To be a complete bitch, Hitler *did* sell the idea of Jews as an inferior race and the idea that a war against those who made Germany worse (mostly through the Treaty of Versailles) as that of Germany and her people merely fighting to make her people the proud people they once were.
As long as you recognize it.
I would argue that no matter what Hitler said, that wasn't the real purpose of his march across Europe.
..And besides. You invoked Hitler. Direct violation of Godwin's Law.
OK, fine. But wouldn't it be a bit more fun if I continued.
Well then. Let me type out a few points, and see how you post without letting your head explode...tag partner.
This should be fun.
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As far as the thread goes, and the principles of Marxism, the whole idea is silly once you bring in the idea of human nature.
I don't think human nature is the only flaw though. I think that assuming everyone is equal is a good way to start in the whole. Everyone is different. People have different strengths and fall into different roles. Some of those roles are more important, and more marketable than others. It's just the way the cookie crumbles. The ideal of equality is a nice sentiment, but it's not pragmatic. Now, I do not endorse pigeonholing people into the role that their attributes best fit. I do believe in a Jeffersonian vision of equality, in that what makes us different is tangible, yet our rights are all the same. "All men are created equal" does not mean that everyone is the same, it means that when we are born, none of us have more or less rights than the other. It is how we exploit what is allowed within those rights that allows us to achieve a station in life.
While I wouldn't agree with Shocky that the whole point of human nature and evolution is that the one looks after himself, seeing as though Altruistic acts that benefit the whole have been shown to be reviewed favorably when in the whole Natural Selection scheme of things, we humans are pretty damn greedy. No one can deny that fact, and if you wanna try, go ahead. I'm a Deist that believes everyone is born with the ethics of God built into them, and I still think people are greedy bastards.
Maybe God is greedy too. He ruled the Heavens and that wasn't enough, so he created the Earth. God was not satisfied with having enough, and he worked to have it all. God is, in fact, a capitalist.
Simply put, the idea of a Marxist society (and any society that hinges on the group as a whole doing their fair share) is going to fail miserably, because not everyone is going to do their fair share, and not everyone is going to put forth the best effort or believe that their job as a farmer is as valuable as the man who sells subway tokens for a living. You can call it greed, laziness, whatever. I call it the death of the Marxist Manifesto.
Exactly right. I would further it to say, that in reality, some people are just more important than others. Not at birth mind you, but through hard work, opportunity, and a bit of luck, your value to society increases. I think people should be paid based on their value to society, not based on their share of the work. My theory invites creativity and innovation and progress, while the Marxist theory invites stagnation and contentment.
Now. That is not to say Capitalism, completely unregulated, is the way to go. We had unregulated capitalism. You know, during those years before the Great Depression. It didn't work out too well.
There was no safety net. Everything hung on a very thin string. The drought in the midwest was enough to unravel the whole economy. I am not against regulation, but I think we are over regulated as it is, and inviting more regulation is a bad idea in that the higher taxes are, the less people strive to be in the top group of earners. People will be content to stay at the top of the middle class instead of moving to the bottom of the elite.
And then, after those sweeping reforms, the proponents of the shitstorm that is Reaganomics decided to deregulate businesses. Maybe not to the point of Pre-Depression Era, but enough to help cause this wonderful Recession we're in.
The biggest proponent and beneficiary of Reaganomics was Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton would have made a fine Republican. The core principles of Freidman economics got ignored at the end of Clinton's time and the beginning of Bush's. Reaganomics was supposed to involve business using the extra money to hire more people, but during Clinton's time, everyone was employed, so they started stockpiling money. They decided they liked the extra money, and boards voted themselves pay raises and bonuses. People had more money, and this caused inflation, which dropped the value of the dollar. Suddenly, the middle class' money meant less, and they spent less, so then the full employment turned into 5% unemployment, which is manageable for an economy, but it also meant less devalued dollars were being spent. This encouraged people to buy on credit, which was fine, but the this also led to further devaluing of the dollar, so more people lost their jobs, and couldn't pay their debts. This led to the banks having to lay people off. The spiral continues. The point is that Friedman economics, or Reaganomics are brilliant in a dynamic economy, however, an economy that is static, or one with full employment, needs to switch away from Reagonomics which puts people to work, to a more Keynesian approach, which keeps people working. I say all this, so I can say that capitalism in its many forms is the
perfect economic system, it just needs to be adjusted from time to time to fit the current economic model. Clinton forgot to do it, and no one told Bush.
You guys can wake up now.
As I've said before, I will never know why people didn't make the logical connections of "Hey. Those unregulated businesses are what caused the Great Depression in the first place...I wonder if deregulating businesses today, when businesses have the potential to be even more powerful than they could 80 years ago, will cause the same problem." Then people complain when Obama and Bush threw trillions of dollars at it. I'm sorry, but they didn't have World War II to fall back on and expect literally trillions of dollars from.
I don't think that deregulation is to blame as much as you think it is. Business has quite a bit of power, but it can be fine deregulated as you long as you can control the value of currency. This is done not through taxation, but through economic policy. In times of fuller employment, you need to raise tariffs, because the first thing people do when they get money is what? But a Benz, buy a BMW, etc. Raising the tariffs on these cars encourages people to buy Cadillacs.
