Alternative to capitalism?

[klif]

My second post here and I jump into a politic thread!


It really amazes me how seemingly smart and otherwise "normal" people can fall for the leftist/communist trap. I guess they did a good job when they infitrated our schools and univerisities.

I can understand some third world person, not educated, living in a cardboard hut, eating beatles, and then someone hands them an AK47 and says "let's kill that guy in the big house and redistribute his wealth to everyone." Sure sounds good in the beginning. What the Univerisity PhD's do not realize is, once "the people" are in control, they kill the educated ones first. Cambodia is a good example. After all, they do not want those teachers stirring up trouble like they had been.

It all falls back to "liberal guilt" and the ego feeding. Leftist all have this personal belief that somehow they are more "moral" than everyone else because they "care" about the little people. So that way they can talk down to people that do not agree with them, and act like everyone else is stupid. It's also an easy cop-out for their own failures. "It's not my fault, the evil imperialistic/capitalistic/government/corporation/etc. caused this!"

It's really sad. The poorest of the poor in the USA have a better standard of living than most of the world's middle class. Our middle class is rich compared to the rest of the world. Our rich are richer than kings in other countries.

Most of you communists keep harping on "wealth" like everyone in the USA is having a race for wealth and stepping on each other to get there. That is so far from the truth it isn't even funny. The majority of people strive for a good standard of living to raise a family. They do not strive to be the next Bill Gates. They just want to be able to live decent, raise children, have fun, live a long life, die peacefully, and leave a little something for their kids. There is no other place in the world where this is as easy to do than the USA, right now.

 

[Don Roley]

Roughly in reverse order:

1. No reason to, "distrust, despise, hate or vilify any group or class out of hand," eh? How exactly do you folks feel about, say, Nazis--as long as we're being hyperbolic? (Memo: interesting that the mind should jump to, "Muslims," in association with a) bias, b) political correctness, c) the notion of the enemy.)

People choose to be Nazi's based on their political and social views. To accept naziism is to know that it despises jews. People can be born to nazi families and grow up to be non-nazis. And being part of naziism is to accept the central core of hatred. I could say the same thing about the KK, Islamic Jihad or any other orginization that had a central principle you had to accept in order to join of your own violation. I see no such principle or membership appliction for the rich. You can be born rich, or you can be Tiger Woods and become it. You do not have to sign up to do some evil deed in order to join the club.

To be born muslim, or rich, is not to accept a standard of hatred and such that joining the nazi party entails.

2. If you'll actually read what I wrote, you might see that there's no, "hatred," involved--only a claim that a) as individuals and as a class, "the rich," are no better than you and I;

No one is saying that they are better than us. The thing is, you are saying that the entire class should be treated worse than us- with scorn. We do read hatred in your words, even in this post, towards those who have more than you.

b) their "greater success," comes at other people's expense, and not at all necessarily through their own efforts. Oh yes--and a hideous suggestion that folks actually learn about the history of their country and the economic system they espouse.

Common fallicy to believe and espouse that one person can only succeed at by taking away from another. If Bill Gates did not produce the product he did, we would bnot have all the computers in our houses that we do. He offered a product, we bought, he did not stick a gun to our heads to accept computers.

3. The claim that the Donald Trumps and Michael Eisners and Dan Quayles of the world are the victims here, the poor sufferers who must face the bigotry of their oppressors every day, remains remarkable. However, it is very similar to the goofball claims that men are now the victims of feminists, white guys are oppressed by the ACLU and the NAACP, heterosexual men are being picked upon by those gosh-darn gay people, and on and on and silly on. I recommend a day or two holed up with Naomi Wolf's, "Backlash."

Take a look at the world and your own statements in this thread. No one is bashing any economic group other than the rich. The only hatred is towards them. What some of us want is for everyone to be treated equally, whther they be poor or rich.

4. We don't have an aristocracy? Really. How much did Bill Gates spend on his house in, where was it, Oregon? Does my browser typically feature the intellectual exploits of some poor kid who made, say, the National Academic Decathlon team, or gasping comments about the J-Lo wedding? I drive by one of that loser Trump's casinos every day--how come HE'S still in business, if it's pure meritocracy?

