508 replies to this topic

[kyle65uk]

Mangala,

Just some quick (ish) points before you leave

At the end of the day, the majority of people are just out there to get the maximum possible personal gain for themselves, and no matter what system of governance is in place people will continue to follow that. They know as soon as they stop taking someone else will jump on nad take it instead, even if you did manage to get almost all of the worlds population to work happily together, it would only take one single person to take advantage of it exploit it to destroy the whole system. And Im certain there are in reality many more than one person wanting to do this. Since you plan to (thankfully) not use force I believe that most people will see this and not vote in favour of a complete socialist state. As for menial jobs I think that you would find that people would end up designating virtually all the jobs available as menial, with everyone trying to simply find the cushiest, and since you plan to force people to share the menial jobs you would probably find they'd actually get to spend about 6 weeks of the year doing their favourite job, and all the rest sharing menial jobs. Since there would be no way to avoid this people would probably complain even more.

Also since you said would allow people to earn money through other means, it would only be a matter of generations until there was once again a top level of rich people, and jeolously would set in all over again.

Finally when you mentioned that you were not planning to use your system over the whole world simaltaneouly, people in the country you start in with large amounts of money would simply move to another country, to avoid losing their money to redistribution, thus leaving only poor people behind, with the likely effect of crippling your economy.

Whilst you have stated that you prefere to ignore the transition stage, and rather discuss what it would be like if it was all set up and working there is little point unless it is established that it could be set up in the first place.

Kyle

[thefirstimmortal]

Whether ideas make a difference is an important question for us. It seems to me that liberal ideas may not prevail in practice at this time, but they are more durable than their socialist counterparts.


The consequences, however, of the intellectual legacy of socialism will continue to exist long after their intellectual roots have fallen into disrepute.

[thefirstimmortal]

If the collapse of communism caught the CIA and others unawares, it was certainly no surprise to Libertarians. They had been expecting it for 40 years. With a confidence no less certain because we had acquired it fortuitously, we knew socialism was doomed and we knew why.

Now everyone knows what we knew; the one big thing the libertarians knew and could explain better than anyone else-that the invisible hand of the market is a more reliable organizer of the economic life of nations than the visible hand of the state. The collapse of the communist economies has at last put to rest one of the great unsettled questions of modern times, which absorbed an unreasonable share of the world’s intellectual energy for nearly a century. Libertarians had it right from the very beginning.

[thefirstimmortal]

From the beginning and almost to the end, Socialist draws its legitimacy from its ends rather than its means, from the powerful echo of its original promises to protect ordinary people from the hazards of life in a capitalist society. Large numbers of working people and their intellectual surrogates still feel in their bones that an unfettered free market is a jungle, that workers do not get their fair share of what they produce, that capitalism so degrades and disorients working people that they cannot make mature decisions about their own welfare

[thefirstimmortal]

This “system,” to which the newly non-Communist nations are thoughtlessly gravitating-variously called social democracy, democratic socialism, or market socialism-is the only game in town, but it is everywhere, and particularly in the United States, showing signs of strain. Eastern European countries may only have jumped out of the fire and into the frying pan. They, along with the rest of the developed world’s democracies, are staring down the barrel of the same non sequitur: if it is true that the state is bound by its nature to bungle the business of making steel or shoes, what makes us think it is any better at the vastly more complex responsibilities of the modern full-service state: educating the children, providing pensions and health care, eliminating unemployment, protecting depositors from the imprudence of their bankers, and providing hundreds of other services, presumably necessary but beyond the reach of the market, not just for the few who have been left behind, but for practically everyone?

[thefirstimmortal]

The American service state, our not very original version of social democracy, an undertaking now at least three times as large as the whole former Soviet economy is no longer sustained either by logic or by any record of practical success. It is becoming clear that we have confused the state’s blustering eagerness to take responsibility with an innate capacity to exercise it. The American service state survives and flourishes only because an invincible political majority is convinced that its failing programs must be continued because they are essential and because there are, or seem to be, no alternatives. The so-called Reagan revolution was bogus, a disguised tax revolt. It was not an effort to repeal the service state but to preserve it-and to substitute debt or inflation for taxation as a way of paying its politically irreducible costs. But the illusion that gave the Reagan program its ephemeral plausibility has already faded, and America’s social democracy is in a bind from which there is no apparent escape. The status quo is impossible to defend and impossible to change.

