Unsustainable America

[Hegemonicretribution]

It seems that most of the reaction against any country that ever professed to be "socialist" or "communist" (regardless of whether or not this had any bearing on reality) is based on the assumtion that they are not American enough.

Cuba was bad, because it didn't have such and such, like America, or the USSR was bad because America has more...whatever.

I am not talking about social policy here, and as most right/left wingers that have ever read anything on this site know, most members see America as oppressive, as well as any "nation" you care to contrast them with.

This is therefore about economics, and in part the American dream. The problem is that, firstly, the dream that is presented is not attainable by the majority of people in America, let alone world wide. Secondly, that sustaining this for the few is not something that can be done indefinitely, and is not justified temporarily.

It may be true that American's enjoy certain economic freedoms, and the benifits of a certain level of consumerism, when taken holisitically. However this is to the detriment of billions of people world wide. If all children received even an education as poor as America's, then the "benifits" of child labour to the consumer would be lost.

Some may be against the lives of excess in America, although I don't necessarily have as much of a problem with this, as I do with the effects of it on the rest of the world.

I am not criticising people for having a nice car, or house in which they can raise their kids, but I will draw attention to the fact that the rest of the world cannot be judged by this standard. Not everyone can live like this, under capitalism at least. So to those pro-Americans that justify their attitude to other nations based on the standards of America, please remember that if everywhere was at the same level, the planet would collapse in less than a week.

This is not tailored towards the self proclaimed "anarcho-capitalists" as such, but more towards defenders of the American ideology, if there are any. Any comments?

[Publius]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10 2006, 01:33 PM






I'll take a crack at it.


It seems that most of the reaction against any country that ever professed to be "socialist" or "communist" (regardless of whether or not this had any bearing on reality) is based on the assumtion that they are not American enough.

Maybe it's implied in other's arguments, but in mine.




Cuba was bad, because it didn't have such and such, like America, or the USSR was bad because America has more...whatever.


Well, to be fair, if you said "The USSR was bad because America has more freedom" you would be absolutely correct.



I am not talking about social policy here, and as most right/left wingers that have ever read anything on this site know, most members see America as oppressive, as well as any "nation" you care to contrast them with.

And that's why I think many of their arguments are absurd on their face.

America's done plenty of bad shit, but this villification, I think, is absurd.

If America were really this evil and powerful, wouldn't it completely control everything already?

WHy does America have so many problems, if it indeed is that powerful?

It seems contradictory to me.

If America is so good at extorting the world, why does it fuck up so often?

It's just evil enough to be the purpotrator of all the world's problems, but not good enough to fix it's own problems.

How convenient for the sake of your arguments, huh?


This is therefore about economics, and in part the American dream. The problem is that, firstly, the dream that is presented is not attainable by the majority of people in America, let alone world wide. Secondly, that sustaining this for the few is not something that can be done indefinitely, and is not justified temporarily.


I don't think you can prove either of these assertions.



It may be true that American's enjoy certain economic freedoms, and the benifits of a certain level of consumerism, when taken holisitically. However this is to the detriment of billions of people world wide.

Really?

So people around the world are getting poorer? Is that your argument?



If all children received even an education as poor as America's, then the "benifits" of child labour to the consumer would be lost.

So are you saying that children around the world are bccoming less educated?

I also fail to see how your second clause follows from your first.


Some may be against the lives of excess in America, although I don't necessarily have as much of a problem with this, as I do with the effects of it on the rest of the world.

Such as?



I am not criticising people for having a nice car, or house in which they can raise their kids, but I will draw attention to the fact that the rest of the world cannot be judged by this standard. Not everyone can live like this, under capitalism at least. So to those pro-Americans that justify their attitude to other nations based on the standards of America, please remember that if everywhere was at the same level, the planet would collapse in less than a week.

Hmm.

Fallacious.

Your point fails to take into account the limit to weatlh, predicated not by 'american capitalism' but by lack of resources and lack of production.

We simply don't have enough stuff to go around, maybe period.

Simple calculation shows that if you spread all the current wealth of the world around, everyone would have about 3k.

That's bad.

Is it worth it to 'chop off the mountains' to 'fill in the valleys'?

Maybe, if you look at it from your perspective, but not if you look at rationally.

Basically, this income inequality encourages the creation of wealth, which is the only way to make one person richer without making another poorer.

Communism kills this, thus your point is not one.

[Atlas Swallowed]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10 2006, 08:56 PM

If America were really this evil and powerful, wouldn't it completely control everything already?

WHy does America have so many problems, if it indeed is that powerful?

It seems contradictory to me.

If America is so good at extorting the world, why does it fuck up so often?
Corruption and infighting. The more corruption the less effective. The war in Iraq and the handling of the Katrina disaster are good examples of corruption in action. Pretty ugly in both cases.

The US government is a tool of the corporate elite whose interests may contradict each others. I would not say America is evil as I would not say a weapon is evil. The evil is those who use the weapon. The real power is on Wall St. not on Pennsylvania Ave.

[Publius]

Corruption and infighting. The more corruption the less effective. The war in Iraq and the handling of the Katrina disaster are good examples of corruption in action. Pretty ugly in both cases.

Nice theory.

What's backing it up?



The US government is a tool of the corporate elite whose interests may contradict each others. I would not say America is evil as I would not say a weapon is evil. The evil is those who use the weapon. The real power is on Wall St. not on Pennsylvania Ave.

Give me some examples.

[Atlas Swallowed]

Thank you. Common sense and logic is backing it up. The handling of the disaster after hurricane Katrina is a good example of corruption. We go to war with Iraq for oil and war profiteers. We send most of the equipment and national guard soldiers to Iraq that would normally be used for disaster relief. The head of FEMA is not given the position because of merit and is totally inept at handling the job.

A good example of government infighting is the CIA vs the DEA(The FBI and CIA have a long history of not working well together also for various reasons). The CIA brings drugs into the nation while the DEA tries to prevent drugs being brought in.

As for corporate interest simply competetion.

Site with various links and articles dealing with the subject.

http://www.wethepeople.la/ciadrugs.htm

"The Corporation" is a great documentary that explains corporate control of the US government far better than I could. Here are some links to articles and sites dealing(not all left-wing for your benefit :)) with the subject if you are interested. I stated my beliefs in the previous post, from what I have seen and read I stand by them.





http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Controll...rporations.html (http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Controlling_Corporations/ControllingCorporations.html)

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0407/dailyUpdate.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard66.html

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/aug2003/preo-a19_prn.shtml

[Publius]

Originally posted by Atlas [email protected] 11 2006, 07:18 PM




Thank you. Common sense and logic is backing it up. The handling of the disaster after hurricane Katrina is a good example of corruption. We go to war with Iraq for oil and war profiteers. We send most of the equipment and national guard soldiers to Iraq that would normally be used for disaster relief. The head of FEMA is not given the position because of merit and is totally inept at handling the job.

I don't see how all of this is 'corruption' though.

Incompetence, yes, but corruption, no.



A good example of government infighting is the CIA vs the DEA(The FBI and CIA have a long history of not working well together also for various reasons). The CIA brings drugs into the nation while the DEA tries to prevent drugs being brought in.

Again, not corruption.



"The Corporation" is a great documentary that explains corporate control of the US government far better than I could. Here are some links to articles and sites dealing(not all left-wing for your benefit :)) with the subject if you are interested. I stated my beliefs in the previous post, from what I have seen and read I stand by them.


Seen it.

Still have it on my computer. May watch it again some time.

But I must be honest, I certainly didn't think it was 'slam dunk' case.

You could take any social structure and make a movie about how it sucks. It's not a difficult thing to do.

I'll read the articles.

[Publius]

Note: I'm against corporate welfare and collusion as well.

And certainly there are cases where the government serves corporate interests, many of them.

But I also think that the government is the one who is ultimately in charge.

As bad, and as malfeasant as it can be, it still controls things rather well, and it still holds sway over corporations.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Publius
Basically, this income inequality encourages the creation of wealth, which is the only way to make one person richer without making another poorer.

"Wealth-creation" is a very fashionable "buzzword" these days...it probably appears on almost every page of The Economist, for example.

The implication is rather oddly metaphysical. As if wealth is "created" by some tiny portion of humanity while everyone else "just consumes".

It strikes me that this phrase "wealth creation" is an attempt to dignify -- or even "spiritualize" -- what used to simply be called capital investment.

If you already have more wealth than you need to meet your basic consumption needs, then you can use the excess to "create more wealth"...or at least attempt to do that.

Traditionally, this was done by financing the creation of additional means of production. That is, ways by which some additional "piece" of "raw nature" could be converted into commodities that humans could use. In the last analysis, this is done by human labor, of course -- though that labor is directed by the investor.

This now seems to be less and less the case in the "old" capitalist countries -- Europe and North America. There are still a lot of useful things being produced...so wealth is still being "created". But much of what these countries economically "do" not only does not "create wealth" but actually destroys wealth.

Consider the vast and growing financial derivatives sector, for example. This is no more "wealth creation" than a casino; there are "winners" and "losers" but nothing gets made from this furious "activity".

In fact, this applies to all of the "speculative" sectors of the economy. If you purchase real estate on the premise that its market value will increase over time, you may make a bundle or lose your shirt...but in either case, no "wealth" has been "created" by you unless you build something that's useful.

Then consider the enormous burden of security. Larger police forces, more prisons, more private security firms, and a permanent military swollen to cancerous proportions. Here and there, almost by accident, something useful emerges (like the internet)...but almost all of it is entirely wasted. Even the "security" that is promised is rarely actually delivered.

Most of the people on this board are of the opinion that the U.S. went to war in Iraq to loot and plunder Iraqi oil reserves...but, ironically, oil production in Iraq continues to fall and is now well below what Iraq was producing under Saddam Hussein.

It's pretty obvious what will happen if the U.S. invades Iran...yet another catastrophic fall in oil production in the Middle East.

In capitalist theory, the resultant hyper-profits derived from the shortages in the Middle East will provide an incentive for the oil mega-corporations to drill for more oil in other locations...a "wealth-creating" option.

But will they do it? When all they really have to do is "sit tight" and watch "the money roll in". (If pressed, they can always fall back on the "peak oil" scam.)

Consider further the massive advertising industry...which consumes many billions of dollars every year.

To what useful purpose? Rarely the simple transfer of useful information about a particular product to a potential consumer.

Instead, it's almost all propaganda...in the "bad" sense of that word. It may indeed "stimulate" economic activity...but does it "create wealth"?

Not in any sense that I can see.

The argument for communism in this context is that communism provides an incentive for "wealth creation" that capitalism cannot...we will create additional wealth because everyone will benefit.

That is, production will be for use and not for status enhancement, financial speculations (gambling), military aggression, mass incarcerations, or propaganda.

Those increasingly prominent characteristics of "late" capitalism will be abolished. Just removing those enormous and still growing "fetters on the means of production" should generate an explosion of "wealth-creating" activities.

Not because someone can become individually wealthier (though that will be the outcome) but because people will want to "walk tall"...and those who do the most useful stuff will be the ones who walk the "tallest".

I know...it's hard to picture it in your mind. We are so used to living in an era where "high status" people are parasitic dumbasses or avaricious hustlers that any other way is almost "unthinkable".

Well, communists can "think it"...and it only remains to be seen if we can do it. :)

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Atlas Swallowed]

How much control and influence corporations have on the government is subjective and would take a more intelligent person than myself to present a slam dunk case if it could be proven, but the amount they do makes me very uncomfortable. Yeah I agree with you that incompetance is a great factor. Haliburton and other milatary contractors are a good example of corruption though(and probably some incompetence as well). I wonder how many soldiers met thier demise because of faulty equipment. The number would be alot lower if they were held accountable for thier actions, not that I am losing any sleep over it, not a patriot and the only troops I support are the ones that I am related to or friends with.

You could probably make a movie on anything and how it sucks :) I do not believe their is some worldwide conspiracy but so much power and wealth concintrated in the hands of so few has to take alot of effort to maintain and unfortunatly alot of people suffer and die as a result. I see government as a tool to maintain that power and that is why I am an Anarchist. I do not believe in survival of the fittest and people should use thier strengths to assist one another that is why I support Socialism. We all choose are idealogy on different beliefs, expeirences and knowledge but I think most of us believe thier is alot of room for improvment in the way the world is run.

[Tungsten]

redstar2000

The argument for communism in this context is that communism provides an incentive for "wealth creation" that capitalism cannot...we will create additional wealth because everyone will benefit.
If it's true that wealth can be "created", then Marx's exploitation theory doesn't have much stand on.

That is, production will be for use and not for status enhancement, financial speculations (gambling), military aggression, mass incarcerations, or propaganda.
After reading your "interesting" website, I should image it'll all be spent on constructing a police state.
You complain about money spent on advertising as being "waste", but what about the amount of resources you intend to waste on stamping out "unauthorised opinions (http://www.redstar2000papers.com/theory.php?subaction=showfull&id=1118373842&archive=&cnshow=headlines&start_from=&ucat=&)"?

Not because someone can become individually wealthier (though that will be the outcome) but because people will want to "walk tall"...and those who do the most useful stuff will be the ones who walk the "tallest".
They tried that in the Soviet Union. It didn't work.

