"Marxists are clueless" (Funk N. Furter)

[H20nly]

Reread the quote, find the argument, and then if you actually want to learn something, the read Mises's book Socialism.

is the sentence above part of the lesson on poor English?

fixed.

[Steve Ballmer]

Reread the quote, find the argument, and then if you actually want to learn something, the read Mises's book Socialism.

is the sentence above part of the lesson on poor grammar?

Is the sentence above a lesson on the misuse of linguistic terms?

Lol. I'm awesome.

[Steve Ballmer]

You're breaking up. You're starting to make even less sense than usual.

- Who are the "these people" you mention? You mention Mises, but that s on the end of his name is part of his name. It does not denote a plural.
- Why would "they" cringe?
- You attack Von Miseseses, but then appear to claim that we don't even share the same views; if this is the case, then why attack him/them to attack me?

I have never run away from a debate. You on the other hand have left multiple questions hanging, we must assume because you have no answers. Spamming huge chunks of text that you c/p is not a proper response, especially when you yourself claim within your responses that you are "not an economist" and that I would have to read someone other than yourself to find an decent answer.

Whenever you are found wanting, your stock response is to either mention your arse, or spam. This makes for a poor debate, and does little to advance your cause. It would appear that *gasp* you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

[Steve Ballmer]

Great. A quote from the Stalinist Pravda in 1988

So are you saying that Pravda was lying; the plan was working, and that the massive famines were all part of that plan?

Or are you saying that all of a sudden your planned economy was not planned enough?

Or are you saying that the plan was poorly calculated for some arbitrary reason that has nothing to do with economics?


How many famines are you willing to accept as part of your "trial and error phase" in order for you to figure out the "objective value" of food?

[Steve Ballmer]

I have no job because of these cunts.

Well so long as you have a job, it doesn't really matter how many people die. So long as you have a job.

[Steve Ballmer]

Great. A quote from the Stalinist Pravda in 1988

So are you saying that Pravda was lying; the plan was working, and that the massive famines were all part of that plan?

Or are you saying that all of a sudden your planned economy was not planned enough?

Or are you saying that the plan was poorly calculated for some arbitrary reason that has nothing to do with economics?


How many famines are you willing to accept as part of your "trial and error phase" in order for you to figure out the "objective value" of food?

What are you talking about? Of course Pravda was lying. It was part of the Stalinist machine. It was a planned economy but it was not a socialist one, it was run by a bureaucratic Stalinist dictatorship. It's not a question of being 'not planned enough'.

Of course the plan was poorly calculated, it was not based on socialism. It had no chance of working. What was it designed to do anyway? Not to realise a socialist economy. It's only function was to maintain the privileges of the elite. It has nothing to do with 'calculation'. It was not part of any trial and error phase, it was what followed a bloody counter-revolution.

You fail to understand the basics because you have no interest in the truth.

The famine happened during forced collectivisation in the 193os. This had nothing whatsoever to do with socialism, it was part of Stalin's reaction AGAINST socialism. Until you try to grasp these ABC basics you will never have the foggiest idea what you are talking about.

You're contradicting yourself. If the plan wasn't working, then Pravda was telling the truth. Or if Pravda was lying, then the plan must have been working. You can't have both.

Your contention is that planned ecomonies are automatically superior ("Socialism is bound to be better because it's planned"), yet here we have a wonderful example of a planned economy that was far worse than anything we have today in the west. Hence your contention is wrong.

[Steve Ballmer]

What? No retort?

[Steve Ballmer]

Ah, well my apologies then. I only thought it was your contention because that's what you said. My mistake for putting stock in your words. It's just that when you claim that Socialism is superior because it's planned and give the USSR as an example, it can get a little confusing as to what your point is.

It's very easy to "debate" if you keep changing your position. I'm sure it works well on those 12 year old communists you keep mentioning.

[Machinesworking]

The part you cite is the conclusion, not the explanation. Reread the quote, find the argument, and then, if you actually want to learn something, read Mises's book Socialism. Or the relevant wiki page, which is much shorter. Or ask me politely.

In any case, I'm going with Tinky-Winky, because of the handbag.

Well what's the point? There are right now planned economies that have been running for 40+ years, this pretty much says that whether someone thinks their favorite economic system is the 'bestest evar!" or not is irrelevant.
Here's my take on it, in any given system the main thing that drives it to being successful is the lack of fear that the average person has towards that system. So in the case of Soviet socialism, it was doomed to begin with, and in the case of modern American capitalism we're starting to see a huge amount of fear. Where you see little fear is in the social democracies, Sweden, Norway, Denmark etc. This makes perfect sense because you have a system that doesn't get much in the way of personal liberty, and also doesn't allow for large businesses to destroy safety nets for the less privileged.

