Babylon and on - the new capitalism/communism thread

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Velociryx
societies did not exist before individuals grouped together and created them....thus we see that the individual "trumps" society in this regard.

Humans have always lived in groups (with the exception of the occassional hermit). Early homonid society was likely very similar to those of the higher apes, and all evidence of homo sapiens sapiens shows that we always lived in groups. Neither the individual nor the group trumps one another. Niether can exist without the other. Capitalist society, however, treats the individual as superme (provided they are the right individuals) and lowers the group in importance. Socialist and communist society hopes to restore a balance (or, depending on the communist, tilt it the other way).

I also agree that a "blood revolution" to enact communism will result in the very same (predictable) totalitarian state that it has every other time it has been tried.

Bloody revolution is almost never tried. Instead, what is tried is often what you saw in Seattle. People asserting their rights, the state reacting violently, and people fighting back. In almost every case, that is how revolutions become violent affairs. It is usually the old state, the old society, which initiates violence. I hope you would grant us the right to violent self-defence when attacked with violence.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by JohnT
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost

Bad link

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Jack_www
Innovation is needed as much today as it was a 100 years ago. To say that we can switch to communism because we have disscovered most of the things their is to disscover is silly. Many people have been proven wrong time and time again on this matter.

I would like to know what innovations you think will be developed. Especially those that will put people back to work.

I'm not saying there aren't new discoveries to be made. I'm saying that these new discoveries are not going to come fast enough, and aren't going to create enough jobs, to keep the system going. Look at the Great Depression. The future will look like that, but worse.

[JohnT]

Fart.

Go to http://www.bls.gov/cps/home.htm

Scroll down, click on "Most Requested Statistics"

Scroll down, check "Persons At Work Part Time for Economic Reasons - LNS12032194", click the "Retrieve Data" button.

You have the ability to change output options if you want a graph and information from 1955 onward.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Kidicious
What do I care?

BTW, how's your P-100 handling the slow forums as of late?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by JohnT
Fart.

Oh, welcome back.

I guess more part-time jobs have been lost during the current recession than I was aware of. Good job John.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by DinoDoc


BTW, how's your P-100 handling the slow forums as of late?

I have a Intel Celeron 1 GHz

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by JohnT
Go to http://www.bls.gov/cps/home.htm

On NPR a week or so ago they were talking about the alternative unemployment rate. Apparently the government puts out two sets of numbers, those collecting unemployment, which is the number we're used to seeing, and an alternative number, which includes those who've given up looking for work or have been unemployed longer then 6 months, etc. Apparently that number is at 9%.

Underemployment gets talked about way to much by lefties. It's a factor, but not nearly as big as they think.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Kidicious
I have a Intel Celeron 1 GHz

And you're the one proclaiming the uselessness of inovation?

[Kidlicious]

The rate that I would like to see is the rate of displaced workers who end up taking jobs for less pay.

[Jack_www]

Originally posted by Kidicious

I would like to know what innovations you think will be developed. Especially those that will put people back to work.

I'm not saying there aren't new discoveries to be made. I'm saying that these new discoveries are not going to come fast enough, and aren't going to create enough jobs, to keep the system going. Look at the Great Depression. The future will look like that, but worse.

First off I dont think that their is any technology that we can come with that will put more people to work. Second I cant predict the future and neither can you.
Thrid we need innovations and research to help cure deases such as AIDS, Cancer and other deadly deases. This would help all mankind.
Also why do you say that a Great Depression will come? And even if it does, we got out of it before and will again.

I dont know what economic classes you have taken but unemployment rate of about 4 to 5% is normal for a healthy economy. This means that their is enough jobs to go around for workers and that companies can find the people they need. If the unemployment rate were at 0 then this would cause wages to rise rapidly, in turn this would cause inflation and would in the end hurt people as inflation would go out fo controll and people's money would become useless and in end result in higher unemployment.

Right now the unemployment rate is aroun 6% in the United States, and this far from the 25% unemployment of the Great Depression. Now this is not good, and many companies will not be hiring this summur in the US. But it is not a crisis. Most of this is due to the 9-11 attacks and many economists are saying that economy will rebound with a years time and the stock market is already starting to come back, but this is manly due to the low interest rates which forced many to invest in the shockmarket to make money off their savings.

How could communism though give people more jobs? I mean the economy is really based on how people react and feel. If people think that things are going good, they will buy more stuff, and in turn companies will make more money and see that demand is rising and hire more people to meet the demand.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
And you're the one proclaiming the uselessness of inovation?

I'm not the f'king unibomber!

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Kidicious
I'm not the f'king unibomber!

No, you're just a hypocrite.

[GePap]

Where to start?

On the arguement of innovation:

Innovation is a result of human ingenuity and huma desire to know, our inquisitiveness and our ambitions. The rgeatest discoveries in human hisotry have been things like agriculture, Animal domestication, metalurgy, writing (and then printing), gunpowder and the basics of chemistry, so ofrth and so on, and none of these things were discovered thanks to either capitalism or commuism. The notion of vaccines did not come out of capitalism, neither did the steam engine nor the railroad nor a whole other set of things. So take say that it was capitalism that is responsbile for the invention of the internet is absurd. Capitalism isn't. It is responsible for the shape of the internet today, just as capitalism is not the reason for the invention of TV, but it is the reason for how it developed. No one here can possible argue that if edison had lived in Bellamy's world, he would not still have invented the things he invented, if only to be forever famous for having invented them. And you can;t becuase you can't claim to know how Edison thought the way he thought.


Che is correct: man is a social being. We evolved in groups, have always lived in groups. The notion that human beings came together to for groups is absurd. A human child is such an expensive things to raise that solitary creatures could not have done it.

On capitalism and individualism:I don;t think capitalism gives a sh1t about the individual. In fact, the "market" does not care about anything at all, save creating the METHOD of interaction that will lead to maximizing the creation of wealth and capital. As long as people act in a way beneficial to the market, the market flourishes. But the market flourishing has little to do with the happiness of individuals.

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Kidicious


Oh, welcome back.

I guess more part-time jobs have been lost during the current recession than I was aware of. Good job John.

You're welcome. Last thing I want to do is post a broken link.

"Apparently", Che? I give you the link and you can't even bother to look it up to see if this Bald Assertion is correct?

In May 2003, there are 146,485,000 civilians in the available labor force, and of those, 482,000 of them are officially categorized as "Discouraged", or a whopping 0.329% of the work force. The number of unemployed that have been so for over 6 months (27 weeks or over) is 1,930,000, or 1.3175% of the population, for a total percentage of the population that is either long-termed unemployed or discouraged at 1.646% of the workforce. 10 years ago the combined figure was 1.7112%. The lowest I've seen the combined figures was for May of '98, where the figure was just over half that, at .805%.

Nowhere near 9%, buddy.