The problem of Capitalism

I am not American. I don't have an amero-centric view of democracy.
IMO democracy is your right to live your life, even if against the wishes
of your ruling government.
And with freedom to choose comes freedom to own, freedom to invest
and so on. This is the foundation for Capitalism.

As for "one side or the other" - on the "bell-shaped curve" I suppose
you can say one "standard deviation" to either side of the center is
your center left and center right parties. Generally they are good and
sensible parties. Either side to these and you get into your extreme
groups, eco-facsists, Marxist, white supremacists, black supremacists
etc.. These two center style parties are here whether the "system"
"manipulates" or not.

 

A friend started selling flowers on the road sides. He employed a few others to work
for him. Every Sunday was a big day for him. He got busier and busier and I hardly
saw him after a while. Soon he became what I thought was improbable - a millionaire.
How so? Selling flowers??!!!!!
In a system which creates INCOME PARITY this guy would be shut down. If you want
flowers there would be a govt ministry for this. You would queue and some insolent
govt employee would tell you whether there were flowers or not. If they aren't fresh or
not what you want then you could contact the Ministry for Flowers. Ask them to up their
game in the next Five Year Plan.

No thanks. I will reward the person who caters for my needs. If they breed a blue rose
then I will reward them even more because they would risked many millions into creating
this. This is why I am an admirer of Elon Musk.

 

Yes, they ARE 'poor', and no, I'm not talking about trailers (they're not even legal dwellings in my country, so no such thing) on rented land. I'm talking about bricks and mortar and a title deeded plot of land. These are very cheaply purchased homes in smaller cities/towns, paid off fairly without difficulty even on a minimum wage. At some point the owners of such properties will stop working, either temporarily or permanently, and that's when the importance of that ownership kicks in. They can live securely on welfare or an age pension, even thought they have no other assets or income - not even enough to bring the toilet indoors.

What do we learn from the above? That if you're poor, you must buy cheap property anywhere and any way you can. It will provide lifetime security for yourself, and subsequent generations if necessary.

 

This speaks for itself. Complain, then keep living your parasitic lifestyle of ultra dependence and nil responsibility.

 

ACCUMULATED WEALTH ISN'T "EVERYTHING"

All you have done is explain to the world "how I want MY NEEDS to be met". You are just one of more 340 million Yanks who have needs, and want them satisfied. Quickly! Soon! Not tomorrow, today!

In that world, "life is all about me-me-me".

In fact, you're just a tiny-tiny dot on a humongous wall-chart of the US. But your special in that you cannot understand that we are all just one small part of a humongous whole. And that lack of comprehension is What's Wrong With America Today.

And it aint getting any better until we Yanks get back-to-basics that are destroyed any time the main societal-incentive is to "Gather as many big-bucks as I can before I get too old to do so ... and in that quest the rest of you can all go-to-hell because I COME FIRST!"

The US has an incomplete socio-economic structure. With an unfair and unnecessary predominance in wasting money on the DoD. As well as a simplistic social-habit of adulating the rich and the super-rich. As if money were everything. But, it aint!

The purpose of any "nation or peoples" is to share the burden of its mutual-existence. Which means to assure that nobody drops behind, and nobody-but-nobody gets too far ahead. Which it must accomplish by rewarding those who deserve most their just-rewards. But justly and fairly throughout.

There must be an upper-limit (by means of taxation) on the acquisition of wealth. And the rule tax-and-redistribute must remain predominant for the whole of a society. Without which said society will disintegrate - as it has always done many, many times historically. The economic rot-at-the-bottom eventually gains the whole*.

Such an unfair excess in the accumulation of riches will do to the US what it did to Rome. Kill it.

So, like Rome on the Tiber do we want a Washington on the Potomac ... ?

*The Watts Uprising (august 1965) has taught us nothing? So, the next time around what will?

 

That's right. "Me."
brought courtesy of my human nature.
The alternative is "The State"
where The State wars against human nature.
Stalin and Mao in particular come to mind with their collectives
where people served the state. And agriculture collapsed and
millions died. No incentive, no provision for "greed" which BTW
isn't really "greed" at all but seeking rewards for your effort.

The chilling thing about setting limits on people is this - do we
set limits on how much POWER The Collective, The Party, The
Commune, The Politburo, The Dear leader has? No, of course
not. It's for our own good - they say. Some are born equal, but
some are more equal than others.

