Your view is skewed and overly-optimistic about the beneficial influence a totally free and unrestricted capitalistic system would have and maintain, at least for the majority of people. You seem to forget that socialism started as a reaction to this raw capitailism, and thus, if people would not feel a certain need and necessecity to temper this system (and according to your rosy picture they shouldn't and wouldn't), it would not have started, nor have remained active for so long.
This is raw positivism. Its like saying 'the law allowing me to hold slaves is just because otherwise it wouldn't be law'. Marx exploited the fact that the 'unwashed' masses don't have political long term memory. They don't care for trends over centuries and they hardly care to remember what life was like 50 years earlier. Like I said, I know that life wasn't all peachy during the industrialisation but the trend pointed upward and that quite extremely. Marx just rewrote history so the trend would disappear, though the majority of historians don't agree. He dreamed his little dream of 'subsidence' that had no connection with reality at all. And if you doubt that people focus mainly on their 'hardship', listen to the workers when they complain that they are so poor they can only afford a jetta and not an 's-class'. Poverty is only ever perceived in relation. If you told them that 50 years ago all workers had s-classes (like marx did with the subsidence) they will be enraged. Of course, the truth is that car ownership and quality has only increased in those years. In addition, Marx playes on greed which is a good thing, if it is kept in a civilized manner. Marx told the majority that they could have everything and also needn't work so hard anymore. Seems familiar? look how many people fell for the nigerian scam.
Also, you keep arguing things that are on itself true, but have little argumental validity in establishing the use of either political system. Take your example of healthcare; even when I would take your argument as being true, it surpasses the fact that, while the health system may be inefficient (and I'm all for making it more efficient), one HAS an adequate health system for everyone (at least in my country). Certainly, private healthcare could be far more effective....for those that can afford it.
Maybe you missed the part where I showed you that private health care is way more affordable for anyone working. My 2000 euros are nothing. This is way below the average income, meaning that for the majority of people private would be cheaper and better. If you look at any example, you'll see that reality works like this:
Private products become more accessible (cheaper) and in higher quality given time. Government products are the opposite. The become ever more expensive and the quality just goes down the shitter. This conclusion can be drawn from just looking a second at the real world. Also, it can be reached by pure logic but this would just take to long. Look at cars at shortly after they where invented. We would be argueing about the socialized car manufacturing. You'd say: well it might be a shity car and the process is highly inefficient but at least everyone gets one. First, the 'everyone' part doesn't even hold true since with time it will get so prohibitivly expensive that the government has to decide who is to have one. The reason for this is that people crash their cars left and right because they don't care, they'll get a new one anyways. They won't have it inspected because when it breakes its not their problem. This is whats happening in socialized medizine quite literally. People go to see a doctor everytime they sneeze. Though because it inconviniences them, they don't go to the dentist until it hurts. By then, it's too goddamn late. The amount of money that could, in theory, be wasted this way is infinitly high.
Second up are productivity increases. Why should they happen in a socialized system? Everyone is too concerned with keeping the c
Re:Of course the candidates are in favor!
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And a human being doesn't die unless it's reached that life's natural end point OR you deny it the resources needed to survive- just like a process needs memory to survive. Deny it that memory, and you deny it life
Its not same. As long as you keep the process in existance (executable and stack in memory) the process will not disappear. You might force it to 'pause' by not giving it more resources but you can't kill it that way (my example). A human being is different. Existance does not equal life. Its perfectly easy to store a person forever as long as you let them occupy space within the universe (in memory so to speak). And as the universe is so near to infinite that it doesn't matter much to us, you could 'store' a large number of human bodys. Living is a different matter. A little hitch in resource
allocation and you die. Malloc must not return a pointer to void. Can your algorithm gurantee that?
Human beings are not ends within themselves- they exist to procreate, much like any computer virus. They are a part of the greater whole of the culture, society, and species.
This is what I meant when I said we differed on our basic axioms. If you speak truth about reality, why is it that I thrive to futher myself and my own goals? Why am I artificially sterilized without having a single offspring? Why do the vast majority of people act the same way (being selfish)? What is the 'I' I talk about and how could it possibly come about? Do you feel comfortable implying that an abstraction ('we') is, in fact, an instance while at the same time treating the instance as non existing? To put it an other way, society is an abstraction that describes shared properties (name=nationality,value=german) of individuals. Individuals are not properties of an society because society does not, in reality, exists (hence abstraction). To put it in programing terms:
select id from individual where nationality = "german";
The result of this query(simplified) would be what we call 'society' which at best can be viewed as a 'virtual' table, while individual is a table that actually is meaningful or real.
Have you never written a self-modifying program? I've got plenty of programs that modify their own algorithims for more efficient resource usage on their own in my house- admitedly I use quite a bit more artificial intelligence than the average computer user, but I don't see why I should need to mess with something when the computer can mess with itself perfectly well and much faster than I can.
The rounds a human can go with this are only limited by his lifetime. A program can not reason about itself. It can not step out of the system es hofstaeder said. level l is the level of optimization. Humans can always do l+1. If you got a program able to do this, you should talk to MIT.
Really? Where are we getting the extra elements and electrons then? There's nothing in the Solar System that hasn't been there for the entire time humanity has been alive. It's a zero sum game in that there's nothing being added or subtracted- it's just that humanity is a much smaller part than we'd like to imagine ourselves to be. In the end, on a universal scale, economics IS indeed a zero sum game, always. Can't violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics indefinately.
Obiously, this is not true. Look at the stars at night. The photons hitting your retina where not here before humanity arrived. Or even yesterday. But I see your point nonetheless. In this reality, economics is not concerned with the universal scale. Where humans live and are able to act is what matters. Also, there is the pesky fact that eventhough E equals mc^2 not all energy is equally useful to us. Humans require special carbon hydrates and triglycerides combined with delicate enviromental conditions (tempratures and such) to function. These are not found in abundace on this planet. The whole point of the economy is to convert energy into other forms of it or m
Re:Of course the candidates are in favor!
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Why not fcfs algorithim? It works fine in Unix resource allocation, to a large extent. This gets to my second fundamental truth- economic systems are just physical world operating systems.
