Cowardly Refugee Running Away From Problems

[TomViolenz]

well go with just policy then. i dont care

just get a government that has the balls to say it the way it should be.

you do business here, and conduct yourself within the boundaries we set, you will do well. if you dont like it, bollocks to you, cause somebody else will come in and fill the void.

aint trying to rewrite socialism or whatever other blah blahs are out there, just freaking do it where everybody for the most part does well

Problem is that you then also have to go autark as a country, because otherwise they just leave and sell their Chinese crap in your country.
That's the problem with globalization as it stands today, it mostly benefits the coperations.

[TomViolenz]

well go with just policy then. i dont care

just get a government that has the balls to say it the way it should be.

you do business here, and conduct yourself within the boundaries we set, you will do well. if you dont like it, bollocks to you, cause somebody else will come in and fill the void.

aint trying to rewrite socialism or whatever other blah blahs are out there, just freaking do it where everybody for the most part does well

This is not how it is, and it will never be like this. Soft left and center parties will promise to do this before an election, but they will always break their promises. They cannot and will not do anything major to curb the private companies. The big companies are too powerful, far more powerful than politicians. There are many ways big companies control governments. A former chief economist of the IMF (Simon Johnson) admitted The Atlantic that Wall Street had 'captured' the American government. And he's not the only major insider who has partially revealed or admitted what really goes on. Another is Nobel Prize winner and former chief economist of the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz, in his book Globalization and Its Discontents. "As chief economist at the world bank, Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz had a unique insider's view into the management of globalization. Now he speaks out against it: how the IMF and WTO preach fair trade yet impose crippling economic policies on deveopling nations; how free market 'shock therapy' made millions in East Asia and Russia worse off than they were before; and how the West has driven the global agenda to further its own financial interests."

I've mentioned the tip of the iceberg here. Capitalists will have a government bombed (Chile 1973), a fascist takeover (Germany 1933), or at least scare a government (Harold Wilson). They can create a run on the economy and organise a strike of capital. They own the media. Their people run the Civil Service, the army, the police, everything. They are 'too big to fail' and too big to argue with.

Well said.

Just today it was in the news how the WTF is trying to force India to not sell subsidised food to their poor! Oh the audacity!

[TomViolenz]

Hitler was not a capitalist. His father was a farmer, he spent part of his childhood on welfare, and even went homeless for a while.

They're called books. Use them.

Hitler? Who mentioned Hitler? Hitler was funded by the capitalists, operated on behalf of capitalism. That was the whole raison d'etre of the fascists. Their job was to prevent socialist revolution. Hitler's support came from the middle class and the bourgeoisie.

I agree, I don't see how it is relevant where Hitler as a person came from.
I think way too much attention is paid to personalities when talking about history.

[andydes]

I've decided I no longer care about socialism, libertarianism or capitalism. I just want to live in a world where Hitler isn't mentioned in every single political or economic discussion.

[Galt]

Yes, Hitler was just a puppet.



Of course, technically, anybody who has ever received funds, like ever, was funded by capitalists, that is, the ones who have the capital and thus can do the funding. Because logic.

[Machinesworking]

Capitalism is a reflection of the (human social)world and not the other way around. Capitalism as is an a posteriori (not a priori) item.

This should be obvious.

Laissez-faire literally means "let do"—humans just being humans, doing as we are naturally inclined. The employee is naturally inclined to earn a salary in order to buy a Wii U; the socialist seeks to deny him this basic right to free association and then attempts to give free Wii Us to everybody; and when nobody never receives their free Wii U, socialism fails.

This is the folly of socialism—it denies people their most basic rights in exchange for a promise that it can never make good on.

And this is crystal clear, be your approach theoretical or historical.

Which is why I'd classify socialism as a form of insanity.

Again, this is entirely too black and white a picture of human interaction, economics, and even history.