[thefirstimmortal]

If there are alternatives to the state’s failing efforts to get rid of Skid Row, eliminate involuntary unemployment, eradicate illiteracy, provide reasonable pensions, treat the indigent sick, detoxify the environment, among a thousand other problems that beset and perplex an industrial society, there is only the dimmest awareness of them, and certainly no confidence that they would work. (That is one of the reasons Americans sound so confused when they talk to opinion pollsters, saying usually that government programs are failing miserably and ought to be expanded.)


However, there is gathering evidence that there are half-forgotten, potentially powerful, largely dormant social forces in the society that might, in time, become a serious alternative to state social action. This dimension of society is practically begging to be rediscovered, explored, and understood. It has a glorious past, an ambiguous present, and possibly a considerable future.


America’s overall institutional landscape consists of one federal government, 50 state governments, and, at last count, about 80,000 local governments of various shapes and sizes. There are more than 10 million commercial entities, ranging from bootblacks and pushcart peddlers to giant conglomerate corporations. And running through and among and around all those like glue are the institutions of the third, independent sector, several million of them altogether. The variety of their purposes is staggering. There are hundreds of universities, elementary and secondary schools, thousands of hospitals, museums, symphony orchestras, and libraries, hundreds of thousands of mutual aid groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, to mention only a few of its more visible entities. Its institutions range from the giant Teachers’ Insurance and Annuity Association, now the world’s largest non-governmental pension provider with assets of more than $80 billion, to a clearing-house through which amputees can trade their useless left or right shoes or gloves. Any list of its activities of reasonable length is bound to be a distortion.

How we could mislay a sector of society of this size and scope is something of a mystery.

[thefirstimmortal]

It is said that the fashionable curse during the Chinese Cultural Revolution was, “May you live in interesting times.” Our times would doubtless qualify-we cannot complain on that score. Over the last few decades almost every day has brought fresh surprises, leaving us to gape at each new breakthrough for freedom: the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent reunification of Germany; the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania; Vaclav Havel’s stunning rise from the depths of prison to the presidency of Czechoslovakia; Violeta Chamorro’s upset victory in the Nicaraguan elections; and the democratization of Haiti.
We are still rubbing our eyes at some of the things we see on our television screens.

Everywhere, it seems, communist parties are expiring or seeking to survive by changing their names and disowning such essential features of Marxism-Leninism as class struggle, centralized planning, and social ownership of the means of production. We are witnessing the abandonment of all the myths, stereotypes, arguments, and methods that gave birth to communism, made it grow, put a third of the human race under its yoke of servitude and terror, and finally led to its self-destruction.

Under the circumstances, great pronouncements are difficult to avoid. Are we not launching a new era in human history?

Should we, then, claim that communism’s last gasp marks the true “end of history” in the Hegelian sense?

I think we should not.

We are right to be thrilled by current trends such as the resurgence of the individual vis-à-vis the state; of economic freedom versus central planning; of private property and enterprise versus collectivism and statism; of liberal democracy versus dictatorship and mercantilism. But let us not fool ourselves. No hidden force, waiting in the catacombs of obscurantism and terror that impoverished and humiliated entire peoples, led to the fall of Ceausescu, the triumph of Solidarity, or the demolition of the wall that divided Berlin. These victories-and all the others like them that have inspired totalitarianism’s foes-were hard won by the stubborn resistance of victims.

The victory of freedom over totalitarianism has been overwhelming, but it is far from fully secured. Indeed, the toughest part of the struggle lies ahead. The dismantling of statism and the dispersal of the economic and political power expropriated by a despotic bureaucracy are exceedingly complex tasks. They are demanding enormous sacrifices from those peoples who still labor under the illusion that political democracy and economic liberty provide instant solutions to all problems. These peoples need to overcome the legacy of stupefaction and rigidity that collectivism has left behind.

This will require citizens who know that without economic freedom there can be no political liberty, much less any progress.


Accepting this new-found liberty, then, means standing ready to pay the piper for inefficiency or miscalculation. The competitive market generates the most efficiency and creates the most wealth of any economic system, but it is also cold and merciless toward inefficiency. It is best, I think, to take this sobering truth into account right now, at the threshold of the new era. Freedom, which is always necessary for progress and justice, exacts a price that people must pay daily if they wish to remain free. No country, neither the most prosperous nor the one with the longest democratic tradition, is exempt from this danger.