[Publius]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12 2006, 12:38 PM










"Wealth-creation" is a very fashionable "buzzword" these days...it probably appears on almost every page of The Economist, for example.

The implication is rather oddly metaphysical. As if wealth is "created" by some tiny portion of humanity while everyone else "just consumes".


I don't this opinion is cognizant of what wealth creation actually implies.

Wealth creation is a natural consequence of free trade.

Wealth (Value) is created every time a trade or transfer is made.

Anyone can create wealth.


It strikes me that this phrase "wealth creation" is an attempt to dignify -- or even "spiritualize" -- what used to simply be called capital investment.

If you already have more wealth than you need to meet your basic consumption needs, then you can use the excess to "create more wealth"...or at least attempt to do that.

As opposed to what? Role around in it? Stuff it in a mattress?

The way things worth, investing money has ancillary benefits. Hiding the money in a vault doesn't.


Traditionally, this was done by financing the creation of additional means of production. That is, ways by which some additional "piece" of "raw nature" could be converted into commodities that humans could use. In the last analysis, this is done by human labor, of course -- though that labor is directed by the investor.



Consider the vast and growing financial derivatives sector, for example. This is no more "wealth creation" than a casino; there are "winners" and "losers" but nothing gets made from this furious "activity".

Information transferal.

The funcction of price in any market is information transferal.



In fact, this applies to all of the "speculative" sectors of the economy. If you purchase real estate on the premise that its market value will increase over time, you may make a bundle or lose your shirt...but in either case, no "wealth" has been "created" by you unless you build something that's useful.


'Wealth'? Maybe. Value? Certainly.

The value was the possibility of wealth, which is what the stock market is about. You aren't really trading wealth, just the possibility of wealth. That's how the system works.

Purchasing real-estate in that fashion creates value for both the buyer and seller, expresses information about the housing market, and can thus create wealth.



Then consider the enormous burden of security. Larger police forces, more prisons, more private security firms, and a permanent military swollen to cancerous proportions. Here and there, almost by accident, something useful emerges (like the internet)...but almost all of it is entirely wasted. Even the "security" that is promised is rarely actually delivered.

This now seems to be less and less the case in the "old" capitalist countries -- Europe and North America. There are still a lot of useful things being produced...so wealth is still being "created". But much of what these countries economically "do" not only does not "create wealth" but actually destroys wealth.

I would agree that a lot of those things don't create wealth, and actually do destroy wealth.

Prisons, for instance.

But I hardly find this to be an indictment of my system, or what I propose.



Most of the people on this board are of the opinion that the U.S. went to war in Iraq to loot and plunder Iraqi oil reserves...but, ironically, oil production in Iraq continues to fall and is now well below what Iraq was producing under Saddam Hussein.

But who is it going to?

We can 'cut prodution' but still increase 'our take'.

I'm not saying this is what's happening, I don't know, just saying it's possible.


It's pretty obvious what will happen if the U.S. invades Iran...yet another catastrophic fall in oil production in the Middle East.

And possibly a worldwide recession/depression.


In capitalist theory, the resultant hyper-profits derived from the shortages in the Middle East will provide an incentive for the oil mega-corporations to drill for more oil in other locations...a "wealth-creating" option.

But will they do it? When all they really have to do is "sit tight" and watch "the money roll in". (If pressed, they can always fall back on the "peak oil" scam.)

It's a good question.

In fact, a very good question.

It's why I'm thinking about considering myself a 'geolibertarian': http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/tma68/geo-faq.htm#geolib

Oil, a basic natural resource and commodity, doesn't really fit within basic market laws, because it's supply is finite: monopoly power is held.

Oil Companies do have an incentive to restrict supply, thus they could be considered monopolies.




Consider further the massive advertising industry...which consumes many billions of dollars every year.

To what useful purpose? Rarely the simple transfer of useful information about a particular product to a potential consumer.

Instead, it's almost all propaganda...in the "bad" sense of that word. It may indeed "stimulate" economic activity...but does it "create wealth"?

Not in any sense that I can see.

This is a pretty tendentious line of argument here, because I'm just going to state that it is 'wealth creation' and 'information transferal' and you're going to make a value judgement about the wealth creation and information, saying it's false wealth and false information, and I'm going to disagree and say it fills a market want. And then we'll disagree and that will be that.

Prescient, aren't I?


The argument for communism in this context is that communism provides an incentive for "wealth creation" that capitalism cannot...we will create additional wealth because everyone will benefit.

Is that an 'incentive'?

I don't think so.


That is, production will be for use and not for status enhancement,

Vanity is human nature. People will always seek status. It's part of society.

To think that they won't use goods for this purpose is hopelessly naive.



financial speculations (gambling),

Speculation serves a personal purpose and a market purpose.



military aggression, mass incarcerations, or propaganda.

And there will be pixies and elves and we'll all dance around a big fire of dreams!

Sign me up!


Those increasingly prominent characteristics of "late" capitalism will be abolished. Just removing those enormous and still growing "fetters on the means of production" should generate an explosion of "wealth-creating" activities.

What an absurd line of reasoning.

We can 'remove the fetters' without becoming communistic.

In fact, a number of Western countries dont' have the 'fetters' of massive prison systems and armies and their growth rates are much lower than ours.

What incentive do people have to create wealth under communism? To create more?



Not because someone can become individually wealthier (though that will be the outcome) but because people will want to "walk tall"...and those who do the most useful stuff will be the ones who walk the "tallest".

The only problem is, 'tall' and 'short' people will be exactly the same.

Unless there's some sort of heirarchy the 'tall' could dominate...




I know...it's hard to picture it in your mind. We are so used to living in an era where "high status" people are parasitic dumbasses or avaricious hustlers that any other way is almost "unthinkable".

I think that's what 'status' entails: vainglory and malfeasance.

Using it as your sole incentive in 'communism' is, I think, a perverse joke.

'Be vainglorious by being communalistic'.

What a condtradiction.



Well, communists can "think it"...and it only remains to be seen if we can do it. :)

Good luck.

[red team]

The argument for communism in this context is that communism provides an incentive for "wealth creation" that capitalism cannot...we will create additional wealth because everyone will benefit.
If it's true that wealth can be "created", then Marx's exploitation theory doesn't have much stand on.

Wealth can be created, but the Capitalist system does it in a round about way. What is important is value not material wealth. The scarcer a commodity is the more valuable it is. "Precious" metals and gems are only precious (valuable) because they're scarce. If a large cache of diamonds were to be discovered that would be a very bad thing for jewelry merchants because value would decrease. Same thing applies to products made from labour. If products and services produced were to become cheaper than the value of labour that went into making them businesses would have to destroy goods and cut back on services to maintain value, otherwise go bankrupt. Material wealth is secondary to the importance of value. The inverse of this is when businesses decrease costs to decrease value so as to sell more from mass marketing. The problem with this is that the way to decrease cost is to produced more units per a given unit of labour time while maintaining the same wage per unit of labour time, so that the value of the product can be at a level where profits could still be made. You still run into the value problem because if you maintain the same labour cost while increasing production there would not be enough money in circulation to buy back what you've produced in the first place unless you print more money in which case this leads to money itself being less in value and therefore needed in increased amounts to exchange for items that are more valuable. The official economic term for this is inflation. The problem is unsolvable unless you invade other countries and force their population to essentially work for free (imperialism) while the population in the "home" country engages in unproductive work in exchange for value created in the colonies.



That is, production will be for use and not for status enhancement, financial speculations (gambling), military aggression, mass incarcerations, or propaganda.
After reading your "interesting" website, I should image it'll all be spent on constructing a police state.
You complain about money spent on advertising as being "waste", but what about the amount of resources you intend to waste on stamping out "unauthorised opinions (http://www.redstar2000papers.com/theory.php?subaction=showfull&id=1118373842&archive=&cnshow=headlines&start_from=&ucat=&)"?


If differing opinions are of the majority then there's no need to stamp them out since there won't be any support for Communism in the first place so there won't be any support for a revolution to overturn the present status quo and the small minority advocating it would be regarded as idealist crackpots. If differing opinions are of the minority then there might be a requirement for a small police presence as would be the case now, but probably less so because those who are advocating a return to the past in opposition to the views held by the majority can be regarded as silly relics of the bad old days and nobody would care. In either case a police state would have been irrelevant. Police state tactics are more a sign of weakness in a regime than of strength.



Not because someone can become individually wealthier (though that will be the outcome) but because people will want to "walk tall"...and those who do the most useful stuff will be the ones who walk the "tallest".
They tried that in the Soviet Union. It didn't work.


It didn't work? the Soviet Union when it existed was a scientific-technological superpower rivaling the western powers. The launching of Sputnik shocked the U.S. enough to spur it on to engage in their own space program, otherwise NASA would have probably never have existed.

It failed because it was a top down bureaucratic system. Incentive for technical inovation was only encouraged in military affairs and discouraged everywhere else. Workers had no democratic say in organizing their own production. This was inevitable because revolution happened in a backward country where most of the population were semi-literate dumbasses so expecting them to be first-rate technicians and scientists is impossible. Having shelter and not starving to death was an improvement so innovation was far off the table.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Publius
The value was the possibility of wealth, which is what the stock market is about. You aren't really trading wealth, just the possibility of wealth. That's how the system works.

Purchasing real-estate in that fashion creates value for both the buyer and seller, expresses information about the housing market, and can thus create wealth.

But the "possibility" of wealth is not wealth. You can't eat it or drink it or live in it or drive it or do anything with it at all.

Information may or may not be "wealth"...depending on both its content and its accuracy.

If I learn that oil is "here" and not "someplace else unknown", that's "worth something".

If I learn that my neighbor's house just sold for $500,000, that may "make me feel wealthy" but doesn't add a cubic foot to the area of my house.

In these and other remarks in your post, I think you are hinting at the existence of what Marx called "fictitious capital"...or what business journalists often call "paper profits".

It doesn't represent real wealth...like a building or a road or even a useful data-base -- things that can be used.

It's just "there"...for a little while.

Marx said that the demonstrated fictional nature of such capital was demonstrated in business recessions...a periodic "correction" in which capitalism wiped out all the fictional capital (or what would now be called "inflated values") leaving only the real wealth untouched.


This is a pretty tendentious line of argument here, because I'm just going to state that it is 'wealth creation' and 'information transferal' and you're going to make a value judgment about the wealth creation and information, saying it's false wealth and false information, and I'm going to disagree and say it fills a market want. And then we'll disagree and that will be that.

Prescient, aren't I?

Well, if you have determined your disagreement in advance, then there's hardly any need for me to respond.

I've already said that I don't disagree with the contention that some information represents real wealth.

It may well be that you take seriously much of the "information" that the business media publish about the economy. I would advise you to disregard 99.999% of it...but it's your money. :lol:


Vanity is human nature. People will always seek status. It's part of society.

To think that they won't use goods for this purpose is hopelessly naive.

I quite agree that humans will always "seek status". But your assertion that this "must" be done by display of possessions is historically naive.

Indeed, some have achieved "high status" by the ostentatious renunciation of possessions.


And there will be pixies and elves and we'll all dance around a big fire of dreams!

Sign me up!

Such extravagant "refutations" suggest a bit of intellectual desperation on your part.

Not all that uncommon in this forum, though. When pressed, the defenders of capitalism here often resort to the rhetoric of anti-utopianism.

Which is curious, when you stop and think about it. Instead of stoutly maintaining that "capitalism really works" -- in the face of growing evidence to the contrary -- they fall back on "communism will never work"...something unknown at this point.

Fair enough...it might indeed "never work". I think it's worth trying for...but who can credibly claim to see the future?

What seems increasingly clear to me and even seems to be worrying the pro-capitalists here is that what we have is looking bad!

And while there is much talk of "reform" among the leading economic and political circles of capitalism, nothing they've come up with so far seems to be helping matters any.

It's been observed that when a system really "gets in trouble", it seems that all of its leading institutions are plagued with chronic incompetence.

And it's starting to look like the American capitalist class can no longer act rationally in its own class interests.

I don't have to remind you that that's a recipe for revolution if there ever was one. :)

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Tungsten]

Red Team

Wealth can be created, but the Capitalist system does it in a round about way. What is important is value not material wealth. The scarcer a commodity is the more valuable it is. "Precious" metals and gems are only precious (valuable) because they're scarce. If a large cache of diamonds were to be discovered that would be a very bad thing for jewelry merchants because value would decrease. Same thing applies to products made from labour. If products and services produced were to become cheaper than the value of labour that went into making them businesses would have to destroy goods and cut back on services to maintain value, otherwise go bankrupt.
If they have products that don't sell, they make ones that do or face bankrupcy.

Material wealth is secondary to the importance of value. The inverse of this is when businesses decrease costs to decrease value so as to sell more from mass marketing. The problem with this is that the way to decrease cost is to produced more units per a given unit of labour time while maintaining the same wage per unit of labour time, so that the value of the product can be at a level where profits could still be made. You still run into the value problem because if you maintain the same labour cost while increasing production there would not be enough money in circulation to buy back what you've produced in the first place unless you print more money in which case this leads to money itself being less in value and therefore needed in increased amounts to exchange for items that are more valuable. The official economic term for this is inflation.
You seem to have mistaken me for some sort of Keynesian interventionist and every businessman on earth for a moron.

