What, exactly, is socialism? Again this discussion seems necessary.

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by Kode, Aug 19, 2018.

  1. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    What makes them too diffuse to adjudicate?
    By property owners do you mean the state? Or do you mean you and me?
     
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  2. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    The facts of objective physical reality. How can one person harmed by air pollution from millions of vehicles and factories identify a single source of that pollution to sue in court? How could such a court ever decide how to apportion the damages? You are talking utter, absurd nonsense. And you know it.
    I mean rich, greedy, privileged -- propertied -- parasites who use their property "rights" to legally abrogate everyone else's rights to life and liberty without making just compensation.
     
  3. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    And how does this relate to the state owning all land?
    So you're talking about the state. Got it.

    See, that's why I don't want one single entity to own every piece of land in the country. I oppose monopolies. I would prefer the land be owned by millions of individual citizens.
     
  4. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    True. Afraid the market fundamentalists, although aware of the concept of imperfect property rights, ignore it. Its easier to refer to a utopianism where markets automatically are consistent with freedom. Useful sheep for big business perhaps...
     
  5. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    First, it proves your beliefs are nothing but childish and indefensible "Meeza hatesa gubmint!" garbage. Second, it shows why all the positive externalities created by public provision of desirable services (including secure, exclusive land tenure) and infrastructure, and the community's provision of opportunities and amenities, cannot be traded consensually in the market or compensated by courts. If private landowners get to keep that publicly created value, they are stealing from the community. You want them to continue to steal from the community, and to be legally entitled to steal from the community. You are in favor of stealing, as long as it is landowners who get to do the stealing.
    Nope. Not at all. The state and the community it represents CREATE the land's value. The private landowning parasite does not. You just demand that the parasite be entitled to steal the value from the community that creates it. You advocate stealing. I'm not sure there is any clearer or simpler way to explain that fact to you.
    No it isn't. The reason you don't want government to secure and reconcile the equal individual rights of all to use land is that you want landowners to be legally privileged to own everyone else's rights to liberty.
    No you don't. You only oppose a monopoly that is accountable to the people who have to deal with it to survive. You are perfectly content with a monopoly that is entitled to abrogate people's rights without being either accountable to them or making just compensation.
    But you have already seen the proof that that abrogates everyone's rights without just compensation. So what you really want is for landowners to be legally entitled to rob, enslave and murder everyone else.
     
  6. Socratica

    Socratica Well-Known Member

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    Right...

    Capitalist make money by figuring out what people want and providing them goods and services... But can't shouldn't try to make money providing goods and services; otherwise, they will get greedy and capitalism will fail...

    What a paradox [sarcasm]

    There are plenty of good jobs out there. I honestly don't know what you're talking about.
     
  7. Socratica

    Socratica Well-Known Member

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    What are your examples of this?
     
  8. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    All property in privilege: land titles, IP monopolies, oil and mineral rights, broadcast spectrum allocations, limited corporate liability, etc.
     
  9. Socratica

    Socratica Well-Known Member

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    I don't see how any of these are an, "abrogation of people's individual rights to life and liberty by property owners." Perhaps you can explain.
     
    Last edited: Nov 15, 2019
  10. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Nope. The return to production tends to be competed away. Capitalists make money by owning legal entitlements to take it: land titles, bank licenses, IP monopolies, etc.

    "The most comfortable, but also the the most unproductive, way for a capitalist to increase his fortune is to put all his monies in sites and await that point in time when a society, hungering for land, has to pay his price." -- Andrew Carnegie
     
  11. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Huh?? People would otherwise be at liberty to use those things. What part of that are you having so much difficulty understanding?
     
  12. Socratica

    Socratica Well-Known Member

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    How are people prevented from using the services you've listed?
     
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  13. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    I don't buy your "the government owns all the land" argument. I don't like monopolies.
     
  14. sec

    sec Well-Known Member

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    from the OP who claims it to be "exploitation of the worker"

    If you agree to work for me for a specific wage and in turn, provide agreed upon labor, that is a contract. You work, i pay. We both meet our obligation

    What about me, the person who had pay-less months and ate through savings in order to grow the business? Was I being exploited?
     
  15. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    The obvious example is property in land. Landowners have routinely starved to death large numbers of people who could not afford to pay them for permission to live. The only reason they don't do it in our advanced capitalist democracies is that government intervenes massively in the economy to rescue the landless from enslavement by landowners.
     
  16. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    I don't agree with your proposal to have one single institution (the state) control all the land. I eschew state monopolies. I would rather that land be controlled by millions of individuals instead of a single monopoly.
     
  17. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    If not for the government-issued and -enforced landowner's title, others would be at liberty to use the land. If not for the government-issued and -enforced patent or copyright monopoly, others would be at liberty to use that knowledge and those ideas. Etc. You don't seem to understand what a right to liberty is.
     
  18. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    What about the right to the right to the liberty to have the right to liberty?
     
  19. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Yes, of course you do, because that what the state IS: the sovereign authority over a specific area of land. Your disingenuous denials don't alter the fact that secure, exclusive tenure cannot be maintained except by force, and the state is the only force that can do it consistently with security of individual rights.
    No you don't. You just want them to serve the narrow financial interests of landowners and other privileged parasites rather than secure and reconcile the equal individual rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor.
    But that can't work, even in theory, as history has demonstrated. Feudalism -- which is what you apparently advocate -- soon turns into monarchy as the strong take the land from the weak in a positive-feedback process.
     
  20. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Did that help you evade the facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil?
     
  21. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    By the police. Duh.
     
  22. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    That's not my argument, as you know. I simply identify the indisputable fact of objective physical reality that government administers possession and use of land because that is what government IS: the sovereign authority over a specific area of land. The only question is whether it will discharge that duty in the interest and to secure and reconcile the equal individual rights of all the people, or only in the narrow financial interest of a wealthy, idle, greedy, privileged, parasitic landowning elite. I want the former. You want the latter. Simple.
    Yes, of course you do. You like private monopolies to own people's rights to liberty.
     
  23. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    But as I said, I would prefer the state allow millions of people to administer bits of land than it administer all the land. I don't like monopolies.
    Um, I just said that I oppose state monopolies. You can't say I didn't say that.
    I'm not advocating feudalism, so, yeah no.
     
  24. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    Evil? Wow that's some debating right there.
     
  25. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Evil is deliberate, uncompensated abrogation of others' rights with intent to inflict injustice. That is what you advocate when you advocate landowning without just compensation to those who are harmed by it.
     

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