23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism

[Seth]

I thought that the goal was "meaningful conversation," not "solution to all the world's problems."

Clearly we're not having one here.

I'm waiting on you to actually address the issue. Let me know when you do so.

What's your alternative?

That's an unanswerable question.

That's the best you've got? I guess you're right, it's impossible to have a meaningful conversation with you because you appear to have no opinion worthy of debate. How sad.

[Animavore]

Fancy that...free market forces inducing employers to provide employment benefits beyond a simple wage. Do you suppose that they might do that because it's a good way to find and keep reliable, trained employees, thus reducing the costs of staff turnover and training?

In the US, company provided health care came about BECAUSE of FDR's Progressive agenda that limited the amount of wages that could be paid to employees during WWII. Employers, desperate to find and retain skilled and competent employees, began offering health care plans as a legal inducement because they could not offer higher wages. And today, health care coverage is nothing more than wages in another form. I guarantee you that the overall wage structure in any company that provides health care insurance is reduced by pretty much exactly what the costs of the health care program are to the company. TANSTAAFL.

And smart people turn down company health care plans in favor of higher wages, which they then use to buy their own, targeted, lower-cost health care when they need it, a catastrophic health insurance policy, and they bank the surplus. When the government doesn't interfere and forbid them to do so, that is.

I see nothing wrong with this picture.
Carry on.

[Coito ergo sum]

Read about the current trouble in Egypt. You'll find the government is using the military to "protect" the instruments of power,they have surrounded the key buildings with tanks, ie all the government departments.

You won't find a better current example of the use of force to keep an exploited and abused population down.

I don't see why I should limit examples to current events. So, what about Tiananmen Square? East Germany, 1953? Hungary 1956? Czechoslovakia 1968? ...

You are conflating totalitarianism , a political system, with communism, an economic system. ( though they weren't communist, they were statist)

When has Communism ever been anything but totalitarian?

This is an interesting issue that comes up in this discussion a lot.

The anti-communist says: communism invariably results in or entails totalitarianism like in Soviet Russia, etc.
The pro-communists say; that was really communism.

Well - from what I can tell, according to pro-communists "true" communism has never been implemented. The pro-communists generally disavow places like North Korea and other Stalinist regimes, and Maoism, because they didn't work out they way they should have.

We had a whole thread on this at one time - what's the "true" communism, then? I'm all ears. The general response I get most often is that asking for a description of what the true communism is is not really a fair question, and that there are many ways it can work out. In a lengthy thread that became argumentative, hardly anyone would even describe what the gist of the "true" communism really is.

Of all the attempts I've heard, they generally are a loosey-goosey discussion of how true communism results in the disappearance of the State completely. But, nobody can explain what that means in terms of decisions making - it seems to me that people seem to think that there will be some fundamental shift in human nature where disagreements will just disappear, people will subordinate themselves to stateless collective, and decisions will naturally result which benefit everyone equally. As soon as probing questions are asked, though, like - if there is no State, then who arrests criminals and tries them? If there is no State will there by zero taxes? Who decides what to plant and what to harvest, and what to sell and what prices to charge and what jobs people will do and what products people will sell? If there is no State, are there any laws and such.

I want to stress that I am in good faith searching and yearning for a good answer to this. People seem, in my experience, to simply have sort of a glorified notion of communism as sort of a coming utopia that will result in everyone living really well, no poverty, no hunger and everyone being equal, nobody being greedy or jealous, etc.

Seth is basically right in impliedly asserting that communism has always been totalitarian. It has. Soviet Russia was an abysmal prison state that we would hardly want to emulate. There were those in the 20s and 30s who propagated the notion that Soviet Russia was, in fact, the workers' paradise and that the bad press in the West was merely a propaganda ploy. Later it was discovered that communism didn't work in Russia.

Naturally, of course, pro-communists dismiss that as "not really communism." So, in order to continue this discussion, if we're not in agreement as to what communism is - would be to put it to the proponents thereof - can you give us a summary of what it is you define as communism, and specify if you think it has ever existed on Earth, and if so, when and where.