[thefirstimmortal]

  quote:
                     --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                     How am I a tyrant in the making at all if my ultimate goal is to make people happy?

                     --------------------------------------------------------------------------------


                     I want everyone who is reading this to look closely at that question. Read it again if necessary. One does not make people happy. Please, please notice the irony in this question!

                     Sophianic

Let me hasten to add that it does not necessarily mean that because of capitalism, human happiness has been measurably increased. Happiness is not something to be measured according to social coordinates, only individual ones. That is why happiness is not the duty of governments or individual tyrants. Those who try to achieve it for everyone-”holistic” governments like those of Fidel Castro, the Shiite ayatollahs of Iran, or the superstitious antediluvians of the People’s Republic of China-tend to turn their societies into a hell. Happiness, which is mysterious and variable, like poetry, concerns only oneself and one’s intimates; there are no formulas to produce it and no explanations to decipher it.

[thefirstimmortal]

Are you still out there Limitless? Cause I'm willing to bump up the Tobacco topic if you are, since no-one seems to be chatting about the other topics. I do need to hit the excitotoxin and something else first, but I'll put the tobacco topic ahead of health, school and taxes ect... if your still out there. [roll]

[thefirstimmortal]

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
Thomas Jefferson

[Limitless]

Are you still out there Limitless? Cause I'm willing to bump up the Tobacco topic if you are, since no-one seems to be chatting about the other topics. I do need to hit the excitotoxin and something else first, but I'll put the tobacco topic ahead of health, school and taxes ect... if your still out there. [roll]

Hi Mr. O'Rights,

Yes, I'm still around. I'm sorry it took me so long to respond to this post. I must have missed it on the opening screen, and never checked the secondary screen until now. As for the tobacco industry, I agree with part of what you say, but have some counter-arguments & alternative-strategies to present. I've had some time constraints lately, so I'll post replies in the tobacco-industry thread as soon as I can.


As for any unanswered posts, I can't think of any in the "Socialists Vs. Capitalists" thread. I have some things to add to this thread though, as well as to the welfare, taxes & government threads, at least. I'll let you know if there's anything you've missed, but you'll probably notice any new things I post.


The only thing that I've posted that I don't believe you've responded to is my post from back in October in the "FDA Tyranny in Action" thread. When you get a chance, it's the longish-post in that thread, around October 18th, I think....could be wrong though.


That's all for now.

[Malpoet]

Hi everyone

I have just read this very interesting discussion.

I am amazed that anyone can still believe, as Managali apparently does, that planned economies and the direction of labour can result in anything other than the misery, slavery and slaughter that took place in communist regimes.

At their beginning these tyranny's had the support of many utopian soialists who had only the best of intentions for humanity. They were all swept aside or crushed. That is the inevitable outcome of centralised planning and direction.

The First Immortal is undoubtedly right when he says that economic freedom is the necessary precursor of political freedom.

Capitalism works because it is organic and evolves to meet the needs and wants of people. ( Incidentally the Internet works for the same reasons of lack of central direction and control). Of course, an unregulated economic structure gives rise to poverty and hardship as well as to wealth. It is for compassionate people to work to alleviate those problems as many do. Overall, societies with free economic systems are much better off, financially and spritually, than any command economy whether it is communist, fascist, religious or simply the playground of a dictator.

Technological development is freeing human beings from some of the most unpleasant and dangerous labour and that will continue. There is no socialist paradise to be had, but mankind will evolve in freedom to achieve much greater prosperity and comfort along with limitless life expectancy. Those of us who succeed in this freedom should do what we can to help the less fortunate rather than trying to organise the lives of everybody in the fruitless pursuit of perfection.

In my youth I was a Marxist.

Regards

:D

[Limitless]

Instead of posting a direct response, I posted raw data that I think addresses the issues we were pondering. If I have failed to get my idea across, I would be more than happy to go over this in another way.-thefirstimmortal

Oh-sorry. I haven't had much time to read posts in the last little while, and I assumed ( [blush] ) that the raw data you posted was for some other purpose. I haven't read the data yet. I'll get back to you when I have.

