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And have you considered what the alternative to working in those third-world sweat shops would be?
If they work in a sweat shop, isn't it better than being on the street starving? Not to say I like sweat shops, but they must be looked at with perspective.
Yes, we could probably both agree that those people are being exploited. But what is the alternative? Being exploited is better than starving.
They were doing great until they began implementing free market reforms, so ironically capitalism is what killed the beast.
No-true-scotsman at its finest. You're willing to write volumes talking about how hard work gets you everywhere in capitalism, but whenever that fails you can blame it on government intervention "socialism."
@tooAlive The idea that we have both socialism and capitalism today is beyond stupid, it's just plain ignorant. Stop listening to right wing talking points they make you look like an idiot to every non ultra rightist.
So you agree that it is not generous wage?
lol. I won't keep arguing with you about this. If you want to continue to believe that Cuba, North Korea, USSR, ect.. Are all examples to live by, I'll let you continue with that belief.
I'm not blaming the government; just pointing out how we're not a true capitalist society. Otherwise each individual would be able to decide where his or her tax dollars would go.
Redistribution of wealth is a socialist policy. Like I mentioned above, if each individual had the freedom to choose where his or her tax dollars would go, we wouldn't have socialist policies. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment, Welfare, Bailouts, Subsidies, ect.. are all socialist policies.
So yes, we do have a mixture between capitalism and socialism.
For you and me? No.
For her and her current situation? Yes.
We can talk about what I believe like you do, with no regard for reality, or I can attempt to prove my beliefs.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...00287-0032.pdf - Life expectancy of the Soviet Union from 1938 to 1986
http://www.prisoncensorship.info/arc...pectussr2.html - Deaths per 100 in the USSR from 1913 to 1956, along with infant mortality rates
http://www.google.com/publicdata/exp...e%20expectancy - Life expectancy rates in China from 1960 to 1970
So, no true scotsman then. Your beliefs are divorced from reality, which is why you have not once been able to link to an economic scientist who shares your beliefs. Actually-existing-capitalism is "not real capitalism," only your fantasy land of capitalism is "true" capitalism, and this puts you in an unreachable position because any time capitalism goes wrong you can say "Actually, that's not real capitalism!"
Now I'm sure you're going to tell me that because we have not attained true communism, this means I cannot criticize you, but that would merely be you saying "I know you are but what am I?" You're not answering any criticisms of your belief system, you're just saying "Yeah, my views are shit, but communism sucks too so I win"
I'm sorry, but giving someone pennies for working 16 hours of slave labour a day is not generous. Giving them only enough money to buy so little food that they go hungry every night is not generous. A lesser of two evils is not a good.
And you suggest that human society is, or should be, like nature?
Then what's going to stop us from merely killing the capitalists, setting the workplace afire, and go back to hunting and gathering?
In which case I suppose you see nothing wrong with robbery and mugging?
So when your small business fails, due to competition of bigger sharks, that's merely part of how things should be, hm?
Luís Henrique
How does it follow from the definition of capitalism that it necessarily involves one being able to choose the destination of one's tax dollars?
And also, what happens in this notionally "pure capitalist" society when all the people who are not parents or primary school children themselves decide that they don't want their tax money (or other resources contributed for common puposes) being spent on primary schools? Do the children then go uneducated, especially if their parents cannot afford private tuition?
Another implication of this ability to choose where one's tax money is spent are locations with social minorities - suppose the majority white inhabitants of a town mostly decide they don't want to spend tax money on maintenance or cleaning for a particular street which has a high proportion of non-white residents. Now you have a street breaking down and covered in filth simply because enough of the town's inhabitants are racist pricks.
The majority of doctors wouldn't agree with you, as would I imagine the millions of Americans who get into sticky situations because their health insurance is lacking or non-existent. I certainly appreciate having something approaching a universal health care service. I'm glad I don't have to risk dealing with scammers in order to get basic medical provision.
Otto von Bismarck was a socialist? I think you need to check your definitions. Socialists may be in favour of redistribution, but the degree and nature of that redistribution is also important, not just the fact of it in the first place.
Welfare crumbs from the table and wholesale seizure of the means of production by a politically conscious revolutionary class aren't exactly the same thing.
The Human Progress Group
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker - Mikhail Bakunin
Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains - Karl Marx
Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value - R. Buckminster Fuller
The important thing is not to be human but to be humane - Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
Check out my speculative fiction project: NOVA MUNDI
I know this may come as a shock to you but these issues we're discussing were pretty obvious before the 'economic crisis'
no
And you were incapable of eating your employer and as a result you worked as a wage slave which for a lot of people means everything I've already stated and the means out of that position are unattainable or even more common, unknown.
