Why Isn't Communism Viewed As Negatively as Nazism?

[Scot Dutchy]

Their definition of democracy is very loose. The UK is not a democracy in comparison to this country. (I am not flag waving this time) For me there are a few fundamentals; all votes are equal. This is where constituency systems fail. They are not the same size and have different number of voters. They are also prone to gerrymandering. The tories have done it for years.
Here is Paddy Ashdown's speech in 1999 after the Jenkins Committee issued its report. It is an interesting read regarding the changes proposed but never made of course (the last thing the tories would do) Also he describes the benefits of PR.

RSA Lecture, London 1999

[Forty Two]

Their definition of democracy is very loose. The UK is not a democracy in comparison to this country. (I am not flag waving this time) For me there are a few fundamentals; all votes are equal. This is where constituency systems fail. They are not the same size and have different number of voters. They are also prone to gerrymandering. The tories have done it for years.
Here is Paddy Ashdown's speech in 1999 after the Jenkins Committee issued its report. It is an interesting read regarding the changes proposed but never made of course (the last thing the tories would do) Also he describes the benefits of PR.

RSA Lecture, London 1999

This is silly. In a federated system, the people of each individual state have their own separate state governments, and the states elect the President. That doesn't mean it's not a democracy, or that the votes are not equal. The votes of people in New Jersey are all equal to each other, and the votes of people in New Mexico are all equal to each other. But, it's not the voters that elect the President, it's the States themselves. When it comes to a representative in Congress, they represent districts, which is normal in a democracy, and the people in the district vote for the person to go represent them in Congress.

Just because it's different from the Dutch system doesn't make it undemocratic.

In the UK, they have a representative system too, only in the Parliamentary sense. It's plenty democratic. Again, different from the Dutch, but who gives a fuck. The Dutch system ain't perfect neither.

[Forty Two]

To begin with, capitalist markets are not level playing fields. Once one or more major players in any industry are on the scene their clout makes it next to impossible for new players to enter. It's like big weeds basically suffocating smaller ones.

Friedman does not ignore the issue of monopoly:



Now, FA Hayek, whose view I am more partial to, suggests an important role for government intervention which I agree with, and which I think you agree with. That would be to ensure that the foundations of a free market economy are in place. So, it would be the role of the government to prevent anticompetitive behavior of large monopolistic companies from engaging in exactly the anticompetitive behavior you described.

Harmonizing the two views - Friedman asserts that monopolies will self-destruct, because their existence creates incentives for market players to destroy the monopoly. Using the example of the airline monopolies, there were no new routes from 1930 to the 1980s, and then when deregulation happened, suddenly there were tons of new airlines coming in and undercutting the big, cumbersome monopolistic/oligopolistic ones. It was the government that propped up the monopolies for 50 years! FA Hayek would add that if a circumstance came about where one airline was so big it was distorting the competitive market, then the government could and should act to reestablish the competitive market. Friedman's thought is that if the government will just refrain from helping the monopoly, then it will ultimately fail.

And, both of them have decent points. Friedman is not far off. The usual industries cited to be improper monopolies in the the US were government supported. The companies get big, buy the politicians and then they use the law to stifle competition. So, in that sense Friedman is right. But, I think Hayek's view has a bit to favor it, in that we shouldn't have to wait until there is a monopoly and then wait for it to come crashing down or for small players to chip away. I think that there is a role for government to keep companies from being too big to fail. And, by the government having the goal to maintain the competitive market, it keeps itself from being owned by a large player or players.

[Sean Hayden]

Did I read that right? I only glanced at it. But it looked like the US was a full democracy until Trump got elected when it became a flawed democracy.

Is that right?

God, I hope that isn't right. That'll be right up there with Obama's peace prize in terms of silly cunts elsewhere giving a bit of approval or disapproval in the hopes of influencing them poor dumb mericans.

The report explains that it wasn't the election of Trump that affected the score for the US, despite claims to the contrary by people who apparently haven't bothered to read the report. Why would you trust the hearsay of members of this site when you could read the report yourself? It's freely available. To get it directly from the EIU, a person would have to register an account with them. However other places have put it up for public viewing (here for instance).

Popular trust in government, elected representatives and political parties has fallen to extremely low levels in the US (See Box: A trust deficit is undermining democracy, page 14). This has been a long-term trend and one that preceded the election of Mr Trump as US president in November 2016. By tapping a deep strain of political disaffection with the functioning of democracy, Mr Trump became a beneficiary of the low esteem in which US voters hold their government, elected representatives and political parties, but he was not responsible for a problem that has had a long gestation. The US has been teetering on the brink of becoming a “flawed democracy” for several years, and even if there had been no presidential election in 2016, its score would have slipped below 8.00.

