You vote for what I want, I'll vote for what you want

And homosexuals are child-molesting agents of the Devil.

I note that point in order to illustrate why I disdain definitions crafted by opponents.

The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, scarcely anyone at all escapes.

Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M. Renan; a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand ‘under the shelter of the wall,’ as Plato puts it, and so to realise the perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These, however, are exceptions. The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism – are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.

But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.

(Wilde)​

And that last is what people seem to fear.

After all, even our most accomplished societies still require poverty; without it, things fall apart.
____________________

Notes:

Wilde, Oscar. The Soul of Man Under Socialism. 1891, Marxists.org. 30 April 2015. http://bit.ly/1JdDOaw

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

There's a search function, grandpa. Seriously, it couldn't be easier.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Tell that to the American "conservative" - they think Romney's health care plan is socialist.

If by "government officials" you mean the local fire department, or the sewer and water guys, Ok. There's nothing in "socialism" requiring one's social ownership to be organized on any particular proportionate scale - unlike capital, social does not accumulate by compounding.

Notice that whoever has amassed sufficiently disproportionate power and wealth is going to be running your town. So if you are allowing that kind of accumulation in a few hands, the question comes down to: who do you want to have running your town?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Yep. But at the time they thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. They only dislike it now because a democrat implemented it.

Nor is there anything in capitalism requiring large scales. The city I live in is in the midst of a microbrewery explosion - over 100 in San Diego alone right now, many consisting of one person with one or two employees. They are doing this by utilizing the most basic of capitalist principles, attempting to make money by supplying a desired product to a market.

Personally? I'd prefer a democratically elected government to run the administrative functions, and a capitalist economy to run commerce.

 

Yes, there is - economies of scale, market control, and supplier leverage on the one hand, compound interest and return on investment measured in percentage on the other, lots of stuff.

In general: Capitalist enterprises grow, or they die. This growth has to be managed, or it will encroach and do damage.

Running commerce is an administrative function. It's performed by people, not an abstract "capitalist economy".

 

America's definitely gone socialist. Latest example: the only way to avoid buying into Obamacare is to vote against it, and spend the money watching billionaire rapists pummel each other with boxing gloves instead.

 

I have a perfectly good vote that I would like to rent out to any candidate whose argument is accompanied by money(the more money, the stronger the argument).
Tytler anyone?

 

America socialist, hell no! It is communist through and through its just that they can hide it better here in Amrerika. I know that there must be others who see this as I do and if so I agree that there's little that can be done about it. They help their own kind with raises, bailouts and other things that only their ilk need to make money by stealing it first then claiming it wasn't their fault and then goes belly up. Funny more haven't seen this as I have watching those in power give themselves whatever they want and blaming "the economy" for all the bad things that have happened.

Yes it must be nice to sit back at a bank and give unworthy businesses huge loans knowing they will never be paid back and receive a handful of money under the table for looking the other way as that is being done.

 

You've described effects of large-scale commerce. None of those things are required for capitalism to flourish. Again, a local example - San Diego now has over 100 microbreweries. Some are run by one guy. If scale was required for capitalist businesses to be successful, there would be none, and all the bars here would sell either Bud or Bud Light.

Again, there are 100 counterexamples here.

No, here it is a capitalist function.

People != administration.

 

Not only that, you've been voting for them and preventing your neighbors from doing anything about them. And you still are.

Sarcasm?

If so, it doesn't work in this poisoned discourse. Private individuals being forced to buy stuff from private, capitalist businesses is being labeled "socialist" almost routinely, taken for granted, after so many years of media propaganda. Orwell's skull is quietly smiling in his grave.

Capitalism is a form of industrial economy, a way of organizing large scale commerce. If you don't have large scale commerce you don't have capitalism in any meaningful sense.

If political force were not applied, and these smaller breweries not protected by law from the market power of Anheuser Busch, they would not exist.

No, it isn't. Running a single private business, it it's small enough, can be a "capitalist function" with no significant administrative tasks involved, but running commerce itself, or large areas of it, in an industrial economy, is an administrative function. It's done by administrations.

They don't equal "capitalist economy" either. People performing administrative functions do equal administration.

 

Capitalism is an effective means of organizing both small scale and large scale commerce. All the trappings of capitalism - fiat money, banks that extend both loans and a means to secure deposits, market-based pricing for sales, companies controlled by private entities - work as well for small-scale commerce as for large-scale commerce.

The US circa 1800 exemplified both small-scale commerce (compared to today's level of trade) and capitalism.

Nonsense. They exist because they provide a better alternative to AB-Inbev. They succeeded because they make better beer, as decided by the market.
Now, do they rely on laws that prevent possible anti-competitive actions by AB-Inbev, like restraint of trade through illegal actions? Definitely. But those laws protect capitalism, rather than weaken it.

 

Fiat money, that kind of banking, and the entity one calls a "company", do not exist without large scale commerce. The very existence of "capital", even, doesn't really make sense until an economy has reached a certain size.

Capitalism is an economic theory of industrial economies, with money and trade relationships

That would not be enough, as half a dozen defunct computer operating systems show, without political protection from larger capitalist organizations.

