OrbitalPower said:
The Nazis did not interfere with the profits of some of their largest corporations, such as IG Farben, Krupp, Siemens AG, and so on. I don't know what you're talking about. These corporations were pretty much free to run amok.
Again, the Nazis PRIVATIZED far more industries than what had existed under the Weimar republican, and their problem, if anything, was giving corporations too much freedom -- such as the freedom to use slave labor.
Yes, but again, privatization alone doesn't mean the corporation is "free to run amok." The Nazis and the fascists in Italy heavily regulated all of industry. And the Nazis threatened some firms/industries that were at first resistant to the Nazi regime with outright nationalization if they didn't comply.
The problem is when you regulate too much, you make it impossible for entrepreneurs to start up companies that can challenge the existing big businesses in the industry.
For example, in the computer and software industry, there is nothing preventing you or me from starting our own company that could eventually challenge Google or Microsoft.
But with the drug industry, if you or me wanted to start our own drug company, well first, you have to send the drug through about ten to fifteen years of FDA regulations. Now if you are an entrepreneur, are you really going to wait that long just to get the drug passed, in order to start your company?
Or look at it from a legal and accounting standpoint. With excessive regulations, what happens is that the big businesses, with their multimillion-dollar accounting and legal budgets, can afford to comply with these regulations, whereas the small business can't. For a big business to comply, they might have to raise their prices maybe a cent or so. For a small business, they would have to raise their prices a lot more, thus driving them out of business.
Why do you think Wal Mart favors a higher minimum wage? This is Wal Mart, the company that supposedly doesn't care for its workers. Do you think they favor a higher minimum wage because they care about their workers? The reason is because Wal Mart, being a multinational corporation, one of the largest in the world, can absorb a higher minimum wage easily. They would maybe need to raise prices half a cent. But a small mom-and-pop business cannot. A higher minimum wage for them means they will either have to fire workers or pay them significantly less, or yank up their prices, all things that can drive them out of business (which is what Wal-Mart wants).
I disagree. Both economic freedom and political freedom depend on how the government is protecting the power structures in a society, and who they are protecting.
There is more "government intervention" in European countries than the US in the economy, but I would classify them as more free because of the more diverse media options, less indoctrination, and more social freedoms.
I think we'll just have to "agree to disagree" on that one.
Slavery often had a weak government, but it was more tyrannical than modern America, which is a more powerful government.
Yes, and slavery was very wrong. After the Civil War was when the national government became more powerful than the states. We do need a strong national government, what we don't want is a national government that is too powerful.
Feudalism, capitalism, all require the government to play a role -- which is why I'm opposed to these systems, as despots have no place in politics.
Feudalism is an opposite of capitalism. Feudalism works by having the vast majority of the population work their whole lives to serve a very small group of elites who rule over them, with no hope of escape.
Capitalism requires the opposite: to get rich in capitalism, you must serve the masses. If you start a company that provides millions of people with some good or service that helps them a lot, you will become very wealthy. Hence the plethora of companies making everything from shoes to appliances to electronics to furniture to retailing to things like frozen food, canned goods, candy, automobiles, etc...that is why the general standard of living with capitalism always increases. Because the whole way people get wealthy in the capitalist system is by providing for the masses.
Even Hitler, in a sense, said this, admiring Henry Ford, saying, "...he produces for the masses. That little car of his has done more than anything else to destroy class differences." (Ann O'Hare McCormick, "Hitler Seeks Jobs for All Germans,
New York Times, July 10, 1933, p. 6).
And he was correct. The Ford Model T gave millions of Americans, for cheap, a luxury once afforded only by the wealthy elites. Although Hitler did not like Western capitalism and the free-market, he inadverdently pointed out that in the capitalist system, one gets rich by providing for the masses, as Henry Ford was very, very wealthy. Ford didn't get rich by keeping people down.
(remember the Nazi idealogy was to take the best elements of capitalism and mix them with socialism, because they believe pure laissez-faire capitalism was a failure, from the Great Depression. The Nazis liked neither pure socialism or laissez-faire capitalism).
Henry Ford also invented another great product: Kingsford Charcoal.
(Ford, however, was a rabid anti-Semite and Nazi lover).
Hershey brought another product to the masses once only afforded by the wealthy: chocolate, with his milk chocolate bars.
