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

To: TimF who wrote (151185)	9/9/2002 8:36:18 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1586650

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. Look Tim, I don't care if the Russians called themselves a hot fudge sundae with a cherry on top. They were neither chocolate nor socialist nor communist. They were a dictatorship. In a dictatorship its all the same...... power gravitates to one man at the top. Marx, never in his wildest dreams, ever wanted that for his fantasy nation. 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. How does what you say in the paragraph above negate what I have said? 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. Do you consider the losses that individuals, companies and gov't suffer during a recession to be great examples of the capitalist economy's efficiencies? I hope not. If the capitalist system were the epitome of efficiency, those loses would not happen. I think its more efficient than most systems........I don't know if its more efficient than all existing systems. Could we improve upon its efficiency......definitely. I am unclear why you are afraid that they're might be something better out there that may exist now but is not well known, or one that has yet to be invented. 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. That's assuming there is nothing better. I don't believe that.....and I hope you don't either. 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. Capitalism encourages profit. When profit is the mantra of the entrepreneurial world, people get exploited. 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. When I was a kid, I assumed that we would be able to travel to the other stars by no later than 2200. As an adult, I suspect it may take much longer. If that's true, the only natural resources we have are in this solar system. I don't think the moons have many natural resources. Mars and Venus might.......maybe the asteroids too. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus et al. are too big and extraction from them probably will be impossible way into the future. Even if the planets like Mars and Venus have a wealth of natural resources like Earth, they may be too far to make extraction cost effective for the next two hundred years. If that's true, we may be limited to Earth and her existing resources. In other words, we will be screwed if we keep using like we are today. No one can predict the future but in the end, everything is finite. Capitalism was great when the limits seemed infinitesimal.......but that was a hundred years ago. 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. Corps. are a byproduct of capitalism. Their fortunes are intertwined. 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. You assume Russia was poor because it did not have a capitalist system. In fact, Russia was poor because it place its priorities in things that garnered it prestige and power, and because it siphoned its wealth off to the oligarchs, and consequently, its people were starving and given no real incentive to work harder. Capitalism may save them......but truly what will save them is a less corrupt system and a more equal sharing of the country's wealth. ...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). Tim, I was speculating based upon the question you asked. I am not going try to defend it especially when anything non capitalistic automatically gets your ding. ted