Why not? Well, for one, human beings are in two ways different from processes:
A process doesn't 'die' unless you tell it to. No matter how many resources a process can acquire or is denied, it will always remain 'alive' as long as it is 'run' by the system (kept in memory, for humans this would be their bodies within the universe). You can program it to retry, at periodic intervals, even for memory:
Reference reference = null;
while(true){ //try-catch left out for brevety Thread.sleep(interval); try{ aReference = new Reference();// try to reserve memory break;// okay, we got it, lets move on catch(OutOfMemoryError t){ // well no memory:-( } }
This is impossible with humans. You can not create a living thing that could operate this way.
Secondly, a process within an operating system is a means to an end, directly or indirectly a human end at that. The operating system too. This is a basic difference. Humans are ends in themselves and not means to the end of others.
Also, economics is nothing like an operating system. For one, resource allocation in an operating system is always a zero sum game. In real world economics, it is rarly so. Processes can not create new resources, and they can't modify algorithms (usage of resources) to run more efficiently on their own. They can't overcome the limitations set by their creators. They can't create.
If you can't learn to question basic axioms, you'll never grow beyond them. That's the basic meaning behind Godel's incompleteness theorem.
basic axioms are called that because they can't be proven. They are supposed to be apparant. Either you see them or not. Gödel has not much to do with it. The theorem only says that it is impossible to be complete and consitent at the same time, for every formal system that is complete must be inconsitent ( A==A and A!=A are both true or false) or it is consitent but not complete (it is not possible to state all truths about the system within the system).
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So, who gets to 'organize' the rental. In other words, how does it get done? Especially, how do you think that conflicts would be resolved. Say A and B would like to eat apple C. Who gets it and by what standard? I am sincerely asking. Arguing is over, since our basic axioms are different. There is no way to have a discussion about 'fundamental' truths.
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as does the concept of private property
As you said 'that doesn't follow'. But I am curious, in a world of mutual physical exclusion, how will you prevent property? At the very minimum, lets say at a hypothetical start of the world, my property is the 2 square foots I'm standing on. Also the air I consume and the food I eat. If I am allowed to use this, it is in fact, my property. If I am not, no one else can be either -> no human life.
care to name a number of significant treaties the US has violated?
And shall I remind you that the WMD technology was put in Hussein's hands covertly by YOUR DAMN COUNTRY! to use against the Iranians, because Hussein was your glorious friend at the time!
This is plainly false. During the Iran-Irak war, Irak (the agressor) received millitary support from the soviet union and france, Iran meanwhile was supplied by the US and the rest of western europe. The US even restricted the sales of so called dual-use chemicals (you could use them to make fertilizer or chem weapons) after heavy orders by Irak. Only latter, as it appeared that the iranian might even win, the US decided it wouldn't be wise to let the iranian, fundamental islamists, gain too much power in the region. Basically, when two assholes fight, you best furnish them both with baseball bats. The charge that biological or chemical weapons (or knowledge for manufacturing them) have been given to Iraq with the government knowing of it was never substantiated. In terms of numbers and quality, by far the most millitary equipment was delievered by the russians and the french though. Its quite easy to add 1 and 1, isnt it.
So, you went to war, killed at least 11,000 innocent Iraqi civilians (so far), who had nothing to do with supporting Hussein, and sent 1000+ of your own citizens to their deaths on the ASSUMPTION that because some paperwork hadn't been filed, there must be WMD's.
Saddam Hussein was among the most brutal dictators in history. Under his yoke millions died. 11.000 thousand isn't even a number for him when speaking of killing people. How can you be so sure that the intervention in fact hasn't saved 100.000 lives?
The proof that all weapons of mass destruction where distroyed is not mere paperwork. Especially if the country and leader in question has already used them and dreams the sweet dream of pan-arabic domination.
And shall I remind you that when Hussein was killing his own people, it was in an attempt to overthrow Hussein as encouraged by Bush Senior... who promised support, but then looked the other way!
Yes this was a bad move. Nobody says the US has acted always in the best possible way. This doesn't equate them with genocital dictators though.
I suppose you think it would be just fine to kill people on american soil who were violently trying to overthrow your own government, despite the OBVIOUS contradiction of it being wrong for Hussein to have done so.
Well, eventhough I am not an american, I think that seperatism (a 'unit' (county, province etc) splitting up from the federation) is a way to hold the government in check. The biggest failure of the consitution is that it doesn't provide the legal support for it. But, even in the united states of today, only those people that were actually violating the law (even if unjust) would be brought to justice. This hugly differs from just killing them and all else that are related through ethnicality.
yeah, because it is totally uncontested that vietnam was immoral and wrong. Those things are not synonyms for 'losing'. I'm sorry, from my world view, the north-vietnamies leadership was right up there next to stalin or mao. Protecting the souvereignty of the south from this was a just cause for war. The vietcong where the aggressors and they where the ones first violating the geneva convention.
yes, exactly. I somewhat doubt you read my large post thouroughly. Well, no need to be vain: It doesn't matter so much that money (resources) is spend (used) but where it is put. The balance between consumer goods (like bread, you eat it and very real resources are gone) and capital goods (in effect goods that act as tools to produce other goods: industrial machinery, factories etc.) is a delicate one precisly because capital accumulation (the stock of all capital goods) is an exponential effect. Missalignments in this balanced caused by excessive consuming (of course, usage of resources can never reach zero, otherwise we wouldn't need to work at all) in the present (employing massive artillary enplacements i.e which are definatly, in no way, capital goods) make impossible economic advancements (=productivity increases) in the future. This effect gets noticable in the relation to the excess vs national income and saving factors.
As an example, if you spend 5 billion dollars, your economy is missing it in two ways: Lets say you had a savings rate of 10%, the savings would be.5 BN. Assume this feeds an 1% (very conservative) productivity increase for the global economy. If todays productivity equals 20 BN in output, over ten years this would become 22 BN (actually much more, we haven't factored in that savings would continue during the ten years and the 22 BN is actually rounded but who cares for a couple of millions, right?;). Also, production and consumption of the 4.5 billions left (as you recognize) shifts from human needs (food, clothing, housing, entertainment) to state expenses (for NK, this is military and luxury cars for Kim Il). So instead of furnishing to the people bread and gowns worth 4 billions and increasing productivity a whopping 10% in a decade, it now has arty and nukes and the people starve.
Todays social 'regulation' would have killed the industrialisation on the spot. The forbidding of child labour in the 19th century already had serve adverse effects. Ditto for the corn laws that where the real cause for much of the suffering remembered from that time. The 19th century capitalism wasn't optimal, even from my point of view. The capitalistic elements though, the factories and mass production (inadverntantly) caused a rise in wealth, for everybody, unprecendented in history. I don't know how this could not benifit the majority. The textile factories sure weren't churning out clothes for the 'rich' as they usually prefer tailor made over mass produces.
