I think everyone knew that even Capitalism has its down sides, we just agreed that they were acceptable. Yeah, he may have been right, but it's nothing we didn't already know.
The author identifies the fundamental flaw with Marx's theory--he used a false premise. The author here starts a corrected premise and proceeds to give a very interesting history lesson, one which applies quite strongly to today's economic environment.
That blog post has one rather glaring flaw: it fails to analyse why there are debtors and savers in the first place and who actually gets the opportunity to become a saver. In particular, it fails to account for some quite significant economic reasons why some people would be financially unable to save money. TFA has, in my opinion, a better explanation of why debt explosions are inevitable.
This is technically true, but scale matters. A lot. For someone earning minimum wage, how long will it take them to save enough money to, say, open their own business? Compare that to someone who is earning millions each year.
Even your examples of how to save money reveal your flaws. You mention living with your parents, but what about people whose parents are absent from their lives? You mention giving up some free time to collect cans, but what about those who are already working multiple, minimum wage jobs and don't have any free time to give up? From the sounds of it, you come from a place of privilege (as do I - my family helped pay for college, among other things), and I think that it would do you well to remember that there are some places in the US where people live in abject poverty and have very minimal options.
The blog that you reference makes some interesting points about the merits of spending vs. saving, but trying to cram all of history and economics into this simple divide is naive at best and dangerously foolish at worst. The danger comes from the inherent assumption that all people in poverty are there through their own laziness and "debtor" mentality.
BS. Anyone who has cash flow can save money. Or they are dying of starvation. The likelihood of someone having literally only exactly enough to "survive" is practically zero. One can ALWAYS sacrifice current consumption for future gain. Whether that means eating rice instead of bread, or living with your parents instead of your own apartment, or making extra effort to pick up discarded cans for recycling (sacrificing leisure time).
Do a little experiment. Get the minimum wage figures, and figure out how much you get per month. Assume you pay no taxes, since theoretically you're getting all of that back anyway at the end of the year. Find out what it costs to rent a really, really cheap place in your area. In a horrible neighborhood. I'm talking about what it requires for you to have basic shelter, where the only requirements are electricity (need to store food in a refrigerator), and indoor plumbing (you can't hold a job if you can't shower). Determine how much it would cost to pay for that electricity and water. Assume bare minimums here, just take a non-zero value. Determine how much food costs, and for the sake of argument, this person lives on ramen alone. Eats nothing else. You may also assume that this person lives within walking distance of where they work, so they will have no transportation costs. This person never spends any money on entertainment, they will never become unemployed, they will never become sick (otherwise we'd have to factor in health insurance, and that'd definitely break the budget).
Turns out that depending on where you live, minimum wage won't even cover the rent for that shack in a bad neighborhood. In other places, you might be able to determine that there's some money left over after my minimum living requirements stated above. If that's the case, I want you to calculate how much they will have saved after 50 years of working (you can assume their salary follows inflation, so keep all costs the same for all 50 years). That means they started working at 20 and retired at 70. Assume they've invested in the stock market and got a steady 10% growth every single year. You might be surprised to find that investments [xkcd.com] don't yield as much as you think they do.
Even assuming these ideal conditions, I guarantee you that the result will be that they won't have enough money saved over to last them and 20 years of life, living in the same poor conditions. I know this from experience. I'm not a debtor, but I lived my childhood as one. My parents weren't skilled enough to get high paying jobs, and there wasn't enough left over to save. We weren't starving, but that doesn't mean that sometimes we wouldn't have to do that 1-2 day fast until payday came along and we could buy food again. My parents were, however, smart enough to explain to me the value of an education, so that I wouldn't be in the same situation. With what I earn today, I find that it's rather easy to save for retirement, even as I send my parents some extra money every month to help out since they had a grand total of 20k saved in a 401k and social security isn't enough to fill in the gap.
I find that people who believe what you do have always been in the same situation as I am, where it's always easy to save some extra money by not buying that new iPad thingy. You see other people who earn the same as you do being financially irresponsible and you assume that's the reason EVERYONE has for not doing as well as you do. Financial irresponsibility can ruin you regardless of your income, I agree. However, a minimum income is required before financial responsibility is even an option.
Put 4 or 6 minimum wage people into that same apartment.
Will get you kicked out of that 270 square foot apartment - not to mention that there's barely room for the beds.
Or move back in with your parents.
Dead, only child, parents lived in an apartment.
I started out as an office clerk making $4 an hour back in 1980.
4 USD in 1980 equals 10.44 USD in 2010. By comparison the Federal minimum wage is 7.25 USD, and Washington has the highest minimum wage of 8.67. In other words, in 2010 dollars, you made between 20 and 44 percent more than minimum wage.
I lived paycheck to paycheck for many years
Now cut that paycheck between the aforementioned 20 and 44. Assuming you only worked 40 hours a week back then, you'd now have to work between 48 and 58 hours a week to make the same paycheck, which would cut significantly into your available time for self-improvement.
Your back-of-the-napkin calculation is missing a few things that eat into the leftover $500 pretty darn quickly -- $60 for incidentals doesn't begin to cover them.
Phone (say $30/mo). Actual medical costs (that insurance plan you list has a $5k deductible, remember -- at the minimum for basic standard of care you should have two dentist visits and one doctor visit each year, so roughly $250 in a cheap area), let's say $20/mo. Clothing (including shoes), let's say $20/mo (assuming shopping at goodwill). W
Under Liberty, the state's sole function is to prevent criminal exploitation, not provide security nor prevent the stupid from doing stupid stuff by punishing the smart (under current government practices).
What people don't understand is that under liberty, people are responsible for their own actions and decisions and that doesn't count as "exploitation". Captialism is amoral in the classic sense of the word. There are no "morals" guiding capitalism. What has happened is Liberty has been forgotten and ther
The thing is, if you read Marx's Das Kapital (which it certainly sounds like you haven't) you'll discover that the major thrust of Marx's argument is that under a capitalist economy with completely unfettered markets, wealth gets concentrated in the hands of a few capitalists by effectively stealing value from workers. The reason for this is that if a worker has no money and nothing of value to sell except their own labor, then that worker has 2 choices: 1. Work at a wage that is below the true value of their labor, but no less than the minimum amount needed to keep that worker alive, or 2. Die of starvation, illness, or exposure.
Now, here's the question: Is the worker making the choice to take that below-value wage really making a free choice?
Not under what Marx theorized about. Under state-capitalist states that call themselves communist, yes. I also am not a communist, for other reasons but I am able to read.
I am no philosophy type, and I realize that nothing is black and white. My only objection here was comparing the USSR to what Marx wrote about is insane. The USSR and its leaders never intended to put such a system in place or even attempt to. They used these words as a propaganda tool. Just like the "American Dream" is used as a propaganda tool to keep the poor from rioting in the streets when they find out Buffet pays less taxes(percentage wise) than his secretary.
I thought philosophical types specialized in the "shades of grey" areas.
...they've already found the -ism that fits their preestablished view of the world / needs and aspirations.
Then they become -ists of the said -ism, and as such they preach their -ism as a perfect weapon in the endless battle against... well, whatever lies on the polar opposite of their perfectly white -ism. Mostly all shades of gray of all other -isms out there.
Yes, the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
And the law, in its majestic equality, allows the poor as well as the rich to pay lower taxes on stock income vs.a paycheck, deduct the use of any business jet, and have the police show up and actually investigate when a $100,000 piece of art is stolen.
Funnily enough, that's what Marx was all about too. His approach is characterised as Historical Materialism because it's only concerned with the realities of human nature and things that really happen here, in the material world.
The whole point of Marxism* is to build a political economy that's better/I. than Capitalism. Capitalism is the greatest, most innovative form of political economy devised by mankind but it comes at a terrible price. Marxism is about confronting the reality of the world, which developing a critique of Capitalism in its various forms, and trying to change things for the better.
The only way that struggle can be ultimately resolved is for the working class to gain the consciousness necessary to govern. That change has to come from the bottom up - you can't impose it from above. All attempts to create Socialism from above are doomed to create authoritarian, bureaucratic structures.
Basically, Capitalism as a game is rigged. It rewards making money over performing useful labour (e.g. using knowledge from a medical degree to figure out reasons to refuse insurance payouts rather than using it to treat patients) and results in a world I think most people are clearly unhappy with. The challenge as Socialists is to figure out a better game, a better system of incentives and discouragements to get people doing more useful things.
As to what things are useful, well, that's not a question for one person to answer. It should be decided democratically!
Marx called himself a Humanist. He once said, in reference the the French Marxists with whom he disagreed, "all I know is that I am not a Marxist".
And it does so because there is no democratic government tamplate for: 1. Bring the capitalism; 2. Regulate it in such way that most profit can be gained from doing what's really needed (although we start to see this with tax cuts for less carbondioxide vehicles); 3. (Probably he most important point:) hand out tax money to people that want to start a business that's good for society and while you're at it: don't fscking own it and hand it a monopoly/unfair advantage.
