Why didn't the US aid North Vietnam back in the day?

Because it's necessary to stop the spread of murderous ideologies. Look at what happened in China and the USSR. typically, the people killed in the effort to stop communism are usually dwarfed by the amount of people the communist themselves will kill in their silly great leaps and collectivization plans.

 

There's not much democratic about what passes for 'democracy' either; especially when nobody but the elite get into power.

 

So the pious, holier than thou, democratic West attempts to defeat ideologies and dictators by killing tens of thousands of their citizens, as in Iraq, and then expects gratitude from them for their 'liberation'. And so the circus continues...
'We're better than you because we have democracy'. Yeah, right...

 

I think it is safe to say Viet Nam was a mistake all around...morally as well as logically. There is o way to justify such a mistake, nor is it necessary....which is why we call it a mistake.

Hypocrisy however, would require a context that does not involve long periods of time. I used to dive buzzed, but now think it is a terrible idea....am I a hypocrite?

 

I'm just making a justification here, I didn't say the west followed it all the time.

 

I agree.

 

Ho Chi Minh had actually asked for American aid in overcoming the Imperialistic French who tried to maintain their colony in French Indo-China. We refused him and he turned to the Russians for aid.

We should have stayed out of it, as we should have stayed out of Korea, Iraq, and a host of other countries. We should never have interfered in Iran in 1954, either.

 

From North Vietnam to North Korea? Okay. The Korean conflict was certainly one we should have stayed out of.



The reason we actually invaded was because of North Korea's alliance with Russia. South Korea needed help fending off a Russia backed invasion.[/QUOTE]

 

Every single time Democracy has been tried someone misuses it, oh and we were a democracy when we committed genocide on the Indians, should we blame democracy for that? Of course not, because you hold to double standards and you are a huge hypocrite.

 

You have to provide a logical reason for why that is, im not just going to take your word for it.

 

Socialism and democracy can't be compared because whereas democracy certainly has flaws, it's quite simply the least faulty system. Socialism has soo many flaws as to make it unworkable, but there's another system, capitalism, which has fewer flaws so that's why socialism is just scrapped. There's no such equivalent to democracy, as capitalism is to socialism. It's quite simply just a very bad system.

 

Fine ill rephrase what I said, we were Capitalists when we committed genocide on the Indians, why does NO ONE ever blame capitalism for this? But when Communists do the same, Communism gets the blame rather than the people who did it? Do you not see the double standard?

 

I'm certain the US was a republic and a democracy also while they did that, does that mean democracy and republicanism are inherently to blame somehow? The US was many things by the time of the indian removal acts, among them racist, imperialist, and jingoist. Wouldn't you say it's more reasonable to blame on of those things?

 

YES I WOULD and that is exactly my point, when Stalin massacred those people they just barley finished with being ruled by bloodthirsty czars who sent them to war constantly, the Russians at that time were Jingoist Nationalists also, wouldnt you say that is more of the reason they massacred those people? Of course it is, what they did had nothing to do with Communism. Not all Communists are bloodthirsty Nationalists like the Russians and Chinese were during that period of time, hell even now as Capitalists Russia just invaded Ukraine, so clearly what they did had nothing to do with Communism because they are trying to do the same thing as Capitalists. Jingoism and Nationalism are the real problems. The point I was making by showing capitalists who commit atrocities wasnt necessarily to say Capitalism is the problem but to show that the economic system in place does not determine whether or not they will be bloodthirsty warmongers or not.

I do indeed blame Capitalism for slavery though, not for starting slavery but for industrializing slavery essentially, there has always been slaves but not the way Capitalists had slaves, they took it to a whole new level purely on the grounds of profits and cheap labor to increase capital gains, which is essentially the definition of Capitalism. I also blame capitalism for letting the Irish starve, on the thread I made about it the vast majority of capitalists even defended the idea of letting people starve at your doorstep if they cant afford food so its pretty obvious that is a problem with Capitalism. The Indians though, that was pure Jingoism. Actually, my name is to blame for that one, Manifest Destiny, the idea God gave them the right to conquer the lands to the west is what got the Indians killed, so a mixture of Jingoism and Christianity caused the genocide of millions of Indians.