All what you describe above as benefits would have been possible too, if capitalism hadn't been so extreme and raw. Fact is, our current situation (in europe, at least) shows this exactly, with the added benefit that now, it counts for a lot more of people, not merely the wealthy and rich.
The so called social meassures continue to impoverish europe, thats how I see it. The rise in wealth (a constant in an unhampered market economy) has all but stopped due to shady redistribution shemes. The unemployed get instilled with a sense of entitlement that is sickening. Just today a guy tried to set of a bomb in a berlin social court because he wasn't getting some or other medical procedure payed. Meanwhile the middle class (what had been the working class;) is fighting through its unions for every higher wages and even claiming that this would create jobs. However, every union victroy has forced others out of work because the rules of econonic calculations are strict and the law of supply and demand even hold true for labour. The government now dictates the use of over 50% of national income and uses it to stimulate economic growth that only is not happening because the government takes so much out of the economy in the first place. A national minimum wage is considered, again driving people out of employment (and those where the worst of anyways) because an employer will just not pay more than he can, from an economic standpoint. Regulations of the workplace, ranging from special protection for women and the elderly to the correct height of a computer monitor affect exactly the group of people negativly that they tried to protect. If you force a company to pay for a womens pregnancy, this company will consider women to be a higher risk and prefer males. If you force it to keep older people over young ones, you just gave them reason to not employ them anymore. If, for the firing of employers, you make the company do it according to social criteria, you will prompt the company to not hire people in hardship.
Healthcare: this is the worst of it. The equalitarian health system is so ineffective that a normal employee in germany (me) pays 4 times (!) as much for about half the benefits my privatly insured father who is 20 years older and has an income of 5 times larger than mine.
After all, raw capitalism like it was rampant in the 19th century was far from ideal for most of the people (exept the rich); the inequality and abuse of the ecomoically weaker was grotesk.
You mean the rampant growth in population size, 10 fold increase in a space of 2 generations. The increase in life expectancy of 10 years and the fall of child death rates from the high 50s to the low 20 coupled with the seed of women emancipation(the didn't have to wait for someone to marry them, the could be independent and work for themselves) and the highest living standard, on average hereto experienced. Yeah, it sure was hell, especially if you compare it to what it was like before the industrial revolution: no one needed to do hard labour, play nd fun all abund;)
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Sure- liberty. The liberty to suddenly become homeless. The liberty to lose all hope. The liberty to be told by society that you're a worthless good for nothing for two or three years while you're searching for the next job. Loads of LIBERTY there- liberty is no good without basic life support.
But you have the right to 'not become homeless', 'hope' and 'finding a job immediatly'?.Liberty is the basic foundation. Regardless of the ultilarian argument or those of the social justic crowd, you are either with indiviual liberty and self responsibility or you are not. In the later case I just wonder why you tipptoeing around banning the stock market. Why not just come straight out with you plans to rebuild society and eliminate all that is individual.
Private property is a myth.
If this is case, your right to live is also a myth.
oh please don't make me write an other one of those. In short: Because the millitary build up consumes capital that otherwise would have aided the economy in expanding.
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withdrawing from a contract (in the predetermined or default way, agreed upon before hand) is hardly aggression. Its liberty. You actually call for enslaving people to provide work. Good that it doesn't work that way.
By what authority are you requesting this ban? It's none of your business. It's the property of other people. Its equal to me banning you from using your toothbrush. Do you believe this would be my call to make as well?
LOL. Funny how USA-dudes always think that critique on their system, or saying the USA has imperialistic tendancies iveriably makes someone a socialist. "Only a socialist" my ass. Typical smallmindness so people like you can shrug it off without any problems by saying it 'can only come from a pinko'. In reality, YOU don't have a clue about what really constitutes a socialist, liberal, communist or liberal. If you are a USA-citizen, your ignorance on that matter is no surprise and even understandable, if your an european you should KNOW the difference.
Well, the fact that I translated the Nazi Party program from german could have given you a hint where I am really from;)
I'm not shrugging it of. Certainly not. For that, I despise 'pinko' ideology far too much. I'm always going to get into an argument with them (you, I don't know). Of course I thought you where one of them, this is clear from the text. The rational behind what I said still stands though, even if I adressed the wrong person (sorry): It has been general left tactics to destroy concepts by renaming them. Exhibition a) 'slavery'- the meaning of slavery is as clear as an english word can be. It means bound into servitute, forced labour etc. Now the logic goes like this 'slavery = hard work under harsh conditions' (which doesn't capture the essence, that you are not volunteering) and 'wage labor = hard work under harsh conditions' so 'wage labor = slavery' and if slavery is immoral, wage labor is as well. The concept of 'voluntary exchange' that is absent from the slavery and present in wage labor is utterly destroyed. For me, your equating imperalism with what the US does seemed like this Imperalism requires Invasion, the Americans invaded Iraq therefor Americans are imperalistic. This is utterly wrong. Imperalism doesn't much refer to the how it got that way ('hostile' army inside country) but what followed afterwards: complete oppression, forcibly changing peoples lives, trying to 'civilise' them, forced labour, exploitation of property of 3rd parties without consent etc.. This is the essence of imperialism. None of this has the states dones.
Fact is, while Nazism claimed to have socialist roots, they were merely, as you indicate yourself, a populist, nationalistic party using some socialist slogans to become popular, not to implement it. For instance, you conveniently left out that the nazi's forbid unions and seriously reduced a lot of socialistic endeavours...something a true socialistic party, obviously, would not do.
Think about it for a while. Stop reading and think about 'why would a socialist gov. forbid unions'?
Well a) the class struggle is over, we have won. We are the true path and anyone not giving it all up for the collective is clearly leading a counter revolution. They have been subverted by their capitalist masters, kinda like the stockholm syndrom. Every socialist/communist government has forbidden unions. Besides the fact that this follows logically from the doctrine, they are b) just a nussiance, especially if the workers see how socialism doesn't make them be better off.
