It's Capitalism, Not Globalism

Humans largely opt for theft from their neighbors, if government offers it to them. In this way government always grows, and societies then collapse under its weight.

 

An interesting viewpoint it is. But you said "Socialism is absolutely ruinous."


That is a blanket assertion and you haven't proven it even logically. In fact, you have repeatedly misspoken and misrepresented it, so you are singularly unqualified to assert any such conclusion. And none of it has anything to do with abortion and crime.

You're strange.

 

There will always be a governing class. It always seeks to gain more and more power and as it does so it invariably becomes more and more corrupt for power breeds corruption the way flies breed maggots.

 

The author of the book that drew the link between abortion and crime suggested economics was the study of incentives. He followed incentives to understand that abortion would have a positive impact on crime as the incentive to commit crime (parental desperation) would evaporate if the parents were never parents to begin with.

We accept that human beings follow incentives for every action they take. If in an economy, such as in socialism, where the product of labor is split evenly, the the incentive to overperform (let's call this competition) evaporates just as well because you don't get any reward for overperformance. In logical arguments, the contrapositive holds that if any statement is true, it's equal and opposite is also true. This is a scary predicament for socialism, that statement being:

If there is no reward for overperformance, there also can be no punishment for underperformance.

Thus you have the absence of a performance incentive and the existence of an incentive to 'free ride.'

Socialism destroys productivity by removing the incentive to produce.

Because capitalism allows the individual to keep what they earn, the incentive to produce is untethered.

Capitalism, because it rewards productivity yields a better producing economy than a socialist one which inhibits the same.

An economy devoid of competition is less productive than an economy that harnesses competition.

 

Decades in project management across multiple industries, corporate engineering, business analysis, software development, and business consulting/coaching.

A typical unimaginative false dichotomy. If I don't agree with you, I must be in the "right wing." If you are going to (*)(*)(*)(*) and moan over an epithet, why do you then resort to one?

I see. You can lay on the snark, but when I do it, you get fussy.

That is what 100 years of a nationalized monetary system and central planning in banking get you.

Great! Be snarky, and then (*)(*)(*)(*) and moan about a personal attack in response, and then dive right in with your own! Nice, hypocrite!!!

 

False. As long as more can be produced, more can be consumed, and as long as people can add value to raw materials through their own labor, there is no limit to how much can be produced.

False. It is theoretically possible to have a capitalist economy based solely on equity (ownership). Credit just makes it that much easier to do business. The money supply does not NEED to be continually expanded, but the result of not doing so is deflation. Current economic theory is that deflation is always bad. I don't agree, but that's the current thinking. Finally, the national debt has absolutely nothing to do with capitalism OR the money supply, but solely how much the government is spending versus how much it is taking in.

Yeah, and? All evidence suggests that the market will correct itself quickly, but government programs make that difficult or impossible. Likewise, the bank failures and stock market crash in 1929 would have been a temporary situation except for the government's attempt to alleviate things. As for corporations doing everything in their power to maximize profits, that's what they are in business for. You might want to reconsider that last statement. If corporations are so evil, why WOULDN'T you want them to move their operations overseas? The solution to that is of course to reduce taxes here, make it less profitable to move.

The solution here is to defang the government, make it impossible for corporations to buy influence in Washington because Washington can't make special deals for specific corporations or industries. But congress likes having businessmen treat them to all kinds of goodies in exchange for special legislation for this and that.

Yeah, and? Every shred of evidence suggests that private pensions are far better for the individual worker than government pensions are. As for Social Security, it is, was, and always will be a Ponzi scheme. When SS started, there were 16 people working for each retiree. Now there are 2 1/2 workers per retiree. Soon it will be less than that and SS will collapse of its own weight. As for unions, a study showed that while the unions benefitted their own members, they ended up costing the rest of the public the difference in their wages and what non-union members earned. Business pays for nothing, consumers do. Without consumers, the business wouldn't exist, and the workers would earn nothing.

Pure fantasy. All the things you listed here are the direct consequence of government programs, NOT capitalism. Even climate change is the direct result of government policies, in Brazil, allowing peasant farmers to slash and burn the Amazon rain forest until little of it is left. If sensible property laws had been in place in Brazil, we'd still have the Amazon and no one would be talking about climate change.