[PsychoSerenity]

What's your alternative?

That's an unanswerable question.
:

Well - it is answerable. If by "unanswerable" you mean that you don't have an alternative, then the answer is "none." If you have an alternative but you are unable to relate it here, then that's your answer "I have one, but can't describe it here." But, "what's your alternative" is plainly an answerable question.

Nobody could give a satisfying answer to that question. Nobody can carry in their heads the complete blueprints of a civilisation - even if they were super-brilliant, it's always a work-in-progress requiring many people. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't prefer one of the millions of possible alternatives, or have opinions on the ways we should change society.

[Seth]

Read about the current trouble in Egypt. You'll find the government is using the military to "protect" the instruments of power,they have surrounded the key buildings with tanks, ie all the government departments.

You won't find a better current example of the use of force to keep an exploited and abused population down.

I don't see why I should limit examples to current events. So, what about Tiananmen Square? East Germany, 1953? Hungary 1956? Czechoslovakia 1968? ...

You are conflating totalitarianism , a political system, with communism, an economic system. ( though they weren't communist, they were statist)

When has Communism ever been anything but totalitarian?

This is an interesting issue that comes up in this discussion a lot.

The anti-communist says: communism invariably results in or entails totalitarianism like in Soviet Russia, etc.
The pro-communists say; that was really communism.

Well - from what I can tell, according to pro-communists "true" communism has never been implemented. The pro-communists generally disavow places like North Korea and other Stalinist regimes, and Maoism, because they didn't work out they way they should have.

We had a whole thread on this at one time - what's the "true" communism, then? I'm all ears. The general response I get most often is that asking for a description of what the true communism is is not really a fair question, and that there are many ways it can work out. In a lengthy thread that became argumentative, hardly anyone would even describe what the gist of the "true" communism really is.

Of all the attempts I've heard, they generally are a loosey-goosey discussion of how true communism results in the disappearance of the State completely. But, nobody can explain what that means in terms of decisions making - it seems to me that people seem to think that there will be some fundamental shift in human nature where disagreements will just disappear, people will subordinate themselves to stateless collective, and decisions will naturally result which benefit everyone equally. As soon as probing questions are asked, though, like - if there is no State, then who arrests criminals and tries them? If there is no State will there by zero taxes? Who decides what to plant and what to harvest, and what to sell and what prices to charge and what jobs people will do and what products people will sell? If there is no State, are there any laws and such.

I want to stress that I am in good faith searching and yearning for a good answer to this. People seem, in my experience, to simply have sort of a glorified notion of communism as sort of a coming utopia that will result in everyone living really well, no poverty, no hunger and everyone being equal, nobody being greedy or jealous, etc.

Seth is basically right in impliedly asserting that communism has always been totalitarian. It has. Soviet Russia was an abysmal prison state that we would hardly want to emulate. There were those in the 20s and 30s who propagated the notion that Soviet Russia was, in fact, the workers' paradise and that the bad press in the West was merely a propaganda ploy. Later it was discovered that communism didn't work in Russia.

Naturally, of course, pro-communists dismiss that as "not really communism." So, in order to continue this discussion, if we're not in agreement as to what communism is - would be to put it to the proponents thereof - can you give us a summary of what it is you define as communism, and specify if you think it has ever existed on Earth, and if so, when and where.

You've nailed the root cognitive disconnect. Communists, when challenged with the evidence of history, resort to "dictionary Communism" much like atheists resort to "dictionary atheism" as a way to avoid culpability or recognition of the fundamental failings of the ideology.

Theoretical "perfected" Communism is indeed heaven on earth. Everyone living together in socialist harmony, loving and caring for one another in socialist solidarity, freely giving of their labor according to their ability, charitably taking only according to their modest and reasonable needs. No greed, no avarice, no sloth, no individualism, no concerns about inequality in any way, no crime, no corruption, no authoritarian central government, no classes.

It's fuckwitted utopian delusion, is what Communism is.

