"Marxists are clueless" (Funk N. Furter)

[Steve Ballmer]

Can we just have a no holds bar cage match out in international waters and settle this once and for allski.

If you're suggesting that I beat up a cripple, I'll have you know that those days are behind me...

[H20nly]

I wonder who will concede first...

Hmmmm...

[Machinesworking]

I wonder who will concede first...

Hmmmm...

This could be the thread that beats the iPad thread.

[H20nly]

and the random pic thread

[Machinesworking]

^^ Considering the boundless egos of the two main participants I wouldn't bet against it.

[Steve Ballmer]

My ego is only as big as my cock.

[Mint Invader]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnOLhXmhkyA

Its basically this.

[Steve Ballmer]

My ego is only as big as my cock.

Yes, behind the bravado I sense a deep insecurity.

You woulnd't be saying that if you knew where my fingers were right now.

[Steve Ballmer]

The difficulty in dealing with McFunk is that he seldom presents any actual arguments. He usually just presents assertions sans any logical or evidential support. Then, when pressed, he makes a credentialist appeal or pretends to not understand.

Of course, since Trotsky has so aptly shown that logic is not logic, we must recognise that McFunk's behaviour is at least consistent with his beliefs.

[Machinesworking]

The difficulty in dealing with McFunk is that he seldom presents any actual arguments. He usually just presents assertions sans any logical or evidential support. Then, when pressed, he makes a credentialist appeal or pretends to not understand.

Of course, since Trotsky has so aptly shown that logic is not logic, we must recognise that McFunk's behaviour is at least consistent with his beliefs.

Forgive me for not going back through this thread to quote you directly, but wasn't the original bone of contention that according to you Socialism/Communism etc. is not a sustainable economic policy? I mean beyond all the other zingers and hyperbole, that is the gist of it right?

To me right away this seems silly. We've seen Socialist type systems, Capitalisms, and Dictatorships etc. that sustained themselves for decades, centuries even. The key to all of them seems to be balance, if an economic ideology isn't feasible at the time, try an intermittent policy from one of the other 'camps'. The problem seems to be mostly in the allure of the Dictatorship camp, whether of the oligarchic banking system and large corporate interests like we see in the west, or in the actual "oligarchies" like we see in the Middle East, Russia etc.
....of course recent history provides us with a ton of evidence of the allure of dictatorships of all kinds.

Again the question doesn't boil down to ideological debate and whom is better endowed intellectually etc. but of which system offers the common man some sort of protection from tyranny? whether it comes in the form of a jackboot or a sapping of resources, inevitably both are used to prop up either a corporatism or a government. <-- and both large corporations and government are used to prop up each other.


Again we can ramble on about details but in the bigger picture the world has seen only tyranny, mostly economic, sometimes from the government directly. A small amount of people through birth, or hard work and providence have accumulated most of the power and wealth, but in the end always through the benefit of luck and the scarcity model of human interaction. The only thing that seems to work is for those people to feel to a degree that their enforcing of tyranny is much more likely to get them killed than them allowing the money to flow. I don't believe that money or the perceived value of an item is an intangible, so with that in mind the vast accumulation of wealth that's happened in the last century has a combined negative effect. I don't have an answer to this, I think Libertarianism just like real Anarchism is a system that could work only in a smaller community scale, and I think Socialism inevitably slips into Tyranny. The main thing that works right now is to keep the extremely wealthy afraid of the working class enough to where they aren't total assholes.

[Steve Ballmer]

^ Off-topic.

[myrnova]

[Steve Ballmer]

Forgive me for not going back through this thread to quote you directly, but wasn't the original bone of contention that according to you Socialism/Communism etc. is not a sustainable economic policy? I mean beyond all the other zingers and hyperbole, that is the gist of it right?

Again the question doesn't boil down to ideological debate and whom is better endowed intellectually etc. but of which system offers the common man some sort of protection from tyranny? whether it comes in the form of a jackboot or a sapping of resources, inevitably both are used to prop up either a corporatism or a government. <-- and both large corporations and government are used to prop up each other.

You're asking two separate questions here: one concerning the economic tenability of socialism (let's call this the economic question), and the other concerning the ethics of such a system (the ethical question).