You seem to know nothing of these things.

Now I have five or six more pages to read.

 

I don't see any logic that would dictate that a corrupt government must necessarily fall to a smaller one. Corrupt governments in Africa have been in business for decades. In some cases, violent coups replaced one corrupt government with another one. In South America, repeated coups just replaced one general with another without altering the size or corruption of the rest of government.

 

Close enough
Governments do grow
and do collapse
But they collapse for any number of reasons

there is no evidence that eventual collapse can be avoided by choosing small government

 

I would beg to differ, to offer the thought that existence is an ongoing evolutionary process, and that we are not locked into repeating historical precedents, so to speak, that we are in fact capable of envisioning, evolving, and actualizing new and more authentically democratic forms of life. At any rate, what would your alternative be, resigning ourselves to the current status quo, because supposedly anything that we might replace it with will be just as bad? If everyone throughout history had subscribed to that kind of pessimism history would not include any social progress or examples of the amelioration of the social conditions of human beings at all! Or do you favor a form of right-anarchist (non)society in which social and political relations are somehow abolished and everyone somehow exists as an island unto him/herself?!

 

A genuine, objective practitioner of critical thinking would perceive the genetic, so to speak, the quite acute, and quite fatal contradictions, pathologies, and downright (social and moral) evils of the capitalist system.

 

An oligarchy is a small group of people having control of an organization or country. If a small group of surplus capitalists own the media and control the political systems, which they do in USA, then USA can be described as being a type of oligarchy.

And the capitalist has a surplus. Would you be happier if people said 'surplus capitalist class' instead? And no a small business owner should not be described as being a 'capitalist' because they have no surplus and no genuine capital. Unless you have enough surplus capital not to have to work if you do not want to, then you are not a capitalist. What kind of inheritance is the average small business owner leaving their children? Generally no more than the average wage slave is it? And you are saying that only people that own a business are capitalists are you? And if you have watched much John Stossel you would know that there is a huge amount of red tape to get through just to open a lemonade stand. I want to test my self driving vehicle technology on public US roads but your nation has made the fee to do that so high that only large corporations can afford to do it. The rest of us have to rent a race track and test our self driving vehicle technology there. This kind of thing is what the capitalist oligarchy of USA get the government to do to prevent anyone that does not have a huge amount of capital to enter various markets.

[video=youtube;QLXligldtJk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLXligldtJk[/video]

It is a lot easier to set up a lemonade stand in China than USA you know.

 

Sorry, human beings are the only self aware social animals on the planet. Anarchism, doesn't work because it always cycles into totalitarianism. It does this because there is always some jackass somewhere that thinks he has a better idea how things ought to be rather than how he believes everyone else is doing it. The trouble is, he's almost always wrong on both ends. If his ideas were that good, he wouldn't need to compel others to accept them.

The trouble is you see human logic is only as good as the information it has to work with and we never have all the information we need, or in many cases even most of the information we need. That sadly is the human condition. Marx thought he had it down pat sadly almost everything he thought he knew was wrong. Thus it is with most of us. We challenge every idea but our own. And our own are assembled, from a hodge podge of moving parts, or we become quite doctrinaire ideologues, hard as nails and thin as glass and nearly as fragile.

What do I think the perfect governing system is? The one that governs least. And yes that has problems too. I am not a utopian. There is no perfect system of government for human beings, because human beings are themselves not perfect. We will never in this lifetime achieve perfection simply because we lack the prerequisites..

 

So this is a liberals attempt at humour is it? You have gone to all this trouble to insult and make fun of working class people that want a sane border policy and a government that acts in the national interest have you? Funny stuff.

Not all nationalists are against so-called 'capitalism' or international trade. Many nationalists like Hitler and his allies supported the idea of a nationalist fraternity - which is a form of internationalization/globalisation. And the Nazi got rid of democracy and they isolated themselves by ending trade with capitalist enemies - and things in Germany were much better for the masses than they were under the treaty of versailles.