It fails utterly every time it's been tried for the simple reason that people are not utterly altruistic saints who will give of themselves without thought of reward, according to their ability, and they are not monks who have sworn vows of poverty which induces them to only consume in accordance with their needs.

People are selfish, cruel, greedy, self-serving, cupidinous, fearful, overbearing, hostile, friendly and an endless list of adjectives describing the faults and foibles of human nature that absolutely, categorically precludes the success of utopian Communism.

It's a flawed social theory because it utterly ignores actual human nature and behavior in favor of a theoretical human character and condition that will never, ever exist in any but the very smallest and most voluntary of situations, like monasteries.

Altruism is NOT a high-order fundamental aspect of human nature. Maslow identified the basic human needs, and altruism falls far down on the list.

Human beings will satisfy their own individual needs before they act altruistically towards others. Socialism fails to recognize this fundamental fact of human nature.

What this means in the practical sense is that socialism is a least-common-denominator system that induces people to do the least possible amount of work in order to get the greatest possible share of resources. This situation is induced because there is no reward for excellence or hard work. Any success that the individual achieves is redistributed to others, and soon the individual ceases to excel and begins to do only the minimum required to get by. No society can be prosperous when everyone is doing the least possible amount of work because there is no inducement to do more.

And as the dependent class grows, and more and more people become idle as production decreases and industry stultifies, the burden on the productive class increases exponentially, and the downward spiral accelerates, until starvation is barely avoided and the government, rather than disappearing into a classless society, becomes ever-more class conscious and authoritarian as it struggles to control the outrage of the dependent class, which has been denied the promised largess from the backs of the productive class.

Eventually the utopian ideal disintegrates into authoritarian oppression and genocide as the government tries to hold on to power with ever more force.

That's exactly the course that the Soviet Union followed, and it's the course that every socialist nation will inevitably follow when the society runs out of money and resources it can extract from the producive class to support the dependent class.

Intelligent Communists know this, but don't care. They are in it to be in charge, and to enjoy the perks of being in the elite class and in control of the lumpen proletariat for as long as the ride lasts. They gild their parachutes and stash away the cumshaw in their dachas in the woods and Swiss bank accounts, and when the society descends into chaos and murder, they pull the ripcord and disappear...or if they are unlucky, they get their heads put on a pike in Red Square or its local equivalent.

[Seth]

What's your alternative?

That's an unanswerable question.
:

Well - it is answerable. If by "unanswerable" you mean that you don't have an alternative, then the answer is "none." If you have an alternative but you are unable to relate it here, then that's your answer "I have one, but can't describe it here." But, "what's your alternative" is plainly an answerable question.

Nobody could give a satisfying answer to that question. Nobody can carry in their heads the complete blueprints of a civilisation - even if they were super-brilliant, it's always a work-in-progress requiring many people. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't prefer one of the millions of possible alternatives, or have opinions on the ways we should change society.

What unintellectual hogwash. "I can't solve all the problems of the world, so I'm not even going to discuss it." Why are you even bothering to post here?

[PsychoSerenity]

What unintellectual hogwash. "I can't solve all the problems of the world, so I'm not even going to discuss it." Why are you even bothering to post here?

Don't worry I won't bother to discuss anything with you any more, if you are going to misrepresent what I say to such an extent. But I don't blame you. It's like I said, - incompatible world views. I would completely believe you if you said you didn't think you were misrepresenting my words.

[.Morticia.]

Read about the current trouble in Egypt. You'll find the government is using the military to "protect" the instruments of power,they have surrounded the key buildings with tanks, ie all the government departments.

You won't find a better current example of the use of force to keep an exploited and abused population down.

I don't see why I should limit examples to current events. So, what about Tiananmen Square? East Germany, 1953? Hungary 1956? Czechoslovakia 1968? ...

You are conflating totalitarianism , a political system, with communism, an economic system. ( though they weren't communist, they were statist)

When has Communism ever been anything but totalitarian?

there has never been communism


there has been socialism , or part socialism at various times and places

what you are misrepresenting as communism is statism

a bit of study should have told you that

[.Morticia.]