Capitalism itself does not create an environment where we can all pursue happiness. That is why government intervention is necessary. Pure capitalism leads to feudalism. It is unsustainable without checks and balances. That's where socialism helps. Capitalism and socialism can and do co-exist. And when religion is removed from the equation (eg capitalism good, socialism bad mindset) and they are implemented by a government as complimentary components of the economy, we will all be able to pursue happi
But the market corrects over time, that is what it does and it is as relentless as water on stone. Government on the other hand is also made up of the same human actors, but because it has a monopoly on the use of force is much slower to realize its mistakes and thus to correct them.
"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." The question of the stability of laissez-faire is bound up in the question of how many people are forced to encounter this rule, and to what extreme.
Democracy always ends the same way, the plebs figure out they can vote themselves bread and circuses from the public treasury.
"Democracy" in modern language (which is different from what US Founding Fathers used) means any political system where the populace has input. What you call "republic" is more properly referred to as "representative democracy".
And it doesn't solve the problem of "voting for bread and circuses", at all. Practice shows that representatives will do whatever it gets to get elected, and hence promise bread and circuses - and deliver some of it, insofar as they are not busy stuffing their pockets with lobbyist m
> Yeah, I sure they how they built that giant house of cards out of selling bogus mortgages and then blew up the economy.
No, that was the government. Who put regulations on the banks subjecting them to punishment if they failed to meet government quotas for issuing loans to people who had little hope of repaying them in the name of 'affordable housing? Why that would be people like a certain lawyer for ACORN Housing by the name of Barack H. Obama. That would be certain influential Congressmen like Bar
Bullshit. Banks loaned to everyone because they sold the mortgages at AAA+ (rated by the agencies paid for them) to somewhere else who were the ones who took the risk, without knowing it.
Found a good article a few years ago at www.csmonitor.com (could not locate it more precisely, sorry) from mortgage agents. They were forced to accept whatever proof of "liquidity" by appliants, if they did not sell enough mortgages to whoever was coming they were just fired. In one story, a man went with a photo in front of a store and just claimed that the store was his, to get his mortgage approved.
BTW, if someone has a link to the article it would be very informative.
No, it was the banks. They were the ones who lobbied for regulations to be removed, and they were the ones that performed every fucking action that led to the collapse. They did it with full independence and completely knowing what they were doing. To blame that on government is fucking crazy.
Of course, then I read the rest of your post and realize you're just another one of the extreme crazy right wingers who hates anything on the left, has a completely irrational hatred of government, and has a religious like belief in the "free market".
> I really, really wish that people who say this would actually - actually! - read the Federalist Papers, and not just say they did.
I really did read most of them years ago. Rereading the modernized version inspired by a comment by Glenn Beck and find them very helpful. Wish he had went ahead and made all of them available even if it didn't make sense to publish them all. Apparently the kid did rework all of them, Beck only printed about half though.
The Federalist Papers are available for free, online, in their entirety. See for example http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fedpapers.html [loc.gov], or even via free reader apps on Android. Not sure why there's a need for a modernized version, considering we're specifically talking about what the Federalist papers said, not what their modern interpretation is.
Your idea of the Rule of Law is fine and dandy, but it's a shell game. All laws are men's laws, even the ones in the bible. The only thing that's up for discus
My argument though is that the original version really isn't that hard to read. Yes, some words have somewhat changed in context, but if you are ready to reread a few paragraphs, it comes together quite nicely. Specifically, it becomes obvious that when they talk about democracy, they're actually talking about a direct democracy in the vast majority of the cases. It also specifically doesn't need infographics. Finally - and this is where we will part roads, I'm pretty sure - Beck is a moron of such magnitud
There is no way to implement what Marx theorized about. That's the whole point. Once the theory hits the real world, human nature screws it up.
Exactly. Communism is based on the idea that people are willing to give up their own self-interest to advance the collective. This is pretty much like the Prisoner's Dilemma. Even though people may be "educated" to agree with the general principle, when it comes down to individual choices, people tend to do what's best for themselves.
And even that's stretching it. Studies found that people might do what's best for the immediate short term (chocolate for passwords? a little money now instead of lots of blow later?), but on average do not do what's best in the long-run. And that's where hardcore libertarians fall down.
Libertarianism, capitalism, communism all have ideas that are worth implementing. But we need to realize that all the main forms of economic policy, in their pure, distilled form, fall apart because of human nature.
Pick an '-ism'; the same applies. I don't think human nature can be blamed; the whole point 'theory' is to account for human nature.
Marx ( Smith, Malthus, Mill, Keynes,...) didn't write about organizing mice or chickens. That they grossly misunderstood the core of their subject, people, demonstrates how trivial their philosophies were. Without people, it is just a novel mathematical model.
All economic systems end up in the plight of the modern farmer: How long you remain a farmer depends upon how muc
There's no way to implement a theoretical free market either. Once that theory hits the real world, the Second Law of Thermodynamics (Shannon version), screws it up. Guess what - the second law allows fewer exceptions than human nature. People who think the Second Law will bend for them are even more out of touch with reality than people who think human nature won't oppose their system.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that. The problem in Marx's case was that none of the states he thought were ready for a Communist revolution did in fact tip over. There were failed revolutions in some European countries, but the rulers got smart and began instituting relatively liberal constitutions, increasing worker protections and other various cries from classical 19th century Liberals and Socialists. The industrialized nations all got the hint pretty fast that if they didn't at least increase standards of living and rebalance the social equation, they would end up with revolutions.
The places that actually fell to Communism, at least in the first wave, were countries that Marx distinctly said were not ready, and that was the largely agrarian societies of Russia and China. In both cases, the revolutionaries literally had to lift up their economies and carry them through to industrialization, which was what the capitalist epoch in classical Marxism was supposed to be for. In essence, Marxism is an industrialized political and economic theory.
There are other problems with Marxism, but I think Marx himself was proven to be a pretty smart guy, even if there were some substantial flaws in his theory. Certainly the Marxist view of history as class struggles has a lot of adherents in the historical and scholarly community, and it's very clear that he did a rather good job of dissecting Capitalism's major flaws. I wouldn't go out and suggest we all adopt Marxist Communism, I don't think it would work at all, but at the same time I think we can take the warnings of out of control capitalism and see the truth in them.
I don't think any particular political or economic theory should exist solely for its means. The idea that we should pursue Capitalism simply for Capitalism's sake is absurd, and I think underlies the flaws in tossing out pragmatism. In certain circles, Capitalism seems almost a religion, much as Leninist Communism and its descendants did in their day. But clearly by allowing vast sums of money, and almost more importantly, vast amounts of economic influence, to accrue to large commercial and corporate interests has lead us down a dark dark path. The whole notion of too big to fail suggests to me that the time has come to perhaps put caps on just how big any given commercial interest, whether it be a corporation, consortium, co-operative or whatever formulation you can imagine can get. Maybe we shouldn't consider mergers or buy-outs beyond a certain size, maybe when companies reach whatever size seems dangerous they should be cut into pieces, in part to foster competition, but also to assure that the collapse of any one entity doesn't become so dangerous as to threaten the underlying economy.
The success of post-War Capitalism was in no small part due to the embedding of what could only be called socialist principles. Yes, we would allow free enterprise, but with controls, and just as importantly we would create a welfare apparatus to assure that those who would inevitably be harmed by the economic system could at least be guaranteed a certain minimum lifestyle. Different nations took this mix in different degrees; in Europe the welfare state took on a larger role, whereas in the United States, it was less overarching, though I would argue every bit as present, though implementation much less even due to constitutional and political constraints. Regardless of how it was instituted, the goal was to create a balance.
What I think we've seen from the wave of deregulation beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s is a tipping of that balance. We've allowed commercial interests to accrue a vast amount of economic influence, to the point where their success or failure substantially impacts the success or failure of whole economies, even the global economy. Suddenly we've been plunged into a whole new form of welfare, nations literally printing or borrowing vast amounts of money just to keep these sputtering engines from dying and taking everything with them. Now we
The most annoying problem I have with Libertarians is that they make exactly the same mistake Marx and the rest of 19th century economists did. They thought we were rational actors who could see the steps necessary for a better future. So do the libertarians. For some reason it's correct when libertarians say we're rational, but then insist Marxists do not understand human nature. Just more and more religious zealotry and the pot calling the kettle black.
That's because communism has never been tried. A communist regime in the model that Marx was pushing hasn't ever been implemented. Marx wanted a state like the US, except where the people owned all of the shares of the companies they worked for rather than random investors. And where there was only one class.
To date there has been precisely zero countries where they did away with class and where the workers truly owned the means of production.
The level of ignorance that people express about how it's been tried and failed just boggles my mind, when it hasn't even been tried once.
People (especially in America, sorry) have this weird assumptions that they know Marx, communism and socialism, from what they saw Lenin, Stalin and their breed of fascism do. You may as well argue that monarchy does not work because the nazis were bad people.