They implemented it all. How can you be so ignorant? How can you even begin to claim that the facism is a variant of capitalism. Thats bullshit. Facism implemented a command economy. Mostly because it is lead by socialistic principles. The nazis send SS officers to over see every major manufacturing joint. Please read. Educate yourself. Become smart, like the big boys. A command economy is the polar opposite of what capitalism embodies. Yet a command economy is where every socialist utopia is headed. This in inevitable. And btw. 'the corps' telling the government what to do is called 'mercantilism'. True advocates of capitalism despise mercantilism only a tiny bit less than facism/socialism.
well, if you compare the few cases that where recognized almost immediatly and treated with the appropriate meassures, in addition to having been quarantiened, to the 'almost' outbreak in toronto where asian-canadians would come to the doctors saying 'well, I was in china and I have these symptoms' and where sent home with a bottle of aspirin. You should be glad that SARS wasn't that bad, otherwise you wouldn't be typing righ now.
So, how did that work out? Did you finally realize that you shouldn't feed cows to cows?
No, we haven't gotten rid of it yet. And most amusingly, for the same reason the canadian health care sucks. Farming is controlled by a EU wide buerocrazy. It's socialized, and therein lies the problem. Everytime a food scandal comes up, the governments bail the offending companies/farmers out. There is no incentive for keeping your food save, you'll stay in business anyways. There is no incentive to have a company control that the food is acutally save, because the state says it is so. Do you see the problem? Rewards and 'punishment' how they are absent? Now check your health care system on those critierias.
And I guess you just don't realize that your neighbourhood is only one plane ride away from being wiped out by ebola. It could happen anywhere.
Actually thats a pretty likely scenario. We have socialized health too. It'd probably take half europe down. Put I guess there are also planes to canada from infected-but-not-yet-detected europe. The only ones left will be the americans, laughing 'told ya so'.
That could take quite a while.
Disclaimer: All of the following is what the theory of economics, which I subscribe to, holds. Or at least what I understand it to hold
Terms used:
Capital structure: the allocation of all factors of production ( capital goods, labour, capital). To describe it on a very basic level: In a credit (and therefore money) economy, resources can be allocated in infinite different ways. Seen from the outside, decisions must constantly be made whether to allocate more towards the production of final consumer goods or towards the production of capital goods (tools, factories, employment training). In addition to this happening in every branch and on many more levels (cap goods that can be used to produce cap goods, ad infinitum), decisions must be made whether to venture into completely new sectors (R&D) or even if to continue suppling goods of a certain type at all ( surely no one needs knight amour any more;).
Trying to make it short:
The best performance for a given economy can only be achieved by an optimal capital structure. [ask why no. 1]. The best capital structure, in turn, can only be achieved by the free market. If, at any point, the state decides to take money from a cross section of the economy ( everyone is taxed) many resources that where originally meant to be invested ( equals saving) are now redirected towards all out consumption. Millitary hardware is a prime example. Not only is it less durable than ordinary 'durable' consumer goods due to the fact that it is supposed to be exposed to danger (the polar opposite of usual goods), it's sole purpose is to destory capital (human lives, factories etc). I digress. Immediatly after this intervention has happened, at least two things 'which are not seen' (like Bastiat would put it) happen: a) the price structure (reflects the cap structure) shifts in the same order as the intervention was. Credit becomes more scarce and thus more expensive. Manufacturing that could have happened 'on the margin' has now become unprofitable ( equals too expensive). Consumer prices fail to decrease because production failed to increase. b) Increasing demand by a huge spike ( when the government awards a 1 billion defense contract ie) in millitary hardware makes investments in that line relativly more profitable. More investment in hardware = more future production in hardware = less future production anywhere else due to less capital available, see a). Less production = higher prices = less consumption = less wealth.
A simple example should demonstrate. Lets say we just view the part of the economy that produces either chicken eggs or chicken meat. Obviously the chicken is either a capital good of the 1st order (when it produces eggs for consumption) or a capital good of the second order ( when it produces eggs to make more chicken) or it is an 'almost' consumer good ( you kill it and sell the meat). In this scenario, in a free market, market prices will show the farmer what best to do to satisfy the consumers. As an example, three possibilities:
Market Prices:
Eggs fetch a higher price than meat
Profit inspired action:
Don't sell meat, raise more chickens, sell lots of eggs ( there is risk for the farmer in determining the raise vs. sell ratio because of future uncertainty in regard to egg prices. From experience though, the farmer would be able to make an informed guess. An important note: as the prices a egg would fetch rise (rising demand), the farmer would be more tempted to cash in on the present situation (supply more) vs. betting prices are even higher next year.)
Consequences:
With demand rises supply. More people get eggs. Egg production is boosted. Meat production declines.
Market Prices:
Meat is more profitable than eggs.
Profit inspired action:
The other way around.
Market Prices:
Profits on eggs and meat decrease to the point where a) the money spend on maintaing egg and/or meat production could go elsewhere and be more p
no it doesnt stimulate the economy, it strains it. The real reason for NK millitary is that destruction (or the threat thereof) is easier than production. Easy enough for central planning to archieve, even if it means you have to let your people starve for a while until your black-mailings return results.
I don't know a about japan but I do know about germany. Hitlers gang and the war had the massive support of 'the people'. Why shouldn't 'the people' suffer when it all goes bad? There where almost no innocents in germany in 1945. Those that where most lickely awaited their execution in a KZs.
this is why we are in afgahnistan and the kosovo? Purely defensive? Right. Also, the US of A would so kick our asses (again;). Btw. The Civil War was within their borders and pitted brothers against brothers. The only expierience germany has with that is the SS officer shooting his own man in the back for not running fast enough.
If you actually do the math, you will find that there is, for a given product, a perfect price. This is where the economy of scales is most effective with the given manufacturing capacity and where supply meets demand. It would be more than stupid for seagate to demand different prices from different manufacturers because somewhere down the chain, different kinds of end users are targeted. Seagate doesn't care for the customers customers curstomers. It cares for its customers. True, prices might be different, but this can only be due to contracts that limit the risk for seagate or provides it with more planning security (ie.: you agree to order at least 10000 units over the next 6 month).
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hostile takeover is just one of many phrases the media has coined to 'millitarize' the business world.
While it is competetive it is seldom destructable or even invasive. If you trade stocks (ownership titles to x percent of the company) a 'hostile takeover' could happend at anytime. The term itself is grossly missleading. If the managment can't control the trading of it's stock through contractual obligation of the shareholder why should they have any say in who sells how many stocks to whom? If a hostile takeover is possible the management doesn't own a company, the shareholders do. No property, or life nor limb has been harmed by physical force. This is why the term 'attacked' is not applicable.
