"If you have a gun, you can rob a bank, but if you have a bank, you can rob everyone!" -Bill Maher
"You can only be robbed by a bank if you are foolish enough to borrow money from one." - Average Joe
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"If you have a gun, you can rob a bank, but if you have a bank, you can rob everyone!" -Bill Maher
For the cohesive society of differing functions, somehow working together, that humanity on Planet Earth must become if our children are to fulfill their destiny and reach for the stars (assuming we don't burn down our infrastructure instead), there must be some guidance and long term vision expressed collectively by The Peoples Interests and Will through government as well as an evolutionary process of survival of the fittest, weeding through ideas and processes to sort the good ideas and business models from the bad.
There are two systems currently in place with the resources to foist such a society upon the world...
1. The United States, a capitalist system, which is currently experiencing the pain of learning what happens with everyone doing their own thing with no central planning. While raw capitalism produces a plethora of ideas and processes in the marketplace, especially when there is an abundance of natural resources and undeveloped land available for the taking, it also can produce uncontrollably large and powerful business organizations which cause havoc in the market place when they implode.
2. China, a socialist system, which has been experimenting over the last 30 years with central vision and planning, combined with letting people make many of their own decisions in the market place and allowing them to reap the rewards and losses of those decisions.
Guess which system currently owes the other more money than God could repay...
So here is the question my fellow Americans:
Do you think capitalism, with some semblance of vision and central planning might recover from its current embarrassing situation and kick ass on socialism that is experimenting with the value of marketplace freedoms, or are we doomed to pay our mortgages in yuan instead of dollars 10 years from now, because nobody wants the electric grid running through their back yard and by God were free to say "Fuck you" to the rest of us?
-Joe
This sort of thinking is what brings down great societies. "Humans just aren't smart enough and good enough, and I, in my infinitely superior wisdom and morality, need to barge in and show them how they OUGHT to be, because I can change human nature."
There is no necessity whatsoever for human beings to be warm and fuzzy and altruistic, and the honest truth is that you are NEVER going to get 100% of them to be that way, or even to believe it's a good idea. Which means the closest you'll ever get is to turn the majority of society into sheep with a handful of wolves in the herd.
Capitalism cannot exist in conjunction with "central planning", because right there you have negated the entire premise of capitalism. Seriously, what is it with people that they think they, personally (or any one person, for that matter) can be smart enough to singlehandedly replace every bit of knowledge and every single economic decision made by hundreds of millions of people every day? That's what central planning is: the government is going to decide what people need and want most, instead of letting the individual people decide and reflect their decisions in market forces.
Seriously Cecilie?
Capitalism cannot exist in conjunction with "central planning", eh?
Was America a socialist nation in the 1800's when the government coordinated private investment in a rail line that linked the coasts?
Central planning and capitalism are diametrically opposed, eh?
So the interstate system "just happened" to link up at the state lines? (Assuming some sort of central planning at the state level is allowed in your imagination.)
So the safest food supply in the history of a socially organized mankind "just happened"? Safe food is not exactly a profit oriented goal, unless the producer sees his customers face-to-face on a regular basis...
So America's proudest moments, winning WWII and walking on the moon "just happened"?
Shall I go on?
The economy that leads the world into the 21st century will have to have vision and central planning. Right now, the Chinese are in a position to own us and our leadership position because of our push for short-term gains and lack of long term vision, as a nation, during the last 50 years.
Even if enough greed has been bitch-slapped out of our system to get proper private investment into more-expensive-in-the-short-term alternatives to imported energy, where will the electric grid go? Someone is going to have to allow it in their back yard... That takes central planning.
Shall I go on?
-Joe
"If you have a gun, you can rob a bank, but if you have a bank, you can rob everyone!" -Bill Maher
"You can only be robbed by a bank if you are foolish enough to borrow money from one." - Average Joe
As to Capitalism not being able to exist without central planning, well you can chalk up our current economic downturn to the central planners so there's certainly something to that argument. I'd recommend Friedrich von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom for more reading on the subject.
Some of you people think that you want PURE FREEDOM.
You think capitalism is a manifestation of that freedom, too
None of you really want that.