And why would nationalism have to be xenophobic? Isnt a multicultural nationalism possible? Of course it is. The British idea of nationalism is territorial, not linguistic -

-------
The political life of the British island community centres in its parliament at Westminster, which represents men rooted in British soil. This is a territorial, and not tribal, assembly; it was for centuries the representation of freeholders and householders, of men with their share in their native land; and in "every blade of grass in Great Britain" was said to be represented in it. Bound to the soil of Britain, it is limited to it : by now the British parliament does not claim authority over communities even of British origin and English speech omce they are rooted in other soil. And so close is the nexus between territory and nationality in English law that a child of whatever parentage if born under the British flag can claim British nationality. Indeed, the English language lacks a word to describe a "nationality" distinct from, or contrasted with, the citizenship derived from territory and state; and the meaning-less term of "race" is often used for what in continental languages is covered by "nationality".
------------------------------------------------------------------
- Nationality and Liberty/Lewis B Namier/European Political History, 1815-1870 - Aspects of Liberalism

So isnt the US idea of 'nationality' basically the same as the British idea of nationality? The American idea of nationality has always been territorial not linguistic or racial. USA has always welcomed people from around the world that are seeking a better life hasnt it? And apart from the whole slavery thing USA treats all citizens as being American as long as they are citizens right? If a baby is born in USA then it is a US citizen right? Even anchor babies that were born in USA to non-US citizens that came to USA for the specific reason of having the anchor baby to help them get US citizenship for themselves. So there is nothing at all racist about American nationalism. People that are supporting Trump want to get rid of illegal Mexicans that are not citizens right? Trump supporters are not pushing for Mexican-American citizens to be made illegal in USA - only for illegal Mexicans to be made illegal in USA. What is racist about that? You liberals like to use the word 'xenophobic' to call people racists but all the majority of Trump supporters want is secure borders and a sane border policy that does not just let anyone come in to USA as an economic migrant and for them to be welcomed by you neoliberals. The reason many working class people do not want illegal economic migrants to be allowed to flood over US borders is because these economic migrants from places like Mexico and South America put downward pressure on wages and they reduce job opportunities. The British Brexit leave voters were accused by you liberals of being racist and xenophobic but it certainly wasnt just Muslims that they want to stop from flooding into the UK - the main problem they had was with Europeans from poor European nations flooding into Europe taking many British jobs and putting downward pressure on wages. It is very racist and stupid for neoliberals to imply that race and nationality are the same thing because in any modern western nation this is not the case. It is not just white British working class people that are against unregulated or unsustainable or even illegal immigration that puts downward pressure on wages and reduces job opportunities and it is not only white working class people Americans that are against the same things in USA - but USA is far worse than England because your main problem is with illegal immigrants that you just allow to stay in the country if they can get across your borders - which is not difficult at all since there are 11.4 million illegal immigrants in USA apparently. 11.4 million illegals in USA. HA! Jesus Christ.

What do you want apart from to insult working class people that love their former countries anyway? What kind of utopia are you suggesting? Some borderless mess where we have a global democracy and nobody has to do anything and we are all the same? That may be some kind of utopia to a lazy liberal hippy but it is not a utopia to me or many other people. Express our preference for liberation and life hey? Ok then... What the heck are you even talking about? And it was not just the fascist Nazi and friends that supported the idea of Fraternity - early French socialists supported the idea of fraternity as well, and they favoured the idea of equity over equality because equality is unfair and dishonest -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libert%C3%A9,_%C3%A9galit%C3%A 9,_fraternit%C3%A9#cite_note-Ozouf-2

We are not all equal and it is wrong to pretend that we are or should be. So-called 'equality' is not only a brutal leveling of individualities - it is also unfair to suggest that all citizens deserve equality in society because we all have differing values. Some of us are very valuable and many of us are not. So if your hippy utopia that frees us of so-called capitalists has anything to do with lazy hippies getting to lay about all day doing nothing and still being able to enjoy a standard of living the same as someone that produces value then that is no utopia. Sure we should work towards equality of opportunity for children but equality in society for adults is not fair so a utopian society must be based on equity - not equality. An equality based society is an idiocracy - an equity based society is a meritocracy.

