Capitalism is economic tyranny Socialism is economic democracy.

Yeah, whatever examples of socialism you can point out that was a failure is not really socialism.

In fact the only true socialism is in countries that are more capitalist than the United States. Countries like Sweden who have privatized social security.

Venezuela isn't really socialist because they had a famine which rightly makes socialism look as bad as it is and it's sunshine rainbows and gum drops

 

Why do all dictators prefer socialism?

 

The quote refers to established socialism some decades or centuries down the road. You’re thinking of the very earliest stages when socialism is still just partially established as the old traditions, laws, habits, and culture are all being gradually reformed and replaced. I added “workers” to make the distinction from what’s really state capitalism.

Workers’ committees, workers’ assemblies, local workers’ councils, state-level workers’ delegates congress, regional congress, and national congress all held in the form of mass democracies or as suitable in order to comply with the law.

Ya think? How about a Constitution that provides for a government that facilitates worker control of their workplaces, provides for creation of, and enforcement of, laws that ban things like private profiteering off the labor of others, provides for protections of workers’ management, and creates and manages banking activities to support businesses, as well as providing appropriate record-keeping services, databases, and reporting to facilitate distribution and production levels. Of course there would also be a body of laws banning any bureaucrat from personally benefitting himself from his government job beyond a paycheck.

No, what actually happens is that the advocates of capitalism and their lackeys take up arms to force socialists into retreat and to eliminate them. So of course socialists defend themselves. In this society you are not allowed to set up a bank and take 20% of the money that is deposited for your own income. You need to obtain licensing and comply with limitations and regulations. Why do you think socialism should not have laws protecting the economic system too?

 

It does qualify as one part of the MoP. The law would be that you must not hire employees. Then, by complying, you are a worker owning MoP. That’s fine. What would be illegal is capitalism, —you could not hire employees. You could follow laws allowing you to invite other workers to participate with you as equal partners having an equal say in running the business in every respect. That is socialism. But setting yourself up to prosper off the labor of others would not be allowed.

All your partners/coworkers who would follow established procedures to buy into the business to own it equally and collectively. You would not be required to give away anything to anyone. If you want others involved, there would be procedures to make it happen. It could have been your idea, but all others involved would buy a share.

They would have bought a share. (Keep in mind that this is a possible approach that could be used in the earliest stages of socialism and may change to make life easier later.) Currently the most familiar business form that is most familiar is the LLC. It’s a corporate structure and shares are issued. So we are talking about something very much like the current notion of a “workers’ co-operative corporation” or “Workers’ Self-Directed Enterprise” (WSDE). Workers become members by buying one share of stock in the LLC. Only one may be owned, giving the workers each one vote. No one may own more than one share. And in any stock transaction, the corporate Treasury must be one of the two partners, either buyer or seller.

…—with what?

Currently the pay scale common to workers’ co-ops from the lowest-paid wage to the highest (which is typically the CEO) is a ratio of 1 to 7 or 1 to 8. So as the creator you would be honored, first of all, and secondly you would very likely be voted to be the CEO making 7 or 8 times what the lowest-paid worker earns in the company.

No. Certainly not.

Ok, let’s review some basics. You would be allowed, by law, to do anything you want (if it isn’t harmful to anyone) to provide an income for yourself as long as it doesn’t involve hiring employees to “work for you”. As now in the US there would most likely be some activities that would be illegal. You couldn’t produce and sell cocaine, for example. You could grow food and do what you want with it. Sell it. Give it away. Freeze it and keep it. But the only limitation other than safety concerns in any activity, would be that you could not hire employees. You could invite equal co-owners to buy in. Or you could run a “mom & pop business” of producing things and selling them at the market.


See, the objective is two-fold. 1) eliminate the exploitation of workers for private profit, and 2) eliminate the enormous income disparity we now have. No one needs or can even logically justify a net worth of $200 million or more, so no one would have that much money. The current insane spread of income that grants the fortune 500 CEOs an income that is 350 times the median income, would be gone. That money would be spread out more equitably among all workers.

 

Then you owe it to society to get out there and get active to make damned sure no such corruption happens. Get some systems and laws ready to put in place to prevent parasitism. Why would you want to leave it to someone else who might screw up?

 

So why has the Western First World abandoned it? And more particularly, why are those most Western First Worldists of all - Progressive Leftists - even more determined than most to deconstruct our tribal nature? What is their purpose?

