I realize that Communism itself isn't anything bad, but considering that it's consistently failed and resulted in brutal dictatorships, is it really worth continuing?
kronk wrote: Has anyone on Dakka ever said that living in the year 40k would be a good thing?
With whom are your debating?
I removed part of it because I thought it was too confusing. I remember someone here was saying that Communism is still a good idea in one of the Sturmkrieg discussions. I'd have to say that living in the Sturmkrieg Sector wouldn't be desirable.
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rockerbikie wrote: Communism is yet to happen, thise "Communist" countries are socialist countries who have been corrupted back to capitalism over time.
But if Communism has constantly failed, is it really a good idea to keep trying it?
kronk wrote: Has anyone on Dakka ever said that living in the year 40k would be a good thing?
With whom are your debating?
I removed part of it because I thought it was too confusing. I remember someone here was saying that Communism is still a good idea in one of the Sturmkrieg discussions. I'd have to say that living in the Sturmkrieg Sector wouldn't be desirable.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
rockerbikie wrote: Communism is yet to happen, thise "Communist" countries are socialist countries who have been corrupted back to capitalism over time.
But if Communism has constantly failed, is it really a good idea to keep trying it?
It has only occured in 3rd world countries with low literacy rates and a devastated economy. Also, Vietnam would of been a success if the US did not intervene.
I can't put down the playboy... it is covering up my "covert" operations I'm studying the American way of life so that I may infiltrate as a communist sleeper cell...
On paper, Communism is not a bad thing like 40k... Awesome setting, cool idea, and yet fethed up once it gets into the hands of the people...
d-usa wrote: Communism works just as well on paper as Capitalism.
Communism works just as well in real life as Capitalism.
I would argue that Capitalisim works much better then Communisim, because it doesn't make any false assumptions about the nature of mankind. It actually assumes everybody is a selfish prick and goes from there. Meaning nobody should ever be surprised.
Now this doesn't mean a completely free market is a good thing for everybody concerned, it can lead to an oppressive situation, such as price fixing and abuse.
However the System itself doesn't mind. Ergo: it "works".
Communisim on the other hand assumes people are good and simply become corrupted over time. So you just need to have a strong government take over, get rid of all the bad people, and then the government will dissolve and the system will run itself.
The problem is that the Government will never dissolve, because the people running it will simply use the system to collect power for themselves and set up a dictatorship. Using a nice warm ideological ideal as the excuse for why they must do what they do.
Of course the real deal here is that Communisim is a Political ideal, that involves the economy. Capitalisim is an Economic ideal that really couldn't care less what the political system is.
rockerbikie wrote:It has only occured in 3rd world countries with low literacy rates and a devastated economy.
So you are implying that only societies that have an educated populace and/or fantastic economies will work with Communism? I find this to be extremely illogical. Considering that a fundamental idea in Marx's Communist Manifesto is that society is to be re-educated so as to eliminate class systems and facilitate a "transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society." It makes more sense that a generally uneducated society will be easier to re-educate since their preconceived notions are likely to be less deeply ingrained, and those who have a ruined economy are more likely to be willing to try a radical new solution. Could it be that is exactly why Communism has been tried in those situations?
rockerbikie wrote:Also, Vietnam would of been a success if the US did not intervene.
Really? Sorry to burst your bubble but Ho Chi Minh was not the saint you make him out to be, despite what the People's Party publications in Vietnam tell you...
rockerbikie wrote:It has only occured in 3rd world countries with low literacy rates and a devastated economy.
So you are implying that only societies that have an educated populace and/or fantastic economies will work with Communism? I find this to be extremely illogical. Considering that a fundamental idea in Marx's Communist Manifesto is that society is to be re-educated so as to eliminate class systems and facilitate a "transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society." It makes more sense that a generally uneducated society will be easier to re-educate since their preconceived notions are likely to be less deeply ingrained, and those who have a ruined economy are more likely to be willing to try a radical new solution. Could it be that is exactly why Communism has been tried in exactly those situations?
rockerbikie wrote:Also, Vietnam would of been a success if the US did not intervene.
Really? Sorry to burst your bubble but Ho Chi Minh was not the saint you make him out to be, despite what the People's Party publications in Vietnam tell you...
No. That's why it failed. If Norway became Communist, it would be successful. If everyone is educated than it is more likely to succeed. Ho Chi Minh freed his people from the French.
rockerbikie wrote:It has only occured in 3rd world countries with low literacy rates and a devastated economy.
So you are implying that only societies that have an educated populace and/or fantastic economies will work with Communism? I find this to be extremely illogical. Considering that a fundamental idea in Marx's Communist Manifesto is that society is to be re-educated so as to eliminate class systems and facilitate a "transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society." It makes more sense that a generally uneducated society will be easier to re-educate
Marx ended up endorsing the idea of a violent revolution as the only mean to End history (of class conflict). The communist society is principally defined by the fact that people freely associate and are free to pursue their own aims, something which isn't likely to happen in 3rd world countries.
Marx also beleived that to happen, 1) commerce would have to be done internationnaly, and 2) the alienation of proletariat would have to come to a critical point.
The Bolchevik Revolution wasn't the Communist Revolution.
The problem with Communism is that it requires a large government to keep so much under control, and so much power is bound to become corrupted in human hands. Until we can develop a computer that can reliably handle such important things with a 0% failure rate and have everyone trust it, I don't see communism happening. I just hope I live to see the day that it does.
No. That's why it failed. If Norway became Communist, it would be successful.
You will forgive the massive amount of skepticisim I have about that.
Communisim has a 100% failure rate so far. I doubt Norway would be the first success.
That argument was probably made about democracy in the 17th and 18th century.
Actually Democracy had a pretty good track record. The Greeks did pretty well with it, they were just conquored by non-democratic enemies.
It wasn't used on a large scale because there wasn't a practical way to practice it. Pure Democracy as the Greeks practiced it only works at the scale they practiced it, the city state level.
The US was actually the first country to try it on a national scale, and its worked so far. But of course we did have to modify the Greek version of pure democracy so it would be possable to use it on a national scale.
Roman democracy largely failed, and it had a biased system anyway. Plus, since even Churchill stated that democracy's a bad system, you simply can't say it's perfect without being delusional. Communism, if it works, is.
p_gray99 wrote: Roman democrasy largely failed, and it had a biased system anyway. Plus, since even Churchill stated that democracy's a bad system, you simply can't say it's perfect without being delusional. Communism, if it works, is.
The Romans did not have a Democracy. They had a Republic.
It was largely based on money and how well you were in favor with the sitting members of the Senate. The Senate was basically a semi-fluid group of nobles that made the laws.
The only check and balance the system had, as well as input, was how well the publics opinion of you was. If they liked you, you would do well because the other Senators wouldn't dare oppose you. For fear of Riots against them.
It was how loud the public screamed at you and if they were nice screams or screams of hatred.
Communism is a failure. It only killed 30 million people, which is just shameful. Any decent political and economic system would have been able to kill at least 60 million people, if not more. Now capitalism, that has potential. Where communism encourages you to be lazy and accept your government benefits, capitalism and ruthless pursuit of profit encourages conflict and the development of bigger and better weapons. We must remove oppressive government regulation of capitalism and allow corporate rule and the inevitable bloody eternal war! Industrialized killing! Profitable nuclear weapons!
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! DOLLARS FOR THE DOLLAR THRONE!
(Given the OP, not much chance of constructive discussion here.)
rockerbikie wrote:No. That's why it failed. If Norway became Communist, it would be successful. If everyone is educated than it is more likely to succeed.
Why? I have provided reasons why it makes more sense for it to work in an uneducated or economically depressed nation, but you are just re-asserting your viewpoint with no reasoning. An educated populace means it has a nearly infinite number of viewpoints, and thus makes it hard to agree with a single point of view. An uneducated society can be much more easily guided to support a single notion simply because they don't have a firm, well-reasoned ground for their ideas.
rockerbikie wrote:Ho Chi Minh freed his people from the French.
Helping to free his people from an attempt by the French to re-establish imperialist rule is definitively NOT the same as successfully implementing Communism, nor does it make him a saint. Surely, you can see the basic reality in that.
Kovnik Obama wrote:Marx ended up endorsing the idea of a violent revolution as the only mean to End history (of class conflict).
Marx endorsed that idea to start that process. He then planned on using the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to facilitate future Communist generations. I wasn't talking about his ideas on how to get the ball rolling, merely how to implement a wider societal change.
Kovnik Obama wrote:The communist society is principally defined by the fact that people freely associate and are free to pursue their own aims, something which isn't likely to happen in 3rd world countries.
No, communist society is principally defined by there being a classless society, where the means of production are owned by the state. In all honesty, I do not recall reading that in the [/i]Communist Manifesto[i].
Kovnik Obama wrote:The Bolchevik Revolution wasn't the Communist Revolution.
Never said it was, and never made that comparison. I thinks you are implying a bit to much. Give me more credit then that! I may have been absent from the OTF for a while, but I am still at least moderately capable!
p_gray99 wrote: Roman democrasy largely failed, and it had a biased system anyway. Plus, since even Churchill stated that democracy's a bad system, you simply can't say it's perfect without being delusional. Communism, if it works, is.
The Romans did not have a Democracy. They had a Republic.
It was largely based on money and how well you were in favor with the sitting members of the Senate. The Senate was basically a semi-fluid group of nobles that made the laws.
The only check and balance the system had, as well as input, was how well the publics opinion of you was. If they liked you, you would do well because the other Senators wouldn't dare oppose you. For fear of Riots against them.
It was how loud the public screamed at you and if they were nice screams or screams of hatred.
They had a democracy. Everyone had a vote towards who ruled them, a bit like the democracies of today. Those that were more influential had a more powerful vote, arguably like the democracies of today. Everyone could be the leader if they did well enough, as shown by Cicero. Arguably it was a system very similar to ours, and it fell apart.
Clean up your post, OP. I have no idea what you're asking, or what the point of this thread is.
Communism, just like socialism, sounds great, but only in theory. It's assumed that leaders won't be corrupt and fall into capitalism, but that's far from the reality. On the flip-side, communism might have actually become something if Stalin had been killed early on, and the work force had remained intact. Socialism might have stayed true to its ideas if Hitler had never risen to power or made deals with capitalists, like Krupp Steel (which would have been impossible).
Indeed, the question of this thread isn't clear.