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Your view is skewed and overly-optimistic about the beneficial influence a totally free and unrestricted capitalistic system would have and maintain, at least for the majority of people. You seem to forget that socialism started as a reaction to this raw capitailism, and thus, if people would not feel a certain need and necessecity to temper this system (and according to your rosy picture they shouldn't and wouldn't), it would not have started, nor have remained active for so long.
This is raw positivism. Its like saying 'the law allowing me to hold slaves is just because otherwise it wouldn't be law'. Marx exploited the fact that the 'unwashed' masses don't have political long term memory. They don't care for trends over centuries and they hardly care to remember what life was like 50 years earlier. Like I said, I know that life wasn't all peachy during the industrialisation but the trend pointed upward and that quite extremely. Marx just rewrote history so the trend would disappear, though the majority of historians don't agree. He dreamed his little dream of 'subsidence' that had no connection with reality at all. And if you doubt that people focus mainly on their 'hardship', listen to the workers when they complain that they are so poor they can only afford a jetta and not an 's-class'. Poverty is only ever perceived in relation. If you told them that 50 years ago all workers had s-classes (like marx did with the subsidence) they will be enraged. Of course, the truth is that car ownership and quality has only increased in those years. In addition, Marx playes on greed which is a good thing, if it is kept in a civilized manner. Marx told the majority that they could have everything and also needn't work so hard anymore. Seems familiar? look how many people fell for the nigerian scam.
Also, you keep arguing things that are on itself true, but have little argumental validity in establishing the use of either political system. Take your example of healthcare; even when I would take your argument as being true, it surpasses the fact that, while the health system may be inefficient (and I'm all for making it more efficient), one HAS an adequate health system for everyone (at least in my country). Certainly, private healthcare could be far more effective....for those that can afford it.
Maybe you missed the part where I showed you that private health care is way more affordable for anyone working. My 2000 euros are nothing. This is way below the average income, meaning that for the majority of people private would be cheaper and better. If you look at any example, you'll see that reality works like this:
Private products become more accessible (cheaper) and in higher quality given time. Government products are the opposite. The become ever more expensive and the quality just goes down the shitter. This conclusion can be drawn from just looking a second at the real world. Also, it can be reached by pure logic but this would just take to long. Look at cars at shortly after they where invented. We would be argueing about the socialized car manufacturing. You'd say: well it might be a shity car and the process is highly inefficient but at least everyone gets one. First, the 'everyone' part doesn't even hold true since with time it will get so prohibitivly expensive that the government has to decide who is to have one. The reason for this is that people crash their cars left and right because they don't care, they'll get a new one anyways. They won't have it inspected because when it breakes its not their problem. This is whats happening in socialized medizine quite literally. People go to see a doctor everytime they sneeze. Though because it inconviniences them, they don't go to the dentist until it hurts. By then, it's too goddamn late. The amount of money that could, in theory, be wasted this way is infinitly high.
Second up are productivity increases. Why should they happen in a socialized system? Everyone is too concerned with keeping the c
Its not same. As long as you keep the process in existance (executable and stack in memory) the process will not disappear. You might force it to 'pause' by not giving it more resources but you can't kill it that way (my example). A human being is different. Existance does not equal life. Its perfectly easy to store a person forever as long as you let them occupy space within the universe (in memory so to speak). And as the universe is so near to infinite that it doesn't matter much to us, you could 'store' a large number of human bodys. Living is a different matter. A little hitch in resource allocation and you die. Malloc must not return a pointer to void. Can your algorithm gurantee that?
Human beings are not ends within themselves- they exist to procreate, much like any computer virus. They are a part of the greater whole of the culture, society, and species.
This is what I meant when I said we differed on our basic axioms. If you speak truth about reality, why is it that I thrive to futher myself and my own goals? Why am I artificially sterilized without having a single offspring? Why do the vast majority of people act the same way (being selfish)? What is the 'I' I talk about and how could it possibly come about? Do you feel comfortable implying that an abstraction ('we') is, in fact, an instance while at the same time treating the instance as non existing? To put it an other way, society is an abstraction that describes shared properties (name=nationality,value=german) of individuals. Individuals are not properties of an society because society does not, in reality, exists (hence abstraction). To put it in programing terms:
The result of this query(simplified) would be what we call 'society' which at best can be viewed as a 'virtual' table, while individual is a table that actually is meaningful or real.
Have you never written a self-modifying program? I've got plenty of programs that modify their own algorithims for more efficient resource usage on their own in my house- admitedly I use quite a bit more artificial intelligence than the average computer user, but I don't see why I should need to mess with something when the computer can mess with itself perfectly well and much faster than I can.
The rounds a human can go with this are only limited by his lifetime. A program can not reason about itself. It can not step out of the system es hofstaeder said. level l is the level of optimization. Humans can always do l+1. If you got a program able to do this, you should talk to MIT.
Really? Where are we getting the extra elements and electrons then? There's nothing in the Solar System that hasn't been there for the entire time humanity has been alive. It's a zero sum game in that there's nothing being added or subtracted- it's just that humanity is a much smaller part than we'd like to imagine ourselves to be. In the end, on a universal scale, economics IS indeed a zero sum game, always. Can't violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics indefinately.
Obiously, this is not true. Look at the stars at night. The photons hitting your retina where not here before humanity arrived. Or even yesterday. But I see your point nonetheless. In this reality, economics is not concerned with the universal scale. Where humans live and are able to act is what matters. Also, there is the pesky fact that eventhough E equals mc^2 not all energy is equally useful to us. Humans require special carbon hydrates and triglycerides combined with delicate enviromental conditions (tempratures and such) to function. These are not found in abundace on this planet. The whole point of the economy is to convert energy into other forms of it or m
Why not? Well, for one, human beings are in two ways different from processes:
A process doesn't 'die' unless you tell it to. No matter how many resources a process can acquire or is denied, it will always remain 'alive' as long as it is 'run' by the system (kept in memory, for humans this would be their bodies within the universe). You can program it to retry, at periodic intervals, even for memory:
This is impossible with humans. You can not create a living thing that could operate this way.
Secondly, a process within an operating system is a means to an end, directly or indirectly a human end at that. The operating system too. This is a basic difference. Humans are ends in themselves and not means to the end of others.