Essentially you're running on a Cold War fear of Socialism, it's transparent to people outside your shell.

[Steve Ballmer]

So you're saying that the only relevant factor to whether or not a system works is how many pants are shit. So... and I'm going to try to phrase this as politely as possible, the primary reason that Nazi Germany failed is that they suffered from an insurmountable amount of poo.

I can't really see this theory gaining much traction any time soon...

[Steve Ballmer]

Ah, well my apologies then. I only thought it was your contention because that's what you said. My mistake for putting stock in your words. It's just that when you claim that Socialism is superior because it's planned and give the USSR as an example, it can get a little confusing as to what your point is.

It's very easy to "debate" if you keep changing your position. I'm sure it works well on those 12 year old communists you keep mentioning.

It's not that hard a concept to grasp. The fact is that up to the 1970s the Soviet economy grew faster than the American one, faster than any country except Japan. Why was that? You tell me. My opinion is that for those years, there was a boost from the half-assed, pretend socialist, Stalinist version of planning. Eventually other factors - basically the existence of the bureaucratic dictatorship is the main one - overwhelmed the advantages from the planned economy.

There are different uses for the word planned. The Soviet economy was 'planned' in that is was not a market economy. It was a bureaucratically deformed planned economy. The actual planning itself was often a farce. As I've said many times, to plan properly you have to do it in a democratic (socialist) context, for public good. You need to have the mass of the population involved, and no elite to burden the economy. Not only were the elite a financial burden and a disincentive, bureaucratic decision making is usually hopeless. I take it you've not bothered to read Lenin's 1922 speech to congress yet, or you would be familiar with that. Even in 1922 he was fighting the bureaucracy. What do you imagine happened decades after the bureaucracy triumphed against socialism?

So for the umpteenth time, Russia did well for several decades despite the relative fetter of the bureaucracy, which later became an absolute one, because it had the advantage of being planned, albeit in a half-assed, bureaucratic, pseudo socialist (anti-socialist in fact) way.

I have not changed anything. I could have told you this thirty years ago (except the USSR still existed then of course), it's not like I just thought it up. I learned this in 1984, and it was written about by Marxists since 1917 and earlier, going right back to Marx and Engels. Nothing has changed, nothing that you'd understand anyway. Of course Lenin and Trotsky changed one or two of their views during their lives, but not the fundamentals.

Now, you tell me why you think the Russian economy grew faster than any other country except post-war Japan, which was heavily funded by Marshall Aid, up to the 1970s.

Why did 'communist' Russia's economy grow faster than America's?

Simple. It didn't. Any "growth" you may claim to perceive was either artificial (like all US growth since 2008), or fabricated, as per China, or a mix of both. I have already shown that during your "growth" years, the soviets couldn't even produce a car. Hardly a model of success.

[Steve Ballmer]

So you're saying that the only relevant factor to whether or not a system works is how many pants are shit. So... and I'm going to try to phrase this as politely as possible, the primary reason that Nazi Germany failed is that they suffered from an insurmountable amount of poo.

I can't really see this theory gaining much traction any time soon...

Who are you talking to and what are you on about?

Machines.

[Machinesworking]

So you're saying that the only relevant factor to whether or not a system works is how many pants are shit. So... and I'm going to try to phrase this as politely as possible, the primary reason that Nazi Germany failed is that they suffered from an insurmountable amount of poo.

I can't really see this theory gaining much traction any time soon...

Who are you talking to and what are you on about?

Machines.

And I didn't respond because the gratuitous use of metaphors ends up wasting everyone's time.
There are working planned economies, there are working free market economies. Which is better is a matter of opinion. It seems to me that people with extreme political ideologies tend to spend most of their time trying to find holes in the opposing system instead of figuring out how to prevent their ideological system from devolving into a corperatism or a dictatorship?

I have yet to hear one good argument for a total free market with little or no government that had any real solid way of preventing companies from becoming little dictatorships in their own right. <-- Even more so than they are now.

I have yet to hear any good argument for a Socialism that allowed for the kind of total freedom of action you have now, in fact I sincerely doubt being working class anything at all would change for me. Though that much control in the hands of the government is always a huge risk, and ripe for exploitation, just as much as relinquishing control to corporations..

[Steve Ballmer]

You should read more.

[Machinesworking]

You should be less of a zealot.