Reply With Quote
Why did I have to pick a thread with two idiots?
I've got no problems with social programs, provided they make sense, in particular education...in fact I think all education should be free.
Social programs aren't socialism...
Socialism, everthing has to be socialism...that's not true for capitalism.
Why did I have to pick a thread with two idiots?
Ill second that.
For the same reason you pick a political party with 49 million of them..that incidentally...can't win a Presidential election? -[insert conspiracy theory here]
"As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents."-George Orwell
Social programs are socialism. In socialism, the means of production has to be owned by the state and wealth is redistributed. Socialism is an economic and political ideaology. In capitalism it is the exact opposite, the means of production are not owned by the state. When you take my tax dollars to pay for someone's check, it is socialism. However, as many welll know, the U.S. is hardly a socialist state.
-end quote part, this is general
Warning: Boring educational content ahead, feel free to skip to bottom
People are unfortunately mixing up terminology, no thanks to all the propaganda during the cold war.
Communism: Ecnomic and political ideaology that states that a society should be without classes or government. The means of production is commonly owned.
Socialism: Economic and political ideaology that states that the means of production should be owned by the state (not private), that pricing should be done by the state (not the market), and that wealth should be redistributed (not hoarded).
Capitalism: Economic ideaology that states that the means of production are privately owned (not the state), prices are determined through the market (not the state) and that wealth flows to those who earn it.
Command-and-control: Economic structure in which government owns the means of production.
Free-market: Economic structure in which government stays out of the market. The market is guided by the invisible hand.
Mixed economy: An economy that contains privately owned and state owned enterprises. Government regulates the free market but does not primarily own the means of production.
First, it should be immediately obvious that capitalism and socialism are both useless. Capitalism left unchecked will lead to the formation of corporations, then mergers, then a monopoly. With no compe ion, prices can be raised above equilibrium.
In socialism there is no incentive to work hard. This leads to extrememly inefficient management of resources and is why the U.S.S.R. isn't the world's leading superpower (or in existence). The people were poor and starving as the United States' mixed economy gave them an extreme wealth advantage.
A guns-and-butter graph makes this very clear. Every state has a production possibilites frontier, a certain allocation of two goods that is possible. For example, the U.S. can make 10 tanks and 90 food or can make 90 tanks and 10 food. Graphically, this is displayed as an arc, where a nation can produce anywhere inside that arc.
As proof that socialism is inefficient, take this production possibilites frontier comparison of the United States and the U.S.S.R.'s economic systems. On this chart guns and butter are graphed. Guns is military spending and butter is civilian spending. Towards the end of the cold war, the U.S. was able to reallocate it's resources into a lot of guns while still making enough butter to feed the people. When the U.S.S.R. tried to follow by increasing arms spending, it found that it was at the edge of it's production possiblilites frontier. What happened? People starved, the U.S.S.R. couldn't keep up, and the soviet union crumpled under an inefficient system.
However, pro-capitalist people shouldn't fool themselves with all the cold war propaganda. The soviets may have called us capitalist dogs, which we wore with pride, but be well aware that the United States is far from a free market. The government regulates thousands of aspects of the market. Our central bank influences prices, a trait common to socialist governments. We break up monopolies. Education is provided by government. We buy our water from the city but it has a pricing strucutre like a free market. We have compe ion. We can even compete with the government such as with private detectives, personal body guards, and volunteer firefighter services.
I like this system the best. The mixed economy. It is the staple of nearly every nation and has been modeled the best by the United States under the guide of geniuses like Adam Smith and John Locke. There is a reason why the United States is so high in innovation, wealth, economic power, military power and so forth. While the left may argue that this is because of our past imperialism, take well note that thanks to socialist movements abroad that many of our imperialist gains have been long taken-over by the respective nations.
Pure capitalism loses, pure socialism loses. Mixed wins. There is a reason even a supposed socialist country like china and cuba let their people trade in a market. That's not socialism, that's capitalism and Marx would be rolling in his grave at the idea of that being called socialism.
------------
What the question really should be is: How socialist/free do you want to be?
-Utilities: private or government?
-Regulation: for or against?
-Trust-busting: good or bad?
-State medical care: savior or inefficient tax dump?
-Subsidies: economic stimulus or screwing up the invisible hand?
-Welfare: help for the needy or handouts for the lazy?
-Pricing: privately determined or government calculated?
-Education: public? private? both? college?
-Prisons: federal too expensive and private should interfere? Or is private untrustable?
-Central bank: keeps us from another great depression or hold back the economy?
Well, I am a capitolist. Yes, I also believe in reasonable controls in place.
I only take socialism to the point of helping those who cannot help themselves. I say help the disabled, elderly, and children who have parents who cannot provide for them. Short term help for others is no problem either.
What I completely disagree with is government taking away from the free market. This is what socialist countries do. They increase their power and influence of the population by controlling things like health care, forcing the citizens to rely on government.
I draw the line when this occurs. Any government program that forces "we the people" to not have free choices is flat out evil.
Our cons ution laid out a few things that are necessary. The Preamble spells out why. I can make valid arguments as to why liberal social programs are uncons utional. Primarily because the remove the individual rights of choice.
No way. There are no industries that government can do better than the free market.
