Capitalism is...Slavery; Democracy is Not

[daveman]

Where did you get your education? What exactly does nature provide you if you don't work? You are treading very close to looneydom if you truly believe that. More importantly I challenge you to go out for a walk in the desert somewhere with no water. I wonder how long it will take for Nature to swt you like a bug for your impudence.

Did you find your religion on a desert?

Nature's abundance sustained this specie for millions of years before primitive desert capitalists invented a bronze-age psychopath and called it "god."

Capitalism enhances scarcity in order to maximize profit.

When technology evolves to the point where workers are no longer necessary for profit, the capitalist tells them to take a walk in the desert without water and pray to their slave god.

No thanks.

Yes in point of fact I have spent many years out in the deserts of the world. Try leaving your socialist theories at home and go get your own food. You my good man will starve to death. It takes work to find food to eat. Nature is very abundant but only if you can catch it. Lazy people starve.

Which gets back to the point that you dodged. What do you do when the workers have had enough of your lazy ass and they tell you to go screw yourself and stop providing you with your welfare check/food?

He would answer, but he hasn't given this any thought. At all.

 

[daveman]

Says the yellow ***** generator mechanic from behind his keyboard.

I had the courage to put on the uniform. You chickened out.

Remember that, Revolution Boi.

And if you're thinking the real revolutionaries are going to give you power or authority when they've taken over (snerk!), you're an idiot. You'll sit down and shut up and do as you're told, and you'll like it.

And you'll STILL be a failure.

That's if they let him live. Real revolutionaries don't have much use for poseurs like our dear boy. He would be toast because he lacks courage and won't work hard for the new masters.

I honestly think he believes that after the Revolution, they'll come to him and ask why they shouldn't put him up against the wall, and he'll point to his posts here at USMB as proof of the fighting he's done for and the value he has to the Revolution.

And then they'll laugh, and shoot him.

 

[georgephillip]

Yes in point of fact I have spent many years out in the deserts of the world. Try leaving your socialist theories at home and go get your own food. You my good man will starve to death. It takes work to find food to eat. Nature is very abundant but only if you can catch it. Lazy people starve.

Which gets back to the point that you dodged. What do you do when the workers have had enough of your lazy ass and they tell you to go screw yourself and stop providing you with your welfare check/food?

"Douglas disagreed with classical economists who divided the factors of production into only land, labour and capital.

"While Douglas did not deny these factors in production, he believed the 'cultural inheritance of society' was the primary factor.

"Cultural inheritance is defined as the knowledge, technique and processes that have been handed down to us incrementally from the origins of civilization.

"Consequently, mankind does not have to keep 'reinventing the wheel'. 'We are merely the administrators of that cultural inheritance, and to that extent the cultural inheritance is the property of all of us, without exception.'"

In our current economic system only those who own the means of production benefit from our collective cultural inheritance. Social Credit would amend that by providing each citizen an annual dividend on their collective inheritance that would be independent of any other sources of income.

Social Credit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You're still dodging the question bucko. What do you do when the workers stop supporting your lazy ass?

I'm not the one dodging, slick.

Maybe you're too stupid to comprehend what I'm saying?

That's possible.

 

[daveman]

That's like saying a pebble "serves" geology by rolling across a stream bed. A lion has no conscience intent to "serve" natural selection anymore than the zebra does. The lion simply does what his genes compel him to do. A lion is the result of natural selection, not the cause of it.

Again, what does any of this have to do with your theory that nature is fair? The evidence that nature is grossly unfair couldn't be more obvious. All you have to do to understand that is consider a child born with a birth defect. How fair is that?

I never said "nature is fair."
I said "nature says you deserve everything"
You twisted that into "you have to be a moron to believe nature is fair." (Post 304)

Nature is often random; hence birth defects.

And I still say while the lion may not be conscious of Charles Darwin, by culling the old and weak and young from the zebra herd, she is serving natural selection.

Yet you don't get it.

You almost knock it out the park...

So why you a demofuck if you believe in natural selection, why do you believe in social welfare?....