But yeah - was Marcus Crassus a 'capitalist'? Do you think that the US Founding Fathers were 'capitalists'? The Founding Fathers were pretty protectionist and USA remained fairly protectionist until USA won WW2 and took the reserve currency right? What is this 'capitalism' that you are attacking anyway? Are you saying that you are against private wealth building and business? Without private wealth building and business wouldnt we all still be living like monkeys or early Germanic tribes? Even early Germanic tribes and monkey have a hierarchy. You wish to be liberated from the hierarchy do you? And you think that bringing this about has something to do with doing away with national borders do you? And doing away with the so-called 'capitalist' power structure? ..... Hmmm. Are you certain?

So was Marcus Crassus a capitalist? The Patricians of the Roman Republic were some of the worlds first liberals werent they? They were very much like you modern American neoliberals are werent they? The Founding Fathers of USA stole a heck of a lot from the Roman Patrician liberals didnt they? But it didnt take long for Roman plebs to see that so-called liberal 'democracy' is just a bunch of nonsense that the ruling class uses to attack the masses. It wasnt long before they wanted a leader like Caesar was it? The reason is that while humans are certainly social and communal animals we also designed to form dominance hierarchies and we do not want weak leaders that hide in the shadows and use stupid tricks to justify their status - we want strong leaders like Julius Caesar to lead us.

The fact is that freedom belongs to the state, not to the individual. So instead of your little liberal hippy equality society what people really want is a type of neo-feudalism.

http://realsociology.edublogs.org/f...ar-of-freedom-escape-from-freedom-29wevxr.pdf

http://realsociology.edublogs.org/f...ar-of-freedom-escape-from-freedom-29wevxr.pdf

See the above Fromm stuff is very true and very important. The fact is that most working class people do not wish to be Daddy Warbucks or even believe that they deserve to be - so there is no sense annoying them and bothering them with this 'upward mobility' 'American Dream' junk. Not only is there no point but it is also very stupid because to promote this idea of upward mobility while at the same time telling these masses that it is they that are the masters and it is they that decide how society will be due to so-called 'democracy'. All 'upward mobility' and 'democracy' do is promote the ensure a kind of permanent revolution similar to the one that Gramsci and various communists talked up. If I didnt know any better I would think the capitalists are trying to overthrow themselves. But Gramsci was right that the working class must have their own culture and identity because they do anyway and for bourgeois liberal capitalists to try to destroy working class culture is stupid and dangerous. The elite should want the working class masses to have their own identity - not for them to be thinking that they are the masters. When working class people live in a society that respects them and values them and allows them to have their own culture then the working class are happy to remain working class and that is what elites should want - not permanent revolution. It really wouldnt take a lot for your bourgeois neoliberals to make the working class feel valued and respected in US society and this would make US society a lot more stable and easier to manage. You neoliberals are not going to end history with your nonsense and that is for sure.

[video=youtube;GHEUsGhUtgg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHEUsGhUtgg[/video]

Here is something funny for you funny bourgeois neoliberals -

[video=youtube;TKuUqsR4WOY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKuUqsR4WOY[/video]



[video=youtube;57vaKllPg7k]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57vaKllPg7k[/video]

Liberals. What we need is a new aristocracy. Noble leaders that can lead a virtue based society. And the world needs a King.

 

You just attempted a logical proof , in hopes of proving you could

 

Due to such differences we cannot just leave everyone to their own fate, and we cannot just heap benefits on everyone indiscriminately either. Those are two unhelpful extremes. But we need to provide incentive for people to develop their skills while also providing for those who really cannot, and they would be a tiny fraction.

Now, if we expect workers to update skills or even change to a whole new skill set so they can adapt to new and different jobs, then we have to provide a means for those workers to acquire the new skills. Are you agreeable to providing training and an income for workers during the period of training so that they can maintain their families and upgrade too?

But the problem goes beyond changing skills and jobs. We are seeing more and more automation with robots, resulting to massive per-company layoffs, and it is only going to accellerate. This has the potential to result in a huge unemployment problem as long as we have this type of economy. Such technological progress demands that we change the economy to one without private profit driving it. Then instead of a business owner laying off, say, 10% of his workforce after automating some processes, the number of people employed could remain constant and could earn the same wages but cut their work week by 10%. They could all go home after lunch on Friday every week. With this private profit economy this is impossible because the decision will always be made in favor of increasing profits.