Read about the current trouble in Egypt. You'll find the government is using the military to "protect" the instruments of power,they have surrounded the key buildings with tanks, ie all the government departments.

You won't find a better current example of the use of force to keep an exploited and abused population down.

I don't see why I should limit examples to current events. So, what about Tiananmen Square? East Germany, 1953? Hungary 1956? Czechoslovakia 1968? ...

You are conflating totalitarianism , a political system, with communism, an economic system. ( though they weren't communist, they were statist)

When has Communism ever been anything but totalitarian?

This is an interesting issue that comes up in this discussion a lot.

The anti-communist says: communism invariably results in or entails totalitarianism like in Soviet Russia, etc.
The pro-communists say; that was really communism.

Well - from what I can tell, according to pro-communists "true" communism has never been implemented. The pro-communists generally disavow places like North Korea and other Stalinist regimes, and Maoism, because they didn't work out they way they should have.

We had a whole thread on this at one time - what's the "true" communism, then? I'm all ears. The general response I get most often is that asking for a description of what the true communism is is not really a fair question, and that there are many ways it can work out. In a lengthy thread that became argumentative, hardly anyone would even describe what the gist of the "true" communism really is.

Of all the attempts I've heard, they generally are a loosey-goosey discussion of how true communism results in the disappearance of the State completely. But, nobody can explain what that means in terms of decisions making - it seems to me that people seem to think that there will be some fundamental shift in human nature where disagreements will just disappear, people will subordinate themselves to stateless collective, and decisions will naturally result which benefit everyone equally. As soon as probing questions are asked, though, like - if there is no State, then who arrests criminals and tries them? If there is no State will there by zero taxes? Who decides what to plant and what to harvest, and what to sell and what prices to charge and what jobs people will do and what products people will sell? If there is no State, are there any laws and such.

I want to stress that I am in good faith searching and yearning for a good answer to this. People seem, in my experience, to simply have sort of a glorified notion of communism as sort of a coming utopia that will result in everyone living really well, no poverty, no hunger and everyone being equal, nobody being greedy or jealous, etc.

Seth is basically right in impliedly asserting that communism has always been totalitarian. It has. Soviet Russia was an abysmal prison state that we would hardly want to emulate. There were those in the 20s and 30s who propagated the notion that Soviet Russia was, in fact, the workers' paradise and that the bad press in the West was merely a propaganda ploy. Later it was discovered that communism didn't work in Russia.

Naturally, of course, pro-communists dismiss that as "not really communism." So, in order to continue this discussion, if we're not in agreement as to what communism is - would be to put it to the proponents thereof - can you give us a summary of what it is you define as communism, and specify if you think it has ever existed on Earth, and if so, when and where.

communism is an economic system that is classless, ie, no proletariate and no bourgeoisie


just look up marxists.org

this isn't secret knowledge

[Seth]

communism is an economic system that is classless, ie, no proletariate and no bourgeoisie


just look up marxists.org

this isn't secret knowledge

No, Communism THINKS it's a classless economic system. "Dictionary Communists" who, like you, ignore the realities of how Communism actually works in the real world in favor of abstract utopian theories WISH Communism was a classless economic system, but it's not, and never has been, in any iteration ever tried, which universally have ended up in totalitarian tyranny and genocide.

[Seth]

there has never been communism


there has been socialism , or part socialism at various times and places

what you are misrepresenting as communism is statism

a bit of study should have told you that

Right. Every single attempt at Communism has failed at State Socialism, tyranny, genocide, death and destruction.

There has never been "Communism" and there will NEVER BE "Communism" precisely because it's a fuckwitted utopian delusion that credulous ignoramuses think sounds great because they are too bone-headedly stupid to spend a moment of time actually studying human behavior and how social systems actually work, and don't work.

Unfortunately, that doesn't stop delusional credulous nitwits from lapping up the Marxist propaganda and regurgitating on command like Pavlov's dogs.