Yes, at first, in the very early days, you had factories that had horrible working conditions and unsafe machinery, but because of the freedom of the capitalist system, people organized, form watchdog groups, social movements formed to have the government regulate companies to at least provide safe working conditions, and so forth, meanwhile the capitalist system improved the security and safety and efficiency of the machinery used in said factories, etc...whereas in socialism, this could not happen. If you were forced to work in a horrible factory in the Soviet Union, tough. If you didn't like your boss, tough. If you tried protesting, the Soviet military or police would come out and shoot you.
One cannot deny the efficacy of capitalism. North Korea, Cuba, China in the communist days (and still much of it), the Soviet Union, etc...all resemble a feudalist society, with a small group of elites ruling over the masses. South Korea, Hong Kong, the United States, Australia, Canada, etc...are all predominatly capitalist countries, with the highest standards of living ever given to humanity.
These examples were almost complete perfect social experiments: capitalist Hong Kong versus socialist China, capitalist West Germany versus socialist East Germany (the Soviets had to put up a big wall and armed guards to get people to stop leaving East Germany!), capitalist South Korea versus socialist North Korea.
Heck, even more socialist Mexico versus capitalist United States, where people are fleeing Mexico for America.
Even economists who during the Cold War era were socialists have all begrudgingly admitted capitalism works.
The argument is over things like what should taxes be? Should you have high income taxation and a low corporate tax (as some nations do it) or low income taxation and a higher corporate tax? How much should the economy be regulated by government? What industries should be nationalized, as not everything can be privatized (this debate especially rages regarding healthcare as we've seen).
Wrong. With a government, you can vote, with a corporation, you cannot vote, as the resources are already so controlled by them they force you to buy goods (you have to have goods to survive), forcing you to work job x just to get resource y.
If you have a government agency in charge of a certain industry, you can't vote for those bureaucrats. And no corporation can force you to buy goods unless it's a needed good, like say water, in which case, if one company controls the water and gouges the price, the government must step in. But for the vast majority of industries, there is competition.
Sometimes a monopoly will form temporarily, and eventually die off, however, if the temporary period is too long and it's for a very needed good, government will have to step into regulate properly. But again, this is an exception to what normally occurs.
One of the strange ironies of capitalism is that it allows what communism aspired to do, that is, public ownership of the corporations.
I'm sure you've heard of the so-called "huge windfall profits" Big Oil is making. Many believe Big Oil is really owned by a small group of elite businessmen (who are supposedly hogging all this money), and that it should be nationalized so that the "public" owns it (some Democrats have suggested nationalization). In reality, if nationalized, the government would own it, not the public. Big Oil as is, is in fact, majority owned by the American public:
http://www.sonecon.com/docs/studies/0907_WhoOwnsOilCompanies.pdf
"Voting with your dollars" is nonsense because it favors the wealthy heavily, whereas democracy is "one person, one vote."
Imagine a car manufacturer that has two lines of cars going. Say about 1,000 rich people want their first car, car A, and 90% of them will go out and buy it within the next few weeks. Say 10,000 people want car B because car B has better gas milage. Well, only a fraction of them can afford to pay for it right now, only a few buy it within the next few weeks, and so the car manufacturer decides to put car A on its main production line, forcing up the price of car B, or discontinuing it altogether. This happens even though more people wanted car B and could have even made the company more profits.
Or, imagine a TV set, and the company wants to sell it to 100 people at a higher price than they could sell it to a 1,000 people at a lower price, equal profits.
Such happens all the time in capitalism and in this kind of "voting" favors the rich, which is tyranny, which is despotic and not democratic.
If you have a monopoly, yes, but the automotive industry, and the electronics industry in particular, are very competitive, with manufacturers constantly trying to offer lower prices than their competitors.
Cars for wealthy people generally are not profitable. The most expensive, exclusive luxury car companies oftentimes have to either be subsidized (either Aston Martin or Bentley, I forget, is subsidized by the British government), or take a loss. For example, the $1 million Bugatti Veyron, that car is costing Bugatti a lot of money. It made no sense, from a profit standpoint, whatsoever to manufacture it, except for bragging rights of having engineered and built the world's fastest car. Also Bugatti is historically an elite wealthy-people's car manufacturer, so to them, profit likely isn't as important. They probably view their cars more as art.
It is much more profitable to offer cheap, affordable cars and trucks to the masses. With a monopoly, one can charge what they want, but with competition between firms, prices get driven down (and wages up).
You see prices of electronics going down all the time. I remember about eight years ago I paid $200 for a portable CD player. Now, you can get a much more capable IPOD for less. Prices of flat screen TVs are coming down, DVD players used to be ultra-expensive, now they're cheap. Because constant competition, again, drives the prices down (and the quality up).
cont'd...