A two part question for those considering Socialism

Thank you for CONCEDING that art, police and fire fighting ALL predate capitalism. So do food, clothing, fire, tools, hunting, language, fishing, etc, etc, etc. Without socialism there would be no capitalism.

 

Thank you again for CONCEDING that there MUST have been a tribal SOCIETY in place BEFORE anything could be "traded".

 

You might want to read up on VZ before Chavez... before socialism. If you don't want to read the history since oil was discovered read up on the 1980s and 1990s.

 

Why does the term gormless spring to mind?

When the hunter returned to the tribe the SOCIALISM that prevailed at the time ensured that the meat was SHARED between EVERYONE in the tribe which was a form of TAXATION enabling the hunter to BELONG to the tribal SOCIETY!

The abject FAILURE of the OP to THINK any of this through is readily apparent.

 

Ironic given how confused the OP appears to be on the topic of this thread.

 

"... cite a single. real, purely capitalistic nation, and all the most advanced nations are pragmatic blends of capitalistic and socialistic policies."

 

According to some [which?] believers, scientology asserts that people have hidden abilities which have not yet been fully realized.[126] It teaches that increased spiritual awareness and physical benefits are accomplished through counseling sessions referred to as auditing.[127] Through auditing, people can solve their problems and free themselves of engrams.[128] This restores them to their natural condition as thetans and enables them to be at cause in their daily lives, responding rationally and creatively to life events rather than reacting to them under the direction of stored engrams. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology#Theological_doctrine

In both cases those 'some' are wrong.

 

Not sure why you are talking to me on the evils of Communism and pure Socialism - you are preaching to the choir. That does not change the fact that Taxation is wealth redistribution. You are taking money from one person and giving it to another.

 

I don't believe I claimed to be quoting you. That was a definition common to a number of dictionaries.

I'm sorry, I realise that you have put a lot of effort into making this into right vs left politics, but I am discussing the term in the semantic sense. Whereas you seem determined to conflate human development, trade, invention, social progress, etc. with your concept of capitalism. They are all important developmental increments without which mankind would be the poorer - but they do not in themselves, constitute capitalism, which is a socio-political system.

And saying that one needs tools to create machines, and paint and brushes to create pictorial art, is not evidence that a particular political system is essential to those enterprises. That you should believe that is so - is your prerogative, but please do not treat the members of this board as ill-educated ideologues.

 

If you forget to say whom you’re quoting it will be assumed you meant the person you just mentioned. Me. It’s just another language thing. Real English hasn’t been taught in school for many decades, and English is no longer the first language for millions of Americans, and it affects their children’s understanding of the same. It’s one of the reasons so many Lefties misunderstand Trump. As you can see in the troll posts above, many haven’t a clue what I’m talking about, and I’m being about as clear as a person can be. Twenty years ago this didn’t happen much online. Now it’s common.

This is another example of those same language problems. Trade isn’t “my concept”, just as the Pacific Ocean is not “my concept”. It’s an enormous body of water; an ocean. Trade is the action of buying and selling goods and services without government interference. It’s raw capitalism. It has nothing to do with me or my concepts. Without trade you would be living in the wilderness, butt naked and hungry, clutching a wooden spear and the only way you could take meat away from someone else would be through force. Theft. That is the way of animals. Hyenas will come across two or three cheetahs with a freshly killed antelope. They’ll scare the cheetahs away and share the antelope between them, guzzling it down in no time. Socialists do the same thing with a businessman. They take his money and share it between them. After life evolved on that basis for millennia, we finally got to the point where a human decided to trade, and since that moment capitalism has been improving human life no end. It’s one of the things that separates us from the beasts. Of course our instincts, built up over eons, still tell us to steal, which is why Socialism is so popular. It’s a matter of curbing our brute instincts. Humans have to learn to curb their wish to steal, just as they have to curb their instinct to rape. Raping and stealing is for the birds, so to speak.

Try painting the Mona Lisa without wood, canvas, paint, brushes, etc. Good luck. Let me know how you go.

