"Dying" seems to be the new word for "very few people I know do/have/play it, and I'm not interested in it, so it doesn't matter!". Essentially a new way of stroking one's ego.
Examples: Nokia and symbian. MMOs and WoW. Laptops and desktops. Etc.
Strongly disagree (but then again, I'm not living in USA). I worry very little of government wiretaps - they leave a paper trail, have to abide by rules and all people involved are bound by an oath of silence on whatever private info they get to hear.
I do worry about small time criminals trying to fish out useful information, like locations, time when apartment is empty, identity theft, etc. That's largely untraceable, and is an actual substantial risk in this day and age to anyone.
Granted if you're some sort of an activist, former is probably a big risk for you. But for an average citizen, latter scenario is far more likely.
The point is that this is the minimum required amount enforced by the law. You cannot summarily take this time away and not face enormous fines. Except in USA because there aren't any.
For the record, I live in Finland, which is on top of that list with 30 days, and we're still considered among the top economies in the world in terms of competitiveness. Thing is, if a key employee needs to work extra, he can stockpile these days (my father does that for example). Once he had to work two years without leave days. Then the financial crisis hit, and folks were put on unpaid leave. He just took his 60 days of paid vacation instead and flew around the world with my mom. Employer was actually HAPPY and even pressured him into taking the paid vacation, because it meant another person less they had to account for with bureaucracy needed to put people on unpaid leave.
It's a system that works, keeps people fresh so they don't burn out, allows for time with the family, and yet still grants key employees an ability to work with no leave if company needs them to, and they want to (i.e. properly incentified while preventing the pressure when employee doesn't want to.
The "they don't make them anymore" feature phones still outsell smartphones by a very large margin. We're looking at about 4-5 times at the moment.
But even if you count any "I can install a game on it" phone as a "smartphone" (you could do that in early 1990s), they still make a lot of mobile phones that don't even have a screen, much less a capability to install anything on it.
The article said one was a sys admin who apparently had access to the ATM's, and another was a former IT director, but still you'd think there'd be some security to prevent some crooked employee from just emptying out an ATM whenever he felt like it.
P.S. It's worth noting that Chavez has been in power for quite a while now, and with the exception of him being a rather epic-sized attention whore (which is probably a good thing, as he seems to crave attention far more then personal wealth), he has done nothing but good for most of his people. Unlike Mugabe the level of living for the poor in his country has increased substantially because unlike Mugabe whose policies were "grab from the colonialists and give to allies", Chavez's policy is "grab from the colonialists and put under government control".
The judgement if he will get corrupted by the money in the end is still in the air, for as long as he's in power. This goes for pretty much every leader. But so far, so good, at least as far as majority in his country is concerned.
International investors on the other hand, are obviously pissed - hence the massive propaganda push.
I think I'm done talking to the wall that is you because you:
1. Ignore the history that is impossible to twist your way (Scandinavian countries) through a strawman. 2. Claim that cases where history doesn't go your way in is "we just don't know about it yet" in spite of massive evidence to contrary. 3. Admit that foreign and internal interests were the driving force behind Germany and USSR conflict in WW2, yet again try to make it somehow the financial system's fault without any facts or even arguments to back it up. 4. Draw a conclusion from above three strawmen that history supports you. 5. Describe the dictatorships that called themselves "communist", and instead of drawing the conclusion that dictatorships often elevate a smart minority to control the poor majority, you decide that in fact the communism does. I.e. you're once again unable to see the inside of the shop behind the neon sign in front.
Essentially for every argument presented, you try to defeat it with a strawman. That makes arguing very tiring, because instead of arguing about the actual issues, we end up arguing on why your strawman claims are in fact useless, and they ignore most of the existing opposing evidence and are nothing but simple claims.
And finally, the definition of fascism: Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy. In fascist Germany for example, all of the large corporations had representation in the very internal circles of the Fuhrer. They essentially drove the economy of the nation, down to the point of essentially enslaving entire ethnicities to work in their factories for free. Even better example was Mussolini's fascism, which was even closer to the roots of actual fascism.
All in all, it's a nice argument, but you need to present something more then "but this country that called itself communist commited genocide, so clearly communism is bad, and so are YOU for arguing that it has some good parts to it!" strawman to argue. It works well when preaching to a choir of similarily narrow minded people, but not when you argue against someone who is actually presenting concrete facts and examples to the opposite.