Because many more people than you decided to give them money. You may think that they do not deserve your money and you are free not to give it too them. I certainly will not pay for a J-Lo album. But other people have the freedom to do with their money as they please and as much as that may stick in your craw that they choose to give it to IBM, you don't have the right to control them because you believe you are more qualified to determeine how they should spend their money.

5. If everybody has equal opportunity, that would mean that kids at community colleges get equal education opportunities--and subsequently, employment choices--with, say, Ivy League kids. Anybody out there stupid enough to believe that one? If so, please send me 20 bucks. I will send the Tooth Fairy to your house, and she and the Easter Bunny will be bringing your fat check. (Note: I believe that I can confidently say that I am the only person on this thread who has taught extensively in both Ivy League and community college settings. And ya know what? Smarts and hard work are NOT, repeat NOT, the major things that separate these students.)

People who have more money can buy better things, including education. I wish I could have gone to Harvard, but I could not have done it without violating the rights of another by taking the money they earned or was given them. And in collectivist societies so far, the elite's children get better education than the masses just as much as in capitalist societies.

6. Yes, yes, yes. I know, I know. It's the, "few bad apples," fantasy, right? That fixes everything. Sure there are abuses, but it's just a Few Bad Apples. There were abuses of prisoners in Iran, but it's just a Few Bad Apples. Enron happened, Bhopal happened, French pharmeceutical makers knowingly sold HIV-infected blood products to hemophiliac kids, Bechtel cheated to get Iraq contracts, ITT helped overthrow Chile, Microsoft got nailed for monopolistic practices, the Director of the NYSE tried to suck down 130 mil in pay last year, about eighteen other corporations got noticed for corrupt accounting practices, and let's not even get going on Martha Stewart and the tobacco industry and on and on and endlessly on. How long a list do you need?

If you try to say that each and every person that is rich is guilty and should not be treated on their own individual merits, then you are practicing bigotry. There may be as amny bad businessmen as their are corrupt politicians. Treating them all as if they were evil is bigotry.

7. What's the opposite of biting the hand that feeds you?

For the fourteenth time: it often isn't a matter of simple oppression. It's a matter of what Foucault called the productivity of power: "It produces...domains of objects and registers of truth." In this case, power produces an object called, "the rich," and the concomittant weird fantasy that the very fact of their having cheated in the Great Game of Life is proof that the Great Game of Life is utterly fair.

You are making the bold statement that every rich person got there by cheating and foul play. Some may, some do not.

And for the fifteenth time: do you really think that wealth is all that should matter, when we count success?

Everyone has their own standard for what they call success. I do not subscribe much to a person's bank account, but do not think ill of them if they are rich. The key is they have the freedom to do what they want as long as those efforts do not violate anyone else's rights. I do not seek riches as a sign of my success and I am free to feel that way. People who seek wealth shold be given the same right to choose as I demand for myself.

 

[rmcrobertson]

Hey, thank you, thank you very much. It's because of my extensive indoctrination by ACLU-trained lesbians in our secret base underneath Hangar 18 near Groom Lake, Nevada...today floridation, tomorrow ze vourld.

What never fails to amaze ME, since you've chosen to assume that I am a stupid and uneducated dupe of the International Communist Conspiracy, is the assumption that gee, I may have a PhD (which really does mean, "piled higher and deeper," but gee, I never so much as saw, "The Killing Fields," or "Reds," or heard of the Cultural Revolution. Gee, I jes' totally missed out on some of the most reported and obvious events of the last 100 years, while I was studying how to pollute the Precious Bodily Fluids of this nation.

Of course, I have posted and mentioned guys like Pol Pot and their ties to leftist theory, but hey, I musta done it sleepwalking. Just as an opener, let me suggest that y'all might wanna go read a real book or two--try E.P. Thompson, "The Poverty of Theory." Or Cornel West, "Race Matters." Or any of the long, long list back through Solzhenitsyn, Raymond Aron, Orwell, Malraux and Sartre and frickin' Hemingway on the ugly history of marxist behaviour.