 

[georgephillip]

I don't. But you keep stamping your feet and insisting your opinion matters to me. It's amusing, in a little-yappy-dog kind of way.

Your arrogance is matched only by your ignorance.

How many children are dead because of your work?

Not nearly as many as are dead because you chickened out and didn't protect them.

You lose yet again, Georgie. As always. It's your default mode.

The same way the VC lost in Vietnam.

How many Vietnamese children did the USAF save?
How many did they kill?
How much profit did LBJ earn from his wife's stock in du Pont?

How many Muslim children are dead or maimed this very second because of your actions?
Does that number make you proud?

 

[georgephillip]

[
Capitalism:"From French capitalisme ('the condition of one who is rich'). First used in English by novelist William Thackeray in 1854."

Mental retardation (MR) from french dumb ass .....ia generalized disorder, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors. It has historically been defined as an Intelligence Quotient score under 70.

.

Represented by a belief in infinite growth on a planet of finite resources?

 

[georgephillip]

That's like saying a pebble "serves" geology by rolling across a stream bed. A lion has no conscience intent to "serve" natural selection anymore than the zebra does. The lion simply does what his genes compel him to do. A lion is the result of natural selection, not the cause of it.

Again, what does any of this have to do with your theory that nature is fair? The evidence that nature is grossly unfair couldn't be more obvious. All you have to do to understand that is consider a child born with a birth defect. How fair is that?

I never said "nature is fair."
I said "nature says you deserve everything"
You twisted that into "you have to be a moron to believe nature is fair." (Post 304)

Nature is often random; hence birth defects.

And I still say while the lion may not be conscious of Charles Darwin, by culling the old and weak and young from the zebra herd, she is serving natural selection.

Yet you don't get it.

You almost knock it out the park...

So why you a demofuck if you believe in natural selection, why do you believe in social welfare?....

If I get my way in November of 2012, hundreds of Republicans AND Democrats will be FLUSHED from DC in a single news cycle starting in the White House.

One huge mistake that I believe most conservatives make involves social Dawinism.
It's not all about "survival of the fittest" in human societies.
It's as least as much about empathy, imo.

If we have reached a technological tipping point where automation has eliminated enough jobs to produce a "new normal" of double digit unemployment, what is the alternative to "social welfare?"

Mass starvation?
Camp FEMA?
US Civil War 2.0?
All of the above?

 

[georgephillip]

I'm not sure that limiting the capitalist influence on state violence in any way inhibits your freedom of voluntary exchange?

Or maybe I'm missing your point???

Well, the devil's in the details, I guess. So I suppose I'd need to know how you propose to do that. But, as I've said, I don't really see a problem with capitalists influencing government. In a free market, we're all capitalists of one form or another, so I'm wondering where you'd draw the line between those who should be allowed political expression and those who shouldn't.

Anyway, I still don't think limiting people's influence over government (whether they're rich or not) is the right answer. The most important thing is to limit what that influence can do. It's our steady drift away from the principle of limited government that's allowed the state to be used as a tool for 'redistributing' wealth. And THAT's what we need eliminate.

The irony is, I think you're correct to point out that state redistribution of wealth favors the rich far more than it does the poor. But to use that fact as justification for even more state control over the distribution of wealth seems to me particularly foolish. It's like drinking to relieve a hangover. The more control we give the state over who succeeds in the market place, the more ambitious people will be motived to control the state.

The solution is to do the opposite - get the state out of economics and keep it out. Government has no more business telling us how to make a living than it does telling us how to worship, or what to think.

I guess many of the devils and details I'm concerned with can be found in the history of the US labor movement. There is no shortage of examples of rich capitalists using the power of the state to arrest, assault, murder and deport workers whose leadership abilities posed a threat to the capitalists' bottom lines.

I'm not sure this isn't zero sum, dblack.

Restricting the power of capital to brutalize labor will limit some people's influence over government and enhance their opponents' clout.

Ideally, creating an economy where state control isn't required would be the ultimate game changer.

I don't see how that economy could afford the level of income inequality that capitalism produces.