That capitalism is self-destructive if not fettered is of course the point. Unlimited growth, inherent in capitalism, kills its host and itself.

And there's nothing "anti-competitive" about a larger capitalistic organization using its market power to win, eh? If AB wants to spend its money to reserve all the hops on the market, provide favorable contracts to vendors who agree to exclusive relationships, keep its banking operations in banks that treat it well and its enemies poorly, etc, that's just capitalism in action.

 

Hmm. So personal bank accounts and mortgages do not exist (no large scale commerce to justify that kind of banking)? And small companies do not exist?

The beginning of capitalism - mercantilism - arose out of a desire to pay wages to serfs after the collapse of the feudal system - which is economics on a small scale indeed. It continues to serve a similar function today, allowing everyone from the two-man brewery to Exxon to pay for everything from labor to raw materials.

?? So your argument is that we don't use TRS-DOS any more because it was a superior system that did not have political protection from larger capitalist organizations? It had nothing to do with the fact that it sucked as an OS and ran on inferior hardware? What political protection did UNIX have that TRS-DOS did not?

People are self-destructive if not fettered by laws. That shows the need for laws, rather than pointing out any fundamental flaws in democracy or self-reliance.

If they are competing in a free and open market - no. They are competing.

Yes, it is - and they tried some of those things. Hops? Hop growers simply charged more and started acres of new farms. They ended up hurting themselves (higher costs) without affecting the microbrewing market much, since their profit margins are much narrower than microbrews are. (And not just AB-Inbev; Sierra Nevada bought nearly every pound of Simcoe available in 2011-2012 for their new beer Ranger.) Favorable contracts to vendors? The three-tier system in the US allowed the big three (AB-Inbev, Miller, Coors) to control the distributors for a while; the distributors refused to carry new beers out of fear of irking their big clients. So Greg Koch of Stone simply opened a new distributorship to distribute his own beer - and all the beers of local breweries that could not find distribution. And he made tens of millions doing it. These are examples of capitalism _working._

Now, had AB-Inbev tried to buy all the highways in San Diego and prevent anyone from shipping microbrews on those highways, then that would be a different story - and would also be illegal.

 

International trade between the industries of entire continents financed by nation states and defended by armies is large scale economic organization. Not large enough, maybe, to establish fiat currency, but plenty big enough to come under the province of capitalist theory.

Nope.

They are more often other-destructive, which is what the laws are about.

The pointing out of the fundamental hazards of capitalism was independent of the need for laws - many theorists, such as Marx, think that laws are inevitably worthless in curbing capitalism and not indicated, that the only solution to the obvious problems of overgrowth and so forth is a different system entirely. I disagree.

We aren't talking about "flaws", but properties. It's not something "wrong", but a hazard inherent in the nature of the thing.

Only the legal ones. And there were limits even with them.

So they didn't force them, or their fertilizer and seed etc suppliers, to sign exclusive contracts. Because that would have been illegal.

And he had no trouble financing such an expansion, or finding warehouse space, buying gas and vehicles, etc.

And of course the owner of the highways was not available to strike agreement with AB - because the highways of California are socialist.

In such ways are the hazards of capitalism curbed, avoided. By political action, coercion, force of law.

 

Definitely. Capitalism defines an economic system that works on both small and large scales.

Cool, so large scale banking, and the entity one calls a "company", DOES exist without large scale commerce. I agree.

They are both self-destructive and other-destructive, and there are laws preventing both.

If you prefer such terminology, that's fine. Both people and capitalism have inherent hazards in them due to their nature.

He had some trouble - but he persevered and accomplished his goal, without capitalism trying to "protect the big guys."

Here in California they are both public and private. I live on a private road; I often use 73, which is a private highway. Neither public nor private highways are allowed to exclude specific businesses from their roads.

Agreed. Laws prevent abuses of capitalism, just as they prevent abuses of the freedoms that individuals enjoy. (Or if you prefer, they protect people from the hazards of either personal freedom or capitalism.)

 

No, they don't. Your impression of the scale of the global commercial enterprises operating in the 1800s - or the 1600s, for that matter - is an error. They were very large enterprises.

He enjoyed the protection of a powerful and sensibly arranged government, that kept the capitalists in check - in part by making much of their natural behavior "illegal", and in part by co-opting resources into socialist arrangements.

Curbs on capitalism's natural tendencies often benefit the public. Nice example.

 

Of course it's sarcasm. This is what America's wealthiest want to keep their money for, so they can buy $10,000 seats and make unapologetic serial woman batterer Floyd Mayweather Jr. one of the wealthiest thugs on the planet next to Vladimir Putin. I felt dirty just for watching that fight; I only allowed myself to watch so I could see Mayweather get his brain turned to mush on international TV, and instead I got suckered into wasting an hour of my life watching him walk away from a sparring match $100,000,000 richer.

Apparently, if the US enacts Obamacare or raises taxes on the wealthiest 1%, then the resulting decline in yacht sales and boxing tickets will lead to an inevitable US collapse and Soviet invasion.

 

I'll never understand why two groups of differing political and economic agendas feel they need to cooperate under one government. Socialists and Capitalists have such animosity towards each other's theories so why try and attempt to force one or the other on unwilling participants?

The world is insane.