Capitalism Is Not The Most Efficient System Ever Devised By Man

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by resisting arrest, Jun 3, 2016.

  1. CausalityBreakdown

    CausalityBreakdown Banned at Members Request

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    muh 100 trillions

    Those numbers can only be obtained for blaming Stalin and Mao for the most absurd deaths. I've seen figures that blamed Stalin for deaths during WWII. They also lean heavily on the outlandish conspiracy theory that the famines that effected entire countries were organized and targeted conspiracies designed to murder opponents.

    Even the great purge, an event I often criticize and condemn when speaking with fellow leftists, resulted in 800,000 arrests, 95% of which survived their sentence. That number is from the opened Soviet Archives, after 50 years of leaders that hated Stalin and wanted to discredit him by any means possible. If those documents are altered, they are surely altered in the direction of making Stalin look worse.

    Do your own research and you'll find out that a lot of so-called authorities are bull(*)(*)(*)(*).
     
  2. tharock220

    tharock220 Well-Known Member

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    I was about to say, capitalism has lifted more people out of actual poverty than socialism ever could.
     
  3. Zorro

    Zorro Well-Known Member

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    Free-will, free-choice, free-markets
     
  4. Zorro

    Zorro Well-Known Member

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    I attended graduation ceremonies at a University in a major US city. Listening to the commencement speakers, load after load of drivel. It was like watching parody. It truly is as bad as billed.
     
  5. Russ103

    Russ103 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I was born in the USSR, and I thank God, and my parents for escaping your version of utopia. You are a statist. You have zero faith in the individual, nor do you have any respect for your fellow man. Otherwise you wouldn't type a fraction of the sycophantic throne sniffing BS I read (and shook my head in utter disbelief) in this thread.
     
  6. CausalityBreakdown

    CausalityBreakdown Banned at Members Request

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    Tell me, at what point in the USSR's history were you born and when did you leave? There's a story there.

    For example, my grandfather is a czech who left his home country because he was imprisoned over his 'political activism'. I used to respect this, until I remembered that he's also the man that would drunkenly goosestep around the house while shouting 'Heil Hitler' and realized that he probably deserved it.

    I'm a statist in the sense that I believe that the seizure of state authority is necessary to create a more free society and to finally break the shackles of class society that cause the existence of the state in the first place. I believe in the self-determination of peoples and believe that human beings are naturally an altruistic, cooperative, and social species.
     
  7. jdog

    jdog Banned

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    There was nothing socialist about the early United States and if you say there way you are misinformed.
     
  8. danielpalos

    danielpalos Banned

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    socialism starts with a social contract. no capital contracts are ordained.
     
  9. jdog

    jdog Banned

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    Socialism is the taking of one persons property in order to give it to another. It is the opposite of liberty.
     
  10. heresiarch

    heresiarch Well-Known Member

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    As if the opportunities were all the same for everyone.
     
  11. jdog

    jdog Banned

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    Opportunities are what you make of them. Equality is a liberal lie to undermine liberty and freedom.
     
  12. danielpalos

    danielpalos Banned

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    Government is socialism: Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of government, and it is equally undeniable, that whenever and however it is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights in order to vest it with requisite powers.--The Federalist Number 2

    Socialism merely requires social morals for free: If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.--The Federalist Number 51

    Socialism provides for social justice, not capital justice.

    Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.--Thomas Jefferson
     
  13. Russ103

    Russ103 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    State authority (as you wish it to be) and free society cannot be used in the same sentence.

    Cuba, and N. Korea have the state authority that you seem to admire. Have you inquired about moving there? I hear the "free healthcare" and education there are top notch.

    You can keep your state authority worshiping, I'll keep my freedom along with my money (the latter is thanks to the former)
     
  14. Fred C Dobbs

    Fred C Dobbs Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    No, it doesn't created great poverty. It creates disparity in incomes, which many complain as being 'great poverty'. Those who make the claim have usually lived poverty free lives but feel, when they see others with more, fancy themselves as poor and feel they should deserve more also. If you want to see genuine poverty just visit any country where democracy, and thus capitalism, is not allowed.
     
  15. Fred C Dobbs

    Fred C Dobbs Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The opportunities remain the same for everyone but the ability to recognize them, and the ambition to achieve them, vary from person to person. There is no good reason to make all people less free because others lack the wherewithal to improve their lives.
     
  16. Le Chef

    Le Chef Banned at members request Donor

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    I've spent a lot of time listening to and arguing with young commies and I believe they really do yearn for an egalitarian society controlled by the working class, and not by Lenin/Stalin/Pol Pot/Castro etc. Such a political arrangement is not far, as they conceive it, from the society of disciples mentioned in the New Testament:

    The community of believers was of one heart and mind,
    and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own,
    but they had everything in common.


    4:32, Cathoic Bible (but all versions say roughly the same thing)

    Communists are usually atheist, so this coincidence of philosophies is accidental, I think.

    It's an appealing philosophy to some, as far as it goes, and it can maybe work in small communes, though even well-intentioned hippies couldn't make a go if it.