 

[daveman]

Your arrogance is matched only by your ignorance.

How many children are dead because of your work?

Not nearly as many as are dead because you chickened out and didn't protect them.

You lose yet again, Georgie. As always. It's your default mode.

The same way the VC lost in Vietnam.

How many Vietnamese children did the USAF save?
How many did they kill?
How much profit did LBJ earn from his wife's stock in du Pont?

How many Muslim children are dead or maimed this very second because of your actions?
Does that number make you proud?

The 60's called. They want their retardery back.

 

[bripat9643]

I guess many of the devils and details I'm concerned with can be found in the history of the US labor movement. There is no shortage of examples of rich capitalists using the power of the state to arrest, assault, murder and deport workers whose leadership abilities posed a threat to the capitalists' bottom lines.

There is no history of that. However, there are numerous instances of corporations evicting trespassing union thugs from their property. Trespassing is against the law.

I'm not sure this isn't zero sum, dblack.

Restricting the power of capital to brutalize labor will limit some people's influence over government and enhance their opponents' clout.

Ideally, creating an economy where state control isn't required would be the ultimate game changer.

I don't see how that economy could afford the level of income inequality that capitalism produces.

Name one system that doesn't produce income inequality? The worst income inequality is found in command, top down control economies like the ones you favor. In the Soviet Union, everyone lived hand-to-mouth except the Communist Party apparatchiks who enjoyed lifestyles equivalent to oriental potentates. Income inequality is a fact of life.

 

[bripat9643]

The 60's called. They want their retardery back.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Ya know, it's hard to believe that anyone still espouses this kind of idiocy. What's truly scary is the fact that the public universities are pumping out legions of brainwashed morons who believe in this stuff.

 

[daveman]

The 60's called. They want their retardery back.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Ya know, it's hard to believe that anyone still espouses this kind of idiocy. What's truly scary is the fact that the public universities are pumping out legions of brainwashed morons who believe in this stuff.

What's scarier is they vote.

 

[bripat9643]

The 60's called. They want their retardery back.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Ya know, it's hard to believe that anyone still espouses this kind of idiocy. What's truly scary is the fact that the public universities are pumping out legions of brainwashed morons who believe in this stuff.

What's scarier is they vote.

Even scarier is the fact that they get elected to Congress.

Anthony Wiener is a case in point.

 

[daveman]

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Ya know, it's hard to believe that anyone still espouses this kind of idiocy. What's truly scary is the fact that the public universities are pumping out legions of brainwashed morons who believe in this stuff.

What's scarier is they vote.

Even scarier is the fact that they get elected to Congress.

Anthony Wiener is a case in point.

Indeed. The loons have taken over the asylum.

 

[georgephillip]

Not unlike the Pentagon

 

[LAfrique]

Confused about the fundamental conflicts regarding proper distribution of power?

"Listen, for example, to liberal economist Lester Thurow who writes that 'democracy and capitalism have very different beliefs about the proper distribution of power.

"'One believes in a completely equal distribution of political power, "one man [sic] one vote," while the other believes that it is the duty of the economically fit to drive the unfit out of business and into extinction. "Survival of the fittest" and inequalities in purchasing power are what capitalist efficiency is all about.

"'Individual profit comes first and firms become efficient to be rich. To put it in its starkest form, capitalism is perfectly compatible with slavery. Democracy is not.'"

Capitalism and Democracy Don't Mix Very Well ::: International Endowment for Democracy

True. And I am always amused by so-called conservatives who are quick to tout horn about the free market (the soul of capitalism), and yet forget that the free market was the idea of political radicals!

 

[Contumacious]

[
Capitalism:"From French capitalisme ('the condition of one who is rich'). First used in English by novelist William Thackeray in 1854."

Mental retardation (MR) from french dumb ass .....ia generalized disorder, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors. It has historically been defined as an Intelligence Quotient score under 70.

.

Represented by a belief in infinite growth on a planet of finite resources?

