- #106
Smurf
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Yonoz said:So does capitalism,
Yonoz said:So does capitalism,
What reason did the police have? Wasn't that factory theirs?oldunion said:They were confronted by police after order had been re-established, some of the defiant ones were killed.
This is just as likely to happen in democracy as it is an anarchy, perhaps even moreso. How would you achieve this magnificent feat?oldunion said:With a fully educated society, based upon non-partisan or indoctrinating education systems, and a lack of classism, there would be a very small possibility of a power elite taking form. there would be few means to do so, no one would stand for it immediately, and what would be their means for domination? If money was de-glamourized, and if the populous was trained in military, if they knew their rights as humans, if society was based on collective good, i don't see a power elite being able to take form.
I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but you have to get into it - it's the exact reason I see why anarchy cannot be implemented! There's no magic wand to wave and turn us all into carebares...oldunion said:And it is arguable that men want power, etc etc with social patterns. I won't get into this because it could be science or it could be societal cause.
How would it continue to exist? Without constant competition, progress will stagnate and corruption will spread.oldunion said:yes. Industry has been established, its time to make it beneficial to all. This is part of marxist philosophy. Once there is industry, it can then be made public property and beneficial to the collective good.
Again, not unique to democracy. IMO it will be much worse under communism/anarchy. In democracy people still have the power of voting.oldunion said:the central government is in close ties with the power elite, in fact i don't see a possibility of defining the central government or power elite, without exclusive interdependency- if not that a definite synergism exists and serves to benefit only those parties involved not its supporters, the people.
Mao also killed millionsoldunion said:Let me make it clear that I am not the deity of modern anarchism, i have not read tons on anarchism either. I know more about communism, but anarchism has interested me as of late. However, i do know one thing Mao said which i will repeat because of its pertinence here. He said that a struggle will develop between the intellectual and the worker, a struggle to keep them in balance with each other. He made intellectuals work, and workers learn about being intellectuals.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Reformism 1, revolutionarism 0.oldunion said:So i don't have all the answers on how anarchism works, but it is the little things that must exist for the society to debate, and learn from. this is progression. Problems are natural, when you start working a society around a system that does not have problems, that's when you truly get them.
How would I be getting all this chocolate? I want more chocolate than what is given to me.oldunion said:But your point on wanting lots of chocolate; why not?
I was obviously exaggerating, but this returns us to the argument about people's motives. You have to convince me that somehow rapists, for example, will stop raping and alcoholists will stop drinking in a society with no "laws around the predictability of human nature" as you put it.oldunion said:suddenly without laws, you submit yourself to an utter lack of dignity. i wouldn't be doing that. but interesting you say so
oldunion said:i agree, these are basic needs and predictability could be sprung off of them. but power structures present different criteria for studying behavior, and predictability could be variable.
I'll point you to my response.oldunion said:Ill point you to the post on linux, very good example.
I want to research MRI technology and need more computers than my friend who just plays video games all day. How do I get them?oldunion said:There are enough computers for everyone in the usa to have one, who knows how many could be given to everyone else in the world.
Exactly.oldunion said:This concept is a product of capitalism though.
What you're saying is - "The sharp stick did the job right - it's 'efficient'. Instead of spending time 'inefficiently' sharpening the flint tip, the hunter should hunt for other tribe members - who will do anything they like during this time. Otherwise, the hunter will have more food than other, less creative hunters - and that's inequality"oldunion said:Think of the tribal hunter. He spends more time sharpening his flint tip than would be required to just sharpening the stick. He does this because it is a more efficient way of producing a killing weapon, so he can eat.
Similarly, men would strive to make more efficient computer devices to transmit intellectual property faster, to share information more widely, to do anything more efficiently that a computer is used for. You may deduce that certain things, which go far beyond the boundaries of efficiancy would disappear. things such as ferraris, i think toyota got the job done right, and now the prius and hybrid cars will prove to be more efficient.
I guess we have to take your word for it. So far, they have only happened in capitalism.oldunion said:the wooden to mechanical pencil. these things would have happened without money as their sole motivation.
Right. What we should do is compare the ratio of contributers in the combined population of capitalist countries to that of non-capitalist countries. I think the result is still in favour of my argument.Smurf said:I think you'll find that that is completely true because oooooh 99% of the countries in the world are capitalist? (that constitutes an "overwhelming majority" too you know)
I have already described the resoning behind this in the segment about the Pentium chip. Such rapid advancement, such a variety of uses, such a widespread domestic and commercial use - could only happen in a capitalist market.Smurf said:Correlation is not causation. You are implying that the computer would not be produced or advanced under non-capitalist, non-democratic countries merely because they were produced in capitalist, democratic countries.
There is no reason for this assumption.
