The mentality of socialism versus capitalism

taxation of multinational corporations is a challenge that we must solve in the 21st century. their ability to hide money pits national governments in a ridiculous race to reduce taxes (and the social services necessary for modern civilization. )

 

No I don't. I speak only on COLLECTIVISM, which is an economic model. Nothing to do with politics or the State.

 

Oh my lord ... no it freaking isn't! However you raise money as a capitalist, you're still capitalist if that money is sufficient to purchase services which don't depend on the recipient having first laboured for those services.

Only in a wealthy capitalist democracy, can we actually afford to purchase services without any compulsion to first labour for those services. That's an incredible privilege and luxury .. just ask anyone from the Third World (or from a socialist state).

 

Your only example of functioning State Socialism is North Korea? Wow.

Meantime, 'help your neighbour' is a mutual arrangement. IOW every member must acknowledge their obligation (to be strong enough to help) at the outset, and conduct their lives accordingly. No one gets a pass. If it's not mutual, it's not collectivism/socialism.

 

1) State Aid is the opposite of socialism. And it's only possible via the profits of capitalism, as exercised in democracies.

2) Since socialism/collectivism is "work to eat", then yes it is Free Stuff. If the individual in receipt of benefits, has not earned those benefits in real time, they are simply largess - aka free stuff. The small amount of taxes contributed by generational and other exploitative welfarists, is not even a token gesture in that regard.

 

I am not going through this again.
I suggest you get a good dictionary definition of socialism in terms of the central role of the state in redistribution as opposed to the capitalist laissez faire ideology which tries to decentralise and reduce the role of the state.
Taxation is no small matter. Ask any medium to large corporation about taxation.
How the funds were created, via capitalism or any other system, is irrelevant.

 

Please don't rewrite my posts. I used an extreme example.
Your last paragraph reinforces the need for full community input...which is socialism and which you say erodes the family, community and stability.
"No one gets a pass".
ISTM you are full of contradictions. In your own terms, socialism expects every man to do his duty, and creates community adhesion, not erodes it as you have tried to suggest.

 

Economics has nothing to do with politics?? Or the state which defines its economic policies??
Oh dear.

 

Capitalism is not far and away concerned with services.
Capitalism is about investment for profit and is writ large in stocks, national bonds, hedge funds where money is huge and depends not on actual funds but on the POTENTIAL PROMISE of a profit.
In fact the fundamental base for capitalism is the weather and the natural elements found in the earth from gold to oil to rare earth minerals. From those all value starts according to supply and demand.
More to the point, those valuable assets are usually still IN THE GROUND and are mere speculation.
The investors invest according to PROJECTED/POTENTIAL PROFITS (above) and also invest money which may or may no actually be there.

This is EXACTLY what caused the South Sea Bubble and the depression of 1929.
People were investing in what they were TOLD was there, and it wasn't.

Briefly, the entire basis for value and capitalism depends more often than not on what NO ONE Has laboured to produce and gains value in the first instance purely by a gamble.
Example...I invest money in rice ir wheat. It is sold through the commodities market on global stock markets. Yes labour has gone into planting it etc but NO LABOUR has gone into the weather it takes to produce that grain.

Or, supply and demand does not depend ultimately on human labour.

 

1) No it doesn't - not in any way. It describes the collective. It describes the requirement for full participation from every member, for a collective to function. That's not at all the same thing as 'community input'. What you are describing is a situation wherein contributors are obliged to support strangers who do not contribute. That is not how any community functions .. that's how a weird totalitarian state would function. First of all a community is a product of RELATIONSHIPS OF FAMILIARITY AND TRUST, and secondly there are no free rides for ANY member. No one works to support someone who doesn't work. Not ever. No one gets a pass.