[Mind]

An Article By Bruce Bartlett:

December 5, 2002

The myth of employee ownership

The imminent bankruptcy of United Airlines may be the final blow to an idea that once entranced both liberals and conservatives. Known as industrial democracy, its proponents preached that employee ownership of the means of production could overcome the historical conflict between management and labor. But as UAL, an employee-owned company, demonstrates, it works a lot better in theory than practice.

The left-wing approach to industrial democracy grew out of Marxism. Karl Marx argued that the fundamental economic problem of the industrial age was the alienation of labor from its product. Previously, workers made entire products by hand for their final owners. But once they joined factories, workers might only make one small part of the product and had no idea who its final owner might be. For some reason that I have never been able to comprehend, Marx thought this was a big problem.

Unfortunately, Marx convinced a lot of other people that it was a problem, as well. They concluded that only socialism would solve it -- total state ownership of all productive assets. The theory was that workers controlled the state and would thereby own the assets. Thus workers would no longer be alienated and exploited by greedy businessmen. Part of this theory assumed that owners and managers added nothing whatsoever to the production process and were, by definition, parasites.

In the early 20th century, some industrial democracy advocates took a more moderate approach. They said that it was unnecessary to go all the way to socialism in order to gain its benefits. Advocates of industrial democracy pushed for employee ownership of companies and plants within capitalist countries. They thought that the benefits would be so manifest that eventually socialism would emerge by evolution, rather than revolution.

Interestingly, as the left's interest in industrial democracy waned in the 1950s, some conservatives picked up the idea. Pushed mainly by lawyer Louis Kelso, they argued that employee ownership could overcome the adversarial relationship between business managers and labor unions. Kelso thought that if workers could participate more in business decision-making and also share in its rewards, they would be willing to moderate demands for excessive wages and work rules that hampered productivity. The result, he thought, would be a win-win situation for management and labor.

Kelso's ideas got a big boost in 1973, when he convinced Sen. Russell Long, Democrat of Louisiana and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, to support them. Although fundamentally conservative economically, Long also had a populist streak inherited from his father, Huey Long, the famous governor and senator from Louisiana. Kelso's idea of using the tax code to create employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) appealed to Long, who put it into law in the mid-1970s.

The ESOP legislation led to a sharp increase in employee profit-sharing plans. In a few cases, such as the Weirton Steel Company and Hyatt-Clark Industries, workers took full ownership in order to stave off layoffs or bankruptcy. However, Weirton ended up laying off workers anyway and Hyatt-Clark went out of business a few years after workers took control.

Economists that have looked at ESOPs generally find that there is no significant increase in productivity at companies with such plans. The benefits to each individual worker are too small to fundamentally change their attitudes. On the contrary, they often use their ownership to block productivity-enhancing changes. The result is that management is even more hamstrung than it was before, leading to losses and bankruptcies.

A Dec. 4 report in The Washington Post looks at the experience of China with employee ownership, which the government strongly encouraged. Workers proved unwilling to make radical changes, blocked layoffs, slacked off from work and often abused corporate assets. At the Jing Wine Company, for example, workers apparently drank much of the profits.

Says economist Martin Sullivan about ESOPs in general, "There do not appear to be any microeconomic foundations to back up claims that employee ownership of large corporations is good for the economy. In fact, there are -- unfortunately -- many reasons for economists to believe employee ownership can just cause problems."

UAL seems to be the latest case of failure. Workers there have owned a majority of the stock since 1994 -- half of that owned by the pilots. Yet UAL has the highest salaries for pilots of any domestic airline -- receiving as much as $306,000 per year. This is $43,000 more than at the next highest-paid airline, Delta, and twice what pilots at Southwest Airlines make. No wonder the company is losing money.

Employee ownership may still make sense as a way of privatizing government assets, but it is clearly no ticket to higher profits and productivity.

[Mind]

A book review by Thomas Sowell

Disastrous utopia

Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous. Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export.

Its economic disasters have afflicted virtually every industry. In its Communist version, it killed far more innocent civilians in peacetime than Hitler killed in his death camps during World War II.

Nevertheless, for many of those who deal primarily in ideas, socialism remains an attractive idea -- in fact, seductive. Its every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders.

Many of the intelligentsia remain convinced that if only there had been better leaders -- people like themselves, for example -- it would all have worked out fine, according to plan.

