On human nature-the end of capitalism-communism

[Kramerman]

So if a communist came up to you and demanded you hand over your stuff to enrich his group, regardless of his rationalisations about "communism" and what he will allocate to you as a new member of the collective, you'd comply because how we exchange goods doesn't matter? Freedom is natural, and the freedom of association is natural - these are why capitalism is natural.

First of all, whoever said 'HOW WE EXCHANGE GOODS DOESNT MATTER'? How we exchange stuff matters completely, but it depends on who you are and who you are exchanging with. What I am saying is that I dont think it is possible for anyone to possiblely say that one way of exchanging is 'more natural' than another.

What would lead you to believe that I would comply? There are a million different ways to exchange things, that is what is the basis of EVERY relationship of every kind. Just beacuase there is not specifically a natural way to do it, doesnt mean I have to do it how someone demands of me.

[DAVOUT]

I have heard that a population in the Pacific knows only one way to exchange : the reciprocal gift.

[Kramerman]

Originally posted by DAVOUT
I have heard that a population in the Pacific knows only one way to exchange : the reciprocal gift.

wierd... well then, its clear, reciprocal gifts is the only natural system of exchange

EDIT: wrong smilie

[GePap]

Originally posted by DAVOUT
I have heard that a population in the Pacific knows only one way to exchange : the reciprocal gift.

I would guess that is what you get in a system with such limited resources. In one way giving, one side ends up poorer. But if there is not that much around, they end up poor period. By having gifts go both ways, you keep an equilibrium. That is my guess at least.

[Meldor]

Originally posted by GePap
And they simply could not have gotten to such a position as to prevent it. You seem to think that somehow they coudl start a medical industry on this little Island, if only they were capitalists..nonsense. It taes a certaint amount of resources to do somehting. if you do not have those resources, YOU CAN NOT DO IT, PERIOD. Peoples on small isolated islands do not have the resources base to get very far, no matter what their ideology or drive. You also ignore the fact that ceratinly peoples on those islands have plenty of internal drive, like any other peoles. Unless you tell me they do nothing for excitment and just stay home. There are more than one way to channel your drive than to try to become wealthy.

I was not using this as an arguement for capitalism but an arguement against communism, I hope you can see the difference. The people on this island could have started any number of industries based on local resources. They island is large enough to have rivers, it is large enough to support samll industry. The point being that in the communal society they formed, there was no incentive to do so. They lost the drive to go farther. That some people had the drive is evident, the polynesian people spread to most of the islands in the pacific. By why did they not develop larger ships and begin inter-island commerce? They had more than enough resources to do so. They had access to the larger islands as well. The culture stagnated and stayed there, it might have even been going downward if archeology findings are any indication. Again, the point wasn't to prove capitalism, it was to disprove communism. Different, goals.

Originally posted by GePap
Their individual cause make sense only in the group. There is no point of being "top dog" outside of the group, for if there are no other wolves, then being at the top or bottom are meaningless notions. The group your are in sets the parameters of what "top" means, not the toher way around.

Sorry, you will have to do better with this one. No one stays in a group (by choice) that doesn't farther their individual goals. That is why your fellow communists are trying so hard to get out of Cuba. That is why they tried so hard to get out of Russia and her satellites. You stay in the group that will best advance your individual goals. That is why groups are formed to start with.

Originally posted by GePap
Sorry, it was NOT. I would like you to find me, and quote, where excatcly, when Lenin spoke about the revolutionary vanguard, does he say: "brainwashing". Go look, you won't find it. Brainwashing is a loaded term, which you use with loaded meaning. I personally don;t care to use your loaded meanings, for I think they are of little use in real debate.

It seems that we have different maenings for the words. When someone says they are going to force people to be re-educated and this must be done to get rid of their old thinking an put in a new way of thinking, I call that brainwashing in the classical sense. I was in the service and went through basic training, what they did was brainwashing as well. The difference is that I volunteered to do it. The choice was mine and not Lenin's or Marx's. So let's hear what you think re-education entails and your definition of brainwashing.

Originally posted by GePap
No such thing as "natural development" of human systems. Capitalism as it exist today is the result of the work of thinkers and philosophers and economists, just as communism was. Had those ideas not come up, there would be no capitalist system in the world. If sucha development were "natural" it would be universal accross man kind. I isn't.