Yeah, maybe. But trust reached lows years ago and the movement has been up and down along those lows ever since. Also, just look at what the bulk of the report actually says. I might go through in more detail later.

Report title:

Revenge of the “deplorables”

A particularly telling bit:

The predominant response among political elites to the events of 2016 (Trump's win and Brexit) has been to rue the
popular backlash against the democratic order and to interpret it as a threat to the future of liberal
democracy. Some have even questioned whether ordinary people should be trusted to make decisions
about important matters such as the UK’s membership of the EU. Yet the popular backlash against
the established order can also be seen as a consequence, not a cause, of the failings of contemporary
democracy. We explore the various factors that led to the 2016 backlash in the section entitled The
roots of the contemporary crisis of democracy.

*bolded bit mine

I feel like I need a bath after reading that, and it's actually worse before that bit!

[pErvinalia]

Everything has to be at least a bit clickbaity these days. People only have so many hours of social media a day to read all their fake news. So they need to be dazzled by titles!

[Sean Hayden]

Oh come on perv. Read the thing, it's the title for a better reason.

[pErvinalia]

Nah. I'm going to bed.

[Hermit]

To begin with, capitalist markets are not level playing fields. Once one or more major players in any industry are on the scene their clout makes it next to impossible for new players to enter. It's like big weeds basically suffocating smaller ones.

Friedman does not ignore the issue of monopoly:

In the clip you linked to he talks about monopolies or oligopolies protected by government regulation. H e says nothing whatsoever about the ones that are created by free market conditions themselves. Believe me, the freight transport industry in Australia has not become a de facto duopoly. TNT and Toll have been steamrolling smaller, and even medium sized trucking companies for decades, sometimes employing the method I described above. This not the result of government regulation. How would Hayek have dealt with that? By telling naughty big company: "No, you can't underbid the small guy's freight rates?" What's so"free market" about that?

[JimC]

It's the corporate equivalent of "nature red in tooth and claw"...

[Animavore]

There's good people on both sides.

[Brian Peacock]

[Scot Dutchy]

In communism you dont have sides which is the whole point which capitalists cant get their head around.

[pErvinalia]

There's good people on both sides.

Yay, Ani's back! We need you, bro, the right wingers are getting a bit above their stations.

[Animavore]

There's good people on both sides.

Yay, Ani's back! We need you, bro, the right wingers are getting a bit above their stations.

A little bird told me they were throwing shade at the Parkland students. I guess the only way is up now.

[Forty Two]

To begin with, capitalist markets are not level playing fields. Once one or more major players in any industry are on the scene their clout makes it next to impossible for new players to enter. It's like big weeds basically suffocating smaller ones.

Friedman does not ignore the issue of monopoly:

In the clip you linked to he talks about monopolies or oligopolies protected by government regulation. H e says nothing whatsoever about the ones that are created by free market conditions themselves. Believe me, the freight transport industry in Australia has not become a de facto duopoly. TNT and Toll have been steamrolling smaller, and even medium sized trucking companies for decades, sometimes employing the method I described above. This not the result of government regulation. How would Hayek have dealt with that? By telling naughty big company: "No, you can't underbid the small guy's freight rates?" What's so"free market" about that?

Here in the US, there really isn't a monopoly that arose in the free market. In every case I can think of, the government propped them up. Friedman notes two non-government supported/created monopolies, New York Stock Exchange (from 1865 to 1934), and the DeBeers Diamond company. Can you name any others?

They're going to do it again with Facebook. Just watch.

Hayek would allow government regulation where it is to protect the foundations of a free market. In other words, he recognizes the need for occasional busting of monopolies in order to ensure market competition.

There are basic assumptions under which a free market operates. If the situation arises where one of those basic assumptions is no longer present, then something needs to be done.

Free market doesn't mean anarchy, even to Friedman. A free market capitalist society won't exist outside of regulation by a government, because the government has to enact foundational laws and regulations, at a bare minimum. What is property law? What money is to be used? How are stocks and bonds traded? What are the liabilities for violation of the law? What is fraud? Is it against the law to breach a contract? What contracts must be in writing to be enforceable? What intellectual property is protected and how? Many of these laws and regulations are taken for granted, but they aren't. They are government regulations. Another set of laws/regulations to create and maintain the structure of free market capitalism is antitrust laws and the like.

One can just as easily say "what kind of a free market is it that has laws and regulations about trespass and fraud?"

Underbidding is one thing, but anticompetitive underbidding, like when Chinese companies dump products on the US market for well under the cost of production is quite another.