Socialism or Capitalism

Discussion in 'Opinion POLLS' started by Texan, Mar 4, 2019.

?

Socialism or Capitalism?

  1. Socialism

    8 vote(s)
    21.1%
  2. Capitalism

    30 vote(s)
    78.9%
  1. Pollycy

    Pollycy Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Sep 24, 2008
    Messages:
    29,922
    Likes Received:
    14,183
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    "With the speed at which we are advancing", it will be the CHINESE and the RUSSIANS who determine what the dominant economic system of the future will be. Right now, if that is accurate, it looks surprisingly like government-sponsored Capitalism that will prevail! People who exist on government handouts and welfare will be lumped into a sub-class of essentially worthless "Proles", not unlike those described so hauntingly in George Orwell's masterpiece, "1984"....

    Before you dismiss this concept, consider: approximately 50% of the American population is currently taking some form of government handout, welfare, or "subsidy" right now!

    [​IMG]
     
  2. Dissily Mordentroge

    Dissily Mordentroge Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jan 1, 2016
    Messages:
    2,690
    Likes Received:
    674
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Advancing? Given our species increasing capacity for denial and rejection of climate science I suggest ‘advancing’ isn’t the appropriate term.
    Maybe if you’d said ‘Advancing towards extinction’ you’d be closer to the truth.
     
  3. wgabrie

    wgabrie Well-Known Member Donor

    Joined:
    May 31, 2011
    Messages:
    13,830
    Likes Received:
    3,054
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    While it's true that half the country is in poverty, I don't think it's 1984. The pyramid in your post is based on the idea that income is your level, so it's a system where the rich will rule the roost.
     
  4. wgabrie

    wgabrie Well-Known Member Donor

    Joined:
    May 31, 2011
    Messages:
    13,830
    Likes Received:
    3,054
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    There is the concept of the great filter. That civilizations among the stars die out before they spread out among the stars. But, what if it applies to primitive animal species who shared the world with the intelligent life form?
     
  5. XploreR

    XploreR Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 8, 2014
    Messages:
    7,785
    Likes Received:
    2,704
    Trophy Points:
    113
    1. I would agree that my post may have been a bit overly optimistic regarding socialist countries of Europe prohibiting companies from making profits from goods & services that involved the use of toxins. I don't dispute that some socialist governments will control more business activities in-country than others, but most do work well with private businesses & help them be successful thru proactive legislation. '
    2. According to the CATO Human Freedoms Index (ver. 2016), there are 16 countries in the world rated higher than the U.S. for personal freedoms. Many of those are in Europe, & socialist, but not all. The U.S. is #17 out of a total of 162. Every country is different because their history & background issues are different. I wouldn't expect European countries to have similar views on private gun ownership as the U.S., so I don't judge them harshly on that issue. We don't always do so well with free speech either.
     
  6. Shonyman32

    Shonyman32 Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Oct 23, 2018
    Messages:
    1,557
    Likes Received:
    743
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Let me be first to say I havent read everything yet (I will in time) but had a question could you point me in the direction of showing differences between the 2 systems like you said? I would enjoy reading and haven't seen your explanation. A copy paste or a link would be wonderful.
     
  7. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 5, 2016
    Messages:
    26,310
    Likes Received:
    7,461
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Do you understand what communism would be and how it would come about?
     
  8. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 5, 2016
    Messages:
    26,310
    Likes Received:
    7,461
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Ahhh but you don't know. Socialism in inevitable. Resistance is futile.
     
    XploreR likes this.
  9. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 5, 2016
    Messages:
    26,310
    Likes Received:
    7,461
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    No it doesn't. There has never been a socialist country that became a dictatorship. And that's because there has never been a socialist country. Venezuela and Cuba were on the right track, but now it is doubtful whether they will ever make it to socialism.
     
  10. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 5, 2016
    Messages:
    26,310
    Likes Received:
    7,461
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    You're not right. A few of them are democratic socialist countries. Others like Canada and Spain are capitalist.

    The Scandinavian countries in that list are a mixture of capitalism and socialist policies, and they are all now being aggressively "assaulted" by right wing forces that threaten the socialist policies. So the problem with trying to manage both systems in some sort of "ideal" mix is that even after the people win socialist concessions from capitalism, they must continue to fight to keep them. I'll predict that 20 years down the road, all those democratic socialist nations will jettison the capitalism and go full-bore socialist.
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2019
  11. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 5, 2016
    Messages:
    26,310
    Likes Received:
    7,461
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    You don't know that! Sheesh! YOU CAN'T!! You've never seen socialism!!
     