The problem is unsolvable unless you invade other countries and force their population to essentially work for free (imperialism) while the population in the "home" country engages in unproductive work in exchange for value created in the colonies.
Which website did you copy this ridiculous stuff from? Cheap labour is useful, but not essential by any means.

Police state tactics are more a sign of weakness in a regime than of strength.
You got that right.

It didn't work? the Soviet Union when it existed was a scientific-technological superpower rivaling the western powers.
Thanks to the western powers. Enough with the Soviet apologetics.

[Publius]

But the "possibility" of wealth is not wealth. You can't eat it or drink it or live in it or drive it or do anything with it at all.

You can do something with it: pretend with it, and that's good enough.



Information may or may not be "wealth"...depending on both its content and its accuracy.

If I learn that oil is "here" and not "someplace else unknown", that's "worth something".

If I learn that my neighbor's house just sold for $500,000, that may "make me feel wealthy" but doesn't add a cubic foot to the area of my house.

In these and other remarks in your post, I think you are hinting at the existence of what Marx called "fictitious capital"...or what business journalists often call "paper profits".

It doesn't represent real wealth...like a building or a road or even a useful data-base -- things that can be used.

It's just "there"...for a little while.

Marx said that the demonstrated fictional nature of such capital was demonstrated in business recessions...a periodic "correction" in which capitalism wiped out all the fictional capital (or what would now be called "inflated values") leaving only the real wealth untouched.

Well, Marx was partly right.

But it isn't an endemic flaw in capitalism, but a result of specific actions, namely cheap credit and information assemytry.




I quite agree that humans will always "seek status". But your assertion that this "must" be done by display of possessions is historically naive.

Indeed, some have achieved "high status" by the ostentatious renunciation of possessions.

Indeed.

But similarly, many who had no possessions had no status.

Items are just one way to express status.

Also, I would argue that 'establishing status' is inherently un-communistic, that is, selfish.



Such extravagant "refutations" suggest a bit of intellectual desperation on your part.

What am I to refute? Your dream-world?

Am I to journey into your head and re-wire neurons?

How am I to refute your mental picture of 'communism'?

If that's what you really think Communism is, nothing I can say or do will change that belief.

I can try, but...


Not all that uncommon in this forum, though. When pressed, the defenders of capitalism here often resort to the rhetoric of anti-utopianism.

Yes, we like to call it 'rationalism'.






Which is curious, when you stop and think about it. Instead of stoutly maintaining that "capitalism really works" -- in the face of growing evidence to the contrary -- they fall back on "communism will never work"...something unknown at this point.

Ah, but I can do both. And I do.


Fair enough...it might indeed "never work". I think it's worth trying for...but who can credibly claim to see the future?

What seems increasingly clear to me and even seems to be worrying the pro-capitalists here is that what we have is looking bad!


Not at all.

I'm ecstatic about the new century, economically.

[red team]

Wealth can be created, but the Capitalist system does it in a round about way. What is important is value not material wealth. The scarcer a commodity is the more valuable it is. "Precious" metals and gems are only precious (valuable) because they're scarce. If a large cache of diamonds were to be discovered that would be a very bad thing for jewelry merchants because value would decrease. Same thing applies to products made from labour. If products and services produced were to become cheaper than the value of labour that went into making them businesses would have to destroy goods and cut back on services to maintain value, otherwise go bankrupt.
If they have products that don't sell, they make ones that do or face bankrupcy.


If they have products that sell too cheaply because they're too abundant they introduce artificial scarcity or face bankruptcy.


...every businessman on earth for a moron.

You really don't want to know my answer to that. :lol:



The problem is unsolvable unless you invade other countries and force their population to essentially work for free (imperialism) while the population in the "home" country engages in unproductive work in exchange for value created in the colonies.
Which website did you copy this ridiculous stuff from? Cheap labour is useful, but not essential by any means.

Oh, really? Any moron with half a brain knows that you can't have a quantity higher than 100 percent. But knowing that cappie sympathizers have less than half a brain (with the rest of the brain to memorize business jargon so they can sound impressive) I'll elaboratee so that even you can understand.

In a closed economy with all production organized around the profit principle the total amount of wages paid to workers are always less than the total profit required by all employers so as to insure that they all make a profit and stay in business. With the total amount of worker's wages being 100 percent, you have insufficient value in circulation to make up the profits that all businesses demand. This means some businesses will fail, some businesses will become monopolies and some workers will not get paid and become homeless. If you continue this simulated economy to it's conclusion you end up with one big robber baron and the rest of the population reduced to impoverished semi-slaves.

Now knowing that most cappie sympathizers are mathematically deficient, I'll set up a graphical representation of what I've just stated.

Make five strips of paper with a pair of scissors (just like in kindergarten so I know it won't tax your brain too much).

Next mark off the left end of each strip at about 1 tenth the total length of each strip with a pen or pencil. The total length of a strip represents total expected revenue. The area left of the mark represents profit. The area to the right of the mark represents expenses including worker's wages. If the whole economy was pure free-market Capitalist this is a good graphical representation. Now try to cover the amount of total wages to satisfy the expected revenue of every business using your strips of paper as a guideline. Can you do it? No, because it's impossible. Total area exceeds 100 percent with the addition of profits.

So the solution? Invade other countries and make their working population work harder than the workers at home. Meanwhile, the workers here can engage in useless schlep work like marketing or retail to increase sales.



Police state tactics are more a sign of weakness in a regime than of strength.
You got that right.

So, you agree that the Capitalist system is weakening toward its eventual doom. Capitalist states are becoming increasingly authoritarian. A sign of weakness. I agree.



It didn't work? the Soviet Union when it existed was a scientific-technological superpower rivaling the western powers.
Thanks to the western powers. Enough with the Soviet apologetics.


I must have missed something. Were all the Soviet scientists and engineers foreign imports? :lol:

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Publius
I'm ecstatic about the new century, economically.

Planning to move to Dubai? :lol:

Boom town (http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1708395,00.html)

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

It didn't work.

Comparative economic performance (Real per capita GNP in US dollars):

------1950 1960 1970 1980
USA 4550 5195 6629 8089
UK 2700 3388 4216 4990
USSR 1373 2084 3142 3943
GDR 1480 3006 4100 5532

Source: Robert Summers and Alan Heston, 'Improved International Comparisons of Real Product and its Composition, 1950-80, Review of Income and Wealth, xxx (1984), pp. 207-62.

[Tungsten]

redstar2000

Planning to move to Dubai? :lol:
What's wrong with Dubai?
red team

If they have products that sell too cheaply because they're too abundant they introduce artificial scarcity or face bankruptcy.
If "they" are stupid enought to do that, then "they" risk being overtaken by someone else who has no intention of inducing "artificial scarcity".

In a closed economy
:rolleyes: I'm not advocating a closed economy.

This means some businesses will fail, some businesses will become monopolies
Rarely does any business become a monopoly and it can't mantain it for long unless it's government-owned.

and some workers will not get paid and become homeless.
I've been made redundant a number of times. I'm not homeless. I just got another job.

If you continue this simulated economy to it's conclusion you end up with one big robber baron and the rest of the population reduced to impoverished semi-slaves.
Well, seeing as the simulation doesn't have much of a basis in reality, it doesn't matter all that much.

Make five strips of paper with a pair of scissors (just like in kindergarten so I know it won't tax your brain too much).
Stop being such a lamer.

Next mark off the left end of each strip at about 1 tenth the total length of each strip with a pen or pencil. The total length of a strip represents total expected revenue. The area left of the mark represents profit. The area to the right of the mark represents expenses including worker's wages. If the whole economy was pure free-market Capitalist this is a good graphical representation. Now try to cover the amount of total wages to satisfy the expected revenue of every business using your strips of paper as a guideline. Can you do it? No, because it's impossible. Total area exceeds 100 percent with the addition of profits.
I'll tell you what: You stick with your origami, I'll stick with real world economics and praxeology. That way, it's safer- and everyone benefits.

So the solution? Invade other countries and make their working population work harder than the workers at home.
But we're not "invading other countries", nor enslaving anyone. Not even Iraq was invaded for "cheap labour". So called "imperialism" long predates capitalism or any de-jure free market.

You're preaching your own ideology, not reality.

Even if this hee-haw was true, it wouldn't justify slavery under socialism as a viable alternative.

So, you agree that the Capitalist system is weakening toward its eventual doom.
I don't recall mentioning capitalism. I recall mentioning police states, which is what pretty much every socialist system becomes- and eventually requires to keep working. Even then, it's survival isn't guaranteed.

I must have missed something. Were all the Soviet scientists and engineers foreign imports?
-Where do you think they got the hardware to do it from?
-Most of the scientists were around long before the revolution.
-Wonderful feats of science and engineering took place under the third reich. Are you going to apologise for that too?

[red team]

In a closed economy
:rolleyes: I'm not advocating a closed economy.

This means some businesses will fail, some businesses will become monopolies
Rarely does any business become a monopoly and it can't mantain it for long unless it's government-owned.

and some workers will not get paid and become homeless.
I've been made redundant a number of times. I'm not homeless. I just got another job.

If you continue this simulated economy to it's conclusion you end up with one big robber baron and the rest of the population reduced to impoverished semi-slaves.
Well, seeing as the simulation doesn't have much of a basis in reality, it doesn't matter all that much.

Make five strips of paper with a pair of scissors (just like in kindergarten so I know it won't tax your brain too much).
Stop being such a lamer.

Next mark off the left end of each strip at about 1 tenth the total length of each strip with a pen or pencil. The total length of a strip represents total expected revenue. The area left of the mark represents profit. The area to the right of the mark represents expenses including worker's wages. If the whole economy was pure free-market Capitalist this is a good graphical representation. Now try to cover the amount of total wages to satisfy the expected revenue of every business using your strips of paper as a guideline. Can you do it? No, because it's impossible. Total area exceeds 100 percent with the addition of profits.
I'll tell you what: You stick with your origami, I'll stick with real world economics and praxeology. That way, it's safer- and everyone benefits.


If every major economy in the world was free-market and profit based then it is a closed economic system. My model (discounting delaying tactics like loans and bonds) is then pretty much universal.



So the solution? Invade other countries and make their working population work harder than the workers at home.
But we're not "invading other countries", nor enslaving anyone. Not even Iraq was invaded for "cheap labour". So called "imperialism" long predates capitalism or any de-jure free market.

You're preaching your own ideology, not reality.

Even if this hee-haw was true, it wouldn't justify slavery under socialism as a viable alternative.


Oil is a resource that can replace man-hours with machine-hours or in other words Calories for Kilowatt hours. Taking that resource and reducing the native population to unemployment and poverty is equivalent to enslavement because Calories can never be equal to Kilowatt hours in term of energy output.

When scientific progress slows because Capitalism becomes regressive then an alternate social system is justified. Profits gained from supply and demand is based on the extraction human labour on the basis of greed and desire. These are imponderable and subjective qualities that can never be strictly quantifiable in a scientific sense. Irrational action inevitably results from an irrational economic system like wasting resources and production for purposes that are not materially progressive for the welfare of the population. The only universal physical property that can be quantifiable for generating useful outcomes is energy which can be measured in terms of Joules and Kilowatt hours. Oil produces energy and socialism or more specifically energy accounting is a system which relies on scientific progress to increase energy production and efficiency for the egalitarian welfare of the general population. For Capitalism scientific progress is predicated on market demand for goods and services that may or may not be beneficial to the general population and even then the fruits of technical innovation is not evenly distributed. No energy accounting is even attempted for Capitalism.



So, you agree that the Capitalist system is weakening toward its eventual doom.
I don't recall mentioning capitalism. I recall mentioning police states, which is what pretty much every socialist system becomes- and eventually requires to keep working. Even then, it's survival isn't guaranteed.


The police presence in Capitalist society is also required for the enforcement of property rights even if those property rights are detrimental to the general welfare of the population and is in operation for destructive purposes rather than constructive purposes. General material progress is not the determining factor in using physical means of production to create material wealth, rather the subjective human desires of greed and commodity accumulation are. Police states are irrelevant to the discussion of Socialism as all social-economic orders including Capitalism ultimately derive their authority to govern and maintain its system of economic relations from armed force. The degree in which Socialism works in terms of providing for general human welfare depends of material conditions which are ultimately shaped from improved techniques in transforming raw materials into useful goods. These techniques in turn becomes possible from scientific and technological progress. As far as scientific progress in Capitalism is concerned, it is still viable, but even this is an open question since the stability of the system is undermined from technological progress not being used rationally and its benefits not distributed evenly.



I must have missed something. Were all the Soviet scientists and engineers foreign imports?
-Where do you think they got the hardware to do it from?
-Most of the scientists were around long before the revolution.
-Wonderful feats of science and engineering took place under the third reich. Are you going to apologise for that too?

- The tokamak which is the plasma containment device used for leading edge research into fusion power generation was developed in the Soviet Union. Sputnik was all based on domestic research as far as I could tell.

- Then why was Russia at the time of the Czars still a backward shit hole with an agrarian based economy?

- Scientific and technological progress lays the basis for all human social progress. Overly emotional appeals to useless sentimentality leads you nowhere. Werner Von Braun was a brilliant German rocket scientist which was given asylum at the end of the war by the American forces and was instrumental in leading America to accomplish the Apollo program.