A lot of the difficulty I have discussing with you stems from the fact that you tend to switch between the two questions fairly randomly. For example, when I say that pure capitalism is theoretically more productive than the current system, rather than discussing that claim, you'll often say "but it's uncaring", or "who'll take care of the poor?!". These are separate questions—which is not to say that they are uninteresting, just that we need to know what it is that we're discussing.

You're correct when you say that my basic critique of socialism has thus far been primarily concerned with the economic question. This because, in my experience, ethics are about as personal, and thus as convincing, as religious beliefs. Hence, an appeal to ethics, when debating a marxist, is about as useful as an appeal to Christ, when debating an atheist.

[Machinesworking]

Forgive me for not going back through this thread to quote you directly, but wasn't the original bone of contention that according to you Socialism/Communism etc. is not a sustainable economic policy? I mean beyond all the other zingers and hyperbole, that is the gist of it right?

Again the question doesn't boil down to ideological debate and whom is better endowed intellectually etc. but of which system offers the common man some sort of protection from tyranny? whether it comes in the form of a jackboot or a sapping of resources, inevitably both are used to prop up either a corporatism or a government. <-- and both large corporations and government are used to prop up each other.

You're asking two separate questions here: one concerning the economic tenability of socialism (let's call this the economic question), and the other concerning the ethics of such a system (the ethical question).

A lot of the difficulty I have discussing with you stems from the fact that you tend to switch between the two questions fairly randomly. For example, when I say that pure capitalism is theoretically more productive than the current system, rather than discussing that claim, you'll often say "but it's uncaring", or "who'll take care of the poor?!". These are separate questions—which is not to say that they are uninteresting, just that we need to know what it is that we're discussing.

You're correct when you say that my basic critique of socialism has thus far been primarily concerned with the economic question. This because, in my experience, ethics are about as personal, and thus as convincing, as religious beliefs. Hence, an appeal to ethics, when debating a marxist, is about as useful as an appeal to Christ, when debating an atheist.

Yet you have used ethics in this debate when it fits your needs, asking for the consideration of the theft of property in the redistribution of wealth, or bringing up the violence and murder inherent in regime change. It would be wise to keep that in mind when trying to paint others as fluffy ethics types. Your'e very clearly subscribing to the "ethics only count if I say so." logic of debate.

With that in mind it's a useless debate to argue without ethics at all isn't it? The most fluid economic system in terms of pure mobility and gearing up power would have to have been Nazi Germany right before WWII and Stalin's USSR one year into Operation Barbarossa. In fact the fear and war based economic model (with good old fashioned Martial Law thrown in), is very easily the most productive economic model that mankind has witnessed to date. So very flatly without any fluffy bunny or ideological meanderings attached, ethics and economics in any logical debate about systems of government are invariably tied at the hip.

You can't have it both ways. You can't attempt to use the morality of revolution and wealth redistribution in a debate on economic systems then turn around and claim that people are bringing ethics into the debate when they mention the Capitalist/Libertarian lack of concern for the infirm and poor. Throughout this debate it's been an easily demonstrable common thread that you're concerned with the violence that would occur with wealth redistribution and funken is concerned with the everyday violence that occurs when a few have accumulated most of the wealth.

So with that in mind, please explain to me how your favorite economic model, a small government and little or no rules on doing business, could possibly prevent an even more obvious example of corporatism than what we see today in the west? Exactly how does a government without a tax base to speak of, rise up against new private militaries that would inevitably be hired to protect large companies in the vein of the Dutch East India Trading Company? It reeks of idealism to me to expect that businesses would somehow be more law abiding than they are now when given even more freedom and less restrictions.

[scott nathaniel]

You can't have it both ways. You can't attempt to use the morality of revolution and wealth redistribution in a debate on economic systems then turn around and claim that people are bringing ethics into the debate when they mention the Capitalist/Libertarian lack of concern for the infirm and poor. Throughout this debate it's been an easily demonstrable common thread that you're concerned with the violence that would occur with wealth redistribution and funken is concerned with the everyday violence that occurs when a few have accumulated most of the wealth.

Shit, Machines! What are you doing bringing cogency into this thread.