given no special treatments by the government, to go out and do as they please. If some folks are born more rich than others, that's just how it is.

He talks about equality of "conditions" which would automatically prevent mass inequality of outcome, and he himself condemned the division of labor and spoke highly in favor the workers.

In book V of "The Wealth of Nations" he constantly condemns the '"merchants and manufacturers" who jump forward at every opportunity to fix prices, and selfishly narrowing competition through monopolies and protection.

Smith was not ideological, and he certainly wasn't a capitalist. He say the elements of capitalism forming and he condemned the "incorporations" as being tyrannies.


Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
Adam Smith

Our merchants and master manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.
Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, chapter 9)

"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”
-Adam Smith

Libertarians simply ignore these writings or even edit them out of the WoN.

So, not even Adam Smith supported a system of private tyrannies (modern libertarianism).

 

[OrbitalPower]

For one thing, in a free-market economy if it's a privately-owned corporation, than so what? If it is publicly-owned, this is a lot less likely to happen, because the shareholders watch.

And it was because of the Ronald Reagan financial revolution that really ended this practice of nepotism, making corporate accountability to shareholders a lot larger than it used to be.

It was because of Ronald Reagan's despotism and lack of accountability that corporations thought they could run their companies into the ground, and then get bailed out. "So what?" is not an argument for anything.

Monopolization of resources in a capitalist economy is very rare. The rest of the world doesn't use the resources of a capitalist economy because they are so poor, because they produce no wealth, because they are not capitalist.

You say that, but resources have become more consolidated, not less so. And when there was little oversight, there was even more monopolization, such as Standard oil and so on. All resources in capitalism are really monopolized by a few industries.

Actually, modern farming, thanks to capitalism, has produced an environmental miracle of allowing us to grow about three times as much food on about one-third as much land as we used back in the 1920s.

Modern capitalism has created less produce off of arable land than what could be produced, at the expense of the environment, meaning the world itself, the world's populations, are forced to accept the outcomes, such as with global warming.

Misusing land and wasting resources is not an "environmental miracle," and the epidemic of diseases were seeing probably has something to do with the poor farming techniques.

The lands of Third world nations get damaged precisely because they are not capitalist.

Again, makes no sense. Some of the deforestation happened because they opened up their markets to the US and the "capitalist" economies, exactly what Libertarians advocate.

The disastrous effects of NAFTA on Mexico are also an example, which is estimated at about 47 billion dollars worth of damage.

http://www.sierraclub.org/trade/downloads/2008-04-naftamexico.pdf

Corporations do not control all the resources individually. There is nothing tyrant about them.

Corporations do control most of the actual resources in the US.

Capitalism CREATES wealth, thus there is no need. Again, look at Russia versus little Japan, Japan being far wealthier, yet Russia having all the oil, coal, natural gas, and so forth.

Russia was far more powerful than Japan when it was a socialist economy. Wealth production and increase in productively is meaningless to a debate on whether a system is free or not.

Yes she should; that is one of the most democratic things about capitalism. Capitalism pays people according to what you PRODUCE. And what you produce is valued by the MARKET, i.e., THE MASSES. The reason idiot football players (not that all football players are idiots, but many are) can make so much more money than a professor of computer science is because they produce something valued highly by the masses, and are thus paid accordingly.

I think most people would agree that the work computer specialists do is more important, and more valuable, than football, showing there is yet another discrepancy in capitalism.

Because football makes more money doesn't mean it's more valuable or even that people think it is more valuable.

It's like the roman games, it's used to take people's minds off things.

The Google guys are a perfect example of this. They became billionaires because the market highly values their product.

The engine of which was developed at Stanford, a University that has seen millions from the government. I don't see how a few "winners" in a system proves anything, however.

For every Horatio Alger, there are a million Willy Lomans, even though the Lomans quite possibly have better ideas, better methods to implement it, they just couldn't patent their ideas in time.