  12. Canell

    Canell Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Mar 7, 2011
    Messages:
    4,268
    Likes Received:
    1,814
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Care to explain? :)
     
  13. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 5, 2016
    Messages:
    26,310
    Likes Received:
    7,461
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Egad. EGAD! Either you are referring to the communist ideology of the controlling party, or you are talking BS propaganda. In either case you need more information because what you're saying is completely incorrect. HALF A CENTURY AGO I was a member of a national communist organization, so I dare say I know whereof I speak.

    China's revolution was led by a Marxist-Leninist party, referred to as a "communist party" because their ultimate goal was eventual communism some dozens of generations down the road, but their immediate strategy was to establish socialism under the leadership of the "communist party", guided by what has come to be called "communist ideology" of Marx.

    They never did achieve their immediate goal of socialism, or "worker ownership and control of the means of production". They only got as far as government bureaucrats and government owning and controlling the means of production, or "state capitalism" that Marx warned about.

    Ask me any questions about this to get clarity and understanding of what I've said.
     
    Dissily Mordentroge likes this.
  14. Thingamabob

    Thingamabob Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jan 12, 2017
    Messages:
    14,267
    Likes Received:
    4,465
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    It is you who is wrong. All of those are Socialist-Democracies.
    He may not have but I have. He is right. Your pseudo-logic is buried deep in the ... :icon_shithappens:
     
  15. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 5, 2016
    Messages:
    26,310
    Likes Received:
    7,461
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Sure. Thanks for asking.

    We are talking about Marxian theory, so we must refer to Marx and not some capitalist bourgeois dictionary.

    According to Marx, under socialism the public will gradually become accustomed to socialist relationships and functions such that it all becomes "natural" just as we see capitalist attitudes being so "natural" today that many say it is a system that is based on "human nature".

    According to his theory, as society becomes accustomed to socialist thinking, people will automatically handle transactions and processes in a "socialist" way such that gradually, government functions that maintain socialist relationships in transactions and processes will become unnecessary and will terminate. People will just do what is needed of themselves. And ultimately, the only government functions that will remain will be things like record-keeping and such. This will only happen as the capitalist class has completely given up and ceases to conflict with the working class. IOW, as Marx put it, classes and the state machinery will "wither away". The social conditions that then remain he called "communist society." Remember, this is just a theory. It is sooooo far in the distant future and involves changes and processes we can't imagine now, that there is really no point in debating "communism". We will never see it IF it ever happens. All we may ever see is socialism.
     
    Canell likes this.
  16. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 5, 2016
    Messages:
    26,310
    Likes Received:
    7,461
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Apparently you don't even know the difference between democratic socialism and social democracy!! LOL!!!! Hence you're wrong. Canada is not a democratic socialist country. It's a version of a social democratic system which is a CAPITALIST SYSTEM!

    No you haven't because there has never been a country in which workers OWN and CONTROL the means of production.

    Read my post #88 above.
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2019
  17. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 5, 2016
    Messages:
    26,310
    Likes Received:
    7,461
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    BTW, "logic" is not the basis of my post. EXPERIENCE is. Read my above post #88.
     
  18. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 5, 2016
    Messages:
    26,310
    Likes Received:
    7,461
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    SOCIALISM bans privately-owned business. If there are private businesses, it isn't socialism. It may be social democracy or even democratic socialism, but it isn't socialism.
     
  19. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 5, 2016
    Messages:
    26,310
    Likes Received:
    7,461
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    What too many people fail to understand, is that every economic system runs its course and eventually begins producing more problems than it can solve. We reached that point some years ago. And since then, our economic life and politics have degenerated and decayed. Real wages have not made much progress for 40 years but the rich have kept getting richer and concentrating more and more wealth in fewer and fewer hands. Our politics have become so polarized and dangerous that our "American way of life" is threatened and likely to be lost entirely.

    Capitalism provided the USA a rate of growth and a technological boom that was unheard of and barely imagined. Our standard of living exploded and led the world.

    Not so much any longer. The powerhouse that was our capitalism has done its job and is now eating itself. It is undermining society and threatening to take us back to the "stone age". I recently told a man that we had lived through the best this country had to offer, and now it looks like we will live through the worst it will have to offer. He agreed.

    The truly idiotic idea is that we can just pick and choose and have "the best economy" available to imaginations.

    Capitalism created a working class that will eventually seize control just as the new capitalist class took control from the feudalists. It's just as inevitable. Capitalism will eventually give way to socialism and will end the exploitation of private ownership of the means of production for private profits. The economy will be in service to the whole of society. We can fight it or we can anticipate it and welcome it and share in shaping it, but it's going to happen.
     
  20. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Mar 9, 2013
    Messages:
    41,184
    Likes Received:
    16,180
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Probably because you've never had to work your butt off for that same subsistence and even less with no hope whatsoever of it ever getting better. You're spoiled beyond redemption by being born in a system where you CAN actually do more with your life than that and should understand that the vast, VAST majority of humanity over time has never had anything even CLOSE to the opportunities you take for granted and most still don't today. Keep up what you're probably doing though and you, or your kids, may just get to see it for themselves, Feudalism is never dead, it just sleeps.

