Home › Forums › Financial Markets/Economics › Karl marx.
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FlyerInHi.
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October 13, 2015 at 1:59 PM #790194October 13, 2015 at 8:37 PM #790198
ltsddd
Participant[quote=CA renter][quote=ltsdd][quote=FlyerInHi]
Russia, China, Vietnam now do have billionaires and ownership in a capitalist sense. But that’s capitalism, not communism.[/quote]Isn’t that enough proof there that marxism is shit?[/quote]
No, it’s proof that corruption is shit. Those countries are not truly socialist countries. They are/were under the control of a dictatorial regime…that’s the complete opposite of socialism.
Any type of economic system will fail if corruption becomes rampant. But there is only one system that can reasonably contain corruption and that’s socialism. With capitalism, wealth and power are concentrated. When wealth and power are concentrated, corruption will be endemic, whether it’s a capitalist system or a “communist” system.
In a true socialist system, the hierarchy is relatively flat, and those who have are in more powerful positions are accountable to the masses. This helps prevent the power/wealth inequality that drives corruption and better ensures the well-being of the majority of the population.[/quote]
You are contradicting yourself here. If socialism is one system that can reasonably contain corruption, as you claimed, then please explain why it hasn’t been able to do so in the aforementioned “socialist” countries? And why is corruption appears to be worse in those “socialist” countries than it is in the non-socialist countries?
October 14, 2015 at 8:33 AM #790200livinincali
Participant[quote=ltsdd]
You are contradicting yourself here. If socialism is one system that can reasonably contain corruption, as you claimed, then please explain why it hasn’t been able to do so in the aforementioned “socialist” countries? And why is corruption appears to be worse in those “socialist” countries than it is in the non-socialist countries?[/quote]The problem with a socialist utopia is it is still governed by people. Most extended families (20 or so people) couldn’t even pool their resources together and allocate them fairly in the eyes of everybody in that family. How is a group of people going to do that for 300 million people? It just never is going to work and it never has.
Even for something small and simple like all the piggs putting their resources together and letting CAR allocate them would be an impossible task for CAR to handle. And yet somehow there’s some smart guy/girl, some think tank, some computer algorithm that can properly and fairy allocate resources for a nation of 300 million. What is fair is always in the eyes of a person, it’s hard to measure.
October 14, 2015 at 9:22 AM #790201meadandale
Participant[quote=livinincali][quote=ltsdd]
You are contradicting yourself here. If socialism is one system that can reasonably contain corruption, as you claimed, then please explain why it hasn’t been able to do so in the aforementioned “socialist” countries? And why is corruption appears to be worse in those “socialist” countries than it is in the non-socialist countries?[/quote]The problem with a socialist utopia is it is still governed by people. Most extended families (20 or so people) couldn’t even pool their resources together and allocate them fairly in the eyes of everybody in that family. How is a group of people going to do that for 300 million people? It just never is going to work and it never has.
Even for something small and simple like all the piggs putting their resources together and letting CAR allocate them would be an impossible task for CAR to handle. And yet somehow there’s some smart guy/girl, some think tank, some computer algorithm that can properly and fairy allocate resources for a nation of 300 million. What is fair is always in the eyes of a person, it’s hard to measure.[/quote]
+1
The central planners are also never even close to as efficient as a free market. That’s why you have one type of car, one type of shoe and there’s never any bread or toilet paper. The profit motive is a powerful force to keep the shelves stocked and is absent in socialist and communist countries.
October 14, 2015 at 9:32 AM #790202scaredyclassic
ParticipantMaybe stocked shelves are the root of the problem…
October 14, 2015 at 9:44 AM #790203The-Shoveler
ParticipantOn my few journeys into China (which must have been much better than it was 40 years ago), the one thing I did notice was a lack of Toilet paper (and Toilets for that matter).
But everything else was actually quite well stocked, shoes any type of clothes etc…
money money money motivates
October 14, 2015 at 10:01 AM #790205FlyerInHi
Guestshoveler, America is the land of plentiful toilet paper and napkins. In other countries, they ration them to avoid waste. People carry little packs of tissue with them.
October 14, 2015 at 5:14 PM #790213Anonymous
Guest[quote=livinincali]
The problem with a socialist utopia is it is still governed by people. Most extended families (20 or so people) couldn’t even pool their resources together and allocate them fairly in the eyes of everybody in that family. How is a group of people going to do that for 300 million people? It just never is going to work and it never has.
Even for something small and simple like all the piggs putting their resources together and letting CAR allocate them would be an impossible task for CAR to handle. And yet somehow there’s some smart guy/girl, some think tank, some computer algorithm that can properly and fairy allocate resources for a nation of 300 million. What is fair is always in the eyes of a person, it’s hard to measure.[/quote]
You obviously don’t know anything about purely socialist countries.