American healthcare is among the best quality in the world. The healthcare SYSTEM is another matter.

I disagree. We are ranked far behind most other industrialized countries. That is not a good healthcare system. When you say healthcare, you mean the healthcare system. It's meaningless if too few have access.

Welfare is a pointless program. If you pay people not to work, guess what? They won't.

Numerous people have been on welfare only to become productive members of society, debunking your "theory" here.

All corporations are on welfare, far more than social welfare, and yet they are also still producing.

In a free-market, capitalist economy, charities and churches and so forth help the poor...

We have welfare because charities did not meet the demands of the poor in the first place.

So how would workers own and manage factories themselves then? They'd need a hierarchy to manage it.

There would just be different jobs; but it wouldn't be a hierarchy in the since that a corporation is. Plus, it would be democratic.

Yes, and they also get a great deal of money from private donations as well.

They get billions from the government, which contradicts your theory that they're support by private initiatives.

The education does not succeed, then, because it's private. They are all public to the degree they get research money, and other government grants like student loans, which go into the Universities as well.

I don't understand the meaning of this question.

You were claiming that capitalism is responsible for the advancement of science, but science does not work like a corporation works at all. Science is about ideas, but they are not "patented" and so on like ideas are in engineering.

The U.S. government doesn't really regulate the computer industry at all. It just supplies money for research and development here and there.

That proves it doesn't operate on market principles.

Give me a billion dollars and inevitably i could produce a program as well.

Science is something that can be advanced by either the government or corporations.

I agree, but the real science that needs to be done isn't usually isn't immediately shown to be profitable. Science means, knowledge of the world and how it works, and refers to such a collected body of knowledge. More often than not corporations have no interest promoting this kind of knowledge, which is why we have the University system to begin with.

Nikola Tesla couldn't get the funding he needed for the research he wanted to do, and he was a genius.

Babbage also couldn't even get the funding for his Difference Engine, which has now been proven to have been applicable and could have worked.

Such pitfalls of capitalism actually hold back progress and advancement by centuries.

Already, better technology exists in engineering, in the automotive industry, and in energy production, etc., but it is held back because it cuts into corporate profits. It took government involvement to get cars safer as well.

These are called "market failures" by economists, and they are endless. So not only is capitalism a failed system, it's not producing as efficiently enough, either.

 

[thomasxc]

George Orwell remarked in 1946 that the term 'fascist' no longer had any meaning other then 'something undesirable.'

that quote is mentioned in the book.

 

[thomasxc]

Fascism did not work to "eliminte" class differences. As shown in that quote, Mussolini believed in "inequality" and Hitler said it was "natural." Neither of them supported equality, and their systems were not equal. If they were equal, they would have given rights to Jews, Socialists, and so on.

hitler tried to eliminate the classes of the "german" people, after he had excluded everyone else.

 

[thomasxc]

i can't really form an opinion after i finish liberal fascism and read about it from the other side. insofar i can tell, liberal fascism seems to make some sense.

 

[thomasxc]

so i just read the nazi party platform. it seems to incorporate ideas associated with both modern day liberals and conservs.

 

[wildman]

Both Left and Right can and do set up Fascist states. I have spent a lot of time in South America and, believe me, there are and have been lots of both there. They all end up badly. The ideology is less important than the lack of freedom.

 

[thomasxc]

The ideology is less important than the lack of freedom.

absolutely.

 

[OrbitalPower]

Which "nazi platform" did you read? The one that was never implemented (except of the naitonal standards, of course)?

As Paxton shows, you cannot learn much from reading fascist propaganda or documents.

You have to look at the overall analysis of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, that is to say, you have to look at their actual actions. And their actions included privatization, social spending well below many modern social democracies (with much military spending), a conservative focus on "values" (women in the home, etc.), and so on.

Some real sources have been provided for anybody who wants to look at them; they are not the only ones, however. A complete list can be provided upon request.