[Tungsten]

red team

If every major economy in the world was free-market and profit based then it is a closed economic system. My model (discounting delaying tactics like loans and bonds) is then pretty much universal.
You still haven't explained how it's a "closed" system.

Oil is a resource that can replace man-hours with machine-hours or in other words Calories for Kilowatt hours. Taking that resource and reducing the native population to unemployment and poverty is equivalent to enslavement because Calories can never be equal to Kilowatt hours in term of energy output.
But whether they were even steailing the oil is open to debate. I was neither discovered by, nor were the means of acessing it developed or provided by the "natives" (natives=racist crap). It makes you wonder how all that equipment got there in the first place, doesn't it? A brief read of a history book might provide the answer.

When scientific progress slows because Capitalism becomes regressive then an alternate social system is justified.
No it isn't, even if it does do that.

Profits gained from supply and demand is based on the extraction human labour on the basis of greed and desire.
Greed and desire the best motives for advancement and prosperity. Everyone benefits.

These are imponderable and subjective qualities that can never be strictly quantifiable in a scientific sense. Irrational action inevitably results from an irrational economic system like wasting resources and production for purposes that are not materially progressive for the welfare of the population.
Define "progressive".

The only universal physical property that can be quantifiable for generating useful outcomes is energy which can be measured in terms of Joules and Kilowatt hours. Oil produces energy and socialism or more specifically energy accounting is a system which relies on scientific progress to increase energy production and efficiency for the egalitarian welfare of the general population.
In other word, you just want another "command" society working (or not working) under the banner of some undefinable "common good".

For Capitalism scientific progress is predicated on market demand for goods and services that may or may not be beneficial to the general population
We don't work for the benefit of the general population. We work for our own benefit which indirectly results in the betterment of the general population.

and even then the fruits of technical innovation is not evenly distributed. No energy accounting is even attempted for Capitalism.
Good job. I wouldn't want to live under your "energy dictatorship".

The police presence in Capitalist society is also required for the enforcement of property rights even if those property rights are detrimental to the general welfare of the population
No property rights are detrimental to the general population. Once it's okay to breach one person's rights, it's okay to breach everyone's. You can't have "sort of" property rights.

Police states are irrelevant to the discussion of Socialism
I think they're very relevant. I don't want to live in one and I don't imagine anyone else in their right mind does either.

as all social-economic orders including Capitalism ultimately derive their authority to govern and maintain its system of economic relations from armed force.
Some governments hold more power and are more likely to misuse it than others. Empowering a government with the ability to legally violate property rights and commit any action in the name of "efficiency" is recipe for dictatorship. A government without this ability is going to have trouble establishing a dictatorship.

- The tokamak which is the plasma containment device used for leading edge research into fusion power generation was developed in the Soviet Union.
Everyone's got their own version of it and none of them work yet.

Sputnik was all based on domestic research as far as I could tell.
So what.

- Then why was Russia at the time of the Czars still a backward shit hole with an agrarian based economy?
Then it became a backwards shithole with a industrial based economy under Stalin. So what.

- Scientific and technological progress lays the basis for all human social progress. Overly emotional appeals to useless sentimentality leads you nowhere.
Ah, so it's okay to point out technological advancements in the USSR and hold them up as proof of the superiority of socialism, but when I suggested massive technological advancements occured under the Nazis, you start back-peddling and calling it an "appeal to emotion". The initially successful space exploration aside, Russian spent the following four decades playing catch-up in every other area. And in the end, they lost the space race, too.

[red team]

If every major economy in the world was free-market and profit based then it is a closed economic system. My model (discounting delaying tactics like loans and bonds) is then pretty much universal.


You still haven't explained how it's a "closed" system.


Unless there is some mechanism in place to increase the purchasing power of consumers in which value gets redistributed downwards towards the workers (social democracy) or if one particular layer of workers from a different part of the world takes up the slack from workers in the "home country" getting paid above the value of their labour so as to insure sufficient domestic purchasing power (imperialism) then all economic activity follows the same model as I have outlined. Consumers are given less than what is required to make up 100 percent of expected revenue. Production will have to be wasted (even more so then now). Some people will have to be made permanently unemployed, lots of smaller businesses will fail and some companies will inevitably become monopolies.




Oil is a resource that can replace man-hours with machine-hours or in other words Calories for Kilowatt hours. Taking that resource and reducing the native population to unemployment and poverty is equivalent to enslavement because Calories can never be equal to Kilowatt hours in term of energy output.


But whether they were even steailing the oil is open to debate. I was neither discovered by, nor were the means of acessing it developed or provided by the "natives" (natives=racist crap). It makes you wonder how all that equipment got there in the first place, doesn't it? A brief read of a history book might provide the answer.


Excuse for imperialism from arguing a historical accident in human social development. If one part of the world from historical accident becomes more advanced in production techniques from the discovery of a novel technology, it does not excuse the use of that technology for furthering the impoverishment of another part of the world that did not gain from such a discovery out of historical accident. It's naive to think that resource extraction from another part of the world is a benign affair for the population being colonised. In reality all means of self sufficiency for the colonised population must be made dependent on the colonisers economy so as to compel them to work for the colonisers at a much reduced wage that would normally be paid a domestic working population because of an rebellious domestic working population. This has always been the case and in reality it has been even more brutal than what I have described. Furthermore, you've just defeated your own arguments that greed and desire benefits all involved. No, it only benefits those who gained from the historical accident of a discovery being made first and even then it mainly benefits from those who own the production resources made possible from such a discovery, regardless of the original intentions of their discoverers or inventors.



When scientific progress slows because Capitalism becomes regressive then an alternate social system is justified.


No it isn't, even if it does do that.


When scientific progress slows then there's nothing else that progressive about the system. It does not claim to be egalitarian and it does not distributes the benefits of scientific progress evenly. Defining progress as being able to advance the general welfare of the population, it has failed to do that. Next it has failed to even advanced the potential for improved techniques in advancing human welfare. This becomes total failure as a tool for human advancement, therefore revolution is justified. But of course there are lap dogs that like the old order, but these are far and few between when the situation comes to this point.




Profits gained from supply and demand is based on the extraction human labour on the basis of greed and desire.


Greed and desire the best motives for advancement and prosperity. Everyone benefits.


Except when "everyone" doesn't benefit. Be careful when you define "everyone" since this also includes people who are tools for the financial accumulation of someone else. As I have mentioned before under the present system unless another population from another part of the world is subjugated or income redistribution is implemented then enrichment for the few while impoverishment for the many is inevitable. Furthermore, because purchasing power is based on human labour output which is an extremely stupid and short sighted method given our present production technology which relies on automated production done by energy fed machines, enormous waste of resource and destruction of the natural environment for no good purposes is also inevitable.



These are imponderable and subjective qualities that can never be strictly quantifiable in a scientific sense. Irrational action inevitably results from an irrational economic system like wasting resources and production for purposes that are not materially progressive for the welfare of the population.


Define "progressive".


Quality of life of a person is heavily dependent on the material resources made available to a person. If material resources are denied this not only limits the person's quality of life, this also limits the options available for a person to achieve a better quality of life. If production of useful products are wasted not because of some physical limitation of technology, but purely because of the subjective motives of human desires then this is not "progressive"

Progress as a general definition means the optimization of the quality of life and the optimization of the potential for the optimized number of members of the population to achieve a maximization of the quality of life. Only physical laws can limit this progress, but for now subjective motives limit this development.




The only universal physical property that can be quantifiable for generating useful outcomes is energy which can be measured in terms of Joules and Kilowatt hours. Oil produces energy and socialism or more specifically energy accounting is a system which relies on scientific progress to increase energy production and efficiency for the egalitarian welfare of the general population.


In other word, you just want another "command" society working (or not working) under the banner of some undefinable "common good".


Sounds pretty good to me if it advances the common good of the majority of the population. Common good is very definable in terms of material resources for furthering the quality of life for a quantifiable number of people. Furthermore, working is ultimately only a means to an end and not an end in itself no how much (some) people worship the "work ethic" as some sort of mythical ideal. Compelling someone to work from the personal economic pressure of impoverishment when the necessity for long hours of meaningless, non-materially progressive "work" becomes obsolete from the development of production technology is slavery.



and even then the fruits of technical innovation is not evenly distributed. No energy accounting is even attempted for Capitalism.

Good job. I wouldn't want to live under your "energy dictatorship".


It's not a matter of you wanting or not wanting to. The momentum of present industrial society is going toward more energy inputs to produce goods more cheaply (for the producers). But because purchasing power is still based on human workers being paid for man-hour labour, purchasing power will always lag behind production no matter how technologically advanced production becomes. If energy accounting of the mechanized production of goods is not eventually implemented, the coming ecological collapse is all but inevitable from such irrationalities. Of course "freedom loving" people will always have subjective slogans like "freedom" and "liberty" when they are dying from disease, weather anomalies and violence. Furthermore, how exactly is energy accounting dictatorial in practice when this has never been implemented before. And whether you want to admit it or not during the vast majority of human history human labour was the sole factor in generating material abundance, therefore there was a "human labour dictatorship" in one form or another whether directly from governmental mandates or market driven economic compulsion to work. "Energy dictatorship" as you call it would be an improvement in necessary labour time to achieve material abundance. People need to at most work four hours a day (but not strictly) to achieve material abundance with the rest of the work going to energy fed machines. As a further proof of the superiority of energy accounting over the human labour market take the comparison of human slavery to machine "slavery". How efficient are humans at energy output? Suppose I harness you in front of my car and jam a cattle prod up your ass to motivate you. Can you generate the same amount of power to move my car as opposed to me turning on the oil powered engine? Next, suppose I jam open your mouth and force-feed you gasoline. Can you make use of that fuel with your puny bio-body to supply the power needed to move my car at 60 kilometers per hour? Mechanization always produces power in excess of human labour, therefore human labour to the extent it is used now for wealth rationing through wage labour is obsolete.




The police presence in Capitalist society is also required for the enforcement of property rights even if those property rights are detrimental to the general welfare of the population

No property rights are detrimental to the general population. Once it's okay to breach one person's rights, it's okay to breach everyone's. You can't have "sort of" property rights.


Except those who don't own property which can sustain them beyond a day or two then they are compelled to rent themselves out to people who own large amounts of property in excess of what is necessary to sustain themselves. Sure you can have "sort of" property rights in the form of a public lease for the time you use it.




Police states are irrelevant to the discussion of Socialism

I think they're very relevant. I don't want to live in one and I don't imagine anyone else in their right mind does either.


But of course they don't mind living in one depending on what economic relations are uphold by brute force. I'm quite sure big property holders and factory owners don't mind living a police state in which rebellious workers are "disappeared" when they get too demanding of respect. The leaders of such regimes are even called "strong men" instead of dictators, by those sympathising with the property owners. I'm also quite sure workers (a big majority of them) don't mind living in a police state in which people who tries to rent someone else for labour is met with fines or incarceration. Any society which upholds an economic order could be democratic as well as a police state and it will still gain the animosity of a section of the population depending on their position in the economic ladder, so it is pretty much irrelevant.




as all social-economic orders including Capitalism ultimately derive their authority to govern and maintain its system of economic relations from armed force.

Some governments hold more power and are more likely to misuse it than others. Empowering a government with the ability to legally violate property rights and commit any action in the name of "efficiency" is recipe for dictatorship. A government without this ability is going to have trouble establishing a dictatorship.


Not unless it is a populist government with popular demands for the government to violate some property rights.

Efficiency in some forms is a good thing every Capitalists agrees with this, but where we disagree is in which area the efficiency should be optimized in.




- The tokamak which is the plasma containment device used for leading edge research into fusion power generation was developed in the Soviet Union.

Everyone's got their own version of it and none of them work yet.


Is that a guarantee that it can never be made to work with further research and development?




Sputnik was all based on domestic research as far as I could tell.

So what.


So I've trashed your argument that scientific and technological progress cannot made under non-profit based economic system. That's What! :lol:




- Then why was Russia at the time of the Czars still a backward shit hole with an agrarian based economy?

Then it became a backwards shithole with a industrial based economy under Stalin. So what.


The massive industrialization undertaken raised the living standards of a vast number of people who for most of their lives and their ancestors lives known only impoverishment and ignorance. Backwards this isn't. It was progressive for many as well as a horror for many. But history is written in blood isn't it?




- Scientific and technological progress lays the basis for all human social progress. Overly emotional appeals to useless sentimentality leads you nowhere.

Ah, so it's okay to point out technological advancements in the USSR and hold them up as proof of the superiority of socialism, but when I suggested massive technological advancements occured under the Nazis, you start back-peddling and calling it an "appeal to emotion". The initially successful space exploration aside, Russian spent the following four decades playing catch-up in every other area. And in the end, they lost the space race, too.


Massive technological advancement is always progressive regardless of the regime it is made under. Technology is politics free, but it lays the basis for the material conditions in which another system of wealth production can be achieved. I make no excuses for the Nazis or for Stalin, but you're the one being fanatical in defending a system in decline when it fails to even develop the potential for advancement by furthering scientific progress. As you yourself so stated: "No it isn't, even if it does do that" when confronted with the statement I've made: When scientific progress slows because Capitalism becomes regressive then an alternate social system is justified.