Whoops, I forgot. All of us are mindless dupes. Only those who gloss over the death toll of capitalism (let's scope that out with, say, American Indians, the Vietnamese, the inhabitants of Bhopal, those Tennessee kids the government did the radiation experiments on back in the 1950s, the "disappeared," of Chile, of Argentina, of...hell, fill in the blank) know anything--though oddly enough, they seem only to repeat the same crap from the "Reader's Digest," I read, as a boy, back in 1962.

And as for this remark:

"The poorest of the poor in the USA have a better standard of living than most of the world's middle class. Our middle class is rich compared to the rest of the world. Our rich are richer than kings in other countries."

You badly need to get on the WHO website and check out just where this country stands in terms of literacy rates, childhood poverty, infant mortality, cancer rates, percentage imprisoned, yearly income, and so forth. You might find it edifying--oh wait, I forgot, it's the WORLD health organization. Aren't they spokesmen for the New World Order, led by the demon Azarael?

A safer, and more-appropriate source: try scoping the way the the Sultan of Brunei lives on an old, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous."

Man, let me be blunt: I heard of every single thing you've mentioned about twenty-five years ago. The assumptions you're using are hand-me-downs from idiots like George Gilder, Dinesh d'Souza, Alan Bloom, the "American Spectator," Phyllis Schafly, and that loonbox Michael Savage. Fer cryin' out loud, go read, "The Closing of the American Mind," and, "Ill-Liberal Education," because at least Bloom has read books. (And doesn't it shake your tree in the least that I know who these guys are, and have read some of them, and I will be you a shiny nickel that you've never even HEARD of the writers I've mentioned, let alone read them? Kinda odd for a Communist stooge, ain't it?) They were common currency when academics discussed these issues, BACK IN THE LAST CENTURY. But hey, never heard of 'em. Only us helpless stooges of Stalin here.

Sincerely,
Boris Badenoff

P.S. Dear Don: YOU introduced words like, "hatred." I discussed a system. You are relying upon a social darwinist notion: the rich deserve greater advantages, because they have proved that they are more fit to survive by beecoming rich. This is a democracy, dude. Have a little faith in, "the people, yes, the people," who are every bit as capable and deserving as the Dan Quayles of the world. I mean, can you honestly claim that HE got to be rich and famous and Vice Prez through sheer merit--honestly, without bursting out laughing? Or Spiro T. Agnew, who as VP took fat envelopes stuffed with cash? Hell, if you want the Horatio Alger story, your hero oughta be Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan, both of whom rose from nothing and did it a HELLUVA lot more honestly than our present Prez...

 

[klif]

I said:

It really amazes me how seemingly smart and otherwise "normal" people can fall for the leftist/communist trap. I guess they did a good job when they infitrated our schools and univerisities.

you said:

I may have a PhD

I said:

It all falls back to "liberal guilt" and the ego feeding. Leftist all have this personal belief that somehow they are more "moral" than everyone else because they "care" about the little people. So that way they can talk down to people that do not agree with them, and act like everyone else is stupid.

you said:

The assumptions you're using are hand-me-downs from idiots like George Gilder, Dinesh d'Souza, Alan Bloom, the "American Spectator," Phyllis Schafly, and that loonbox Michael Savage.

Thanks I knew your true colors would come out. Typical left winger, always resorting to insults and a posturing while trying to act "above" everyone.

Your arguments are the hand-me-downs, about 1848 right? How these fantasy land ideas continue to exist after years of failure, genocide, and misery will always amaze me. But hey, we still have Nazis here, so why not communists too. Your left wing, pseudo intellectual, babbling means about as much to me as a Klan speech. All your go "read this book.." means nothing. Why don't you talk to some people that have lived in communist countries and fled to come here?

I bet you have a Che Guevara poster.

 

[rmcrobertson]

So...you've actually read Bloom, West, Aron, Sartre, and the rest? And my, my, my, absolutely none of your ideas come from Savage and the rest? Quel surprise.

