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.