A remarkable new book makes the history of socialism come alive. Its title is "Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism." Its author, Joshua Muravchik, is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a leading think tank in Washington. It is hard to find a book on the history of socialism that is either readable or accurate, so it is especially remarkable to find one that is both. The story told in "Heaven on Earth" is so dramatic and compelling that the author finds no need to gild the lily with rhetoric or hype. It is a great read.

This history of socialism begins more than two centuries ago, at the time of the French Revolution, with the radical conspirator Babeuf, who wanted to carry the revolutionary ideas of the times even farther, to a communist society.

It ends with current British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who brought the Labour Party back to power by dropping the core of its socialist agenda and putting distance between himself and previous Labour Party governments, whose socialist policies had so backfired that the party lost four consecutive national elections.

In between, there are stories of small communal societies, such as that founded in the 19th century by Robert Owen, the man who coined the word "socialism," as well as stories of huge nations like China and the empire that was known as the Soviet Union.

In all these very different societies around the world, the story of socialism has been a story of high hopes and bitter disappointments. Attempts to redistribute wealth repeatedly led to the redistribution of poverty.

Attempts to free ordinary people from oppression repeatedly led to what Mikhail Gorbachev frankly called "servility" to new despots. How and why are spelled out with both facts and brilliant insights expressed in plain words.

Human nature has been at the heart of the failures of socialism to produce the results it sought, even when socialist leaders were idealists like Julius Nyerere in Tanzania or Pandit Nehru in India.

Nowhere have people been willing to work as well for the common good as they do for their own benefit. Perhaps in some other galaxy there are creatures who would, but the track record of socialism among human beings on earth shows that this is not the place.

Worst of all, the concentration of political power necessary to try to reduce economic inequalities has allowed tyrants like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot to impose their notions and caprices on millions of others -- draining them economically or slaughtering them en masse or exploiting them sexually.

Mao Zedong, for example, had harems of young girls -- and occasionally boys -- for his pleasure in various parts of China.

There is no point blaming the tragedies of socialism on the flaws or corruption of particular leaders. Any system which allows some people to exercise unbridled power over other people is an open invitation to abuse, whether that system is called slavery or socialism or something else.

Socialism has long sought to create a heaven on earth but an even older philosophy pointed out that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[thefirstimmortal]

Great posting Mind.

There are Questions that Mangali or any Socialist could probably never answer. Such as what is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the individual over himself? Where does the authority of society begin? How much of human life should be assigned to individuality, and how much to society?

[SouL RippeR]

The problem as I perceive it is that ok capitalism is indeed wrong from the beginning (theory) but in pratice, it's even worse. On the other side Socialism is pure from it's roots and in pratice is made a piece of crap, that's why I wouldn't consider the fact that there has existed a socialist or a comunnist country. On the other hand neoliberalism is a savage and brute capitalism which will only lead to destruction.
The main problem in capitalism is power over knowledge by which the system works, this is what Michel Foucault explains in his book called the "Metaphysiscs Of Power" and it would be very interesting for this conversation to take it from his perspective. Michel Foucault

[Mangala]

Sweet Lord, another socialist...

[SouL RippeR]

I don't see a reason why not, after all look at what capitalism has taken us to..... At least socialism then communism and then a perfect society. And here is what I think Nietzche ment by the Super Human a human with the capacity to create. Love = Creativity. A society where "All You Need Is LOVE" (John Lennon), the same as Erich Fromm would say. This by the way is my own interpretation of Marx but after all for all this to happen first we need Capitalism for all this perfect society, so to speak first we need to be submerged in the sh't to be able to want love and perfection. B)

[thefirstimmortal]

The socialist ideal is now beginning to lose more and more of its adherents. The penetrating economic and sociological investigations of the problems of socialism that have shown it to be impracticable have not remained without effect, and the failures in which socialist experiments everywhere have ended have disconcerted even its most enthusiastic supporters. Gradually people are once more beginning to realize that society cannot do without private property. Yet the hostile criticism to which the system of private ownership of the means of production has been subjected for decades has left behind such a strong prejudice against the capitalist system that, in spite of their knowledge of the inadequacy and impracticability of socialism, people cannot make up their minds to admit openly that they must return to liberal views on the question of property. To be sure, it is conceded that socialism, the communal ownership of the means of production, is altogether, or at least for the present, impracticable. But, on the other hand, it is asserted that unhampered private ownership of the means of production is also an evil. Thus people want to create a third way, a form of society standing midway between private ownership of the means of production, on the one hand, and communal ownership of the means of production, on the other. Private property will be permitted to exist, but the ways in which the means of production are employed by the entrepreneurs, capitalists, and landowners will be regulated, guided, and controlled by authoritarian decrees and prohibitions. In this way, one forms the conceptual image of a regulated market, of a capitalism circumscribed by authoritarian rules, of private property shorn of its allegedly harmful concomitant features by the intervention of the authorities.