In the current system, worldwide we have mostly capitalistic systems of economics with some government intervention, not as much as you think, but some.
Mostly in any system supply and demand are connected, whether a government designs a gaming system or a private enterprise doesn't matter, if people don't want it, it ceases to be developed. Plus do we really have to pretend that all areas of business are to be eliminated in a socialist system? Using gaming systems as an example really?
Contrary to our resident socialists ideological stance at least here in the united states we treat socialism and communism as two separate forms of government. Communism being where all means of production are collectively 'ownedby everyone', i.e. the government. Socialism as an ideology is treated as a system where most large necessities are controlled by the government. Things like electricity, prisons, highways, water, defense/military, and the like. This can and does include health care, some means of retirement support for citizens, and schooling. In no way would I want to see the results of a system that had no public schools, completely privatized prisons and police, water etc.

So, in respect to things like electricity here in Washington state we have publicly owned electricity. What that means is Enron has never artificially created rolling black outs across our state to artificially increase the prices of electricity after they purchased it. That, is the result of letting private enterprise use the flexibility in the free market on the actual price of a service, there is no counter argument to this except for in the cases of totalitarian states. Basically in a fairly social democratic country like America you still have enough wiggle room capitalistically to utterly destroy the health and welfare of people if the free market gets it's way.

So if you classify socialism as a form of insanity, well then I have direct proof of the results of unfettered capitalism.

[Galt]

I've decided that I now own the air, so if you want to breathe you have to pay me. So cough up!

No, you believe that one day, when the Marxists take over and kill everybody, they're going to pay you for all your hard work posting on this forum. That is, right before they abolish money.

[Galt]

Socialism as an ideology is treated as a system where most large necessities are controlled by the government. Things like electricity, prisons, highways, water, defense/military, and the like. This can and does include health care, some means of retirement support for citizens, and schooling. In no way would I want to see the results of a system that had no public schools, completely privatized prisons and police, water etc.

Thank you for confirming that the USA is socialist.

[Galt]

So, in respect to things like electricity here in Washington state we have publicly owned electricity. What that means is Enron has never artificially created rolling black outs across our state to artificially increase the prices of electricity after they purchased it.

Corporatations do this all the time. They're called "false flags". Governments would NEVER do such a thing.

[Machinesworking]

So, in respect to things like electricity here in Washington state we have publicly owned electricity. What that means is Enron has never artificially created rolling black outs across our state to artificially increase the prices of electricity after they purchased it.

Corporatations do this all the time. They're called "false flags". Governments would NEVER do such a thing.

Why would you automatically trust either then? You have this attitude that business left unfettered somehow automatically stops this from happening, or that somehow a weak government (low taxes and small) can somehow be less prone to manipulation by international businesses? It's where your logic dies for me completely.

One this is completely true, rolling blackouts have never happened in the USA because the government wanted to artificially inflate the price of electricity. What electricity has to do with false flags to start wars for instance, created almost universally by the collusion of business and government, is entirely in your brain sack, and I'm pretty certain most of us haven't taken enough drugs to make that artificial synapse connection.

[Galt]

Why would you automatically trust either then? You have this attitude that business left unfettered somehow automatically stops this from happening, or that somehow a weak government (low taxes and small) can somehow be less prone to manipulation by international businesses? It's where your logic dies for me completely.

One this is completely true, rolling blackouts have never happened in the USA because the government wanted to artificially inflate the price of electricity. What electricity has to do with false flags to start wars for instance, created almost universally by the collusion of business and government, is entirely in your brain sack, and I'm pretty certain most of us haven't taken enough drugs to make that artificial synapse connection.

I wouldn't automatically truth either of them. And the points you are making are valid. Any service provider who has a monopoly over a given area can "artificially" increase prices to his heart's content. The difference between private businesses and states, in the case, is that states can use their legal privileges to enforce that monopoly, whereas a private company cannot. This simply makes states more dangerous.

As for the false flag thing, I was using the metaphor as a metaphor, but I've actually seen this kind of behaviour first hand. If a branch of the government is doing a bad job (blackouts, etc.), it typically receives more funds, whereas if a private company (without a monopoly) is doing a bad job, it loses money. Hence, there is a material incentive for states to constantly underperform.


NOTE: I'm using the terms "government" and "state" interchangeably here, sorry for any confusion.

[Galt]

Yes. Most socialists are cabbages.