2) Yes, in a collective .. a group BUILT upon established relationships of trust and familiarity .. every member who wants to remain and reap the benefits of strength in number, must participate in full from day one. OTOH, the Welfare State creates the opposite. It teaches people they don't need to do any of that to survive. It teaches them that it's safe to abandon those relationships and obligations. And when it comes to the Progressive Left they go one step further - they actively demonise the obligations, conformities, and expectations for behaviour that are part and parcel of any functioning collective. If that doesn't all add up to the worst possible plague of 'every man for himself', I don't know what does.

 

If socialism describes the requirement for full participation from every member, for a collective to function, how does this then create a looser community? (as you have said is the case with socialism)?

Then you say:
That's not at all the same thing as 'community input'. What you are describing is a situation wherein contributors are obliged to support strangers who do not contribute.

AH! So YOUR socialism only includes the "accepted" community (at any one time).
That is not socialism. That it tribalism. Extrapolate that to a country and you are talking "nationalism behind walls."

I am afraid you won't find any definition of socialism that supports your own which is built on the premise that newcomers" do not contribute but merely act as leeches on the existing community.
Socialism makes no such assumption.

So now we have defined terms (finally) and we are talking about two different things under one name, ISTM we can go no further.

 

1) Collectivism (aka socialism and communism) requires full participation from every member, yes. No idea what is meant by "looser community", sorry.

2) Of course. How on earth are you going to trust that all members are on the same page, when you include unvetted members in your collective? Given that, the only way a nation sized collective' can exist, is via force (totalitarianism), or via a solid monoculture - as was the case in Scandinavian countries, until their hubris grew so grotesque that they thought the collective would somehow magically still work after introducing members who were not even in the same book, much less on the same page. Trust is gone. It's every man for himself there now.

"Tribes" are circles of trust - the very foundation of people power. That you think you can afford to toss coins to any exploiter who wants them, shows not only immense disrespect for those who rely on circles of trust, but also the same hubris-borne-of-privilege which our Scandinavian friends are afflicted with. Your 'tribe' is people you know will do their part, rather than people who are operating for themselves only - and who therefore have the potential to exploit and abuse trust. Further, your willingness to demonise collectives (what you call 'tribes') indicates that you're working - consciously or unconsciously - in the service of those whose aim to create a permanent underclass. If you care about the small man, you would not do that, ever. You would champion his every effort to build and retain the pillars of security that he needs - property/family/community. You would not encourage him to abandon those pillars in favour of the isolationism the elites want for us - the grasping self-interest resulting from the deliberate and protracted demonisation of collectivism.

3) You can think collectivism is whatever you want, but the reality will remain. It's work-to-eat 'tribalism'. Take it or leave it - but if you leave it, own that you're working against the common man, in the service of the 1%.

4) Time to overhaul the ideology you appear to have spent very little time thinking through. Certainly, you don't appear to have ever thought about the consequences and outcomes of Progressive Left policies .. nor what those outcomes actually say about their motives.

 

Well as the say the only communist or socialist in those systems are the people, the citizens...............NOT the government officials and workers.

 

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I traveled through the Czech Republic and East Germany into East Berlin shortly after the wall fell. It was deplorable, broken windows, shoddy work, drab and dreary in Berlin you would see what looked like nice apartment buildings until you got up close to them and saw they were in the same condition as Cabrini-Greene before they torn it down.

In Prague we went to a nice breakfast restaurant and the staff were all older people and they were so happy to be free and CAPITALISM and they were just giving us great service and foood. We saw a sign that they would have jazz that night. So we go back to hear the jazz and we go in and sit and sit and sit and can never get someone to serve us. I finally flag a guy and he waves and then takes his time getting to the table and then took his time bringing us two Prague Budweiser's. We drank them and left. The next morning we go back for breakfast and tell our waitress about the previous night. She made a face and a wave of her hand and told us the older people still remember when they were free and the economy was free, the younger people are all spoiled on communism/socialism where it didn't matter how hard your worked or if the place made any money, they would get paid

It was really amazing to see the people that DID realize what was possible and opening stores and businesses everywhere with all the Russia military vehicles and even tanks strewn about everywhere!

 

Please elaborate............

 

I can't remember!