I do not claim everyone is equal in capitalism. However, it is just as honest as the claim about communism having equality as its highest priority. It is all a matter of theory. In theory capitalism gives everyone an equal chance to succeed, just as in theory communism means all citizens are equal. We both know that does not happen in either case.Smurf said:Oh I can't wait to hear this one. Please, explain!
Smurf said:Communism puts equality as one of the top priorities.
Yes, you said that. But why? What reason do you have to believe that those could not have occurred equally quickly and efficiently in a non-capitalist society? In counter example I could just as easily cite any number of examples of scientific and technological advances that had nothing at all do with johnny capitalist.Yonoz said:I have already described the resoning behind this in the segment about the Pentium chip. Such rapid advancement, such a variety of uses, such a widespread domestic and commercial use - could only happen in a capitalist market.
A capitalist economy is one in which the government does not interfere and people are allowed to do what they want with what they own. The flaw in capitalism is that before it's wide spread establishment there was no markets with any really large forces other than states. Therefore it was thought that as long as the state did not interfere, a person would be perfectly capable of succeeding. Now there are. The state not preventing you from succeeding is not the same as giving you an opportunity to. This is a theoretical flaw in capitalism, not an implementation problem or a loose screw.Yonoz said:In theory capitalism gives everyone an equal chance to succeed, just as in theory communism means all citizens are equal. We both know that does not happen in either case.
Okay fair enough. Communism, I think, is negative utilitarian in essense.vanesch said:That's maybe a difference then: I put "reasonable happiness for most" as one of the top priorities.
All equal but unhappy is way worse (to me) than people not equal but reasonably happy.
... duh. Aside from Cuba and North Korea there are exactly 0 (read: zero) countries in the world today with command economies. And Korean and Cuba both have sanctions on them and very few resources in their own borders. What do you expect them to do?Yonoz said:Right. What we should do is compare the ratio of contributers in the combined population of capitalist countries to that of non-capitalist countries. I think the result is still in favour of my argument.
yonoz said:What reason did the police have? Wasn't that factory theirs?
yonoz said:This is just as likely to happen in democracy as it is an anarchy, perhaps even moreso. How would you achieve this magnificent feat?
We don't need to be carebears. My point was that it could be argued as scientific fact or as societal effect. If you raised a man on another planet, where there was a government without leaders; he would be different than a man raised in the usa for example. You couldn't wage a neutral experiment on a man to decide if he wants power or other vices, because he has been raised to desire such things.yonoz said:I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but you have to get into it - it's the exact reason I see why anarchy cannot be implemented! There's no magic wand to wave and turn us all into carebares...
production could be toned down until it was sufficient to supply the populous with everything it needs, and maybe some on top of that. competition is not essential. what competition does a pioneer have? corruption is based on gains, there are no gains to be had without heirarchy or excessive wealth.yonoz said:How would it continue to exist? Without constant competition, progress will stagnate and corruption will spread.
communism/anarchy is democracy.yonoz said:communism/anarchy. In democracy people still have the power of voting.
he was a great tactician, writer, and was successful. He did what he thought he had to and i won't argue against it. Besides, every leader kills, even if they do it in a business suit and a phone call.yonoz said:Mao also killed millions
of Chinese. Pardon my disrespect.
No reformism moves to write into law the method of erradicating problems. This is a fundamental flaw of common thought. You must look at nature, yin and yang, poles of a magnet, matter-antimatter...everything has a converse. When you try to write a law forbidding one side of an issue from happening, you are giving free reign to the other. This will lead to some form of regimentation, and again, you cannot methodize life when it is by definition chaos. You must let life happen, without bounds.yonoz said:I couldn't have said it better myself. Reformism 1, revolutionarism 0.
You wouldn't need more, i look down on gluttony as a serious problem. People should be free to do what they want, but some freedoms are not necessary and infact detrimental to the rest of society. Then again, once the economy was functioning, you could probably have as much as you wanted.yonoz said:How would I be getting all this chocolate? I want more chocolate than what is given to me.
Alcoholism is a personal problem, which i believe is caused by the stresses of this society, very much. Some people genuinely have a problem, but when you stop focusing on your own agony, there is less of a desire to sit in gluttony, wasting away and being a complete waste of space. I don't think there's room for that in anarchism or communism. If you wanted to be a wastoid, i would submit my vote to have you banished from my community. Either you would learn to carry your own, or you would be gone, either way it wouldn't be mine or anyone elses problem.yonoz said:I was obviously exaggerating, but this returns us to the argument about people's motives. You have to convince me that somehow rapists, for example, will stop raping and alcoholists will stop drinking in a society with no "laws around the predictability of human nature" as you put it.
yonoz said:oldunion said:i agree, these are basic needs and predictability could be sprung off of them. but power structures present different criteria for studying behavior, and predictability could be variable.
oldunion said:Can you explain that please?
yonoz said:People have basic needs so you could predict how they would act rather easily. However, when you get into power structures, like grouping people together and giving them a goal, the difficulty in predictability becomes exponentially more difficult to calculate.
present your case to the community, partake in a vote.yonoz said:I want to research MRI technology and need more computers than my friend who just plays video games all day. How do I get them?
