Should Communism Be Declared A Criminal Ideology?

[Rum]

And of course all of it is people fucking about and coping as best they can until they fall over.

[pErvinalia]

Capitalism is in trouble with the ballooning national and private debt loads, and the growing under employment from automation and offshoring of jobs. Something is going to pop again in the not to distant future.

[Seabass]

42's logic is spectacular. Everything that isn't 100% socialist is capitalist. Using that sort of logic it's easy to claim any and all successes as due to capitalism.

And using that "logic", he votes for the political party that would dismantle everything that makes the US economy a mixed one.

[pErvinalia]

Well he is a free market capitalist, so that's not surprising.

[Hermit]

Wrong thread. This propaganda piece belongs to the one titled Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty or maybe Spontaneous Order and Creative Destruction. Or you could start yet another one, which I suggest you name something like "Out Of Private Greed Arises Public Good Like The All-Good Capitalist Phoenix Out Of the All-Bad Communist Ashes". Thanks for explaining, though, why there were no pencils in revolutionary Russia and China.

As to the clip itself, I agree with aspects of it. Adam Smith's metaphoric "the invisible hand", self-interest, has blindly wrought a humongous amount of benefits to humankind. Even Karl Marx showered fulsome praise on capitalism, then in its infancy, for its productive power that feudalism could never hope to come anywhere near to. From the Communist manifesto:

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground--what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?

The clip illustrates very nicely how individual self-interest spontaneously creates unintended and unforeseen benefits. Where it fails, and that failure is spectacular, is to imply the conclusion that capitalism is best left to its own devices, unfettered by government laws and regulations. It does so by being fundamentally, intentionally dishonest. The dishonesty is perpetrated via omission. While it correctly illustrates how individual self-interest spontaneously creates unintended and unforeseen benefits, it deliberately omits to point out that not all effects of self-interest is beneficial, and that some of the undesirable effects cannot be dealt with without government regulations and laws. To pick a small example, consider the London smog. It was a human-made phenomenon, the result of coal-fired power stations and thousands of households keeping warm by burning low-grade, sulphurous coal and it was an ongoing problem for many years. It was first noted in the 13th century. The smog reached crisis point in December 1952, when it descended on the city for four days. During those four days 4,000 people had died as a direct result of the smog and 100,000 more were made ill by the smog's effects on the human respiratory tract. More recent research suggests that the total number of fatalities was considerably greater; about 6,000 more died in the following months as a result of the event (linkiepoo). It could not have been dealt with without government legislation, such as the City of London (Various Powers) Act 1954 and the Clean Air Acts of 1956 and 1968, and the government's financial incentives aimed at householders to switch from coal to gas.

Unfettered capitalism, as animavore and Seabass keep pointing out, can be as disastrous to humankind as the state capitalism, incorrectly labelled communism, in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the People's Republic of China. I will always prefer a mix of both, hopefully consisting of the better aspects of each - taking individual initiative and the necessary freedom to exercise it from capitalism and government regulation, including the ability to use force to ensure it is obeyed, from socialism.

[pErvinalia]

Isn't this communism?
Luxembourg is set to become the first country in the world to make all its public transport free.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... -9JKCFh8qg

Not really - but Luxembourg makes the point. It is easy to provide free stuff when you live in a state of plenty. Luxembourg is a country where the average person makes like $110,000 per year, as the second highest per capita GDP in the world, and is ranked as the 14th freest economy in the world. It's capitalist economy allows it to do this.

Luxembourg's national debt is 6,300% of GDP. Go capitalism!

[DRSB]

Capitalism is in trouble with the ballooning national and private debt loads, and the growing under employment from automation and offshoring of jobs. Something is going to pop again in the not to distant future.

A glaring example is Switzerland. The unemployed numbers are fake news because they do not include the persons no longer on count at the unemployment offices. They do not use the ILO standard and use their own instead.

There was more good news about the Swiss job market in July with the official unemployment rate coming in at a healthy 2.4 percent, according to the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).

The figure of 106,000 people out of work last month was the lowest since the global economic crisis kicked off in autumn 2008 and means 28,000 people have left the jobless queues in the last 12 months.

But a new analysis by the Federal Statistics Office (FSO) detailed in Swiss weekly NZZ am Sonntag suggests Switzerland's real unemployment rate may be double the official figure of 2.4 percent – at 4.9 percent.

https://www.thelocal.ch/20180813/real-s ... ure-report

The persons that "have left the jobless queues" have not found jobs but are burning through savings until they become eligible for welfare at which point they drop from the SECO-stats altogether.

[pErvinalia]

Same thing in Australia and the US. Real un(der)employment is usually 2 to 3 times the official rate.

[L'Emmerdeur]

I read this critical analysis of the 'I, Pencil' propaganda piece (as Hermit astutely describes it) years ago.

'I Pencil: A product of the mixed economy (updated)'

My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon.

That would probably be in a forest managed by the US Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management, or maybe a similar state agency.

And why is this? Starting in the late 19th century, the US government (most notably under Theodore Roosevelt) judged that the nation’s forests were not likely to be adequately managed to ensure a supply of timber for, among other things, the production of pencils for future generations if they relied on existing private property rights and the workings of the invisible hand. Similar judgements have been made in Australia and many other countries. That is, the production of pencils in the US in the 1950s depended, to a substantial extent, on conscious planning undertaken 50 years ago.

...

The pencil goes on to mention “all the persons and the numberless skills” that are involved in forestry and in the various subsequent stages of production. Most of those people would have acquired their basic skills in public schools, and learned more in colleges, trade schools and so on, mostly public or publicly funded.