One can best acquire an insight into the meaning and nature of this system by considering a few examples of the consequences of government interference. The crucial acts of intervention with which we have to deal aim at fixing the prices of goods and services at a height different from what the unhampered market would have determined.

In the case of prices formed on the unhampered market, or which would have been formed in the absence of interference on the part of the authorities, the costs of production are covered by the proceeds. If a lower price is decreed by the government, the proceeds will fall short of the costs. Merchants and manufacturers will, therefore, unless the storage of the goods involved would cause them to deteriorate rapidly in value, withhold their merchandise from the market in the hope of more favorable times, perhaps in the expectation that the government order will soon be rescinded. If the authorities do not want the goods concerned to disappear altogether from the market as a result of their interference, they cannot limit themselves to fixing the price; they must at the same time also decree that all stocks on hand be sold at the prescribed price.

But even this does not suffice. At the price determined on the unhampered market, supply and demand would have coincided. Now, because the price was fixed lower by government decree, the demand has increased while the supply has remained unchanged. The stocks on hand are not sufficient to satisfy fully all who are prepared to pay the prescribed price. A part of the demand will remain unsatisfied. The mechanism of the market, which otherwise tends to equalize supply and demand by means of price fluctuations, no longer operates. Now people who would have been prepared to pay the price prescribed by the authorities must leave the market with empty hands. Those who were on line earlier or who were in a position to exploit some personal connection with the sellers have already acquired the whole stock; the others have to go unprovided. If the government wishes to avoid this consequence of its intervention, which runs counter to its intentions, it must add rationing to price control and compulsory sale: a governmental regulation must determine how much of a commodity may be supplied to each individual applicant at the prescribed price.

But once the supplies already on hand at the moment of the government’s intervention are exhausted, an incomparably more difficult problem arises. Since production is no longer profitable if the goods are to be sold at the price fixed by the government, it will be reduced or entirely suspended. If the government wishes to have production continue, it must compel the manufacturers to produce, and, to this end, it must also fix the prices of raw materials and half-finished goods and the wages of labor. Its decrees to this effect, however, cannot be limited to only the one or the few branches of production that the authorities wish to regulate because they deem their products especially important. They must encompass all branches of production. They must regulate the price of all commodities and all wages. In short, they must extend their control over the conduct of all entrepreneurs, capitalists, landowners, and workers. If some branches of production are left free, capital and labor will flow into these, and the government will fail to attain the goal that it wished to achieve by its first act of intervention. But the object of the authorities is that there should be an abundance of production in precisely that branch of industry which, because of the importance they attach to its products, they have especially singled out for regulation. It runs altogether counter to their design that precisely in consequence of their intervention this branch of production should be neglected.

It is therefore clearly evident that an attempt on the part of the government to interfere with the operation of the economic system based on private ownership of the means of production fails of the goal that its authors wished to achieve by means of it. It is, from the point of view of its authors, not only futile, but down-right contrary to purpose, because it enormously augments the very “evil” that it was supposed to combat. Before the price controls were decreed, the commodity was, in the opinion of the government, too expensive; now it disappears from the market altogether. This, however, is not the result aimed at by the government, which wanted to make the commodity accessible to the consumer at a cheaper price. On the contrary: from its viewpoint, the absence of the commodity, the impossibility of securing it, must appear as by far the greater evil. In this sense one can say of the intervention of the authorities that it is futile and contrary to the purpose that it was intended to serve, and of the system of economic policy that attempts to operate by means of such acts of intervention that it is impracticable and unthinkable, that it contradicts economic logic.

