Hey guys, one thing before we start, please keep it civilI know many of you heard of such debates where one side gave his word on Socialismwhile the other side gave the word for Capitalism, so this is a place to share your oppinion.and sorry for any mistakes, as English is far not my main language
Anyways, 3 days ago we had 1st May Day, the day of the workersI wont say where i am from, but i can say that i am from a democratic capitalistic countryand there were a whole lot of people comming out with red flags waving and shouting for socialism.I know many people in here are from USA, and USA education have a tendancy to teach the youththat socialism is in fact evil with no human rights or whatever...Sure both sides got thair ups and downs, but when it comes to "rights" socialism is just asgood as capitalism, just in a different way. So please avoid throwing in false facts.
Soon im planning on traveling to Cuba for like 5+ months, to live in thereto see how its like, to meet new people, to talk to them, to reserch about their lifei mean, one thing is what newspapers tell us, another thing is to interview true socialists.Both my parents are socialists by the way, and with time i find more and more interest in socialism myself.Mainly due the capitalist hostile world i see all around me, with the huge corporations that inslave workersand how my parents are scared as hell to loose thair job, and are rdy to do anything to keep it.Now i never was rich, in fact im more like middle class, but even today i see how my parentsfighting to survive, just so that we wont loose our house, just like many americans did.many blame the crisis but its a different topic, lets stay on this one.i spent some time today reserching the unknown world of socialismi say unknown because i find it difficult to trust media, yet its the only tool i havethrew which i can see the world around me, so i read international news, same news from diffrentpoints of view, and i found this page:http://www.workers.org/ww/2002/cuba0627.php
sure some may say its propoganda, others will shout blinldy against socialismbut i beliave that when people vote, they show the truth, and when i see 9 million cubansthat is out of 11 million cubans (remember there are undaraged childer who cant vote)when i see so many vote for socialism, i must admit, there must be a reason for it.some may say they vote so out of fear, yet if they were scared then they would of avoid voting at all.
I must admit, i think its better to live in a country where i dont have to be scared like shit to end up on the streetjust because my boss dont like my haircut, so he throw me out, i loose my home, and with it everything ales...I also admit that i prefare free health care, so that i know that when the time comes and i will end up with somereally nasty crap going on with me, i can trust my goverment to take care of me without it checking my insurace first.and in case i dont have it, to kick me out of the same door i came in, and to forget about me.
And i must admit, that equality starts with education, and when education is totaly freei know that i dont have to have rich father so that ill be able to register to Harward-like univercity.
Do i prefare to surcifice all the things above just so that ill have a sport car with LCD screens and 3 housesand a super computer? no, i prefare to live a simple life, where i can date a girl without worreing thati dont have a BMW to show her, or without worreing that i cant take her to some expancive restoraunt.a simple life where brands are not the focus of my life and my money, where all people are equal, even if somewhat poor!Thats me, please guys dont attack me because of my views on things, i went threw a lot in my lifeand i can trully say that i dont like capitalism at all.
Open your mind, and share
Or where there's just the butt-end of what some of us, partly out of respect for capitalist theory, would call imperialism...
Mind you, I had to poke first because I want to praise your scoff of the sloppy starvation talk. Half the world might wish we had a few more snacks, but *very* few of us in the 'developed' world have a personal understanding of what starvation means. If half the world were truly starving right now, we'd be seeing far more armed conflicts and mass migrations than we currently have.
If any of you have read George Orwell's works, then you know that stable socialism is an unattainable goal that always leads to a corrupt dictatorship. In a capitalist environment, individuals are driven by there own volition and succeed depending on their own abilities, the problem arises when you consider that there is a finite amount of resources being divided between more and more people, Earth is a zero-sum planet, some must fall so others can rise. This is how things have been since the very beginning (ie dinosaurs died so mammals could take over, countless other species died so we could take over, etc.) This way of thinking, of surviving is an innate part of human nature and our current economic systems reflect this. All the successful socialist countries today (germany, scandinavian countries) are successful because of trade with capitalist ones, a socialst economy fails without outside stimulation, as witnessed with the fall of the USSR. The goal of every one being equal translates into a economic stagnation that harms equality more than anything. But, economies are (generally) very complex and the law of averages maintains that if a complex system repeats enough times then something unexpected may happen, but is it really worth risking what little freedom you have under capitalism to find out if this is the time socialism will work?
