Do You Prefer Capitalism or Socialism?

Biting the hand that feeds:

 

Now you're getting it!

Subject to the laws of physics and nature as we are, all things valuable must be worked for at some point.

 

What a load

 

Enough to live on. Democrats want $15 also health care daycare paid parental leave cheap college and tax ing the rich. Enough getting screwed by the GOP! And that sir is what everyone in the world believes socialism is except for brainwashed English speaking conservatives and fellow travelers. Always Democratic fair capitalism with a good safety net and the final solution. Just like they have in every other developed country.

 

Maybe I misconstrued your point. I'm not immune to that, as anyone on this board is surely aware.

My point is that when I believe a problem must be solved and when capitalism isn't interested in solving that problem, I will back socialized solutions.

When I discuss those non-capitalist solutions, I almost always get called out as being a socialist or otherwise desiring to move America away from capitalism.

As I am sensitive to those majorly false and unreasoned accusations, I probably can be mistaken about the points others on this board are making.

If that's what happened here, I certainly apologize and regardless I'll try to check this - and not just because I don't like looking like an idiot.

 

There's a mathematical, logical way to figure this out. I learned it in graduate-level economics courses.

It's to learn the difference between private an public goods. There is a difference, and those goods have distinct characteristics that empirical evidence dictates defines who is the more efficient provider - government or private industry.

It's a non-partisan approach to these debates that is scientific and mathematical.

 

I appreciate that. And I do understand what you're saying.

Personally, I'm not shy about admitting I advocate a transition to socialism, as it fairly obvious from a reading of my posts. The problem I've spent some years trying to resolve is that of people having no idea what socialism and/or communism are but not letting that stop them from spewing BS. And I've had some success over the years.

Once an honest, objective person discovers what they actually are, I find most by far support real, actual socialism.

 

"Honest and objective" as defined by YOU of course.

So basically, if someone agrees with your position on socialism, then they are conferred with the title of "honest and objective". If they disagree, then they are dishonest and/or not objective.

That is a nice little bubble of delusion you have created for yourself.

 

Proposing that there are ways of improving how our requirements can be met is great.

So PROPOSE! I don't need to hear how great your ideas are - I'm sure you see them as fabulous!

How should we improve in providing the services that FEMA, national defense, utility delivery in cities, fire and policing, social safety net, medical care, transportation, SEC, etc.?

 

From what I have seen, you present a fairly reasonable position on what should or should not be socialized. Of course we need a degree of socialized programs, and nobody credible argues otherwise. The only argument is to what degree.

However, you falsely assume that all other leftists hold your same reasonable viewpoint. A great many do not, especially the ones that have camped out in this 100+ page thread thread.

 

Well, I'm pretty convinced that regulated capitalism is the best solution for providing most of what makes up our standard of living. The distribution of decision making along with a built in reward system for better answers is important, I think.

But, there certainly is a need for socialized solutions to problems that absolutely DO have to be addressed and in which capitalism has no answer.

And, we need to do a LOT better for all who have jobs of any kind. (I don't like calling those who have jobs "workers", because we tend to see "workers" as limited to menial labor or hourly wage earners, and the issues cover every employee.) We allow capitalism to treat humans as no more than a discardable resource.

 

Well my friend, it will be a long, hard road I'm afraid. The least painful, most peaceful, most civilized path to significant improvements that I can imagine would be to amplify the progressive message and spread it widely while making Biden and Congressional Democrats take swift action to CRUSH the current Republican push for state laws that enable them to replace any elected Democrat with a Republican of their choice. The advocate far and wide for progressive candidates, and when they get elected, make them take action to end this huge, greedy redistribution of wealth to the wealthy by taxing both income and wealth heavily for new top tax brackets, and then push for nationalization of selected industries like healthcare, drugs, energy resources and production, and convert utilities to PUDs and finally a MAJOR reform of banking to create state banks and tighten up the creation of money through debt.

How's that for starters?

 

How about an experiment, after doing the things I listed above, that tries out some basic "socialist-type" structures for selected business activities to see how they can do?

 

I think this board isn't representative of America, and shouldn't be taken that way.

I look to studies such as:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politic...-americans-views-of-socialism-and-capitalism/

Even among those who have a generally positive view of what they term socialism, most see it as a way to enhance capitalism.