Sure communism has killed people, so has democracy
Sure communism has put people in concentration camps, so has democracy.
Communism evolved away from Marx's original ideal, I doubt he would support it as it appears in the world today. Similar to how I doubt the founding fathers would be comfortable with the power of the executive branch or the influence of corporations in the democratic process
Hmm. Even the subject is a little unclear, or at least mistyped. And anyway, any political system is dangerous if used incorrectly, which I'd say is the only way Communism has been used so far.
Actually Democracy had a pretty good track record. The Greeks did pretty well with it, they were just conquored by non-democratic enemies.
Democracy didn't mean the same thing back then. The Freedom of an Ancient would seem like slavery to us.
Yeah so?
That was kinda the point.
Democracy as we practice it today, as invented by the founding fathers of the US, has a pretty good track record.
Communisim, or at least those pretending to be Communists, didn't last but a handful of decades.
Democracy can mean a crapload of things, it's a very open to interpretation term. Ghadafi called his government 'democratic'. The point being that you cannot point to Ancient democracies and say that Democracy has a good track record, like you initially did.
I agree with you that modern democracies, related or not to constitutional republicanism, have a good track record.
Actually Democracy had a pretty good track record. The Greeks did pretty well with it, they were just conquored by non-democratic enemies.
Democracy didn't mean the same thing back then. The Freedom of an Ancient would seem like slavery to us.
Yeah so?
That was kinda the point.
Democracy as we practice it today, as invented by the founding fathers of the US, has a pretty good track record.
Communisim, or at least those pretending to be Communists, didn't last but a handful of decades.
Democracy can mean a crapload of things, it's a very open to interpretation term. Ghadafi called his government 'democratic'. The point being that you cannot point to Ancient democracies and say that Democracy has a good track record, like you initially did.
I agree with you that modern democracies, related or not to constitutional republicanism, have a good track record.
I suppose you are correct. They were fairly different from modern democracies on the practical level.
Out of curiosity, how would people rate the Monarchy as a means of government? By Monarchy I mean an Absolute Monarchy.
JEB_Stuart wrote: No, communist society is principally defined by there being a classless society, where the means of production are owned by the state. In all honesty, I do not recall reading that in the [/i]Communist Manifesto[i].
The German Ideology, 1. Feuerbach, p 62 - 64. "Communism isn't either a state to be created, nor an ideal on which reality must be fixed. We call communism the real mouvement which abolish the current state" [...]
"as long as there is a scission between the individual interest and the collective interest, as long as activity isn't voluntarily divided" [...] ''he is dominated'' - My translation, so please be lenient
Of course you are correct with the abolishment of private property thing. But on of the main caracteristics that's often overlooked is that the communist society is supposed to be one in which it is easy to 'relocate' yourself.
''as soon as work is divided (unvoluntarily) each has an exclusive sphere of activity determinated [...] he is hunter, fisherman, gatherer or critic, and he must remain so if he doesn't want to lose his means of existence ; while in the communist society, where no one has an attributed sphere of activity, but can specialise himself freely in whatever branch he likes, society rules on the means of production, which makes me free of doing something today and tomorrow another thing, to hunt the morning and fish the evening...'' - p.63
The US was actually the first country to try it on a national scale, and its worked so far. But of course we did have to modify the Greek version of pure democracy so it would be possable to use it on a national scale.
I do believe you mean the British.Who had the Americans beat by about fifty years.
JEB_Stuart wrote: No, communist society is principally defined by there being a classless society, where the means of production are owned by the state. In all honesty, I do not recall reading that in the [/i]Communist Manifesto[i].
The German Ideology, 1. Feuerbach, p 62 - 64. "Communism isn't either a state to be created, nor an ideal on which reality must be fixed. We call communism the real mouvement which abolish the current state" [...]
"as long as there is a scission between the individual interest and the collective interest, as long as activity isn't voluntarily divided" [...] ''he is dominated'' - My translation, so please be lenient
Of course you are correct with the abolishment of private property thing. But on of the main caracteristics that's often overlooked is that the communist society is supposed to be one in which it is easy to 'relocate' yourself.
''as soon as work is divided (unvoluntarily) each has an exclusive sphere of activity determinated [...] he is hunter, fisherman, gatherer or critic, and he must remain so if he doesn't want to lose his means of existence ; while in the communist society, where no one has an attributed sphere of activity, but can specialise himself freely in whatever branch he likes, society rules on the means of production, which makes me free of doing something today and tomorrow another thing, to hunt the morning and fish the evening...'' - p.63
The issue with that(bolded) is that given the free choice, people will generally pick an easy or enjoyable profession. Which, after everyone has picked their chosen profession, is likely to result in a society that cannot function.
I doubt many people would choose farming, mining, or other more necessary jobs when they could be an entertainer, painter, or a sports commentator.
We would have an overabundance of some professions and a shortage of others, with the shortchanged ones likely being vital industries.
It only works on small scale hunter gatherer societies and with simple examples, but with a complex society it utterly falls apart.
Grey Templar wrote: Out of curiosity, how would people rate the Monarchy as a means of government? By Monarchy I mean an Absolute Monarchy.
Depends on which people. Monarchy is great at public relations, considering how stupid a system it is.
I suppose you are correct. They were fairly different from modern democracies on the practical level.
Benjamin Constant wrote Of the freedom of the Ancient, compared to that of the Moderns if you are interested on the subject. I think Rousseau also wrote on the subject in Social Contract. Lots of people were calling to a return to Ancient politics with the Reform, which prompted a lot of authors to write about how misinformed that idea was...
Grey Templar wrote: Out of curiosity, how would people rate the Monarchy as a means of government? By Monarchy I mean an Absolute Monarchy.
Depends on which people. Monarchy is great at public relations, considering how stupid a system it is.
I suppose you are correct. They were fairly different from modern democracies on the practical level.
Benjamin Constant wrote Of the freedom of the Ancient, compared to that of the Moderns if you are interested on the subject. I think Rousseau also wrote on the subject in Social Contract. Lots of people were calling to a return to Ancient politics with the Reform, which prompted a lot of authors to write about how misinformed that idea was...
I am guessing it was more of a practical difference then an ideological one.
In ancient greece the only citizens were land owning men, so a small portion of the actual population. Which was part of the reason it worked as well as it did.
And as I recall our own Citizenship requirements were very similar to that for a little while.
The issue with that(bolded) is that given the free choice, people will generally pick an easy or enjoyable profession. Which, after everyone has picked their chosen profession, is likely to result in a society that cannot function.
I doubt many people would choose farming, mining, or other more necessary jobs when they could be an entertainer, painter, or a sports commentator.
We would have an overabundance of some professions and a shortage of others, with the shortchanged ones likely being vital industries.
It only works on small scale hunter gatherer societies and with simple examples, but with a complex society it utterly falls apart.
Marx (as usual) takes things a bit too far in my opinion, but I think what is described here, as a ''voluntary division of work'', we find in our societies as an easy access to education (possibly a free access to education).
We must keep in mind that the system in which Marx evolved was utterly different from our own. 6 days a Week, 14 hours shift in the plant didn't leave much time for education.
Grey Templar wrote: It only works on small scale hunter gatherer societies and with simple examples, but with a complex society it utterly falls apart.
Or highly advanced societies. If you have large-scale automated industry it doesn't matter if people don't want to do those jobs. Who cares if few people want to be a farmer instead of an artist, all you need is one "farmer" overseeing a massive robot farm, and by "overseeing" I mean "occasionally looking at a computer screen to make sure nothing has screwed up and spending most of their time being an artist". Same with mining, factory work, etc. Automate it all, and all that's left for people to do is entertainment.
And of course at that point communism becomes inevitable, as capitalism collapses under the fact that nobody needs money to obtain anything anymore.
The issue with that(bolded) is that given the free choice, people will generally pick an easy or enjoyable profession. Which, after everyone has picked their chosen profession, is likely to result in a society that cannot function.
I doubt many people would choose farming, mining, or other more necessary jobs when they could be an entertainer, painter, or a sports commentator.
We would have an overabundance of some professions and a shortage of others, with the shortchanged ones likely being vital industries.
It only works on small scale hunter gatherer societies and with simple examples, but with a complex society it utterly falls apart.
Marx (as usual) takes things a bit too far in my opinion, but I think what is described here, as a ''voluntary division of work'', we find in our societies as an easy access to education (possibly a free access to education).
We must keep in mind that the system in which Marx evolved was utterly different from our own. 6 days a Week, 14 hours shift in the plant didn't leave much time for education.
Indeed, which means you must read the Manifesto as the ramblings of an ideological bitter old man.
It has only occured in 3rd world countries with low literacy rates and a devastated economy. Also, Vietnam would of been a success if the US did not intervene.
That's odd I've always thought of Poland, Germany, and Czechoslovakia as both first world and literate. Wierd.
I am guessing it was more of a practical difference then an ideological one.
In ancient greece the only citizens were land owning men, so a small portion of the actual population. Which was part of the reason it worked as well as it did.
And as I recall our own Citizenship requirements were very similar to that for a little while.
Ancient Freedom meant that at some point you had a chance of being a part of the governmental system. Usually by draw, in all things going from the military command to being a judge. Very poor citizens could always become jury, for which they received a small compensation (the equivalent of a meal, I think).
In comparison to Modern freedom, it didn't mean much. You were entirely defenceless against a decision from the government, you had no Rights whatsoever.
And for the requirements, Napoleon's popularity was in good part due to his promise to reform the requirements for voting rights. At the time, you had two (beyond, obviously, being a man) ; ownership of land and ownership of riches, with the amount set very very high. The reform he promised was never passed.
The US was actually the first country to try it on a national scale, and its worked so far. But of course we did have to modify the Greek version of pure democracy so it would be possable to use it on a national scale.
The US is not a democracy- our President is not selected by the unwashed masses, but by the electoral college. Our founding fathers did not trust the people to correctly choose their leaders.
It has only occured in 3rd world countries with low literacy rates and a devastated economy. Also, Vietnam would of been a success if the US did not intervene.
That's odd I've always thought of Poland, Germany, and Czechoslovakia as both first world and literate. Wierd.
Poland has been rather economically poor for awhile, as has Czechoslovakia. And both, plus East Germany, were part of Soviet Russia, it wasn't a revolution like happened in Russia. It was a foreign invasion that foisted the Communist way on them.
