Seeker
4th September 2005, 04:39
I don't care to sign up for an account, but feel free to cut and paste.
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the US is no better than either Cuba or Venezuela regarding the welfare of it's citizens?
I'm not sure about Venezuela, but unless you are very wealthy, Cuba does quite a bit better regarding the welfare of its citizens.
http://tinypic.com/bijv9j.jpg
New Orleans' response to Katrina, a Cat 5
Truck and buses carried men, women and children, as well as pets and even chickens to shelters set up by the government in nearby boarding schools. Early in the week over 300,000 boarding school students were sent home to make room for the evacuees.
Cuba (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/12/world/main642832.shtml)'s response to Ivan, a Cat 3
The communism part has resulted in about 95% of the misery in that equation and the free market part, when combined with republican democracy
Communism has never existed.
There have been authoritarian bureaucracys that have failed at State Capitalism (where the State owns all the capital) with a planed economy (USSR, China under Mao).
We have a couple of fledgling mixtures of State (see above) and laissez-faire Capitalism (law of the jungle determines ownership of capital) with a regulated market (Cuba, China, the Stans), some more authoritarian than others.
And it seems President Chavez of Venezuela is experimenting with some kind of Social Capitalism, where profits go to workers, not investors.
Why must a democracy be a republican democracy? That is pure ethno-centrism.
colombiano
6th September 2005, 19:28
Anyone who has time to pick aprt this guys arguement from thread noted above please feel free to do so. I have a Thesis statement to write. Than to worry about argueing with a right wing nut job. Here is a little more of his hyperbole.
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Perhaps most interesting is the dismal view of human nature applied across the board, a belief that people will always act selfishly and that this is itself human nature.
This appears as basically the foundation of your love of capitalism and hatred of communism.
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You simply could not possibly be more wrong on this point. For starters, your view requires that you equate acting in what one considers to be his/her own best interests to selfishness, when they are not the same thing. Certainly, some folks have selfish notions of what is in their own best interest, but many also have the notion that living and trading with honestly, compassion, sympathy, respect and fairness is in their own best interests, as well as the best interests of others. Nor does acting in one's best interests preclude acting selflessly. It all depends on what the individual deems "best interests" to be.
True free market capitalists celebrate the MUTUAL prosperity that free trade brings, because one of the great beauties of free market capitalism is that one party does not have to lose in order for the other to win and another is that having more, happier and increasingly prosperous clients is desirable. In fact, the freer trade is between people and nations, the more prosperous all involved tend to be.
Contrast that with communism, socialism, fascism and any other system where the government decides who wins and loses and is in the business of deciding outcomes. That path can and does only lead to economic disaster, as it always has, and it is a path america has been dangerously close to going down for far too long.
Having said all the above, the best characteristic of free market capitalism, and the main reason it is so radically superior to anything else ever devised, is that free market capitalism doesn't require any benevolence from ANYONE, including government, in order to work and to benefit all parties involved. All it requires is at least two people who want something the other has and an arrival at mutually agreed upon terms of trade.
I don't have to like you, or even know you, but I will do my best to give you what you want, at a price you're willing to pay, because it is advantageous for me to do so.
It really is that simple, and that beautiful.
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'Tis a sad world inhabited by equally sad creatures in which you dwell if appearances are true.
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'Tis a WONDERFUL world, inhabited by ever more free, happy, prosperous people in which I dwell. The doom and gloom, as well as the dismal view of people and human nature resides predominantly with the left, as demonstrated by their unwillingness to let individuals make important decisions for themselves and by their penchant for social engineering.
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Only in individualism and individualistic pursuits powered by greed can be found happiness in this world...so much so that greed and pursuit of wealth, even to the extent of the creation of more "disparity of income," as you write so cheerfully is the endgame.
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You completely misunderstand the foundations and constructs of free market capitalism if the above is how you view it.
Free market capitalism in no whay precludes, prohibits, hinders or even discourages group thinking, group pursuits or group-anything-else that people might wish to embark upon in the pursuit of happiness, world betterment or whatever pursuit it might be. The only requirement free market capitalism puts on it is that joining said groups be VOLUNTARY and that individual rights and freedoms are not violated in the process.
As to disparity of income, I have yet to see a cogent argument as to why disparity of income matters at all, much less as to why it is necessarily a bad thing. I would think that for folks such as yourself, who I know full well put the most emphasis on helping the poor and disadvantaged, the only question that need be answered is whether or not the economic well being of those on the bottom end of the spectrum is rising or not, if things are getting better for the poor or not, as opposed to how much they make compared to the super rich.
