Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (151139)	9/9/2002 7:31:16 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586628

The USSR never met any of the definitions Marx had for communism. It was neither communistic nor even socialistic in nature but a good old fashion dictatorship. That's like saying its not chocolate because its ice cream. When it's chocolate ice cream. A dictatorship is the opposite of a democracy. Socialism is the opposite of capitalism. You can mix either of the political systems with either of the economic systems. Communism is basically a more extreme form of socialism. That extremism can take the form of a small self selected group who agrees to share everything in common, a marxist-lenninist government, or Marx's fantasy of a perfect society. Its not efficient. Its more efficient then any other idea that has even been imagined. That would in my opinion make it efficient. If it was inefficient it would have to be inefficient relative to something and there is nothing more efficient. I suspect we will be forced into it a different system. Capitalism is too wasteful for a world rapidly filling up and depleting its resources. Any other system ever put in to place anywhere is more wasteful. Individuals in any system (or at least any system that gives them the freedom to make their own decisions) can decide to be more or less wasteful, but junking capitalism would not only make us poorer and less free it would probably also cause a lot more environmental damage. And one of its abuses is to be exploitive. You defend this system like you defend corporations. I didn't say it abuses. I said it can be abused. Capitalism is at its most basic level simply freedom of economic interaction. If you give people freedom some of them will abuse it. That isn't the fault of freedom its the fault of the individuals who act immorally. But people will act immorally in any system. Even if you system restricts freedom to a great extent to try to limit how much people can abuse the system, the people who are imposing the limits just gain more power to be abusive. ("Who watches the watchers") Capitalism doesn't exploit people. It doesn't even normally lead to a situation where people are routinely exploited any more then they would be in any other system. Of course no system gets implemented 100% in reality. Marx's idea of communism simply could not be implemented on a large scale. Free markets have gotten much closer to implementation but even without the near inevitable (and sometimes even desirable) government interference there will always be areas of the economy that are not as flexible or transparent as the idealized simplified classical capitalist models. That's not a weakness of capitalism, recognizing it is just a recognition that real life is messy and that people are not and will not ever be perfect. They both are developed by man so its not surprising that they are flawed. Capitalism was developed by man interacting with others freely. The theories where invented by specific men, but they are more descriptive of economic reality then they are an attempt to control it. Marx's ideas are rather an attempt to impost a supposedly ideal system on to people. However, a student of American history will quickly see that the corporation has been much more exploitive over time. I disagree, but even if I accepted that statement as right it ignores the fact that corporations are not capitalism. They are actors in the market, they are not the market itself or the freedom that lets people and corporations act in it. Any system with almost 300 million people (or really more like 6 billion as we have a world wide market for goods and services) is going to have unethical, selfish, stupid, or just down right evil people and organizations participating in it. Saying the abuses are the fault of capitalism is like saying 9/11 is the fault of air travel. Relevance implies necessity...... Russia would not have been able to ignore demand for 70+ years had that demand been relevant to life in Russia. Relevance doesn't really imply necessity, but necessity does imply relevance. The fact that Russia needed to figure out where demand was but did not meant it was poorer then it would otherwise have been if it had free markets, and it could only be maintained through power and fear. But meeting the demand was so important that eventually power and fear was no longer enough, so knowing the demand was a necessity not just relevant. ...And prices would have little to do with reason for being... ...The surplus products could then be introduced into a system who's main component is capitalistic... Two incompatible parts of your idea. You can't have a capitalist main component for anything even just where the "surplus products" go, without having prices and having some importance attached to those prices. Also how do you determine what is surplus? You say "after the people's basic needs have been met", but what determines those basic needs? Enough to keep someone alive? Then most of the world's production (even if it was reduced from the harsh environmental laws you would be likely to impose) would be "surplus" and those determined by a market system (if you can drop the idea of prices not being important but if you can't then you have a logical contradiction within your idea). Actually your ideas sounds like it would be basically capitalist. You would apparently want a world wide welfare state to take care of peoples "basic needs", and more environmental restrictions on production (my interpretation of "Global resources would have to determine the level of global production", don't hesitate to correct me if I am wrong about that part), but you are not proposing a new economic theory or system. I just think eventually the world will not be able to afford capitalist excesses and inefficiencies. It seems to me like you still have a capitalist system ("The surplus products could then be introduced into a system who's main component is capitalistic") with all its inefficiencies (more efficient then anything else but no system will ever be perfect and even if it was it would be run by imperfect people) plus the extra inefficiencies in the areas that your rope off from capitalism. The one thing I am most unclear about is what your plan for the basic needs is. Is it a basic capitalist system for their production but then a welfare state to give them to everyone or do you think that some sort of government managed system would be more efficient (I think the odds of that approach 0% but you might disagree). The only other alternative I can think of is to have people produce their most basic needs themselves or with the cooperation of small groups, sort of like Neanderthal hunter gatherers but I don't think that's what your aiming for. Socialism is the theory. The fact is that it works. Its also true that it works. The fact is supported by socialist countries like Sweden. The fact is invalid or not true if you think that Sweden does not work. I believe Sweden works and therefore, that supports my fact that I think socialism works. No the facts would be something like "Sweden has a GDP per capita of X" or less specifically "the people of Sweden are fairly happy with their country". Sweden "works" largely because of the capitalist component. They have been unusually good at making the capitalist component smaller then most places that have a system that works fairly well but it is still vital for them to have the component. It produces the wealth that the government redistributes. Without it Sweden's economy would be more like that of the USSR (or even worse when you consider that that even the USSR had some capitalism, at least the black market which was huge, but also either "gray market" or on occasion completely legal capitalist activity. Tim