Why Capitalists are Capitalists...

[Velociryx]

Actually, yes, Gepap. I came from a family that was literally LESS than dirt poor.

I've come a long way since then, USING the very system that the communist crowd is swearing up and down is broken.

Thus, ANY evidence to the contrary (ie - the system is not broken, and opportunities exist for more than just the rich), IS perfectly valid, because if the situation in reality is as the communist crowd says, then there would have been no way for me to rise above where I started from.

That I am here, on my road runner connection and able to even HAVE the conversation flies in the face of the core of the other side's argument.

-=Vel=-

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
The leftist whining that's prevelent throughout these threads is that unless you're born with a silver spoon in hand, you're stuck in ****sville, unless the heroic party comes in and plays Marx meets Robin Hood. Oh, and nobody is actually responsible for their choices or results.

Where's Officer Imran the head of the black and white police to tell you to see shades of grey?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Thus, ANY evidence to the contrary (ie - the system is not broken, and opportunities exist for more than just the rich), IS perfectly valid, because if the situation in reality is as the communist crowd says, then there would have been no way for me to rise above where I started from.

Who cares if it's valid it's completely meaningless? None or us aren't saying that there are success stories. There isn't even an argument over this.

[Velociryx]

Yessir....I'll tell you exactly why it's fair. Because Gates WORKED for his choices. He by and large MADE the opportunities he has. Did you? If not, then guess what? You don't get to take advantage of those opportunities.

So....rather than whining about the fact that you don't have the same choices as Gates, do you not see that the more productive response is to go out and generate some options and opportunities for yourself? Or would you rather someone just walk up and hand them to you on a platter?

-=Vel=-

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Velociryx
If that's true, Che, then I should not be where I am. Am I just that damned good? Are all the people around me whom I have WATCHED bootstrap themselves from the gutter to something significantly better?

You seemt to have a problem with understanding simple math. 90% != 100%

Gate was born to a wealthy family. Yes, he is now among the world's richest men, but he was already rich. He is not an Andrew Carnegie or a John D. Rockerfeller. Let's look at our President. This is a man who has had everything handed to him: his education, his businesses, and his political positions. He hasn't had to work for anything in his life, and he's the most powerful man in the world. More or the ruling class is made up of Bushes and Gates than Andrew Carnegies and John D. Rockerfellers. On the flip side, I can't imagine too many Rockerfellers and Carnegies working in a steel mill or flipping burgers at McDonalds. Jeb Bushes daughter has repeatedly been caught with illegal drugs, and she's not in prison.

The system is different for those at the top and those at the bottom. The fact that there is room for movement both up and down doesn't mean that it isn't stratified and largely rigid. The fact that the Colorado flows into Mexico isn't proof that the Hoover and Glen Canyon dams aren't holding most of it back.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Yessir....I'll tell you exactly why it's fair. Because Gates WORKED for his choices. He by and large MADE the opportunities he has. Did you? If not, then guess what? You don't get to take advantage of those opportunities.

So....rather than whining about the fact that you don't have the same choices as Gates, do you not see that the more productive response is to go out and generate some options and opportunities for yourself? Or would you rather someone just walk up and hand them to you on a platter?

-=Vel=-

You have no basis to say that Bill Gates has worked harder than I have. You have little knowledge of his work and none whatsoever of my work.

[Velociryx]

Oh but it's not meaningless.

The crux of the entire argument you have been putting forth is that the system is so heavily weighted in favor of the rich that the poor effectively have no choice (or, what few choices they have aren't enough to matter), and that is why they should welcome the coming revolution.

And IF that is so, then the ONLY success stories we should be hearing about should be coming from people who started off with all the cards stacked in their favor.

But when confronted with something else....a poor kid who should be the freakin' POSTER CHILD for your revolution, embracing the current system and making something of himself, you ignore it.

Pretend it doesn't exist and maybe it'll go away, right? Cos if it works for a poor kid like me, then what's the point of the revolution?

-=Vel=-

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
It's very easy to bash capitalism for being "evil," so a lot of socialists and communists fall into that trap. One merely need point to the rather vicious and violent measures to which both legal and illegal capitalists will go to protet their wealth and means of generating that wealth. The most naked examples, are criminal enterprises, such as the mob, drug gangs, etc. On the legal end, we have Coke hiring death squads to murder union activists in Columbia and Guatemala, Nike hiring children for a dollar a day to make $200 a pair shoes, Exxon cutting back on safety equipment and spill containment equipment and overworking their employees than taking the clean up expenses and damages as a tax writeoff, etc.

Injustice isn't inherent to the system, but the powerful are able to get away with it because of their ability to control the means of communication and politics. Sometimes they go to far, do something so egregious to common decency that they must be punished, even if it's only a slap on the wrist. At other times, they threaten the entire system with their greed, and the system must intervene.

Speaking about the injustice of the system as it is fires people'e sense of righteousness and indignity. In other words, it's a hook. This is only part of the reason that socialists and their ilk want to bring the system down, an overdeveloped sense of unfairness.

Marxists, i.e. scientific socialists, however, "oppose" the system for three other reasons. Reason #1 is the inherent instability of the system. It is precisely when the system is at it's most productive that it falls down. When it is producing more than can be consumed, the economy falters, people lose their jobs, their homes, and their lives for being too prodctive. This is the capitalist paradox. Only so long as their is room to grow is it "efficient." Too much production means capital is allocated "inefficiently" and excess capital must be cleared away, generally by a crisis (aka depression, aka recession, aka slowdown).