Indeed, which means you must read the Manifesto as the ramblings of an ideological bitter old man.
I don't really think so, I think Marx was very sensible to the horrors of the economical system in which he grew up. At the time, there were no governmental agency responsible for workers, so when legislation was passed in favour of the workers, the industrials easily found ways to circumvent them.
I think overall that Marx would today write an entirely different book, and while he might be critical of certain aspect of our society, I'm fairly certain that he would prefer ours to that thing which was Communist Russia
The US was actually the first country to try it on a national scale, and its worked so far. But of course we did have to modify the Greek version of pure democracy so it would be possable to use it on a national scale.
The US is not a democracy- our President is not selected by the unwashed masses, but by the electoral college. Our founding fathers did not trust the people to correctly choose their leaders.
Limiting the influence of the people on the actual workings of politics is as integral to modern democracies as allowing them to participate in it.
It's the difference between the general will and the most popular individual will.
So far in this thread I have seen a few instances of communism and socialism seemingly switching places, and the usual argument that a republic is not a democracy.
Grey Templar wrote:Out of curiosity, how would people rate the Monarchy as a means of government? By Monarchy I mean an Absolute Monarchy.
I know this wasn't directed at me, but I just have to interject. Personally, I am a strong believer that Constitutional Monarchy is really the ideal form of government. It balances experience, and a lack of a special interest driven government, with representation for the people. Now absolute monarchy does sound appealing, i.e. the benevolent dictator type ruler, but I don't trust people in general. I can trust an individual person I know well, but never people. The one thing I do trust is for them to inevitably compromise their ideals for the sake of expediency, and then watch it start to tumble down that proverbial slippery slope.
Kovnik Obama wrote:
JEB_Stuart wrote: No, communist society is principally defined by there being a classless society, where the means of production are owned by the state. In all honesty, I do not recall reading that in the [/i]Communist Manifesto.
The German Ideology, 1. Feuerbach, p 62 - 64. "Communism isn't either a state to be created, nor an ideal on which reality must be fixed. We call communism the real mouvement which abolish the current state" [...]
"as long as there is a scission between the individual interest and the collective interest, as long as activity isn't voluntarily divided" [...] ''he is dominated'' - My translation, so please be lenient
Of course you are correct with the abolishment of private property thing. But on of the main caracteristics that's often overlooked is that the communist society is supposed to be one in which it is easy to 'relocate' yourself.
''as soon as work is divided (unvoluntarily) each has an exclusive sphere of activity determinated [...] he is hunter, fisherman, gatherer or critic, and he must remain so if he doesn't want to lose his means of existence ; while in the communist society, where no one has an attributed sphere of activity, but can specialise himself freely in whatever branch he likes, society rules on the means of production, which makes me free of doing something today and tomorrow another thing, to hunt the morning and fish the evening...'' - p.63
Ah, then I apologize for a very real misunderstanding in what you meant. I thought you meant complete freedom to do what you wanted as in [i]anything. I didn't realize you meant freedom to move around and pick your profession (which, for example, you can do and have always been able to legally, in the US). I understand more clearly what you meant now, and am happy to concede the point in that Marx sought that as the ideal. Others have dealt with the reality of this subject on this thread, so I won't beat a dead horse, no matter how droll I might be.
It has only occured in 3rd world countries with low literacy rates and a devastated economy. Also, Vietnam would of been a success if the US did not intervene.
That's odd I've always thought of Poland, Germany, and Czechoslovakia as both first world and literate. Wierd.
Well now they do. Of course literacy has been a thing for them for some time now, but after the WWII their economies were in the pisser, so that is why I specifically didn't use them as examples.
Gitzbitah wrote:The US is not a democracy- our President is not selected by the unwashed masses, but by the electoral college. Our founding fathers did not trust the people to correctly choose their leaders.
Peregrine wrote: Communism is a failure. It only killed 30 million people, which is just shameful. Any decent political and economic system would have been able to kill at least 60 million people, if not more. Now capitalism, that has potential. Where communism encourages you to be lazy and accept your government benefits, capitalism and ruthless pursuit of profit encourages conflict and the development of bigger and better weapons. We must remove oppressive government regulation of capitalism and allow corporate rule and the inevitable bloody eternal war! Industrialized killing! Profitable nuclear weapons!
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! DOLLARS FOR THE DOLLAR THRONE!
(Given the OP, not much chance of constructive discussion here.)
I'm not against Communism as one would generally conceive, but I question whether it's a good idea to keep trying it.
Communism, just like socialism, sounds great, but only in theory. It's assumed that leaders won't be corrupt and fall into capitalism, but that's far from the reality. On the flip-side, communism might have actually become something if Stalin had been killed early on, and the work force had remained intact.
Stalin was always going to be bad news. What really soured the Soviet version of Communisim was its very difficult formative years. A messy civil war, external wars, foreign intervention and international isolisation laid the foundations of the repressive and brutal Soviet years, If the October revolution was more widespread and had enough support to fully control the country (admittedly this would never have happened) I wonder how modern history would have turned out?
Communism, just like socialism, sounds great, but only in theory. It's assumed that leaders won't be corrupt and fall into capitalism, but that's far from the reality. On the flip-side, communism might have actually become something if Stalin had been killed early on, and the work force had remained intact.
Stalin was always going to be bad news. What really soured the Soviet version of Communisim was its very difficult formative years. A messy civil war, external wars, foreign intervention and international isolisation laid the foundations of the repressive and brutal Soviet years, If the October revolution was more widespread and had enough support to fully control the country (admittedly this would never have happened) I wonder how modern history would have turned out?
One could say that Russia was always bad news for politics, no matter what. If the Revolution had actually won over France, it would have been an entirely different beast.
Communism, just like socialism, sounds great, but only in theory. It's assumed that leaders won't be corrupt and fall into capitalism, but that's far from the reality. On the flip-side, communism might have actually become something if Stalin had been killed early on, and the work force had remained intact.
Stalin was always going to be bad news. What really soured the Soviet version of Communisim was its very difficult formative years. A messy civil war, external wars, foreign intervention and international isolisation laid the foundations of the repressive and brutal Soviet years, If the October revolution was more widespread and had enough support to fully control the country (admittedly this would never have happened) I wonder how modern history would have turned out?
One could say that Russia was always bad news for politics, no matter what. If the Revolution had actually won over France, it would have been an entirely different beast.
Well French + Revolution didn't work out so well in the previous century so one could argue that it was for the best.
Well French + Revolution didn't work out so well in the previous century so one could argue that it was for the best.
They are still less belligerent then Russia. Or at least, more inwardly belligerent. It's hard to play alternate history with big things like this, but I would think that there wouldn't have been a Cold War.
On the other hand, the Germans would have been (even ) less amiable during the Occupation.
Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote: I realize that Communism itself isn't anything bad, but considering that it's consistently failed and resulted in brutal dictatorships, is it really worth continuing?
The short answer is 'no'.
The long answer is that communism contains a really powerful set of ideas with, in many places, some incredible insights into human political and economic structures, and from them it seems like people could start to create one or more sophisticated, viable economic systems. Unfortunately, for reasons that communist academics have never even tried to answer, most of the people drawn to the ideas of communist tend to be disaffected, power hungry lunatics. Think of Lenin, Castro or Mao, but then go to your local university and meant the self-professed communists - they're complete bonkers. I don't know if its the language of revolution coupled with the emotional power of casting off the oppressor and replacing him the oppressed, but it seems to attract people who have seem really, really nasty baggage from highschool.
The answer that's just a little bit longer still is that ultimately, for all its flaws capitalism is a system in which the incentives of private investment led to the development of computing technology, machinery and robotics and all kinds of other stuff that have made people here productive and materially wealthy. At the same time communism, where investment was directed by the state, focussed surplus capital on high profile national projects and landmark buildings (Stalinist Wedding Cake anyone?). Profitable investments that changed everyday processes, better tractors, mechanisation, cars that didn't suck, flourished in the West and produced profits that in turn were used to make further advancements simply didn't happen in Soviet Russia. By the mid-60s it was clear the US was moving forward every year, while the Soviet Union remained stagnant. In 1987 the Soviet Union fell because their leaders looked at their system, realised it sucked and gave up on it.
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whembly wrote: A pure capitalist system or pure communisit system would never work in the real world.
In the real world, what works best is a balance between capitalism and socialism.
The balance is what we're constantly tweaking/changing.
Communist systems can be impure. The USSR allowed farmers private sectors of ownership on collective farms, for instance. Now, they did this because the greater collective farms were so woefully unproductive that they had to compromise, but the fact remains that communist systems are just as impure as any other.
That said, I agree that what works best right now, given the nature of the modern world, is something between capitalism and socialism, and the debate is about tweaking that as best we can.
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JEB_Stuart wrote: Marx endorsed that idea to start that process. He then planned on using the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to facilitate future Communist generations. I wasn't talking about his ideas on how to get the ball rolling, merely how to implement a wider societal change.
Yeah, Marx did, but I just thought I'd interject to point out his view on the issue was a little more complicated. Marx wasn't just a revolutionary writing pamphlets, he was the first economic historian, and his one truly ground-breaking idea is that systems destroy themselves. The pressures in slave society lead to its demise and the rise of feudalism, the pressures in that system lead to mercantilism, in turn to capitalism and finally into communism. Not because people make that happen, but because the systems themselves leave no choice but to happen.
Now, what Marx didn't see, and couldn't have seen is that capitalism, particularly within democratic countries, has so far proven rather effective at providing a release valve for class tension. Workers have had their paying and working conditions improved without needing to overthrow the ruling class.
That's really the issue with his conclusion. I mean, had the hardships of late 19th century capitalism remained a constant, the communism would have been a great idea.
sebster wrote: Unfortunately, for reasons that communist academics have never even tried to answer, most of the people drawn to the ideas of communist tend to be disaffected, power hungry lunatics. Think of Lenin, Castro or Mao, but then go to your local university and meant the self-professed communists - they're complete bonkers.
Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, the crew of Les Temps Modernes and the entirety of the School of Francfort would like a word with you. A few peeps from the Vienna Circle are also looking at you while sharpening their knives.
Grey Templar wrote: The Romans did not have a Democracy. They had a Republic.
First up, Democracy and Republic aren't exclusive concepts. Republic just means you don't have a monarch. You can have a Democratic Republic, in fact you live in one.