Try the following: 1. How/why it was social system rather then militarism/home/foreign policy/other similar factors that caused the issues such as genocide/wars. In what way would this change if we changed social policy of the state? 2. Why these wars and genocides different and more/less condemnable from ones caused by countries with another social system? Etc.
And for the record, it's worth noting and anti-colonialism hasn't exactly been a great thing on large scale, as for every success story like Chavez, history will show a dosen of Mugabes and Jong-Ils. And if doesn't help that many just end up bought up and corrupt by the old colonial masters anyway (great case to point: Nigeria and it's oil wealth).
1. Why Hitler comparison was horrible (let's get this out of the way right at the start not to tempt Godwin's law). Hitler's party was "national socialist". It's key ideologies were: Fascism: Idea of corporate control of government. Nationalism: Idea that one race is superior to others. Militarsm: Idea that above two goals and idea of Great Germany should be advanced via military might.
Considering that Hitler was openly anti-communistic (to an extent of which USSR of the time was considered communistic) and anti-socialistic (as fascism key tenets sit in polar opposite side to those of socialism), and finally nationalistic to extreme (which again sits in the very direct opposition to socialistic basics), calling him socialist is insulting at best and just utterly stupid at worst.
Example: Basic idea behind socialism is that strong should help the weak. One of the basic tenets of nationalism, in which Hitler took active part was elimination of the weak. A great example of this was recovered in one of the Hitler's letters, were a german father of a mentally retarded son asked Fuhrer for a permission to, under key tenets of nationalistic supremacy teachings, right to kill his son to remove him from "polluting Aryan genetic pool".
Permission was granted after personal letter exchange, signed by Hitler by hand.
Essentially, the key point is that calling your party "socialist", "capitalist", "democratic", etc doesn't make it one. You're stuck on the faceplate without seeing what's under it.
2. Forcible linking of social system to genocide. Also addressed in 3.
Any modern major STATE (note, not system but state) has commited open genocide in its past. Example: USA, indians. Great Britain: India, South Africa. Example can be found on virtually any state that can be called "great". There are also numerous cases of modern, somewhat hidden genocide, such as Indonesia in the 50ties (essentially the birthplace of modern extremist islam, cultivated as an open secret by CIA to crush communist uprising in accordance to doctrine of the time).
3. Modern communist states: There aren't any as far as I know. China, while calling itself "communist" is in fact mostly extremely capitalist state resembling USA of early 1900s. USSR was, as the infamous soviet time joke goes "standing with one foot in socialism, and one in communism, in a very uncomfortable position". It was essentially attempting a mix of capitalism and socialism on lower level of society, and extreme capitalism on higher levels (i.e. companies). It was a functional system to an extent too, as it successfully carried a massive ~40% military overhead for decades until eventual collapse (our current Western capitalism has trouble handing even current ~10%).
The closest you can get to a "socialist state" is probably nordic states of Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway. They incorporate a mix of socialist and capitalist policies, and it's widely understood that most of their recent social problems have been rooted in the slow erosion of socialism in favor of more capitalist policies, creating massive inefficiencies within the system as old bureaucracies which were considered inefficient were found to be far more efficient then private services handling same sectors after public bureau was privatized. This particular experience is in no way limited to these four however, even with countries such as Great Britain getting the same problems (i.e. GB's privatisation of railways).
It's worth noting that unless you count past of Great Sweden around 400 years ago, long before they became socialist, there has been a grand total of zero "genocides" commited by the aforementioned countries.
Which brings me back to the point that genocide isn't tied to social system of the country, but to it's larger, foreign and internal policy goals, which tend to run independent of social system. I.e. openly socialist USA would've still killed off indians and openly capitalist USSR would've
Most stated that call(ed) themselves "communist" throughout the history of mankind have NEVER been communistic. This includes: USSR, North Korea, Warsaw Union states in Eastern Europe... List goes on.
Two: Communist is an exact term. It's a person who adheres to views of communism. Communism is an economic system which is designed around the idea that nothing is personal and everything is communal. There is a wide argument in scientific circles that there were some heavily communistic tribes during stone age, and possible early bronze age.
Three: "democrat" and "republican" are party names in USA. Just like most US names, they are typically heavily misleading and overly pompous.
Democrat in reality refers to a person who follows democracy: a political system which is essentially a rule of majority, where every major community decision is made by a vote. For example, NONE of the western states (with possible exception of Switzerland) are true democracies. Previous known cases of true democracy were during Greek Polis (city-state) period.