Capitalism, on the other hand, has been tried. It is not working, and never have (I know it's great for growth and accumulation of wealth - it just sucks at liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness).
Capitalism, on the other hand, has been tried. It is not working, and never have (I know it's great for growth and accumulation of wealth - it just sucks at liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness).
Bogus claim. If you're going to define Communism is purist theoretical terms and claim it's a system that's never been implemented, then you have to acknowledge that that pure capitalism, as in totally free market, has never really been tried, either.
Even in the nearest implementations of capitalist systems, here have always been government and institutional interventions into the markets in forms like tariffs, product-specific taxes, regional trade restrictions, etc., etc. The last 40 years have seen an ever-increasing amount of interventionist policies, and these have accelerated in the last 10-15 years.
Claiming that this system is evidence of a "failure" of "free markets" is like cutting the legs off of a frog and then claiming "See, look! Frogs can't jump!"
Actually, capitalism, in the laissez-faire austrian school, has never been tried either. Everything we have today that approximates or is considered capitalist is actually the bastard child mixed economy with both socialist and capitalist features. I posit that either extreme is complete fantasy and the fanboys of both have elevated their respective economic hypothesis' to religion.
In the same way that capitalism has been tried and failed because you can't remove greed from the human condition. Someone will always take advantage of their position and grab more than they deserve leaving the less able or unfortunate with less than they deserve. The downside to communism appears to be stagnation/reduced competitiveness which in a global society is less of an issue than it used to be when states used to compete with each other.
In the same way that capitalism has been tried and failed because you can't remove greed from the human condition.
No, that's totally wrong. Capitalism (free markets in their most-free form) actually recognizes and utilizes greed to promote the system. It's greed and profit motive that drives and motivates the producers in the system. The winners are the ones that can satisfy the needs of consumers expending the least resources to do so.
I agree with this and will add a bit. The failing of capitalism is not in accounting for greed. For capitalism to work you need an educated consumer base. This is where capitalism fails in reality. Marketers intentionally deceive consumers which wouldn't be a problem with an educated consumer base (they would be able to catch the deception). The problem is that it's literally impossible to be educated about all products on the market so you simply can't have the educated consumer base necessary for free markets to operate as theories would indicate.
I think that your comment highlights a key weakness of capitalism. In practice, government is not operated independently of business and the politicians in charge of regulating business (minimally, in the ideal case) are also trying to look out for their own best interests. I'd argue that in such a system, the only two negotiable instruments are, ultimately, money and power. Under such circumstances, corruption is inevitable. The wealthy and the influential will collude. leaving the middle and lower classes (those with minimal money and power) out of the conversation. They key question that capitalism must address, in my opinion, is how does a society prevent the wealthy and the influential from colluding, to the detriment of everybody else?
Political term limits might be one way to start. Restrictions on corporate political activism might be another. (I'm sorry; corporations are not people and should not enjoy "free speech" in the same manner as a human citizen.) Of course, either method could backfire. Term limits might induce politicians to grab what they can, while they can. Restrictions on corporate political activism might just drive it underground. I don't have a great answer to the problem but I think it's one to which a lot of attention should be devoted.
In the same way that capitalism has been tried and failed because you can't remove greed from the human condition.
In capitalism the greed is meant to be used as a balancing factor. Sure one man is a greedy fucker who will abuse all of his workers to death... but... there are 1000 greedy workers with less 'power' but just as much greed, and they'll do things to balance it out... like vote.
Communism pretends humans aren't humans.
Capitalism uses human nature against human nature as a moderator.
Not necessarily true. While this doesn't work when forced, manufacturing and other work co ops work well. Removing a middle and upper managers who think in the short term about profits and having workers who rely on that job tends to work out pretty well.
I see a false dichotomy. It's not one or the other, both forms of running business work, it depends entirely on the competency of whoever is running the joint.
I think this isn't quite right. Marx believed that you could transform man's greed for material wealth into greed for something else, not that it could be eliminated.
Marx, being a Hegelian, believed that man's psychology could be altered through social changes; he thought that changes in social structure could create corresponding in the peoples' incentive structure. Thus, in a successful Marxist state as Marx envisioned it, peoples' greed for gold would be replaced with a zeal for contributing to society (and, perhaps, greed for the social recognition that would come from those contributions). So, in a way, a successful communist system would be as much driven by greed as a capitalist one.
It may not be possible, of course, to modify peoples' incentives in this way, though it's never truly been tested since the prerequisite social structure has never actually been created (and I don't think it's accurate to say he "assumed" that they could; it was certainly something he explicitly argued for). It doesn't seem crazy on its face, though, that people can be conditioned socially to value something other than material wealth.
Blaming greed on the collapse of a system is like blaming gravity on the collapse of a bridge. In both cases they are permanent conditions they have to be factored into the design of the system.
So what happens when I sell my share of the company to my friend for something?
How do you "own" a part of the company you work for unless you are given something to own? If you are given something to own, who's to say you can't give that to someone else in trade?
It's possible to set up a company structure that is, by definition of the company bylaws, owned by its workers. They would own a "share" of the company in a definitional sense, but not in the sense of a stock certificate that they can sell or take with them when they quit the company. In some countries the law provides special status for cooperatives that enables that sort of thing.
> It's possible to set up a company structure that is, by definition of the company bylaws, owned by its workers. > They would own a "share" of the company in a definitional sense, but not in the sense of a stock certificate > that they can sell or take with them when they quit the company.
That would suck ass if you bothered to actually THINK about the implications. Lets imagine an attempt to do this.
We begin with 100 unemployed workers who happen to have a bit of capital saved up. Each contributes $10,000US into an account and a corporation is chartered along the lines you suggest. Each investor receives one share with a special condition that they must be an employee to maintain possession of their share. They invest in a small abandoned factory and begin bringing it up to make the infamous 'unspecified widget.' At the first meeting the duly elect a board of directors and a CEO from among their number to meet the legal requirements of incorporation and elect the rest of the initial management.
Problems set in almost instantly when one of the peeps wants to buy a house and finds that no bank will accept their stock as collateral because of the special restriction on the ownership. Out of a hundred people the odds are quite good that one will die in the first year. How to deal with inheritence? Does the next of kin have to take the job to inherit? Does the company buy out the share? When a new employee is hired does he have to buy a share as a condition of employment?
Now imagine that the company has somehow survived the above problems for a few years and prospered. How does an employee reap the benefit of his invested capital short of retiring? In light of this, why would anyone invest in such a venture in the first place vs investing in the more liquid traditional market?
That's true as well. A truly free market degenerates to a monopoly every time. And that's not a free market. Again, it happens for the same reason true communism can never be implemented. Human greed.
So tell me how does a company keep out competition while providing low quality service at a high price in a free market?
Money. Their startup competition has bills to pay. Most of the incumbent's bills are paid off. So they can afford to drop their prices below what the startup can.
During the implementation of Standard Oil's 90% market monopoly, the price was driven down 90%, and it stayed there until it was broken up. How EXACTLY is that bad?
You didn't look closely at this, did you? They would enter an area, and cause prices to go low, this is true. But what do you think happened after their competitor went bust?
Precisely. My understanding of Marx's communism is that it is a description of the utopian (perfect/ideal) society. It is meant to be an ideal that we (as a species) endeavor to reach, not an actual government to implement today (for that, we have Marx's Socialism). Humanity needs to evolve a bit more to eliminate (or control) greed before the ideal can even be contemplated as attainable - but as the ancient proverb goes, it is not the destination that's important, but the journey there (which in this ca
It has been tried but not under the term Communism. There was a form of primitive Communism in the Bible read the book of Acts. So yes Christianity and socialism are very compatible.
Acts 2
44: And all that believed were together, and had all things common; 45: And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.
Acts 4
32: And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. 33: And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. 34: Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, 35: And laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need. 36: And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is, being interpreted, The son of consolation,) a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus, 37: Having land, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet.
It was voluntary, not state mandated. Communes and Kibbutz in Israel also function well, and are "communistic". However people are kicked out for not doing what they are able, and everyone is responsible for everyone else. The problem with state mandated communism is that it necessarily is abusive of power, or sufficiently weak that it doesn't work.
Expectations of work, and the condition of expulsion of those that are able, but refuse to work allow for Communes and Kibbutzes to function. A large state cannot function in that manner.
Yep. In fact many modern intentional communities [ic.org] work this way. It can work because you aren't going to screw your neighbors when you live, work and sleep all within a few blocks. Many of these communities are also run by consensus instead of having a hierarchy or authority figure. The problems you see with "communism" at the state level don't emerge until you have a community large enough so that there are "strangers". People will willingly screw a stranger. I've heard that this starts to happen when you get 150 people in the community. In other words, communism doesn't scale.