I also have yet to see any evidence that any country has seen long term benefit to those on the bottom end of the economic spectrum by lowering the income of those at the top of the spectrum. In fact, if one cares to examine history on this matter, I think one will find that when the incomes of the top end of the spectrum drop significantly, whether through economic ups and downs, or artificially so through government mandate, so does the income of everyone else.
Wealth simply is not a zero sum commodity and I've seen no evidence that the rich getting richer in any way hinders the poor from getting richer.
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Off the top, though, I would argue that what we have seen far too frequently in our system is NOT benevolent voluntary cooperation that benefits the rich and poor alike, but profiteering and opportunism that continue to dramatically increase the disparity between the rich and the poor, and that our system privileges wealth, making it easy for this profiteering and opportunism to take place.
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Who gets to decide what is and is not benevolent? Why does the system itself have to be benevolent anyway?
"Profiteering" and "opportunism" are pretty broad statements. If you'd give me some examples, I will address them.
Again, what the hell difference does the disparity of income make for the poor? If the rich made less, do you think it would automatically follow that the poor would make more? If so, please show me some evidence that this would happen.
Please define "privileges wealth" for me. Do you mean the wealthy can do/buy more, or that the wealthy have more rights than others.
If it's the first, that's the whole point of creating and accumulating wealth. If it's the second, to the extent that it is true, it is the fault of government, and therefore the voting public, that those special rules/laws are in place, not free market capitalism.
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Now, I don't know if there is necessarily a better system, but I think that universal access to basic human needs (food, water, health care, shelter) is or should be a fundamental right in a democratic society.
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I don't agree entirely with that, at least I likely don't agree with it to the degree you do, but free market capitalism doesn't preclude any of those things. In fact a largely free market capitalist system is the only system ever devised that has any realistic chance of both providing for those needs and still maintaining economic growth and prosperity(depending, of course, on how it's gone about) in the long term.
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I am willing to concede that the accumulation of individual wealth could allow for BETTER access to these fundamental needs, but I think that economic barriers to these very fundamental needs are inherently wrong. We have these barriers in our system.
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Please cite some of these barriers for me and how free market capitalism is at fault for them being there.
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I would like to see a gov't that provided these essential needs, then left a great deal else alone. Unfortunately, our gov't seems to be very involved with a lot of inessential issues while leaving these essential needs at the mercy of the market.
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Far worse than that, our govenment is going against both our constitution and free market principles by favoring one group of americans over others, whether it by by giving preferential tax/regulatory treatment to certain corporations or organizations, large or small, or by penalizing other groups with those same regulations/taxes.
I disagree that our government is leaving essential needs to the mercy of the market, as our welfare/entitlement/medicare/medicaid and about a bazillion other government "aid" programs testify.
Edited by: jws at: 9/4/05 6:05:10 pm
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You are correct, the system doesn't have to be benevolent ... but I think TJ pretty clearly indicated that it was one of the goals of our gov't when he included the pursuit of happiness in his essential rights bit.
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I don't think he indicated that at all. The "pursuit of happiness" is listed as one of the inalienable rights endowed on all men by their creator. There's nothing in there about govrnment providing that happiness.
The fact is that the vast majority of the founding fathers rightly feared the inherent tyranny of government and mostly wanted government to just do it's job of regulating the economy, policing and settling disputes and protecting the country, but otherwise staying the hell out of people's lives.
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Re: Profiteering and opportunism: Enron, Halliburton, Tyco.
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What Enron did was a question of breaking the law and was prosecuted as such.
Halliburton certainly has some questions to answer on overcharging, but otherwise they are operating within the law. Again, if you don't like the rules/regulations/laws they are allowed to operate under, that's a criticism of government, and therefore the american electorate, not capitalism.
What Tyco did was a question of breaking the law, and was prosecuted as such.
That there are companies that break the law is no more a legitimate indictment of free market capitalism than the fact that there are some people who break the law is a legitimate indictment of republican democracy and if you take a good look at socialist countries like France, or communist countries like China, you will find the graft, corruption, profiteering and general cheating to be worse than what we have, not better.
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To blame the voting public is ludicrous in the extreme, as the only candidates who ever face the nation are already so indebted to "capital" in the broad sense that it's not a choice between capital and non-capital, but a choice between two candidates who are both totally compromised by capital.