The term I think you're looking for is Oligarchy - where power is held by a fluid group, but they're so few in number that it can't be called democracy.
Lastly, be very, very wary in describing Rome as anything. The place lasted for a really long time, and formed many different government types throughout. It was a kingdom at some stages, a military dictatorship at other, and at times the senate had some fairly primitive and narrow democracy (though oligarchy is probably the better term in general for it).
sebster wrote: capitalism is a system in which the incentives of private investment led to the development of computing technology, machinery and robotics
That would be Frege's acheivement... (and the whole renewal of logics brought on by the formalisation mouvement)
Captain Fantastic wrote: Clean up your post, OP. I have no idea what you're asking, or what the point of this thread is.
Communism, just like socialism, sounds great, but only in theory. It's assumed that leaders won't be corrupt and fall into capitalism, but that's far from the reality. On the flip-side, communism might have actually become something if Stalin had been killed early on, and the work force had remained intact. Socialism might have stayed true to its ideas if Hitler had never risen to power or made deals with capitalists, like Krupp Steel (which would have been impossible).
Nah. Lenin was utterly ruthless, as was Trotsky. And Kruschev and Brezhnev weren't exactly pleasant fellows either. That's just the culture of the organisation, and what was needed to reach absolute power in that system.
Nor can any of the atrocities of Soviet Russia be laid at Hitler's feet. Most of the killing was done by then. Really, after the war and the death of Stalin, the state just settled down into being your average, run of the mill totalitarian hell hole, with nowhere near the level of murder that went on in the pre-war period.
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Huffy wrote: And the USA is a Federal Republic not a democracy
Republic just means you don't have a monarch. The USA is a democratic republic.
Grey Templar wrote: Out of curiosity, how would people rate the Monarchy as a means of government? By Monarchy I mean an Absolute Monarchy.
Honestly, I think it's a bad question because it assumes that people have some kind of a choice in the matter. If you have the economic and social systems that necessitate a king then that's the system you have.
You couldn't, for instance, drop a modern representative democracy into medieval Europe. The idea of the king and nobility as having a divine right to rule is too strong, and the system of feudal lords and largely communal villages kind of makes a nonsense of the idea of voting for local leadership.
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Ratbarf wrote: I do believe you mean the British.Who had the Americans beat by about fifty years.
I love the idea that people could hear the term 'no taxation without representation' and not realise that probably means the folk back home were getting some kind of representation
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Grey Templar wrote: Indeed, which means you must read the Manifesto as the ramblings of an ideological bitter old man.
Have you read it, or any of other Marx' works? Because while the guy sure is wordy, his writings there formed the foundation for a whole new area of academic study. Seriously, it was breakthrough stuff, on a level with Adam Smith or Keynes.
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Grey Templar wrote: The issue with that(bolded) is that given the free choice, people will generally pick an easy or enjoyable profession. Which, after everyone has picked their chosen profession, is likely to result in a society that cannot function.
I doubt many people would choose farming, mining, or other more necessary jobs when they could be an entertainer, painter, or a sports commentator.
We would have an overabundance of some professions and a shortage of others, with the shortchanged ones likely being vital industries.
You're working under the mistaken belief that in communism you can't have differing levels of pay. You can even have such pay scales set by market mechanisms. Even Soviet Russia paid doctors and scientists more than it paid farm labourers.
The point is that there would be no class or economic restrictions on people pursuing the job of their choice. So if you were smart enough you'd get into medical school, even if your parents couldn't afford the tuition.
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Gitzbitah wrote: The US is not a democracy- our President is not selected by the unwashed masses, but by the electoral college. Our founding fathers did not trust the people to correctly choose their leaders.
The electoral college, both before and after the 17th amendment, was still on basic democratic processes. You're a representative democracy.
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Kovnik Obama wrote: Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, the crew of Les Temps Modernes and the entirety of the School of Francfort would like a word with you. A few peeps from the Vienna Circle are also looking at you while sharpening their knives.
I'm sure they would. But note Sartre's difficult relationship with other communists within France, and his own sort of, but then not and then kind of again relationship with defending Stalin.
And then ask why there's never been any kind of effort by any academic within communism to reconcile their beliefs with the death tolls in Russia, China, Cuba and Vietnam. None. They just write it off as 'not really communism' and ignore the issue. It's fething shameful, to be perfectly honest, and the product of a movement and culture that despite all the rhetoric simply does not have the interests of working people first and foremost. If it did, there would have been a hell of a lot of soul searching about how previous movement killed so many working people.
They're both communist countries, and work very well. Venezuela works so well that the US has tried to kill the leader there.... 2 times...
Umm, calling Cuba or Venezuela systems that work really well is kind of a bit screwy. Go ask Reporters without Borders how well Cuba is working.
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Kovnik Obama wrote: That would be Frege's acheivement... (and the whole renewal of logics brought on by the formalisation mouvement)
Yeah. Totally. Which is why assembly line manufacturing sprung up out of nowhere all over the Earth once Frege released his theorem. It was just because until that point we didn't have the right maths theorems in place.
I mean, think about this. Soviet Russia had access to the same writings and academic theories, and yet if you look at economic growth figures there and in the West the numbers tell a very clear story. Productivity and technological advancement becomes a constant in the West, while Soviet Russia remains stagnant. Theories need to be put into practice, and that happens best when you have venture capitalism.
sebster wrote: I'm sure they would. But note Sartre's difficult relationship with other communists within France, and his own sort of, but then not and then kind of again relationship with defending Stalin.
And then ask why there's never been any kind of effort by any academic within communism to reconcile their beliefs with the death tolls in Russia, China, Cuba and Vietnam. None.
Sartre did. It's the reason why Merleau-Ponty stopped talking to him until 2 months before he died.
They just write it off as 'not really communism' and ignore the issue. It's fething shameful, to be perfectly honest, and the product of a movement and culture that despite all the rhetoric simply does not have the interests of working people first and foremost. If it did, there would have been a hell of a lot of soul searching about how previous movement killed so many working people.
I would again point out M-P's Adventures of the Dialectic. He very well denounce his own previous stance.
Yeah. Totally. Which is why assembly line manufacturing sprung up out of nowhere all over the Earth once Frege released his theorem. It was just because until that point we didn't have the right maths theorems in place.
Building copies en masse isn't exactly the same as inventing the machine, tho. You attributed the developpment of technologies to capitalism, which is incorrect. The developpment is attributed to the developpers. Widespread use, you can give to chain factories (and distribution channels, and marketing, and etc etc...)
Grey Templar wrote: Indeed, which means you must read the Manifesto as the ramblings of an ideological bitter old man.
Have you read it, or any of other Marx' works? Because while the guy sure is wordy, his writings there formed the foundation for a whole new area of academic study. Seriously, it was breakthrough stuff, on a level with Adam Smith or Keynes.
Yeah, I've read it.
I agree that it was definitly ground breaking and its definitly worth a read. I still call it the product of a man that had become throughly disillusioned with society to the point of being downright bonkers, especially later in life.
He had good ideas, just not a good way of putting them into practice, and he never assumed that his system could be so easily abused. If he could have forseen the future that was Soviet Russia he might have burned his book and started over.
I wonder how well an island country can work when the US puts a trade embargo on it for half a century... not saying, but I'm just saying.
Venezuela is fine. I'm not sure where you're getting your info, but the "Dictator" after surviving a coup de da by the US government, was actually liberated by his own people, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan's stormed the capital to reinstate him in power.
A good example of the reverse is Taiwan - a capitalist country getting the shaft by China, and it's doing "fine".
Has anyone talked about the inherent pitfalls of a pyramid system that capitalism is? Communism may have failed spectacularly in Russia and can be used fairly as a model of what not to do when first trying to be a socialist state, but it's nothing compared to the destruction capitalism has had on the earth since its inception way before Karl Marx was even around. No one speaks of slavery as an inherent part of true capitalism? The economic ruin of countries who dip into their slice of the pie? The corporations that literally starve people in third world countries to marginalize losses they'd receive on another shore?
You want to talk about fething shameful. Look to the ignorance of the world as they bounce between ideals - for that's all they are - religions of the state. They are simply beliefs people have surrounded themselves with, and center to that ideal is not a God, but in its place a more real and believable thing: Money and how to use it.
ENOZONE wrote: I wonder how well an island country can work when the US puts a trade embargo on it for half a century... not saying, but I'm just saying.
Venezuela is fine. I'm not sure where you're getting your info, but the "Dictator" after surviving a coup de da by the US government, was actually liberated by his own people, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan's stormed the capital to reinstate him in power.
A good example of the reverse is Taiwan - a capitalist country getting the shaft by China, and it's doing "fine".
Has anyone talked about the inherent pitfalls of a pyramid system that capitalism is? Communism may have failed spectacularly in Russia and can be used fairly as a model of what not to do when first trying to be a socialist state, but it's nothing compared to the destruction capitalism has had on the earth since its inception way before Karl Marx was even around. No one speaks of slavery as an inherent part of true capitalism? The economic ruin of countries who dip into their slice of the pie? The corporations that literally starve people in third world countries to marginalize losses they'd receive on another shore?
You want to talk about fething shameful. Look to the ignorance of the world as they bounce between ideals - for that's all they are - religions of the state. They are simply beliefs people have surrounded themselves with, and center to that ideal is not a God, but in its place a more real and believable thing: Money and how to use it.
I think a slight difference is Capitalisim doesn't make any grand promises it can't keep.
It does have that goal you have stated, make money and damn the other guy. Its a system that harnesses man's competitive nature.
Equality and happyness are never promised or garunteed. You are instead given a chance to obtain those things on your own merit.
As a system, you have to appreciate the rugged practicality of it.
Grey Templar wrote: Equality and happyness are never promised or garunteed. You are instead given a chance to obtain those things on your own merit.
And there's the myth of capitalism. The truth is that you don't start on a level playing field, and you don't have the chance to obtain those things on your own merit. For every lucky success story there are countless others who were born into poverty and couldn't get the resources to start a business or the education to get a good job, or who were unable to overcome the barriers to entry and break into their chosen industry, or who were crushed by competition that already had a head start and the dice loaded in their favor, or were simply worked to death until they had nothing left to give, with no opportunity to rise above their position. And while all these failures-by-circumstances fail despite their own merit, parasites on society turn wealth and power into even more wealth and power through no effort of their own. The fact that success is possible at all is only because we limit capitalism and attempt to make merit count for something.