I'm so sick and fucking tired of the Communist bashing that goes on even to this damn day in the US. Communism hasn't failed mankind, mankind has always failed Communism. The true question is whether or not a society will mature enough that it's people do not constantly want to posses more of whatever goddamn thing they see than their neighbor. As long as there is that one selfish dickface that just has to hoard bread, or money, or whatever else he gets his hands on, Communism fails. It depends on people acting honorably.
I have faith in humanity that eventually we will get to that point, but I'm not gonna sit here and say it will never happen as a justification for my own greed. We get enough of that as it is. Enough with the Randian bullshit. Just say "I want more than your neighbor because fuck him" and be honest with yourself and others. At least we'll know who not to piss on when they're on fire...
I'm so sick and fucking tired of the Communist bashing that goes on even to this damn day in the US. Communism hasn't failed mankind, mankind has always failed Communism. The true question is whether or not a society will mature enough that it's people do not constantly want to posses more of whatever goddamn thing they see than their neighbor. As long as there is that one selfish dickface that just has to hoard bread, or money, or whatever else he gets his hands on, Communism fails. It depends on people acting honorably.
An economic system that only works if every person acts ideally at all times is a recipe for mass graves.
Capitalism, for all its imperfections, is built on self-interest. It expects people to be people, not ants. So it works.
Yes, it hasn't been tried. Everyone who has ever tried it ended up subjugating a load of people, creating the same old power games that despots always create, and making everyone miserable. Can anyone name a communist country that they would like to live in?
No, I didn't mean to rule in, I mean as a normal citizen. I've met Cubans, Vietnamese, Poles, East Germans, etc. You know what? They all wanted to stop "trying" to bring on the revolution.
Lame. I hear this over and over again. This is a "when are things equal" problem, where you don't believe that something is 'truly' what someone else thinks it is.
You can say it's never been tried. But that's a fucking lie. The resultant systems, which you don't see as 'actual tries', are the culmination of attempting to bring about the very type of system you dream about. Ergo, it's the best of what can be achieved.
Not only that, but it's been tried, in many different ways, all over the world.
It's been tried dozens of times. It just fails, invariably, rapidly, and completely.
Apart from the obvious problem of simple human nature, there's a computationally intractable scaling problem involved. J. B. S. Haldane pointed this out in his famous paper, On Being the Right Size [ucla.edu] (primarily on biological scaling) back in 1928. And Haldane was himself a communist.
There is no class structure in America, and no distinction between workers and capitalists. That's how actual capitalism works. The only difference is that no worker is guaranteed a certain amount of capital, or ownership.
There may not be a codified class structure, but if you're making the assertion that the United States is a lovely fairly-land filled with elves and unicorns that live without any class whatsoever then you are woefully incorrect. There is a massive differential in income between the haves and the have-nots with the bottom 50% controlling 2% of the wealth. We may not have the same rigid caste rules that India used to (for example only) but class mobility is becoming more and more difficult and wealth is becoming more of a legacy passed from generation to generation (new technology notwithstanding).
Yeah right. The US is one of the most classist states remaining in the world. If you doubt it, run down to Martha's Vinyard sometime.
The only difference is that class in the US is based on money, and how long your family has had it instead of strict hereditity as it was in the old world.
It's probably more accurate to say that it is impossible to set up a communist system, at least on large scales. In very small communities where people can police each other it could work, but Marx's fundamental misunderstandings about human nature doomed the idea from the start. In a classless system, who enforces the rules? If there is nobody with authority to enforce the rules, how do you keep people from breaking them? If someone does have the authority to enforce rules, how do you prevent them from
> That's because communism has never been tried. A communist regime in the model that Marx was pushing hasn't ever been implemented.
Oh please. Have you even _read_ the Communist Manifesto or even know what "allodial title" means??
I'll repeat them here for your benefit...
1. "Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all right of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of wastelands, and the improvement of the the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the populace over the country. 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form."
And quoting the excellent analysis....
- - - 8http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/wua11.shtml
1. Abolition of Property Rights.
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises. (Taxes on things, including property.)
Zoning laws and regulations - the Supreme Court ruled zoning constitutional in 1921.
Federal ownership of land; Bureau of Land Management - in Nevada 87% of land is federally owned.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) - broad powers to seize any private property during "emergency."
Communist percentage: 25%.
2. Heavy Progressive Income Tax
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises. (Taxes on things, including income.) The Sixteenth Amendment classifies income tax as an indirect tax, or tax on a thing, as opposed to tax on a person.
Corporate Tax Act of 1909.
Revenue Act of 1913.
Social Security Act of 1936.
Communist percentage: 85%. (Maybe 15% of the population don't pay the taxes.)
3. Abolition of Rights of Inheritance
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises. (Taxes on things, including inheritances.)
Estate Tax Act of 1916.
Social Security Act of 1936.
Communist percentage: 30%.
4. Confiscation of Property of Emigrants and Rebels
Confiscation of property of American Indians.
IRS confiscation of property without due process.
Internment of Japanese-Americans during WW II; confiscation of their property.
Confiscation of drug-merchant property.
RICO Act of 1970 (Racketeering Influenced & Corrupt Organizations) - used as a basis to confiscate property.
Communist percentage: 20%.
5. Monopoly National Bank
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have the power to coin money, r
Just to play devil's advocate here, in America workers have the opportunity to buy shares in their employers' stock. Middle-class workers even have the means to do so. And if there is a society that is closer to being classless than 21st-century America, I'd like to hear about it. Our head of state is the son of a hippie schoolteacher and a foreign student, who lived for several years in a shack with a dirt floor.
So yeah, the worker's utopia has never really come to be, I'll grant you. I none the less sugge
And yet under communist rule there are still wealthy power brokers who know how to game the system for their own profit.
Corruption is corruption, no matter what "wrapper" we put around it. Greed (whether personal or financial) always has been and always will be the Achilles heel of ANY model. Every model will fail if greed and corruption are left unchecked. Again, this should come as no surprise to anyone.
This is the sad reality that the people who espouse theoretical communism either never think about or attempt to reject out of hand. But it is exactly what prevents the theoretical model of communism from ever being attempted. As soon as you have two people starting it, the greed and corruption starts.
I know you think you're being clever by rewording my statements. But if you read all my posts you'll see that I already stated this obvious fact. But thanks for playing.
There's also those other human traits of sloth and envy to take into account. If I cannot worker harder to better myself, and if there is no downside to my not working at all, then why would I bother? Once you introduce benefit or disadvantage for how hard you work then you introduce imbalance and jealous envy that some others have something I do not, even if there are logical reasons for that to be the case.
No system can ever be perfect as humans are not universally equal.
Well yeah. So what? The communists claim to be able to create a better society. It ain't better, and the excuse is that uhm... people are still people? How does that solve anyone of the purported weaknesses of the previous regime?
The difference is that capitalism expects greed and attempts to use it for benefit. Communism's base idea is that greed can be suppressed.
Where Communism sees too much rain and attempts to dam it up forever, capitalism sees to much rain and tries to channel as much as possible toward making electricity, so that the dam doesn't need to be as high.
Communism has to suppress normal everyday human nature. Capitalism only needs to suppress the extremes.
"Greed" is defined as "excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions." Personally, I would define it as "wanting more than one deserves or is entitled to."
The trouble with this: who defines what is "excessive," or what a person "deserves" or "is entitled to?" Under professedly Communist regimes, that has always wound up being the government.
In reality, "greed" is simply the flip side of envy: a person who is "greedy" is someone who has a lot more stuff than I do, which is perceived as
There hasn't been a communist country on the earth yet. There's been many permutations of socialist dictatorships/oligarchies but no communist rule.
Communism is a dream. A perfect state whose only problem is that we are short-sighted, self-serving and nepotistic monkeys who turn the greatest dreams and aspirations into a dog-eat-dog contest for power and wealth.
But then it's not the system that's a dream. It's the model of humanity. Why not just cut out the whole politics and redistribution, and just have a fantasy about a world where everyone is happy?
That because we've never actually seen real communist rule, we've seen fascist rule calling itself communist. I mean, the Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers' Party but they sure as shit were not socialist.
Seems like we should actually see real communism in action before we dismiss it as being a failure. The question is, will a society ever mature enough and be enlightened enough to actually try it?
Seems like we should actually see real communism in action before we dismiss it as being a failure. The question is, will a society ever mature enough and be enlightened enough to actually try it?
The cynical part of me agrees with you, but I still maintain a small bit of hope that it will come to pass eventually. Something on par with an impending global catastrophe may be enough to get humanity to stop fucking around and grow the hell up.
Then again, it could just make people even more selfish and cruel; even when group cooperation is a necessity of survival, there is always that lazy jagoff. Banishment could cure that real quick, though...
That because we've never actually seen real communist rule, we've seen fascist rule calling itself communist. I mean, the Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers' Party but they sure as shit were not socialist.
Seems like we should actually see real communism in action before we dismiss it as being a failure. The question is, will a society ever mature enough and be enlightened enough to actually try it?
