Capitalism is NOT Democratic: Democracy is NOT Capitalist

[Toddsterpatriot]

They left is trying to create a counter defense to capitalist dictators, in order to prevent intimidation and murder by the wealthy elite.

And they'll intimate and murder you if they have to, eh comrade?

 

[progressive hunter]

Meerkats and primitive primates are OUR history, for tens of millions of years, if not longer.
Those are where all our inherent instincts/values came from.
We are inherently communist and social animals.

maybe your history but not human history,,

 

[bripat9643]

Sure you can. You just need consensus that government shouldn't be meddling in our economic affairs.

That won't under democracy.

 

[bripat9643]

Are rich people or poor people the majority in America?
Which cohort's interest does oligarchy serve?

Brutal Capitalism: How America is transforming from a democracy to an oligarchy | The Milwaukee Independent

"Recidivists. Repeat criminals. Billionaires. But because the crime they committed was mostly against average Americans rather than against big companies or rich people, they’ll quietly retire to one of their chalets or mansions.

"Meanwhile, Jessica Reznicek was just sentenced to serve 8 years in prison for damaging an oil pipeline that she believed threatened the water supply of Iowa and surrounding regions and is contributing to climate change. Nobody died. Nobody got addicted. She didn’t make any money doing it. She’s not rich"

The death toll from the “heat dome” caused in part by Exxon’s product (and their decades of funding climate denialism every bit as horrific as the Sackler’s marketing efforts for Oxycontin) has now officially killed over 116 people in Oregon, probably twice that in Washinton State (which has a much larger population), and over 500 people in British Columbia. ​

There was no "heat dome" caused by Exxon's products. Heat waves are a normal phenomenon of nature, dumbass. Exxon killed no one.

 

[Thunderbird]

Wrong on every score. The left doesn't "demonize" capitalism. You have all of these "either/or" fallacies. "Either you want to build the Wall, or you favour open borders". "Either you're in favour of 'free market capitalism' or you're a communist". None of these things are "either/or" scenarios.

"Free Market capitalism" is the basis of everything that is going wrong in the USA at the moment. It's not socialism that has turned South America into the political hellscape we see today, but rather South America is what happens when you give the country over to free market capitalism. The poverty, the murder of leftist leaders, the extreme violence, all leading to today's Brazil, where death squads go through the barrios gunning down any male not working, as suspected "gang members".

Just as communism has failed where ever it's been tried, so have the attempts of the IMF and the World Bank to impose unfettered capitalism on countries seeking financial assistance in the fall of communism, since the early 1990's. Most countries were quick to discard the IMF imposed economic straight jackets on social spending and worker rights. But the results are already being seen.

To no one's surprise, you have authoritarian right wing governments in Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Poland, Hungary, and Russia - all countries which received IMF funding with Milton Friedman's "capitalism on steriods" which imposed Chicago School of Economics economics, labor and social spending doctrines on those countries as a condition to funding. South Africa is another IMF success story.

Today, the only country in the world still in thrall to Friedman's discredited notions is the USA, which is currently sliding into 2nd world status as a result. The gap between rich and poor is now widening at the fastest rate in your history, and your declining life expectancy is proof positive of the failure of your current social/economic structures.

Without a healthy and thriving middle class, your country will continue to decline. The oligarchs have taken over your economy and are now pushing you into an authoritarian dictatorship. You're nearly there.

Oligarchs, poverty, violence all disappear when leftists take over?? When did you lose touch with reality?

 

[Thunderbird]

I agree that capitalism is economic and has nothing to do with governing systems like democracy, theocracy, autocracy, etc.

But all humans always inherently implement communism whenever they get the chance, like all small scales.
That included all families, religious orders, small tribes, etc.

No one has ever allowed communism to be tried on a scale larger than an employee owned company.
Anyone who ever has tried, like Trotsky, was killed by capitalist agents like Stalin.

Trotsky was a murderous bum just like his fellow Leftists Stalin and Lenin.

Don't idealize Leon Trotsky.

The following essay is adapted from Clive James' Cultural Amnesia, a re-examination of intellectuals, artists, and thinkers who helped shape the 20th...

slate.com

 

[Thunderbird]

Obviously capitalism is dangerous.
It relies on and enhances materialism, greed, and all the bad emotions that get people to kill and steal from each other.
However, it also promotes innovation and motivation, so it often wins wars.
So to survive, we need a combination of socialism that allows capitalism, but regulates it enough to prevent abuses like slavery, child labor, etc.
Pure capitalism is pure evil, where if you want something, you just kill whomever has it and take it.
Pure capitalism can never be allowed.