Gilder is an idiot. The man actually argued that feminists were responsbile for the oncoming downfall if this country, on the grounds that they made decent white men impotent, which led to the breeding and breeding of the inferior classes--you know, black people. You may be happy with such an argument, but gee, I am not. "Idiot," is charitable. "Racist loonbox equalled only by Heinlein in 'Farnham's Freehold,'" would be more on the...money.

And axly, Sparky, about 1848? Back when I read this stuff all the time in grad school, people like Thompson and others were attacking the weird little marxist and patriarchal fantasy that the years 1844-1848 in Marx's work represented an epistemological break with the discourse of history, and attacking the notion that this legitimated any sort of abuse on the grounds that one's "outsider," position allowed for a privileged understanding...whoops, you've no idea what I'm talking about, because you've never read the material. It's a shame to see students today writing things like, " All your "go "read this book.." means nothing," since going to find out for yourself was, I thought--wacky me!!--precisely the idea.

But then, I was brought up in the 1950s. Back then, we believed in education, as well as the power and worth of ordinary people...among some nastier things, I'm sorry to say. I guess that now, when the Almighty Dollar reigns supreme for so many, all that's out the window. Shame to see the decline of the values that made this country.

Just incidentally, you will be in a far-stronger rhetorical position, if you'll simply suggest some things for me to read that establish your views as equally grounded upon knowledge. But then, no doubt you have enormous experience with refugees from Communist countries. Me, I only teach people who tell me stories about having to abandon their grandparents to get out of China, or about being a grade school student in Beijing at the time of Tienanmin Square, or live around the corner of the First Hmong Baptist Church in Providence, RI, or about fleeing Leningrad after the Sovet Union fell. I personally only know folks who lived through the Eighties in the USSR, or who led trips there--big irony; one of them told me that last on her list of Things Not To Bring To the Soviet Union was, "46. Do not bring this list." Of course, I also know/ teach/ have hung out with people who have fled from Chiapas and Honduras, or who served as Chilean Marines, or...well, you get the point. Perhaps.

It's doubtless more comforting to hang on to this picture of me in a basement, with the collected works of Ted Kosynszki and the Guevara poster. And I encourage it: it makes discussions so much funnier. Hell, if you'd read any Christopher Hitchens, I'd have a problem.

Hey, and as long as were on the subject of, "failure, genocide and misery," let me refer you to Thompson's, "Making of the English Working Class," Zinn's, "A People's History of America," (which I haven't read yet...but I AM looking forward to your reflexively attacking on the grounds of his being a lazy, mindless knee-jerk America-hater, because BOY have I got some quote for you, so please, please do jump that jump) and in brief, learn about your own world and its own history.

I know you'll skip over this, but you'll learn more if you'll read the books, think about what's written, and understand that people who disagree with you are not merely evil toads of marx. I'm probably being intemperate myself, but it has dawned on me that the folks who scream incoherently aren't going to go read the books and look at reality anyway, so I might as well amuse myself.

Oh, and just to really mess with your head...I own a copy of, "Red Dawn." I think it's a great movie. Your problem is that I don't get it confused with reality.

 

[Tgace]

Thanks I knew your true colors would come out. Typical left winger, always resorting to insults and a posturing while trying to act "above" everyone.

Boy if that didnt hit the nail on the head. Some people here are prime examples of "Your tone (rude,insulting,etc.) is so loud I cant hear a word your saying."

I suppose that if you read (and quoted) enough books that supported your view of the world, you would think you were "right" about everything too.

 

[MisterMike]

Gary Dahl became a millionaire in a matter of months, and he didn't even make it off the backs of immigrant child workers OR the lower class.

(Inventor of the pet rock)

See, not all rich guys are bad.

 

[klif]

.......Me, I only teach people who tell me stories about having to abandon their grandparents to get out of China, or about being a grade school student in Beijing at the time of Tienanmin Square........

and these things reinforce your beliefs?

Oh, and just to really mess with your head...I own a copy of, "Red Dawn." I think it's a great movie. Your problem is that I don't get it confused with reality.

Great another jab. A communist PhD comic. More true colors?

What is reality? Someone who spends their life reading other's misguided writings and then teaches this sugar coated view, or people that have to work?