It's been tried by small groups - communes. They tend to work for a while, maintain equality as long as the original founders with the vision are intensely involved. I don't know how many have kept it going for more than one generation. I went to a talk by the Twin Oaks Community [wikipedia.org]. They have a very organized and sensible economy which has lasted.
What is algebra, exactly? Is it one of those three-cornered things?
-- J.M. Barrie
Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think everyone agreed that they were acceptable, I think that the wealthy agreed that it was more profitable.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet under communist rule there are still wealthy power brokers who know how to game the system for their own profit.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
In Capitalism, Man exploits Man.
In Communism, it's the other way around.
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Exactly!
Attribution: (Score:5, Informative)
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I like another quote of his better:
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
The author identifies the fundamental flaw with Marx's theory--he used a false premise. The author here starts a corrected premise and proceeds to give a very interesting history lesson, one which applies quite strongly to today's economic environment.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
That blog post has one rather glaring flaw: it fails to analyse why there are debtors and savers in the first place and who actually gets the opportunity to become a saver. In particular, it fails to account for some quite significant economic reasons why some people would be financially unable to save money. TFA has, in my opinion, a better explanation of why debt explosions are inevitable.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
This is technically true, but scale matters. A lot. For someone earning minimum wage, how long will it take them to save enough money to, say, open their own business? Compare that to someone who is earning millions each year.
Even your examples of how to save money reveal your flaws. You mention living with your parents, but what about people whose parents are absent from their lives? You mention giving up some free time to collect cans, but what about those who are already working multiple, minimum wage jobs and don't have any free time to give up? From the sounds of it, you come from a place of privilege (as do I - my family helped pay for college, among other things), and I think that it would do you well to remember that there are some places in the US where people live in abject poverty and have very minimal options.
The blog that you reference makes some interesting points about the merits of spending vs. saving, but trying to cram all of history and economics into this simple divide is naive at best and dangerously foolish at worst. The danger comes from the inherent assumption that all people in poverty are there through their own laziness and "debtor" mentality.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
BS. Anyone who has cash flow can save money. Or they are dying of starvation. The likelihood of someone having literally only exactly enough to "survive" is practically zero. One can ALWAYS sacrifice current consumption for future gain. Whether that means eating rice instead of bread, or living with your parents instead of your own apartment, or making extra effort to pick up discarded cans for recycling (sacrificing leisure time).
Do a little experiment. Get the minimum wage figures, and figure out how much you get per month. Assume you pay no taxes, since theoretically you're getting all of that back anyway at the end of the year. Find out what it costs to rent a really, really cheap place in your area. In a horrible neighborhood. I'm talking about what it requires for you to have basic shelter, where the only requirements are electricity (need to store food in a refrigerator), and indoor plumbing (you can't hold a job if you can't shower). Determine how much it would cost to pay for that electricity and water. Assume bare minimums here, just take a non-zero value. Determine how much food costs, and for the sake of argument, this person lives on ramen alone. Eats nothing else. You may also assume that this person lives within walking distance of where they work, so they will have no transportation costs. This person never spends any money on entertainment, they will never become unemployed, they will never become sick (otherwise we'd have to factor in health insurance, and that'd definitely break the budget).
Turns out that depending on where you live, minimum wage won't even cover the rent for that shack in a bad neighborhood. In other places, you might be able to determine that there's some money left over after my minimum living requirements stated above. If that's the case, I want you to calculate how much they will have saved after 50 years of working (you can assume their salary follows inflation, so keep all costs the same for all 50 years). That means they started working at 20 and retired at 70. Assume they've invested in the stock market and got a steady 10% growth every single year. You might be surprised to find that investments [xkcd.com] don't yield as much as you think they do.
Even assuming these ideal conditions, I guarantee you that the result will be that they won't have enough money saved over to last them and 20 years of life, living in the same poor conditions. I know this from experience. I'm not a debtor, but I lived my childhood as one. My parents weren't skilled enough to get high paying jobs, and there wasn't enough left over to save. We weren't starving, but that doesn't mean that sometimes we wouldn't have to do that 1-2 day fast until payday came along and we could buy food again. My parents were, however, smart enough to explain to me the value of an education, so that I wouldn't be in the same situation. With what I earn today, I find that it's rather easy to save for retirement, even as I send my parents some extra money every month to help out since they had a grand total of 20k saved in a 401k and social security isn't enough to fill in the gap.
I find that people who believe what you do have always been in the same situation as I am, where it's always easy to save some extra money by not buying that new iPad thingy. You see other people who earn the same as you do being financially irresponsible and you assume that's the reason EVERYONE has for not doing as well as you do. Financial irresponsibility can ruin you regardless of your income, I agree. However, a minimum income is required before financial responsibility is even an option.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Will get you kicked out of that 270 square foot apartment - not to mention that there's barely room for the beds.
Dead, only child, parents lived in an apartment.
4 USD in 1980 equals 10.44 USD in 2010. By comparison the Federal minimum wage is 7.25 USD, and Washington has the highest minimum wage of 8.67. In other words, in 2010 dollars, you made between 20 and 44 percent more than minimum wage.
Now cut that paycheck between the aforementioned 20 and 44. Assuming you only worked 40 hours a week back then, you'd now have to work between 48 and 58 hours a week to make the same paycheck, which would cut significantly into your available time for self-improvement.
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Phone (say $30/mo). Actual medical costs (that insurance plan you list has a $5k deductible, remember -- at the minimum for basic standard of care you should have two dentist visits and one doctor visit each year, so roughly $250 in a cheap area), let's say $20/mo. Clothing (including shoes), let's say $20/mo (assuming shopping at goodwill). W
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Under Liberty, the state's sole function is to prevent criminal exploitation, not provide security nor prevent the stupid from doing stupid stuff by punishing the smart (under current government practices).
What people don't understand is that under liberty, people are responsible for their own actions and decisions and that doesn't count as "exploitation". Captialism is amoral in the classic sense of the word. There are no "morals" guiding capitalism. What has happened is Liberty has been forgotten and ther
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, if you read Marx's Das Kapital (which it certainly sounds like you haven't) you'll discover that the major thrust of Marx's argument is that under a capitalist economy with completely unfettered markets, wealth gets concentrated in the hands of a few capitalists by effectively stealing value from workers. The reason for this is that if a worker has no money and nothing of value to sell except their own labor, then that worker has 2 choices:
1. Work at a wage that is below the true value of their labor, but no less than the minimum amount needed to keep that worker alive, or
2. Die of starvation, illness, or exposure.
Now, here's the question: Is the worker making the choice to take that below-value wage really making a free choice?
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Not under what Marx theorized about. Under state-capitalist states that call themselves communist, yes. I also am not a communist, for other reasons but I am able to read.
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There is no way to implement what Marx theorized about. That's the whole point. Once the theory hits the real world, human nature screws it up.
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No the point is comparing Marx's writings and states like the USSR is disingenuous.
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Then don't bother reading Marx, or any other philosopher.
If you don't waste time with that then no new ideas will ever be tested, or thought of. Have fun in your ignorance.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
I am no philosophy type, and I realize that nothing is black and white. My only objection here was comparing the USSR to what Marx wrote about is insane. The USSR and its leaders never intended to put such a system in place or even attempt to. They used these words as a propaganda tool. Just like the "American Dream" is used as a propaganda tool to keep the poor from rioting in the streets when they find out Buffet pays less taxes(percentage wise) than his secretary.
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"You philosophical types need to learn that the world is not just black and white"
Huh? That's news to me. I thought philosophical types specialized in the "shades of grey" areas.
Not if... (Score:3)
I thought philosophical types specialized in the "shades of grey" areas.
...they've already found the -ism that fits their preestablished view of the world / needs and aspirations.
Then they become -ists of the said -ism, and as such they preach their -ism as a perfect weapon in the endless battle against... well, whatever lies on the polar opposite of their perfectly white -ism.
Mostly all shades of gray of all other -isms out there.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
And the law, in its majestic equality, allows the poor as well as the rich to pay lower taxes on stock income vs.a paycheck, deduct the use of any business jet, and have the police show up and actually investigate when a $100,000 piece of art is stolen.
We are all equal under the law.
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Capitalism does too ... Pure Capitalism devolves into brutal dictatorship unless contained by the government it theoretically does not need ...
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Informative)
Funnily enough, that's what Marx was all about too. His approach is characterised as Historical Materialism because it's only concerned with the realities of human nature and things that really happen here, in the material world.
The whole point of Marxism* is to build a political economy that's better/I. than Capitalism. Capitalism is the greatest, most innovative form of political economy devised by mankind but it comes at a terrible price. Marxism is about confronting the reality of the world, which developing a critique of Capitalism in its various forms, and trying to change things for the better.
The only way that struggle can be ultimately resolved is for the working class to gain the consciousness necessary to govern. That change has to come from the bottom up - you can't impose it from above. All attempts to create Socialism from above are doomed to create authoritarian, bureaucratic structures.