Equality and happyness are never promised or garunteed. You are instead given a chance to obtain those things on your own merit.
Not necessarily. Capitalism, at its core, is about the private ownership of the means of production under a system of laws which encourage the exchange of goods for profit. Success might happen as a result of this, and most certainly will for some, but how many people are able to succeed (or given a realistic opportunity for success) is not something that is addressed. That said, there are certain assumptions which underpin capitalism that could be argued to imply a sort of equality (Basically, anything related to the insurance of a competitive market.), if not in the absolute sense discussed with respect to Communism.
Of course success is an abstract concept that will not have the same meaning for every person, which means its generally a better idea to discuss the relative distribution of wealth and overall economic viability in a capitalist system; which has universally proven to be superior with respect to a communist one.
That's the supposed premise of capitalism, that you succeed or fall based on merit, not based on whether you were born into a poor family or a wealthy family. You know, the whole "equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes" thing, except that you don't actually have either.
You were promised a chance, not an equal chance.
Sorry, but it doesn't count as a chance if the odds of success are absurdly tiny because of where you happened to be born, while someone who was born into better circumstances is pretty much guaranteed to succeed way beyond anything you can realistically hope for.
There are plenty of Rags to Riches stories out there, so you can't say "I never had a chance"
And that's the myth of capitalism: you see the occasional lucky person who was able to overcome a system that was biased in every way against them, and you're supposed to assume that anyone can be that lucky. In reality it's pure wishful thinking, and being born into a privileged position is far more important than any personal merit.
From a moral perspective that would render all economic systems equivalent. After all, you may not have much of a chance of becoming Premier of the Soviet Union, but the chance still exists regardless of your initial station.
In other words, when we discuss whether or not a person has a chance to do a thing, we aren't speaking in an absolute sense. The statement "He didn't have a chance." does not imply the absence of any chance, but merely that the chance which existed was very small.
And there's the myth of capitalism. The truth is that you don't start on a level playing field, and you don't have the chance to obtain those things on your own merit. For every lucky success story there are countless others who were born into poverty and couldn't get the resources to start a business or the education to get a good job, or who were unable to overcome the barriers to entry and break into their chosen industry, or who were crushed by competition that already had a head start and the dice loaded in their favor, or were simply worked to death until they had nothing left to give, with no opportunity to rise above their position. And while all these failures-by-circumstances fail despite their own merit, parasites on society turn wealth and power into even more wealth and power through no effort of their own. The fact that success is possible at all is only because we limit capitalism and attempt to make merit count for something.
I would say that that is only partially true, by and large the reason that the dice are loaded in the favour of the guy with the headstart is in large part due to government intervention in the first place. Having been bought and paid for by those with the money and sense to do so. I mean recently (about four or five years ago now) in Ontario, where all alcohol is controlled and purchased by the provincial government, you had small breweries managing to cut away some of the market share of the big three by selling very cheap beer of a somewhat crappy quality. But people didn't care, they were just going to get drunk on it anyways, so the taste wasn't enough of an incentive for them to buy the big threes 24s for 40 dollars, when they could get the cheap bear for 24 dollars. Well the big breweries lobbied the government and they in turn raised the minimum price on all 24s to about the level of the big breweries discount brands. Now meaning that for the same price you could get slightly better taste. So some smaller breweries could no longer compete and had to shut down. That's dice loading, but it's unfair because it's the government interfering in markets where really it shouldn't be.
Ratbarf wrote: I would say that that is only partially true, by and large the reason that the dice are loaded in the favour of the guy with the headstart is in large part due to government intervention in the first place. Having been bought and paid for by those with the money and sense to do so. I mean recently (about four or five years ago now) in Ontario, where all alcohol is controlled and purchased by the provincial government, you had small breweries managing to cut away some of the market share of the big three by selling very cheap beer of a somewhat crappy quality. But people didn't care, they were just going to get drunk on it anyways, so the taste wasn't enough of an incentive for them to buy the big threes 24s for 40 dollars, when they could get the cheap bear for 24 dollars. Well the big breweries lobbied the government and they in turn raised the minimum price on all 24s to about the level of the big breweries discount brands. Now meaning that for the same price you could get slightly better taste. So some smaller breweries could no longer compete and had to shut down. That's dice loading, but it's unfair because it's the government interfering in markets where really it shouldn't be.
That's kind of missing the point:
1) In a pure capitalist world this never would have happened, because the big breweries would have used their size advantage to force their smaller competition out of business by using price fixing/exclusive contracts/etc. We see over and over again that, if given the opportunity, large corporations want to cooperate to screw over everyone else, not compete with each other. And without government regulation to stop that from happening the barriers to entry in a market become effectively infinite.
2) You're ignoring more relevant kinds of advantages. For example, it doesn't matter how much raw talent you might have as an engineer, if you can't afford to go to college you aren't ever going to make the next big invention in computer chip design. On the other hand, if you're born wealth you're pretty much guaranteed to stay wealthy simply from investments, without ever making any effort of your own. The capitalist system rewards the people who already have advantages, not the people who have the most talent/determination/etc.
The usual endpoint for pure socialist systems ala Russia: the people in charge become corrupt and consolidate power, becoming a ruling party of one.
The usual endpoint for pure capitalist systems without laws to reign in capitalism: the successful people become corrupt and consolidate power, becoming a monopoly.
For example, it doesn't matter how much raw talent you might have as an engineer, if you can't afford to go to college you aren't ever going to make the next big invention in computer chip design
That would be ignoring quite a few engineering inventions that were created by people who never went to school for engineering. Especially with the internet nowadays you can learn pretty much anything to a decent degree if you pursue it enough on your own time. Heck when it comes to computers that's what a lot of people do. My sister's ex boyfriend and a bunch of his friends put themselves through college by teaching themselves to program and then making browser based games for Crazy Monkey Games and Armor Games.
On the other hand, if you're born wealth you're pretty much guaranteed to stay wealthy simply from investments, without ever making any effort of your own
Partially true, but what you don't mention is that those investments get invested. They create more wealth, even if they are just sitting on their butts sipping champagne and beating the servants all day, their investments go towards ventures with (hopefully) good business plans and execution.
Secondly, would you be implying that the succeeding generations not be allowed to benefit from the fruits of one or more successful ancestors? I mean, half of the reason that people strive in life is to try and give their offspring a better chance at life than they did, and if you were to take that reward away, which you seem to be implying because such a reward is "unfair" would really disincentivise people.
Thirdly, you should also take a look at social mobility indexes, they're a much better representation of how a society is doing on the class thing than average annual income. I mean heck, my great grandfather was a multi millionaire, but my generation will be the last to see any money from that, and if I do poorly my kids could very well end up living in a lower class household. I think you'll find that that's how the vast majority of rich families end up. They have it pretty good for a few generations but eventually that edge runs out, and they're back on an even playing field.
Kovnik Obama wrote: I would again point out M-P's Adventures of the Dialectic. He very well denounce his own previous stance.
And doesn't that tell you something?
Building copies en masse isn't exactly the same as inventing the machine, tho. You attributed the developpment of technologies to capitalism, which is incorrect. The developpment is attributed to the developpers. Widespread use, you can give to chain factories (and distribution channels, and marketing, and etc etc...)
And while exactly who developed an idea might be very important to academic study, a clever idea doesn't matter one bit in terms of changing the world if there isn't a political and economic system in place to take advantage of it.
This reminds me a bit of that eternal debate about who got to the Americas first (other than the North Americans, obviously). Whether it was the Vikings or the Chinese or the Europeans or whatever. Truth is it doesn't matter one bit who got their first, because it only changed the world when the journey was backed by political and economic systems that sent large number of ships, and extracted profits into order the expand that shipping - that was what changed the world. It's the same thing with capitalism - the idea is great, but you need a political and economic system that can put that idea into practice.
I agree that it was definitly ground breaking and its definitly worth a read. I still call it the product of a man that had become throughly disillusioned with society to the point of being downright bonkers, especially later in life.
Man, I just don't get that at all. Have you read much about his personal life?
He had good ideas, just not a good way of putting them into practice, and he never assumed that his system could be so easily abused. If he could have forseen the future that was Soviet Russia he might have burned his book and started over.
That's the thing, though. There's nothing in his writing about how that stuff is to get put into practice. He wasn't describing what the revolution should be and what should replace it, he was arguing from a position of historical inevitability - the owner must treat the worker in a certain way to maintain profit, therefore the worker will reject his exploitation, therefore revolution will happen and capitalism will fall.
Now, the guy is wrong because it turns out capitalism coupled with democracy leads to an improvement in working conditions and the development of a middle class, but to be fair to Marx no-one really saw that one coming.
But the argument that 'Marx didn't have a good way of putting his ideas into practice' just doesn't describe Marx' writing at all.
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ENOZONE wrote: I wonder how well an island country can work when the US puts a trade embargo on it for half a century... not saying, but I'm just saying.
I'm not saying the embargo on Cuba was justifiable, but it has stuff all to do with political repression within the country.
Venezuela is fine. I'm not sure where you're getting your info, but the "Dictator" after surviving a coup de da by the US government, was actually liberated by his own people, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan's stormed the capital to reinstate him in power.
Again, the various dodginess by the CIA is terrible, but to just pretend Chavez isn't dismantling the democracy in his own country is just ignoring reality.
Has anyone talked about the inherent pitfalls of a pyramid system that capitalism is? Communism may have failed spectacularly in Russia and can be used fairly as a model of what not to do when first trying to be a socialist state, but it's nothing compared to the destruction capitalism has had on the earth since its inception way before Karl Marx was even around. No one speaks of slavery as an inherent part of true capitalism? The economic ruin of countries who dip into their slice of the pie? The corporations that literally starve people in third world countries to marginalize losses they'd receive on another shore?
One can recognise the problems with capitalism, and the difficulties in addressing those, without pretending communism is a practical alternative.
There are plenty of Rags to Riches stories out there, so you can't say "I never had a chance"
No, but you can say that we as a society can do a lot of things to give people more & better chances to succeed in life, and that means modifying the system.
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Ratbarf wrote: That would be ignoring quite a few engineering inventions that were created by people who never went to school for engineering. Especially with the internet nowadays you can learn pretty much anything to a decent degree if you pursue it enough on your own time. Heck when it comes to computers that's what a lot of people do. My sister's ex boyfriend and a bunch of his friends put themselves through college by teaching themselves to program and then making browser based games for Crazy Monkey Games and Armor Games.
