Capitalism Saved The Miners

[Kevin_Kennedy]

As for the Fed being "the quintessential example of a capitalist enterprise," I hope you're joking. The organization created by the federal government, with its head appointed by the President, with a monopoly right to create currency out of thin air is about as far from capitalism as one can get.

Only if you are a purist. In reality the federal reserve is the best example of actual real life capitalism that ever existed. The best example of what capitalist ideologues commonly espouse as capitalism.

And communism by your terms has never existed. Neither has socialism. Neither has democracy, or free markets or liberals, conservatives or even nationalists.

Raise the bar too high and all of your catch phrases die at once.

I don't think saying that anything created by the government can't possibly be capitalistic in nature is raising the bar too high. I think that's just common sense.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

You attack me for saying that capitalism saved these miners on one hand, while saying capitalism doesn't exist on the other. You then turn around and say on one hand that capitalism doesn't exist, but that capitalism is to blame for the miners' accident in the first place. You're a hypocrite.

absolutely false, supertard. I merely turned your own illogic upon you and hung you by your own petard.

That you failed to even realize it makes you a pretty simple ton.

YOU began your dialogue by claiming that capitalism didn't exist and that the miners were saved by capitalism(that didn't exist).

Don't you feel like a moron? You should.

No, I don't. I'm not the one resorting to insulting somebody else and claiming I won an argument to prove that I'm right. Those tactics are reserved for those with no argument.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Nasa wasn't a capitalist venture, God is a socialist, The miners did save each other, capitalism didn't invent the drill, people did, the miners survived 15 days with no access to the outside world. How did capitalism deliver them oxygen for those 15 days?

Capitalism did absolutely nothing to save the miners, in fact it got them trapped in the first place!

The technology innovations that made space flight possible were done in Capitalist Companies that received NASA contracts.

No they weren't! The companies that did NASA's footwork were fascist corporate enterprises supported by corporate socialism! You know, wealth distribution and all that!

Are you living in a fishbowl? Or just so drunk on idealism that you lie incessantly?

I think you're raising the bar too high bud. Because if the Federal Reserve is somehow a capitalistic enterprise then NASA for sure is.

 

[Urbanguerrilla]

At the risk of offending the moonbats who think All Good Flows From The Government, here is a contrasting, and accurate, point of view regarding what value system rescued the miners.

Here's a clue: It was neither centralized planning nor class warfare against people who make $250K.

It needs to be said. The rescue of the Chilean miners is a smashing victory for free-market capitalism.

Amid the boundless human joy of the miners' liberation, it may seem churlish to make such a claim. It is churlish. These are churlish times, and the stakes are high.

In the United States, with 9.6% unemployment, a notably angry electorate will go to the polls shortly and dump one political party in favor of the other, on which no love is lost. The president of the U.S. is campaigning across the country making this statement at nearly every stop:

"The basic idea is that if we put our blind faith in the market and we let corporations do whatever they want and we leave everybody else to fend for themselves, then America somehow automatically is going to grow and prosper."

Uh, yeah. That's a caricature of the basic idea, but basically that's right. Ask the miners.

If those miners had been trapped a half-mile down like this 25 years ago anywhere on earth, they would be dead. What happened over the past 25 years that meant the difference between life and death for those men?

Short answer: the Center Rock drill bit. ...

Daniel Henninger: Capitalism Saved the Miners - WSJ.com

Yeh! And who was the first nation into space? Technology is not the preserve of capitalism...

 

[midcan5]

People saved the miners, fellow human beings who cared - also given the situation a great deal of that weird substance called luck, or faith if you are religious, saved them. Can we, when miners die, which they do too often say capitalism killed them? But seriously I have never seen capitalism, people I see all the time, many good many not so good. I also see technology but capitalism never! Or maybe democracy saved them? Hm, or sharing saved them, what an odd thought that would be.


"Democracies have great rational and imaginative powers. They also are prone to some serious flaws in reasoning, to parochialism, haste, sloppiness, selfishness, narrowness of the spirit. Education based mainly on profitability in the global market magnifies these deficiencies, producing a greedy obtuseness and a technically trained docility that threaten the very life of democracy itself, and that certainly impede the creation of a decent world culture." Martha Nussbaum

 

[Paulie]

This is really what we've reduced the argument for capitalism to?

 

[American Horse]

People saved the miners, fellow human beings who cared - also given the situation a great deal of that weird substance called luck, or faith if you are religious, saved them.

I wouldn't dispute that, but ... (from the OP link) "if those miners had been trapped a half-mile down like this 25 years ago anywhere on earth, they would be dead. What happened over the past 25 years that meant the difference between life and death for those men?

Short answer: the Center Rock drill bit.

This is the miracle bit that drilled down to the trapped miners. Center Rock Inc. is a private company in Berlin, Pa. It has 74 employees. The drill's rig came from Schramm Inc. in West Chester, Pa. Seeing the disaster, Center Rock's president, Brandon Fisher, called the Chileans to offer his drill. Chile accepted. The miners are alive."