Basically, Capitalism as a game is rigged. It rewards making money over performing useful labour (e.g. using knowledge from a medical degree to figure out reasons to refuse insurance payouts rather than using it to treat patients) and results in a world I think most people are clearly unhappy with. The challenge as Socialists is to figure out a better game, a better system of incentives and discouragements to get people doing more useful things.
As to what things are useful, well, that's not a question for one person to answer. It should be decided democratically!
Marx called himself a Humanist. He once said, in reference the the French Marxists with whom he disagreed, "all I know is that I am not a Marxist".
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And it does so because there is no democratic government tamplate for:
1. Bring the capitalism;
2. Regulate it in such way that most profit can be gained from doing what's really needed (although we start to see this with tax cuts for less carbondioxide vehicles);
3. (Probably he most important point:) hand out tax money to people that want to start a business that's good for society and while you're at it: don't fscking own it and hand it a monopoly/unfair advantage.
What we really should do is use the least w
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"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." The question of the stability of laissez-faire is bound up in the question of how many people are forced to encounter this rule, and to what extreme.
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Democracy always ends the same way, the plebs figure out they can vote themselves bread and circuses from the public treasury.
"Democracy" in modern language (which is different from what US Founding Fathers used) means any political system where the populace has input. What you call "republic" is more properly referred to as "representative democracy".
And it doesn't solve the problem of "voting for bread and circuses", at all. Practice shows that representatives will do whatever it gets to get elected, and hence promise bread and circuses - and deliver some of it, insofar as they are not busy stuffing their pockets with lobbyist m
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> Yeah, I sure they how they built that giant house of cards out of selling bogus mortgages and then blew up the economy.
No, that was the government. Who put regulations on the banks subjecting them to punishment if they failed to meet government quotas for issuing loans to people who had little hope of repaying them in the name of 'affordable housing? Why that would be people like a certain lawyer for ACORN Housing by the name of Barack H. Obama. That would be certain influential Congressmen like Bar
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. Banks loaned to everyone because they sold the mortgages at AAA+ (rated by the agencies paid for them) to somewhere else who were the ones who took the risk, without knowing it.
Found a good article a few years ago at www.csmonitor.com (could not locate it more precisely, sorry) from mortgage agents. They were forced to accept whatever proof of "liquidity" by appliants, if they did not sell enough mortgages to whoever was coming they were just fired. In one story, a man went with a photo in front of a store and just claimed that the store was his, to get his mortgage approved.
BTW, if someone has a link to the article it would be very informative.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
No, that was the government
No, it was the banks. They were the ones who lobbied for regulations to be removed, and they were the ones that performed every fucking action that led to the collapse. They did it with full independence and completely knowing what they were doing. To blame that on government is fucking crazy.
Of course, then I read the rest of your post and realize you're just another one of the extreme crazy right wingers who hates anything on the left, has a completely irrational hatred of government, and has a religious like belief in the "free market".
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> I really, really wish that people who say this would actually - actually! - read the Federalist Papers, and not just say they did.
I really did read most of them years ago. Rereading the modernized version inspired by a comment by Glenn Beck and find them very helpful. Wish he had went ahead and made all of them available even if it didn't make sense to publish them all. Apparently the kid did rework all of them, Beck only printed about half though.
> And as an FYI, the battle cry "Rule of Law" is
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The Federalist Papers are available for free, online, in their entirety. See for example http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fedpapers.html [loc.gov], or even via free reader apps on Android. Not sure why there's a need for a modernized version, considering we're specifically talking about what the Federalist papers said, not what their modern interpretation is.
Your idea of the Rule of Law is fine and dandy, but it's a shell game. All laws are men's laws, even the ones in the bible. The only thing that's up for discus
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My argument though is that the original version really isn't that hard to read. Yes, some words have somewhat changed in context, but if you are ready to reread a few paragraphs, it comes together quite nicely. Specifically, it becomes obvious that when they talk about democracy, they're actually talking about a direct democracy in the vast majority of the cases. It also specifically doesn't need infographics. Finally - and this is where we will part roads, I'm pretty sure - Beck is a moron of such magnitud
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no way to implement what Marx theorized about. That's the whole point. Once the theory hits the real world, human nature screws it up.
Exactly. Communism is based on the idea that people are willing to give up their own self-interest to advance the collective. This is pretty much like the Prisoner's Dilemma. Even though people may be "educated" to agree with the general principle, when it comes down to individual choices, people tend to do what's best for themselves.
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And even that's stretching it. Studies found that people might do what's best for the immediate short term (chocolate for passwords? a little money now instead of lots of blow later?), but on average do not do what's best in the long-run. And that's where hardcore libertarians fall down.
Libertarianism, capitalism, communism all have ideas that are worth implementing. But we need to realize that all the main forms of economic policy, in their pure, distilled form, fall apart because of human nature.
The nature of theory... (Score:2)
Pick an '-ism'; the same applies. I don't think human nature can be blamed; the whole point 'theory' is to account for human nature.
Marx ( Smith, Malthus, Mill, Keynes, ...) didn't write about organizing mice or chickens. That they grossly misunderstood the core of their subject, people, demonstrates how trivial their philosophies were. Without people, it is just a novel mathematical model.
All economic systems end up in the plight of the modern farmer: How long you remain a farmer depends upon how muc
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There's no way to implement a theoretical free market either. Once that theory hits the real world, the Second Law of Thermodynamics (Shannon version), screws it up.
Guess what - the second law allows fewer exceptions than human nature. People who think the Second Law will bend for them are even more out of touch with reality than people who think human nature won't oppose their system.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't go so far as to say that. The problem in Marx's case was that none of the states he thought were ready for a Communist revolution did in fact tip over. There were failed revolutions in some European countries, but the rulers got smart and began instituting relatively liberal constitutions, increasing worker protections and other various cries from classical 19th century Liberals and Socialists. The industrialized nations all got the hint pretty fast that if they didn't at least increase standards of living and rebalance the social equation, they would end up with revolutions.
The places that actually fell to Communism, at least in the first wave, were countries that Marx distinctly said were not ready, and that was the largely agrarian societies of Russia and China. In both cases, the revolutionaries literally had to lift up their economies and carry them through to industrialization, which was what the capitalist epoch in classical Marxism was supposed to be for. In essence, Marxism is an industrialized political and economic theory.
There are other problems with Marxism, but I think Marx himself was proven to be a pretty smart guy, even if there were some substantial flaws in his theory. Certainly the Marxist view of history as class struggles has a lot of adherents in the historical and scholarly community, and it's very clear that he did a rather good job of dissecting Capitalism's major flaws. I wouldn't go out and suggest we all adopt Marxist Communism, I don't think it would work at all, but at the same time I think we can take the warnings of out of control capitalism and see the truth in them.
I don't think any particular political or economic theory should exist solely for its means. The idea that we should pursue Capitalism simply for Capitalism's sake is absurd, and I think underlies the flaws in tossing out pragmatism. In certain circles, Capitalism seems almost a religion, much as Leninist Communism and its descendants did in their day. But clearly by allowing vast sums of money, and almost more importantly, vast amounts of economic influence, to accrue to large commercial and corporate interests has lead us down a dark dark path. The whole notion of too big to fail suggests to me that the time has come to perhaps put caps on just how big any given commercial interest, whether it be a corporation, consortium, co-operative or whatever formulation you can imagine can get. Maybe we shouldn't consider mergers or buy-outs beyond a certain size, maybe when companies reach whatever size seems dangerous they should be cut into pieces, in part to foster competition, but also to assure that the collapse of any one entity doesn't become so dangerous as to threaten the underlying economy.
The success of post-War Capitalism was in no small part due to the embedding of what could only be called socialist principles. Yes, we would allow free enterprise, but with controls, and just as importantly we would create a welfare apparatus to assure that those who would inevitably be harmed by the economic system could at least be guaranteed a certain minimum lifestyle. Different nations took this mix in different degrees; in Europe the welfare state took on a larger role, whereas in the United States, it was less overarching, though I would argue every bit as present, though implementation much less even due to constitutional and political constraints. Regardless of how it was instituted, the goal was to create a balance.
What I think we've seen from the wave of deregulation beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s is a tipping of that balance. We've allowed commercial interests to accrue a vast amount of economic influence, to the point where their success or failure substantially impacts the success or failure of whole economies, even the global economy. Suddenly we've been plunged into a whole new form of welfare, nations literally printing or borrowing vast amounts of money just to keep these sputtering engines from dying and taking everything with them. Now we
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That's not communism.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because communism has never been tried. A communist regime in the model that Marx was pushing hasn't ever been implemented. Marx wanted a state like the US, except where the people owned all of the shares of the companies they worked for rather than random investors. And where there was only one class.
To date there has been precisely zero countries where they did away with class and where the workers truly owned the means of production.
The level of ignorance that people express about how it's been tried and failed just boggles my mind, when it hasn't even been tried once.