And, I think my own views would fall in that category - that is, that there are cases where capitalism doesn't do something we need, and we can find solutions that are socialized. Also, we can work to provide a better voice for employees. The STUPENDOUS compensation disparity we see is not possible to justify and is something we have developed fairly recently. We ARE allowing the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer. The wealthy have had buying power steadily increase for decades, while the lower half has been astonishingly stagnant in buying power - even losing during various periods. Middle America is not experiencing the "American Dream" any more. Steps to solve that do not need to include dumping capitalism for socialism.

The number of Americans who actually want to move from capitalism to socialism is small enough to be considered irrelevant. If Pew had asked that question directly, the answers would be far more strongly divided in favor of capitalism.

The claims the right wing constantly makes about that as a desire shared by some significant section of America are TOTALLY partisan and TOTALLY unreasoned.

 

I'd certainly not turn that down categorically.

But, I don't know of a way to create a test case.

The VA is not a good test case, for example. We don't all use that system, so it's not surprising that we refuse to pay for the quality available in our for-profit system that everyone uses.

We CAN compare our for-profit health care to the health care of every other nation in the world, of course. And, our for-profit system has clear deficits in that comparison.

 

Who said this board is representative of America? I am talking about this thread. There are people in this thread that are full throated Socialists and at least one Communist, but you keep jumping into those conversation and acting as if the person on the right is talking to someone with your position and they are not. You did this to me a few days prior and I happened to have been talking to the person in this thread that 100% has no problem admitting that he supports true Communism including the abolition of all property rights. You reflexively assumed that his position is the same as yours and that I was misstating his position, when in reality he is 100% unashamedly a proponent of Communism. Those people do exist.

While there are some on the right that scream Socialism at every opportunity, that too is not representative of all. There is an undeniable leftward shift with a great many leftists as evidenced by the rise of Bernie and his comparatively far more collectivist viewpoints than anything seen in the mainstream prior to Bernie. Some people tend to exaggerate this to call people Socialist, but it does not help that situation that Bernie himself self identifies as a Democratic Socialist (lets not pretend like exaggeration exists on only one side of the aisle). I sense that you yourself are probably not a full fledged Bernie acolyte. I think you may be underestimating just how much many of his proponents (especially the kids) have moved to a position that is certainly lurching far forward in the direction of true Socialism. With this group of people (mostly youth), true socialism is no longer a bad word. That reality is concerning to me and many others. You are advocating a limited use of socialistic programs which is entirely different from socialism. I suspect you are older and wiser than many of your vocal leftist brethren.

 

What's your point?

How many people support socialism on this thread is NOT indicative of anything AT ALL - as I pointed out.

I'm glad there are some around, as they can help hold back the ignorance that far too many have concerning what socialism and communism even MEAN!

I don't agree with this AT ALL.

The news is FULL of right wing partisans accusing numerous Democratic office holders at all levels of government of being "socialists" when that is just plain BULL.

Are you really so isolated that you don't know that?

 

I feel as if I have been pretty clear as far as my point, but I will restate it with different verbiage...

My point is that you keep jumping into conversations in this thread and insisting that YOUR support of reasonable socialistic programs is what all other leftists in here are supporting, and your conversation with KODE is a prime example of such. Your assumption with him was wrong and he corrected you on that assumption. There are honest to goodness people that support 100% true socialism. You seem to live in denial of that reality, as evidenced by the fact that you continue to assume that all of these other people on the left are making the same argument as you. Many are not. Of the small subset of the left that support full throated socialism, this thread is a haven for people with that mindset.

 

So you don't care about math. Got it.

 

Nothing in my post was vulnerable to any math based argument.

All you claimed was that your ideas are stupendous - without even an indication of what those ideas might be.

 

And that is what I have been focusing on correcting for a few years now. Wasn't socialism always and everywhere presented as promising the liberation of the working class from capitalist "wage slavery" and/or the end of capitalist exploitation of the working class? Was that the given goal and purpose?

Being confused and greatly influenced by Cold War propaganda, Americans have believed socialism consists of socially-beneficial policies that can occur in a capitalist economy, or that socialism is "government ownership and control of the MoP", which is something Lenin himself referred to as "state capitalism".

Socialism has always been known as the antithesis of capitalism and antagonistic to it. You can't have worker ownership and control of production that is privately owned for private profit. So socialism is actually a fundamental change, a reversal, of the employer/employee relationship.

 

How about passing the two bills submitted to the House and the Senate in 2017 by Bernie Sanders, Pat Leahy, and Maggie Hason which facilitated the formation and support of worker-owned, worker-controlled cooperative corporations? That would be a start.

 

Interesting that you neither name him nor post reliable evidence to support your claim. So who is he? I know of no such person.

 

You seem excessively argumentative and averse to civil discussion.