Socialism: A solution to America’s recession

If the conspirators didn't exist and you lived in a society of good willed people, you'd wish to live in a free market society where you could work and trade your product fairly. Not live in a commune where you're just another piece in the machine doing what some beloved leader ordered.

I did but if you suggest a system without working unions who try to ensures their wages and their working conditions or a government that uses your taxes for social projects, we go back in the early 19th century.
And indeed what the applied capitalism has done (lets dont talk about books and ideas as they are wishful thinking as in the socialism and communism examples) is that the capital uses you as long as it gains from you and then moves on to a more virgin society (not exploited enough) or to an oppressed enough to continue its growth. eg look where the western factories have moved to and why.

I dont say that socialism or capitalism is better or worse, I say that in their applied forms may act differently but the result turns out to be problematic in both cases.

Last Edited by Ostria1 on 02/03/2013 09:10 AM

OP, capitalism, socialism or any other system of economics is what the people within the system make of it. The socialist left has spent the last 50 years stripping religion out of the public dialogue, replacing traditional morality with moral relativism, corrupting our institutions, promoting a culture of death, violence and dysfunction and then seem somehow surprised that the system of capitalism it all exists in doesn't work so well.

So, I will ask YOU as I have asked many before: In such a climate, WHERE DO WE FIND THESE GOOD, PURE, WISE, BENEVOLENT AND UNCORRUPTABLE PEOPLE THAT WILL "IMPOSE FAIRNESS" ONTO SOCIETY? Where are they? Who are they? How will this purity manifest itself? I offer that such people do not exist, have never existed and never will exist. You continue to hope for such saviors at your own folly and at all of our peril.

That's why the free market system should be applied in a national setting not in a global scale of free trade as some free market advocates have argued. Nations should trade with each other, not send their corporations to parasite each other. And the trade should be fair for the smaller nations or these should refuse the business. There's no place in civilized society for imperialism, but neither for state control of the markets at the national level.

Right, they do not exist, or at least not permanently enough to argue for a paternalistic system. So what we need is a system based on freedom for the individual and where the individual can have the means to protect his rights. America was intended for that, but now we're witnessing how those with authoritarian aspirations are attempting to destroy the checks and balances that protect people's rights and individuality to be able to send them to the gulags once again.

Religion has nothing to do with the people been good, pure, wise etc. Applied religion has done more damage (and still does) to humanity than all the political systems together.

Well we do talk a lot of individual rights lately, we dont talk about society's rights.
And you forget that capitalism was the one that brought the market system to a global scale.

Really? Do you think an economic system would function better if the people within the system lived by the 10 Commandments or not. For starters, let's eliminate theft, jealousy and greed. Let's live by "do unto others" and then see how well capitalism works. Try not thinking about the 10 Commandments as a religious dogma but rather as an instruction manual for an enduring and functional society.

There is no such thing as "society's rights".

In a truly free society if the employer doesn't pay well enough the workers are free to go where a better pay is found and if no one wishes to pay a decent wage then let the people revolt, they'd be free to do that. If people need some commie ideologue to organize that goes to show the sheepish nature of the masses.

The fact that the ten commandments were the rule in Christian societies didn't impede murder, theft and other undesirable behavior to be found in them. Religious belief doesn't automatically warrants true adherence to their precepts by the masses, except maybe superficially.

Last Edited by Manu-K on 02/03/2013 09:31 AM

What you dont wish to understand is that any model of financial transfer and trade is fully moderated by a separate value system of morality and culture.
Any system would work if only all would cooperate with it in the same way, with the same limits, but it's absolutely human nature to try and manipulate any system for individual advantage, and it wont stop when you add ever more variables and outsiders into the mix.
Systems of trade and exchange fall to pieces when the group involved is balkanized into factions with different motivations and goals.
That's what happens when a society is mongrelized, it ends up being manipulated by those that keep above the melting pot and manipulate it all for their own benefit.

Actually, you are right.

We live in Fuedalism which is basically the same as the oligarchy we live under now.

That is what the NWO will be. A world government where the poor are in servitude to the rich, and the useless eaters can be disposed of at will.

Nothing but savagery is automatic in nature.
Learning and accepting limits on ones options is called socialization.
Religion is in truth whatever you choose to accept for yourself, but many other motives exist for claiming membership but acting for other contradictory goals.
In a more functional society, social outriders or deviants were shunned or disposed of, returning a degree of certainty to the rest of the group. Unfortunately human nature is such that the cleverest of criminals sociopathically hide and claw their way to the top of almost any heirarchy in order to subvert it for their own needs.

Yes! It never ceases to amaze me how the socialists continue to believe that human nature can be manipulated and overcome by some miracle of their own perceive genius.

"Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous". - Thomas Sowell

I like your support of free markets but have to challenge your belief in restricted interstate trade. First, various economists (first Ricardo I think, but definitely Mises and Rothbard) have demonstrated the efficiency of international trade. Second, individuals trade. Nations are composed of individuals, and international trade is simply trade between individuals in different geographic regions. The nation is an artificial concept. If you think there should be restrictions on international trade, then you think there should be restrictions on all individuals. This is no different, in principle, than advocating internal restrictions on trade.