Each business has its own problems, but the trend indicates the direction it’s all going, and the trend is toward bigger and bigger businesses as each one works to best the competition and to grow larger each year. This is what’s happening and this is what’s going to keep happening. And it deepens the problems of capitalism that are accumulating. And one big problem goes back to the previous point, and that is worsening unemployment due to technological advances.

Yes, --when they issue stock. But there is another whole set of considerations that go into a decision to issue stock. My comment was in regard to float stock which would be the type of stock we would assume we are discussing unless something else were specified. And the buying and selling of float stock doesn’t put money into the corporation’s hands in spite of what many people think.

I had asked you “Should the sale of drugs be regulated?” So the subject was lawsuits for cases where companies cause harm, like drug companies causing irreparable harm to patients due to inadequate testing or other irresponsible actions. In cases of lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies the damage is usually permanent and serious. Not so with sexual harassment from which one can recover given a successful lawsuit. Hence a discussion of sexual harassment is a change of subject. And again, I had asked “Should the sale of drugs be regulated?” Your answer seems to be “no”. If so, I disagree. We cannot wait for the damage to be dome to millions of people. Failure to regulate the development and distribution of drugs would be a serious and unacceptable problem.


For the last point we need to review its history.

And there you have it: theory, ... nice-sounding theory to confront facts which I laid out in the first entry here. The fact is that the leading capitalists use both downturns and upturns in the economy to profit and grow --while the population suffers from downturns and, now, cannot benefit from upturns. And this absence of benefit for the people is the latest development of capitalism as it transitions more deeply into the stage of degeneration and decline.

 

Wehrwolfen has a thread going in which he attempts to portray Mrs. Clinton (of whom I’m a nonfan, btw, but for reasons that are quite the opposite of the reasons that Trump supporters and other rightists love to hate her; if you wish to understand why I’m not a Hillary-booster simply think of Bernie Sanders’ criticisms of her, and then amplify them a bit) as an agent of a sinister leftist-globalist conspiracy. Sure it’s the case that she and entire “governments are simple business agents for international capital” (as fellow Marxist Jacques Rancière would say), but it’s extremely perverse and counterproductive to concoct a B-movieish conspiracy theory that identifies the villainy of globalism with (the right’s demonized version of) the progressive platform of the left, rather than zeroing in on capitalism and the capitalist world system as the true ur-source of the negative realities of actually-existing globalism and advocating replacing it with a more enlightened movement for the economico-political integration of humanity. At any rate, I posted a reply in his thread that’s actually quite apropos in this thread, therefore I’ve taken the liberty of reposting it below (I of course also wish to do him the courtesy of not hijacking or derailing his thread).

My reply:

Was this merely a conscious attempt to be humorous? Because it’s certainly a laughable load of over-the-top Trumpite caca. As for the globalism that you seem to be concocting into a conspiracist bogeyman, it’s merely a warmed-over 21st-century version of that hobgoblin of the conservative mind, the new world order cabal, with its B-movieish sinister secret societies (the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, et al). To get down to psychological brass tacks, it serves the function of being a scapegoat that answers the need of a simplistic mind for a noncomplex, handy explanation of what’s going on in the world (a need which nowadays is exacerbated by inhaling too much of the “exhaust fumes of democracy”, to borrow a phrase from Christopher Hitchens, i.e. living in an information age in which one's mind has a good deal too much information to process and therefore condenses it all into simple ideas, stereotypes, and shibboleths). It does duty as a specific and defined target upon which you can project and focus your fuzzy suspicions, fears, and paranoias, some of which are entirely subjective and some of which are reality-based but misinterpreted. It’s a scarecrow that your xenophobia, your fear of foreign enemies, your us vs. them mentality, your threat-oriented cognitive style can latch onto. It’s a reducer of the senseless and uncontrollable events and evils in the world to meaningful and manageable factors and thereby a way out of one’s sense of existential randomness and insecurity. It’s also a villainous other that one can assign blame for life’s evils to in order to disown them, to disown any personal responsibility for them. In addition, it’s an object upon which you can localize your sense of being dominated by external forces (the feeling of being dominated per se is certainly not to be dismissed, it’s often quite reality-based, especially under a system of domination such as capitalism, where our lives are run by bosses in the workplace, and in society at large by economic elites). It’s also a carrier for externalized dark and unacceptable aspects of your own personality, i.e. your own shadow side, for instance your own will to power or personal Machiavellian tendencies.