Sorry, again I must disagree. Our government is the work of thinkers and scholars, philosophers and economists. Unfortunately, economics in practice existed long before any of these others. As man has developed and his interactions have become more complex both governments, societies and trade systems have changed to meet both the needs and expectations of the people that are in it. Yes, the government can attempt to regulate and legislate the economy and the way capitalism as we practice it works, but if it bucks the natural trends then it loses, supply finds a way to meet the demands. The drug trade is a good example. With teh harsh penalties we have here in the US, why would anyone take the chance to deal drugs? Because the demand has made the reward justify the risk. This is in spite of everything that the govenment has done to stop it. You can slow it down, you can speed it up, you can try and channel it, but supply will meet demand if the demand is high enough.

Originally posted by GePap
There are no rights in nature. Wolves may feel and act, as a group, that an area is theirs, but if they are weak, they lose it. Nature grants you no such things as rights,. You have no right to keep anything, to live, to eat, if you are not strong enough to get it and keep it for yourself. A right is a privalege, and nature does not give privaleges.

Hey, the wolves were your analogy not mine. You are the one who gave them the concept of society, not me. I just used your example to show "natural rights" along with your society. If you want to drop the wolves as invalid, then thats up to you. Your example. Also, if we look at your comeback, those wolves individually can not holod the terrirtory, so they give up some individual rights (who gets to eat first and mate first) to advance others through common practices. If another group comes along that is better at getting and keeping territory, then they will take it. This section was not about rights themselves but the concepts of things such as "yours", "mine", "property"(territory). Even today, your property rights can be violated by those that are stronger. The group is set to try and protect those individual rights by common action.

Originally posted by GePap
Personal space is not property rights. You feel a notion of personal space even in public property. It does not actually mean you own it. And the use of that feeling is for protection (something that close in nature is likely to be there to ingest you).
capitalism is built on a complex notion of property laws, a human invention. as of yet, you have given no arguemnt that such property laws are inherently human. Nor could you really.

Here we are dicussing natural rights and not property rights specifically. Rights you feel you have even though they may not be strickly codified. Perhaps we can better facillitate this discussion by defining what each of us means by "natural rights". It seems our talks have drifted off course and hijacked the thread. My definition of "natural rights" are those rights which the majority of people feel are derived through either grant by higher power or through common sense. The ones you "feel" are yours. Jefferson listed amoung them Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but they cover much more ground than that.In my example above, it was the right to have a personal space around your body free of intrusion. We could spend days refuting what is or isn't a natural right. Let us first agree on how we define it.

Originally posted by GePap
On your rant about Cuba: you failed to answer the question of why Latin America would be a better market for Cuba than the US, speically given the fact that when Cuba was 'so well run" as you claim it was pre-1959 (hmm, I wonder why there was a general revolution there if it was?) the US was it's biggest (by far, far) market for all Cuban producst and goods, when Cuba had the ability to trade with anyone else as well.

OK, I will bite. First, I never said that the system in place before the governmental system in place prior to the revolution was run pretty well. I said nothing about working conditions or corruption in the government or industry. I simply stated that there existed before the revolution a viable sugar indutry that was bringing in millions of dollars in hard cash to the island. After the revolution the industry was mismanaged and then dismantled to the utter detriment of Cuba as a whole. The industry was owned and controlled for the most part by American companies that bribed Cuban officals and made off with the profits. Make these assertions and I will stand in line and sing amens. But if you want to tell me that any Cubans (except Castro and his cronies) are any better off today than they were before the revolution and I will argue it till the cows come home. (how is that for a mixture of metaphors?) Yes, they are "educated" but a well educated starving man will still die just a quickly. Yes, they have "univeral health care" but the level of care that the common man receives is laughable. The country is going backwards, they have destroyed their one profitable industry (Do a search on Mugabe and see what his realloction of property is dong for his country). Yet, you want to blame it all on America because we don't trade with them? What did they do? They seized the assets of the companies and took them for the state, which ruined them. This seizure of capital resources was met with a response of withholding trade. If a man steals your car, what do you do? Do you then start paying him to drive you to work? They siezed the sugar industry from American companies, were we then supposed to buy sugar from them? That is a silly position to put forth. Naturally, we found other sources of the needed product and moved on. Castro should have found other markets to sell his products in. Heck, we export tons of sugar out of the US every year. Castro siezed the indutry that put him way ahead of us. In the short term, he should have been able to beat any price we could sell for and get markets in Latin America. Instead the industry is in ruins and there are no goods to market. So why didn't those "thinkers" and "economists" running Cuba come up with other products that they could have sold to the amrkets they were able to compete in? With all the hundreds ofg millions of dollars poured into the country by the USSR, couldn't they establish a set of good they could market? One of the raps against the US is that we don't understand the Latino market. The Cubans (being Latino themselves) should better understand this market and be able to take advantage of it. In particular they should b e able to take advantage of the anti-Americanism that is prevailent in some of these countries. Yet they haven't. Why, because the communist system has lead to its typical stagnation and lack od any incentive for people to make it better. I haven't checked the numbers, but I would say on a gut feel that America is getting close to having a higher number of people of Cuban descent than Cuba does. So, I have answered your question, now answer mine. List in what ways the Cuban people as a whole are better off now than they would be under a capitalist system? We aren't talking government types, but feel free to inject that if needed.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Meldor
I was not using this as an arguement for capitalism but an arguement against communism, I hope you can see the difference. The people on this island could have started any number of industries based on local resources. They island is large enough to have rivers, it is large enough to support samll industry. The point being that in the communal society they formed, there was no incentive to do so. They lost the drive to go farther. That some people had the drive is evident, the polynesian people spread to most of the islands in the pacific. By why did they not develop larger ships and begin inter-island commerce? They had more than enough resources to do so. They had access to the larger islands as well. The culture stagnated and stayed there, it might have even been going downward if archeology findings are any indication. Again, the point wasn't to prove capitalism, it was to disprove communism. Different, goals.