[.Morticia.]

communism is an economic system that is classless, ie, no proletariate and no bourgeoisie


just look up marxists.org

this isn't secret knowledge

No, Communism THINKS it's a classless economic system. "Dictionary Communists" who, like you, ignore the realities of how Communism actually works in the real world in favor of abstract utopian theories WISH Communism was a classless economic system, but it's not, and never has been, in any iteration ever tried, which universally have ended up in totalitarian tyranny and genocide.

the Paris Commune ( which was semi socialist ) ended in genocide

So how's that capitalism working fer ya? Hitler was capitalist, so was Mussolini.

rwanda, that was capitalist

etc etc

I know. Apartheid South Africa. That's a shining example of capitalism.

[.Morticia.]

btw, it's great hearing all those old debunked arguments spoken with such certainty

[Seth]

btw, it's great hearing all those old debunked arguments spoken with such certainty

Bald assertions do not equal "debunking" of anything, Morticia. Do you actually know anything substantive about your own ideology? Do you have any basis of knowledge other than the propaganda you've clearly been indoctrinated with? Have you ever read Marx or Engles beyond a few quotes from the Communist Manifesto? If so, your rhetoric certainly does not indicate even a passing knowledge of what Marx actually wrote or believed.

I have read Marx and Engles works. I plowed my way through "Das Kapital" despite it's nearly impenetrable and turgid logic, if one can call it that. I've read the Communist manifesto and many other works by Marx, and I can boil his entire ideology down to one, single narrow and brittle column that holds up the entire edifice of Marxism and socialism.

Marx's entire theory of capital is not a rational examination reaching a conclusion guided by the facts, it's a pre-determined conclusion that Marx spent hundreds and hundreds of pages trying to justify after the fact, and that conclusion is completely based in his personal distaste and antipathy for the "bourgeoisie merchant class" and the hereditary aristocracy of Germany that he lived under.

It boils down to this one fundamental and fallacious principle: That risk is not "work" and therefore return on the investment of capital, such as profit, rents and interest, are illegitimate enrichment of the bourgeoisie merchant class and theft of the labor of the working class.

That's it. Everything he wrote and spoke about is based in that single fragile reed. And if that reed fails, his entire philosophical edifice and all that is built upon it comes crashing down to destruction.

And that reed fails because Marx never rationally justifies why the risk inherent in capital investment is not deserving of reward in the form of profits, rents and interest. He asserts it, but never rigorously proves his claim, despite spending tens of thousands of words in the attempt. His entire body of work in Das Kapital is focused on "proving" that return on capital investment is "unfair" to the laborer. But "fairness" is not a mathematical relationship, it's a social one.

Nor does he acknowledge that without a potential return on investment, capital will not be placed at risk. Why should it? We see precisely that happening in the banking industry today. Regulatory uncertainty and uncertainty about the potential for confiscatory taxation has kept all that bailout money granted to the banks in the vaults. Businesses are doing the same thing. They are hoarding cash and not expanding their businesses because they quite rationally and reasonably fear a regulatory and tax climate that will simply seize their capital and redistribute it to serve some Marxist Progressive social agenda. The risk is too great for business or banks to invest their capital because the return on that investment is too speculative in this regulatory climate.

And without the reward of return on capital investment, through the assumption of reasonable and calculable risks, the economy flounders and people lose their jobs. That's what happens when Marxist dictators take over. Nobody is willing to invest in Venezuela because Chavez is an unpredictable Marxist dictator who is highly likely just to seize and nationalize their capital investment, as he's done several times already. The same is true of Greece, Spain, Portugal and to some extent the United States.

Investment capital flows away from taxes and government redistribution schemes to places where risk is mitigated, and if no such places exist, then money sits in a vault somewhere until opportunities for return on capital investment open up.

By failing to accept that capital investment risk is a legitimate form of "work," and that profits, rents, and interest are the "fruits of the labor" of risking investment capital, Marx's entire system collapses of its own weight, and so do all societies based upon his economic principles and political beliefs. Eventually.

There's a free lesson in Marxism for you. Perhaps this will stimulate you into actually learning about your claimed ideology. Probably not, but I remain eternally hopeful.

[.Morticia.]

tell someone who cares