No, capitalism is a structure primarily driven by people being allowed to keep the rewards of their work. Socialism requires larger taxes, removing the incentive for working hard and strive to be rich, because the rich get hit the hardest. You cannot regulate greedy behavior without turning into a police state. Socialism has the same greedy people in government, and it allows them even more influence over a capitalism system because under capitalism, people can choose a different supplier, business, etc. When the government dictates blanket rules, choices are removed.
I did not know Spurster had such a short fuse . . .
Anyways . . . public libraries
A combination of both is best
Only the strong survive baby!
I'll pretend to be an ethical egoist for a sec here ...
If I haven't done much with my life, still work a minimum wage job even though I'm in my 30's, have fathered 3-4 kids with different wimmin, live in the projects, eschewed education and opportunities for advancement in favor of the 'thug life' or illegal activity, and believe that I am a victim and never had a chance to amount to anything ... then, yes, I would probably be a socialist. Give me that check!
However, if I'm successful and have made good decisions, earned what I have (my $$, house, car, etc.), then I would probably be a capitalist, unless I am suffering from 'white guilt' or something.
Then again ... I am not an ethical egoist. Some things are just wrong, no matter who is involved, and the gummint taking hard-earned $$ from the hands of people who work, and forking it over to people who won't, is wrong.
I'm neither of those things you mentioned and I still prefer a socialist inclined government.
Okay, then ... I take it you'll be making your check out in the morning to the U.S. Treasury? I am sure they will be more than delighted to have more of your $$.
I'll be doing the same that you do as well, paying taxes.
You're dillusional if you think you can live in a country that doesn't tax you.
Do you have any idea what a country like that would look like?
To Repubs it always comes down to taxes no matter what the situation is or who it is that gets screwed. Without fail everytime.
Yes, it's much better to borrow and spend and then owe the original principal plus interests, devalue your currency in the process and concurrently raise the price of your main import commodity - oil, and also have to answer calls on US foreign policy from the prince of Saudi Arabia and the Chinese Premier....
power utilities, communication lines, water, trash, mass transit, maybe a couple of others.
Those kinds of companies should be owned by the people they serve with the appropriate level of government acting as proxy shareholders.
A lot of that has more to do with our quality of government, not the type.
Tell that to CPS. One of the greenest, most efficient, and cheapest power utilities in the nation. Municipally owned and contributing about 20% of San Antonio's annual budget.
How are those utilites owned by venuture capitalists doing?
That's not necessarily true. There are a lot of other factors that would factor into that (such as how large of a military you want, how large of a government, etc). In the right mixed economy, a few socialist ventures could significantly lower taxes by providing the government with a non-tax based revenue stream (ala CPS above) while providing a service for nothing more, and potentially less than the private sector could. Either that or you operate those as government services, raises taxes to pay for them, but people don't have to pay other people for those services.
As long as it stays with just specific industries that directly service a community, a lot of the dangers you mention are non-existant.
Last edited by fyatuk; 03-24-2008 at 08:29 AM.
I cannot disagree with you more. Luckily, most of the developed world also disagrees with you.
Unofrtunately, many countries in the developing world agree with you. I wonder why?
You don't really believe this statement do you. Owned by
the people. What crap. Government controlled en ies are
controlled by the politicians and operate at their every
wish. You cite CPS in one of your post. Are you aware
that they are going to the city council for a rate hike?
Do you think city council will turn them down, no way,
puts more money in the old kitty for them to spend for
votes. You think the people of San Antonio could stop
this rate hike, no way.
Look at what you city council and SAWS has done with
the water rates. The took a plentiful water supply and
made it scarce and pricey and with all kinds of
controls.
I am quite aware. Some of the reasons for the rate hike are the desire to expand the ST plant in cooperation with NRG, and the need to continue providing San Antonio with the same revenue in the face of rising fuel costs. You probably could stop it if you could get enough people to pe ion the city council. About as easy as stopping anything else the council is planning on doing.
And the council should not turn them down, IMO. Even WITH the planned hike, CPS will still be one of the cheapest, and the money they'll raise will help fund important expansion and improvements.
I've never felt the water costs were high (the largest water bill I ever had was $35, and that was because I had a massive leak). I do agree the regional aquifer authority has forced water to feel more scarce than it should be due to its warnings, etc, that kick in a lot earlier than is needed, though. I have no idea how well they work with commercial customers, although I know they require some industrial type people to use reclaimed wastewater where it doesn't involve human consumption.
I'd have to look harder into rate comparisons before coming to a sound conclusion on them, but I'd bet a lot of SAWS problems are related to the Authority, which sets a lot of the pumping regulations and drought restrictions.
Logic. Businesses whose sole purpose is to serve the public should be controlled by the public, not be allowed to exploit it.
It's all a matter of personal tastes, though. Each system can work given the right cir stances and the right people running it. Socialism relys a bit more on the right people being in government, while capitalism relys on nobody forming a de facto monopoly.
I live in a country where the state owned everything, from utilities to TV stations.
The public never owned and recieved the crapiests services you can imagine (no power in winter, no water in summer, etc, etc)
What a load of crap!It's all a matter of personal tastes, though. Each system can work given the right cir stances and the right people running it. Socialism relys a bit more on the right people being in government, while capitalism relys on nobody forming a de facto monopoly.
Maybe Spurster can come up with a better take than this one if he stays away from using public libraries as an example of socialism.
A business's sole purpose should be to make money by providing a product or service the public needs or desires. Period.
Making money for owners and investors is the sole reason to be in business.
You can't get the right people in government and it is government regulation that leads to monopolies.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