Not unless you want pure anarchy.
What most of you want is as much INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM as possible, but you want it in an ORDERLY CIVIL SOCIETY, too.
That demands tension between YOUR "RIGHTS, and the right of the society that you eixst in to LIMIT your and your neightbors' individual freedoms.
But if you think PURE CAPITALISM grants any of you FREEDOM whatever, you don't know what the hell capitalism even is.
Capitalism has nothing whatever to do with governance.
Capitalism can only exist in a place that has government.
If you doubt that, show me any place in the world today, or EVER, where capitalism ruled the roost, but no government was there to make it possible for people to safely OWN ANYTHING.
No such place ever existed and no such place will ever exist.
PURE CAPITALIST STATES one with no government simply cannot exist.
Why?
Because in that state of affairs MIGHT MAKES RIGHT.
duh!
Anyone with more power can deny you whatever right they choose.
But editec that's theft, that's not capitalism, you say?
No shit, Sherlock. That's my whole fucking point.
Capitalism has no mechanism to protect you (or itself) from crime.
And the moment it creates mechanisms to protect itself from crime, it begins the process of denying others their FREEDOMS.
Remember that PURE FREEDOM is the FREEDOM to take other people's STUFF.
Well, thank you, Miss Cleo, for that fascinating mind-reading act where you first tell us what it is we THINK we want, and THEN tell us what we REALLY want and don't know about.
Here's a thought. Why don't you stick to figuring out how to articulate your own thoughts coherently before tackling everyone else's?
This sort of thinking is what brings down great societies. "Humans just aren't smart enough and good enough, and I, in my infinitely superior wisdom and morality, need to barge in and show them how they OUGHT to be, because I can change human nature."
There is no necessity whatsoever for human beings to be warm and fuzzy and altruistic, and the honest truth is that you are NEVER going to get 100% of them to be that way, or even to believe it's a good idea. Which means the closest you'll ever get is to turn the majority of society into sheep with a handful of wolves in the herd.
Capitalism cannot exist in conjunction with "central planning", because right there you have negated the entire premise of capitalism. Seriously, what is it with people that they think they, personally (or any one person, for that matter) can be smart enough to singlehandedly replace every bit of knowledge and every single economic decision made by hundreds of millions of people every day? That's what central planning is: the government is going to decide what people need and want most, instead of letting the individual people decide and reflect their decisions in market forces.
Seriously Cecilie?
Capitalism cannot exist in conjunction with "central planning", eh?
Was America a socialist nation in the 1800's when the government coordinated private investment in a rail line that linked the coasts?
Central planning and capitalism are diametrically opposed, eh?
So the interstate system "just happened" to link up at the state lines? (Assuming some sort of central planning at the state level is allowed in your imagination.)
So the safest food supply in the history of a socially organized mankind "just happened"? Safe food is not exactly a profit oriented goal, unless the producer sees his customers face-to-face on a regular basis...
So America's proudest moments, winning WWII and walking on the moon "just happened"?
Shall I go on?
The economy that leads the world into the 21st century will have to have vision and central planning. Right now, the Chinese are in a position to own us and our leadership position because of our push for short-term gains and lack of long term vision, as a nation, during the last 50 years.
Even if enough greed has been bitch-slapped out of our system to get proper private investment into more-expensive-in-the-short-term alternatives to imported energy, where will the electric grid go? Someone is going to have to allow it in their back yard... That takes central planning.
Shall I go on?
-Joe
The government subsidized transcontinental railroads were largely inefficient and corrupt, as opposed to James J. Hill's privately built Great Northern Railway.
The Truth About the "Robber Barons" - Thomas J. DiLorenzo - Mises Institute
As to Capitalism not being able to exist without central planning, well you can chalk up our current economic downturn to the central planners so there's certainly something to that argument. I'd recommend Friedrich von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom for more reading on the subject.
Seriously Cecilie?
Capitalism cannot exist in conjunction with "central planning", eh?
Was America a socialist nation in the 1800's when the government coordinated private investment in a rail line that linked the coasts?
Central planning and capitalism are diametrically opposed, eh?