Reason #2 stems from #1, the magnitude of these "slowdowns" has a tendency to increase, or rather, they did until after the Great Depression. Keynesian economics has mitigated this tendency greatly, at the expense of growth. We don't fall down as far as we used to do, but we do it more frequently (though not in the last twenty years, as Keynesian policies have been dismantled). Sometimes, even a crisis cannot clear away enough capital and labor for the system to become productive again. In these cases, war is necessary to phsycially destroy competitors. Both World Wars were examples of this.

Reason #3 flows from the previous reason. These crises are inefficient. Labor and capital become unproductive, people's livelihoods are destroyed, sometimes even their very lives. The ultimate expression of these crises, war, is even more wasteful. On top of this, much human productivity is wasted in such things as advertizing (necessary from a capitalist standpoint), the military, prison systems, various stock and financial schemes, etc. All of this could be put to better use. Add again unemployment, underemployment, and the waste of many potentially productive human beings because of poor education, crime, etc., and there is a vast army of capital and labor that serves very little productive purpose. It's inefficient. We could use this energy to lower the amount of time we have to work and maximize the amount of time we have to be with friends, family, and increasing our human potential.

To this I could add the problems of human alienation, human spacial organization, racism, heterosexism, agism, pollution, overuse of resources, etc. The world could be managed much more efficiently by direct, democratic oversight, rather than the anarchic "take what you can grab" system we have now.

As much as people claim that corporations have resource management in their best interests, the fishing industry is great example of how this is false. Each individual company knows that the resources need to be better managed. If they wipe out tuna stocks, they can't sell anymore tuna. That's why we don't have Atlantic halibut anymore. Unless they are coerced by an outside force, however, they cannot voluntarily stop, because their competitors won't stop. So fish stocks have collapsed in the oceans around the world . . . with the exception of the Pacific Halibut which is managed very strictly because the government go involved (many, many decades ago, when it was nearly fished out of existence) Today the Pacific Halibut stock is abundent and quotas are strictly managed.

In this case, a democratically managed system of resource allocation has saved the resource, provides jobs, and profit. We Marxists argue that the entire world could be run similarly.

Course, it hasn't ever worked out that way, because every place socialism has appeared it has been under seige from day one. It is amusing that those who are the biggest proponents of the Israelis acting as despotic as necessary to protect themselves from terrorism always claim the opposite when it regards socialist countries. More than thirty thousand Palestinians have been killed since 1948, 1% of their total population today. That's a huge number, more than were killed by the "dictatorships" of Cuba, Nicaragua, etc. But we're the murderous bad guys and they are the set upon heroes.

This isn't to bash Israel. They have to do what they have to do (we can argue about efficacy elsewhere). So did/do the socialist states. Protecting yourself from invasion, terrorism, and subversion causes massive inefficiencies. The USSR was invaded twice, and suffered from terrorism from 1917 to 1991. Cuba was invaded, bombed, and still suffers from terroist attacks. Nicaragua was invaded and terrorism. Vietnam, the same, China got off with just terrorism. Eastern Europe got off with just terrorism. And so on. Peasant countries all, which had to industrialize and defend themselves at the same time. Yeah, it's pretty inefficent, but it's an external inefficiency forced upon them.

Thought I'd quote this since MtG and Vel have ignored it.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Kidicious


By your own interpretation you could be digging ditches any day now. A bunch of poor people will start competing with you and put you out of business.

One of my favorite barfight starter lines is to go up to someone and ask "Do you know the difference between a smartass and a dumbass?" (hint, there is no correct answer)

Of course people go into competition. If you stay static, produce nothing new, save none of what you earn, and generally display a reverse Midas touch (everything you touch turns to **** instead of gold ) about everything, you can get the result in the marketplace your incompetent actions deserve.
In the worst case, it's unlikely that you'll revert to digging ditches, because you've acquired a more marketable skill set.

If I manage to make my software business go belly up, I can still get decent paying work in software development, since I have a fairly good set of core skills that relate to each other. I can also continue to do the energy consultancy work that bores me at this point. Either way, 27.5 years after dropping out of high school (to go and not finish college), I have two totally independent marketable skill sets where I can make six figures per yer in either.

The point is that you grow, save, improve, adapt, etc., in an on-going process, as does everyone else, in response to competition.

What's your alternative? The central planning bureaucracy guarantees your present income in your present field for life? Or is there "competition" in your fantasy of a socialist paradise and you were just digging (no pun intended) at Vel?

[Velociryx]

Oh no...I didn't ignore it, I just didn't see anything to respond to.

It's blindingly clear that you guys refuse to see the forest for all the dang trees in the way, and that's okay.

You go on and wait for the big revolution to come, wringing your hands about how the man's out to get you in the meantime, and I'll get back to work.

We'll see who's gotten further in a few years....

-=Vel=-

[Az]

Great reading, Che.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Oh no...I didn't ignore it, I just didn't see anything to respond to.

Then let's just agree to disagree.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Oh but it's not meaningless.

The crux of the entire argument you have been putting forth is that the system is so heavily weighted in favor of the rich that the poor effectively have no choice (or, what few choices they have aren't enough to matter), and that is why they should welcome the coming revolution.

No, economics isn't like that. You have to go with relativities. You can't say that no poor people have any opportunities anymore than you can say that there is enough opportunity for all poor to become rich. So you have the argument wrong. The point is the MOST of the poor do not have the opportunity to improve their situation significantly. That they are rational and if they have opportinies that would benefit them that they would take them.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Thought I'd quote this since MtG and Vel have ignored it.

Well, I know I have.

You could start another whole thread on the self-justifying fallacies and propaganda digs, whitewashing of unfavorable facts, etc.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
It's blindingly clear that you guys refuse to see the forest for all the dang trees in the way, and that's okay.

It's your job to show us the forest. Quite frankly, you have done poorly today. Come back when you have an argument that can stand up.