At any rate, the aversion to globalism that many suffer from is the reactionary psychological aversion of nationalistic, tribalistic, xenophobic psyches to relinquishing their national-tribal identity in favor of a more planetary identity; a primitive tribalistic opposition to the idea of internationalism, to the integration of humanity. What’s more, this also, for many, involves a racist aversion to integrating with other peoples of the Third World who of course are people of color. And naturally this sort of nationalistic and racist anti-globalism involves a demonization of globalism and any and all forces working for it. Hence the alt-right portrayal of globalism as a grand satanic scheme of the left to turn the world into one ginormous gulag.

Actually, however, there are quite legitimate reasons to take a moral stand against globalism in its present form, but the minds of the nationalistic conservative opponents of globalism are entirely out of touch with them. In a nutshell, globalism in its current form involves the imposition and maintenance of the hegemony of the capitalist world system and its economic elites, which of course involves the economic and political disenfranchisement of the vast majority of the human beings on the planet, their subjection to wage slavery, various degrees of political repression, various degrees of poverty, and the adverse ecological impact of the capitalist’s insatiable drive for profits. This is the actually-existing and pernicious form of globalism that we should all oppose, but alas the right-wing anti-globalist movement is more keen on diabolizing and resisting the enlightened vision of global human solidarity that we should all be working to replace it with. It’s so engrossed in hating a fictional foe, an imaginary leftist totalitarian conspiracy of planetary proportions (which it’s now making Mrs. Clinton a personification of), that it can’t see the objectively real enemy of human liberty and well-being, the transnational capitalist plutocracy (which Mrs. Clinton is in fact a puppet of, and Mr. Trump a member of) that already rules the world behind the facade of democratic governments and the rule of law, and instead it lamely and hatefully riles itself up against progressives. That is, the psychological and ideological bent of nationalists and alt-rightists causes them to suffer from a serious and dangerous derealization of reality and pro-capitalist bias that tragically prevents them from being involved in the solution, and instead leaves them predisposed to being a part of the problem, to ironically being recruited to the defense of the world capitalist system against the enlightened anti-globalists of the left. They unwittingly work against their own cause. Well, they certainly don’t help the cause of liberating humanity from the hegemony of the world capitalist system. Actually, perversely, they’re the ideological stormtroopers of the global capitalist elite!

 

And of course, you know more than many very credible people on the left, and the right who spent lives studying what you obviously know absolutely nothing about. I have never seen so much misinformed nonsense in a single post.

I would take my time to actually give you a list of sources of men much more learned than you, but it would be the biggest waste of time and energy, and so I will desist from taking your bait. But the informed people know who I am talking about for they have taken the time and effort to do the research and inform themselves.

Let me take a guess though, about your beliefs. It is the communists and the socialists that are in charge, and not robber baron fascism, right? And if you follow the money it will not lead to robber baron parasitic vampire corporate capitalism, but to communists and socialists, right?

I will allow others to take your intellect down, as I am sure they will. For the flaws in your belief are so easily busted out. This is always the case when reality contradicts beliefs.

 

i think you have misunderstood my motive
I was trying to make logical extension of your commensts on large and small government
To see if they really make sense

Imo we go astray when we try to fit real life into ideological straight jackets
Which was how i understood your initial comment on big and small government

 

Reply to GreyMatter...

Here we go with another necessary review.

You had said “I just have learned through an economic curriculum that the intuitive beliefs we have about economies are often quite destructive if not ruinous. Socialism is absolutely ruinous. Varying degrees of socialism added to free market yields merely resistance to growth not full on blockade.”

I replied: “How would you or anyone know since we have never seen a settled, "finished" socialist society? You can't judge how a German Shepard behaves by watching a wolf hybrid.”

With that in mind we can now consider your current comments:

Critical thinking also involves current facts and conditions.