 

You are correct to chastise me for not supplying the specific source of my quotation - I must confess that I thought the quotation so commonly understood, that a source might have been redundant. I won't be as presumptuous in future. And BTW, I am not an American, and although I speak a couple of languages (imperfectly,) English is definitely my first language.

I'm sorry, but you appear to being deliberately obtuse. Neither human development nor trade are inherent characteristics of capitalism. Your concept of capitalism is, much like my concept of capitalism, an understanding of the term peculiar to each of us. In your case, and in this thread, you are using your concept of capitalism to make obscure political points - with which not everyone agrees, and in which not everyone is interested. As I have already mentioned - that is an opinion to which you are entitled, but it does not constitute factual evidence supporting your conclusions.

Let me be clear about this - I do not disagree with much of the thesis you have outlined above - I simply disagree that any of it proves that capitalism is the engine of human development. Given your somewhat intractable stance - I thank you for your input; but I see nothing to be gained by our discussing this further.

 

There’s no chastising – I was just correcting you for apparently claiming to quote me, paraphrasing me and then denying the same. You should have simply apologized for the mistake and moved on instead of whining and crying about it.

There is no such thing as a redundant source for a quote, especially when it sounds like you’re quoting me.

You probably will be, since you’re still whining about it.

Yes, that’s what another poster said. It turned out he’d learned English from the age of five and his immigrant parents spoke hardly any. As a result he didn’t understand a lot of the nuances or subtleties of English, but English was his first language. I suggested he do night-classes in English expression and literature if he wanted to debate, but he just called me the son of a giant whore and said he would s**t in my milk.

Obtuse folk aren’t usually very deliberate. There’s that language hiccup again…

Humans existed before they began to trade, though it would not have taken long to think up the practice. As for trade, it is capitalism, period.

Mine is easy to prove.

Part 1): Can you name just one thing in your home that is not there as a result of capitalism?

Part 2): Can you name just one modern, full time, wage-paying job that you could have today, if rich capitalists never existed?

The fact that you can’t name either is all the proof you need about how much you utterly depend on capitalism.

 

Don't be tiresome - I admitted to an error. Although it seems my greatest miscalculation was attempting to engage you in civilised conversation.

Lol, my ancestors immigrated to these shores just after the Romans left - at least a thousand years before your nation came into being - and I can trace my lineage to before the Norman invasion - so I suspect I have a passable grasp of the subtleties of the language, and I am not affected by the implicit linguistic put down. Furthermore, I am studying to earn my keep before the bench in a horsehair wig, so words, which I attempt to use carefully, are the tools of my trade.

This conversation is at an end, and I wish you every good fortune in your endeavours.

 

Still whining? When Anglo Saxons point out an error, the other guy says sorry and they move on. When Hispanics (or millennials) are criticized they want to start up another Armada.

British eh? I’ll put it down to your teachers then. For the last half century British schools were infiltrated by blacks, Indians, South Americans, Spanish, and other immigrants. Many spoke with thick accents. A cousin of mine in London complained that his Indian English teacher’s accent was so thick they could barely understand him. His Spanish geography teacher was also barely legible. Aside from that schools haven’t taught English as such for at least 40 years. Instead they brainwash kids with political propaganda – environmentalism, Marxism, feminism; you name it.

Well, my British parents were in Canada when I was born. One’s nationality isn’t always defined by one’s GPS.

I can trace mine back to an Irish king. However, one doesn’t ‘inherit’ a language as if it is a gene. It still has to be taught and learned. I said earlier that millennials today don’t understand the nuances of English either because their English teachers failed or because English wasn’t their first language.

That’s an excellent ambition but you’ll need to mind your Ps and Qs. If you haven’t learned how to react to a correction, or how to remember when someone gives you an ‘either or’, how will you fare against sharp-witted and well versed lawyers?

Thanks, and you. My advice though is to add English Grammar and Literature to your subjects. It will help you impress both judges and juries instead of annoying them. If they think you’re Manuel from Fawlty Towers they’ll probably be hard to convince.

