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Pick your Poison - Communism or Capitalism? (Or Socialism?)

Which poison would you pick?


  • Total voters
    44
ksu_aviator said:
The only way you can come to any other conclusion is if you believe everyone is a victim of their circumstances.

It's actually a mix of both. If I make the conscious decision to jump off a cliff then obviously my decision determined the outcome. If someone pushes me off then obviously it did not. You cannot apparently understand that even if someone makes a good decision, that bad consequences can still follow, and that bad consequences can follow completely independent of any decision I make. Bad things happen to good people and it has nothing to do with the decisions they make.

Your entire belief system would be undermined by such a basic fact of life.

Even if that was the case, I would rather make a good choice with bad consequences than have the government make a bad choice with good consequences. I choose freedom over socialism.

This statement doesn't even mean anything.

Kandahar said:
If everyone shares something, then no one cares about it. It's the same reason why rental car customers almost never go to the car wash.

This isn't true at all whatsoever. I can name a ton of things off the top of my head which are community-based that thrive because of that very basis. Every single example you gave was absolutely terrible because out of those examples not a single one of them gives sole responsibility to the community first off and second off shared responsibility only works in light of a feeling of responsibility for that particular space/action/thing/whatever.
 
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A true, free market society. Not the corporatism we have now.
 
Feel free to join any number of African tribes and villages if you believe this to be true. Ignore the average lifespan and AIDS rates - that's just capitalist propaganda.

People are not equal. The people who say otherwise are the ones on the losing side of average.

You do realize this is in a "perfect world" right. Do you guys read the first post where i said i know this will probably never happen in my life.. Right?
 
A true, free market society. Not the corporatism we have now.

You do realize that a true, unregulated free market will always devolve into corporatism, right? Monopolies naturally form in an unregulated market, which then dominate the economy and eventually the government as well.
 
And you guys do realize, there is no point to regulating a free market system, it is just delaying the inevitable. Self profit no matter the cost does not care about regulations. It is sort of like rationing a heroin addict heroin. Eventually, the heroin addict will do whatever it takes to get more heroin, even if it means his or her death.
 
You do realize that a true, unregulated free market will always devolve into corporatism, right? Monopolies naturally form in an unregulated market, which then dominate the economy and eventually the government as well.
Wrong. Monopolies are not natural aspects of the free market The vast majority of monopolies were granted monopoly status by the state. Can you name examples of natural monopolies?

Corporatism is an example of government propping up businesses with welfare. It is not a result of the free market, it is a result of government.
 
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This isn't true at all whatsoever. I can name a ton of things off the top of my head which are community-based that thrive because of that very basis.

I'm not saying there aren't any examples of things like that, I'm saying that there are plenty of things that DON'T thrive when they're community-based. Some things work reasonably well when shared, others don't. This is why communism is idealistic and can never work in practice.

Khayembii Communique said:
Every single example you gave was absolutely terrible because out of those examples not a single one of them gives sole responsibility to the community first off and second off shared responsibility only works in light of a feeling of responsibility for that particular space/action/thing/whatever.

A "feeling of responsibility" doesn't scale very well to groups of people larger than families, let alone nation-states. If everyone jointly owns something, then no one is responsible for it and everyone is entitled to help themselves to as much of it as they want. Nations that have tried planned economies received a harsh lesson in this. If, say, everyone in a certain area jointly owns some farmland, what is the incentive for me personally to pull my weight and contribute to the harvest? What is the incentive for me personally to make sure that everyone has enough food if I'd rather gorge myself? And what is the incentive for ANY of us to make sure that the farm operates in an environmentally sustainable manner?

The answer to all three questions is that there is no incentive. And that's the problem that many communist countries faced with food shortages. It's also one of the reasons that many African nations today are far less productive with their farmland than they could be.
 
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Wrong. Monopolies are not natural aspects of the free market The vast majority of monopolies were granted monopoly status by the state. Can you name examples of natural monopolies?

Corporatism is an example of government propping up businesses with welfare. It is not a result of the free market, it is a result of government.

Standard Oil, US Steel, JP Morgan and Co, etc etc. The only reason they lost their monopoly status was because the state split them, and now monopolies are illegal. You remove the antitrust laws and they'll come right back within a decade. And corporatism is when the government becomes a tool of the corporations. It involves the government, but it starts with the corporations. It's obviously not a free market anymore, but a free market will naturally evolve into it unless you stop it with regulation.
 
Why wasn't Centrist included in the poll? We've seen Communism fail and now we're watching Capitalism circle the drain. A little common sense might be in order.
 
Wrong. Monopolies are not natural aspects of the free market The vast majority of monopolies were granted monopoly status by the state. Can you name examples of natural monopolies?

Corporatism is an example of government propping up businesses with welfare. It is not a result of the free market, it is a result of government.

socialists and other statists always figure the best way to prevent the concentration of wealth and power into the hands of a few corporations is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of one big government
 
I would prefer to live above anarchism. No stinking rulers for me.
 
I said neither. Capitalism in it's pure form exploits the poor to benefit the rich. Communism is unattainable without a one-party state using force to quash the Kulaks. Even then, maybe not.

Basically, I'm against any system that oppresses or exploits people.
 
I said neither. Capitalism in it's pure form exploits the poor to benefit the rich. Communism is unattainable without a one-party state using force to quash the Kulaks. Even then, maybe not.

Basically, I'm against any system that oppresses or exploits people.

You might as well blow your brains out now and get to heaven now. I don't know if man is capable of building any system where someone or some percentage of the human population won't figure out a way to oppress or exploit another percent of the population.
 
communism is childish pipe dream. socialism is little more than communism-lite. capitalism is unrealistic simply because
money consolidates and then kills the free market. capitalism transforms money into government control. no matter which system is
established...it all runs a certain cycle. a steady incline...a period of social gratification...and then a decline into a "revolution" of
one kind or another. no social philosophy works without imperialism, though. without imperialism? culture stagnates and regresses,
leaving an opening for a more enterprising philosophy to take hold.
 
It's actually a mix of both. If I make the conscious decision to jump off a cliff then obviously my decision determined the outcome. If someone pushes me off then obviously it did not.

How did you get to the cliff? Why are you standing near a cliff with someone that wants to push you off? You made choices that got you there. That's the problem with so many people. They don't see past the here and now. They only see what they did 10 seconds ago and what they got them. In that respect, so many people are no different than puppies.

But you completely mischaracterized what I was trying to say. I never suggested that people make great decisions day in and day out or that every decision pans out. I suggested that the freedom to make decisions, good or bad, is better than having a known outcome.


You cannot apparently understand that even if someone makes a good decision, that bad consequences can still follow, and that bad consequences can follow completely independent of any decision I make. Bad things happen to good people and it has nothing to do with the decisions they make.

I understand fully, but that is the straw-man story line you have chosen and you refuse to see otherwise.

Your entire belief system would be undermined by such a basic fact of life.



This statement doesn't even mean anything.

It only "doesn't even mean anything" if you choose to ignore the heart of my argument.
 
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