They still went to college, which shows it still has a lot of value compared to just looking stuff up on the internet.
And while working a job like that might work pretty well for some people, it certainly isn't a practical option for everyone. You can't, for instance, teach yourself to program if the only computer you have access to is in the public library.
But to bring some coherence to what everyone is saying - is anyone here honest to God arguing that providing greater opportunities to every kid isn't a desired thing? So free public education, loans and scholarships for college, all that stuff is just a basically good idea, yeah?
Thirdly, you should also take a look at social mobility indexes, they're a much better representation of how a society is doing on the class thing than average annual income. I mean heck, my great grandfather was a multi millionaire, but my generation will be the last to see any money from that, and if I do poorly my kids could very well end up living in a lower class household. I think you'll find that that's how the vast majority of rich families end up. They have it pretty good for a few generations but eventually that edge runs out, and they're back on an even playing field.
And looking at those indices, you'd see that the countries with more moderated capitalist economies, like the Scandanavian countries, show far greater social mobility than the countries with more pure capitalism, like the USA.
Ratbarf wrote: That would be ignoring quite a few engineering inventions that were created by people who never went to school for engineering. Especially with the internet nowadays you can learn pretty much anything to a decent degree if you pursue it enough on your own time. Heck when it comes to computers that's what a lot of people do. My sister's ex boyfriend and a bunch of his friends put themselves through college by teaching themselves to program and then making browser based games for Crazy Monkey Games and Armor Games.
There's a few problems with that:
1) By teaching yourself you've restricted yourself to inventing something as your only viable career path, and it's a very risky one. No employer is going to hire you without a degree (and, in some cases, a license), which means you're forever excluded from getting that nice stable job where you take home solid middle-class salary, live a comfortable life, and increase efficiency by 5% for the company you work for. Your only choice is an all-or-nothing gamble that most people fail.
2) You're still assuming a degree of resources that not everyone has. Good luck teaching yourself programming when you're working long hours just to feed your family and can't afford a computer/internet/textbooks/etc.
3) I deliberately picked a field with huge barriers to entry. Getting into computer engineering isn't something you can do on your own, in addition to the education required you need thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars in specialized software to design chips, and millions of dollars in hardware to build them. It's effectively an infinite barrier to entry, so the field is off-limits to anyone who can't afford the prerequisites to get into it, no matter how much merit they have.
Partially true, but what you don't mention is that those investments get invested. They create more wealth, even if they are just sitting on their butts sipping champagne and beating the servants all day, their investments go towards ventures with (hopefully) good business plans and execution.
The point is that "capitalism is about merit" is laughably false. That wealthy "investor" (who just hires someone to manage their money and make it into more money) isn't succeeding on their own merits, they're succeeding because they had wealthy parents.
Secondly, would you be implying that the succeeding generations not be allowed to benefit from the fruits of one or more successful ancestors? I mean, half of the reason that people strive in life is to try and give their offspring a better chance at life than they did, and if you were to take that reward away, which you seem to be implying because such a reward is "unfair" would really disincentivise people.
Where do you get this ridiculous strawman from? I'm not at all arguing against allowing any kind of inherited wealth, I'm just pointing out that inherited wealth is one of the ways in which pure capitalism denies equality of opportunity and ignores merit in favor of giving more wealth and power to those who already have it. It's because of these things that capitalism needs limits.
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sebster wrote: But to bring some coherence to what everyone is saying - is anyone here honest to God arguing that providing greater opportunities to every kid isn't a desired thing? So free public education, loans and scholarships for college, all that stuff is just a basically good idea, yeah?
The point is that pure capitalism is a broken system, since its whole premise of "equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes" is broken. Equality of opportunity doesn't exist, and you need to put limits on capitalism to restore some degree of equality of opportunity to the system.
Peregrine wrote: The point is that pure capitalism is a broken system, since its whole premise of "equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes" is broken. Equality of opportunity doesn't exist, and you need to put limits on capitalism to restore some degree of equality of opportunity to the system.
But no-one here that I've seen is arguing for pure capitalism, so what's the point of this little aside?
Peregrine wrote: The point is that pure capitalism is a broken system, since its whole premise of "equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes" is broken. Equality of opportunity doesn't exist, and you need to put limits on capitalism to restore some degree of equality of opportunity to the system.
But no-one here that I've seen is arguing for pure capitalism, so what's the point of this little aside?
There's this nice bit of Ayn-Rand-style social darwinism:
ENOZONE wrote: I wonder how well an island country can work when the US puts a trade embargo on it for half a century... not saying, but I'm just saying.
I'm not saying the embargo on Cuba was justifiable, but it has stuff all to do with political repression within the country.
Venezuela is fine. I'm not sure where you're getting your info, but the "Dictator" after surviving a coup de da by the US government, was actually liberated by his own people, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan's stormed the capital to reinstate him in power.
Again, the various dodginess by the CIA is terrible, but to just pretend Chavez isn't dismantling the democracy in his own country is just ignoring reality.
Has anyone talked about the inherent pitfalls of a pyramid system that capitalism is? Communism may have failed spectacularly in Russia and can be used fairly as a model of what not to do when first trying to be a socialist state, but it's nothing compared to the destruction capitalism has had on the earth since its inception way before Karl Marx was even around. No one speaks of slavery as an inherent part of true capitalism? The economic ruin of countries who dip into their slice of the pie? The corporations that literally starve people in third world countries to marginalize losses they'd receive on another shore?
One can recognize the problems with capitalism, and the difficulties in addressing those, without pretending communism is a practical alternative.
Two things. First: Freedom does not equal Democracy - the Soviet Union, and all of the Soviet Revolutions that occured in Central and South America were revolutions to liberate those who were oppressed. Though many simply traded one dictator for another, for a time people lived a fragile, but nonetheless very real freedom communism promised. Chavez is loved in his country because he is a benevolent dictator that gives the people a working socialist state without curbing their freedoms - he actively tries to give the people what they want: education, healthcare, lower taxes, ect.
Second: Like I said, communism and capitalism are belief's to be as feared as Christianity and Islam. They have much in common should both sides put aside their differences and could do well if they learned and worked from each other. Until then, like Christianity, most of us will only know of one view of the world, and demonize the other ideal by focusing on those that have made it evil.
Two things. First: Freedom does not equal Democracy - the Soviet Union, and all of the Soviet Revolutions that occured in Central and South America were revolutions to liberate those who were oppressed. Though many simply traded one dictator for another, for a time people lived a fragile, but nonetheless very real freedom communism promised. Chavez is loved in his country because he is a benevolent dictator that gives the people a working socialist state without curbing their freedoms - he actively tries to give the people what they want: education, healthcare, lower taxes, ect.
Have you actually been to either Cuba or Venezuela?
Because if you have, then you have a very twisted view of what "benevolent" dictators Chavez and Castro really are. There is a very palpable feeling when you talk to people on the streets that if they don't tow the party line, then "BAD things" happen. In Cuba you have people inviting tourists to eat in their homes to help make ends meet and if they are discovered, then they will be sent to jail, for example.
Chavez is beloved by is people in the same way that Kim Jong Il was also beloved by his people in NK and if Venezuela didn't have such extensive oil reserves then their people would be starving just as the NK people are.
d-usa wrote: Communism works just as well on paper as Capitalism.
Communism works just as well in real life as Capitalism.
'Proper' capitalism works IMO. But instead, we bail out the failing banks instead of letting new companies fill the void. A proper free market might work. Been listening to economic experts on the news
d-usa wrote: Communism works just as well on paper as Capitalism.
Communism works just as well in real life as Capitalism.
'Proper' capitalism works IMO. But instead, we bail out the failing banks instead of letting new companies fill the void. A proper free market might work. Been listening to economic experts on the news
Peregrine wrote: BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! DOLLARS FOR THE DOLLAR THRONE!
If Khorne is the capitalist, doesn't that imply that Tzeentch is the communist. "Just as planned (economy)" jokes aside, I think Nurgle is the more appropriate choice.
p_gray99 wrote: The only reason it's doomed is the governments rather than the economics. Were the governing systems to be sorted out, it would work.
You could say the same of any society throughout human history, so in a discussion about economics it's moot.
I agree, any economic system with a good enough governing body would probably work. However, as communism is the (arguably) fairest economic system, you could therefore say that it's the best and we should try to build a governing system which will allow it to work. Although I don't believe this myself, I believe we should aim for a far more socialist system.
All of which would be lovely, if wasn't for that pesky personal freedom stuff. Oh, and the fact that socialism de-incentivises sustainable economic activity.
Albatross wrote: Capitalism doesn't 'care' about anything except profit and growth.
Which really arent virtues in themselves. Stability could be preferable to a lot of people.
And by 'sustainable' I mean 'non-state funded', incidentally.
Well, are you talking about marxist socialism, or socialism as in social-democracy? Because if its the first, then there's nothing to say that the State's production cannot be sustained, especially if it cumulates all the means of production (and that those don't suck). If it's the latter, I don't see how social values affect productivity. They just take a larger slice of the public fund pie.
Albatross wrote: Capitalism doesn't 'care' about anything except profit and growth.
Which really arent virtues in themselves. Stability could be preferable to a lot of people.
No, they aren't, and yes it probably would! However, it's the price of that stability that is the worrying thing. It basically means surrendering your freedom to compete.
And by 'sustainable' I mean 'non-state funded', incidentally.
Well, are you talking about marxist socialism, or socialism as in social-democracy? Because if its the first, then there's nothing to say that the State's production cannot be sustained, especially if it cumulates all the means of production (and that those don't suck).
The redistribution inherent in such a system would make it very easy to out-compete a nation adopting it. It would kill exports. The collapse of nationalised British heavy industry in the 70s is a good example of this in microcosm.
If it's the latter, I don't see how social values affect productivity. They just take a larger slice of the public fund pie.
...and allow for greater worklessness amongst the population, which affects productivity. It's also a black hole fiscally, because each generation of a family that doesn't work costs the state progressively more. You have to break the cycle at some point.
Albatross wrote: No, they aren't, and yes it probably would! However, it's the price of that stability that is the worrying thing. It basically means surrendering your freedom to compete.