[Tungsten]

red team

Unless there is some mechanism in place to increase the purchasing power of consumers
There is. It's called wages.

Consumers are given less than what is required to make up 100 percent of expected revenue. Production will have to be wasted (even more so then now).
Why will it have to be wasted? I notice that my comment about "imperialism" long pre-dating capitalism has been conveniently ignored.

Some people will have to be made permanently unemployed, lots of smaller businesses will fail and some companies will inevitably become monopolies.
Now I understand why capitalism has to be imperialistic, workers have to be exploited and why capitalism has to be unjust: Because your every argument consists of a series of unquestioned presuppositions and every situation looked at through Marxist-tinted spectacles.
Like all the predictions and re-predictions a hundred or so years ago, they're phony.

Excuse for imperialism from arguing a historical accident in human social development. If one part of the world from historical accident becomes more advanced in production techniques from the discovery of a novel technology, it does not excuse the use of that technology for furthering the impoverishment of another part of the world that did not gain from such a discovery out of historical accident.

The west "accidently" learned how to drill oil, did it? How completely and utterly anti-intellectual. I suppose it "accidently" learned how to split the atom and "accidently" walked on the moon, too?

Just like I accidently got a job, accidently got paid for it, and these accidents now justify some prick from accidently putting a gun against my head and accidently taking that money from me because he's (accidently) in need of it?

It's not an "excuse for imperialism", either. The sheiks were all to willing to sell what was nothing more than a vast area of desert. Which brings us onto another interesting hypothesis: Why should an "accident of history" entitle a few people to live on top of a massive oil reserve and keep it themselves to profit from it?


Furthermore, you've just defeated your own arguments that greed and desire benefits all involved.
I'm talking about rational greed, as in working with your own interest in mind while leaving others to do the same. Robbing your neighbour is not "leaving others to do the same".

When scientific progress slows then there's nothing else that progressive about the system.
Incorrect. Scientific progress is a historical accident.

It does not claim to be egalitarian and it does not distributes the benefits of scientific progress evenly.
Presuming that egalitarianism is a desirable goal and benefits of scientific progress evenly is a good thing to do.

Defining progress as being able to advance the general welfare of the population, it has failed to do that.
But it has. Look around you. Or was it all done by accident :lol: ?

Next it has failed to even advanced the potential for improved techniques in advancing human welfare.
Whatever those are.

This becomes total failure as a tool for human advancement, therefore revolution is justified.
That presumes that what you're replacing it with is going to achieve that.

Except when "everyone" doesn't benefit. Be careful when you define "everyone" since this also includes people who are tools for the financial accumulation of someone else.
More loaded dice.

As I have mentioned before under the present system unless another population from another part of the world is subjugated or income redistribution is implemented then enrichment for the few while impoverishment for the many is inevitable.
Who is being impoverished, who wasn't before?

Furthermore, because purchasing power is based on human labour output which is an extremely stupid and short sighted method given our present production technology which relies on automated production done by energy fed machines, enormous waste of resource and destruction of the natural environment for no good purposes is also inevitable.
I'm sure everything with work much better when the government is telling us what to do, deciding how we spend our money (assuming we'll get anything other than subsistence) and planning our lives for us. I say: no thanks.

Quality of life of a person is heavily dependent on the material resources made available to a person. If material resources are denied this not only limits the person's quality of life, this also limits the options available for a person to achieve a better quality of life. If production of useful products are wasted not because of some physical limitation of technology, but purely because of the subjective motives of human desires then this is not "progressive"
So if someone wants to borrow my car and I don't want him to, I'm being "unprogressive" and libel for punishment?

Progress as a general definition means the optimization of the quality of life and the optimization of the potential for the optimized number of members of the population to achieve a maximization of the quality of life.
Greatest good for the greatest number, huh? 51% enslaving the other 49% in the name of progress? No thanks to that one, too.

Sounds pretty good to me if it advances the common good of the majority of the population.
If Hitler had won the war and had somehow advanced the common good, would you be singing praises for him? I think you would. Nothing more needs to be said.

Compelling someone to work from the personal economic pressure of impoverishment
In other words, you think that working for a living = slavery.

when the necessity for long hours of meaningless, non-materially progressive "work" becomes obsolete from the development of production technology is slavery.
The definition of "non progressive" work to be determined by someone carrying a gun, no doubt.

And whether you want to admit it or not during the vast majority of human history human labour was the sole factor in generating material abundance, therefore there was a "human labour dictatorship" in one form or another whether directly from governmental mandates or market driven economic compulsion to work.
I love the way you equate working for a living to being compelled to work by someone carrying a gun or whip. Very insightful, that.

As a further proof of the superiority of energy accounting over the human labour market take the comparison of human slavery to machine "slavery". How efficient are humans at energy output? Suppose I harness you in front of my car and jam a cattle prod up your ass to motivate you. Can you generate the same amount of power to move my car as opposed to me turning on the oil powered engine? Next, suppose I jam open your mouth and force-feed you gasoline. Can you make use of that fuel with your puny bio-body to supply the power needed to move my car at 60 kilometers per hour? Mechanization always produces power in excess of human labour, therefore human labour to the extent it is used now for wealth rationing through wage labour is obsolete.
If it does ever become obsolete, i'd rather it be a causal, economic phenomenon rather than it being forced on everyone by your dictatorship.

Except those who don't own property which can sustain them beyond a day or two then they are compelled to rent themselves out to people who own large amounts of property in excess of what is necessary to sustain themselves.
What's this supposed to justify?

Sure you can have "sort of" property rights in the form of a public lease for the time you use it.
Those aren't "sort of" property rights, as the lender never owns the property.

But of course they don't mind living in one depending on what economic relations are uphold by brute force.
I think this speaks for itself.

The leaders of such regimes are even called "strong men" instead of dictators, by those sympathising with the property owners.
In the unlikely event of anyone other than the government owning property in any meaningful sense.

Not unless it is a populist government with popular demands for the government to violate some property rights.
Ahhh...you think that it's okay if it's "democratic". Two cannibals eating a victim- is that okay? What about gang rape?

Is that a guarantee that it can never be made to work with further research and development?
That's irrelevent to the discussion.

So I've trashed your argument that scientific and technological progress cannot made under non-profit based economic system. That's What!
When did I make that claim. I don't think the USSR was fully "non-profit", otherwise it's economy would have collapsed much sooner than it did.

The massive industrialization undertaken raised the living standards of a vast number of people who for most of their lives and their ancestors lives known only impoverishment and ignorance. Backwards this isn't. It was progressive for many as well as a horror for many. But history is written in blood isn't it?
I guess this falls under the category of "comments that respond to themselves".

I make no excuses for the Nazis or for Stalin,
You have done so by claiming that any society that advances technology in which many people benefit is a "good thing", therfore the Nazis were a "good thing" and Stalin was "good".

but you're the one being fanatical in defending a system in decline when it fails to even develop the potential for advancement by furthering scientific progress.
You must have missed the last sentence of my post:
"The initially successful space exploration aside, Russian spent the following four decades playing catch-up in every other area. And in the end, they lost the space race, too."
I guess socialism, even by your definition isn't progressive. Where are the most technologically advanced countries today? What political system do those countries follow?

On second thoughts: Screw this, I'm not wasting any more time arguing with some techno-Nazi. Other than reading for a few unintentional laughs, this topic is a waste of time.

[red team]

Unless there is some mechanism in place to increase the purchasing power of consumers
There is. It's called wages.


Only if total wages equal or exceed expected revenue and that requires imperialism. You don't need to worry about that though it's all been taken care of. Corporations have been moving to cheap labour countries like China and countries in Latin America for years now to take advantage of reduced labour costs. That's why they can afford to pay relatively pampered workers like you and me wages above corresponding labour value. Most of everything I buy is now made in China, not that I'm complaining because I don't need to work 14 hour days and paid 25 cents an hour and I get everything at very cheap prices. :D

Like you say "everybody" benefits, except for the poor slobs who don't benefit.



Consumers are given less than what is required to make up 100 percent of expected revenue. Production will have to be wasted (even more so then now).
Why will it have to be wasted? I notice that my comment about "imperialism" long pre-dating capitalism has been conveniently ignored.


Imperialism in its Marxist meaning never came into being until a society became industrialized under a Capitalist economy. What took place before industrialization went into effect was simply conquest for resources and slaves. The home population never needed to be paid wages above labour value to absorb excess production because production technology was too primitive to generate any excess anyway. There was no need for a relatively privileged labour aristocracy or in other words management lap dogs and other parasitic, non-productive "workers", in the home country. Imperialism became necessary when production technology enabled a huge surplus of goods to be made in excess of what could be absorbed by simply paying workers their corresponding amount in labour value, otherwise the whole economy would collapse from unsold (wasted) products. And of course they're wasted and not simply given away otherwise that would undermine your whole economic system. Do you know how many hundred million pounds of food is wasted every year? Of course you don't because your dumb and blind to these things.



Some people will have to be made permanently unemployed, lots of smaller businesses will fail and some companies will inevitably become monopolies.
Now I understand why capitalism has to be imperialistic, workers have to be exploited and why capitalism has to be unjust: Because your every argument consists of a series of unquestioned presuppositions and every situation looked at through Marxist-tinted spectacles.
Like all the predictions and re-predictions a hundred or so years ago, they're phony.


How many huge monopolistic corporations are there in the world? Better yet you try competing with one of these giants by starting your own small company in direct competition with them. Big businesses have the advantage of economies of scale that's why they can out last smaller enterprises when consumers need to buy goods with their wages which is paid below their full labour value. A big business can "waste" a few hundred thousand tons of goods and still be able to survive economically to continue operations. Furthermore, they can have a smaller profit margin and therefore be able to sell goods cheaper than small business because they rely on the mass selling of goods to offset the lesser amount of profit per unit sold. Smaller businesses have no such advantage and have to watch every penny. Also, smaller businesses most likely cannot afford to hire useful labour aristocrats and other privileged parasites that add no useful utility to what is sold but can generate propaganda to improve sales regardless.



Excuse for imperialism from arguing a historical accident in human social development. If one part of the world from historical accident becomes more advanced in production techniques from the discovery of a novel technology, it does not excuse the use of that technology for furthering the impoverishment of another part of the world that did not gain from such a discovery out of historical accident.

The west "accidently" learned how to drill oil, did it? How completely and utterly anti-intellectual. I suppose it "accidently" learned how to split the atom and "accidently" walked on the moon, too?


And how exactly did the west manage to feed all those brilliant intellectuals that invented oil drilling if it wasn't for the historical accident of the west discovering steam power first and hence be able to industrialize first? Have you visited a farm in the west lately? Do they still use horse drawn plough or do they use motorized tractors? :lol: Having a smaller number of people necessary in the agricultural sector of the production allows for more people specialising in other areas of production like your aforementioned intellectuals. Discovering this first gave the west a huge advantage.

Of course all the other countries of the world including former "third world" or non-industrialized countries of the world are catching up by reducing their agricultural sector and enlarging their industrial and intellectual base. People with PhDs are now increasingly home grown in countries like China and India. And all this is happening in these countries even without relying on brutal imperialism to gain surplus value. Impressive isn't it?



Just like I accidently got a job, accidently got paid for it, and these accidents now justify some prick from accidently putting a gun against my head and accidently taking that money from me because he's (accidently) in need of it?


Just like some brilliant scientists and engineers are "accidentally" now out of a job and some are driving taxis for living. You got robbed because an unskilled high school drop-out is now out of job because the previously mentioned over-qualified engineers, technicians and scientists are now driving taxis and working as convenience store clerks for a living by beating said high school drop-outs in a competition for jobs they neither chose to participate in nor wanted as careers in the first place. And while we're on the topic, something like a convenience store could be automated with technology so there wouldn't be any need for store clerks to begin with. This is already done with present day technology. In Europe as well as Canada some stores are equipped with automated check out systems. Under a rational economic system that does energy accounting rather than rely on the human labour market doing this never needs to increase unemployment and would rather be a welcomed development for reducing the unpleasant toil of manual work. But of course Capitalism isn't a rational system in that it is a system that relies of human labour to gain surplus value and so for every job made easier by automation it is one job lost and two jobs gained for one worker. I mean why have "lazy" workers who thanks to technology can now take it easier on the job and still get the same crappy wage when you can leverage your technology by getting one worker to perform double duty while firing another :lol:?

Oh, by the way, have I mentioned in previous posts that I make a living as a software developer? Well, that's not entirely accurate. Ever since the dot-com boom became the dot-com crash, I've been making a living as a part-time software developer while needing to work full-time as a convenience store clerk to "make a living" whatever that means. So it's not as if I'll be the one who's going to mug you. But I couldn't say the same about my competitor who I've beat out to get the job and who really was more suited for this type of work than I am.

From what I've read in your reply, it seems that you have bumped into him a few times. :lol: Too Funny!!! :lol:



It's not an "excuse for imperialism", either. The sheiks were all to willing to sell what was nothing more than a vast area of desert. Which brings us onto another interesting hypothesis: Why should an "accident of history" entitle a few people to live on top of a massive oil reserve and keep it themselves to profit from it?