Hey man, the world is rough, it's people like you who are not strong enough to accept reality who foment utopian "solutions" which always lead to disaster. There's no utopia to save you from suffering, we can only find ways to minimize the most the ugly persistent natures of mankind. If you attain that much consider yourself happy.

What people refuse to understand is that once you become a wage-slave, you no longer are a capitalist and become nothing more than a consumer of the products of capitalists.
A capitalist is an independent individual putting his own creativity and resources in play, not an employee selling his time to another.
Consumers are not capitalists by definition.
Capitalists need to own their own time and labor and resources which nowadays is very rare and not likely to succeed as the ptb pick and chose winners, winners that provide support for their patrons continuing success

Again, what's exploitative about trading? Slaves would be impossible in a capitalist society, which would recognize individual rights. I honestly don't understand where you find exploitation in the kind of capitalism I'm advocating. Again - the current system isn't capitalism. So in a genuine system, where is the exploitation?

Good. Capitalists are those who deploy capital, whereas workers or laborers are those who deploy labor. And you're right that those who deploy capital today are criminals. This is what's unfortunate about the word 'capitalism' - it encourages people to think that all a free market does is promote the interests of those who deploy capital, regardless of where that capital came from. This is why Marx uses the term 'capitalism'.

I prefer the word 'anarchism'. I was just reading about Benjamin Tucker, who promoted anarchism instead of capitalism, because he wasn't just promoting the rights of capitalists, but of all.

The proponents of socialism always choose to capitalize on the concept for themselves.
Theyre simply selling a concept they themselves expect not to follow, but profit personally by managing human nature via heavyhanded neofeudalism with a series of laws and punishments that they control and apply variable as benefits themselves.
Socialism always requires a prexisting source of wealth to loot. There is not a single socialist state that started from nothing and prospered

Agreed , the retardification is complete ! I cant beleive this is what poeple actualy beleive????? Dark days ahead my freind!!!!

The nation might be an artificial concept but it creates tangible patterns after time and these patterns differ from nation to nation. Even trade between individuals requires a certain compatibility in idiosyncrasy to properly function. For instance a practical problem in global free trade is the potential for corporations from wealthier nations to attempt to exploit differences in idiosyncrasy to abuse the resources and labor of poorer nations. That's why I argue for trade of products between nations, not freedom for corporations to establish themselves anywhere they want, because this may create an advantage to these corporations to abuse their financial power.

Let me know how you'd solve these problems in global free trade in a real capitalistic, free market setting.

Last Edited by Manu-K on 02/03/2013 09:57 AM

Consumer cultures are doomed if there is no functional limit on exploitation of them by an ever shrinking base of producers due to limited competition.
I dont claim that capitalists are inherently criminals, what I claim is that everyone in a society was supposed to be a capitalist in a sustainable culture, kinda like the Amish, where everyone pulls their weight in some way shape or form. It's only the socially defective that cannot produce on their own and sell their labor to the highest bidder.

Because I'm using the word 'capitalism' in the same way that all capitalist economists use it: an economic system founded on individual rights, and permitting freedom of trade. Here's a quote from Rothbard, in his essay Justice and Property Rights:

"For an economist to say that X and Y should be free to trade Good A for Good B unmolested by third parties, he must also say that X legitimately and properly owns Good A and that Y legitimately owns Good B. But this means that the free-market economist must have some sort of theory of justice in property rights; he can scarcely say that X properly owns Good A without asserting some sort of theory of justice on behalf of such ownership."

So capitalism presupposes property rights, and any violation of property rights invalidates a trade.

So if bankers gain a monopoly through charters, like they did in American after the Civil War, property rights have been violated, namely the property rights of any individuals who want to start a private banking business.

Or again, if government takes wealth through taxation, property rights have been violated.

Or if fraud is committed, property rights are violated.

The second reason I think capitalism respects property rights is that I'm not using the word 'capitalism' to means an economic system that serves the interests of just capitalists. By respecting everyone's property rights, the system respects all sources of wealth, including labor. Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner called this system 'anarchism'; Rothbard called it 'anarcho-capitalism'; Rand called it 'capitalism'.

Does that help?

In a real capitalistic society, where the government doesn't meddle with the currency and devaluate it by over printing it, you'd have saving power which is what allows the employee to become an entrepreneur and enhances class mobility. As you correctly state, that doesn't happen nowadays because we don't have capitalism, we have fascism.

to simplify, if it isnt yours and yours alone and completely, it's someone elses and they will take any and proceeds and leave you with no more than they wish to.
There can be no capitalism if you dont have any capital.

Very good point. That's why when Marx spoke of the workers managing the means of production he always took for granted an already existing set of means of production, the question is, how those means of production to be appropriated by the workers first came into existence? Of course the answer is capitalism.

the profit
if your product doesnt give you profit you wont product it.
how do you profit from a product you make?

Quite right, and it's obvious to anyone with an iota of residual honesty and reason, and obvious to anyone that sees it being subverted intentionally that someone else expects to profit by it. One mans rubble is another mans gold mine.
That the public is having it's value storage base eliminated means that it has no alternative but slavery or death, and that someone gets to choose which it will be