Socialism

Have there been any countries that are / have been true socialisms?

 

Nah, it's still just something they have imagined. It's hard to argue against because it can be as efficient and productive as they can imagine it to be.

 

It's revealing that governments always feel the need to label themselves as communist or socialist whereas no country has ever had the need to label itself capitalist. Capitalism is what you get when government leaves people free to engage in commerce. Socialism entails government restriction of that freedom

 

Yugoslavia under Tito was for awhile.

 

Factors that you can't mention. Everything you've said has been about supply/demand: referring to the slope and the location. I've given up hope that you're refer to this 'multitude of factors', as you repeat again after again basic error over supply/demand

 

Yugoslavia under Toto was not socialist.

 

That's not what I've read, but it wasn't very detailed so I'll defer to you on this one.

 

Like I said silly fool, Supply is the quantity supplied. Demand is the quantity demanded. Evidently for you, "supply/demand" is supply and demand along with every other factor that you can see on your line charts. They are still separate factors. This really is pointless, but of course thats why you are drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Helps you avoid addressing the relevant.

 

I think if this thread shows us anything is that "socialism" can be whatever someone wants to label as socialism

 

Hundreds of countries over thousands of years, and not one true socialism.

Unions, purportedly formed to protect workers rights, become their own heirachy.

Worker owned companies that aren't significantly different than run of the mill capitalistic company.

Even European socialism, from what I understand is run on the local, not national level, is falling apart with as immigration increases. Local socialsm is an extended (and trusted) family, with the same ethics. Immigrants have different (not wrong, just different) ethics.

Even with all the buzz words and name calling in "defense" of socialism, to use a Mythbusters phrase, me thinks socialism is busted...

 

I'm beginning to think you have an agenda, and won't listen to anything that contradicts that. I've given you the set-in-stone definition of socialism that is in just about any source you look at. Even Wikipedia agrees.

So I'm just going to unsub from this thread if you're going to continue being obtuse.

 

I can forgive the ignorance. I don't expect right wingers to know their economics. I cannot forgive, however, the repeated ignorance. Quantity demanded is merely a point on the demand schedule. To understand how supply and demand determines wages, at least according to the orthodox approach, you have to refer to what labour demand refers to. Anyone who knows just basics in supply and demand will be able to tell you that it is the marginal revenue productivity of labour. Everything you've said (without knowing it of course as the economics goes beyond your current comprenhension) has refereed to the slope and position of the supply and demand schedule. Its all, by definition, supply and demand.

 

The other socialist here on the thread disagree. Wikipedia disagrees

In the late 20th century, the term "socialist" has also been used by Third way social democrats to refer to an ethical political doctrine focusing on a common set of values emphasizing social cooperation, universal welfare, and equality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

But you are one of those who have convinced themselves that they are the arbitor of the meaning of words.

 

You just confirmed my point for me.

It's easy to train economists. Just teach a parrot to say "Supply and Demand." . Thomas Carlyle

 

You haven't got a point. You never had. You've simply got supply and demand drastically wrong and peddled garbage. I doubt you even knew that it was the MRPL that gave orthodox 'labour demand'. You certainly were clueless about market strucutre and its impact on supply

 

Of course I do. the one youve been railing against for a week now. Except you have on several occasions confirmed it for me.

 

All you've got is 'supplky and demand is supply and demand'. I've been trying to educate you in the stupidity of that position. So far no go (despite it being terribly basic stuff). Did you even know that demand is givenby the MRPL? Try honessty

 

On the contrary, they will be even more long-term than the stockholders, who are dominated by speculators getting in and out of stocks. An employee has less motivation to be short-term. Unless a costly new proposal severely cuts into his profits, he will look at it as making him rich in a few years. Because of the hardships of changing jobs, he hopes to be at the company for decades.

You stuff your arguments with strawmen. Some impossibly persuasive demagogue comes along and miraculously damages the well-known (by the new owners-employees) good name of an effective leader. This convenient Mob Rule fantasy only applies when the workers are desperate and powerless. You'd get rule by sane workers if they got to own their own work.

 

Workoholic fathers want to buy the love of their neglected children. There is no incentive. Did the plutocrats only start working hard when they had children.

Besides, they are not involved in this; they are dead. You really want to protect the unearned competitive advantages of the heirheads. Granting birth privileges is overreaching. Objection denied.

 

A free market means that those few people powerful enough to control the market are free to do anything they want, such as controlling supply and artificially creating a desperation in demand. The only Invisible Hand is the one you don't notice picking your pocket.

The Communist countries, under state capitalism, were motivated by power instead of profits. They are not the alternative to capitalism, which our well-financed brainwashing leads us to
believe. The real alternative to capitalism is democracy, absolute rule of the majority for their own benefit, which may include giving privileges to those they see as benefiting them more, such as inventors.

 

Care to ground this in reality? How does the powerful capitalist whiskey producer, for example, who is charging monopoly prices for his whiskey stop you from making whiskey and selling it yourself?

 

You're trying to limit the issue. When I see socialists support multiculturalism, tree-hugging, anti-Zionism, anti-industrialism, AGW, homosexuality, etc., I suspect that their economics is also degenerate and unproductive. Second, I have an instinctive disgust with the anti-talent sentiments of "From Each According to His Ability, To Each According to His Need." Third, that they ignore two great oppressors: the privilege of inheritance and class-biased indentured servitude of working without pay in college, which fits the way they insult ability.

 

I'm referring to socialism and you're just ranting. Not interested. Bye

 

Capitalism is what you get when the rich own the government and won't let it restrict them from oppressing the rest of us.

 

I only quote people smarter than me for the definition of words.

And read the very first line of that Wiki article. What does it say?