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Mod up!
People (especially in America, sorry) have this weird assumptions that they know Marx, communism and socialism, from what they saw Lenin, Stalin and their breed of fascism do. You may as well argue that monarchy does not work because the nazis were bad people.
Capitalism, on the other hand, has been tried. It is not working, and never have (I know it's great for growth and accumulation of wealth - it just sucks at liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness).
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Capitalism, on the other hand, has been tried. It is not working, and never have (I know it's great for growth and accumulation of wealth - it just sucks at liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness).
Bogus claim. If you're going to define Communism is purist theoretical terms and claim it's a system that's never been implemented, then you have to acknowledge that that pure capitalism, as in totally free market, has never really been tried, either.
Even in the nearest implementations of capitalist systems, here have always been government and institutional interventions into the markets in forms like tariffs, product-specific taxes, regional trade restrictions, etc., etc. The last 40 years have seen an ever-increasing amount of interventionist policies, and these have accelerated in the last 10-15 years.
Claiming that this system is evidence of a "failure" of "free markets" is like cutting the legs off of a frog and then claiming "See, look! Frogs can't jump!"
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, capitalism, in the laissez-faire austrian school, has never been tried either. Everything we have today that approximates or is considered capitalist is actually the bastard child mixed economy with both socialist and capitalist features. I posit that either extreme is complete fantasy and the fanboys of both have elevated their respective economic hypothesis' to religion.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes it can...
By removing the human component :P
DESTROY! DESTROY!
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
In the same way that capitalism has been tried and failed because you can't remove greed from the human condition.
No, that's totally wrong. Capitalism (free markets in their most-free form) actually recognizes and utilizes greed to promote the system. It's greed and profit motive that drives and motivates the producers in the system. The winners are the ones that can satisfy the needs of consumers expending the least resources to do so.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that your comment highlights a key weakness of capitalism. In practice, government is not operated independently of business and the politicians in charge of regulating business (minimally, in the ideal case) are also trying to look out for their own best interests. I'd argue that in such a system, the only two negotiable instruments are, ultimately, money and power. Under such circumstances, corruption is inevitable. The wealthy and the influential will collude. leaving the middle and lower classes (those with minimal money and power) out of the conversation. They key question that capitalism must address, in my opinion, is how does a society prevent the wealthy and the influential from colluding, to the detriment of everybody else?
Political term limits might be one way to start. Restrictions on corporate political activism might be another. (I'm sorry; corporations are not people and should not enjoy "free speech" in the same manner as a human citizen.) Of course, either method could backfire. Term limits might induce politicians to grab what they can, while they can. Restrictions on corporate political activism might just drive it underground. I don't have a great answer to the problem but I think it's one to which a lot of attention should be devoted.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
In the same way that capitalism has been tried and failed because you can't remove greed from the human condition.
In capitalism the greed is meant to be used as a balancing factor. Sure one man is a greedy fucker who will abuse all of his workers to death ... but ... there are 1000 greedy workers with less 'power' but just as much greed, and they'll do things to balance it out ... like vote.
Communism pretends humans aren't humans.
Capitalism uses human nature against human nature as a moderator.
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Not necessarily true. While this doesn't work when forced, manufacturing and other work co ops work well. Removing a middle and upper managers who think in the short term about profits and having workers who rely on that job tends to work out pretty well.
I see a false dichotomy. It's not one or the other, both forms of running business work, it depends entirely on the competency of whoever is running the joint.
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Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this isn't quite right. Marx believed that you could transform man's greed for material wealth into greed for something else, not that it could be eliminated.
Marx, being a Hegelian, believed that man's psychology could be altered through social changes; he thought that changes in social structure could create corresponding in the peoples' incentive structure. Thus, in a successful Marxist state as Marx envisioned it, peoples' greed for gold would be replaced with a zeal for contributing to society (and, perhaps, greed for the social recognition that would come from those contributions). So, in a way, a successful communist system would be as much driven by greed as a capitalist one.
It may not be possible, of course, to modify peoples' incentives in this way, though it's never truly been tested since the prerequisite social structure has never actually been created (and I don't think it's accurate to say he "assumed" that they could; it was certainly something he explicitly argued for). It doesn't seem crazy on its face, though, that people can be conditioned socially to value something other than material wealth.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Blaming greed on the collapse of a system is like blaming gravity on the collapse of a bridge. In both cases they are permanent conditions they have to be factored into the design of the system.
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It's possible to set up a company structure that is, by definition of the company bylaws, owned by its workers. They would own a "share" of the company in a definitional sense, but not in the sense of a stock certificate that they can sell or take with them when they quit the company. In some countries the law provides special status for cooperatives that enables that sort of thing.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
> It's possible to set up a company structure that is, by definition of the company bylaws, owned by its workers.
> They would own a "share" of the company in a definitional sense, but not in the sense of a stock certificate
> that they can sell or take with them when they quit the company.
That would suck ass if you bothered to actually THINK about the implications. Lets imagine an attempt to do this.
We begin with 100 unemployed workers who happen to have a bit of capital saved up. Each contributes $10,000US into an account and a corporation is chartered along the lines you suggest. Each investor receives one share with a special condition that they must be an employee to maintain possession of their share. They invest in a small abandoned factory and begin bringing it up to make the infamous 'unspecified widget.' At the first meeting the duly elect a board of directors and a CEO from among their number to meet the legal requirements of incorporation and elect the rest of the initial management.
Problems set in almost instantly when one of the peeps wants to buy a house and finds that no bank will accept their stock as collateral because of the special restriction on the ownership. Out of a hundred people the odds are quite good that one will die in the first year. How to deal with inheritence? Does the next of kin have to take the job to inherit? Does the company buy out the share? When a new employee is hired does he have to buy a share as a condition of employment?
Now imagine that the company has somehow survived the above problems for a few years and prospered. How does an employee reap the benefit of his invested capital short of retiring? In light of this, why would anyone invest in such a venture in the first place vs investing in the more liquid traditional market?
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Informative)
You're trying to argue that gravity falls up. It's a nice attempt, but ultimately moot, because employee owned companies do exist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_employee-owned_companies [wikipedia.org]
Perhaps you should consider that the challenges you mention are not insurmountable.
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It's amazing how so many people cling to the delusion that it is possible to implement theoretical communism. It's just not possible.
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Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
That's true as well. A truly free market degenerates to a monopoly every time. And that's not a free market. Again, it happens for the same reason true communism can never be implemented. Human greed.
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So tell me how does a company keep out competition while providing low quality service at a high price in a free market?
Money. Their startup competition has bills to pay. Most of the incumbent's bills are paid off. So they can afford to drop their prices below what the startup can.
During the implementation of Standard Oil's 90% market monopoly, the price was driven down 90%, and it stayed there until it was broken up. How EXACTLY is that bad?
You didn't look closely at this, did you? They would enter an area, and cause prices to go low, this is true. But what do you think happened after their competitor went bust?
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Precisely. My understanding of Marx's communism is that it is a description of the utopian (perfect/ideal) society. It is meant to be an ideal that we (as a species) endeavor to reach, not an actual government to implement today (for that, we have Marx's Socialism). Humanity needs to evolve a bit more to eliminate (or control) greed before the ideal can even be contemplated as attainable - but as the ancient proverb goes, it is not the destination that's important, but the journey there (which in this ca
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
It has been tried but not under the term Communism. There was a form of primitive Communism in the Bible read the book of Acts. So yes Christianity and socialism are very compatible.
Acts 2
44: And all that believed were together, and had all things common; 45: And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.
Acts 4
32: And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. 33: And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. 34: Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, 35: And laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need. 36: And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is, being interpreted, The son of consolation,) a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus, 37: Having land, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Informative)
It was voluntary, not state mandated. Communes and Kibbutz in Israel also function well, and are "communistic". However people are kicked out for not doing what they are able, and everyone is responsible for everyone else. The problem with state mandated communism is that it necessarily is abusive of power, or sufficiently weak that it doesn't work.
Expectations of work, and the condition of expulsion of those that are able, but refuse to work allow for Communes and Kibbutzes to function. A large state cannot function in that manner.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like some kind of cult.
Yep. In fact many modern intentional communities [ic.org] work this way. It can work because you aren't going to screw your neighbors when you live, work and sleep all within a few blocks. Many of these communities are also run by consensus instead of having a hierarchy or authority figure. The problems you see with "communism" at the state level don't emerge until you have a community large enough so that there are "strangers". People will willingly screw a stranger. I've heard that this starts to happen when you get 150 people in the community. In other words, communism doesn't scale.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish I could mod you up right now...
I'm so sick and fucking tired of the Communist bashing that goes on even to this damn day in the US. Communism hasn't failed mankind, mankind has always failed Communism. The true question is whether or not a society will mature enough that it's people do not constantly want to posses more of whatever goddamn thing they see than their neighbor. As long as there is that one selfish dickface that just has to hoard bread, or money, or whatever else he gets his hands on, Communism fails. It depends on people acting honorably.