Greed is the operating principle....This is not a bad thing. The vast majority of people do things to better themselves. In a true socialist society, everybody is equal and gets the same share of the resources. Therefore, there is NO reason to work harder or smarter. No reason to try. Without reward what is the point? Sure there are some who want to do things just because it is right, but they will be in the minority.
Don't get it? Well there is a famous example; not true, but famous. It is simplistic, but does state the driving principle. A professor at college has a class which is arguing about the merits of socialism and how capitalism is 'wrong'. He says, "Fine, from now on all grades will be averaged. Everyone will get the average, this is socialism." The majority of students in the class were happy and it was done. On the first test the average was a B. The students who worked hard complained that they deserved the A that they 'earned', while the slackers were happy with the B. Unfortunately, the A students, realizing they would not be rewarded for hard work, stopped working. The slackers, assuming they would be held up, slacked more. The next test was a C-, after that a D, and finally an F. When the hard workers see people who are not trying getting the same reward, they see no reason to try themselves. You don't think this is true? Play some sports without keeping score, and you will get the idea.
Whether the losers think it is fair or not, the winners need to see themselves win, otherwise there is no point working harder and sacrificing. Don't get me wrong, I don't want anybody homeless and starving. BUT, for nothing they should be at a MINIMAL level. If you want more, EARN IT!!
I was talking about capitalism, not socialism. Under capitalism the issue of ownership of information is big. It does not seem like it can or will be solved.
Thats not the point. The point is, that the already rich corporation got richer and he didn't. He barely benefited from his invention. It is not a question of choice. If he invented it then he should benefit from it. It should be this simple. Simple systems have less that can go wrong.
An american company patented the human genome not the government.
Capitalism favours the hard workers which is good however, capitalism does not support disadvantaged people very well. The movie Sicko by Michael Moore illustrates this.
The majority of the worlds food goes to West but there is more then enough food for everyone. Thats why people are starving in Africa etc. Western countries give more aid then socialist countries, but this aid is not achieving anything.
Be an interesting experiment to stop the aid, wouldn't it? Since it's not achieving anything & all.
I didn't mean that aid money literary did nothing, only that it does very little.
All that aid money is used by corrupt dictators on themselves. If aid money was actually doing anything, then why don't we hear about it? If anything the situation in Africa is getting worse, not better.
Only very naive, but well-meaning celebrities think that lasting good is being done.
Aid money is used to influence political processes in the receiving nation, those aid agencies are not altruistic.
As I was saying, there is more then enough food for every person on the planet, however the vast majority goes to the rich west.
It is not profitable to truly help poor Africans. That is why there is no vaccine for diarrhoa. No one would make enough money from it. African children die all the time from it, but very few people try to do anything.
Medical research focuses on obesity, diabetes etc. because they what rich westerners suffer from. The research facilites then can make money.
Socialism encourage laziness, but capitalism encourages the abandonment of the weak. Capitalism fovours only the rich.
Uninformed or willfully uninformed?
I liked it better when Socialism and Capitalism didn't compete and just ganged up on Facism. Good times.
Next time you eat your chicken wings, imagine a kid, loosing consciousness, as his internal organscolaps due to starvation, while his parents cant do anything about it and this kid just died while you reading this words.about every few seconds somewhere is the world a child dies due to starvationand your "innate part of human nature" is just something you say to feel better with yourself about it.for some reason i dont have this "innate part of human nature"...
and about the guy who said that there is no way that half of the world population is starving...well you can do 2 things from here:1. you can keep lieing to yourself2. you can open your IE and search for statisticsEdit: here it took me 2 seconds to find it: http://library.thinkquest.org/C002291/high/present/stats.htm
80% of the world population is POOR, while out of those 80% more then 50% are starving.
enjoy your chicken wings
very true
In a capitalist environment, individuals are driven by there own volition and succeed depending on their own abilities, the problem arises when you consider that there is a finite amount of resources being divided between more and more people, Earth is a zero-sum planet, some must fall so others can rise.