Also, economics is nothing like an operating system. For one, resource allocation in an operating system is always a zero sum game. In real world economics, it is rarly so. Processes can not create new resources, and they can't modify algorithms (usage of resources) to run more efficiently on their own. They can't overcome the limitations set by their creators. They can't create.
If you can't learn to question basic axioms, you'll never grow beyond them. That's the basic meaning behind Godel's incompleteness theorem.
basic axioms are called that because they can't be proven. They are supposed to be apparant. Either you see them or not. Gödel has not much to do with it. The theorem only says that it is impossible to be complete and consitent at the same time, for every formal system that is complete must be inconsitent ( A==A and A!=A are both true or false) or it is consitent but not complete (it is not possible to state all truths about the system within the system).
So, who gets to 'organize' the rental. In other words, how does it get done? Especially, how do you think that conflicts would be resolved. Say A and B would like to eat apple C. Who gets it and by what standard? I am sincerely asking. Arguing is over, since our basic axioms are different. There is no way to have a discussion about 'fundamental' truths.
as does the concept of private property
As you said 'that doesn't follow'. But I am curious, in a world of mutual physical exclusion, how will you prevent property? At the very minimum, lets say at a hypothetical start of the world, my property is the 2 square foots I'm standing on. Also the air I consume and the food I eat. If I am allowed to use this, it is in fact, my property. If I am not, no one else can be either -> no human life.
care to name a number of significant treaties the US has violated?
... who promised support, but then looked the other way!
And shall I remind you that the WMD technology was put in Hussein's hands covertly by YOUR DAMN COUNTRY! to use against the Iranians, because Hussein was your glorious friend at the time!
This is plainly false. During the Iran-Irak war, Irak (the agressor) received millitary support from the soviet union and france, Iran meanwhile was supplied by the US and the rest of western europe. The US even restricted the sales of so called dual-use chemicals (you could use them to make fertilizer or chem weapons) after heavy orders by Irak. Only latter, as it appeared that the iranian might even win, the US decided it wouldn't be wise to let the iranian, fundamental islamists, gain too much power in the region. Basically, when two assholes fight, you best furnish them both with baseball bats. The charge that biological or chemical weapons (or knowledge for manufacturing them) have been given to Iraq with the government knowing of it was never substantiated. In terms of numbers and quality, by far the most millitary equipment was delievered by the russians and the french though. Its quite easy to add 1 and 1, isnt it.
So, you went to war, killed at least 11,000 innocent Iraqi civilians (so far), who had nothing to do with supporting Hussein, and sent 1000+ of your own citizens to their deaths on the ASSUMPTION that because some paperwork hadn't been filed, there must be WMD's.
Saddam Hussein was among the most brutal dictators in history. Under his yoke millions died. 11.000 thousand isn't even a number for him when speaking of killing people. How can you be so sure that the intervention in fact hasn't saved 100.000 lives?
The proof that all weapons of mass destruction where distroyed is not mere paperwork. Especially if the country and leader in question has already used them and dreams the sweet dream of pan-arabic domination.
And shall I remind you that when Hussein was killing his own people, it was in an attempt to overthrow Hussein as encouraged by Bush Senior
Yes this was a bad move. Nobody says the US has acted always in the best possible way. This doesn't equate them with genocital dictators though.
I suppose you think it would be just fine to kill people on american soil who were violently trying to overthrow your own government, despite the OBVIOUS contradiction of it being wrong for Hussein to have done so.
Well, eventhough I am not an american, I think that seperatism (a 'unit' (county, province etc) splitting up from the federation) is a way to hold the government in check. The biggest failure of the consitution is that it doesn't provide the legal support for it. But, even in the united states of today, only those people that were actually violating the law (even if unjust) would be brought to justice. This hugly differs from just killing them and all else that are related through ethnicality.
yeah, because it is totally uncontested that vietnam was immoral and wrong. Those things are not synonyms for 'losing'. I'm sorry, from my world view, the north-vietnamies leadership was right up there next to stalin or mao. Protecting the souvereignty of the south from this was a just cause for war. The vietcong where the aggressors and they where the ones first violating the geneva convention.
yes, exactly. I somewhat doubt you read my large post thouroughly. Well, no need to be vain: It doesn't matter so much that money (resources) is spend (used) but where it is put. The balance between consumer goods (like bread, you eat it and very real resources are gone) and capital goods (in effect goods that act as tools to produce other goods: industrial machinery, factories etc.) is a delicate one precisly because capital accumulation (the stock of all capital goods) is an exponential effect. Missalignments in this balanced caused by excessive consuming (of course, usage of resources can never reach zero, otherwise we wouldn't need to work at all) in the present (employing massive artillary enplacements i.e which are definatly, in no way, capital goods) make impossible economic advancements (=productivity increases) in the future. This effect gets noticable in the relation to the excess vs national income and saving factors.
.5 BN. Assume this feeds an 1% (very conservative) productivity increase for the global economy. If todays productivity equals 20 BN in output, over ten years this would become 22 BN (actually much more, we haven't factored in that savings would continue during the ten years and the 22 BN is actually rounded but who cares for a couple of millions, right? ;). Also, production and consumption of the 4.5 billions left (as you recognize) shifts from human needs (food, clothing, housing, entertainment) to state expenses (for NK, this is military and luxury cars for Kim Il). So instead of furnishing to the people bread and gowns worth 4 billions and increasing productivity a whopping 10% in a decade, it now has arty and nukes and the people starve.
As an example, if you spend 5 billion dollars, your economy is missing it in two ways: Lets say you had a savings rate of 10%, the savings would be
hey, I scored 13 out of 16 and I'm not a native speaker ;) ... didn't read the instructions beforehand though.
Todays social 'regulation' would have killed the industrialisation on the spot. The forbidding of child labour in the 19th century already had serve adverse effects. Ditto for the corn laws that where the real cause for much of the suffering remembered from that time. The 19th century capitalism wasn't optimal, even from my point of view. The capitalistic elements though, the factories and mass production (inadverntantly) caused a rise in wealth, for everybody, unprecendented in history. I don't know how this could not benifit the majority. The textile factories sure weren't churning out clothes for the 'rich' as they usually prefer tailor made over mass produces.