Resources are not are not managed by people, they are managed by the unicorns that live there.
October 14, 2015 at 5:44 PM #790214Guest[quote=CA renter]
And there is nothing wrong with making good money if one truly earns it, nor is there anything wrong with accumulating wealth and passing it on to your heirs. The problem arises when the wealth disparity reaches such a point that the masses never have a chance to catch up, eventually having to beg for their basic necessities and perform whatever tasks their masters want, for whatever wages their masters desire to pay, because they have no other choice.[/quote]This paragraph above perfectly captures the inanity of your socialist gibberish.
“there is nothing wrong with making good money if one truly earns it”
Who decides if one truly earns it? Who determines wages?
You never answer that one. Because there is no answer that is better than “the market.” Everything else has failed, miserably.
“The problem arises when the wealth disparity reaches such a point that the masses never have a chance to catch up”
“The masses” do catch up. All the time. As I have repeatedly pointed out on this site (and a fact you consistently choose to ignore) is that most of the wealthiest people in America today were born middle class. More than half of the top ten, and many of the rest are only second-generation wealth:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/list/#version:static
If there is anything that is true about the wealthy is that they are replaced every generation with people who create the things that “the masses” want.
Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Larry Ellison, Sam Walton … oh wait he’s dead but his kids are really wealthy and we know that’s Ok because…
“nor is there anything wrong with accumulating wealth and passing it on to your heirs.”
Yes, it’s tough for the masses who
“beg for their basic necessities and perform whatever tasks their masters want, for whatever wages their masters desire to pay, because they have no other choice.”
Yikes! … typical day at the office?
(BTW scaredy: good troll!)
October 15, 2015 at 10:28 AM #790219Participantthe story isn’t over. maybe we lose…
i wasn’t trolling.
saw a comment on a NY times article…randomly, but it kind of spoke to me…
“I was driving down the street one day and saw workers ripping out perfectly good flowers from a bed in an entrance to an expensive neighborhood. It was fall and it was time to change them to fall flowers, en masse. I guess the dirt is pretty much just there to hold the plants upright and to look more or less natural. There is no soil ecosystem here; the plants will be there for a short time and will be supported with chemical fertilizers, pesticide, and weed-killer.
This is how the world works: exploitation without concern for the larger consequences is the name of the game. If you don’t exploit maximally, you’re considered “lazy” (see: excuses for taking land from the native Americans). Not making as much money as you can, any way you can, no matter what harm is caused, is talked about with the emotional force of preachers inveighing against sin.
How much suffering is wrought by our religion of capitalist exploitation?
Ask the students to consider that. Is there a different way to work? Are there lines you don’t want to cross? This would be a discussion that would benefit not just the individual, but the world…..October 15, 2015 at 10:41 AM #790220Participantsaw last night the movie LE HAVRE, new french release on netflix about a guy named rather obviously Marcel Marx, who meets an African refugee and helps him. was very french and blue colored and maybe communist. i liked it…
October 15, 2015 at 11:15 AM #790221Participantim less concerned with inequality. in equality by itself seems neither bad nor good, since it doesn’t in itself describe the conditions of the lower end.
I am more concerned with the endgame. capitalism, does it necessarily end in the desctruction of our souls, our planet, our society?
October 15, 2015 at 11:46 AM #790222Participantthis was by the guy who wrote the seminal classic, ON BULLSHIT
October 15, 2015 at 11:51 AM #790223Participant[quote=scaredyclassic]im less concerned with inequality. in equality by itself seems neither bad nor good, since it doesn’t in itself describe the conditions of the lower end.
I am more concerned with the endgame. capitalism, does it necessarily end in the desctruction of our souls, our planet, our society?[/quote]
It doesn’t seem too. How many companies that were in the DOW 30 50 years ago still around today or as big as they are today. Kodak was a huge company that dominated photography now it’s gone. Walmart and McDonald’s have both been struggling recently. Apple would never be here today if Steve Jobs didn’t come back in the late 1990’s. The visionary leader that built these companies eventually leaves and dies and the next round of Wharton business grads eventually grinds the company into the ground because they don’t know how to innovate. All the wealth doesn’t eventually end up in the hands of the few because they die and their heirs eventually squander it.
October 15, 2015 at 1:19 PM #790230GuestMarx is always a good topic for a troll post – I know I couldn’t resist responding.
Of course he’s historically relevant and should be in any economics and political science curriculum. He changed the world, or at least had an influence that lasted more than a century.
But being relevant doesn’t mean being right. Christopher Columbus is also relevant and he also influenced history, but we certainly don’t want to use him as a role model going forward. Marx is about the same.
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