BTW, I am amusing myself too. We will never convince the other, but I hope it spurs thought and debate with the rest of those reading.

W in 04

 

[Don Roley]

P.S. Dear Don: YOU introduced words like, "hatred." I discussed a system.

No, you are talking about a group of people, a class. And you are painting each and every one of them as an evil monster. This is bigotry. And if you would clam down instead of insulting everyone and trying to convince us that you are so much smarter than us, you may have time to take a look at what you are doing and realize just how hate-filled and bigoted it is.

You are relying upon a social darwinist notion: the rich deserve greater advantages, because they have proved that they are more fit to survive by beecoming rich.

No, I am relying on the principle that everyone has a right to do something as long as those actions do not violate others such as robbery or violence. I may not like J-Lo records, but as long as no one is forcing a gun to people's head to buy them, then I have no say in the matter if people want to spend their money that way. Nor do I have a say in how J-Lo spends that money once it is in her pocket. I may not think that people who listen to particular types of music are very smart (ever hear of Morning Musume or Pink Lady?) but I have to respect their right to buy what they want with the money they earned if I expect my rights to be respected to do what I want without interference.

 

[rmcrobertson]

THOSE are your best arguments, gentlemen? That's the best you got? No specifics, no actual discussion, no textual support, no reasoned discussion, no facts cited, just, "clam down," you, "hate-filled and bigoted, "communist phd comic," you?

Let's see. You haven't read the material. You don't know the history. You're unfamiliar with basics about capitalism as an economic system, present-day business practices, and even the news. You can only rehash claims I've heard since 1962 and "Reader's Digest." And best of all--and the only real sin--you're apparently utterly unwilling to go find out.

(Just an educational point: the way to whup my arguments is to provide better arguments and better data, not scream at the top of your computerized lungs. And, tgrace, you might wanna go look at Bloom at least. He certainly wouldn't agree with me--I once argued with him and got slaughtered, quite deservedly--and he's far smarter than that loon Ann Coulter.)

The real problem isn't that we disagree. It's that you're perfectly willing to insult your fellow Americans, to disparage their patriotism, to run down their character, and to attack anything that looks different.

The interesting thing is that--for all your protests--I am far, far closer to traditional American values (which is in fact where I get most of this stuff) than you. Unfortunately, the radical transformation that capitalism has made from the mid-1980s has left a lot of the younger folks skewed.

Well, that's dominant ideology for ya. Too bad, because my points are really quite simple: a) the pursuit of cash and toys is not the only thing that matters; b) we can make the world better than this; c) everybody deserves an equal break; d) wealth does not make anybody into a little tin god.

But please keep going: it is fascinating to see people singing the praises of the wealthy.

 

[Don Roley]

Excuse me if I can summerize the last post by Robert.

"You guys are close- minded idiots. So there, I am done with you."

I have seen this tactic before with people who have nothing left to argue with. From this point on, I do not expect much in the way of rational conversation.

 

[rmcrobertson]

Well, I can see your point, Don. After all, the way I kept talking about books, history, social facts and the like was just....just....wrong and unfair. Hell, I didn't even attack anybody's patriotism or sexuality--what kind of a discussion is that? And given your ability to read minds at a distance, you exactly understood what I was thinking anyway.

Hey, here's a far better way to make your argument for next time:

If you look at academic Marxists as they really are, you actually see a fair amount of the same old career-building that employs fancy twists on old ideas. One example would be the work and career of Fredric Jameson, well known for his essays on post-modernity and full-length works such as "The Political Unconscious." Not only has he parlayed ideas taken from Medvedev, Bakhtin and others (see for example his account of the, "semiotic rectaangle," structuring Conrad's, "Heart of Darkness"), but his climb to the top of the profession has been enacted in some of the garden spots of American academe, including the University of California at Santa Cruz and Duke University.

I can personally note that the, "academic marxist," has a habit of self-justifying their own wants far too easily: in conversation circa 1987, one assured me that a) they were a Marxist, and b) their family needed two Mercedes-Benzes. At the MLA Convention in 1986, it was remarkable that attendees at the Marxist Literary Group cash bar appeared to be the best-dressed and groomed group at the convention, particularly those with the good tans (the Convention was held in late December, in Chicago) acquired on the beach in Cuba the previous week.