So the interstate system "just happened" to link up at the state lines? (Assuming some sort of central planning at the state level is allowed in your imagination.)
So the safest food supply in the history of a socially organized mankind "just happened"? Safe food is not exactly a profit oriented goal, unless the producer sees his customers face-to-face on a regular basis...
So America's proudest moments, winning WWII and walking on the moon "just happened"?
Shall I go on?
The economy that leads the world into the 21st century will have to have vision and central planning. Right now, the Chinese are in a position to own us and our leadership position because of our push for short-term gains and lack of long term vision, as a nation, during the last 50 years.
Even if enough greed has been bitch-slapped out of our system to get proper private investment into more-expensive-in-the-short-term alternatives to imported energy, where will the electric grid go? Someone is going to have to allow it in their back yard... That takes central planning.
Shall I go on?
-Joe
The government subsidized transcontinental railroads were largely inefficient and corrupt, as opposed to James J. Hill's privately built Great Northern Railway.
The Truth About the "Robber Barons" - Thomas J. DiLorenzo - Mises Institute
As to Capitalism not being able to exist without central planning, well you can chalk up our current economic downturn to the central planners so there's certainly something to that argument. I'd recommend Friedrich von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom for more reading on the subject.
Kevin, your statements are not untrue. Not only that, they are proof that there is a huge difference between central planning and bad central planning.
This is why democracy* should be able produce a higher standard of living than an authoritarian government can.
*Not what we've had in America the last 50 years, but true democracy, where your voice and my voice are not squelched by the dollars that corporations - including foreign corporations - can provide.
-Joe
I see no proof that there's a difference between central planning and bad central planning, as central planning inevitably becomes bad central planning.
"If you have a gun, you can rob a bank, but if you have a bank, you can rob everyone!" -Bill Maher
"You can only be robbed by a bank if you are foolish enough to borrow money from one." - Average Joe
Would that THAT were true.
That might be true if we hadn't given PRIVATE BANKS the franchise to create money.
Since we did, banks can rob us all regardless of whether or not we do business with them.
For the cohesive society of differing functions, somehow working together, that humanity on Planet Earth must become if our children are to fulfill their destiny and reach for the stars (assuming we don't burn down our infrastructure instead), there must be some guidance and long term vision expressed collectively by The Peoples Interests and Will through government as well as an evolutionary process of survival of the fittest, weeding through ideas and processes to sort the good ideas and business models from the bad.
There are two systems currently in place with the resources to foist such a society upon the world...
1. The United States, a capitalist system, which is currently experiencing the pain of learning what happens with everyone doing their own thing with no central planning. While raw capitalism produces a plethora of ideas and processes in the marketplace, especially when there is an abundance of natural resources and undeveloped land available for the taking, it also can produce uncontrollably large and powerful business organizations which cause havoc in the market place when they implode.
2. China, a socialist system, which has been experimenting over the last 30 years with central vision and planning, combined with letting people make many of their own decisions in the market place and allowing them to reap the rewards and losses of those decisions.
Guess which system currently owes the other more money than God could repay...
So here is the question my fellow Americans:
Do you think capitalism, with some semblance of vision and central planning might recover from its current embarrassing situation and kick ass on socialism that is experimenting with the value of marketplace freedoms, or are we doomed to pay our mortgages in yuan instead of dollars 10 years from now, because nobody wants the electric grid running through their back yard and by God were free to say "Fuck you" to the rest of us?
-Joe
This sort of thinking is what brings down great societies. "Humans just aren't smart enough and good enough, and I, in my infinitely superior wisdom and morality, need to barge in and show them how they OUGHT to be, because I can change human nature."
There is no necessity whatsoever for human beings to be warm and fuzzy and altruistic, and the honest truth is that you are NEVER going to get 100% of them to be that way, or even to believe it's a good idea. Which means the closest you'll ever get is to turn the majority of society into sheep with a handful of wolves in the herd.
Capitalism cannot exist in conjunction with "central planning", because right there you have negated the entire premise of capitalism. Seriously, what is it with people that they think they, personally (or any one person, for that matter) can be smart enough to singlehandedly replace every bit of knowledge and every single economic decision made by hundreds of millions of people every day? That's what central planning is: the government is going to decide what people need and want most, instead of letting the individual people decide and reflect their decisions in market forces.