Only if by "compete" you mean "recklessly trade future survival for short-term gains". I don't know about you, but I don't really think that vulture capitalism, trashing the environment to make a bit of extra profit, pyramid-scheme-in-all-but-name investing, etc, are really good for society. I don't care if removing them costs the richest people some freedom to become even richer, they can just deal with being comfortably rich instead of obscenely rich.
The redistribution inherent in such a system would make it very easy to out-compete a nation adopting it. It would kill exports. The collapse of nationalised British heavy industry in the 70s is a good example of this in microcosm.
And the lesson we can learn from that collapse is "when capitalism fails, the government should step in and save industry". For example, they canceled their fighter jet program and the aerospace industry collapsed, and now they have to import their planes, putting them in a weaker strategic position. But of course this is exactly the problem with capitalism: it cares about short-term gains, not long-term potential, and considers it better to trash a nation's industrial capacity and move it to China than to pay higher prices.
...and allow for greater worklessness amongst the population, which affects productivity. It's also a black hole fiscally, because each generation of a family that doesn't work costs the state progressively more. You have to break the cycle at some point.
Yeah, that whole idea that otherwise-productive people would rather be lazy and collect a welfare check than work and have a more comfortable life? It's a stupid one.
...and allow for greater worklessness amongst the population, which affects productivity. It's also a black hole fiscally, because each generation of a family that doesn't work costs the state progressively more. You have to break the cycle at some point.
There will always be a certain percentage of the population that either chooses not to work, cannot work, or finds itself unable to find work. The last is inevitable in any capitalist system, though the problem becomes increasingly worse as specialization increases*. The second is simply a fact of life, though certainly any disability system must be carefully monitored. The first, however, relates to several different factors, among them unemployment rate, the efficacy of securing a living by criminal means, and the level of benefits relative available employment opportunities.
Its a balancing act, and a delicate one, but ultimate any effective solution that mollifies the lower economic rungs of society (which is what economic hardship benefits do) requires some form of state aid.
*Arguably much of the reason for the high unemployment rate among recent college graduates in the United States stems from the difficulty of entering a field without a [i]very[i] specific set of qualifications. To guarantee yourself a job you essentially have to dedicate yourself to an educational and work path that is specific to a given field (The dread '3-5 years industry experience required' line.), meaning that often entry-level positions in related fields become closed to you; limiting options for employment. This is even more problematic if you have to work your way through college, and therefore cannot take on internships as readily.
Yeah, that whole idea that otherwise-productive people would rather be lazy and collect a welfare check than work and have a more comfortable life? It's a stupid one.
The point being made, largely specific to the UK, is that welfare benefits have exceeded or matched work compensation that the recipients might otherwise receive.
That said, disenfranchisement is another thing to consider, as there is very little reason to work if you see no practical means of improving your circumstances. The myth that hard work and hope are sufficient to improve one's lot in life died long ago, and rightly so.
Albatross wrote: No, they aren't, and yes it probably would! However, it's the price of that stability that is the worrying thing. It basically means surrendering your freedom to compete.
Only if by "compete" you mean "recklessly trade future survival for short-term gains".
Which I don't, so I'm just going excise all the sub-Occupy, populist 'Robin Hood' nonsense in the rest of your post and see if there's anything left that's worth replying to.
The redistribution inherent in such a system would make it very easy to out-compete a nation adopting it. It would kill exports. The collapse of nationalised British heavy industry in the 70s is a good example of this in microcosm.
And the lesson we can learn from that collapse is "when capitalism fails, the government should step in and save industry".
You have it completely the wrong way round! They were state-run industries that failed, so capitalism stepped in and saved them (where appropriate).
...and allow for greater worklessness amongst the population, which affects productivity. It's also a black hole fiscally, because each generation of a family that doesn't work costs the state progressively more. You have to break the cycle at some point.
There will always be a certain percentage of the population that either chooses not to work, cannot work, or finds itself unable to find work. The last is inevitable in any capitalist system, though the problem becomes increasingly worse as specialization increases*. The second is simply a fact of life, though certainly any disability system must be carefully monitored. The first, however, relates to several different factors, among them unemployment rate, the efficacy of securing a living by criminal means, and the level of benefits relative available employment opportunities.
Its a balancing act, and a delicate one, but ultimate any effective solution that mollifies the lower economic rungs of society (which is what economic hardship benefits do) requires some form of state aid.
Yep, no argument here whatsoever. It's a sliding scale, and we definitely need a social safety-net.
I think sometimes you mistake me for a US conservative! I'm a British one - we're a different (and arguably more sensible) beast.
The point being made, largely specific to the UK, is that welfare benefits have exceeded or matched work compensation that the recipients might otherwise receive.
This set off my bs alarm.
Unemployment benefit for over 25s in the UK is £65 a week, minimum wage is £6.12 (ish) an hour. So you'd have to work like 11 hours a week for work to pay better than benefits. A full time job is 40 hours a week, or £244, which is much higher. The notion that people are better off on benefits is an entirely fabricated lie, used to justify all sorts of bs right-wing policies by this government, and supported by their cronies in the press.
Unemployment benefit for over 25s in the UK is £65 a week, minimum wage is £6.12 (ish) an hour. So you'd have to work like 11 hours a week for work to pay better than benefits. A full time job is 40 hours a week, or £244, which is much higher. The notion that people are better off on benefits is an entirely fabricated lie, used to justify all sorts of bs right-wing policies by this government, and supported by their cronies in the press.
Well I'm not sure how it works in Britain, but in Ontario you get your rent paid for up to 500 a month, you get food stamps so you don't have to pay for groceries, and on top of that you get about 50 bucks a week for general spending money and a free bus pass. Sell a little weed on the side and all of a sudden your quality of living is pretty much the same as a person who works minimum wage full time. Except for you everyday is saturday.
While capitalism never cared about sustainability.
Well...it's still going. Which is more than can be said for communism.
If you want to compare it to feudalism then be my guest
You make a good point, however I'm not certain that the fact it's still going shows that it's either more sustainable nor better than communism. What I mean is that it's been given a much better chance than communism and in circumstances when communism wouldn't have worked. Sure, currently it's far more sustainable. However, it is leading to destruction of rainforests, et cetera, I'm not going to bore you with the details that everyone over the age of 3 knows... And when both are competing, capitalism will win due to being built around competition. However, in a world of pure communism, with the right government, communism would work towards sustainability rather than a vulture-like society where any weakness (including the inability of the rainforests to protect themselves) are used to help that business rather than helping everyone.
My point is that communism works towards helping the people in the long term, which is surely what everyone wants. Capitalism, however, works towards helping a small group of individuals, for a relatively short period of time. If you could choose between the two objectives without any knowledge of who would be the winner in the capitalist society, which would you opt for?
Unemployment benefit for over 25s in the UK is £65 a week, minimum wage is £6.12 (ish) an hour. So you'd have to work like 11 hours a week for work to pay better than benefits. A full time job is 40 hours a week, or £244, which is much higher. The notion that people are better off on benefits is an entirely fabricated lie, used to justify all sorts of bs right-wing policies by this government, and supported by their cronies in the press.
I was under the impression that the unemployed could also secure significant benefits in the form of housing and utilities.
They can, which is how people end up 'earning' more on benefits than they would in work. My sister is entitled to around £600 in housing benefit, plus child benefit for three kids, plus Income support (iirc, it may be Jobseekers Allowance) because she doesn't work, all of which adds up to more than she could realistically expect to get by working for a living. And she's not even TRYING to game the system.
Yeah. I've heard also (though I'm definitely taking this with more than a pinch of salt) that due to families being given more money if they have kids, they have more kids, to trick the system...
But anyway, this discussion shouldn't be about how the UK system works, it should be about how it should work. I reckon we've pretty much discussed this to death, TBH.
p_gray99 wrote: Yeah. I've heard also (though I'm definitely taking this with more than a pinch of salt) that due to families being given more money if they have kids, they have more kids, to trick the system...
But anyway, this discussion shouldn't be about how the UK system works, it should be about how it should work. I reckon we've pretty much discussed this to death, TBH.
Families can get larger houses part of fully funded by the state..
The system should work as it is, it does support those in need, you will always get chancers exploiting loopholes in any system.
p_gray99 wrote: Yeah. I've heard also (though I'm definitely taking this with more than a pinch of salt) that due to families being given more money if they have kids, they have more kids, to trick the system...
But anyway, this discussion shouldn't be about how the UK system works, it should be about how it should work. I reckon we've pretty much discussed this to death, TBH.
Families can get larger houses part of fully funded by the state..
The system should work as it is, it does support those in need, you will always get chancers exploiting loopholes in any system.
Not looking for a job is a loophole in the system, and as far as I can tell there's more than just a few "chancers" exploiting it. There's whole neighborhoods doing this, and a society of it being uncool to work.
p_gray99 wrote: Yeah. I've heard also (though I'm definitely taking this with more than a pinch of salt) that due to families being given more money if they have kids, they have more kids, to trick the system...
But anyway, this discussion shouldn't be about how the UK system works, it should be about how it should work. I reckon we've pretty much discussed this to death, TBH.
Families can get larger houses part of fully funded by the state..
The system should work as it is, it does support those in need, you will always get chancers exploiting loopholes in any system.
Not looking for a job is a loophole in the system, and as far as I can tell there's more than just a few "chancers" exploiting it. There's whole neighborhoods doing this, and a society of it being uncool to work.
Claiming jobseekers you have a form to complete which is a log of your job search for a period of 2 weeks. You can fill this with anything, anything. You show it to your advisor, and they say keep it up. there is no incentive to delve into the veracity of the information provided. This loophole is caused by the public servants and the rules they follow.
nomsheep wrote: If you are caught out for not applying to work the punishment ranges from being kicked off to 3 years without any benefits.
Yes, but who checks on the veracity of the information? no one does. A job seekers agreement contains activities which must be completed each week/fortnight. These include 'checking' local papers and recruitment sites. So long as you log this info on your paperwork you are good to go. 9 times out of 10, with the current system, no one will bat an eyelid if it looks right, Its just not worth it to staff to check too closely.
nomsheep wrote: If you are caught out for not applying to work the punishment ranges from being kicked off to 3 years without any benefits.
Yes, but who checks on the veracity of the information? no one does. A job seekers agreement contains activities which must be completed each week/fortnight. These include 'checking' local papers and recruitment sites. So long as you log this info on your paperwork you are good to go. 9 times out of 10, with the current system, no one will bat an eyelid if it looks right, Its just not worth it to staff to check too closely.