;) is fighting through its unions for every higher wages and even claiming that this would create jobs. However, every union victroy has forced others out of work because the rules of econonic calculations are strict and the law of supply and demand even hold true for labour. The government now dictates the use of over 50% of national income and uses it to stimulate economic growth that only is not happening because the government takes so much out of the economy in the first place. A national minimum wage is considered, again driving people out of employment (and those where the worst of anyways) because an employer will just not pay more than he can, from an economic standpoint. Regulations of the workplace, ranging from special protection for women and the elderly to the correct height of a computer monitor affect exactly the group of people negativly that they tried to protect. If you force a company to pay for a womens pregnancy, this company will consider women to be a higher risk and prefer males. If you force it to keep older people over young ones, you just gave them reason to not employ them anymore. If, for the firing of employers, you make the company do it according to social criteria, you will prompt the company to not hire people in hardship.
All what you describe above as benefits would have been possible too, if capitalism hadn't been so extreme and raw. Fact is, our current situation (in europe, at least) shows this exactly, with the added benefit that now, it counts for a lot more of people, not merely the wealthy and rich.
The so called social meassures continue to impoverish europe, thats how I see it. The rise in wealth (a constant in an unhampered market economy) has all but stopped due to shady redistribution shemes. The unemployed get instilled with a sense of entitlement that is sickening. Just today a guy tried to set of a bomb in a berlin social court because he wasn't getting some or other medical procedure payed. Meanwhile the middle class (what had been the working class
Healthcare: this is the worst of it. The equalitarian health system is so ineffective that a normal employee in germany (me) pays 4 times (!) as much for about half the benefits my privatly insured father who is 20 years older and has an income of 5 times larger than mine.
After all, raw capitalism like it was rampant in the 19th century was far from ideal for most of the people (exept the rich); the inequality and abuse of the ecomoically weaker was grotesk. You mean the rampant growth in population size, 10 fold increase in a space of 2 generations. The increase in life expectancy of 10 years and the fall of child death rates from the high 50s to the low 20 coupled with the seed of women emancipation(the didn't have to wait for someone to marry them, the could be independent and work for themselves) and the highest living standard, on average hereto experienced. Yeah, it sure was hell, especially if you compare it to what it was like before the industrial revolution: no one needed to do hard labour, play nd fun all abund
Sure- liberty. The liberty to suddenly become homeless. The liberty to lose all hope. The liberty to be told by society that you're a worthless good for nothing for two or three years while you're searching for the next job. Loads of LIBERTY there- liberty is no good without basic life support.
But you have the right to 'not become homeless', 'hope' and 'finding a job immediatly'?.Liberty is the basic foundation. Regardless of the ultilarian argument or those of the social justic crowd, you are either with indiviual liberty and self responsibility or you are not. In the later case I just wonder why you tipptoeing around banning the stock market. Why not just come straight out with you plans to rebuild society and eliminate all that is individual.
Private property is a myth.
If this is case, your right to live is also a myth.
oh please don't make me write an other one of those. In short: Because the millitary build up consumes capital that otherwise would have aided the economy in expanding.
withdrawing from a contract (in the predetermined or default way, agreed upon before hand) is hardly aggression. Its liberty. You actually call for enslaving people to provide work. Good that it doesn't work that way.
By what authority are you requesting this ban? It's none of your business. It's the property of other people. Its equal to me banning you from using your toothbrush. Do you believe this would be my call to make as well?
LOL. Funny how USA-dudes always think that critique on their system, or saying the USA has imperialistic tendancies iveriably makes someone a socialist. "Only a socialist" my ass. Typical smallmindness so people like you can shrug it off without any problems by saying it 'can only come from a pinko'. In reality, YOU don't have a clue about what really constitutes a socialist, liberal, communist or liberal. If you are a USA-citizen, your ignorance on that matter is no surprise and even understandable, if your an european you should KNOW the difference.
;)
Well, the fact that I translated the Nazi Party program from german could have given you a hint where I am really from
I'm not shrugging it of. Certainly not. For that, I despise 'pinko' ideology far too much. I'm always going to get into an argument with them (you, I don't know). Of course I thought you where one of them, this is clear from the text. The rational behind what I said still stands though, even if I adressed the wrong person (sorry): It has been general left tactics to destroy concepts by renaming them. Exhibition a) 'slavery'- the meaning of slavery is as clear as an english word can be. It means bound into servitute, forced labour etc. Now the logic goes like this 'slavery = hard work under harsh conditions' (which doesn't capture the essence, that you are not volunteering) and 'wage labor = hard work under harsh conditions' so 'wage labor = slavery' and if slavery is immoral, wage labor is as well. The concept of 'voluntary exchange' that is absent from the slavery and present in wage labor is utterly destroyed. For me, your equating imperalism with what the US does seemed like this Imperalism requires Invasion, the Americans invaded Iraq therefor Americans are imperalistic. This is utterly wrong. Imperalism doesn't much refer to the how it got that way ('hostile' army inside country) but what followed afterwards: complete oppression, forcibly changing peoples lives, trying to 'civilise' them, forced labour, exploitation of property of 3rd parties without consent etc.. This is the essence of imperialism. None of this has the states dones.
Fact is, while Nazism claimed to have socialist roots, they were merely, as you indicate yourself, a populist, nationalistic party using some socialist slogans to become popular, not to implement it. For instance, you conveniently left out that the nazi's forbid unions and seriously reduced a lot of socialistic endeavours...something a true socialistic party, obviously, would not do.
Think about it for a while. Stop reading and think about 'why would a socialist gov. forbid unions'?
Well a) the class struggle is over, we have won. We are the true path and anyone not giving it all up for the collective is clearly leading a counter revolution. They have been subverted by their capitalist masters, kinda like the stockholm syndrom. Every socialist/communist government has forbidden unions. Besides the fact that this follows logically from the doctrine, they are b) just a nussiance, especially if the workers see how socialism doesn't make them be better off.
They implemented it all. How can you be so ignorant? How can you even begin to claim that the facism is a variant of capitalism. Thats bullshit. Facism implemented a command economy. Mostly because it is lead by socialistic principles. The nazis send SS officers to over see every major manufacturing joint. Please read. Educate yourself. Become smart, like the big boys. A command economy is the polar opposite of what capitalism embodies. Yet a command economy is where every socialist utopia is headed. This in inevitable. And btw. 'the corps' telling the government what to do is called 'mercantilism'. True advocates of capitalism despise mercantilism only a tiny bit less than facism/socialism.
well, if you compare the few cases that where recognized almost immediatly and treated with the appropriate meassures, in addition to having been quarantiened, to the 'almost' outbreak in toronto where asian-canadians would come to the doctors saying 'well, I was in china and I have these symptoms' and where sent home with a bottle of aspirin. You should be glad that SARS wasn't that bad, otherwise you wouldn't be typing righ now.