To be valid they must be anchored in reality and fact. The comment “Socialism is absolutely ruinous” is not an axion anchored in reality and fact. I refuted it by addressing reality and fact that we have never seen a settled, "finished" socialist society, so we cannot know whether socialism is “ruinous” or whether it has been the blended features of remaining capitalism that have been the problem. If we understand socialism as it has been implemented and according to its theory, we may speculate whether the problems are due to that or to known features of capitalism.

 

That is because you have not read The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Nor have you read Gen. Butler's book, War is a Racket. Nor a number of books written by people who worked on the inside and revealed the truth.

Capitalism as actually practiced takes on different forms. But there two basic forms are, capitalism can allow the greatest number of people in a nation to prosper by their work, which is what the managed capitalism of FDR was, which created the largest middle class in world history, or capitalism can be structured to only enrich the robber baron class, along with the top 1 percent but at the cost of destroying the middle class and taking away prosperity by work.

We are living under the latter model now, with the main devices that restructured the managed capitalism of FDR being, open borders free trade and bank deregs which financialized much of our economy as it was deindustrialized. This current model does not create large middle classes, quite the contrary, and this is all that anyone really needs to know. For it is fundamental. For if this is not understood, you only get garbage as input, as we have seen here on this thread.

 

None of these people who claim oligarchy does not exist have taken the time to read the Princeton Study. So, they are simply uneducated in the basic sense of that term. This Study used legislation, policy, coming out of congress for a couple decades, ending in 2012 as the evidence for their conclusion, that we are either moving into oligarchy, or we are already there. So these people who claim we are not an oligarchy, which is a form of fascism, ala what Mussolin stood for, have to ignore the evidence in public record. And compare it to the public record of congress prior to 1981. The difference between these records is astounding, for we saw a total loss of working and middle class americans being represented when it comes to economic policy and law. Only rich special interests, got representation from 1981 to 2012 when they cut off the public record for study. And it has not changed since 2012, but only gotten worse in favor of the elites.

But denial is so common today, right? It is the only thing some folks can do when confronted with inconvenient facts that prove what your thought, was false, and some egos just cannot admit they were wrong, and even stupid. Well, hardly any egos with do that which is just basic dishonesty. Gotta protect these egos, right? Even if it reveals the person to be an idiot. For they will never admit they were idiots. And that is always the problem isn't it? LOL

 

Very nice, but that does not preclude the possibility of having opinion that are not well founded in reality and fact. Your opinion was that “if they could give you the premium instead of administrating the health plan, they would.. The fact is that “it’s already factored into the price of your labor. It is factored in as a cost of your employment. The businessman would like to save on the cost of your employment. He does not view anything about your employment as being intrinsically yours except your skills. So when and if employer healthcare plans are eliminated through, say, national healthcare, the premium would in all likelihood not be handed to the employee. And if it were it would change the income relationship of that employee to that of another similar employee who was not covered by a healthcare plan in the first place. Given that the S.C. ruled that the first obligation of a corporation is to make a profit for the shareholders, the employer would be remiss to give that premium to the employee.

Imaginative? REALLY?? You had said “Ah yes, the world revolves around you. Should have figured. It's why you think strangers owe you a living.” and now you want to pretend it isn’t a personal attack? LOL!! And if you meant that you object that you aren’t a right winger, then don/t talk like one or you are spewing right wing lines and you might as well be one..

 

This is a grievous misreading of the point of view expressed in my OP, which is actually quite socialist and pro-working class in nature. Well, of course your misreading of my POV is quite willful and spiteful, and certainly not at all productive.

They should be (everyone except economic and political elites with a vested interest in the capitalist world system should be anti-capitalist), but of course as nationalists they would opposed the globalization of capitalism for all of the predictable wrong reasons and not be in favor of a progressive alternative.

Putting in a good word for some of the policies of the Führer certainly doesn't lend validity to your point of view. The nationalist-racialist mentality that Nazi policies derived from was invariably and pretty heinously messed up, to put it in colloquial English.

Because it manifests a negativity bias, a threat-oriented cognitive style, and a primitive tribalist mentality, i.e. a psychological-cognitive orientation that's preoccupied with threats, sometimes real but often imagined, to one's security and that seeks a snug sense of security and security-providing dominance through group identification and membership, but that always keeps one anxiously concerned about and consciously or unconsciously fearful of the alien other who seems to pose a threat to one's tribal-national group. Mm-hmm, this deep-seated, innate fearful sense of concern is of course the essence of xenophobia, and is thus indeed inextricably psychologically linked with the tribal-national mentality.