Seriously Cecilie?
Capitalism cannot exist in conjunction with "central planning", eh?
Was America a socialist nation in the 1800's when the government coordinated private investment in a rail line that linked the coasts?
Central planning and capitalism are diametrically opposed, eh?
So the interstate system "just happened" to link up at the state lines? (Assuming some sort of central planning at the state level is allowed in your imagination.)
So the safest food supply in the history of a socially organized mankind "just happened"? Safe food is not exactly a profit oriented goal, unless the producer sees his customers face-to-face on a regular basis...
So America's proudest moments, winning WWII and walking on the moon "just happened"?
Shall I go on?
The economy that leads the world into the 21st century will have to have vision and central planning. Right now, the Chinese are in a position to own us and our leadership position because of our push for short-term gains and lack of long term vision, as a nation, during the last 50 years.
Even if enough greed has been bitch-slapped out of our system to get proper private investment into more-expensive-in-the-short-term alternatives to imported energy, where will the electric grid go? Someone is going to have to allow it in their back yard... That takes central planning.
Shall I go on?
Sorry, Sparky, but government-created infrastructure has two things to do with this: jack and shit. Capitalism is NOT anarchy, and for the last time because I am frigging TIRED of having to tell you all-or-nothing liberal dimwits this, socialism is NOT defined as having a government that performs government functions. The government building something is not equivalent to the government taking control of the means of production and distribution and micromanaging the economy, and I can't believe I even have to tell you something so dirt-obvious.
Seriously Cecilie?
Capitalism cannot exist in conjunction with "central planning", eh?
Was America a socialist nation in the 1800's when the government coordinated private investment in a rail line that linked the coasts?
Central planning and capitalism are diametrically opposed, eh?
So the interstate system "just happened" to link up at the state lines? (Assuming some sort of central planning at the state level is allowed in your imagination.)
So the safest food supply in the history of a socially organized mankind "just happened"? Safe food is not exactly a profit oriented goal, unless the producer sees his customers face-to-face on a regular basis...
So America's proudest moments, winning WWII and walking on the moon "just happened"?
Shall I go on?
The economy that leads the world into the 21st century will have to have vision and central planning. Right now, the Chinese are in a position to own us and our leadership position because of our push for short-term gains and lack of long term vision, as a nation, during the last 50 years.
Even if enough greed has been bitch-slapped out of our system to get proper private investment into more-expensive-in-the-short-term alternatives to imported energy, where will the electric grid go? Someone is going to have to allow it in their back yard... That takes central planning.
Shall I go on?
-Joe
The government subsidized transcontinental railroads were largely inefficient and corrupt, as opposed to James J. Hill's privately built Great Northern Railway.
The Truth About the "Robber Barons" - Thomas J. DiLorenzo - Mises Institute
As to Capitalism not being able to exist without central planning, well you can chalk up our current economic downturn to the central planners so there's certainly something to that argument. I'd recommend Friedrich von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom for more reading on the subject.
Kevin, your statements are not untrue. Not only that, they are proof that there is a huge difference between central planning and bad central planning.
This is why democracy* should be able produce a higher standard of living than an authoritarian government can.
*Not what we've had in America the last 50 years, but true democracy, where your voice and my voice are not squelched by the dollars that corporations - including foreign corporations - can provide.
-Joe
Ah, the ever-popular liberal argument of "Socialism isn't a bad idea. It just failed because I wasn't running it!"
The government subsidized transcontinental railroads were largely inefficient and corrupt, as opposed to James J. Hill's privately built Great Northern Railway.
The Truth About the "Robber Barons" - Thomas J. DiLorenzo - Mises Institute
As to Capitalism not being able to exist without central planning, well you can chalk up our current economic downturn to the central planners so there's certainly something to that argument. I'd recommend Friedrich von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom for more reading on the subject.
Kevin, your statements are not untrue. Not only that, they are proof that there is a huge difference between central planning and bad central planning.
This is why democracy* should be able produce a higher standard of living than an authoritarian government can.