Furthermore, the unions are to blame for quite a bit of our trouble. Their constant demands for pay raises completely bypass merit based raises, as forces across the board raises. Unions do not allow businesses to control their cash flow. When you have to give everyone a raise, you ahve to raise the price of your car. This encourages people to buy foreign cars, which are comparable, but cheaper. More money leaves the US, devaluing the dollar.
Now, imagine that the proletariat in a Marxist economy is one big Union. If everyone gets a raise, the currency devalues, and this is where recessions and depressions come from, not from deregulated business.
As with Marxism, I deem the inherent flaw of Capitalism to greed. Or, at least, unregulated greed. A Capitalist society that is well regulated with common sense ethics laws should succeed. It would succeed. It was succeeding.
There are so many more factors, as described above than this newspeak definition of greed. Gordon Gekko said it best. Greed is good. Greed leads to discovery and innovation. Greed is the basis of effort. The opposite of greed is contentment, which is a euphemism for laziness.
Then you have what FTS said I would argue, Socialism. However, I argue for more of a Socialist Capitalist state.
This is more newspeak. If the government is free to take control of the industries that they deem "important," then what is to stop them from broadening their definition of important? The farms are important, so now all farm land is under government control. Well, the cereal companies aren't offering us enough to sustain all these farms, so the food makes are now government controlled. Well, it's not fair for ranchers to be members of the free market, so we get them too. Now, the supermarket has to deal with the government, and pay the prices to sustain the farmers, ranchers, and food producers. They need government funds to be solvent, and as long as they're getting this money, they stand to be controlled by the government. Well, they can't pay their private and public loans, so now the banks need help......
You see where this is heading right? You also notice that this trend is apparent in the American economy. Pretty soon, we all work for Uncle Sam (not the wily Brit, but the overly Patriotic cartoon character) and we have moved into Marxism. Only the lawyers are left working for themselves, and eventually, the proletariat turns on them.
How is this fair? A capitalist/socialist economy is just a socialist economy in its infancy.
The government gets their hands wet in regulating the companies, but they don't actually own anything.
Seems to me they make their hands bloody.
The government shouldn't be owning the store where I go to buy eggs, is what I'm saying. But, as I would argue, the state should regulate that store to make sure they aren't in violation of any basic ethics laws or that they are "too big to fail." In this world economy, there does seem to be a case of "You succeeded too well." ..Which FTS is going to jump on, I can tell right now.
I am. Why is it so bad to do well? Nancy Pelosi and her little bitch, Obama, love to demonize profits. I don't understand why. If you don't like that someone has more than you, why don't you try to get more instead of making them have less?
Now you get further, into the social aspects of such a state. I'd like to keep them how they are now, really. We give everyone the way to succeed, and we give everyone rules to follow. If you fail, then you file for Bankruptcy and start all over. However, when you fail, we aren't going to let you fall on your ass and point and laugh. We'll work with you to make sure you're eating, you're sleeping with a roof over your head, and you're at least sorta clothed. We don't need you to have electricity and heating, but we would like to keep our citizens from starving or going thirsty. Just sayin'.
I agree. I am glad there is one lefty in this world who recognizes that the opportunity is there, but nothing is given. Thank you. This is why you're my tag partner.
One would argue, as I'm sure FTS has already argued, that such a socialist state just breeds lazy bums. I call foul. Firstly, the rate of Welfare fraud in this nation is much lower than anyone seems to want to admit. It's what, 7%? If that?
That's the reported fraud. Trust me, as someone who has employed in a welfare office that the social workers have no interest in reporting fraud. They take every sob story and try to get the paperwork done in time to leave at five. Honestly, the stories you hear about people driving Escalades to get their welfare checks are true. I was in charge of placing people in job programs, and more often than not I would place someone, hear them laugh, or even outright say they weren't going to do it, and they would never show up to check in with proof of applications.
Not everyone is going out and claiming 15 children to get that nice 400 dollars a week for them. Secondly, I know plenty of people who were only on Welfare to get back on their feet. My mother, for instance, was only on Welfare for a year. That was the year she got laid off from her factory job and couldn't find any work. Once she found a job, she got off of the program. She was still on Medicare and WIC, but she had children to care for and she was barely keeping us fed AND the bills paid. If you fault her for taking a program that made sure her children with Asthma got seen and her other child with eye problems got surgery that he desperately needed, then I don't know what to say to you.
For every good story, there is a bad one. I don't think we should abolish welfare, I think we should change the culture. Instead of getting your check and then going into placement, you should have to fulfill minimum requirements to continue. If you fail to meet them, you lose your kids and get kicked out on the street. It's that simple. People on welfare don't have to do anything to continue. Some people need it, no doubt. But a lot do abuse it.
To close, there are inherent flaws to each of these systems. Essentially, it's the greed of human beings. We greedy bastards will not sit aside and accept an equal share in the Marxist ideal, we will let greed run to our heads and forget our fellow man in a Capitalist society, and we will let greed convince us to work the system in a Socialist/Welfare state. The problem is working to curb the effects greed has on the system. Of them all, I find the Socialist Capitalist route the most effective.
I find pure capitalism the best. Over regulation leads to a welfare state, a mommy state. The strength of the nation depends on innovation, and I think that socialism does not encourage innovation the way capitalism does.
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