...

Next up is the rail trip to San Leandro California. Read’s pencil doesn’t mention the line, but it’s presumably on the network of the Union Pacific Railroad, created by Act of Congress under Abraham Lincoln, with the plan of building a railway line across the US. Reliance on the invisible hand to produce coherent railway networks was a failure wherever it was tried, and the same is proving true today wherever governments seek to turn the road network over to private toll road operators. In complex transport networks, a fair degree of central planning is in fact necessary.

And, while we learn how the pencil is produced by sandwiching a graphite tube between two wooden slates, the pencil forgets to mention its invention and patenting by Nicolas Conte in the late 18th century. The patent system is a temporary government-created monopoly, and a classic example of the mixed economy.

[DRSB]

And worse is coming as agreements with the EU have not been reached yet and if they get signed, they will be very unfavourable for Switzerland.
As of today, the status is still: no trading of Swiss securities on EU-stock exchanges, no access to Swiss banks to the EU-market. The Swiss government plays the delay-card but subsequent variants of the agreements are usually even worse: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/let-s-make ... l/44598416

[rainbow]

Doesn't she need permission from the national Worker's Committee or the Central Committee which determines the resources needed for pots and whether and how many would be made out of clay?

Nope. No central committee. Just the Free Market.
No barrier to entry due to the non-ownership of the resource.
Also anyone can own chickens, goats, cows and they all graze or browse on communal land.

You've never been to Africa, I assume.

What do you mean "no barrier to entry?" The resources are the chickens and goats and cows, so don't you have to buy those things? And chickens are fed feed, they don't graze. So, that's another resource.

Yes, so you've never been to a village in the developing world so you've actually no idea what you're talking about. Chickens and goats roam freely and feed themselves from what they can find and scratch up in the dirt. In India, I've seen pigs and cows living off discarded vegetables in the communal dump. This is the reality of most of the world's population.
Do you really know so little of the world we live in?

[rainbow]

Capitalism is in trouble with the ballooning national and private debt loads, and the growing under employment from automation and offshoring of jobs. Something is going to pop again in the not to distant future.

A glaring example is Switzerland. The unemployed numbers are fake news because they do not include the persons no longer on count at the unemployment offices. They do not use the ILO standard and use their own instead.

There was more good news about the Swiss job market in July with the official unemployment rate coming in at a healthy 2.4 percent, according to the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).

The figure of 106,000 people out of work last month was the lowest since the global economic crisis kicked off in autumn 2008 and means 28,000 people have left the jobless queues in the last 12 months.

But a new analysis by the Federal Statistics Office (FSO) detailed in Swiss weekly NZZ am Sonntag suggests Switzerland's real unemployment rate may be double the official figure of 2.4 percent – at 4.9 percent.

https://www.thelocal.ch/20180813/real-s ... ure-report

The persons that "have left the jobless queues" have not found jobs but are burning through savings until they become eligible for welfare at which point they drop from the SECO-stats altogether.

In Germany they have managed to reduce the unemployment figures by encouraging young people to study into their late 20s, and older people to retire in their early 60s. Women are encouraged to remain at home after having children for longer than before.They are then effectively taken out of the workforce, but they are not working or earning. Now the trouble is the ratio of those working to those dependent on the state and private pension funds is too low to be sustainable.

The problem is still there, but the figures look better

[DRSB]

Capitalism is in trouble with the ballooning national and private debt loads, and the growing under employment from automation and offshoring of jobs. Something is going to pop again in the not to distant future.

A glaring example is Switzerland. The unemployed numbers are fake news because they do not include the persons no longer on count at the unemployment offices. They do not use the ILO standard and use their own instead.

There was more good news about the Swiss job market in July with the official unemployment rate coming in at a healthy 2.4 percent, according to the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).

The figure of 106,000 people out of work last month was the lowest since the global economic crisis kicked off in autumn 2008 and means 28,000 people have left the jobless queues in the last 12 months.

But a new analysis by the Federal Statistics Office (FSO) detailed in Swiss weekly NZZ am Sonntag suggests Switzerland's real unemployment rate may be double the official figure of 2.4 percent – at 4.9 percent.

https://www.thelocal.ch/20180813/real-s ... ure-report

The persons that "have left the jobless queues" have not found jobs but are burning through savings until they become eligible for welfare at which point they drop from the SECO-stats altogether.

In Germany they have managed to reduce the unemployment figures by encouraging young people to study into their late 20s, and older people to retire in their early 60s. Women are encouraged to remain at home after having children for longer than before.They are then effectively taken out of the workforce, but they are not working or earning. Now the trouble is the ratio of those working to those dependent on the state and private pension funds is too low to be sustainable.

The problem is still there, but the figures look better

Yeah, Rainbow, look at this article:

https://www.beobachter.ch/arbeit/arbeit ... 5VGL-H22_o

[rainbow]

Yeah, Rainbow, look at this article:

https://www.beobachter.ch/arbeit/arbeit ... 5VGL-H22_o

Yes, I am aware of people at 55 who were offered early retirement. It seemed a good deal at the time, but now regret it as they do not have enough to live the life they expected, basically long extended holidays in Greece or Portugal. Now they can barely afford to heat their houses in winter.

[Scot Dutchy]

Yep. If your 55 out of work forget it. Here permanent contracts give protection for many. Those who unfortunately find themselves in that position often go down the ZZP (independent without personnel) road by which you can earn a certain amount of income and still get unemployment support. The whole postage and package industry in run by ZZP'ers. Some do consulting work but it is not easy