    My hope is that we're going beyond Capitalism and Socialism both because we are going beyond economics. In the future given virtual reality and nanotechnology there may be no perceptible scarcity and no real scarcity either. That may make the world a fundamentally different place, though that never really worked out for Star Trek and probably won't for us.
     
  21. Nonnie

    Nonnie Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Dec 25, 2017
    Messages:
    8,399
    Likes Received:
    7,246
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    I'm not asking you if you think I know it or not, I'm telling you that for socialism to work, the people need to be honest.

    Take any socialist idea, for example social housing. What are the two main dishonest scams going with social housing? Priority was given to those single mums with a kid or kids, they jumped the queue and got a council house straight away. Sounds fair enough, the idea was to take care of the children first? It was big news that women went out, got pregnant on purpose, had a kid and bingo, the council came up with a house for them.

    Secondly, what happens if you're in a council house and you get a job that pays very well. Well, of course you buy a house and hand the key back. Erm, how about they buy a house, move out, not tell the council and then sub let the council house house? Grenfell tower that burnt down, social housing. Over half was sub letted out, many were to immigrants and illegal immigrants. Because it was such a tragic event, the government didn't prosecute those sub letting them out.

    Do you honestly believe people are honest?? There are thousands of examples and scams going on. I don't think there's a day going by without someone being in the newspaper for benefits fraud.

    Another one is you receive child tax credit and working tax credit off the government. I know a guy with 5 kids on the maximum wage before he would lose most of his child tax credit if he got a pay rise, so he refused the pay rise off his boss. So the tax payer continued to pay out over a thousand a month instead of him supporting his own family at his expense.

    Do you believe people are honest? Sheesh. Have you ever done economics, it's a basic fact.
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2019
  22. Nonnie

    Nonnie Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Dec 25, 2017
    Messages:
    8,399
    Likes Received:
    7,246
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    There's only one, Portugal.
     
  23. Dissily Mordentroge

    Dissily Mordentroge Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jan 1, 2016
    Messages:
    2,690
    Likes Received:
    674
    Trophy Points:
    113
    There’s little point in discussing so called socialism with many Americans. Say socialism and they react as if Stalin is about to break down their front door. The lack of political sophistication and historic knowledge in relation to a number of ideologies in the US is astonishing. Almost as bad as American’s understanding of geography.
     
    Junkieturtle, XploreR and Thingamabob like this.
  24. Thingamabob

    Thingamabob Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jan 12, 2017
    Messages:
    14,267
    Likes Received:
    4,465
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    :above: :nod: :above:
    You are absolutely right. I try to take that into consideration knowing that it really isn't their fault that they teach so little in the U.S. and most of what they do teach is BS propaganda. So how should the average citizen know about the world? He can't. But it still irritates me when one of them acts like his knowledge it better than those who have much more experience.
     
  25. Pollycy

    Pollycy Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Sep 24, 2008
    Messages:
    29,922
    Likes Received:
    14,183
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    As somebody who grew up very poor, in a broken home, whose parents divorced when I was just a young boy, I DO understand what it looks like when "the wolf is at the door". When I was a boy there were NO government handout welfare programs. Dear 'Daddy' retired from the military, divorced my mother, and he fled to an American enclave in Guadalajara, Mexico to avoid having to pay child-support for me or my little sister. Too bad, so sad.... I'll say it once, Aleks, and either you believe me, or you dont: nobody GAVE me a damned thing! I MADE my way in life, and now I've retired. I honestly do not (NOT) understand why anybody else who isn't suffering from birth defects, debilitating physical unjuries, or mental illness cannot do the same thing, or BETTER, in a way that is rewarding and sustaining for THEMSELVES.

    Nevertheless, I'd love it and cheer it if there were some magic way that everybody in the world could have everything they want in life and not have to do anything unpleasant or tiresome to get it. It would be great if there were some kind of big "overlord" administration in control of everything and everyone on the planet that would make everyone wealthy, healthy, and happy. Let me know when you think that's going to happen, Aleks, and who is going to run such a world....

    Whoever or whatever it is, it probably won't be "Capitalism"... but it also surely will not (NOT) be any of the failed "ism's" that mankind has already gone through, like "Tribalism", "Monarchism", "Feudalism", "Communism", and, yes, "Socialism".... Robbing "Peter" to pay "Paul" is never going to work on a sustained basis -- if for no other reason than at some point "Peter" decides it is a far better thing to simply get rid of "Paul", because nobody tolerates a parasite for very long....
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2019

Share This Page