I have faith in humanity that eventually we will get to that point, but I'm not gonna sit here and say it will never happen as a justification for my own greed. We get enough of that as it is. Enough with the Randian bullshit. Just say "I want more than your neighbor because fuck him" and be honest with yourself and others. At least we'll know who not to piss on when they're on fire...
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish I could mod you up right now...
I'm so sick and fucking tired of the Communist bashing that goes on even to this damn day in the US. Communism hasn't failed mankind, mankind has always failed Communism. The true question is whether or not a society will mature enough that it's people do not constantly want to posses more of whatever goddamn thing they see than their neighbor. As long as there is that one selfish dickface that just has to hoard bread, or money, or whatever else he gets his hands on, Communism fails. It depends on people acting honorably.
An economic system that only works if every person acts ideally at all times is a recipe for mass graves.
Capitalism, for all its imperfections, is built on self-interest. It expects people to be people, not ants. So it works.
Communism doesn't; never has, never will.
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Informative)
It expects people to be people, not ants.
No. It expects people to be able to act rationally and in their long-term best interest. That's still not how people work.
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Ok. I want more than my neighbor, so fuck him.
Anyone with an ounce of pride and competitiveness feels this way. It's called "not being a loser".
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"As if there were only one Human Nature..." - Carl Sagan.
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Yes, it hasn't been tried. Everyone who has ever tried it ended up subjugating a load of people, creating the same old power games that despots always create, and making everyone miserable. Can anyone name a communist country that they would like to live in?
No, I didn't mean to rule in, I mean as a normal citizen. I've met Cubans, Vietnamese, Poles, East Germans, etc. You know what? They all wanted to stop "trying" to bring on the revolution.
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Lame. I hear this over and over again. This is a "when are things equal" problem, where you don't believe that something is 'truly' what someone else thinks it is.
You can say it's never been tried. But that's a fucking lie. The resultant systems, which you don't see as 'actual tries', are the culmination of attempting to bring about the very type of system you dream about. Ergo, it's the best of what can be achieved.
Not only that, but it's been tried, in many different ways, all over the world.
You failed.
Mo
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It's been tried dozens of times. It just fails, invariably, rapidly, and completely.
Apart from the obvious problem of simple human nature, there's a computationally intractable scaling problem involved. J. B. S. Haldane pointed this out in his famous paper, On Being the Right Size [ucla.edu] (primarily on biological scaling) back in 1928. And Haldane was himself a communist.
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Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no class structure in America
There may not be a codified class structure, but if you're making the assertion that the United States is a lovely fairly-land filled with elves and unicorns that live without any class whatsoever then you are woefully incorrect. There is a massive differential in income between the haves and the have-nots with the bottom 50% controlling 2% of the wealth. We may not have the same rigid caste rules that India used to (for example only) but class mobility is becoming more and more difficult and wealth is becoming more of a legacy passed from generation to generation (new technology notwithstanding).
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah right. The US is one of the most classist states remaining in the world. If you doubt it, run down to Martha's Vinyard sometime.
The only difference is that class in the US is based on money, and how long your family has had it instead of strict hereditity as it was in the old world.
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Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
> That's because communism has never been tried. A communist regime in the model that Marx was pushing hasn't ever been implemented.
Oh please. Have you even _read_ the Communist Manifesto or even know what "allodial title" means??
I'll repeat them here for your benefit ...
1. "Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of wastelands, and the improvement of the the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form."
And quoting the excellent analysis ....
- - - 8http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/wua11.shtml
1. Abolition of Property Rights.
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises. (Taxes on things, including property.)
Zoning laws and regulations - the Supreme Court ruled zoning constitutional in 1921.
Federal ownership of land; Bureau of Land Management - in Nevada 87% of land is federally owned.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) - broad powers to seize any private property during "emergency."
Communist percentage: 25%.
2. Heavy Progressive Income Tax
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises. (Taxes on things, including income.) The Sixteenth Amendment classifies income tax as an indirect tax, or tax on a thing, as opposed to tax on a person.
Corporate Tax Act of 1909.
Revenue Act of 1913.
Social Security Act of 1936.
Communist percentage: 85%. (Maybe 15% of the population don't pay the taxes.)
3. Abolition of Rights of Inheritance
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises. (Taxes on things, including inheritances.)
Estate Tax Act of 1916.
Social Security Act of 1936.
Communist percentage: 30%.
4. Confiscation of Property of Emigrants and Rebels
Confiscation of property of American Indians.
IRS confiscation of property without due process.
Internment of Japanese-Americans during WW II; confiscation of their property.
Confiscation of drug-merchant property.
RICO Act of 1970 (Racketeering Influenced & Corrupt Organizations) - used as a basis to confiscate property.
Communist percentage: 20%.
5. Monopoly National Bank
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have the power to coin money, r
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Funny)
Marx also breathed air.
Our congress breathes air.
Communist percentage: 100%.
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Just to play devil's advocate here, in America workers have the opportunity to buy shares in their employers' stock. Middle-class workers even have the means to do so. And if there is a society that is closer to being classless than 21st-century America, I'd like to hear about it. Our head of state is the son of a hippie schoolteacher and a foreign student, who lived for several years in a shack with a dirt floor.
So yeah, the worker's utopia has never really come to be, I'll grant you. I none the less sugge
Re:Nothing to surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
And yet under communist rule there are still wealthy power brokers who know how to game the system for their own profit.
Corruption is corruption, no matter what "wrapper" we put around it. Greed (whether personal or financial) always has been and always will be the Achilles heel of ANY model. Every model will fail if greed and corruption are left unchecked. Again, this should come as no surprise to anyone.
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This is the sad reality that the people who espouse theoretical communism either never think about or attempt to reject out of hand. But it is exactly what prevents the theoretical model of communism from ever being attempted. As soon as you have two people starting it, the greed and corruption starts.
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I know you think you're being clever by rewording my statements. But if you read all my posts you'll see that I already stated this obvious fact. But thanks for playing.
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There's also those other human traits of sloth and envy to take into account. If I cannot worker harder to better myself, and if there is no downside to my not working at all, then why would I bother? Once you introduce benefit or disadvantage for how hard you work then you introduce imbalance and jealous envy that some others have something I do not, even if there are logical reasons for that to be the case.
No system can ever be perfect as humans are not universally equal.
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Well yeah. So what? The communists claim to be able to create a better society. It ain't better, and the excuse is that uhm... people are still people? How does that solve anyone of the purported weaknesses of the previous regime?
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Where Communism sees too much rain and attempts to dam it up forever, capitalism sees to much rain and tries to channel as much as possible toward making electricity, so that the dam doesn't need to be as high.
Communism has to suppress normal everyday human nature. Capitalism only needs to suppress the extremes.
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"Greed" is defined as "excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions." Personally, I would define it as "wanting more than one deserves or is entitled to."
The trouble with this: who defines what is "excessive," or what a person "deserves" or "is entitled to?" Under professedly Communist regimes, that has always wound up being the government.
In reality, "greed" is simply the flip side of envy: a person who is "greedy" is someone who has a lot more stuff than I do, which is perceived as
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Communism is a dream. A perfect state whose only problem is that we are short-sighted, self-serving and nepotistic monkeys who turn the greatest dreams and aspirations into a dog-eat-dog contest for power and wealth.
Homo homini lupus. We have what we deserve.
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But then it's not the system that's a dream. It's the model of humanity. Why not just cut out the whole politics and redistribution, and just have a fantasy about a world where everyone is happy?
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That because we've never actually seen real communist rule, we've seen fascist rule calling itself communist. I mean, the Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers' Party but they sure as shit were not socialist.
Seems like we should actually see real communism in action before we dismiss it as being a failure. The question is, will a society ever mature enough and be enlightened enough to actually try it?
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Seems like we should actually see real communism in action before we dismiss it as being a failure. The question is, will a society ever mature enough and be enlightened enough to actually try it?
In a word, no.
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The cynical part of me agrees with you, but I still maintain a small bit of hope that it will come to pass eventually. Something on par with an impending global catastrophe may be enough to get humanity to stop fucking around and grow the hell up.
Then again, it could just make people even more selfish and cruel; even when group cooperation is a necessity of survival, there is always that lazy jagoff. Banishment could cure that real quick, though...
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That because we've never actually seen real communist rule, we've seen fascist rule calling itself communist. I mean, the Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers' Party but they sure as shit were not socialist.
Seems like we should actually see real communism in action before we dismiss it as being a failure. The question is, will a society ever mature enough and be enlightened enough to actually try it?
It's been tried by small groups - communes. They tend to work for a while, maintain equality as long as the original founders with the vision are intensely involved. I don't know how many have kept it going for more than one generation. I went to a talk by the Twin Oaks Community [wikipedia.org]. They have a very organized and sensible economy which has lasted.