The problem of Capitalism

[James972]

Mistakes could happen, in Capitalism or Communism regimes.

not really mistakes in capitalism are tiny since it is decentralized while communism is the exact opposite. Now do you understand?

 

[James972]

The problem is that you are the one that needs to understand. What Anti-trust laws you are talking about, are you blind or what?

can the liberal say what you feel I am blind about?????????????????????????????????

 

[James972]

Nazis and Communist regimes could run successful conglomerate too.

they could??? Any reason to think govt bureaucrats are better at running businesses than the free market??? Did you notice that the Chinese started to get rich the instant the govt liberal bureaucrats stopped running the businesses???????

 

[James972]

I can't believe how far people defend blindly useless ideas.

can you say what the useless idea is and why you feel it is useless?????????????

 

[enderpotato00]

Communism was tried in USSR and Red China where it killed about 120 million. Do you understand?

That’s my point.

 

[TheEconomist]

It matters little whether someone really thinks the revolutionaries in Russia, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba and other places around the globe really fell in line with the precepts of the Marxist doctrine in practice. Those horrible experiences and the near destruction of the entire world in the tension created by the Cold War are a testimony to what happens when those ideas roam free. When you let people go there, there is not a single example where things did not get ugly very fast. Even if you genuinely believe in the underlying ideas, even if you think that all revolutionary leaders in all those instances spanning a century only paid lip service to those ideas and only used the social turmoil as a means of promoting their own interests, you would be forced to consider that there is something to be said about how it allows people to behave in the real world. It seems that every single time someone said they would uproot the structures of oppression in a society, they excused every horror they would carry out as the means to a noble end. It invariably puts a lot of power and discretion in very few hands and it supplies scapegoats on mass. It doesn't matter the specifics of the collectivist doctrine here: all of them say to the majority that they are victims, that some other groups are responsible for their plight and that this justifies violence.

And then we have the idea that capitalism also killed. Every system of organizing production we know comes with some aspect of tyranny and can involve some people trying to corrupt the institutions for their benefit and at the expense of all others. Capitalism in practice has indeed produced excesses and social problems which have been horrifying in at least some regards. In fact, if you define capitalism sufficiently loosely and if you're generous enough with attributing the causes of death to capitalism, you can probably come up with figures that rival the deaths produced by Nazism, for example. I strongly doubt you can rival the body count of communism without going overtly overboard, but let's assume that you can. Yet, even in that worst of all possible lights, capitalism would still be preferable. Why? It's the only one with real, sizable upsides. It created wealth and prosperity on a scale never seen before, increasingly dragging developing countries into the mix. We more than halved the rate of absolute poverty since 2000, among other remarkable achievements.


If someone here thinks they have the path to the promised land, that they know how to usher in the Utopia, they should think about it twice. How many more millions of murders and near nuclear apocalypses do you need before you become convinced those collectivist doctrines are wrong?

Will you stop after a thousand bodies? A million? Ten million? At what point will you pause and realize good intentions can be deadly too?

 

[James972]

In fact, if you define capitalism sufficiently loosely and if you're generous enough with attributing the causes of death to capitalism, you can probably come up with figures that rival the deaths produced by Nazism, for example.

How cool!!! The standard libcommie academic strikes again!! Why not give us your best example of capitalism rivaling Nazis in deaths produced?????????????????????

 

[TheEconomist]

How cool!!! The standard libcommie academic strikes again!! Why not give us your best example of capitalism rivaling Nazis in deaths produced?????????????????????

Apparently, you have trouble reading plain English. I'm literally saying that you have to play fast and loose with definitions to come up with a credible accusation of capitalism being as dreadful as Nazism, let alone communism, and what you take out of it is that I'm making the claim which I admit to be patently absurd. The point is that I am avoiding to argue in either direction by conceding the worst possible opinion of capitalism for the sake of argumentation and saying that even someone with that view would still have to prefer capitalism because it's the only system that has ever produced some sizable upside in practice. In short, you can say that capitalism is the most awful invention of humankind, except for all those other systems.


To be fair, capitalism under the industrial revolution of the 19th century was not all roses and rainbows. Someone could easily point to the laxness of the business community and argue that a system that allowed them to forgo improvements to security, working conditions, or the fact that this system led to rapid social changes whereby cities became overcrowded, undermaintained, unhygienic and replete with airborne pollution. You can complain that this kind of criticism would not be fair. I don't care. The whole point is that even if it was fair, it wouldn't undermine my argument. Capitalism has upsides that communist/socialist regimes in practice never had.

 

[James972]

Apparently, you have trouble reading plain English. I'm literally saying that you have to play fast and loose with definitions to come up with a credible accusation of capitalism being as dreadful as Nazism, let alone communism,

Here's what you said:
In fact, if you define capitalism sufficiently loosely and if you're generous enough with attributing the causes of death to capitalism, you can probably come up with figures that rival the deaths produced by Nazism,

 

[James972]

In short, you can say that capitalism is the most awful invention of humankind, except for all those other systems.