 

I think there was concern that a stepped up war would have had serious ramifications; in particular Red China's possible involvement which occurred during the Korean War when It looked like the US was going to rout the North Koreans. America didn't want to be accused of starting WW III.

 

When exactly did South Vietnam invade North Vietnam?

 

I suppose the difference would be that for example, the collectivisation of ukrainain farms were rather explicitly socialist in nature. The indian genocide weren't explicitly capitalist. Look at it this way. What does capitalism tell us to do? It tells us to get government out of the economy and let people have voluntary exchanges. What does socialism tell us? To get collective ownership of the economy, and that's what justified the holodomor.

In the same way, what does communism tell us? It says we must change society to make way for a new utopia, apparently also by genocide if necessary. Capitalism says nothing of the sort. Thus, the justification for zedongs, stalin's and pol pot's genocidal actions have a clear justification inherent in communism. Why did mao zedong make the great leap? Why did pol pot kill millions? Why did stalin collective the farms? It was all attempts to make their countries communist. That is why communism and socialism is blamed for these atrocities.

Going on with the same argument, there's no inherent justification for slavery to be found in capitalism. I won't argue capitalism did make use of slaves, and perhaps enabled the slave trade to grow massively, but I don't think capitalism can be blamed for slavery anymore than for example democracy can. Slavery was there because of racism and imperialism. Yes, capitalism affect slavery, as did democracy, but they didn't cause it, nor can they be blamed for it.

 

Slavery was there because of racism and imperialism? What about the British who enslaved their own race in their own country before black people? There is nothing racist or imperialist about enslaving your own race and countrymen. Im sure even America had poor white American slaves, they just used racism as a tool to convince people to let slavery continue on due to the fact they hated black people largely based on religious grounds, the same way religious people today hate gay people on religious grounds. Racism was not the catalyst it was simply fuel for the fire to keep it going. Its a simple concept, Capitalism is all about profits, nowhere in Capitalism does it say you cant hold slaves its not like there is some sort of Capitalist Manifesto, its just about a free market so however you define freedom and its limits will determine how you define capitalism. If we had absolute freedom that would be anarchy, and there are Anarcho-capitalists, many of them. Libertarians are essentially anarcho-capitalists, its anarchy for the economics but not for the government, so capitalism can do anything to make money in a free market but is limited by the government. When there was no government limitation, Capitalism was not limited to exploiting slaves, they were FREE to exploit slaves if they wanted and exploit slaves they did. The Socialist North, who Karl Marx personally congratulated in a heartwarming letter to Lincoln, made it illegal to have slaves, they impeded on the freedom of the few to save the freedom of many, which is a basic ideal of Socialism. For example, Socialists dont want to ban fracking to be tyrannical dictators hungry for power, we want to ban it to ensure the freedom to breath clean air, to have that freedom for everyone we must take away the freedom of the few, the freedom to Frack or whatever the verb for it is lol. We dont want to ban racial discrimination in the work place to be tyrannical dictators, we ban it to ensure the freedom of minorities. The point im making is we do not take away your freedoms just to be (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)s, we do it to ensure that your freedom does not infringe on someone elses freedom. Your freedom to pay insanely low wages to workers impedes on the workers freedom to pursue happiness, so we took away your freedom to pay abhorrently low wages to ensure this workers freedom. Its very easy for one persons freedom to screw with another persons freedom, thus Socialism is required to make some things illegal, economically and socially, rather than just letting things run wild and whatever happens happens, because than Slavery happens and thats historically proven.

 

There was a different mentality back then. You see, decades ago simply quitting and going home with nothing to show for it was a national embarrassment. People just wanted to forget about it. The embarrassment of cutting and running was too much.

Now, actual victory is what embarrasses people, so cutting and running and quitting, then dumping trillions of dollars into the backwards third world country still with nothing to show for it is the preferred method.

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They didn't, but one can't let the facts get in the way of a good story.