*Not what we've had in America the last 50 years, but true democracy, where your voice and my voice are not squelched by the dollars that corporations - including foreign corporations - can provide.
-Joe
I see no proof that there's a difference between central planning and bad central planning.
Seriously Cecilie?
Capitalism cannot exist in conjunction with "central planning", eh?
Was America a socialist nation in the 1800's when the government coordinated private investment in a rail line that linked the coasts?
Central planning and capitalism are diametrically opposed, eh?
So the interstate system "just happened" to link up at the state lines? (Assuming some sort of central planning at the state level is allowed in your imagination.)
So the safest food supply in the history of a socially organized mankind "just happened"? Safe food is not exactly a profit oriented goal, unless the producer sees his customers face-to-face on a regular basis...
So America's proudest moments, winning WWII and walking on the moon "just happened"?
Shall I go on?
The economy that leads the world into the 21st century will have to have vision and central planning. Right now, the Chinese are in a position to own us and our leadership position because of our push for short-term gains and lack of long term vision, as a nation, during the last 50 years.
Even if enough greed has been bitch-slapped out of our system to get proper private investment into more-expensive-in-the-short-term alternatives to imported energy, where will the electric grid go? Someone is going to have to allow it in their back yard... That takes central planning.
Shall I go on?
-Joe
The government subsidized transcontinental railroads were largely inefficient and corrupt, as opposed to James J. Hill's privately built Great Northern Railway.
The Truth About the "Robber Barons" - Thomas J. DiLorenzo - Mises Institute
As to Capitalism not being able to exist without central planning, well you can chalk up our current economic downturn to the central planners so there's certainly something to that argument. I'd recommend Friedrich von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom for more reading on the subject.
Kevin, your statements are not untrue. Not only that, they are proof that there is a huge difference between central planning and bad central planning.
This is why democracy* should be able produce a higher standard of living than an authoritarian government can.
*Not what we've had in America the last 50 years, but true democracy, where your voice and my voice are not squelched by the dollars that corporations - including foreign corporations - can provide.
-Joe
By the way, Brain Trust, we're talking about capitalism, not democracy. One is an economic system, and one is a political system. Just another proof that you have no frigging clue what any of the stuff you're bloviating about is.
OK Fellow American's which do you prefer for our country, Communism, Socialism or Capitalism? and what is the reason for your preference?
More than 1,200 groups from Maine to Hawaii spent the day gathering signatures in support of Obama's economic plan, the first step in building what the White House hopes will be a standing political army ready to do battle.
Kevin, your statements are not untrue. Not only that, they are proof that there is a huge difference between central planning and bad central planning.
This is why democracy* should be able produce a higher standard of living than an authoritarian government can.
*Not what we've had in America the last 50 years, but true democracy, where your voice and my voice are not squelched by the dollars that corporations - including foreign corporations - can provide.
-Joe
I see no proof that there's a difference between central planning and bad central planning.
Proof, eh?
How about China? I think we agree that the central planning done by The United States over the last 50 years has been somewhat lacking in vision, to say the least. Over those same 50 years the Chinese have discovered and implemented freedom in the market place, guided by strict central planning.
Who now owes who more money than God could repay?
Did China create Utopia? Hell no! Nobody will argue that the Chinese Government has done everything right, but they did end up on the correct side of a $13 Trillion mortgage. And they did it by planning for their future as a Nation while we, rich and poor alike, kept asking our government "What's in it for me" and accepted the huge transfer of wealth from our future, using China and the Arabs as the bankers and paying a hefty commission to our "planning committee" in the process.
The sooner we realize how stupid we look from space, the sooner we can start planning, as a Nation, for a better future.
-Joe
OK Fellow American's which do you prefer for our country, Communism, Socialism or Capitalism? and what is the reason for your preference?
We need a new word for what is happening.."Obamanism", those who fall in step and follow without a fight are obamatrons or quite simply "dumbasses" and destroyers of all that is uniquely American
More than 1,200 groups from Maine to Hawaii spent the day gathering signatures in support of Obama's economic plan, the first step in building what the White House hopes will be a standing political army ready to do battle.