Quote:
Originally Posted by oldunion
Think of the tribal hunter. He spends more time sharpening his flint tip than would be required to just sharpening the stick. He does this because it is a more efficient way of producing a killing weapon, so he can eat.
Similarly, men would strive to make more efficient computer devices to transmit intellectual property faster, to share information more widely, to do anything more efficiently that a computer is used for. You may deduce that certain things, which go far beyond the boundaries of efficiancy would disappear. things such as ferraris, i think toyota got the job done right, and now the prius and hybrid cars will prove to be more efficient.
No. I was illustrating that advancements in technology are the product of need, basically. After need has been met, it is a matter of increasing efficiency to preserve resources.yonoz said:What you're saying is - "The sharp stick did the job right - it's 'efficient'. Instead of spending time 'inefficiently' sharpening the flint tip, the hunter should hunt for other tribe members - who will do anything they like during this time. Otherwise, the hunter will have more food than other, less creative hunters - and that's inequality"
Smurf said:... duh. Aside from Cuba and North Korea there are exactly 0 (read: zero) countries in the world today with command economies. And Korean and Cuba both have sanctions on them and very few resources in their own borders. What do you expect them to do?
oldunion said:Which is rather impressive considering cuba was getting aid from the ussr, and then that was cut off. Trade to the usa was cut off. They have very little resources. And yet not one child sleeps on the streets and in the usa 1 in 6 do, that's impressive.
What's more impressive is their handling of the Katrina hurricane. They managed to evacuate 1.7 million people, over one tenth their population, in just as short notice as the US had. Everyone immediately had shelter, medical care and there are no fools refusing to stay behind because they evacuate pets too with veternarians and everyone knows the state will re-imburse them for lost property - there is no fear of looting.oldunion said:Which is rather impressive considering cuba was getting aid from the ussr, and then that was cut off. Trade to the usa was cut off. They have very little resources. And yet not one child sleeps on the streets and in the usa 1 in 6 do, that's impressive.
Smurf said:What's more impressive is their handling of the Katrina hurricane. They managed to evacuate 1.7 million people, over one tenth their population, in just as short notice as the US had. Everyone immediately had shelter, medical care and there are no fools refusing to stay behind because they evacuate pets too with veternarians and everyone knows the state will re-imburse them for lost property - there is no fear of looting.
I don't mean to say Cuba's perfect, but it is impressive. Want to start a new thread?loseyourname said:I've never been to Cuba, but you're making it sound like a pretty nice place. I wonder why so many people defect or smuggle themselves out and why the Cuban population of the US hates Castro so much.
Edit: I'm not being a dick either. I am honestly curious about why this happens. I genuinely don't know jack about Cuba outside of what little I learned from watching The Godfather II.
Smurf said:I don't mean to say Cuba's perfect, but it is impressive. Want to start a new thread?
loseyourname said:Where did you get the information that 1 in 6 American children sleep on the streets?
Smurf said:A person will inherent a large sum of money from their parents. Another person will not. This is not equal opportunity, the person with a larger sum of money will get a better education, have more money to invest with, and be able to start up his own business more easily than the person with less. If the government does not give you the opportunity, you will be prevented from having it by another market force. Any change to this system will restrict private property rights and/or free market economics and is thus non-capitalist.
Smurf said:A person will be born with a higher intelligence, or better looks, or will just get lucky and, say, win the lottery. They now have an inherent and unfair advantage in the free market. They will use that intelligence to get better grades in school. They will use their better charisma to get hired for better jobs. They will use their lottery to buy favorable real estate and start their own business. The competitive nature of the free market, the basis for it is in gaining advantages, and exploiting those advantages, for gain. Therefore, someone has to lose. Someone has to become unequal.
There are some social-capitalist fools (think most democratic socialist parties) who think we have some more responsibility to provide basic needs for people. Thus we end up providing healthcare, food, shelter, and such for people if they can't support themselves. It's pretty obvious these people do not contribute to society. Why is this? Is it because they were born lazy and simply exploit the system? Hardly, it's because the system is pushing them down. If a person can not provide their own food and shelter, how are they going to compete in this intensly competitive economy? They can't.
This ends up creating a deficite and the wealthy populace is hauling all the costs of the unwealthy. They get pissed off because they think they deserve all their money because they actually succeeded in this market (nevermind the fact that most of them went to university on their daddy's money - they must've succeeded because they worked harder). So they end up electing a mini-fascist who ends cancelling all these programs.