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Really? Who's fault is that? Are you saying that the american electorate can't vote in whomever they damn well please to whatever office they want him/her in?
You've got a scoop there!
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Re: basic rights: I don't think you understand my point. If those basic rights cost money (which I assume you'll agree is an essential underpinning of capitalism), and some can't afford them, then they are not available to a segment of the population.
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You're correct, I don't understand your point and I certainly don't agree that having to pay money to get basic rights is an essential underpinning, or any element at all, of free market capitalism.
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Re: Barriers: Money.
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Money is not a barrier, it is, in fact, the exact opposite. It is a tool by which already existing barriers can be surmounted.
If there were no money, someone who has no food would still be starving, there would just be one less method available to remedy the situation.
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Here I categorically and vehemently disagree. If the "entitlement" programs you so casually reference actually met the needs of the Americans who need them, then you'd be correct, but there are thousands of Americans in desperate need who don't fit the various profiles used to allocate those funds, and are forced to choose between food and medicine or the like.
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That is not a function either of capitalism itself, or of government leaving things to the mercy of the market, because the government is TRYING to feed, cloth, shelter and care for the folks who need it. It is, rather, a function of the waste, inefficiency, corruption, duplication of effort and general incompetence and bonheadedness inherent in any bureacracy, but especially inherent in government bureacracy.
If you need further evidence of that incompetence, take a look at New Orleans and Mississippi.
Edited by: jws at: 9/4/05 10:24:50 pm
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Our society has, in my opinion, placed too high a value on selfishness.
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I agree completely. From welfare to entitlements to affirmative action to government subsidies to medicare/medicaid to pork barrel projects to labor unions to tax breaks for people who don't pay taxes to public education, &c, &c, &c, America has been slowly falling into the vicious "the world, and particularly the government, owes me a living" type of selfishness that has so decimated socialist europe by eroding their self-reliance and replacing it with the expectation that it's someone else's duty to provide for them.
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Materialism, if indeed a natural impulse as is your assertion, should be battled in the same manner in which we as human beings battle other urges that are harmful to society.
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You'll need to help me on this. I've reread the entire thread and as far as I can see, the only one who's mentioned materialism prior to this mention, is you. I certainly could have missed it, though, so please cite the assertion for me.
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If this urge remains unrestained, if it is heralded as a positive for society, then we will continue to follow along a path of division, decay, and immorality, caring nothing for the least among us, nor for those at junctures in their lives when hard times have overtaken them.
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Fortunately, free market capitalism in no way precludes or inhibits society from reining in materialism, if, despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary, materialism is indeed the enormous problem you see it to be.
The true danger, the urge historically most certain to bring america to ruin is the urge to take the easy way out, the urge to trust and depend on government for our well being, the urge toward the nanny state and the willingness to sacrifice liberty for imagined security and well-being. That is the urge that must be battled as mortally dangerous to society.
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Indeed, we will foster among our people the sort of attitude that the poor deserve their plight and that in fact being poor is itself evidence enough of behavior deserving of exclusion and shunning, even mockery.
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Do you have any historical evidence that such views/actions are any more prevalent now than back through american history, or that it is any more prevalent here than elsewhere in the free world?
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But if a society marks as its national pathway one which finds positive value in the uncontrained pursuit of wealth to the degree of greedy selfishness and ostentatious and pretentious accumulation far and away beyond the necessities, those same necessities not shared by their fellow humans and citizens I add, by lifting up as virtuous and even "natural" the surrender to the base, immoral and merciless, well such liberal philosophies in regard to the accumulation of capital will result in a nation that produces the sort of situations that we see revealed in New Orleans and is likely inching in the direction of scenes such as might be glimpses in some of the poorer barrios in Guatemala City, Tegucigalpa, and Port au Prince.
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I agree. Fortunately, capitalism neither requires nor embodies any of those things and our society marks no such national pathway. Our society, in fact, generally disparages greedy selfishness, whether it be a capitalist or socialist practicing/espousing it.
Of course, our society TOLERATES greedy selfishness, so long as it does not violate the rights of others, as it tolerates much other stupid, counterproductive behavior, because greedy selfishness, per se, does not violate the rights of others, because greedy and selfish is largely in the eye of the beholder, because whether any individual is greedy and selfish is none of society's business and because tolerance is the hallmark of a free society.
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