The sheiks are monarchs often installed by western powers in armed coups. They do not rule in the interest of their population. Religious indoctrination to justify their rule and to keep the population superstitious and ignorant is wide spread and punishment for rebellion and petty crimes is harsh. Speaking of which, just because someone lives in a country ruled by an autocrat does it mean he always supports the policy of an autocrat and have a say in shaping the policy? You know better than that. Then again, maybe you don't.



Furthermore, you've just defeated your own arguments that greed and desire benefits all involved.
I'm talking about rational greed, as in working with your own interest in mind while leaving others to do the same. Robbing your neighbour is not "leaving others to do the same".


"Rational greed". :lol:

Since when has greed ever became rational? Since when does a compulsive gambler know when to stop? Greed is never rational. Products that kill people and wrecks their health are sold to make a profit and some other products or services that are useful and cheap, but doesn't make a profit never gets produced. Things that are expensive one day and therefore sought after and financed by investors one day becomes cheap and dumped from the market the next day, regardless of its actual utility as a useful product or service. I don't even have to go into the usefulness of technology for labour reduction and improved efficiency, but is now used as a hammer by management to drive down wages and working conditions.



When scientific progress slows then there's nothing else that progressive about the system.
Incorrect. Scientific progress is a historical accident.


Yes it is, but ever since the enlightenment "accident" which overthrew the rule of kings and other arbitrary authority figures scientific progress has been increasing without stop and we Marxists particularly like this accidental rediscovery of science as a means to overcome all fetters blocking the eventual human liberation from want and need. If any economic system hinders scientific progress it hinders potential for human liberation and being a humanist as well as a member of the human species it is in my definite interest to overthrow it when it gets to that point which for North America is fast approaching. Read Time magazine lately? American educational levels in science is dropping like a rock in high school. Overall high school level science ranks somewhere in the low 40's when compared world wide. The number of PhD degrees granted is steadily dropping off. Pretty soon the only growth industry for America would be pornography, video games, movies and narcotics. Progressive isn't it? While a small opulent elite amuse themselves to death the rest of the impoverish masses can go homeless and starve to death.



It does not claim to be egalitarian and it does not distributes the benefits of scientific progress evenly.Presuming that egalitarianism is a desirable goal and benefits of scientific progress evenly is a good thing to do.


Oh, I see. Only the rich should benefit from the fruits of science to give them better health and make their lives easier, less brutish and more enriching, but for the unwashed working masses it's nose to the grindstone with our mind-numbing, body-breaking jobs and nothing but the whip if we get out of line eh? Don't bother responding, from the likes of you I know the answer already.



Defining progress as being able to advance the general welfare of the population, it has failed to do that.
But it has. Look around you. Or was it all done by accident :lol: ?


Look around the whole country not just in your particular neighborhood. After that, look around the whole world, not just your particular country. Islands of wealth and decadence in a sea of misery and impoverishment. Progressive isn't it? :lol:



Next it has failed to even advanced the potential for improved techniques in advancing human welfare.
Whatever those are.


Need I say more about automation technology, biotechnology, robotics, nanotechnology, etc...

In the private sector funding for science is miniscule as compared to marketing and public relations. Why spend years doing research and development when you can just use propaganda to sell your products to the idiot masses?
In the public sector whatever funds the government have gets allocated into military research as wars goes on unabated.

I'll admit to the fact that it hasn't reach the point in which scientific progress has entirely stalled. It's not that decrepit (yet). But it will be. Or it may reach a point in which it doesn't matter because the stability of the system gets compromised from it not being able to distribute both wealth and the benefits of science reasonably so rebellion is in the minds of the majority of the population.



This becomes total failure as a tool for human advancement, therefore revolution is justified.
That presumes that what you're replacing it with is going to achieve that.


Peasant revolutions leads peasant society advancing to industrial society. 1917, 1949
Working as farm workers to working as factory workers.
Different setting, same shit, but at least you don't have to work outside in the rain, sun and dirt.

Worker revolutions leads industrial society advancing to high-technology society.
Working as factory workers to working as technicians and engineers.
Working in an air conditioned office and programming robots to do all the shit work for you.

Very progressive, but of course there are numbskulls who think otherwise. We call these numbskulls CEOs, investors, cappie sympathizers and religious believers.



As I have mentioned before under the present system unless another population from another part of the world is subjugated or income redistribution is implemented then enrichment for the few while impoverishment for the many is inevitable.
Who is being impoverished, who wasn't before?


Countries that become non-align and follow their own path to development become your rivals in the competition for resources and extraction of surplus value. Established Capitalist powers like the countries in the west don't want that. Just take a look at the map of Africa and the middle east for further evidence. Countries are invented without regards to the actual tribal or cultural make up of people living in that particular region of the world. This is the classic imperial strategy of divide and conquer. Countries notably in East Asia that avoided that kind of full-out imperialism became rival powers to western countries and their population although still poor compared to western standards are still very much better off than the population in fully colonised regions of the world.



Furthermore, because purchasing power is based on human labour output which is an extremely stupid and short sighted method given our present production technology which relies on automated production done by energy fed machines, enormous waste of resource and destruction of the natural environment for no good purposes is also inevitable.
I'm sure everything with work much better when the government is telling us what to do, deciding how we spend our money (assuming we'll get anything other than subsistence) and planning our lives for us. I say: no thanks.


That really depends of the government telling who to do what. If you don't own massive means of affecting the material wealth of society (like most ordinary people) then there's no point in the government telling you what to do because your own individual effect on society is too miniscule to be bothered with. If you have massive amounts of assets that affect how other people live their lives then the government should step in to coordinate wealth production and distribution so as to put into practice: the greatest good for the greatest number, otherwise if left unchecked, situations like this usually leads to the greatest good for the smallest number.



Quality of life of a person is heavily dependent on the material resources made available to a person. If material resources are denied this not only limits the person's quality of life, this also limits the options available for a person to achieve a better quality of life. If production of useful products are wasted not because of some physical limitation of technology, but purely because of the subjective motives of human desires then this is not "progressive"

So if someone wants to borrow my car and I don't want him to, I'm being "unprogressive" and libel for punishment?


Your car doesn't produce anything other than carbon monoxide and motion, not useful products that could be distributed in any meaningful way. But if you own a factory that employ hundreds of people and churns out thousands of cars a year then that's a different story if you don't share control. Didn't your parents teach you that not sharing is impolite. :lol:



Progress as a general definition means the optimization of the quality of life and the optimization of the potential for the optimized number of members of the population to achieve a maximization of the quality of life.
Greatest good for the greatest number, huh? 51% enslaving the other 49% in the name of progress? No thanks to that one, too.

Producing material wealth for the benefit of everyone including yourself isn't slavery. Better yet, learning technical know-how to produce high-tech devices which automatically produces material wealth for you as well as everyone else is liberation.



Sounds pretty good to me if it advances the common good of the majority of the population.
If Hitler had won the war and had somehow advanced the common good, would you be singing praises for him? I think you would. Nothing more needs to be said.


Well he lost and we'll never know my position would we?

Seriously though, Nazism never relied on intellectual ingenuity to increase production for the common good, but relied on the forced labour of concentration camps and death camps. Last time I've checked the history books there was no brilliant engineers working to improve production techniques at these camps so we can be pretty sure that Nazism doesn't respect ingenuity or at least ingenuity for the common good. It was just a plain and simple "work them to death" philosophy that was practiced.



Compelling someone to work from the personal economic pressure of impoverishment
In other words, you think that working for a living = slavery.

when the necessity for long hours of meaningless, non-materially progressive "work" becomes obsolete from the development of production technology is slavery.
The definition of "non progressive" work to be determined by someone carrying a gun, no doubt.


Well let's define "working for a living" as it is done in practice now. Prison guards "work for living" by guarding jails full of people who had to resort to crime because there's not enough jobs provided by the system of the economics we live under now. Is their "work" valuable in any socially constructive way in reducing the number of people needing to resort to petty crimes so they wouldn't be put in prison in the first place? Telemarketers "work for living" pestering people who doesn't want to be bothered with calls asking them to purchase products they could have actively went out and bought if they so desired to begin with. The same is true with junk mail and email spam and T.V. commercials and billboards. When I get junk mail it goes directly from my mail to the trash to the local land fill. When I get email spam I delete it. When I get a telemarketing call I hang up. When there's a T.V. commercial on I go to the washroom or kitchen or flip through a magazine until its over. But people "working for a living" at these jobs get paid money that could be exchanged for material products that have an actual utility value to them instead of what they do in their jobs which makes absolutely nothing of utility value, but generate actual real material waste. Utility value is of secondary importance in Capitalism while commodity value is dominant. If you could market useless crap that has no or negative utility value, but sells anyway. You are doing "important" work. If that's the measure of important work then rich narco dealers are more important than unemployed engineers in terms of economic value under this present system whether you want to admit to it or not.



And whether you want to admit it or not during the vast majority of human history human labour was the sole factor in generating material abundance, therefore there was a "human labour dictatorship" in one form or another whether directly from governmental mandates or market driven economic compulsion to work.
I love the way you equate working for a living to being compelled to work by someone carrying a gun or whip. Very insightful, that.


Well, I can't really motivate myself to live a life of a simple and ignorant sustenance hunter-gatherer and let you have all the fun can I? I'll have to choose between something awful and something bad if I don't own a factory or shop and have that ability to force those two "choices" on somebody else. The same is true with the rest of the working population through out history interrupted with brief respites after successful revolutions.



As a further proof of the superiority of energy accounting over the human labour market take the comparison of human slavery to machine "slavery". How efficient are humans at energy output? Suppose I harness you in front of my car and jam a cattle prod up your ass to motivate you. Can you generate the same amount of power to move my car as opposed to me turning on the oil powered engine? Next, suppose I jam open your mouth and force-feed you gasoline. Can you make use of that fuel with your puny bio-body to supply the power needed to move my car at 60 kilometers per hour? Mechanization always produces power in excess of human labour, therefore human labour to the extent it is used now for wealth rationing through wage labour is obsolete.
If it does ever become obsolete, i'd rather it be a causal, economic phenomenon rather than it being forced on everyone by your dictatorship.


The labour value system we call Capitism will have to die before we can get that point and we all know dying systems don't die peacefully. Masters don't give up their power voluntarily.



Except those who don't own property which can sustain them beyond a day or two then they are compelled to rent themselves out to people who own large amounts of property in excess of what is necessary to sustain themselves.

What's this supposed to justify?


It justifies democratization of the means of production and also the abolition of landlordism and other forms of usury. Usury and commodity value (pricing in other words) are hoary frauds that have no basis in actual quantifiable physical reality.



Sure you can have "sort of" property rights in the form of a public lease for the time you use it.
Those aren't "sort of" property rights, as the lender never owns the property.


Ownership is subjective nonsense that is logically unprovable.



But of course they don't mind living in one depending on what economic relations are uphold by brute force.
I think this speaks for itself.


Just explaining social reality as it really exists, rather than what you imagine it to exists.



The leaders of such regimes are even called "strong men" instead of dictators, by those sympathising with the property owners.
In the unlikely event of anyone other than the government owning property in any meaningful sense.


"Strong men" sides with the big property owners in suppressing the propertyless as they are big property owners themselves.



Not unless it is a populist government with popular demands for the government to violate some property rights.
Ahhh...you think that it's okay if it's "democratic". Two cannibals eating a victim- is that okay? What about gang rape?


I doubt that seizing a few factories, a few mines or a few thousand acres of farmland or forests are equivalent to cannibalism and rape in any meaningful sense. If you own and control these assets which affect the economic lives of thousands of people then: "you the dictator now dog" :lol: If these means of production are made public property then everybody owns it which means nobody owns it. If everybody claims equal control then nobody can claim total control. This is a logically consistent argument, but logic is beyond you. Also, if you want a metaphor it's more like the neighborhood residents beating down the local gangster who's running a extortion racket than what you have described.



Is that a guarantee that it can never be made to work with further research and development?
That's irrelevent to the discussion.


Of course it's relevant. It's not cost effective to research something that cannot reap you immediate pay off if something else like addictive substances can gain you larger profits sooner. Simple Capitalist (moronic) cost-benefit analysis.



So I've trashed your argument that scientific and technological progress cannot made under non-profit based economic system. That's What!
When did I make that claim. I don't think the USSR was fully "non-profit", otherwise it's economy would have collapsed much sooner than it did.


Irrelevant to the discussion. I'm advocating a futuristic machine driven society not a relic of the human labour intensive past. You like judging future social development by looking at archaic musuem pieces don't you.



The massive industrialization undertaken raised the living standards of a vast number of people who for most of their lives and their ancestors lives known only impoverishment and ignorance. Backwards this isn't. It was progressive for many as well as a horror for many. But history is written in blood isn't it?
I guess this falls under the category of "comments that respond to themselves".


Oh, come now. You're not seriously naive enough to believe all countries of this world aren't founded on brutal violence by their original founders are you? Then again maybe you are. Dynasties rise and fall. Empires rise and fall, Social systems rise and fall. Give a historical example in which absolutely horrific violence was not involve in any of these transitions.



I make no excuses for the Nazis or for Stalin,
You have done so by claiming that any society that advances technology in which many people benefit is a "good thing", therfore the Nazis were a "good thing" and Stalin was "good".