​

 

One Lefty answered thus:

The question was about a modern, full time, wage-paying job that you could have today, if rich capitalists never existed. As a dog trainer you would need a variety of implements and tools, since you would not be employable if you stood in a field bare ass naked. These would include clothes, shoes, hat, gloves, and according to this page, a clicker, a target stick or spoon, portable mat, collar and harness, treats, a long line and barriers. All these are manufactured by private companies and corporations, transported by truck, train or ship and sold in retail shops or stores. The number of private companies involved, including the mining corporations needed to mine the raw materials, trees harvested for the wood, petroleum industries for plastic, and all the companies needed to make the machines used to mine, transport, package, etc., comes up to hundreds or even thousands. Don’t believe me? Take just one item – the dog collar – and let’s check out the long list of capitalist corporations:



This doesn't include all the companies you need to provide all the trucks, mining machines, tools etc. needed in all those industries, and so on. Without capitalism you would be standing in a field of weeds, naked, with dirty fingernails and an empty stomach. That won’t lead to a full time modern wage-paying job by any stretch of the imagination.

 

The black and white nature of these questions make a real discussion about moving towards a more socialist model impossible. Capitalism is a recent invention of market forces. Prior to its arrival, people did have things for thousands of years so the idea that only capitalism can provide things for a market or economy is refuted by history. Markets have been around since the first cities evolved out of nomadic tribes discovering agriculture and having a surplus with which to trade. The real question you should be asking is about the morality of a purely capitalist system against that of a more socialist system. You do not define what you mean by these two terms nor give us any chance to explain how they both work within a government run for the benefit of its citizens. Pure capitalism does not exist so let's redefine it so that it serves all of us rather than just a few. That is what people who wish for more socialism intend, they are not asking us to be centrally planned with nationalized industries and equal incomes. They merely understand that the trajectory of our version of capitalism is moving in the wrong direction, one that is reminiscent of the Gilded Age which was destroyed by more socialism not more capitalism.

 

It is really just about economics. We have a better understanding of it, now.

Besides, no first world can exist without socialism; or the stability it provides to capital based markets.

 

I agree with you. The term is misused. What all of us are really talking about is redistribution of the wealth created by a society to protect the society from the timeless enemy of any society, the people deciding the system is rigged and they overthrow it either violently or peacefully. We think we are immune to this inevitable consequence but we are not, we are here today as a nation because we changed over time to make the lives of the everyday person better. Pure capitalism has no responsibility to the plight of the losers, it has no self-correcting mechanism to further greater goals than the individual or the corporation.

 

we really just need a fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage, unemployment compensation for being unemployed on an at-will basis in our at-will employment States, and Industrial Automation to help with social costs.

 

I would not say it like that. i would say that the world has made use of capitalism from the dawn of civilization.

Pure capitalism can only be stopped by government.

 

So, why not set that system up? Do not wait for Government, you do it.

 

Saying that over and over isn’t going to make it true. Capitalism started when the first caveman traded his stone axe for a pig, regardless of how that makes you want to bawl.

Once again, you’re blabbering nonsensically. Capitalism or trade isn’t defined by people ‘having’ things. Humans had things before they started trading. Trading those things is what defines capitalism. You can either trade them directly (as in an axe for a pig), or indirectly using money (Axe for money, money for pig). Either way it’s still capitalism.

Capitalism is pure and cannot be mixed with something else; only grouped with something else, in the same way water molecules temporarily bond to clay. The bonding does not change the water molecule into some kind of water/clay element. Capitalism by its nature attracts thieves. They want to steal money or goods. You will find thieves in a capitalist place.

Saying capitalism is ‘not pure’ is like saying of mud, ‘water is not pure’. You’re wrong. The water is pure, it’s just that in the case of mud, the water has been mixed with the dirt to make mud. In the case of modern America, socialist ideas (theft) have been mixed with capitalism to make a less effective, muddy capitalism. Remove the dirt and you will have pure capitalism.

 

I am a federalist and believe in Constitutional government.

 

Yet you couldn't name just one thing in your home that is not there as a result of capitalism, or name one modern, full time, wage-paying job that you could have today, if rich capitalists never existed? Why was that? Or can't you answer that, either?

Existing without theft is the easiest thing to do. The problem is how to exist with theft.

 

This is what is known as double-talk and rigmarole. It's what the Left garble on with when they have no answers.