If the government will not set things right again by desisting from its interference, i.e., by rescinding the price controls, then it must follow up the first step with others. To the prohibition against asking any price higher than the prescribed one it must add not only measures to compel the sale of all stocks on hand under a system of enforced rationing, but price ceilings on goods of higher order, wage controls, and, ultimately, compulsory labor for entrepreneurs and workers. And these regulations cannot be limited to one or a few branches of production, but must encompass them all. There is simply no other choice than this: either to abstain from interference in the free play of the market, or to delegate the entire management of production and distribution to the government. Either capitalism or socialism: there exists no middle way.

[thefirstimmortal]

...political freedom

It is widely believed that politics and economics are separate and largely unconnected; that individual freedom is a political problem and material welfare an economic problem; and that any kind of political arrangements can be combined with any kind of economic arrangements. The chief contemporary manifestation of this idea is the advocacy of “democratic socialism” by many who condemn out of hand the restrictions on individual freedom imposed by “totalitarian socialism” in Russia and who are persuaded that it is possible for a country to adopt the essential features of old Russian economic arrangements and yet to ensure individual freedom through political arrangements. Such a view is a delusion, that there is an intimate connection between economics and politics, that only certain combinations of political and economic arrangements are possible, and that in particular, a society which is socialist cannot also be democratic, in the sense of guaranteeing individual freedom.

[SouL RippeR]

Thus people want to create a third way, a form of society standing midway between private ownership of the means of production, on the one hand, and communal ownership of the means of production, on the other. Private property will be permitted to exist, but the ways in which the means of production are employed by the entrepreneurs, capitalists, and landowners will be regulated, guided, and controlled by authoritarian decrees and prohibitions.

On the contrary: from its viewpoint, the absence of the commodity, the impossibility of securing it, must appear as by far the greater evil. In this sense one can say of the intervention of the authorities that it is futile and contrary to the purpose that it was intended to serve, and of the system of economic policy that attempts to operate by means of such acts of intervention that it is impracticable and unthinkable, that it contradicts economic logic.

Either capitalism or socialism: there exists no middle way.

Invisible Hand Theory made Visible???? = Monarchy
[?] [?] [?]

[thefirstimmortal]

Invisible Hand Theory made Visible???? = Monarchy

Good evening Soul Ripper,

I'm not sure if this is a question, or a comment. It's getting late and I'm getting ready to read a bed time story to my loved ones. I'll catch you Tuesday.


[ph34r]

.....Imagine living in a city where you felt safe walking home at ten in the evening-or even at two in the morning.

Imagine your children going to schools that respect your values; where teachers concentrate on reading, writing, adding, subtracting, and other academic basics; and where no one would dare teach your child a philosophy that’s alien to you.
Imagine paying only half the taxes you’re paying now.
[sleep] [sleep]

[SouL RippeR]

Hey First Inmortal, And what would you call this??? Because I would call it socialism. See to me socialism would be composed of 4 stages. If you want I can later on tell you about this stages. The end of this would sum all this (what you said) and a perfect society. But the key for this perfect society as I see it is LOVE. Which the system right now prohibits and teaches us to hate more and more.
I have to go, but I'll post again with the complete explanation.

[thefirstimmortal]

.

See to me socialism would be composed of 4 stages. If you want I can later on tell you about this stages.

Oh yes, please do. Mangala had some mythical transitional plan that he never got to sharing with us in detail, as he promised. I'm all ears, and opened minded, although as you can see, at the current time I stongly favor Individual Liberty. But as I've said in the past, I would rather have a mind open by wonder, rather than closed by belief.

By the way, as a Socialist, perhaps you could answer the unanswered questions that were put to Mangala.

[thefirstimmortal]

The end of this would sum all this (what you said) and a perfect society. But the key for this perfect society as I see it is LOVE. Which the system right now prohibits and teaches us to hate more and more.
I have to go, but I'll post again  with the complete explanation.

Fair enough

[Mind]

I still cannot fathom why so many people are enamored with socialism. If there is one thing history has taught us...it is that governments are the absolute greatest purveyors of death, oppression, torture, and environmental destruction. Yet every year more people succumb to the siren song of socialism. Every year people are prepared to hand over more power to governments...and they are destined to be burned again at some point in the future. Why? Why? Why?

Soul Ripper, I agree, love is great. However, I do not see the need for governments to get involved in the business of love. Sounds like a set-up for big trouble. People can love each other without governments forcing them.