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Strategies & Market Trends : ahhaha's ahs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ahhaha who wrote (8121)	4/21/2006 6:21:16 AM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24758

We are what we think we are. We are what we do. If you imagine you are are capitalist, you are capitalist. All 'crats imagine themselves to be capitalists. No truth values there. They can imagine what they like but it doesn't change what they do. I submit that a highwayman avoids individual risk to get self gain by using cooperation, but a capitalist must seek risk for self gain using coordination. The distinction cooperation/coordination is fine one and real. I think capitalism works because of trust and coordination. Of course it's necessary to verify that someone or something is worth trusting. But I tell you if I want something from an organization, capitalist or non-capitalist, I'd rather deal with a "manager", not a "coordinator". A robber cooperates in order to avoid risk. OK If capitalists other than highwaymen are to thrive, it is necessary to extirpate highwaymen. This is a dictum coming out of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Capitalists don't thrive when there are too many highwaymen. Highwaymen should be extirpated. Au contraire, if the farmers gained "real control", they'd unintentionally return the country back to the dictatorship of the proletariat! Can't return them to what they never had. They only ever had a dictatorship which made sure the proletariat dictated nothing. A dictatorship which probably murdered at least 30 million of them. I've really tried to work out how farmers owning land would lead to the outcome you describe. Right now, they get to use the land under the sufferance of petty bureaucrats. The countryside is a cesspool of corruption and petty tyranny. What have the farmers got to risk? Why should they make significant investments in improvements? Why should they take on significant debt? This is one scenario I imagine: Since they have nothing there worth risking, large numbers of farmers are deserting the countryside for the cities. Eventually the countryside will be so deserted the government will have to give homesteading ownership rights to the farmers and bureaucrats who still remain and to businesses, and farmers willing to return. The US is in high danger of doing exactly that, and taking Canada with her, western Canada. Subsidies are pernicious. They steal from everybody. Socialism contains the seeds of both capitalism's destruction and tyranny. But non ownership of land as in China doesn't preclude subsidies and all the other trappings of socialism. Income growth at the lowest level in China is proceeding three times as fast as it is at the lowest level in the West. I hope you can appreciate what this little item means. It means they are starting practically from zero and this is a huge change because they remained at near zero for so long. So a lot of conditons there have changed and they are moving along a path of capitalist development more quickly than in the West. Or, more likely, since you are talking about the lowest level, the West is moving away from capitalist development. Then you agree with my statement that the unit of socialism is actually alienating its owners from the means of production Self evidently. if only because e.g., SBUX, doesn't try to make its employees owners. Point of fact, it does, even the baristas. It doesn't do enough of it. But I take your point with regard to other companies. The point here is that any business which has employees who aren't owners, is merely a form of socialist tyranny. Not tyranny. That requires coercion. These are volunteers. And they are free to start their own businesses. The owners use the slavery contributed by those who don't think they can own to get more than they could by themselves. Slavery is involuntary, employment with any given employer is voluntary. Ownership requires risk and not everyone is willing to take it. Don't take the risk, you only get a wage or a salary. I'm willing to bet that a coordinated effort of individuals all of whom equally own the enterprise can defeat any other form of capitalism. I've seen a worker owned company be extremely successful. It was bought by a socialist government. How could something have value if its value is constantly declining? Some annuities do until the payments stop. It's inconvenient if they stop while you're still alive. Health care programs are like that - quality constantly declines and waiting time becomes pathological. In both cases a bad product. The only value in health care is getting rid of it immediately. Folk don't do that until problems reach the disaster stage. Citizens of Stockholm finally reached that stage and (re)turned the city's health operations (back)over to businesses run by doctors and nurses. One 6 year old to another: "What are you planning for your retirement? Response: "I want to be a healthcare portfolio manager for assisted living". A fate worse than death. I overheard a couple of social worker types talking about how the next big thing to make a career out of was "elder care". Their eyes sparkled as they considered all these old codgers they could turn into "clients" and capture for their union members.