But Center Rock Inc. a private comany was driven by more than caring, or maybe another kind of caring. the owners of the company saw an opportunity for their product to reach an international audience and thus an expanded market place. I might, at risk of ridicule, call this "enlightenced self interest".

As I said when I learned about these offers of help from private industry, "None of this would've happened in a completely socialist world like China or Soviet Russia." The connections wouldn't have been made and no one would've even been aware of the potentials for a drill-bit somewhere thousands of miles away having the requisite capacity to contribute to their rescue.

More than likely, such a bit would never even have been built in the first place. The miners would've been written off as expendable even before they had been recruited to go into the mine.

 

[Douger]

Chilean nationalization of copper - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Big Fitz]

Think of the help from all over the world too.

The drill bit from America.

The High strength cable, from Germany

The power equipment to send down the shaft, from Japan

The communications equipment from South Korea.

All international capitalism.

How many community organizers could have saved these people?

 

[Oddball]

People saved the miners, fellow human beings who cared - also given the situation a great deal of that weird substance called luck, or faith if you are religious, saved them. Can we, when miners die, which they do too often say capitalism killed them? But seriously I have never seen capitalism, people I see all the time, many good many not so good. I also see technology but capitalism never! Or maybe democracy saved them? Hm, or sharing saved them, what an odd thought that would be.

Volition and a willingness of free people to help others genuinely in need saved the miners. It also took a head of state who was willing to tell the normal army of meddlesome bureaucrats to sit down, STFU and get out of the way.

If this had happened in West Virginia,we'd still be waiting for the environmental impact statements for drilling the breathing holes to clear the EPA.

 

[Paulie]

People saved the miners, fellow human beings who cared - also given the situation a great deal of that weird substance called luck, or faith if you are religious, saved them. Can we, when miners die, which they do too often say capitalism killed them? But seriously I have never seen capitalism, people I see all the time, many good many not so good. I also see technology but capitalism never! Or maybe democracy saved them? Hm, or sharing saved them, what an odd thought that would be.

Volition and a willingness of free people to help others genuinely in need saved the miners. It also took a head of state who was willing to tell the normal army of meddlesome bureaucrats to sit down, STFU and get out of the way.

If this had happened in West Virginia,we'd still be waiting for the environmental impact statements for drilling the breathing holes to clear the EPA.

A thread of 5 fucking pages and finally someone says something worthwhile.

 

[JBeukema]

The U.S. oil industry saved the miners.

U.S. expertise in drilling and a NASA-aided design Saved trapped Chilean miners | Asian Tribune

NASA?

You mean big government socialist wealth redistribution helped fund the development?

 

[JBeukema]

Society is somehow not a part of a capitalistic system?

Society is the mother, brother, sister, father and GodFather of capitalism.

Capitalism is the free cooperation of society. They're not separate entities.

Socialism is cooperation. Capitalism is competition. That's the whole point. Try to remember your own rhetoric.

 

[L.K.Eder]

guns don't kill people, capitalism kills people.

 

[boedicca]

People saved the miners, fellow human beings who cared - also given the situation a great deal of that weird substance called luck, or faith if you are religious, saved them. Can we, when miners die, which they do too often say capitalism killed them? But seriously I have never seen capitalism, people I see all the time, many good many not so good. I also see technology but capitalism never! Or maybe democracy saved them? Hm, or sharing saved them, what an odd thought that would be.

Volition and a willingness of free people to help others genuinely in need saved the miners. It also took a head of state who was willing to tell the normal army of meddlesome bureaucrats to sit down, STFU and get out of the way.

If this had happened in West Virginia,we'd still be waiting for the environmental impact statements for drilling the breathing holes to clear the EPA.

QFT.

The EPA couldn't even grant permits to let Louisiana deploy berms in time to protect coasts and wetlands from the BP oil spill.

 

[Sallow]

I guess the point is yes, capitalism got them into it, BUT it also got them out of it, where as totalitarianism usually leads to disaster on all fronts.

Couldn't agree more.

 

[boedicca]

Society is the mother, brother, sister, father and GodFather of capitalism.

Capitalism is the free cooperation of society. They're not separate entities.

Socialism is cooperation. Capitalism is competition. That's the whole point. Try to remember your own rhetoric.

Incorrect.

Capitalism is more than competition. It is the voluntary exchange of one value for another value by free participants in the market.

 

[Paulie]

Society is the mother, brother, sister, father and GodFather of capitalism.

Capitalism is the free cooperation of society. They're not separate entities.

Socialism is cooperation. Capitalism is competition. That's the whole point. Try to remember your own rhetoric.

Competition and cooperation are not mutually exclusive.

 

[JBeukema]

guns don't kill people, capitalism kills people.

Ideologies don't kill people.

Other people kill people.

For a number of reasons and in the name of numerous ideologies of all colours.

 

[uscitizen]

Umm if you notice the president was all over the rescue effort.

He did not just fly over in a helicopter and say that is bad....