The government in Venezuela is totally right wing, using military force to prevent popular opinions from being implemented, and the wealthy elite getting all the benefits from industry that is supposed to be equitably shared.
That is exactly right wing capitalism.
The only reason why the US does not like it is that it is Venezuelan capitalists getting all the wealth instead of US capitalists.
Capitalists can't even get along with each other.

Why are you having trouble understanding? Some socialists are authoritarians.

Lenin Paints Himself Black With His Own Words (Published 1996)

Richard Bernstein reviews book The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive, edited by Richard Pipes; Pipes photo (S)

www.nytimes.com

 

[Colin norris]

Today the USA is neither capitalist or Democratic.....

Well what is it?

 

[Thunderbird]

The point is that historically communism works better and is ingrained in our evolved instincts.
Its efficiency can't be denied.
Just look at how successful Meerkats are, or any communist primates.

Can we give Rigby5’s post some kind of award?

Dumbest post for October maybe?

 

[georgephillip]

Here's your socialist paradise you retard. One third of the country is starving while the ruling elite get fat...

What role did US foreign policy play in fattening those elites?
Listen To Venezuela | MR Online
"This film was shot in Venezuela in 2008. It provides an essential background to understanding what has been happening in Venezuela in recent times.

"These are real people, not figments of the filmmakers’ imagination, articulating their hopes for a transformed country.

"It offers a very different perspective and set of images of Venezuela from most Western media which loyally recycles perspectives that tie in with American foreign policy objectives and the internal elites of Venezuela who are responsible for decades of underdevelopment and poverty.

"The film offers a complex account of a complex situation-but it is not neutral: it is on the side of a people struggling for change, it is filmed, from ‘the optic of the people’."

 

[Dragonlady]

Oligarchs, poverty, violence all disappear when leftists take over?? When did you lose touch with reality?

Perhaps you should go back and read what I posted. You home schooled types have a difficult time reading for comprehension. No we don't run our countries for the benefit of the wealthy oligarchs. Our tax codes are designed to help working people, and to give them the resources to succeed. Our rates of murder and other violent crimes are a fraction of yours. Our rates of poverty are also a fraction of what yours are.

The rest of the world's first world countries, all of which are leftist social democracies, have less poverty, violent crime, and most importantly, they have far less wage and wealth inequity. Oligarchs don't run the country, and the rich are taxed. They don't get 80% of the income and wealth of our nations. Our tax codes reward the workers, not just the wealthy.

You're the richest nation on earth, but have the 3rd highest rate of poverty in the world. That doesn't say much for your system of government at all. And you have the highest rates of murder and violent crime.

Poverty rates in OECD countries 2022 | Statista

Costa Rica had the highest poverty rate of OECD member countries.

www.statista.com

Your crime rate is lower because you only count specific crimes as "violent crimes": murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. If two drunks get into a fight behind the bar, we count it.

 

[georgephillip]

Ahh the equivocation game! Who, besides you, is saying that a free market is regulation-free? Free markets depend on property laws at the very least, so you're shadow-boxing.

You got (another) one right.
"Free markets" are NOT regulation free.

Cheat, Lie, and Steal: Michael Hudson on the Capitalist Way

"For Adam Smith, a free market was a market free of landlords.

"You wouldn't have them anymore.

"That was the first thing that he picked up in his travels in France was the physiocrats.

"John Stuart Mill said, 'Economic rent is what landlords make in their sleep without working.'

"He wanted the government ... Basically they were called Ricardian Socialists.

"They wanted the government to collect all the rent so that the only income people would get would be income they make from actually being productive, for making things, for makings goods and services"

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

Rambunctious said:
Today the USA is neither capitalist or Democratic.....

Well what is it?

Good question, Colin. I’d have to say the USA is a country filled with some pretty shamefully ignorant people! From the ridiculous either/or posing of the OP question, to the demagogic and argumentative comments, there is not much useful being said here.

In the end, it seems to me that the key social and economic reality is that the “U.S.A.” has become a dangerously muscle-bound world financial empire, terrified of losing its position as top dog among nations.