I want Elon Musk (for instance) to be the world's first trillionaire.
He is using his new satellite system to fund his Mars ambition.
And this satellite system will benefit humanity. And so too will
opening up of space to the common man.
To see money like this go to building a Better Car, a new mass
transit system, a new form of internet, cheap access to space,
30 minute point to point earth travel, solar tiles, better batteries,
and one day maybe vertical take off electric aircraft.
This is called entrepreneurship - it is giving America a techno
edge once again.

Imagine if your local Socialist Collective was asked to do this.

 

Sorry but you have defined your right to freedom, not democracy.

Definition of democracy: a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.

Yup, that's all it is. It's a representative system of governance. That's all.

Your freedom to do what you want to do - or must not do - is found in a Constitution, which can be amended by an act of government.

Aint no constitutional law about any "freedom to own", or "freedom to invest" - but there are local laws about where you can/invest own and where not. Neither is your freedom to invest protected by any constitutional law. Though there are laws that may define how, when and where you can invest.

Yeah, I see it coming: So What's the Difference!?!

Constitutional law defines Basic Freedoms, but your Right to life is not defined in the Constitution, which does indicate your freedom to elect representatives to office. As defined here:

The constitution strives to get the "rights right" with interpretation of those rights in any given circumstance defined by local judges and - if need be eventually - by the Supreme Court that may decide in any given circumstance what is constitutionally and (most importantly) what is non-constitutionally protected.

The above may seem too complicated. To put it succinctly - it is mostly lower courts that decided - given a context - what we can and what we must not do. With eventually superior-courts that allow higher-level judges to interpret the law in any given circumstance ...

 

Which means we are "warring" with ourselves.

Because we the citizens define the state by voting into responsibility those who make laws upon which are based legal judgements in any court-of-law ...

 

In the US there is no casual "act of government" to amend a constitution. It's a hard fought battle.
In my country you must have a "referendum" to change the constitution. Most of these fail.
A constitution reflects political sentiment. In my country, like yours, we inherited a tradition of
democracy and a tradition of loving freedom. The ratio of power between citizens and govt
oscillates, as does left and right wing thinking.
I feel you are being a tad disingenuous, and dismissive of Western democracies. Our govt
is simply the best of a bad bunch - you need to compare it not with some Platonic ideal but
compare it against all other forms of governance.

 

To war against human nature is what the hard left does, in spades.
The first step is to deny there is human nature involved. War, greed,
racism, sexism etc can all be banished by seizing the child from its
mother, so to speak. We adopt the tabula rasa, the blank slate of
Aristotle to Locke. This is in contravention of the idea of the fall of
man found in the bible.
I feel that to deny human nature is to take the problems associated
with this nature, and make them much worse.

In the case of Mao this nature was to be crushed by removing people
from their homelands, denying them the rights to their own labor,
eroding their family ties, destroying all notions of tradition, regimenting
their lives, denying natural human hierarchy and even controlling how
many children women were to have.

 

You make an accusation then, without any justification of it, you go off the deep-end with a rambling exposition of how Communist China was the root of all evil. And therefore of Communism as well.

Frankly, you are right about China - but that has nothing whatsoever to do with today's economic context for many countries. Which is one you seem not to know called Social Democracy.

The definition of which is this (from here):

You're in a blind dead-end ...

 

Is this a "third way"?
Regulation, redistribution, welfare --- it reads like the dead hand of Socialism.

 

Great post. Couldn't possibly agree more!

 

Yes, but he (and I) are arguing for just that democracy. We're opposed to state 'socialism', as it were.

The reason is obvious .. as long as democracy exists, there can never be anything like state socialism. Human nature means that 50% will always vote against it. State socialism and its ilk can only ever come about under despotic and/or totalitarian regimes.

 

Or, it reads like the death grip of fascism. The lines are blurred at times.

 

You might as well be opposed to pigs flying. Only feasible socialism matters. State socialism has been rejected since the socialist calculation debate.

 

See? You have no facts or logic to offer, so you have to change the subject to me personally, and make false, absurd, and insulting allegations about my personal lifestyle, of which you know nothing whatever. Disgraceful.