This is another thing on which you should educate yourself if you intend to argue about this issue in a more serious circle. Most of these terms have real, non-popular meaning which often has nothing to do with popular entity who has usurped the word in question.
I even predicted your response:
But don't worry I expect to see a speach of how the fact that all planned economies in history have either failed to feed their people or worse (like the massive genocides most economic "plans" involved). I expect to read here how they weren't "really" planned economies, and how it's all the fault of . I expect to read how it's all a big conspiracy, in the academia, so well known for their extreme-right views of life...
I guess you didn't feel like quoting that.
You expected to have facts that clearly prove you false thrown in your face. Your emphasis here looks like "Ha, I trolled you good, didn't I?".
The entire remaining part of your post has already been addressed in this thread. Some parts several times over. Including attempts to paint those opposing your point of view as "socialist", "communist", "capitalist" or any other word with a negative connotation. You chose to essentially disregard the fact that people like me argue for moderation, rather then take the extremes. In this regard, you are a true child of zeitgeist, one who sees the world in black and white, friend or foe and nothing in between.
It's even more sad that you like to quote dictators who worked on completely opposite ends of political spectrum, such as Hitler and Stalin, and then call them both "socialist". Which is an epitome of stupidity and ignorance.
To you and people like you, socialism is a mythical "evil" and capitalism is a mythical "good". As a result, you end up associating anything you consider "evil" with it - down to the point where you call people who were possibly some of the most anti-socialist in the world "socialist". You also end up considering even vices of capitalism "good", because mythical "good" can obviously do no evil.
This renders any attempt to argue pointless. Which is rather sad, as the thread had a good potential for true discussion, rather then "but I believe black is white so it is" slugfest you derailed it into.
One final note: Not a SINGLE revolution in the world in the known history of humanity has not been about a power grab first, and everything else at a distant two hundred and fifty seventh position, if even that.
P.S. People like me are a true "moderates". We prefer to have a little of everything in moderation and see vice in extremes. If you bothered to read the thread throughout, you would've figured this out on your own.
Your entire argument is based on following strawman arguments, which are often completely false, collapsing your entire logic chain:
1. Assumption that profitability = efficiency. We could easily distribute food to entire world for a very small amount of money. Problem is, they can't afford to pay it = unprofitable. Case to point: WFP works on a hilariously small budget compared to amount of people they feed.
2. Assumption that Soviet dictature was "socialist" in the real sense of the word as well as assumption that socialism was the driving force behind poverty in USSR and it's satellites.
It is a widely accepted fact that biggest problem with poverty in Soviet Union was caused by both extreme wealth division (upper class lived better then most of the rich people in the West, while rest lived in poverty) and extreme military spending (over 40% of budget going to military).
3. Assumption that capitalism, or socialism are directly tied to militarism.
Case to point: Scandinavian countries are openly socialist, consistently score as both least militarist, most politically stable and incidentally (somewhat offtopic) most economically competitive economies in the world.
USSR was extremely militarist, and military spending was the main source of their downfall. Incidentally one of the main reasons capitalist West is currently on a VERY shaky ground economically is that if functions on very same militarist principles which simply drain the economy too much.
The difference is only in the fact that unlike USSR that took on the brunt of spending, USA has successfully used NATO as an umbrella to spread the costs (note: this is socialism at work) resulting in financial burden of militarism per capita being far lower.
And honestly, do you REALLY want to talk about genocides, wars, terror, racism and so on... as a fellow Westerner? We could go back to anywhere from current wars "on terror" to colonialism and note that the most fitting saying is that infamous one born in colonies about us:
"West has attained its position of wealth and power through its excellence in systemic and organised application of violence. Many in the West forget this. Those who had to be on the receiving end never do."
Another strawman. Current capitalism is extremely inefficient in the way you describe - food supply.
On one hand we have food literally being thrown away in massive amounts in western countries - the supermarkets count around 10-20% being simply thrown away ALONE. Add to the obvious problems with obesity and the fact that it's mainly caused not by quality, but quantity of food consumed, general inefficiency due to supply and demand not being controlled causing natural supply and demand contractions often reducing or increasing production in inefficient ways (that bring in moe money) and system inefficiency starts to get pretty damn close to that magical "50% inefficient" you tout.
On of the other hand, we still have an eight-nine figure (depending on way of counting) of people suffering from starvation because logistics are optimized around delivering only to people with money, and at choking and killing off local farms in places where people are starving.