 

And who would make that happen? No one is ever going to vote for it, and most of those who claim to want it don't actually want it (otherwise they'd already be doing it). So how will it be enforced?

 

Capitalism has run its course, and the evidence is that it is now producing more problems than it can solve. Capitalism is the cause of the US have medical care costing twice that of the next most expensive country’s system. And capitalism is preventing that problem from being solved to bring us in line with the world community. That can be said for a long list of problems from racism and homelessness, to global warming. And THAT is what socialists want to see stopped.

Do me a favor, Fang. Identify ONE such issue fitting that description, . . . . . ––just ONE!! . . . . . and then identify one type of person who you believe can “control these things”. JUST ONE.

Do you need any evidence that our current system of control is capable of producing what’s best for our society? Most on the right think things are going just fine. But for some reason you think a society BASED ON COOPERATION will fail at cooperating and managing for society?!!! Are you chitting me???? LOL!!!

 

Because it plays so well to the vain. It sounds kind and sharey, so the easily impressed (with themselves) are all over it like a cheap suit.

When you want to rule the world and put the peasants back in their place, just tell the bougies it's Socialism!

 

1) Universal healthcare is a product of capitalism. Socialism would never afford such a relative luxury.

2) Homelessness is a choice, and racism is perpetuated by race agitators and regressive institutional racism like AA. Neither has anything to do with capitalism.

3) 'Socialists' would implode if they had to live without their capitalism. They love it more furiously than most, ironically.

4) LOL at the idea that any of this 'socialism' is even remotely like the cooperation that actual collectivism demands. Most 'socialists' would sooner stab themselves in the eye with a stick, than conform and cooperate. So yes, they would absolutely fail - because they are NON-cooperative in the most emphatic possible way. They despise anything which hints at social obligations and social responsibility.

 

I think it's about making people easier to control. A social economy makes it easier to single out dissidents and intimidate others with the same treatment in order to ostracize the dissidents.

Capitalism in it's most pure form is anarchy.

Socialist economies create peasants it needs then and it destroys opportunity because leaving the peasant gentry takes workers out of the field and harms the elites.

 

Socialism has too it claimed 110,000,000 lives in just one century out doing religion in the cost of human life in that century.

Socialism is a pox.

Incorrect. It's government interference causing the cost of medical care to increase.

People are allowed to get hospital treatment and never pay for it so the ones that can get raked over the coals because people don't work for free. Essentially it's the chicken in every pot philosophy (associated with socialism) that is causing that. In places with socialized medicine it's poor quality of care compared to the US. Look at Canada trying to convince disabled veterans to kill themselves.

No again government interference is doing that. By saying everyone is entitled to the hospital staff labor free of charge.

So capitalism is a Bogeyman and we should resume exterminating humans with Socialism?

There should never be anything that's capable of producing what's best for society because what ever that thing is, it's the dictator. Society is a phenomenon that functions do to humans and their ability to cooperate with one another for reward is not something that can be dictated from a godking. That's what has cause all genocides throughout human history.

It's happened over and over and over again filling graves to the max. Cooperation only works if it's voluntary. When it's forced the rivers run red with blood.

 

For some reason, @Fangbeer , this wouldn’t post as a standard quote, so I had to “name” you above.

Anyway, I replied to this above but I’d like to clarify what I’m asking. I was being called to dinner and was trying to rush a half dozen replies to three people, so I wasn’t clear enough. What I said was …
"Do me a favor, Fang. Identify ONE such issue fitting that description, . . . . . ––just ONE!! . . . . . and then identify one type of person who you believe can “control these things”. JUST ONE.”

What I meant was please identify one such issue, and then one type of OCCUPATION that you feel could properly address it to “control these things”.

 

All likely to be true!

I also believe it's a form of arch capitalism. By that I mean the overlords benefit biggly from a massive dependent underclass. The more dependent the masses are, the more they must purchase all the materials of survival at market rate. From rent, to exercise, to entertainment, to a loaf of bread. Keep them 'slightly cashed up' but otherwise without asset, and they'll line your pockets even faster. They'll become reliant on services, and not just goods. Pizza delivery, lawn care, yoga classes, hair salons, etc etc etc. Once you take away the means of dissent from the common man .. the independence to say 'no' to goods and services at market price .. you have all his money - for his lifetime. That means of dissent, for the common man, can only ever be property/family/community/enterprise. Four things the 'socialist' hates.