 

OMG. You totally whiffed on understanding YOUR OWN EXAMPLE. What an intelligent person would learn from the above is that landowning is a privilege that enables the landowner to live without contributing, at the expense of those who do contribute but don't own land. The reason they have to get ownership of a little scrap of land any way they can is that their rights to liberty have been stripped from them and given to landowners. They are automatically VICTIMS OF CRIME, and there is no way they can escape being victims. All they can do to get a little of their own back is scrimp enough to buy a little land and join the perpetrators. What you describe is the inevitable evolution of evil.

 

This is far from the truth in my area. If I want electricity on my land to where it is not already established I must pay for the powerlines and infrastructure, if I want want water I must pay to to have a well drilled, develop other sources, or haul water from some other location, if I want a sewer service I must pay to have a septic system built. None of this infrastructure is provided by the state or the community, and it is cost to myself in addition to the property taxes due for owning the property.

Our fire protection is volunteer force for which I voluntarily pay dues on an annual basis. I haven't seen a law enforcement officer in this area for years.

 

It's fascinating how the ownership of property, running a business and having a
role in the political process should be term "fascism."
Hitler was a "National Socialist" and the distinction with Stalin was that the
govt controlled the businesses, as opposed to Stalin owning the businesses.

Mainstream Western people reject both models. Businesses should be owned
by those who built or bought them. They know best how to run them. I read an
article once on how the East German Communist govt took over a jam factory
which had been in a German family for generations. The end result needs no
elaboration.

 

Granted - you must pay to have the installation of a service that is provided to you on a continued basis and according a legal-contract. But that contract only agrees to provide you with the service and not its implementation on your premises.

Granted again, if you live in sparse territories where there is likely no public-service providing to all users regardless of where they live. But, I suggest that is unique to the US and likely Canada.

Many of these services such as water and electricity are still Public Services in Europe, though they are trying mightily to have them stand on their own feet. And yes, if I had a farm, they more than likely would provide the line right into the farm. But, even then I am no longer sure. When I built a house here in France, the connexion with the electric box was my cost to pay. But it was no more than 100 feet from the house

Frankly, those differences do not matter all that much. Such services must be paid by the user. In Germany, usually always onto the next new thing, is very reluctant to give up its large supply of coal as the principle means of generating electricity.

But the day that Healthcare and Postsecondary Education are provided at the full cost of the user as in the US, I'm outta here. But that is unlikely to happen. When I tell French friends that seeing a doctor in the US costs around $200, their jaws drop. Here it is closer to 20€ (about the same number in dollars). But, that is because the National Healthcare Service pays for the top-up. (But that happens only because the NHS is funded out of general taxation by the government.)

This is not done anywhere in Europe. What once was a nationalized service throughout Europe (and has become slowly privatized) still observes the rule that the service must be provided to all individuals/families. Of course, here in Europe that service may still be different from the US. In the US the electricity-companies, for instance, likely own the nuclear-reactors that generate electricity whereas, for the most part, those are still run by the state generally in Europe.

Is that all so different from the US? Well, it can be in rural places where the electricity in the US is likely not "atomic" but fuel-burning steam-engine in origin. The US has a much larger geographical expanse than European countries. I live in the boonies here and there is no atomic electricity-plant, but then neither are the boonies in France that far away from one ...

 

Strange start. The war against human nature is actually a right wing phenomenon. That is in terms of political economy (as the elite ensures that joe pleb votes to maintain their rent seeking outcome). Its also in terms of the economics. Supply side economics, for example, was reliant on treating the labour market like any other market. Factor in economic psychology and we necessarily shift to a left wing perspective (such as the realisation that wage determination in capitalism twins both inefficiency and inequity).

Human nature isn't entertained in 'free market economics'. The best you get is the Austrian Economic focus on incentives and the entrepreneur. However, when Schumpeter maps out those incentives he derives a creative destructive process in capitalism that necessarily leads to socialism.

Perhaps you need to read up on some economics? I suppose its human nature to err...

 

Y

Yes, precisely my point. It cannot happen in a capitalist democracy.

 

Friend, I'm not the one refusing to share, and calling family a burden. I don't insist on exclusive use of my 'castle', to the exclusion of even those I claim to love. It's true that I don't know if that's what you do, but so far you've given no indication whatsoever that you do things any differently. The only thing you seem to do is demand that someone else fix the world, while you continue doing exactly that which you condemn.

 

I guarantee there is no privilege in spending years of your life living on next to nothing, no holidays, no luxuries, nothing .. in order to pay for property. If it was easy for you, then YOU have privilege that I don't.