In this regard, a planned socialist economy would most definitely be more efficient in a true sense of the word (results/effort). It would also likely produce less in total due to motivation factor problems. But as division between classes becomes more balanced, majority gets more, while the very top gets less. The current system is based on the fact that even in western "democracies", electorate doesn't hold any real power - it can only choose between candidates that are placed by the top 5% and will all serve the top 5% at the expense of the 95%.
I'm arguing that extremes of any of the above are harmful, and when these extremes and their lackeys attempt to justify themselves through obvious strawman arguments, they're still wrong.
Of course, that's already outlawed. So your argument is that we need more cops then ? I don't understand.
You're purposefully misunderstanding. Anyone living in 2010 knows very well that regulation has been essentially shredded in favor of exactly the kind of practices that grandparent described. Where it's still outlawed, the regulator monitoring is usually crippled by legislation purchased by Big'n'Big Co.
Cases to point: microsoft, banking system.
Well fuck, if it's not the middle class or the lower class, who the hell is left? Oh, right, the bourgeois. Well, as long as they're doing all right, everything is just peachy! Hurray for Capitalism!:P
And since this mobility first started, we moved from 1950's to 2010. Are you seriously claiming either the lower class or the middle class is worse off ?
This is just blatant trolling. The reason why standard of living has moved up is because science has progressed to the point where we can produce things needed to raise standard of living far more efficiently. If Big'n'Big collusion and significant income variance had been shrunk to reasonable size, average standard of living would be MUCH HIGHER.
So yes, in comparison of 2010 without flaws, and 2010 with flaws is indeed obvious. If you want to argue that 1950 vs 2010, we can just as well start praising benevolent North Korean leaders, who made sure that their standard of living of their people is better then in 1800.
Which is the whole bloody point, and to miss it, you have to make a real effort.
My own machine still has audigy2 I bought long, long ago, and that has been in at least 2 other systems before. My parents, who usually get my "hand downs" use ancient SB live!
Both machines have realtek on board audio, and even my father, who is not audiophile by any stretch noticed a difference in spite of using some crappy 50€ speaker+mic set on that machine after I put SB Live in (his words were something among the lines of "whatever you did to our computer, it sounds different. I like it more that way"). On my machine, I use logitech's Z5500 (http://www.logitech.com/en-us/speakers-audio/home-pc-speakers/devices/224) and frankly, realtek sounds utterly horrible even on mp3 playback.
Playing games on realtek was just painful. Literally painful, subwoofer was outputting noticeable distortions even in WoW during the short period of it bugging out with creative cards about a year ago, forcing me to roll over to it.
Point to case - buy a basic ~40€ sound card if you care about sound at all. You don't have to shell any more unless you're an audiophile - pretty much all bells and whistles are a waste. But a proper bulk sound card does make a magnificent difference even for a mid-end speaker setup. And in some cases, even with basic headphones. I'm not sure if it matter whether the card is from crative or asus at this point - both seem to support EAX, and with DX10 onwards losing DirectSound completely, there's just not much of a point in hardware audio in a consumer PC beyond the basic quality and post-processing.
Pretty much this. The rest of Europe is sick and tired of Ireland. When it's not them screwing everyone out by lowering their taxes below obvious minimum, it's them slowing down acceptance of treaties.
Granted Germany and France want as many as possible on board. But many of us living in small peripheral countries that are doing quite well economically compared to most are really, really tired of having to help bailing out assholes who will use that money to bribe companies with "lower taxes" yet again.
You'd be surprised how many would gladly "shrink" EU down to countries that share similar fiscal beliefs. You'd be even more surprised to find that these countries are doing quite well financially even in this countries.
And if you're a US conservative, you'd be utterly shocked to find that these countries are heavily socialist. And doing well. And getting bloody pissed at those who chose "fiscal americanisation" and now want us to foot their bill for it.
Slashdot Mirror
"Dying" seems to be the new word for "very few people I know do/have/play it, and I'm not interested in it, so it doesn't matter!". Essentially a new way of stroking one's ego.
Examples: Nokia and symbian. MMOs and WoW. Laptops and desktops. Etc.
In USA only, probably. In Europe/Japan/other developed countries, highly unlikely but maybe.
In the rest of the world? No way in hell.
Considering the conditions at the time, 23% was a steal for Goldman Sachs. Markets wouldn't have loaned to it at 50% at the time.
Web on a phone is already a great experience. What more could you possibly ask for?