Corporate finance capitalism rules here. It has been developing for a long time. It is our present “American version” of capitalism.

It is not just a matter of economics. Today our democratic traditions and republican institutions are failing us and our people are at each other’s throats, partly but certainly not only due to Trump and his incredible demagoguery.

Sectional and “party-partisan” hysteria grow even as those claiming to be “independents” outnumber ostensible “partisans.” The center does not hold. Those with money and stocks, those with education and good or relatively stable jobs, those without, Americans talk past one another. As do whole nations in the world. So it is with that old “socialism” and “capitalism” debate.

It reminds me of an old Keats poem:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Perhaps you should go back and read what I posted. You home schooled types have a difficult time reading for comprehension. No we don't run our countries for the benefit of the wealthy oligarchs. Our tax codes are designed to help working people, and to give them the resources to succeed. Our rates of murder and other violent crimes are a fraction of yours. Our rates of poverty are also a fraction of what yours are.

The rest of the world's first world countries, all of which are leftist social democracies, have less poverty, violent crime, and most importantly, they have far less wage and wealth inequity. Oligarchs don't run the country, and the rich are taxed. They don't get 80% of the income and wealth of our nations. Our tax codes reward the workers, not just the wealthy.

You're the richest nation on earth, but have the 3rd highest rate of poverty in the world. That doesn't say much for your system of government at all. And you have the highest rates of murder and violent crime.

Poverty rates in OECD countries 2022 | Statista

Costa Rica had the highest poverty rate of OECD member countries.

www.statista.com

Your crime rate is lower because you only count specific crimes as "violent crimes": murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. If two drunks get into a fight behind the bar, we count it.

You're the richest nation on earth, but have the 3rd highest rate of poverty in the world.

Wow! You're clueless.

Poverty Rate by Country 2024

 

[georgephillip]

I use Bank of America.

Bank of America to Pay $16.65 Billion in Historic Justice Department Settlement for Financial Fraud Leading up to and During the Financial Crisis

 

[bripat9643]

Bank of America to Pay $16.65 Billion in Historic Justice Department Settlement for Financial Fraud Leading up to and During the Financial Crisis

"Attorney General Eric Holder"

That's all you need to know about that settlement.

Isn't that the one where Holder gave the money away to leftwing propaganda operations?

 

[georgephillip]

Capitalism is just another word for economic freedom, and that's far more important than choosing a new gang of overseers every coup

Capitalism is just another word for criminal enterprise:

Brutal Capitalism: How America is transforming from a democracy to an oligarchy | The Milwaukee Independent

"The Sackler family, whose criminal Oxycontin drug-dealing killed over a half-million Americans and destroyed the lives of millions more, is close to a deal with the states to keep around $10 billion of their ill-gotten gain in exchange for giving the states a bit over $4 billion over a nine years.

"Nobody will go to jail or even suffer an inconvenience like no longer being able to use a private jet or give up one of their many mansions."

 

[bripat9643]

Capitalism is just another word for criminal enterprise:

Brutal Capitalism: How America is transforming from a democracy to an oligarchy | The Milwaukee Independent

"The Sackler family, whose criminal Oxycontin drug-dealing killed over a half-million Americans and destroyed the lives of millions more, is close to a deal with the states to keep around $10 billion of their ill-gotten gain in exchange for giving the states a bit over $4 billion over a nine years.

"Nobody will go to jail or even suffer an inconvenience like no longer being able to use a private jet or give up one of their many mansions."

How are they "criminal" when everything they did was totally legal?

OxyContin is a medically useful drug.

 

[georgephillip]

There's a difference between a "surplus" and wealth. In reality, there is no economic surplus.

What is economic surplus? Definition and meaning

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

You got (another) one right.
"Free markets" are NOT regulation free.

Cheat, Lie, and Steal: Michael Hudson on the Capitalist Way

"For Adam Smith, a free market was a market free of landlords.

"You wouldn't have them anymore.

"That was the first thing that he picked up in his travels in France was the physiocrats.

"John Stuart Mill said, 'Economic rent is what landlords make in their sleep without working.'

"He wanted the government ... Basically they were called Ricardian Socialists.

"They wanted the government to collect all the rent so that the only income people would get would be income they make from actually being productive, for making things, for makings goods and services"

I love that you get economic "wisdom" from a Marxist economist.