 

I think this is again corporatism because such a thing is fostered by government interference.

An example of this would be the baby formula oligopoly in the US and I'm sure it exists in other places as well. This oligopoly created a shortage. So in our country there's a couple of companies that are able to make baby formula and what they do is because they have such massive wealth they lobby the government to interfere through the FDA basically making it impossible for people to enter into that field of manufacturer. This of course causes other problems because certain children have issues with some of the things that the FDA requires to be in the formula and it's only required to be in there because the people that control baby formula control the supply of it.

This is a capitalism it's corporatism that's the government causing that it's not capitalism.

Capitalism actually sought a solution and a good one that some of these companies were desperately trying to squelch. I remember doing this shortage they were talking about making your own baby formula and there's recipes available online for it the ingredients are a lot cheaper than what they sell it for so if people figured out they can just whip up to this product in their home out of a few other ingredients and it would be cheaper people would do that instead of buying baby formula. So they created an attack ad saying how this is going to kill your baby that's fine the formula probably being almost exact to what they produce. I spoke to my parents about it and they happened to have children before baby formula was widely available and they talked about making it

This of course requires government interference to make competition impossible or extremely difficult.

If you were in a free market and there were people that had these things to offer they would simply undercut the producers and people would stop purchasing from the producers until they lowered their prices. The only way this can go about happening is if the producer of a product controlled everything from the raw materials all the way up to all the factories in the line.

They would simply have to create a vertical Monopoly and without government interference this would be extraordinarily difficult.

I guess this is where Marxism comes into play in tandem with socialism. I never could point that out but it's a method at which to pacify the masses.

Interesting I don't think I've ever heard it put that eloquently thank you crank.

 

I believe it's beyond mere corporatism. This goes up to global elites .. the WEF and their ilk. It's about disenfranchising the proletariat from the gains made in the past hundred or so years (private property), and from the institutions of independence (family, community, enterprise). Once that's done, every cent that falls into the hand of the common man will leave it again in short order .. transferred to the overlords. He'll have no choice but to pay market rate, and pay it for everything he ever does or consumes.

The small man in possession of property, family, community, and perhaps enterprise, has the power to say "no" to so many things. That alone makes him much more powerful than he's ever been before, and much more powerful than the overlords will tolerate. After all, it's a power which limits their profits.

 

No. You are objectively incorrect and I am objectively correct. OBJECTIVELY. You will find that happening a lot, as long as you presume to dispute with me.
Natural resources are by definition not produced by any sort of human labor, and CANNOT be. They already exist without having to be produced.

No. They cannot be anything unless they already exist. Natural resources CANNOT be produced, by definition. They already exist without being produced. I'm not sure there is any clearer or simpler way of explaining that to you. Whether they are useful or not, and whether anyone ever uses them or not, does not affect their existence.

But it is already in the ground without being put there by anyone, proving me right and you wrong.

So what? It doesn't have to. It is a natural resource. It is already there, courtesy of nature, waiting for someone to use it.

In some places, it is.

So it is already there, proving me objectively right and you objectively wrong.

See how that works?

No, that is all just nonsense. Nothing at all need be done with it. It can continue to sit there, unused, as an unproduced natural resource, as almost all the gold on earth still is, until someone decides to use it.

AND NO ONE CAN EVER DECIDE TO USE IT UNLESS IT ALREADY EXISTS.

Right: no one ever produced it, because it already existed before any human being.

What would you step out on, if the land did not already exist, hhhmmmmmm?

And where, exactly, pray tell, do you incorrectly imagine one could do that if the land did not already exist, hhhmmmmmm? A vineyard is not land. A vineyard CANNOT be produced unless the land to create it on ALREADY EXISTS.

You know this. Of course you do. Why are you pretending that you do not?

And where, exactly, do you incorrectly imagine one could do that if there were not land already in existence there, hhhmmmm?

Wrong again. It has to already be a resource before it can be used resourcefully. You are claiming, absurdly, that resources cannot be used until after someone has already used them.

See how that works?

 

How would the law know I have hired an employee under such a system? Can my son, for instance, run my machine?

What a nightmare for the unemployed, the unskilled, and the poor. Who decides the business equity? How does an unemployed person come up with the capital to buy it? I made a machine in my garage. It's worth $50,000. It runs in the garage. Do they have to buy that too? The insurance, the taxes, the cost of heating, the inventory, the tooling. Poor kid fresh of out tech school just wants to run a CNC machine and do a little GD&T. Doesn't even know if he wants to do that for the rest of his life. To work he's got to be saddled with the ownership of a business? Yikes.