Sorry, but imho this statement is wrong. It is common socialist myth. The fact you are being richer doesnt mean that someone has to be poorer.
wth?
Its simple. There is not zero-sum of wealth. For example if i am rich ,do you think, there has to be someone poor because of this? That money i have were taken from someone else? No, it doesnt work that way.
I was referring to the fact that only a rich person can afford to have an accident or get sick in certain capitalistic countries such as America.
Please point out for me where on that page you linked to you get the statistics you just mentioned.
Keep in mind there are over 6 billion (with a b, not an m) total number of people in this world.
Do you know how much it is one-third out of 6 billion?and do you know the differance between "under-fed" and "starving"?
We now know for sure you are uninformed. Willfully or not is the only question.
When i referred to earth as a zero-sum planet, i was more getting at the distribution of resources, money means nothing by itself. The problem is that most people look at starving populations with pity, as objects to help, to clean, to polish, and show off to the world as a trophy of your own altruism. Remember that that same logic is the reason africa is how it is today, european imperialists thought they would "help" the "uncivilised natives who could not help themselves" do you not realize that this is the same logic that some of you are using? they are starving so it is up to us to help them? Africa would be a muh better place without outside influence. But to bring the discussion back to economics, everything is based on carbon, on plants that fix carbon. humans use approximately one-third of all carbon fixed on the planet, by far the most of any other species, with more and more plants being destroyed, there is less carbon fixed and more people to distribute it between. In order for the ones in power to stay in power (the rich), others must be lowered (the poor). This is how things are, if the rich relinquished some resources to the poor, then that would not be the case. Everybody knows the difference between unfair and unjust, but both are abstract ideas with very little actual meaning. I say it is unfair to the ones that work hard to have to then help the ones seen as unable to help themselves, but the naive disagree. Lets say that socialism works and every one is equal, if ONE person is disatisfied with the conditions, then EVERYONE must either raise the standard of living, or ignore the minority. The problem is this; raising the standard of living in a place where everything is already distributed equally is impossible, it would require the creation or acquistion of resources.... resources cannot be created and the past shows that the most popular way to acquire resources is through war. And for those of you who disagree with the assertion that someone must be poor for someone else ot be rich, you are in fact ignoring the core of your own argument, in socialism, the rich give their money to the poor, so everyone is equal, this lowers the rich and raises the poor. So if this is true, logic dictates that its converse must be true, and the poor will fall for the rich to rise
Well, that's interesting, because you gave me 80%*50%, which would be 2/5 not 1/3.
Went to WHO's website, and was unable to find that statistic anyways. Most of the more legitimate websites seem to peg it at closer to 1/6. Which is still a lot of people. The website you linked to doesn't link to its sources of information, so I suspect it is distorting the facts.
BUT - none of the statistics you have shown so far, no matter what their true value is, prove that the source of this problem is capitalism. You need to provide correlations between starvation and capitalism. So far you have proven that a lot of people are starving - you have not proven that there is any sort of correlation between starvation and capitalism, either positive or negative.
Both socialism and capitalism actualy work if you follow either to the T.
But since as a whole species humans are incappable of working toward one goal, we will only fail.