Would the world be better served if science and technology developed under autocrats were destroyed and forgotten rather than captured and made use of for the greater good?



but you're the one being fanatical in defending a system in decline when it fails to even develop the potential for advancement by furthering scientific progress.
You must have missed the last sentence of my post:
"The initially successful space exploration aside, Russian spent the following four decades playing catch-up in every other area. And in the end, they lost the space race, too."
I guess socialism, even by your definition isn't progressive. Where are the most technologically advanced countries today? What political system do those countries follow?


It still hasn't failed to advance scientific progress yet so it's still (barely) progressive. So revolution isn't the order of the day yet, but what could be true now may not be true tomorrow.

You like judging future social development by looking at archaic musuem pieces don't you.

[Tungsten]

Only if total wages equal or exceed expected revenue and that requires imperialism.
Or operating within one's means.

You don't need to worry about that though it's all been taken care of. Corporations have been moving to cheap labour countries like China and countries in Latin America for years now to take advantage of reduced labour costs.
They're not "reduced", they're just lower. They always have been.

That's why they can afford to pay relatively pampered workers like you and me wages above corresponding labour value.
Are you still trying to put forth a wages/value dichotomy?

Most of everything I buy is now made in China, not that I'm complaining because I don't need to work 14 hour days and paid 25 cents an hour and I get everything at very cheap prices.
A chinaman can live quite comfortably on that.

Like you say "everybody" benefits, except for the poor slobs who don't benefit.
Except that "poor" is relative and the "poor" are living quite comfortably.

The home population never needed to be paid wages above labour value

Imperialism became necessary when production technology enabled a huge surplus of goods to be made in excess of what could be absorbed by simply paying workers their corresponding amount in labour value,
:rolleyes:

Do you know how many hundred million pounds of food is wasted every year?
Food gets wasted? Really? I never knew that. :rolleyes: Excess isn't a "problem", starvation is "problem".

How many huge monopolistic corporations are there in the world?
That would depend on whether they're genuinely monopolies or not and how they've become so.

Better yet you try competing with one of these giants by starting your own small company in direct competition with them.
Just like no one stood a chance of competing against IBM.

Big businesses have the advantage of economies of scale that's why they can out last smaller enterprises when consumers need to buy goods with their wages which is paid below their full labour value.
:rolleyes:

Furthermore, they can have a smaller profit margin and therefore be able to sell goods cheaper than small business because they rely on the mass selling of goods to offset the lesser amount of profit per unit sold.
This is "bad" thing?

Smaller businesses have no such advantage and have to watch every penny.
Making them potentially more efficient.

And how exactly did the west manage to feed all those brilliant intellectuals
By accident of course! :rolleyes:

And all this is happening in these countries even without relying on brutal imperialism to gain surplus value. Impressive isn't it?
Or maybe your whole "imperialism" theory is bunk and capitalism does not need "imperialism" to work.

You got robbed because an unskilled high school drop-out is now out of job
His unemployment in not my fault or problem.

because the previously mentioned over-qualified engineers, technicians and scientists are now driving taxis and working as convenience store clerks for a living by beating said high school drop-outs in a competition for jobs they neither chose to participate in nor wanted as careers in the first place.
Well that's novel. I've never heard that excuse before. I trust you'll provide me with some statistics showing how many taxi drivers have phds.

And while we're on the topic, something like a convenience store could be automated with technology so there wouldn't be any need for store clerks to begin with. This is already done with present day technology. In Europe as well as Canada some stores are equipped with automated check out systems. Under a rational economic system that does energy accounting rather than rely on the human labour market doing this never needs to increase unemployment and would rather be a welcomed development for reducing the unpleasant toil of manual work.

But of course Capitalism isn't a rational system in that it is a system that relies of human labour to gain surplus value and so for every job made easier by automation it is one job lost and two jobs gained for one worker.For "rational" read "dictatorial". Thanks, I'd rather let progress happen without "help".

Oh, by the way, have I mentioned in previous posts that I make a living as a software developer? Well, that's not entirely accurate. Ever since the dot-com boom became the dot-com crash, I've been making a living as a part-time software developer while needing to work full-time as a convenience store clerk to "make a living" whatever that means.
Obviously no one wants to pay you to be a software developer as no one wants your software. Ah, I guess that's where the command economy- oh sorry, "rational energy management" comes in...

The sheiks are monarchs often installed by western powers in armed coups.
I think the sheiks long predate western presence in the middle east. You can count on that.

They do not rule in the interest of their population.
Neither would your "energy management-ism".

Religious indoctrination to justify their rule and to keep the population superstitious and ignorant is wide spread and punishment for rebellion and petty crimes is harsh. Speaking of which, just because someone lives in a country ruled by an autocrat does it mean he always supports the policy of an autocrat and have a say in shaping the policy?
It's a common claim that communism in something for the masses, when the "masses" clearly don't want it. But the masses are just idiots who don't know what's good for them, hence the need for your "enlightened" dictatorship, right?

Since when has greed ever became rational?
Since giving away all your food to others and starving yourself resulted in death.

Since when does a compulsive gambler know when to stop?
That's inherently greedy.

Things that are expensive one day and therefore sought after and financed by investors one day becomes cheap and dumped from the market the next day, regardless of its actual utility as a useful product or service.
This is nonsense. If something is genuinely "useful" for people to use, they'll buy it and a demand will be generated. What does a wish to undermine this mechanism amount to in practice, other that some elite deciding what everyone else wants and need. This is just another "you don't know what's good for you" ideology with the inevitable dictatorship that accompanies it.

I don't even have to go into the usefulness of technology for labour reduction and improved efficiency, but is now used as a hammer by management to drive down wages and working conditions.
Which isn't happening, but any excuse for a dictatorship, eh?

If any economic system hinders scientific progress it hinders potential for human liberation and being a humanist as well as a member of the human species it is in my definite interest to overthrow it when it gets to that point which for North America is fast approaching.
But your ideology won't liberate anyone. No command economy ever did.

Read Time magazine lately?
Rag.

American educational levels in science is dropping like a rock in high school.
Not though lack of demand.


While a small opulent elite amuse themselves to death the rest of the impoverish masses can go homeless and starve to death.
Better the opulent elite amuse themselves to death than start dictating to everyone and that people suffer thought their own mistakes rather than the through the incompetence of government "experts".

Oh, I see. Only the rich should benefit from the fruits of science to give them better health and make their lives easier, less brutish and more enriching, but for the unwashed working masses it's nose to the grindstone with our mind-numbing, body-breaking jobs and nothing but the whip if we get out of line eh? Don't bother responding, from the likes of you I know the answer already.
I've never read anything quite so utterly...moronic. Egalitarianism is equality-at-gunpoint, as good and as bad as any kind of dictatorship. It works to everyone's detriment and certainly isn't progressive.

Interesting that you mention whips. What's going to happen to people who don't want your command economy, or your energy dictatorship. Will it be "up against wall with you", or "do as I say, slave"?

Look around the whole country not just in your particular neighborhood.
Pretty much the same.

After that, look around the whole world, not just your particular country.
What, poverty in Africa proves that other country's systems don't work? :rolleyes:

Islands of wealth and decadence
Thanks to capitalism.

in a sea of misery and impoverishment.
Caused by socialism and pre-capitalist systems.

In the private sector funding for science is miniscule as compared to marketing and public relations. Why spend years doing research and development when you can just use propaganda
Because "propaganda" (you mean advertising, don't you?) won't help you when someone else does produce a technologically advanced product. If what you claim was true, we'd still be using 8 bit computers because no one would have developed anything better because of "propaganda".

to sell your products to the idiot masses?
Hmmm..."idiot masses". They obviously don't know what's good for them, I take it, but whose support you will be relying on in order to enact this stupid revolution of yours. Your thinly disguised "love" for the common man is starting to look very false.

I'll admit to the fact that it hasn't reach the point in which scientific progress has entirely stalled. It's not that decrepit (yet). But it will be. Or it may reach a point in which it doesn't matter because the stability of the system gets compromised from it not being able to distribute both wealth and the benefits of science reasonably
What's "reasonably"? Were people *****ing in the 60's because they didn't have space technology in their homes?

so rebellion is in the minds of the majority of the population.
Nah, they're too stupid. Isn't that right? :lol:

Worker revolutions leads industrial society advancing to high-technology society.
Working as factory workers to working as technicians and engineers.
Working in an air conditioned office and programming robots to do all the shit work for you.

Very progressive, but of course there are numbskulls who think otherwise.
Yes, the CEOs are making us all work the dirt instead of in offices. Oh wait, they're not. :rolleyes:

Countries that become non-align and follow their own path to development become your rivals in the competition for resources and extraction of surplus value. Established Capitalist powers like the countries in the west don't want that.
Socialists don't want that.

Just take a look at the map of Africa and the middle east for further evidence. Countries are invented without regards to the actual tribal or cultural make up of people living in that particular region of the world.
Tribalism isn't progressive, right?

This is the classic imperial strategy of divide and conquer.
Except that they're doing the exact opposite.

That really depends of the government telling who to do what. If you don't own massive means of affecting the material wealth of society (like most ordinary people) then there's no point in the government telling you what to do because your own individual effect on society is too miniscule to be bothered with. If you have massive amounts of assets that affect how other people live their lives
Me having a few million in the bank isn't going to affect my neighbours life.

then the government should step in to coordinate wealth production and distribution so as to put into practice: the greatest good for the greatest number,
Nazi Germany was run on the principle of the "greatest good for the greatest number"- with lethal consistency. The majority of Germans "benefited" from the assets seized from Jews and other "undesirables". I should imagine your energy dictatorship won't differ in principle or in practice.

But then you're naive enough to think that such a government would merely stop at seizing the assets of the rich.

otherwise if left unchecked, situations like this usually leads to the greatest good for the smallest number.
No it wouldn't.

Your car doesn't produce anything other than carbon monoxide and motion, not useful products that could be distributed in any meaningful way.
Yes it can. Logistics are an important aspect of production. That makes a car a potential means of production.

But if you own a factory that employ hundreds of people and churns out thousands of cars a year then that's a different story if you don't share control.
It's not yours to share.

Didn't your parents teach you that not sharing is impolite.
Didn't your parents ever teach you not to take what doesn't belong to you? (Sharing at gunpoint is as good as stealing, so let's not beat about the bush.)

Producing material wealth for the benefit of everyone including yourself isn't slavery.
Just because I also benefit in some way doesn't preclude it from being slavery.

Better yet, learning technical know-how to produce high-tech devices which automatically produces material wealth for you as well as everyone else is liberation.
Except when your life is being planned out for you by the energy dictatorship and non-compliance results in punishment.

Well he lost and we'll never know my position would we?
We already know the answer to that, don't we? :angry:

Seriously though, Nazism never relied on intellectual ingenuity to increase production for the common good, but relied on the forced labour of concentration camps and death camps.
Nazi Germany didn't rely on intellectual ingenuity because it used death camps. Sorry, that doesn't follow. I'd say the use of guided missiles in warfare was pretty ingenious, regardless of the evil motives behind it.

Last time I've checked the history books there was no brilliant engineers working to improve production techniques
Oh, it' wasn't progressive because it didn't advance areas you think are "important".

at these camps so we can be pretty sure that Nazism doesn't respect ingenuity or at least ingenuity for the common good. It was just a plain and simple "work them to death" philosophy that was practiced.
So if it did advance the common good, you'd be all in favour of fascism?
Nothing more needs to be said.

Well let's define "working for a living" as it is done in practice now. Prison guards "work for living" by guarding jails full of people who had to resort to crime because there's not enough jobs provided by the system of the economics we live under now.
What utter bullshit.

"Why did you commit rape?"
"Not enough jobs."

"Why did you commit arson?"
"Because I couldn't get a job."

The classic "there aren't enough jobs" argument for crime falls flat on it's face when critically examined.


Is their "work" valuable in any socially constructive way in reducing the number of people needing to resort to petty crimes so they wouldn't be put in prison in the first place?
Read my signature.

[red team]

Only if total wages equal or exceed expected revenue and that requires imperialism.

Or operating within one's means.


Perpetual motions machines doesn't work because perpetual motion machines are a physical impossibility. Capitalism is a perpetual motion machine. Capitalism is economically impossible and doesn't work unless you cheat, more specifically a superexploited layer of workers.




Furthermore, they can have a smaller profit margin and therefore be able to sell goods cheaper than small business because they rely on the mass selling of goods to offset the lesser amount of profit per unit sold.

This is "bad" thing?


Not initially, but like all things made to operate in an unsustainable perpetual motion machine all good things must come to an end.

Want proof?

Banks want more value in the form of interests from the initial value lent out to businesses.
Businesses want more value in the form of profits from the value initially paid out as wages.
Workers take out loans on their credit cards after finding out they don't have enough to cover expenses.

It's only a matter of time before this whole pyramid scheme comes crashing down.




And all this is happening in these countries even without relying on brutal imperialism to gain surplus value. Impressive isn't it?

Or maybe your whole "imperialism" theory is bunk and capitalism does not need "imperialism" to work.


Dumbass.