Anonymous Coward that has tried using web on a personal computer.
Strongly disagree (but then again, I'm not living in USA). I worry very little of government wiretaps - they leave a paper trail, have to abide by rules and all people involved are bound by an oath of silence on whatever private info they get to hear.
I do worry about small time criminals trying to fish out useful information, like locations, time when apartment is empty, identity theft, etc. That's largely untraceable, and is an actual substantial risk in this day and age to anyone.
Granted if you're some sort of an activist, former is probably a big risk for you. But for an average citizen, latter scenario is far more likely.
It's still a whole lot more performance/cost, which admittedly doesn't matter much on high end.
The point is that this is the minimum required amount enforced by the law. You cannot summarily take this time away and not face enormous fines. Except in USA because there aren't any.
For the record, I live in Finland, which is on top of that list with 30 days, and we're still considered among the top economies in the world in terms of competitiveness. Thing is, if a key employee needs to work extra, he can stockpile these days (my father does that for example). Once he had to work two years without leave days. Then the financial crisis hit, and folks were put on unpaid leave.
He just took his 60 days of paid vacation instead and flew around the world with my mom. Employer was actually HAPPY and even pressured him into taking the paid vacation, because it meant another person less they had to account for with bureaucracy needed to put people on unpaid leave.
It's a system that works, keeps people fresh so they don't burn out, allows for time with the family, and yet still grants key employees an ability to work with no leave if company needs them to, and they want to (i.e. properly incentified while preventing the pressure when employee doesn't want to.
The "they don't make them anymore" feature phones still outsell smartphones by a very large margin. We're looking at about 4-5 times at the moment.
But even if you count any "I can install a game on it" phone as a "smartphone" (you could do that in early 1990s), they still make a lot of mobile phones that don't even have a screen, much less a capability to install anything on it.
I think he forgot the most important part:
"Which nation also actively preaches that doing all above is wrong, when it's someone else doing it".
The article said one was a sys admin who apparently had access to the ATM's, and another was a former IT director, but still you'd think there'd be some security to prevent some crooked employee from just emptying out an ATM whenever he felt like it.
There probably is, as they got caught.
P.S. It's worth noting that Chavez has been in power for quite a while now, and with the exception of him being a rather epic-sized attention whore (which is probably a good thing, as he seems to crave attention far more then personal wealth), he has done nothing but good for most of his people. Unlike Mugabe the level of living for the poor in his country has increased substantially because unlike Mugabe whose policies were "grab from the colonialists and give to allies", Chavez's policy is "grab from the colonialists and put under government control".
The judgement if he will get corrupted by the money in the end is still in the air, for as long as he's in power. This goes for pretty much every leader. But so far, so good, at least as far as majority in his country is concerned.
International investors on the other hand, are obviously pissed - hence the massive propaganda push.
I think I'm done talking to the wall that is you because you:
1. Ignore the history that is impossible to twist your way (Scandinavian countries) through a strawman.
2. Claim that cases where history doesn't go your way in is "we just don't know about it yet" in spite of massive evidence to contrary.
3. Admit that foreign and internal interests were the driving force behind Germany and USSR conflict in WW2, yet again try to make it somehow the financial system's fault without any facts or even arguments to back it up.
4. Draw a conclusion from above three strawmen that history supports you.
5. Describe the dictatorships that called themselves "communist", and instead of drawing the conclusion that dictatorships often elevate a smart minority to control the poor majority, you decide that in fact the communism does. I.e. you're once again unable to see the inside of the shop behind the neon sign in front.
Essentially for every argument presented, you try to defeat it with a strawman. That makes arguing very tiring, because instead of arguing about the actual issues, we end up arguing on why your strawman claims are in fact useless, and they ignore most of the existing opposing evidence and are nothing but simple claims.
And finally, the definition of fascism: Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy. In fascist Germany for example, all of the large corporations had representation in the very internal circles of the Fuhrer. They essentially drove the economy of the nation, down to the point of essentially enslaving entire ethnicities to work in their factories for free.
Even better example was Mussolini's fascism, which was even closer to the roots of actual fascism.
All in all, it's a nice argument, but you need to present something more then "but this country that called itself communist commited genocide, so clearly communism is bad, and so are YOU for arguing that it has some good parts to it!" strawman to argue. It works well when preaching to a choir of similarily narrow minded people, but not when you argue against someone who is actually presenting concrete facts and examples to the opposite.