It just instantly eliminated 40% of the entire planets poverty when China switched to it. Is that an example of it being awful????

 

[James972]

Someone could easily point to the laxness of the business community and argue that a system that allowed them to forgo improvements to security, working conditions, or the fact that this system led to rapid social changes whereby cities became overcrowded, undermaintained, unhygienic and replete with airborne pollution.

and someone more intelligent could point out that no one would have participated in the system you describe if it was not a vast improvement over what they were leaving. Do you understand??

 

[James972]

Capitalism has upsides that communist/socialist regimes in practice never had.

like making people rich while communism slowly starves them to death in the millions? That's your idea of an upside. It's like saying that if you look hard enough you discover heaven has an upside over hell.

 

[TheEconomist]

Here's what you said: (...).

I know what I said, but you seem to not understand the difference between saying "if A, then B" and "B." Hint: I might not condone B in the first case, although I definitely do in the second.

It just instantly eliminated 40% of the entire planet's poverty when China switched to it. Is that an example of it being awful?

Instantly? I wouldn't call several-decades-long structural adjustments an instant. You should consider quitting the hyperboles.

and someone more intelligent could point out that no one would have participated in the system you describe if it was not a vast improvement over what they were leaving. Do you understand?

My point isn't that all arguments raised against capitalism are exactly fair, but that those arguments are largely irrelevant.

This reply is also curious because it misses the core of the claim you purport to put down. The point people make when they point to the horrors of the 19th century in Western Europe and the United States isn't that people couldn't gain from trading their field jobs for an industrial job. Their point is that there might have been a still better option -- some limited regulation on security, for example. You may object on libertarian grounds, but it's hard to tell whether those would have made much of a dent in growth and it's easy to tell it might have saved a sizable number of lives (and perhaps also limbs). That is not an unreasonable argument by any stretch of the imagination. You'd need to dig into the relevant economics literature to see if it's plausible.

Either way, I'm conceding that some points would be harder to refute and moving the argument somewhere else by saying that even the worst picture you can reasonably paint of capitalism is still better than everything else we ever tried.

like making people rich while communism slowly starves them to death in the millions? That's your idea of an upside. It's like saying that if you look hard enough you discover heaven has an upside over hell.

You seem to have trouble reading people charitably, so much so that you miss the whole point people are making. How is that attitude working out so far?

 

[James972]

Instantly? I wouldn't call several-decades-long structural adjustments an instant. You should consider quitting the hyperboles.

Yes instantly. Republican capitalism transformed the planet instantly!!

 

[James972]

Their point is that there might have been a still better option -- some limited regulation on security, for example.

total liberal insanity of course! Republican capitalism was a hugely unbelievably astoundingly and better option that produced more in 100 years than liberalism produced in all of previous human history!! THe idea that you would regulate what was saving millions of lives and making billions of lives possible is 100% absurd crazy and nuts!!

 

[James972]

You seem to have trouble reading people charitably,

why not decide what you stand for if anything and then learn to write clearly; then I can read what you write not what you imagine you are writing.

 

[charliebrown]

The problem of anything is rooted in morals.

As a society's morals go down, those traits will be equally spread between the private and public sector.

 

[danielpalos]

Capitalism "died in 1929", coincidence or conspiracy?

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Socialism has been bailing out Capitalism ever since.

 

[James972]

As a society's morals go down,

what morals are going down?

 

[charliebrown]

what morals are going down?

Ask the OP.

 

[James972]

Ask the OP.

why not try yourself????

 

[TheEconomist]

Why not decide what you stand for if anything and then learn to write clearly; then I can read what you write not what you imagine you are writing.

The history of this thread could be summarized as your incapacity to read what others write.

You turn every idea other people present into a parody of itself, usually as a prelude to pathetically crafted rebuttal. And what a rebuttal! Parroting the poor man's version of the most extreme form of libertarianism, you could find. You might have something of an effective troll as many people myself included often respond. Otherwise, this is just sad. I've rarely seen someone so profoundly blinded by partisanship in my life.

 

[James972]

I've rarely seen someone so profoundly blinded by partisanship in my life.

Interesting, so then it should be very very easy to present an example of this profound blindness for whole world to see. Shall I hold my breath??? LOL

 

[ElChupacabra]

The history of this thread could be summarized as your incapacity to read what others write.

You turn every idea other people present into a parody of itself, usually as a prelude to pathetically crafted rebuttal. And what a rebuttal! Parroting the poor man's version of the most extreme form of libertarianism, you could find. You might have something of an effective troll as many people myself included often respond. Otherwise, this is just sad. I've rarely seen someone so profoundly blinded by partisanship in my life.

The optimist in me hopes the poster is just a troll. Based on the threads in which I've participated, James972 just likes to go around in circles and has no real point to make beyond just superficial comments and hyperbole.

 

[ElChupacabra]

Interesting, so then it should be very very easy to present an example of this profound blindness for whole world to see. Shall I hold my breath??? LOL

Perhaps. It may kickstart your brain so it can produce something other than your parroted responses.