 

I was referring to the transatlantic slave trade of africans, nor slavery in general.

No you are wrong. Capitalism isn't just about making profits. Capitalism is a system based around voluntary exchanges. Per definition, taking someone as a slave isn't a voluntary exchange. You might as well just rob him of all he's got also. Neither are capitalist. While capitalism did treat slaves as any other commodity, it wasn't capitalism which made slaves into a commodity to begin with.

What you bring up about freedom is very interesting philosophically, because we do not really have the same understanding of what freedom is. Let's take a Crusoe example. He's all alone (forget about friday) on his island, is he free or not? I'd say yes, he is free, because there's no one there to hinder him from doing what he wants with the situation. You on the other hand might say that the very situation itself in which he is, is repressing him. The island doesn't provide him with the means to do what he really wants to do, like being happy and well fed, or living in a house. So nature itself is making him unfree. So in short, freedom for me is the absence of someone who limits your pre-existing choices. Freedom for you is having the means to pursue your goals. That's two very different things. So in your "exploited" worker example, I'd say he is free, because he employer paying him low wages doesn't remove any of his pre-existing choices, merely adding to them.

But my main points against that kind of thing, like "paying people a fair (whatever that's supposed to mean) wage" isn't moral, but practical. This again shows how economic literacy isn't high on the left. The simple thing is that by simply forcing the employer to raise wages, you actually end up hurting more poor people, and the rich ones too. If you let it be, both are better off.

 

I agree with what you say about freedom, we do have different concepts of what freedom means to us so unless that changes its likely the rest of our views will stay generally the same.

As for raising wages, I dont see how rich people having to sell a few of their beach houses and personal jets would really hurt them or the economy, and if our economy depends on people buying huge beach houses and personal jets than our economy is screwed anyway because thats ridiculous and certainly unsustainable.

About voluntary exchange, I can show you another thread of mine where the capitalists were saying that the workers voluntarily choose to be exploited, so again just like with freedom, I believe we have entirely definitions of what voluntary means. If your only choices are either let your kids starve or work for horrible wages barley enough to feed your kids for the rest of your life I dont believe either of those are voluntary choices, he is being forced to make a decision between two bad scenarios and thats the opposite of voluntary in my opinion, but the republicans I talked to see this as perfectly voluntary.

 

See, that's the problem. They aren't going to seel their beach houses as a first resort, they are going to hire less people. Have you heard of the law of supply and demand? It's really quite easy. If you increase the price of something, there'd be less of it bought. Increase the price of labour, there'll be less of it bought. See the problem is that not all work is worth the same. A worker is hired because the employer believes he can make a profit out of hiring him. Say a worker produces $20 in value. It would then be profitable to pay him anything below $20 as you'd still make a profit. What a minimum wage law does it that those workers who produce value below the minimum wage, can't get jobs, because hiring them would be to make a net loss. And that hurts both the employee and employer, because both would have been better off otherwise by that mutual exchange. You can indeed make it illegal to pay below a certain amount, but you can't make it illegal to not hire people. The law might be well-intentioned, but it really does hurt everyone.

Yes, but did the capitalist remove any of his pre-existing choices? No, he added to them. Imagine how much worse off he'd been had that low-wage job been there. Obviously he values that low wage job, for it's the best one of his sucky alternatives. Removing that choice does nothing at all to better his situation. In fact, it only makes it worse for him.

 

Wow, swing and a miss.Communism 100% failure rate, so deal with it.

 

The corrupting factor is human greed. It has nothing to do with any particular system. If it were not for humans being selfish greedy beings, every system would lead to a utopia. But, since we are, they all end up corrupted. Social is not a bad system in and of itself, it's just that when you give people power, they want more. Unregulated capitalism is the same. It ALWAYS leads to corporatism, but not because capitalism is a bad system, because people are greedy and selfish and want all the money and power for themselves.


The perfect system is a capitalist system with certain regulations to keep corporations and the government from gain too much power over the market. A mixture of both capitalism and socialism.

 

Short answer: inter-imperialist rivalry between the USA and the USSR.