Try the following:
1. How/why it was social system rather then militarism/home/foreign policy/other similar factors that caused the issues such as genocide/wars. In what way would this change if we changed social policy of the state?
2. Why these wars and genocides different and more/less condemnable from ones caused by countries with another social system?
Etc.
And for the record, it's worth noting and anti-colonialism hasn't exactly been a great thing on large scale, as for every success story like Chavez, history will show a dosen of Mugabes and Jong-Ils. And if doesn't help that many just end up bought up and corrupt by the old colonial masters anyway (great case to point: Nigeria and it's oil wealth).
Addressing your questions, one by one:
1. Why Hitler comparison was horrible (let's get this out of the way right at the start not to tempt Godwin's law).
Hitler's party was "national socialist". It's key ideologies were:
Fascism: Idea of corporate control of government.
Nationalism: Idea that one race is superior to others.
Militarsm: Idea that above two goals and idea of Great Germany should be advanced via military might.
Considering that Hitler was openly anti-communistic (to an extent of which USSR of the time was considered communistic) and anti-socialistic (as fascism key tenets sit in polar opposite side to those of socialism), and finally nationalistic to extreme (which again sits in the very direct opposition to socialistic basics), calling him socialist is insulting at best and just utterly stupid at worst.
Example: Basic idea behind socialism is that strong should help the weak. One of the basic tenets of nationalism, in which Hitler took active part was elimination of the weak. A great example of this was recovered in one of the Hitler's letters, were a german father of a mentally retarded son asked Fuhrer for a permission to, under key tenets of nationalistic supremacy teachings, right to kill his son to remove him from "polluting Aryan genetic pool".
Permission was granted after personal letter exchange, signed by Hitler by hand.
Essentially, the key point is that calling your party "socialist", "capitalist", "democratic", etc doesn't make it one. You're stuck on the faceplate without seeing what's under it.
2. Forcible linking of social system to genocide. Also addressed in 3.
Any modern major STATE (note, not system but state) has commited open genocide in its past. Example: USA, indians. Great Britain: India, South Africa. Example can be found on virtually any state that can be called "great". There are also numerous cases of modern, somewhat hidden genocide, such as Indonesia in the 50ties (essentially the birthplace of modern extremist islam, cultivated as an open secret by CIA to crush communist uprising in accordance to doctrine of the time).
3. Modern communist states: There aren't any as far as I know. China, while calling itself "communist" is in fact mostly extremely capitalist state resembling USA of early 1900s. USSR was, as the infamous soviet time joke goes "standing with one foot in socialism, and one in communism, in a very uncomfortable position". It was essentially attempting a mix of capitalism and socialism on lower level of society, and extreme capitalism on higher levels (i.e. companies). It was a functional system to an extent too, as it successfully carried a massive ~40% military overhead for decades until eventual collapse (our current Western capitalism has trouble handing even current ~10%).
The closest you can get to a "socialist state" is probably nordic states of Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway. They incorporate a mix of socialist and capitalist policies, and it's widely understood that most of their recent social problems have been rooted in the slow erosion of socialism in favor of more capitalist policies, creating massive inefficiencies within the system as old bureaucracies which were considered inefficient were found to be far more efficient then private services handling same sectors after public bureau was privatized. This particular experience is in no way limited to these four however, even with countries such as Great Britain getting the same problems (i.e. GB's privatisation of railways).
It's worth noting that unless you count past of Great Sweden around 400 years ago, long before they became socialist, there has been a grand total of zero "genocides" commited by the aforementioned countries.
Which brings me back to the point that genocide isn't tied to social system of the country, but to it's larger, foreign and internal policy goals, which tend to run independent of social system. I.e. openly socialist USA would've still killed off indians and openly capitalist USSR would've
First of all, a bit of history:
Most stated that call(ed) themselves "communist" throughout the history of mankind have NEVER been communistic. This includes: USSR, North Korea, Warsaw Union states in Eastern Europe... List goes on.
Two: Communist is an exact term. It's a person who adheres to views of communism. Communism is an economic system which is designed around the idea that nothing is personal and everything is communal. There is a wide argument in scientific circles that there were some heavily communistic tribes during stone age, and possible early bronze age.
Three: "democrat" and "republican" are party names in USA. Just like most US names, they are typically heavily misleading and overly pompous.
Democrat in reality refers to a person who follows democracy: a political system which is essentially a rule of majority, where every major community decision is made by a vote.