Can you show some proof that the however many billions of drunk and drugged orgy frequenting demon barbarians who are not owning their own businesses are out rocking hard?
It's really morbidly amusing how you overlook the inherent intentionally imposed violence in these situations here where the option to not work in horrible conditions without union support if that would even make a difference, with horrible pay, for a multinational capitalist corporation would be living on the street with access to nothing. The option to organize against such conditions and the institutions that enforce it is often a literal death sentence and the use of cartels and other murderous peripheral oppressive bodies to maintain 'order as is' is pretty common if they're not already hand in hand with government.
Marvelous. People in fact did live longer in those systems..
My question to you is, why would they want to?
And that is an honest, serious question. Why would anyone want to endure such a long life of poverty and suffering?
Heck, even life expectancy in Cuba is much higher than it is here. So then why are so many people crossing the ocean to come here, than there are to get there?
My goodness.. Is capitalism perfect? NO! It's far from perfect.
Why? Because people aren't perfect. So nothing will ever be perfect under capitalism. I never once said capitalism was a perfect system; in fact I said quite the opposite.
More than once I referred to communism as a "perfect world." Not once did I say anything remotely close to that about capitalism.
Did I say exploitation never happens in capitalism? No.
It isn't a perfect system; but simply because we aren't perfect. If we were, nobody would have to discuss economic systems, as we could all just exist peacefully.
Capitalism requires a state; it's not anarchy.
So people would be punished or persecuted from doing those things.
Again, those people would be sent to jail.
Possibly. It could also be due to me not making a good enough product, or a good enough service.
Or perhaps it would not fail. Capitalism doesn't guarantee anything.
So you'd rather her starve than be exploited?
I think you're missing the point. One factory comes along and exploits her. That exploitation is better than her previous reality. She now has one more choice; to be exploited, or to starve on the street.
Now another corporation comes along. What happens? They have to start competing for labor so eventually wages have to come up.
Because it wasn't full of poverty and suffering.
This has nothing to do with what I said. I was pointing out how your interpretation of capitalism is divorced from reality.
Again, this has nothing to do with what I said. Earlier in this thread you shook off criticisms of capitalism by saying that communism has never been proven to exist, which is a logical fallacy. I never said anything about exploitation or a "perfect system" in this particular post.
I disagree.
All I've said about capitalism is that it gives a person the freedom to choose.
You say it doesn't. Fine; we disagree.
No, I was responding to your comment about my beliefs. If I didn't have evidence, they were worthless.
I said ok; where's the evidence about communism? If there's none, does that make it worthless?
I militantly oppose both options and the position of authority and power structures that exists to offer them. I reject the system that requires these options of poverty in order to exist.
Not really better than her previous existence, and I understand that this is a hypothetical 'her' of your own creation, but the reality is that a lot of people have been displaced physically and occupationally thanks to capitalism, often from positions of previous sustainability, maybe even relative comfort, and you are apologizing for exploitation leveraged on the alternative of what is basically death, by this logic you are advocating 'more ethical ' slavery, 'slavery and poverty are better than death in the street there fore it is justified'.
how did you manage to reach so far in to get a hold of this one without seriously injuring yourself
That's nice. Evidence shows I'm right, though.
Soviet workers had access to a wide variety of education. Certain areas like housing faced problems at times, but I'd say the average Soviet worker still fared better under socialism than the majority of American workers during 19th century capitalism (Or early 20th century capitalism, or shit even capitalism today in many areas).
See above. There exists an objective reality, one thoughtless opinion does not equal a well-researched opinion.
As I said above, the problem with that stance is that capitalism does exist. It is not a what-if. Either capitalism works the way you believe, or it works the way most economists describe it; stratified and hierarchical. You've not given anyone much scientific evidence to show that it works your way.
Communism can only be spoken of in the abstract as of now. We can make some predictions about it, that it will be classless, stateless, moneyless. However, as Marx explained, the "evidence" of communism exists as a germ within capitalist society; that is, the class interest of the proletariat to abolish the way-things-are which currently harm them as a class.
However, as we currently live under capitalism, all you have to do in order to prove that it works the way you describe is...well, give us some proof. Which you haven't. Most of your reasoning relies on guesswork and logical fallacies.
Proof? Look around you.
Do you see people suffering and starving on the street?
Out of every 10 kids here in the US, how many don't have a cell phone, an iPod, and iPad, or a computer? Oh, but they must be suffering unless they're rich.
I thought only the 1% was rich?
And you're saying people from those countries were very will off.
Compared to what? Again, starving on the street?
But you compare those countries to "capitalist" ones, and you're at a big disadvantage.