Actually, the signs and symptoms of mental retardation are

1- government supremacy

2- the belief that government should manage the economy via fascism or communism

3- becomes sexually aroused only when authorized by a government official , preferably one wearing a brownshirt

4. ad nauseum

,

 

[bripat9643]

True. And I am always amused by so-called conservatives who are quick to tout horn about the free market (the soul of capitalism), and yet forget that the free market was the idea of political radicals!

Libs call those same "radicals" racist sexist pigs.

The terms "liberal" and "conservative" lost their original meanings long ago. Anyone trying to make an argument based on how they used to be defined is engaging in demagoguery.

In the modern age, someone who calls himself a "liberal" is someone who endorses socialism and even communism. A "conservative" is someone who believes in free enterprise and limited government.

End of story.

 

[Contumacious]

Confused about the fundamental conflicts regarding proper distribution of power?

"Listen, for example, to liberal economist Lester Thurow who writes that 'democracy and capitalism have very different beliefs about the proper distribution of power.

"'One believes in a completely equal distribution of political power, "one man [sic] one vote," while the other believes that it is the duty of the economically fit to drive the unfit out of business and into extinction. "Survival of the fittest" and inequalities in purchasing power are what capitalist efficiency is all about.

"'Individual profit comes first and firms become efficient to be rich. To put it in its starkest form, capitalism is perfectly compatible with slavery. Democracy is not.'"

Capitalism and Democracy Don't Mix Very Well ::: International Endowment for Democracy

True. And I am always amused by so-called conservatives who are quick to tout horn about the free market (the soul of capitalism), and yet forget that the free market was the idea of political radicals!

That's because "conservatives" only pay lip service to Capitalism.

They preferred regulated "capitalism" , ie , fascism.

.

 

[georgephillip]

Confused about the fundamental conflicts regarding proper distribution of power?

"Listen, for example, to liberal economist Lester Thurow who writes that 'democracy and capitalism have very different beliefs about the proper distribution of power.

"'One believes in a completely equal distribution of political power, "one man [sic] one vote," while the other believes that it is the duty of the economically fit to drive the unfit out of business and into extinction. "Survival of the fittest" and inequalities in purchasing power are what capitalist efficiency is all about.

"'Individual profit comes first and firms become efficient to be rich. To put it in its starkest form, capitalism is perfectly compatible with slavery. Democracy is not.'"

Capitalism and Democracy Don't Mix Very Well ::: International Endowment for Democracy

True. And I am always amused by so-called conservatives who are quick to tout horn about the free market (the soul of capitalism), and yet forget that the free market was the idea of political radicals!

In the Spring of 2010 faculty members of the University of Chicago circulated a petition explaining the University's plans to convert the Chicago Theological Seminary building into a home for the Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics (MFIRE)

Michael Hudson a former student at the University explains:

"It would be hard to find a more fitting metaphor than what the press release characterizes as 'conversion of the Seminary building into a temple of neoliberal economics.'

"Even the acronym MFIRE seems symbolically appropriate. The M might well stand for Money in Prof. Friedman’s MV = PT (Money x Velocity = Price x Transactions).

"And the FIRE sector comprises finance, insurance and real estate – the 'free lunch' sector whose wealth the Chicago monetarists celebrate.

"Classical economists characterized the rent and interest accruing to the FIRE sector as 'unearned income,' headed by land rent and land-price ('capital') gains, which John Stuart Mill described as what landlords made 'in their sleep.'

"Milton Friedman, by contrast, insisted that 'there is no such thing as a free lunch' – as if the economy were not all about a free lunch and how to get it. And the main way to get it is to dismantle the role of government and sell off the public domain – on credit.

"As Charles Baudelaire quipped, the devil wins at the point where the world believes that he does not exist.

"Paraphrasing this we may say that free lunch rentiers achieve economic victory at the point where government regulators and economists believe that their returns do not exist – and hence, do not need to be taxed, regulated or otherwise subdued."

Michael Hudson: The Chicago Boys' Free Market Theology

Today's conservatives twist the original meaning of market free from the undue influence of unearned income into a market free of all government regulations.

Then wonder why their ignorance and arrogance aren't taken seriously.