In the interest of full disclosure of my thoughts:
dude i dont have to PROOVE you anything....im just following the statistics i found all over the internetand i dont care if you want to know it or not, because you are not the sort of person that can be changed anyways...there are open minded people, who check facts before they counter attack othersand there are fools who just throw away empty words and ignoring everything that the other side shows
Use simple logicwhen someone earn 18 mil per month, this money comes from SOMEWHEREmaybe it is a printed money, yet with all the anti inflation wars, i dont think so...i will tell you where this money is comming from, imagine a piramide:on the top, 1 person, on the buttom, 10 million people, all those 10 million work for 2$ per dayas statistic showin that more then half of the world population living on 2USD per day.thair production moves up the piramid, and eventually it results in 18 Mil $ for the guy on the top.so a guy who gathers cotton for USA in Africa earns 2$, while the guy who takes this cotton and resellit to usa earns 3000$, then the guy who own a fabric factory in usa buys it and sells the fabric for 500.000$then the fabirc goes into close and is sold for 5Mil to 20Mil dollars (depends on the brand)20Mil out of which 2Mil will go to pay the workers, 20% or whtever goes to taxesand the rest goes to the guy on the top, so where did he get the money from?he get it from everywhere, as in case you dont know, busineses are based on minimising lossesand not raising income, as more income = more taxes, while less loses = more income to the top without taxes.pay less, get more, the poor geting poorer, the rich getting richer, GOT IT NOW?and yes, it IS capitalism foult, as in fact THIS IS capitalism... (i.e owning capital)
Both suck big time since both are based on the same things:
power, control, money (...and rest of the crap that goes with it...)
Screw it all!
Time has long come for global Anarchy but not many understand this as yet
There are many cases of people comming from the slums and turning themselves into millionares. The "fault" usualy comes from someone's actions (or inaction). A purely capitalistic society gives the tools for anyone to succeed.
If your going to quote statistics you need to provide a realiable source.
I checked my facts. That's the whole problem, in fact: You just linked to some random page with a wild claim. That's sheer idiocy, because ANYBODY CAN MAKE UP STUFF AND DUMP IT ON A WEB PAGE.
I checked the page and found it lacking in credibility. It just made claims - it did not say where the claims came from, other than WHO's website, and I did not find that statistic on their website.
I did, however, find a website that lists its sources. Your research skills leave much to be desired.
Agreed. And you didn't have to make a long winded story about it. I already know about where it came from. In most cases, from ownership of stock. Especially in the top levels of businesses, not all income is in the form of paychecks.
I seriously doubt any single business has 10 million employees.
But for the sake of argument, let's say a business hires many people for $2/day in a foreign country (which is a reasonable claim).
If people want more than $2/day, why are they working for that business? Why are they not working for somebody else?
What this tells me is that the foreign country they are living in is itself suffering from an economy that does not function.
Perhaps if the people getting paid $2/day were working in a functional economy they would be paid a lot more.
How much capital do the people who make $2/day own?
If the answer is "none," then we are not talking about capitalism. Because, as you have said, capitalism is about owning capital.
Communism, socialism , Fascism, etc… US Constitution Tyranny ---------------|---------------|-------------------------|----------------|--------------------------Anarchy Democrat Republican
Communism, socialism ,
Fascism, etc… US Constitution
Tyranny ---------------|---------------|-------------------------|----------------|--------------------------Anarchy
Democrat Republican
Socialism does not work, it never has, it never will. Free market capitalism is the best source of economic growth and sustainability. The truth of the matter is, the US does not have a free market, and it hasn’t for a very long time. In a free market, property rights are voluntarily exchanged at a price arranged solely by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers. This isn’t the case with the US, because our currency is artificially manipulated by the Federal Reserve.
The reason socialism does not work is simple. It has to do with the allocation of capital. Imagine if one person had the ability/authority to make all the economic decisions in the USA. How can that one person know what is best (i.e. most efficient, most productive) for a nation of 300 million people? They can’t, it’s impossible. That’s a simplistic explanation, but it can be applied to the Obama administrations attempt to have more centralized authority (Border Czar, Car Czar, etc…)
While I agree that there are times when more regulation and centralized authority is needed, the trend should always be toward deregulation and decentralized authority. That’s why we live in a republic, not a democracy, because the founding fathers knew that the states would be better at handling the problems of their citizens as opposed to a huge federal government (10th amendment)
If every individual had the freedom to make economic decisions in THEIR OWN BEST INTEREST, then in the aggregate, our economy would be far better. But Obama doesn’t see it this way. Make no mistake, through the guise of compassion, the liberal left of this great country will seek to usurp more power and freedom from the individual, and turn us from a country based on individualism to a country based on collectivism, slowly and incrementally moving us left on the spectrum above.
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