For example, NONE of the western states (with possible exception of Switzerland) are true democracies. Previous known cases of true democracy were during Greek Polis (city-state) period.
This is another thing on which you should educate yourself if you intend to argue about this issue in a more serious circle. Most of these terms have real, non-popular meaning which often has nothing to do with popular entity who has usurped the word in question.
I even predicted your response :
But don't worry I expect to see a speach of how the fact that all planned economies in history have either failed to feed their people or worse (like the massive genocides most economic "plans" involved). I expect to read here how they weren't "really" planned economies, and how it's all the fault of . I expect to read how it's all a big conspiracy, in the academia, so well known for their extreme-right views of life ...
I guess you didn't feel like quoting that.
You expected to have facts that clearly prove you false thrown in your face. Your emphasis here looks like "Ha, I trolled you good, didn't I?".
The entire remaining part of your post has already been addressed in this thread. Some parts several times over. Including attempts to paint those opposing your point of view as "socialist", "communist", "capitalist" or any other word with a negative connotation. You chose to essentially disregard the fact that people like me argue for moderation, rather then take the extremes. In this regard, you are a true child of zeitgeist, one who sees the world in black and white, friend or foe and nothing in between.
It's even more sad that you like to quote dictators who worked on completely opposite ends of political spectrum, such as Hitler and Stalin, and then call them both "socialist". Which is an epitome of stupidity and ignorance.
To you and people like you, socialism is a mythical "evil" and capitalism is a mythical "good". As a result, you end up associating anything you consider "evil" with it - down to the point where you call people who were possibly some of the most anti-socialist in the world "socialist".
You also end up considering even vices of capitalism "good", because mythical "good" can obviously do no evil.
This renders any attempt to argue pointless. Which is rather sad, as the thread had a good potential for true discussion, rather then "but I believe black is white so it is" slugfest you derailed it into.
One final note: Not a SINGLE revolution in the world in the known history of humanity has not been about a power grab first, and everything else at a distant two hundred and fifty seventh position, if even that.
P.S. People like me are a true "moderates". We prefer to have a little of everything in moderation and see vice in extremes. If you bothered to read the thread throughout, you would've figured this out on your own.
Your entire argument is based on following strawman arguments, which are often completely false, collapsing your entire logic chain:
1. Assumption that profitability = efficiency. We could easily distribute food to entire world for a very small amount of money. Problem is, they can't afford to pay it = unprofitable.
Case to point: WFP works on a hilariously small budget compared to amount of people they feed.
2. Assumption that Soviet dictature was "socialist" in the real sense of the word as well as assumption that socialism was the driving force behind poverty in USSR and it's satellites.
It is a widely accepted fact that biggest problem with poverty in Soviet Union was caused by both extreme wealth division (upper class lived better then most of the rich people in the West, while rest lived in poverty) and extreme military spending (over 40% of budget going to military).
3. Assumption that capitalism, or socialism are directly tied to militarism.
Case to point: Scandinavian countries are openly socialist, consistently score as both least militarist, most politically stable and incidentally (somewhat offtopic) most economically competitive economies in the world.
USSR was extremely militarist, and military spending was the main source of their downfall. Incidentally one of the main reasons capitalist West is currently on a VERY shaky ground economically is that if functions on very same militarist principles which simply drain the economy too much.
The difference is only in the fact that unlike USSR that took on the brunt of spending, USA has successfully used NATO as an umbrella to spread the costs (note: this is socialism at work) resulting in financial burden of militarism per capita being far lower.
And honestly, do you REALLY want to talk about genocides, wars, terror, racism and so on... as a fellow Westerner? We could go back to anywhere from current wars "on terror" to colonialism and note that the most fitting saying is that infamous one born in colonies about us:
"West has attained its position of wealth and power through its excellence in systemic and organised application of violence. Many in the West forget this. Those who had to be on the receiving end never do."
Microsoft as an example of buying politicians and killing deregulation?
United States of America. They lose the case. They buy the government not to enact the court suggestion of splitting the company up.
Look it up, it's all in the history books. Welcome to USA.
Another strawman. Current capitalism is extremely inefficient in the way you describe - food supply.
On one hand we have food literally being thrown away in massive amounts in western countries - the supermarkets count around 10-20% being simply thrown away ALONE. Add to the obvious problems with obesity and the fact that it's mainly caused not by quality, but quantity of food consumed, general inefficiency due to supply and demand not being controlled causing natural supply and demand contractions often reducing or increasing production in inefficient ways (that bring in moe money) and system inefficiency starts to get pretty damn close to that magical "50% inefficient" you tout.