They're progressing economically and scientifically because in the case of China, although they're hardly Socialist anymore, they still have a strong authoritarian central government with enough power to take a share out of the proceeds of business to invest in public infrastructure including research facilities and universities which produces PhDs. In the case of India, even though the government is very corrupt, they still manage to be corrupt in their own interests by competing against the western powers. Gandhi kicked out the British imperialists years ago. Also, thanks to many years of centralized leadership, life expectancy in China is years ahead of India.

Point to a similar example in the colonized countries of the middle east and Africa.
Go ahead and point to one.




You got robbed because an unskilled high school drop-out is now out of job

His unemployment in not my fault or problem.


Of course it is your problem. He's simply following the same economic motives as advocated by your economic system. Simply supply and demand. There is a demand from pawn shops for cheap goods in exchange for hard currency, no questions asked. He's supplying those goods to the pawn shop he "liberated" from you. While you're following your own economic motives by defending yourself against such "liberation" of personal property by buying locks, security alarms and pepper spray, thus benefitting the economy of the theft prevention industry. It's economic progress all-around :lol:

As well as liberty all-around. :lol:

You do believe in the creed of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness don't you? :lol:

So here's the sequence of event to follow: You get in exchange for your life, his liberty in "liberating" your possessions so that he can pursue a life of happiness. :lol:



because the previously mentioned over-qualified engineers, technicians and scientists are now driving taxis and working as convenience store clerks for a living by beating said high school drop-outs in a competition for jobs they neither chose to participate in nor wanted as careers in the first place.

Well that's novel. I've never heard that excuse before. I trust you'll provide me with some statistics showing how many taxi drivers have phds.


More than you can imagine and this just from my own personal experience as well as experiences from friends and family acquaintances.




But of course Capitalism isn't a rational system in that it is a system that relies of human labour to gain surplus value and so for every job made easier by automation it is one job lost and two jobs gained for one worker.

For "rational" read "dictatorial". Thanks, I'd rather let progress happen without "help".


Progress will halt when the Capitalist economic system experiences a catastrophic failure in the form of a crash of the price system itself. Germanly 1929 was just a mild foretaste of the financial crash that's inevitable. You think people will have even the slightest confidence in the scam you call an economic system when the money isn't worth the paper it's printed on?




Oh, by the way, have I mentioned in previous posts that I make a living as a software developer? Well, that's not entirely accurate. Ever since the dot-com boom became the dot-com crash, I've been making a living as a part-time software developer while needing to work full-time as a convenience store clerk to "make a living" whatever that means.

Obviously no one wants to pay you to be a software developer as no one wants your software. Ah, I guess that's where the command economy- oh sorry, "rational energy management" comes in...


On the contrary, everybody want's my software when there was a demand for making money off of it. That's what a market boom is about. And it's not my software in the sense that if I do it for my boss it's the company's software and if I do it for my client it's my client's software. I take no responsibility for the stupidity of either my boss or my client in choosing the project to undertake.

And let me get this straight. I'm valuable enough to be paid money that could be exchanged for physical goods when computer technology was all the rage and "in demand", but now a talentless street whore who has no high skills other than spreading her legs get $100 an hour? And you still call this a rational economic system? :lol:




They do not rule in the interest of their population.

Neither would your "energy management-ism".


It's called Technocracy by the way and it's planned to be runned by scientists and technicians who are the most level-headed and rational people in the world.

As for it not ruling in the interest of the population, that's simply conjecture on your part as energy accounting has never been tried nor experimented with.




Religious indoctrination to justify their rule and to keep the population superstitious and ignorant is wide spread and punishment for rebellion and petty crimes is harsh. Speaking of which, just because someone lives in a country ruled by an autocrat does it mean he always supports the policy of an autocrat and have a say in shaping the policy?

It's a common claim that communism in something for the masses, when the "masses" clearly don't want it. But the masses are just idiots who don't know what's good for them, hence the need for your "enlightened" dictatorship, right?


Again your making subjective statements about the motivation of the "masses" :rolleyes: Their support for an alternative to the profit system depends on their collective living conditions and their awareness of such an alternative. If you live quite poorly, but you're not aware of anything that might be a better alternative then you'll keep on toiling away with the hope of heaven after this life. Every system have their supporters and detractors depending on the social conditions of their participants. Just stating that the masses don't want an alternative when their not aware of anything better just proves that you're a subjective, irrational, fundamentalist.




Since when has greed ever became rational?

Since giving away all your food to others and starving yourself resulted in death.


For every rich person there must be 20 poor person. I agree. Under a scarcity based system like Capitalism wealth in value is defined in relative terms, otherwise money itself would be valueless.




Things that are expensive one day and therefore sought after and financed by investors one day becomes cheap and dumped from the market the next day, regardless of its actual utility as a useful product or service.

This is nonsense. If something is genuinely "useful" for people to use, they'll buy it and a demand will be generated. What does a wish to undermine this mechanism amount to in practice, other that some elite deciding what everyone else wants and need. This is just another "you don't know what's good for you" ideology with the inevitable dictatorship that accompanies it.


Only partly true. You're just assuming there's sufficient purchasing power from people who wants useful products and services. For that to be true every worker will need to be employed and paid the full value of their labour. Furthermore, every worker will need to be guaranteed sufficient wages to cover the expenses of all critical necessities. The other alternative is for industry to sell products that are in demand at equal cost to labour which is impossible. The only other alternative is to expand industry to other areas of the world which is: imperialism. Selling commodities with a profit will never be an accurate reflection of real demand as this will always be distorted by lack of sufficient purchasing power by the consumer. Also, you have this demand further distorted by advertising which creates artificial desires where there wasn't any before. On top of that you have the effects of the monopolization of the means of production which makes for one company having a disproportionate influence over the supply of goods over every other company and over what people actually demand. So there you have it. You get your guage of consumer "demand" over the distortion of insufficient consumer purchasing power in addition to the distortion of advertising campaigns on top of the monopolization of resources.

Given all these distortions, how this "demand" under Capitalism can be an accurate guage of anything is beyond me.




If any economic system hinders scientific progress it hinders potential for human liberation and being a humanist as well as a member of the human species it is in my definite interest to overthrow it when it gets to that point which for North America is fast approaching.

But your ideology won't liberate anyone. No command economy ever did.


No command economy up to this moment in time had modern information and automation technology to support it. Furthermore, no command economy ever used the scientific method of guaging the costs of goods and services through energy expenditures. Cost of labour was still valuated through government price controls. Labour and goods was still valuated, but through a different mechanism other than the market. This is inevitable given a situation of scarcity not abundance. Through a program of technologically assisted material abundance valuation of goods and services is as unnecessary as it is impossible. Example, nobody can valuate air as it is too abundant. Only under conditions of scarcity, which can either be real or artificially induced, can anything be valuated.




American educational levels in science is dropping like a rock in high school.

Not though lack of demand.


Irrelevant, growth industries in this decadent period of Capitalism doesn't require research and development for materially progressive ends. Speculative shell games and propaganda campaigns on already existing products and services are just as effective for profiteering purposes.




While a small opulent elite amuse themselves to death the rest of the impoverish masses can go homeless and starve to death.

Better the opulent elite amuse themselves to death than start dictating to everyone and that people suffer thought their own mistakes rather than the through the incompetence of government "experts".


That really depends on which elite is in power. Are you really that disdainful of merit? The fact is there are real experts that know a lot more on a subject than people who haven't been trained in a particular field. Tell you what. Next time take your car to a physician rather than an auto-mechanic when it breaks down. As for the first statement the opulent and incompetent elite amusing themselves excessively without giving a damn about the conditions of the working masses which contributed to their wealth, that's already happening.




I've never read anything quite so utterly...moronic. Egalitarianism is equality-at-gunpoint, as good and as bad as any kind of dictatorship. It works to everyone's detriment and certainly isn't progressive.

Interesting that you mention whips. What's going to happen to people who don't want your command economy, or your energy dictatorship. Will it be "up against wall with you", or "do as I say, slave"?


Is it true that egalitarianism defined as equal access to wealth is detrimental to everybody under any conditions? Again you're just making subjective statements without offering any evidence to back up your claim. I would make the claim that egalitarianism is beneficial to everybody and takes away from nobody only under conditions of abundance. Under conditions of scarcity a rationing system based on monetary supply and demand is inevitable. But the point is we are way past the time in which this rationing system is necessary. Furthermore, a rationing system developed under the historical conditions of scarcity is detrimental to future human material progress when science and technology develops the means to eliminate scarcity in the first place. A scarcity based system, which is Capitalism, is detrimental in the fact that it is incapable of using the available technology or developing technology further to provide material abundance, otherwise valuation of anything is impossible, which makes the system impossible. We do have the science and technology to eliminate scarcity and provide for material abundance. Any rationing system, be it Capitalism or old-style, labour intensive, Socialism is obsolete.




In the private sector funding for science is miniscule as compared to marketing and public relations. Why spend years doing research and development when you can just use propaganda

Because "propaganda" (you mean advertising, don't you?) won't help you when someone else does produce a technologically advanced product. If what you claim was true, we'd still be using 8 bit computers because no one would have developed anything better because of "propaganda".


Again, only partially true until the superior utility of the product or service becomes obvious. In the mean time, what's the justification for the enormous waste devoted to propaganda when most of it is not necessary?




to sell your products to the idiot masses?

Hmmm..."idiot masses". They obviously don't know what's good for them, I take it, but whose support you will be relying on in order to enact this stupid revolution of yours. Your thinly disguised "love" for the common man is starting to look very false.


Meritocracy. The most qualified for the job gets to perform it. This is Capitalist rationalization for job qualifications is it not?




That really depends of the government telling who to do what. If you don't own massive means of affecting the material wealth of society (like most ordinary people) then there's no point in the government telling you what to do because your own individual effect on society is too miniscule to be bothered with. If you have massive amounts of assets that affect how other people live their lives

Me having a few million in the bank isn't going to affect my neighbours life.


Under the present commodity system, yes, because the measure of wealth in a price system is relative. If everybody has equal monetary amounts, wealth is impossible even if they are equal in material abundance, this only goes to show you that money is not a measure of anything. It's a fraud perpetrated by defenders of an outdated commodity system.

More importantly, physical assets like factories in a commodity system affects what gets produced and who receives the proceeds of such production because the concept of private ownership is in effect.




Your car doesn't produce anything other than carbon monoxide and motion, not useful products that could be distributed in any meaningful way.

Yes it can. Logistics are an important aspect of production. That makes a car a potential means of production.


Assuming that things like cars are scarce enough and costly enough to make so as to justify seizing cars from members of the population. I don't make such a ridiculous assumption given the productive power of present technologies.




Producing material wealth for the benefit of everyone including yourself isn't slavery.

Just because I also benefit in some way doesn't preclude it from being slavery.


Scarcity mode thinking.




Better yet, learning technical know-how to produce high-tech devices which automatically produces material wealth for you as well as everyone else is liberation.

Except when your life is being planned out for you by the energy dictatorship and non-compliance results in punishment.


Nobody cares about anybody's life style. Optimal material abundance for the majority of the population is the only area of importance. Non-compliance is a matter of anti-social behaviour like defecating in public and is a source of social stigmatization. But it doesn't even have to come to that. If people take over a factory or supermarket and place it under public ownership how are the owners given they are a minority in this situation going to respond to oppose this? A handful of super wealthy "captains of industry" will arrive in stretch limos and shout in the middle of the factory or store: "Please don't take it over!"? :lol:




Last time I've checked the history books there was no brilliant engineers working to improve production techniques

Oh, it' wasn't progressive because it didn't advance areas you think are "important".


If 99% of the people agree that improved material conditions will improve their living conditions then I would say that almost all people think those areas are "important" and that makes it progressive given my previous definition of the word.




Well let's define "working for a living" as it is done in practice now. Prison guards "work for living" by guarding jails full of people who had to resort to crime because there's not enough jobs provided by the system of the economics we live under now.

What utter bullshit.

"Why did you commit rape?"
"Not enough jobs."

"Why did you commit arson?"
"Because I couldn't get a job."

The classic "there aren't enough jobs" argument for crime falls flat on it's face when critically examined.


95 percent of crime have their motives in economic scarcity. 5 percent of crime are pathological in nature like arson and rape. If economic scarcity is eliminated by producing material abundance a 95 percent reduction is crime is the most likely outcome.

The technocracy center got this straight from the horse's mouth. Check the FBI archives.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by red team
...but now a talentless street whore who has no high skills other than spreading her legs gets $100 an hour?

That's only when she's working.

And "talentless" is a bit harsh; successful prostitutes might well be thought of as self-trained psychologists. They have no formal credentials, but they've learned through experience how to make their customers "feel better about themselves".

It's all fake, of course, but in capitalist society what isn't?

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Atlas Swallowed]

Unlike CEOs and bankers, prostitutes earn thier money. At least it is enjoyable when being fucked by a prostitute :)

[red team]

Originally posted by Atlas [email protected] 21 2006, 01:41 AM
Unlike CEOs and bankers, prostitutes earn thier money. At least it is enjoyable when being fucked by a prostitute :)
agreed. :lol:

[Publius]

Unlike CEOs and bankers, prostitutes earn thier money. At least it is enjoyable when being fucked by a prostitute :)

Until you get VD...

[Atlas Swallowed]

Thats why you wrap it ;)