And it is a poor argument against communism due to the fact they they live communal lives, BUT ARE NOT COMMUNISTS! And you ginore another huge fact. The very idea of "industry" is not a natural or normal notion. On thier own, due to the fact that they could ahrdly ever move up the totem pole of civ. to get to a point where industry would make sense, and since they are so isolated that the idea did not reach them very recently. Communism as an idoelogy requires a huge industrial base. No industry, means no proleteriat workers, no proleteriat workers, no communist revolution. So again, this is NOT, nor could it ever be, an arguemn against communism.

Sorry, you will have to do better with this one. No one stays in a group (by choice) that doesn't farther their individual goals. That is why your fellow communists are trying so hard to get out of Cuba. That is why they tried so hard to get out of Russia and her satellites. You stay in the group that will best advance your individual goals. That is why groups are formed to start with.

And you base that BA (Baldfaced Assertion)on? Yes, remember all those countless Eurpean serfs in the Middle Ages. Why, they just got up in thorves and moved to be free and..... Society is not like a club. The one way to leave is to become a monk or a hermit, but that fulfills very different aims.

It seems that we have different maenings for the words. When someone says they are going to force people to be re-educated and this must be done to get rid of their old thinking an put in a new way of thinking, I call that brainwashing in the classical sense. I was in the service and went through basic training, what they did was brainwashing as well. The difference is that I volunteered to do it. The choice was mine and not Lenin's or Marx's. So let's hear what you think re-education entails and your definition of brainwashing.

The term brainwashing is loaded. It assumes that what is being done is aaginst the interests of the one being "brainwashed". That you think so is irrelevant, since an arguemnt is not based on opinions but arguemnets based on some sort of evidence.

Sorry, again I must disagree. Our government is the work of thinkers and scholars, philosophers and economists. Unfortunately, economics in practice existed long before any of these others. As man has developed and his interactions have become more complex both governments, societies and trade systems have changed to meet both the needs and expectations of the people that are in it. Yes, the government can attempt to regulate and legislate the economy and the way capitalism as we practice it works, but if it bucks the natural trends then it loses, supply finds a way to meet the demands. The drug trade is a good example. With teh harsh penalties we have here in the US, why would anyone take the chance to deal drugs? Because the demand has made the reward justify the risk. This is in spite of everything that the govenment has done to stop it. You can slow it down, you can speed it up, you can try and channel it, but supply will meet demand if the demand is high enough.

Economics is simply about resrouce use and allocation. What you are arguing is that somehow a very complex system of regulated interactions is somehow natural. You have yet to provide anything close to prove that.

Hey, the wolves were your analogy not mine. You are the one who gave them the concept of society, not me. I just used your example to show "natural rights" along with your society. If you want to drop the wolves as invalid, then thats up to you. Your example. Also, if we look at your comeback, those wolves individually can not holod the terrirtory, so they give up some individual rights (who gets to eat first and mate first) to advance others through common practices. If another group comes along that is better at getting and keeping territory, then they will take it. This section was not about rights themselves but the concepts of things such as "yours", "mine", "property"(territory). Even today, your property rights can be violated by those that are stronger. The group is set to try and protect those individual rights by common action.