Let's say I'm forced to obey your model. I "hire" an employee that pays me $100k for a share of the business equity for 50% of the business profit. I go back to designing new machines instead of running product and still pull half of the profit? Employee gets injured. Production stops. Who pays his medical?

Easier? My god. Not even remotely. But go for it. You can have a WSDE now. Why do you need laws that prevent your competition from existing? Is it because it's not easier and more competitive to run a WSDE?

It's a means of production that you want to regulate, and you don't know what it is? How are you going to regulate it?

Where do these numbers come from? What is their significance? Why is 1-7 fair, but 1-10 isn't?

Is it illegal for me to allow someone else to rent the machine I made for myself?

So the government has to have direct access to my books even if I don't have employees to ensure that I don't have employees.

What about contractors? Can I hire an accountant? Does the accountant have to own my equipment before they can be employed to do my taxes? A marketing firm? A delivery service?

Don't the employees earn profit? Does that get eliminated too?

 

No I don't, because I have no such power or authority. I cannot stop people from being stupid or being deceived by plausible con men, as my participation in this forum demonstrates so very conclusively. And it's hard enough trying to stop the fools from being deceived by plausible con men once every four years in election campaigns, as Trump proves so very conclusively. So it is best if the con men are granted minimal opportunity to exercise their political skills, and common people have minimal power to "democratically" abrogate others' rights. That is why responsible democratic governments are limited by constitutions that secure individual rights against the depredations of the (invariably misguided, if not vicious) collective.

Those would be laws and systems to secure and reconcile the equal individual rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor. Socialism removes the latter two and transfers them to the collective, which then removes the first.

Because I want to leave it to each individual to screw up or not for themselves. That means not giving "the collective" the political power to "democratically" decide to screw others through your ridiculous -- and inherently corrupt and incompetent -- "workers' committees."

 

It was precisely and only private property in land that originally disenfranchised the proletariat, by depriving them of their natural individual liberty rights to use what nature provided to sustain themselves, as their ancestors had done for millions of years.

You need to somehow find a willingness to know the fact that private property in land is not an institution for the benefit of the common man, but for the unearned profit of those privileged to own the land. It establishes a positive feedback mechanism that inevitably concentrates ownership of land in fewer and fewer hands. Roman history is instructive: under the Republic, land was made into private property, to be bought and sold in the same way as livestock, slaves, buildings and tools, for the first time in history. Its ownership was at first widely distributed. But its status as private property meant that those who owned the most and the best land had more rent income with which to buy up the land of others who had fallen into misfortune. The more land they bought up, the more rent income they had to buy up even more. The result was that after several hundred years, in the second century CE, 90% of the land in the Empire was owned by just 2000 individuals. The positive feedback process that concentrates private ownership of land in fewer and fewer hands is a matter of immutable economic law. If you favor private ownership of land, you favor all wealth inexorably being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands until one person -- the king -- owns everything. It happened in Rome, it happened in feudal Europe, and it is happening again today in every capitalist country. You just have to find a willingness to open your eyes and see it.

But mostly from their rights to liberty -- removed without compensation by privileges like land titles and IP monopolies -- and property in the fruits of their labor, removed by taxation of economic activity and earned wealth.

But that transfer can only legally be effected by privilege, which makes it inevitable.

But it won't be a free market rate. It will be a monopoly rate based on privileges like land titles and IP monopolies.

But not to privilege, because privilege legally entitles the privilege holder to benefit from the abrogation of the small man's rights without making just compensation for what he is taking.

What the overlords will not tolerate is the ordinary man having his rights secured. That's why they need privileges like land titles, bank licenses, and IP monopolies to legally strip him of those rights.

 

Exactly. His right to property being primary.

 

But geoism would, better than capitalism.

Nonsense. Homelessness is landlessness, and landlessness is imposed by force: Google "enclosures" and start reading.

For themselves. For others, they demand social obligations and responsibility.

 

Correct!

 

NOT ALL PROPERTY. Wrongful property in privileges like land deeds, slave deeds, and IP monopolies serves the privileged. Rightful property in the fruits of one's labor serves the honest producer and thus the consumer -- which is everyone.

 

So you don’t believe that Stalin’s Russia was not socialism?