Quite often they will just decide it looks suspicious and send it off to decision makers' who then stop paying you. that happened to me even though my search was genuine so yeah it's a flawed system alright.
Albatross wrote: They can, which is how people end up 'earning' more on benefits than they would in work. My sister is entitled to around £600 in housing benefit, plus child benefit for three kids, plus Income support (iirc, it may be Jobseekers Allowance) because she doesn't work, all of which adds up to more than she could realistically expect to get by working for a living. And she's not even TRYING to game the system.
Whoops. That £600 in housing benefit is regardless of employment status[source], as is the child benefit[unless you earn more than £50,000].
Albatross wrote: They can, which is how people end up 'earning' more on benefits than they would in work. My sister is entitled to around £600 in housing benefit, plus child benefit for three kids, plus Income support (iirc, it may be Jobseekers Allowance) because she doesn't work, all of which adds up to more than she could realistically expect to get by working for a living. And she's not even TRYING to game the system.
Whoops. That £600 in housing benefit is regardless of employment status[source], as is the child benefit[unless you earn more than £50,000].
Try again, Tory.
You know you're not actually refuting anything I've said, don't you? Housing benefit is means-tested, which means that how much you get is contingent upon how much you earn, therefore the less you earn, the more you get. That de-incentivises someone with little-to-no education and kids to support from actually taking a full-time minimum wage job and paying their own way, because they could not realistically earn enough to pay out £600 per month on rent alone. It would leave them with around £300 for utilities, food, transport etc. It basically traps people in welfare dependency.
And I'm proud to be a Tory. I'm not thick enough to treat that word as an insult, so you'll have to think of something else. If you can.
Peregrine wrote: There's this nice bit of Ayn-Rand-style social darwinism:
I'm the last person to defend Gray Templar, but I think you're reading a hell of a lot into his post.
I don't think he said anywhere that the status quo provided exactly as many opportunities as it should, or that we couldn't provide more. If he clarifies and says that no such thing is needed, then fair enough, I'll join you in criticising his opinion, but I'm not just going to assume it.
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ENOZONE wrote: Two things. First: Freedom does not equal Democracy - the Soviet Union, and all of the Soviet Revolutions that occured in Central and South America were revolutions to liberate those who were oppressed. Though many simply traded one dictator for another, for a time people lived a fragile, but nonetheless very real freedom communism promised.
Seriously? fething seriously? I mean, should we just start with first incorrect thing and start to work through it from there? There was no communist revolution in Russia. There was a general revolution that formed a provisional government, and then there was a coup by the Bolsheviks.
Chavez is loved in his country because he is a benevolent dictator that gives the people a working socialist state without curbing their freedoms - he actively tries to give the people what they want: education, healthcare, lower taxes, ect.
That's a horrendously simplistic narrative there. Chavez is loved by some, accepted by many others as preferable to the alternative, and disliked or despised by many, many more. He's a highly divisive figure.
We've had true free markets. It produced child factory workers and companies paying in scrip and indentured servitude and a load of other problems. We saw all that, realised it sucked, and set up building the hybrid system we have today.
We've had true free markets. It produced child factory workers and companies paying in scrip and indentured servitude and a load of other problems. We saw all that, realised it sucked, and set up building the hybrid system we have today.
That's why I support regulation to capitalism; because people need it, otherwise they do immoral things because its easier and brings them more profit. Overall though I take a very libertarian approach to things. Except universal health care. Everyone should have universal health care.
Albatross wrote: You know you're not actually refuting anything I've said, don't you? Housing benefit is means-tested, which means that how much you get is contingent upon how much you earn, therefore the less you earn, the more you get. That de-incentivises someone with little-to-no education and kids to support from actually taking a full-time minimum wage job and paying their own way, because they could not realistically earn enough to pay out £600 per month on rent alone.
Well, that really depends on the taper for the benefit in question. For instance, if the benefit only declined by 1p for every £1, then there'd be little disincentive not to work as you'd only be losing 1p in housing benefit for every £1 you earned.
The problem, it seems to me, is that once you exceed your minimum income level, the taper that kicks in reducing your housing benefit is too extreme, as you lose 65p in housing benefit for every £1 you earn. So why work an extra hour to earn £10, when you lose £6.50 of it in reduced housing benefits.
If they reduced that taper (possibly balancing that by having it start at lower incomes) then I think it would work much better.
Albatross wrote: They can, which is how people end up 'earning' more on benefits than they would in work. My sister is entitled to around £600 in housing benefit, plus child benefit for three kids, plus Income support (iirc, it may be Jobseekers Allowance) because she doesn't work, all of which adds up to more than she could realistically expect to get by working for a living. And she's not even TRYING to game the system.
Whoops. That £600 in housing benefit is regardless of employment status[source], as is the child benefit[unless you earn more than £50,000].
Try again, Tory.
You know you're not actually refuting anything I've said, don't you? Housing benefit is means-tested, which means that how much you get is contingent upon how much you earn, therefore the less you earn, the more you get. That de-incentivises someone with little-to-no education and kids to support from actually taking a full-time minimum wage job and paying their own way, because they could not realistically earn enough to pay out £600 per month on rent alone. It would leave them with around £300 for utilities, food, transport etc. It basically traps people in welfare dependency.
And I'm proud to be a Tory. I'm not thick enough to treat that word as an insult, so you'll have to think of something else. If you can.
"You may get Housing Benefit if:
you pay rent
you’re on a low income or claiming benefits
your savings are below a certain level - usually £16,000
"
If you're unemployed and getting housing benefit, you won't lose it if you get a job unless it's fantastically well paid.
You realise that if what you were saying is true, no one would work right? I don't work 40 hours a week in factory because I love being surrounded by immigrants
Basically housing benefit is independant of employment. You should probably tell your sister to check with the jobcentre about housing benefits being lost when you find work, since she definitely shouldn't.
Oh and Tory is an insult around here, usually appended with the word "bastard".
you pay rent
you’re on a low income or claiming benefits
your savings are below a certain level - usually £16,000
"
If you're unemployed and getting housing benefit, you won't lose it if you get a job unless it's fantastically well paid.
You don't lose the benefit if the job is fantasically well paid. You start losing the benefit as soon as your income exceeds the government's assessment of how much a minimum income in your area might be. And when you exceed that amount, you start losing 65p for ever £1 you earn. That's a pretty harsh taper. It means that a person can be offered an extra hour of overtime, and think 'what's the point, the £10 I earn working that hour will reduce my housing benefit by £6.50?'
you pay rent
you’re on a low income or claiming benefits
your savings are below a certain level - usually £16,000
"
If you're unemployed and getting housing benefit, you won't lose it if you get a job unless it's fantastically well paid.
You don't lose the benefit if the job is fantasically well paid. You start losing the benefit as soon as your income exceeds the government's assessment of how much a minimum income in your area might be. And when you exceed that amount, you start losing 65p for ever £1 you earn. That's a pretty harsh taper. It means that a person can be offered an extra hour of overtime, and think 'what's the point, the £10 I earn working that hour will reduce my housing benefit by £6.50?'
That is a little harsh, but you're still better off for working than you are for not.
rockerbikie wrote: Communism is yet to happen, thise "Communist" countries are socialist countries who have been corrupted back to capitalism over time.
In other words, you're admitting communism, like all "isms" failed.
rockerbikie wrote: Communism is yet to happen, thise "Communist" countries are socialist countries who have been corrupted back to capitalism over time.
In other words, you're admitting communism, like all "isms" failed.
rockerbikie wrote:It has only occured in 3rd world countries with low literacy rates and a devastated economy.
So you are implying that only societies that have an educated populace and/or fantastic economies will work with Communism? I find this to be extremely illogical. Considering that a fundamental idea in Marx's Communist Manifesto is that society is to be re-educated so as to eliminate class systems and facilitate a "transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society." It makes more sense that a generally uneducated society will be easier to re-educate since their preconceived notions are likely to be less deeply ingrained, and those who have a ruined economy are more likely to be willing to try a radical new solution. Could it be that is exactly why Communism has been tried in exactly those situations?
rockerbikie wrote:Also, Vietnam would of been a success if the US did not intervene.
Really? Sorry to burst your bubble but Ho Chi Minh was not the saint you make him out to be, despite what the People's Party publications in Vietnam tell you...
No. That's why it failed. If Norway became Communist, it would be successful. If everyone is educated than it is more likely to succeed. Ho Chi Minh freed his people from the French.
As the Brits would say: "bullocks." East Germany failed. Hungary failed. Czechloslovakia failed. Yugoslavia failed. Cuba failed. Poland failed. the USSR failed.
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p_gray99 wrote: The problem with Communism is that it requires a large government to keep so much under control, and so much power is bound to become corrupted in human hands. Until we can develop a computer that can reliably handle such important things with a 0% failure rate and have everyone trust it, I don't see communism happening. I just hope I live to see the day that it does.
No thats just the killy problem of communism. The problem of communism is that 1) there are still ruling elites who get all the goodies; 2) there are no markets to more efficiently allocate resources and labor vs. need/want. A better computer is not going to help that.
It has only occured in 3rd world countries with low literacy rates and a devastated economy. Also, Vietnam would of been a success if the US did not intervene.
That's odd I've always thought of Poland, Germany, and Czechoslovakia as both first world and literate. Wierd.
Poland has been rather economically poor for awhile, as has Czechoslovakia. And both, plus East Germany, were part of Soviet Russia, it wasn't a revolution like happened in Russia. It was a foreign invasion that foisted the Communist way on them.
NO. THE USSR did not include any of those countries.
Prior to WWII Czechloslavakia, Germany, and Poland were quite prosperous. After the war West Germany became prosperous. Czeckloslavakia improved when it started down the path to reform.
rockerbikie wrote: Communism is yet to happen, thise "Communist" countries are socialist countries who have been corrupted back to capitalism over time.
In other words, you're admitting communism, like all "isms" failed.
Capitalism.
Liberalism.
Federalism.
So, no.
UNfettered capitalism fails as well. It leads to revolutions and the other sims.
Federalism denies the desire of people to make other people do things. Power inevitably centralizes.
Liberalism, well without evil capitalists they would all starve to death.
I'm studying the American way of life so that I may infiltrate as a communist sleeper cell...