On of the other hand, we still have an eight-nine figure (depending on way of counting) of people suffering from starvation because logistics are optimized around delivering only to people with money, and at choking and killing off local farms in places where people are starving.
In this regard, a planned socialist economy would most definitely be more efficient in a true sense of the word (results/effort). It would also likely produce less in total due to motivation factor problems.
But as division between classes becomes more balanced, majority gets more, while the very top gets less. The current system is based on the fact that even in western "democracies", electorate doesn't hold any real power - it can only choose between candidates that are placed by the top 5% and will all serve the top 5% at the expense of the 95%.
I'm arguing that extremes of any of the above are harmful, and when these extremes and their lackeys attempt to justify themselves through obvious strawman arguments, they're still wrong.
Of course, that's already outlawed. So your argument is that we need more cops then ? I don't understand.
You're purposefully misunderstanding. Anyone living in 2010 knows very well that regulation has been essentially shredded in favor of exactly the kind of practices that grandparent described. Where it's still outlawed, the regulator monitoring is usually crippled by legislation purchased by Big'n'Big Co.
Cases to point: microsoft, banking system.
Well fuck, if it's not the middle class or the lower class, who the hell is left? :P
Oh, right, the bourgeois. Well, as long as they're doing all right, everything is just peachy! Hurray for Capitalism!
And since this mobility first started, we moved from 1950's to 2010. Are you seriously claiming either the lower class or the middle class is worse off ?
This is just blatant trolling. The reason why standard of living has moved up is because science has progressed to the point where we can produce things needed to raise standard of living far more efficiently. If Big'n'Big collusion and significant income variance had been shrunk to reasonable size, average standard of living would be MUCH HIGHER.
So yes, in comparison of 2010 without flaws, and 2010 with flaws is indeed obvious. If you want to argue that 1950 vs 2010, we can just as well start praising benevolent North Korean leaders, who made sure that their standard of living of their people is better then in 1800.
Which is the whole bloody point, and to miss it, you have to make a real effort.
You're at least one of the following:
1. Extremely rich
2. Born into a very powerful family
3. Extremely ignorant of reality
4. Trolling
My own machine still has audigy2 I bought long, long ago, and that has been in at least 2 other systems before. My parents, who usually get my "hand downs" use ancient SB live!
Both machines have realtek on board audio, and even my father, who is not audiophile by any stretch noticed a difference in spite of using some crappy 50€ speaker+mic set on that machine after I put SB Live in (his words were something among the lines of "whatever you did to our computer, it sounds different. I like it more that way"). On my machine, I use logitech's Z5500 (http://www.logitech.com/en-us/speakers-audio/home-pc-speakers/devices/224) and frankly, realtek sounds utterly horrible even on mp3 playback.
Playing games on realtek was just painful. Literally painful, subwoofer was outputting noticeable distortions even in WoW during the short period of it bugging out with creative cards about a year ago, forcing me to roll over to it.
Point to case - buy a basic ~40€ sound card if you care about sound at all. You don't have to shell any more unless you're an audiophile - pretty much all bells and whistles are a waste.
But a proper bulk sound card does make a magnificent difference even for a mid-end speaker setup. And in some cases, even with basic headphones.
I'm not sure if it matter whether the card is from crative or asus at this point - both seem to support EAX, and with DX10 onwards losing DirectSound completely, there's just not much of a point in hardware audio in a consumer PC beyond the basic quality and post-processing.
Pretty much this. The rest of Europe is sick and tired of Ireland. When it's not them screwing everyone out by lowering their taxes below obvious minimum, it's them slowing down acceptance of treaties.
Granted Germany and France want as many as possible on board. But many of us living in small peripheral countries that are doing quite well economically compared to most are really, really tired of having to help bailing out assholes who will use that money to bribe companies with "lower taxes" yet again.
You'd be surprised how many would gladly "shrink" EU down to countries that share similar fiscal beliefs. You'd be even more surprised to find that these countries are doing quite well financially even in this countries.
And if you're a US conservative, you'd be utterly shocked to find that these countries are heavily socialist. And doing well. And getting bloody pissed at those who chose "fiscal americanisation" and now want us to foot their bill for it.
+1 Scary.
No, I mean an iphone. Specifically and iPHONE with the ability to make and receive calls.
Don't be an asshat.