These people are effectively being taken out of the productive society. If you have that big of a population being supported and not producing anything in turn all their ability, all their talent is lost. Those people could contribute a lot as labour, as leadership, or any other skills. But we don't let them, and so their potential for the community is lost.Yes, but is that necessarily a bad thing ? Then they simply do not take part in our society. I think that given the living standard of Western societies, we should provide them with a satisfaction of their elementary needs, because this will increase their happiness much for a reasonable price, without expecting any return from them. If they cannot compete, they "do not serve any purpose" but because they are human beings, we should have a minimum of care for them ; we should also limit damage to the next generation (lots of options here, from sterilisation to taking care of their kids). However, I don't think society should reorganize itself just to give them the feeling to be "on par" with the others. They simply have bad luck, just as being born with a genetic defect is "bad luck".
But equality is one of the most fundamental requirements for a happier society. A society with scarce (limited) resources can not function if one person is allowed to take from another, as that person will now fall farther into poverty as the other person rises above it. Capitalism requires a lower class to function. If there is not one, it will create one. If there is one, it will expand it and increase the class gap. This is the function of capitalism - it creates inequality and in doing so it creates poverty.vanesch said:I'd say that that is one of the better parts of capitalism ! That you are not doomed to be equal to your neighbour for the rest of your days...
The aim is not to become, or to be, equal, the aim is to be happy!
Smurf said:But equality is one of the most fundamental requirements for a happier society. A society with scarce (limited) resources can not function if one person is allowed to take from another, as that person will now fall farther into poverty as the other person rises above it. Capitalism requires a lower class to function. If there is not one, it will create one. If there is one, it will expand it and increase the class gap. This is the function of capitalism - it creates inequality and in doing so it creates poverty.
Smurf said:In a capitalist society if you do well one day, it increases your capacity to do well the next day. This "power leads to power" system inherently allows one class to move farther and farther away from another (and the competitive nature encourages them to do it), creating a class that is doomed to be equal to their neighbour for the rest of their days. Equally poor. It is only those that are capable already who can rise even higher - only they have "Freedom of opportunity" to move up and down.
I don't see why I have to. I was speaking of capitalist trends and forces, not of individuals. Class movement only supports my thesis because it verifies the existence of classes to begin with. He is not an exception to the rule, he is the rule - or at least part of it.Townsend said:How do you explain people who come from poverty to become rich? It happens all the time...
I think this statement rests on the assumption that a socialist state would operate exactly like a capitalist state - but with more social programs. This is the common view of socialism in the west. It is probably rooted in the many social-capitalist (social democratic) parties have advertised themselves as 'socialist' despite their vast differences from any resemblance of Marxism. I've written about it above.Townsend said:Just imagine what life would be like if it depended on some bureaucrats' filing the right paper work...that would be hell...oh wait...that would be socialism
Smurf said:I think this statement rests on the assumption that a socialist state would operate exactly like a capitalist state - but with more social programs. This is the common view of socialism in the west. It is probably rooted in the many social-capitalist (social democratic) parties have advertised themselves as 'socialist' despite their vast differences from any resemblance of Marxism. I've written about it above.
I'm sure you'll have no trouble proving it then.Townsend said:I don't think socialism is the opposite but non the less it is not an assumption that the average person living in a socialist economy will be worse off but an inescapable fact.
(my bolding)Townsend said:I don't think socialism is the opposite but non the less it is not an assumption that the average person living in a socialist economy will be worse off but an inescapable fact.
Smurf said:A person becoming rich will take money from someone else - this is because his resources are limited and so he cannot merely create wealth out of thin air.
selfAdjoint said:(my bolding)
How inescapable? What average? Average includes an awful lot of people, many of whom are not well-off at all in capitalism, as we saw from New Orleans. How is it inescapable that people like that could not be better off under some socialist government?
Bio-Hazard said:We already live in Anarchy. Maybe none of you caught my point. People are already ignorant. Cops are just a crazy cult of people who want to throw you in a cage. Their influence started to brainwash many people into believe such things as justice.
The government is just a huge mafia, no better than an L.A. street gang.
Once people start realizing that we already live in Anarchy, then they'll take action to destroy the bigger people with words and actions.
You can still maintain the being of a calm spirit, just don't pay taxes. Educate people to be educated instead of drug abusers. I'm thinking people don't understand any of this. The world is full of ignorant morons which to this day is why I want to kill every last fool on this planet.
Paper money is just that, paper. Metallic items in such a technological world provide much more value for scientific research and as usage as conductors for electronic devices. I'm assuming not a lot of people think about this. A $100 USD bill can be burned right in front of my fingers. It's paper.
Falling nations soon realized that when they burned their cash in their house just to fuel a fire.
These other government terms like socialist and everything else is just a word to have others think what you see is what it is. Just like how I see a darker shade of blue, you see a lighter shade.
Ugh.
Scientists should have more sense.