As for the moral probity (and indeed even sanity) of the academic Marxist, it is worth nothing that many of Robertson's arguments are derived from the work of Louis Althusser, whose work has more than once been described by no less than E.P. Thompson as providing intellectual justification for Stalinism. Nor are Professor Althusser's private affairs reassuring, given that he strangled his wife in a fit of insanity, and ended his life in an asylum after having, as they say, "found Jesus."

It would also be instructive to examine the work of Paul DeMan, author of, "Blindness and Insight," among others, discovered to have published several inexcusable articles in a Belgian anti-semitic jornal during the early years of World War II....

Or hell, look up Masood Zavarzadegh's hilarious career...when I was at Syracuse, he apparently refused to attend department meetings on the grounds that, "to do so would be to be complicit in the ideological reproductive apparatus of late capitalism." Still drew his checks, though...


See what I mean? If you want to make the argument about marx and academe, the actual facts and texts are far more-damning than all this screeching. Of course, they DO require doing yer homework--but believe me, the stuff about deMan and Althusser is well-known to academics interested in marxist ideas. Take ya maybe 15 minutes on a Googol search.

But hey, you didn't hear any of this from me, being as I'm a stupid, benighted Tool of Lenin. Feel free to cite my notes as your own...I feel sure that within three months, somebody will get on one of these forums and start yellin' that I am too dumb to even know about deMan and Althusser.

Wait!! What's that pounding??? Oh my dear {expletive deleted as per ACLU regulations} it's the Party Thought Police!!! With the Maccabee Suicide Squad!!!

Sorry, gotta go crush freedom now. Do write, won't you? I'll be in the Gulag next door...

 

[Cruentus]

Question for the couple of you who seem to be avid proponents of our current capitalistic system; do you believe that there are no improvements to our system as it stands now that could be made? If so, then you must think that our current system is perfect....if that is the case, can you justify this?

I ask because usually what I find is that people who are proponents of our current system of capitalism are usually that way out of fear, not out of love and understanding of the system. The idea is that communism/socialism leads to Stalinist, Nazi-ist, or Nationalist regimes, so anything that smells communist/socialist can't be good. Then, the idea is that anything that goes against the grain of our current system must be communist/socialist in some respect, so therefore cannot be good. It's usually not "Hey, this system is great because of bla!" It's more like, "No system is perfect, but thank god we're not like THOSE other systems/countries!"

Now I know that not all of you support capitalism out of pure fear, because some of you have mentioned aspects about the system that you believe to be good. But, I wonder if those stand on their own 2 legs w/o the underlying fear of "please don't let our system turn into 'the alternative'!"

It seems to me that fear is nessicary to gain the consent of the people to run the capitalist machine (no different then the facist or nationalist-communist machine). The problem with the above fear is that proponents of our system get caught into a dialectic (I'm not using the word in the purely Hegelian sense), or a set of propositions, premises, and conclusions that one fears stepping outside of. By fearing to step outside of the dialectic "box," one cannot visit the possabilities of improving our system at all.

Opinions? :boing2:

PAUL

BTW...I am not reading "Arrogent, leftist, communist nutcase" in Roberts posts, personally. The points I am getting are, "Do some research to think outside of the box before formulating concrete opinions" coupled with "Capitalism is not working well, and here is why" with a little sarcasm in between. Perfectly suitable for this discussion, but that is just my opinion.

 

[Tgace]

Is the problem the economic system or the policies and effectiveness of the government that taxes and redistributes those taxes in social programs??

btw: I draw the line at calling people "idiots" and the like. I recall a few instances where you (Paul) didnt respond to well to "attitude" being projected at you, and cant say as I blame you.

 

[Cruentus]

btw: I draw the line at calling people "idiots" and the like. I recall a few instances where you (Paul) didnt respond to well to "attitude" being projected at you, and cant say as I blame you.