And none of that has much to do with capitalism. IN any system in which the strong can come and take your land, investement is discouraged, hence strict property laws. You are trying to prove capitalism is somehow inherently natural. That does not help your case one iota. Also, what right? As I told Bezerker, rights are a legal concept, not a natural one.

Here we are dicussing natural rights and not property rights specifically. Rights you feel you have even though they may not be strickly codified. Perhaps we can better facillitate this discussion by defining what each of us means by "natural rights". It seems our talks have drifted off course and hijacked the thread. My definition of "natural rights" are those rights which the majority of people feel are derived through either grant by higher power or through common sense. The ones you "feel" are yours. Jefferson listed amoung them Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but they cover much more ground than that.In my example above, it was the right to have a personal space around your body free of intrusion. We could spend days refuting what is or isn't a natural right. Let us first agree on how we define it.

And Jeffeson wrote that in 1776. Who wrote that in 1200bc. Where in the Bible are people's rights codified? I see plenty of rules and regulations, but few places were it might say you have a privalege to anything. As for personal space, don;t confuse biology to common sense. A creature devoid of some aspect of territoriality will soon be inhabiting another creatures space at the same time (within them). You canotanty use the terminology of common sense: all human ebings have common sense. Take your islanders. They are huamnd beings, as human as you. Where is thier comon sense that lead to codifiying a bill of rights for themselves? That is the burden you must pass.

OK, I will bite. First, I never said that the system in place before the governmental system in place prior to the revolution was run pretty well. I said nothing about working conditions or corruption in the government or industry. I simply stated that there existed before the revolution a viable sugar indutry that was bringing in millions of dollars in hard cash to the island. After the revolution the industry was mismanaged and then dismantled to the utter detriment of Cuba as a whole. The industry was owned and controlled for the most part by American companies that bribed Cuban officals and made off with the profits. Make these assertions and I will stand in line and sing amens. But if you want to tell me that any Cubans (except Castro and his cronies) are any better off today than they were before the revolution and I will argue it till the cows come home. (how is that for a mixture of metaphors?) Yes, they are "educated" but a well educated starving man will still die just a quickly. Yes, they have "univeral health care" but the level of care that the common man receives is laughable. The country is going backwards, they have destroyed their one profitable industry (Do a search on Mugabe and see what his realloction of property is dong for his country). Yet, you want to blame it all on America because we don't trade with them? What did they do? They seized the assets of the companies and took them for the state, which ruined them. This seizure of capital resources was met with a response of withholding trade. If a man steals your car, what do you do? Do you then start paying him to drive you to work? They siezed the sugar industry from American companies, were we then supposed to buy sugar from them? That is a silly position to put forth. Naturally, we found other sources of the needed product and moved on. Castro should have found other markets to sell his products in. Heck, we export tons of sugar out of the US every year. Castro siezed the indutry that put him way ahead of us. In the short term, he should have been able to beat any price we could sell for and get markets in Latin America. Instead the industry is in ruins and there are no goods to market. So why didn't those "thinkers" and "economists" running Cuba come up with other products that they could have sold to the amrkets they were able to compete in? With all the hundreds ofg millions of dollars poured into the country by the USSR, couldn't they establish a set of good they could market? One of the raps against the US is that we don't understand the Latino market. The Cubans (being Latino themselves) should better understand this market and be able to take advantage of it. In particular they should b e able to take advantage of the anti-Americanism that is prevailent in some of these countries. Yet they haven't. Why, because the communist system has lead to its typical stagnation and lack od any incentive for people to make it better. I haven't checked the numbers, but I would say on a gut feel that America is getting close to having a higher number of people of Cuban descent than Cuba does. So, I have answered your question, now answer mine. List in what ways the Cuban people as a whole are better off now than they would be under a capitalist system? We aren't talking government types, but feel free to inject that if needed.

Another huge rant in which you never actually ANSWERED THE QUESTION! Why would, in market terms, Latin America be a more natural market for Cuban goods than the US? That is the question you are singularly not answering.

[GePap]

bump. server acting funny.

[Kramerman]

Im on a T1 and it took forever to process my post in another thread, then a few minutes later is was fine... grr... i just feel sry for those on dial up...