 

Free market economies depend upon the policing of force, fraud or coercion. Both of these books describe fraud and force manipulating free markets. On the contrary, the over involvement of policing entities on markets increases the risk of the involvement of force, fraud or coercion. I tend to err on the side of less policing as being less problematic than more policing. War being used as a means of competitive advantage is clearly government manipulation.

"managed capitalism"? You are simply talking about misallocation of economic capital without considering the opportunity costs of such measures when discussing FDR. The increased difficulty of accurately presenting hypothetical outcomes had different decisions had been made is constantly used as an advantage to prove that their "managed capitalism" was successful. The robber baron class of the 19th century is a myth. Also, you are attributing the negative traits of corporatism to capitalism. While there is a fine line of appropriate involvement, the fear should always be toward too much involvement. It is close to impossible to provide less value and increase market share or control markets without the force of government.

I agree that the current economy has far too much government involvement which has led to the ability to deliver less value and maintain a competitive advantage.

 

Let me introduce a touch of reality to modify that theory. The 2008 recession caught business with unsold inventories and workers were laid off when corporations could not justify additional production to add to unsold inventories. This reduced the spendable money in the hands of workers to the point where many lost their homes, so they obviously also reduced their consumption further. Corporations responded to the situation by moving offshore for cheap labor. That further increased unemployment here and further reduced the buying power of the American people. Corporations shot themselves in the foot by taking these measures harming workers. So they were unable, and they remain unable, to sell their inventories. Capitalism is in crisis and there is no solution in the capitalist system as it actually is "on the ground".

Now go ahead and tell me more about your theories of how consumption is limitless.

More nice-sounding theory that has nothing to do with reality.

More theory. I gave you known effects of past recessions and you give me theories. LOL!

Still avoiding reality in favor of what "could be" according to a theory, but isn't.

Nope. No. You're saying that 401k plans are producing more retirement income in total and on average than S.S. That's BS.

Nope. No. It's not. That's a right wing talking point in support of transferring the $2.8 trillion to Wall Street. http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebat...social-security-as-a-ponzi-its-a-bad-metaphor

http://www.ncpssm.org/PublicPolicy/...ID/1607/Social-Security-Is-Not-a-Ponzi-Scheme

"Collapse"??? LOL!! If the Trust Fund were ZERO today, S.S. benefits of 75% of what is being paid out could continue to be paid for the foreseeable future! This proves your view on this is bogus! LOL!

Nope. No. Union wage increases "trickle up" to affect similar non-union jobs with pay increases. They don't increase to the level of union scale, but they increase. And BTW, unions have not ever kept up with the CPI.

Really? Well now, let's see. Since you offer no facts it seems it is you who knows nothing of these things. Let's look at facts then.

Capitalism does not provide for healthcare, but it has tried to intervene for profit. Health insurance companies are no longer non-profit.

Prisons have been heavily privatized for profit. The contracts with government insisted on by the prison corporations typically say that the government must supply prisoners sufficient to maintain a population that is at least 90% of total prison capacity. In return, government has required that prisons perform at a cost that is less than that of government. To keep making a profit the prisons hire poorly qualified guards who get their jollies in some cases by harassing prisoners, especially those with mental problems. Then to further enhance profits the prisons cut back on medications and other services. Capitalism is creating these problems. Prisons should never be privatized. It represents a serious conflict of interest.

Education: Private schools for profit have multiplied and even they are not performing very well. Education should never be privatized. It represents a serious conflict of interest.

Climate change: Mostly driven be fossil fuels which are only still promoted for profit.

Loss of democracy: Ever hear of A.L.E.C.? How about Citizens United? All corporate influence and corporate involvement.

Growing inequality: Self explanatory. I'm surprised you would include this.

Immigration troubles: All done starting with Reagan ignoring the situation and instructing ICE to not enforce the laws against hiring them. It provided a pool of labor not subject to wage and hours laws to be exploited for the benefit of profits. the problem persisted and is now the subject of objections from both sides.

So much for your arguments.