I agree, but I didn't see where he actually called anyone an idiot, but I'll shyly admit that I very well may have missed it through speed reading not carefully enough. :asian:

 

[MisterMike]

Question for the couple of you who seem to be avid proponents of our current capitalistic system; do you believe that there are no improvements to our system as it stands now that could be made? If so, then you must think that our current system is perfect....if that is the case, can you justify this?

I ask because usually what I find is that people who are proponents of our current system of capitalism are usually that way out of fear, not out of love and understanding of the system. The idea is that communism/socialism leads to Stalinist, Nazi-ist, or Nationalist regimes, so anything that smells communist/socialist can't be good. Then, the idea is that anything that goes against the grain of our current system must be communist/socialist in some respect, so therefore cannot be good. It's usually not "Hey, this system is great because of bla!" It's more like, "No system is perfect, but thank god we're not like THOSE other systems/countries!"

Now I know that not all of you support capitalism out of pure fear, because some of you have mentioned aspects about the system that you believe to be good. But, I wonder if those stand on their own 2 legs w/o the underlying fear of "please don't let our system turn into 'the alternative'!"

It seems to me that fear is nessicary to gain the consent of the people to run the capitalist machine (no different then the facist or nationalist-communist machine). The problem with the above fear is that proponents of our system get caught into a dialectic (I'm not using the word in the purely Hegelian sense), or a set of propositions, premises, and conclusions that one fears stepping outside of. By fearing to step outside of the dialectic "box," one cannot visit the possabilities of improving our system at all.

Opinions? :boing2:

PAUL

BTW...I am not reading "Arrogent, leftist, communist nutcase" in Roberts posts, personally. The points I am getting are, "Do some research to think outside of the box before formulating concrete opinions" coupled with "Capitalism is not working well, and here is why" with a little sarcasm in between. Perfectly suitable for this discussion, but that is just my opinion.

All fairly good points, but can't the same be said of communism? People would prefer it because of the fear they might be "left out in the cold" if they cannot work?

Are we so cynical on both sides that we cannot trust Human Nature to come to the need of others?

 

[Cruentus]

All fairly good points, but can't the same be said of communism? People would prefer it because of the fear they might be "left out in the cold" if they cannot work?

Are we so cynical on both sides that we cannot trust Human Nature to come to the need of others?

I think that the same could definatily be said about communism.

 

[loki09789]

All fairly good points, but can't the same be said of communism? People would prefer it because of the fear they might be "left out in the cold" if they cannot work?

Are we so cynical on both sides that we cannot trust Human Nature to come to the need of others?

In our capitolistic system people commonly settle into the middle of the socio/economic strata: just enough balance of comfort where they can get by with a modicum of comfort/luxury but don't go so material crazy that they are working outrageous hours and neglecting family/personal recreation.... those who want more can go for it. The government has added a socialistic stamp on our system with regulatory agencies like EEO, EPA, OSEA.... that make sure things are 'fair' and 'equal'. Capitolism assumes that a major make up of human nature is competitive/personal best motivation. Reality seems to point to a more 'balance' motivation and not an extravegance motivation. That is not something that you can achieve personally in a predominately communistic influenced system - mainly because of the invasiveness of the political aspects of the system.

My 'fear' is that if there is too much 'socialism/communistic' influence - only logically instituted by the government - it will limit my ability to my constitutional right to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' if I happen to pursue that life, liberty and happiness through business. This is no different from the civil liberty infringement/governmental invasiveness that has been discussed previously with cars, licensing and other private property issues.

 

[rmcrobertson]

One problem: the classic argument for explaining why we "have," to have capitalism--an argument reiterated again and again and again on this thread--is that "human nature," is essentially greedy, acquisitive, and competitive.

If you're going to claim that, it's a little hard to turn around and argue for faith in the essential decency of human beings--not to mention the fact that the reason we are supposed to have, "a government of laws, and not of men," is that we do not want to have to rely simply upon individual acts of decency...

 

[Tgace]

I find it amusing how we are debating about our materialistic, property grubbing tendencies from our $700-$?,000 computers.

Similar to when I was arguing with a vegetarian and pointed out his leather belt and shoes...