So, how did that work out? Did you finally realize that you shouldn't feed cows to cows?
No, we haven't gotten rid of it yet. And most amusingly, for the same reason the canadian health care sucks. Farming is controlled by a EU wide buerocrazy. It's socialized, and therein lies the problem. Everytime a food scandal comes up, the governments bail the offending companies/farmers out. There is no incentive for keeping your food save, you'll stay in business anyways. There is no incentive to have a company control that the food is acutally save, because the state says it is so. Do you see the problem? Rewards and 'punishment' how they are absent? Now check your health care system on those critierias.
And I guess you just don't realize that your neighbourhood is only one plane ride away from being wiped out by ebola. It could happen anywhere.
Actually thats a pretty likely scenario. We have socialized health too. It'd probably take half europe down. Put I guess there are also planes to canada from infected-but-not-yet-detected europe. The only ones left will be the americans, laughing 'told ya so'.
That could take quite a while.
;).
Disclaimer: All of the following is what the theory of economics, which I subscribe to, holds. Or at least what I understand it to hold
Terms used:
Capital structure: the allocation of all factors of production ( capital goods, labour, capital). To describe it on a very basic level: In a credit (and therefore money) economy, resources can be allocated in infinite different ways. Seen from the outside, decisions must constantly be made whether to allocate more towards the production of final consumer goods or towards the production of capital goods (tools, factories, employment training). In addition to this happening in every branch and on many more levels (cap goods that can be used to produce cap goods, ad infinitum), decisions must be made whether to venture into completely new sectors (R&D) or even if to continue suppling goods of a certain type at all ( surely no one needs knight amour any more
Trying to make it short:
The best performance for a given economy can only be achieved by an optimal capital structure. [ask why no. 1]. The best capital structure, in turn, can only be achieved by the free market. If, at any point, the state decides to take money from a cross section of the economy ( everyone is taxed) many resources that where originally meant to be invested ( equals saving) are now redirected towards all out consumption. Millitary hardware is a prime example. Not only is it less durable than ordinary 'durable' consumer goods due to the fact that it is supposed to be exposed to danger (the polar opposite of usual goods), it's sole purpose is to destory capital (human lives, factories etc). I digress. Immediatly after this intervention has happened, at least two things 'which are not seen' (like Bastiat would put it) happen: a) the price structure (reflects the cap structure) shifts in the same order as the intervention was. Credit becomes more scarce and thus more expensive. Manufacturing that could have happened 'on the margin' has now become unprofitable ( equals too expensive). Consumer prices fail to decrease because production failed to increase. b) Increasing demand by a huge spike ( when the government awards a 1 billion defense contract ie) in millitary hardware makes investments in that line relativly more profitable. More investment in hardware = more future production in hardware = less future production anywhere else due to less capital available, see a). Less production = higher prices = less consumption = less wealth.
A simple example should demonstrate. Lets say we just view the part of the economy that produces either chicken eggs or chicken meat. Obviously the chicken is either a capital good of the 1st order (when it produces eggs for consumption) or a capital good of the second order ( when it produces eggs to make more chicken) or it is an 'almost' consumer good ( you kill it and sell the meat). In this scenario, in a free market, market prices will show the farmer what best to do to satisfy the consumers. As an example, three possibilities:
Market Prices:
Eggs fetch a higher price than meat
Profit inspired action:
Don't sell meat, raise more chickens, sell lots of eggs ( there is risk for the farmer in determining the raise vs. sell ratio because of future uncertainty in regard to egg prices. From experience though, the farmer would be able to make an informed guess. An important note: as the prices a egg would fetch rise (rising demand), the farmer would be more tempted to cash in on the present situation (supply more) vs. betting prices are even higher next year.)
Consequences: With demand rises supply. More people get eggs. Egg production is boosted. Meat production declines.
Market Prices:
Meat is more profitable than eggs.
Profit inspired action:
The other way around.
Market Prices: Profits on eggs and meat decrease to the point where a) the money spend on maintaing egg and/or meat production could go elsewhere and be more p
Nuclear Launch... Detected
;)
Well, its not like this is a particular creative way to state the fact
I guess that the house resolution to topple saddam by any means necessary, during the clinton presidency, doesn't quite fit into that picture.
no it doesnt stimulate the economy, it strains it. The real reason for NK millitary is that destruction (or the threat thereof) is easier than production. Easy enough for central planning to archieve, even if it means you have to let your people starve for a while until your black-mailings return results.
yeah, because everyone knows how suffering mass causalties is the cause for victory. The more you lose, the more you win?
I don't know a about japan but I do know about germany. Hitlers gang and the war had the massive support of 'the people'. Why shouldn't 'the people' suffer when it all goes bad? There where almost no innocents in germany in 1945. Those that where most lickely awaited their execution in a KZs.
this is why we are in afgahnistan and the kosovo? Purely defensive? Right. Also, the US of A would so kick our asses (again ;). Btw. The Civil War was within their borders and pitted brothers against brothers. The only expierience germany has with that is the SS officer shooting his own man in the back for not running fast enough.
If you actually do the math, you will find that there is, for a given product, a perfect price. This is where the economy of scales is most effective with the given manufacturing capacity and where supply meets demand. It would be more than stupid for seagate to demand different prices from different manufacturers because somewhere down the chain, different kinds of end users are targeted. Seagate doesn't care for the customers customers curstomers. It cares for its customers. True, prices might be different, but this can only be due to contracts that limit the risk for seagate or provides it with more planning security (ie.: you agree to order at least 10000 units over the next 6 month).
hostile takeover is just one of many phrases the media has coined to 'millitarize' the business world. While it is competetive it is seldom destructable or even invasive. If you trade stocks (ownership titles to x percent of the company) a 'hostile takeover' could happend at anytime. The term itself is grossly missleading. If the managment can't control the trading of it's stock through contractual obligation of the shareholder why should they have any say in who sells how many stocks to whom? If a hostile takeover is possible the management doesn't own a company, the shareholders do. No property, or life nor limb has been harmed by physical force. This is why the term 'attacked' is not applicable.