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Democracy Vs Capitalism

Is Democracy more important than Capitalism?

  • Total voters
    15
  • Poll closed .
cabse5 said:
Again, your inserting liberty into a discussion about capitalism.
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No...I'm defining what has to exist in a capitalist system and those things are also integral for liberty. They are inseparable.
 
Democracy is a parasitic and utterly childish system that, when all comes around, is nothing but bribery. Democracy shows little respect for self-ownership and is a soft form of Communism.
 
MrPeanut said:
Is he just advocating for a more regulated form of capitalism then? I don't think you have to choose between the two, but of course democracy is more important. I'm not sure why the ability to profit off of other people's labor would be more important than everyone having a voice.
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I am not sure why the right to put a piece of paper in a cardboard box to decide what other people can do with their own bodies is more important than each individual's right to their own property, bodies and lives.

But, that's just me.
 
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Fishking said:
No...I'm defining what has to exist in a capitalist system and those things are also integral for liberty. They are inseparable.
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There are capitalist systems (or forms of capitalism) in the heaviest of oppression to individual rights states.
 
Fishking said:
No...I'm defining what has to exist in a capitalist system and those things are also integral for liberty. They are inseparable.
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"but, without democracy, we would have no government which means there would be no roads!"
 
cabse5 said:
Capitalism is poison? You don't want the right to decide how goods and services are distributed? You'd rather have the state decide those things?
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Capitalism =/= markets. Capitalism as a term was coined in the 19th century to describe concentration of the means of production into a small number of hands. Markets have existed since the beginning of human history. Property is proper to man.
 
Fishking said:
Capitalism is amazing and democracy is good as well. Capitalism puts more power in the hands of the individual private citizen while other models puts more power in the hands of the government. Governments are the institutions that have been responsible for the largest-scale atrocities throughout history and therefor should have their powers limited.
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Capitalism, as a system, is defined by the removal of property from the average citizen and the formation of a proletariat class which is dependant on capital and has no independent access to the means of production. It is the first stepping stone on the way to socialism, not the opposite of socialism.
 
calamity said:
I'm always reminded of where democracy went wrong" the Middle East. When the majority are zealots, democracy can be a very bad thing.

Now, of course, unfettered capitalism can be pretty rotten too. So, it's not like free markets are a panacea. But, all in all, freedom to determine your own career path beats being in a situation where the tyrannical majority or a ruling class determines it for you.
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Ironically though, our markets are only "free" when well regulated.
 
calamity said:
Interesting point.

Buttigieg: I'm a capitalist but democracy is 'more important' than capitalism

Let's vote.
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Mayor Pete's right. Margin analysis illustrates why.

Think about it. What must one have first: a political construct -- ways of choosing leaders and laws that define the minimum limits of acceptable behavior -- that enables "this or that" type of economy, or a economic system to implement within a political construct? Simply, when whatever political construct a nation/economy has implemented disintegrates, it doesn't matter what economic system operated under that construct, it too will go to shambles. We witnessed that when the USSR, Iran, and other nations collapsed politically. On the other hand, as we've observed, an economy can go to "hell in a handbasket" and the political construct can endure. From those two events, one observes that while economic collapse can foment political collapse, it doesn't necessarily have to do so. In contrast, when a nation's political foundations crumble, its economy does so too.

Thus insofar as democracy is a political system and capitalism is an economic system, democracy is the more important of the two.

,
 
ecofarm said:
We get more of democracy even without capitalism than we get capitalism without democracy.

Democracy without capitalism is like 70% democracy.

Capitalism without democracy is like 30% capitalism.

Capitalism without democracy is fascism.
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Nice post! :thumbs:
 
Dacke said:
I am not sure why the right to put a piece of paper in a cardboard box to decide what other people can do with their own bodies is more important than each individual's right to their own property, bodies and lives.

But, that's just me.
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The bodies and lives stuff? That comes from the cardboard box, not capitalism.
 
Fishking said:
I see capitalism as the voluntary exchange of goods and services between individuals and groups. Without the rights to your property and labor then there is no capitalism, and those are integral premises to liberty.
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:thumbs:

Which is why capitalism seems to flourish where liberty rules ...
 
Xelor said:
Mayor Pete's right. Margin analysis illustrates why.

Think about it. What must one have first: a political construct -- ways of choosing leaders and laws that define the minimum limits of acceptable behavior -- that enables "this or that" type of economy, or a economic system to implement within a political construct? Simply, when whatever political construct a nation/economy has implemented disintegrates, it doesn't matter what economic system operated under that construct, it too will go to shambles. We witnessed that when the USSR, Iran, and other nations collapsed politically. On the other hand, as we've observed, an economy can go to "hell in a handbasket" and the political construct can endure. From those two events, one observes that while economic collapse can foment political collapse, it doesn't necessarily have to do so. In contrast, when a nation's political foundations crumble, its economy does so too.

Thus insofar as democracy is a political system and capitalism is an economic system, democracy is the more important of the two.

,
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You're always so logical! :2razz:

(and often correct)
 
$1000 said:
Capitalism, as a system, is defined by the removal of property from the average citizen and the formation of a proletariat class which is dependant on capital and has no independent access to the means of production. It is the first stepping stone on the way to socialism, not the opposite of socialism.
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Well either that, or it's the first stepping stone to revolution, which then may lead to both revolution & socialism, so I guess I just made your point! ;)
 
cabse5 said:
There are capitalist systems (or forms of capitalism) in the heaviest of oppression to individual rights states.
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Are you talking about capitalism? I'd like an example of what you're talking about, so we can get some kind of common definitions to work with and not talk past each other, saying things that we both take to mean something different.
 
$1000 said:
Capitalism, as a system, is defined by the removal of property from the average citizen and the formation of a proletariat class which is dependant on capital and has no independent access to the means of production. It is the first stepping stone on the way to socialism, not the opposite of socialism.
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Uhhh….wut? That's perhaps the worst, wrong, and backwards definition of capitalism I've ever read. Capitalism is the antithesis of socialism.
 
Chomsky said:
Well either that, or it's the first stepping stone to revolution, which then may lead to both revolution & socialism, so I guess I just made your point! ;)
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Not really....capitalism is the antithesis of socialism. It's not a stepping stone of any sort. If a revolution happens and then socialism is instituted, then that is an entirely different thing that does not naturally flow from capitalism. Conversely, you could say that the purpose of socialism is to create communism, as they are cut from the same cloth.
 
Fishking said:
Uhhh….wut? That's perhaps the worst, wrong, and backwards definition of capitalism I've ever read. Capitalism is the antithesis of socialism.
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It's literally the condition which the term was coined to describe. That's why it's called 'capitalism': because capital is concentrated and functions as an institution with political interests. Most economists during the era of the term's inception viewed it as a step on the way to socialism, an intermediary state between the breakdown of feudalism, and then the concentration of capital which was previously held in common through the confiscation of church property, the seizure of 'common land' during Enclosure in England, and the mass eviction of the peasants who flooded into English cities, forming the unique (at that point) proletariat class, which had its only Western analogue in the proletarii of ancient Rome. Then in the 1960s capitalism was 'rebranded' as markets in the US in order to oppose a Soviet-style command economy, and since then the defenders of capital have argued that this is the only dichotomy which exists. But read any writer who wrote before the Cold War and you can clearly see that using the term in this way is completely misleading, as there are many market-based economies which aren't necessarily capitalistic, including mercantilism, distributism, and even some forms of feudalism. It's a way of artificially narrowing the debate to defend the concentration of property into a small number of hands as somehow essential for a functioning market, which is absurd.
 
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