    Where communism really falls apart is at the international level, especially in an industrialized world. I have never had a commie explain to me how, just to take a couple of crude examples, people in Finland or Alaska will get grapes and tomatoes year round, as we have in the south, without a complex supply chain dependent on contract law, with the emphasis on "law." This cannot be reconciled with communism because communism struggles toward and assumes a "stateless, classless society." No state, no law, no grapes. Unless you live in California, New York, Chile, etc. Who exactly is going to grow and ship grapes to Iowa and Siberia in exchange for nothing? Labor vouchers aren't really any different from money, so that dog won't hunt either..

    And this is where the communist despot comes in, for he will casually dismiss these concerns with "the people don't need grapes and tomatoes year round. Problem solved."

    And if the people disagree with the vanguard and decide to enter into private arrangements with other people who will grow and ship them tomatoes and grapes when they, and not the communist party, want them, then the party will declare them enemies of the people, and we all know what happens next.

    There are problems with capitalism that we conservatives overlook but I'll offer those great thoughts in another post.
     
  17. PeppermintTwist

    PeppermintTwist Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Wow...what an intelligent and well thought out argument. Don't tell me, let me guess, you were captain of The Harvard debate team.
     
  18. Fred C Dobbs

    Fred C Dobbs Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    And yet many Leftists believe politicians and bureaucracies can actually take money from one group and distribute it wisely to another. What politicians do is buy the votes of the poorly informed but it will have little effect on the wealthy. All is does is create a sinecure for politicians and a dependent class to assure their re-elections.
     
  19. spiritgide

    spiritgide Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The world has changed- we now have a global economy, not just a local one. We cannot continue to ignore that by calling competition from foreign products unfair... and those poor Chinese workers have never been better off in their lives, because they are competing, and it's working- while we are saying it's unfair that we have to compete with anyone who threatens our position.

    Our lifestyle has benefited heavily from the imports. If it were not for them, a vast number of things you enjoy today would be much more expensive. Clothes, shoes, etc. Quality too has been dramatically affected by this competition. In 1980, American cars had been diluted in quality to gain profits to the point they were poor. Unions, those good ol boys just trying to help the working man had damaged the auto industry to the point of bankruptcy- and the Honda came along. Over time, the reliability of them outpaced Detroit quality and won loyalty to the point that it became clear that if Detroit would not compete, it would collapse. That competition left no choice- get better, or die. Between that pressure and the financial wash-out of the recession, we have indeed got better and now produce quality vehicles. Literally- Japanese car competition saved our auto industry, and we are better for it. If you won't compete, you will lose. You can't hide from it, you can't just pick and chose who will be in the race so only you can win. You can't create an unrealistic wage structure that is disconnected from productivity or quality, without destroying the value of your own system.

    Capitalism works better than anything else- until you decide that you can twist the rules and fix the game.
     
  20. Derideo_Te

    Derideo_Te Well-Known Member

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    BZZZT Wrong!

    It wasn't the government's idea to ship jobs offshore.

    That came from the Wall Street Casino greed driven capitalism looking to exploit for profit. They bribed politicians to make it possible with their failed "Free Markets, Deregulations" dogma that has stripmined the middle class in America.

    To the OP's point socialism is a natural reaction to the unfettered greed of capitalism that causes a wealth gap between the population and the 1%. When socialism turns into unfettered communism it collapses because it destroys the incentive to innovate.

    Neither capitalism nor socialism are good or bad. What happens is that those who are greedy and/or power hungry ruin the positive aspects of them.

    A balance, called Democratic Socialism, where well regulated capitalism is balanced against the welfare of We the People is the compromise that actually works best IMO.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Who knew that being born into poverty is a "poor choice" by the "stupid lazy" baby? :eekeyes:
     
  21. Fred C Dobbs

    Fred C Dobbs Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    But according to some that would never happen under "Democratic Socialism". Don't know why this great compromise of 'Democratic Socialism' idea didn't catch on decades ago.
     
  22. garyd

    garyd Well-Known Member

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    It isn't a bribe when the only way to stay in the game is to send money the politicians way it's extortion.

    JObs go over seas when dumb ass politicians push them there. When your only alternative to going broke is to move overseas you move overseas.

    Government policy made wall street the only game in town and then cut them off at the knees. Now they've used QE to disconnect the market from economic reality. The OP's point was an uter failure to understand reality as it exist in the West at this point in time. Capitalism has not in truth existed in the West since at least the Great Depression. Everything you see happening that you don't like isn't the product of capitalism it is the product of government policy that came a cropper while trying to create the best of all possible worlds. Such attempts fail almost entirely because bureaucrats however many you have however well educated and however good hearted still don't know everything don't understand everything and don't have power over everything.
     
  23. Derideo_Te

    Derideo_Te Well-Known Member

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    The civilized nations using democratic socialism have been doing very well for the past 50 years or so.
     
  24. jdog

    jdog Banned

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    You have just quoted a party who's goal it was to implement Federalism into the US, and to model the US after Great Brittan. To say government is necessary is a blatant lie. Government is the tool by which the elite form an establishment to exploit the common people
     
  25. Fred C Dobbs

    Fred C Dobbs Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You mean since WWII? Which countries systems do you have in mind for adopting?
     

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