 

I am no going to go over mush of this since it is repeating what has already been said.
I do however return to my premise that you contradict yourself.
Socialism is a community collective. Therefore it requires people working TOGETHER, and it does not separate people
What in essence from your post is you want to isolate the "community" (tribe) as it is when you find it (either by birth or marriage etc).
Your issue is "newcomers" whom you say don't join in properly, pull their weight and expect others to support them.
ISTM a localised form of xenophobia , is unrealistic unless you want to live as if it were the 18th century when people didn't move far from home, hugely generalised and not representative of normal" at all. In fact I have found that newcomers are quite keen to "join in and help".
So finally I don't accept your justification for criticising socialism. I can think of other reasons but not that one.

 

~ I agree !

 

How did that work out for the Mayflower settlers which includedthe Pilgrams? How abouttbe former USSR, Argintina, North Korea?

 

Dude, a capitalist democracy with a few social programs is NOT socialism. It never was, and never will be.

Socialism is a community collective yes .. and COMMUNITIES are relationships of familiarity and trust. Thus a multicultural and relatively new nation is merely millions of strangers without community. When you bring Welfarism (the capitalist 'answer') into such a society, you end up with one group of strangers working all their lives to support another group. It's a freaking disaster. Social responsibility and stability is eroded and eroded until there is nothing left but millions of isolated individuals, out for what they can beg/borrow/steal from their neighbours.

And yes, it's obviously by design. There's no way those involved didn't know that's what would result.

 

In many ways th Mayflower and subsequent community was a very good example of socialism.
A centralised "government" through which passed foreign diplomacy (with the indigenous inhabitants), the fair and equitable, planning and distribution/sharing food, the sharing of construction work, the democratic decision making .
Hardly comparable to NK or Argentina.

 

Ah.
It isn't socialism you object to...it is newcomers.
That is usually called xenophobic nationalism.

When you bring Welfarism (the capitalist 'answer') into such a society, you end up with one group of strangers working all their lives to support another group.

I personally know of NO society in which this has happened. In the UK, in the 70's and 80's, Indians and Pakistani immigration was widely seen as an example of this..."we the island will have to support these *******s."
Instead these "*******s" opened shops, worked hard at school and eventually became surgeons, lawyers, politicians, well known and respected entertainers, university lecturers , and ended up paying far more tax than the majority of the rest of the UK which THEY helped to support.

Now perhaps you could suggest a society where incomers are supported all their lives by the existing community when offered the same opportunities to support themselves.

 

I don't give a flying **** what colour or shape people are, or where they come from. Further, I'm a member of a (very non-white) migrant community, so any thoughts you had about trying to cover for your fails along the cartoonishly dumb lines of "racism!" are going to embarrass you out of your chair.

Meantime, many migrants (particularly those from the East) are actually the best models for collectivism. Tight knit groups of mutually interdependent extended family, and sometimes a small community. We need more of THEM, and less of the Western isolationist 'every man for himself' creature the Welfare State has created. It's freaking unconscionable actually, because it's a freely made decision to allow yourself (not you personally) to become a burden on the State, rather than to build a life of mutual collective support within a family/community. And you (again, not you personally) only think you can get away with such hubris because the Welfare State assured you it was safe to abandon all that icky stuff like conformity, compromise, and obligation.

Finally, yes .. migrants DO frequently arrive with little, and become doctors and lawyers. My own family has several of each. And the reason they can do that is COMMUNITY. It's because they all live responsibly, and stick close together for strength in number. They gain the benefit of shared housing and resources etc, because every member of the group is doing their part to ensure those things are not just acquired and retained, but also built upon.

Your inability to grasp what collective means, is odd but not suprising. Like so many others, you want it to be some kind of free ride. One wherein no one is obliged to put their money where their mouth is. Wherein people can just let their lives fall apart because they know the State will clean up the mess. That is NOT what community/collective is, in any way, shape, or form. That's just millions of strangers who can't be @ssed building a community. Turned away from each other, and towards the State.

 

How many times do I have to declare that I am a socialist?