Capitalism doesn't and IS NOT working, it's destructive and creatives poor social incentives

a reply to: Semicollegiate

You'd be right if there were no government. However, if you actually read history, you can see that everytime that socialism is attempted it's violently crushed with massive force. hell, even the Soviet Union had to contend with an Allied invasion within a year of its formation.

"socialism has made nothing on it's own"

kind of hard for an abstract idea to pick up tools, eh

a reply to: onequestion

Love it I had a thread a couple years back pondering this same issue. I pasted a portion below with the link.

They call me a socialist because I want food production on the basic levels to be community ran, that I want everyone to have medical care, and that I want the individual rights of a person to be given more weight than corporations. It is all in the rules and how society is structured anything can be accomplished if there is agreement. I want everyone to be as happy as they can, but when it comes to issues that effect life, liberty, and happiness I want those things to be ran not for any profit of any class or group of men, or any family. - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: freakwars

Socialism has never been crushed by a government. No group of workers ever made a factory. Workers could have made Sugar, or Texas Oil, or any state of the art factory.

All of the money in the world has been applied to socialistic ideas, but not one socialistic factory has been made anywhere, without the threat of death from the state.

Capitalism has actually moved civilization from feudalism to the Progressive Era. Its been bled since then by socialistic governmental policies. We still live in the 1920's compared to what could have been with higher production output and broader research and development.

kind of hard for an abstract idea to pick up tools, eh

200 years of nothing but theft.

a reply to: Semicollegiate

I must say this, our Constitution does not advocate for any particular economic system. In fact there is a good group of people who believe our founding fathers wanted a hybrid social/capitalistic economic system. Only those things necessary for to a persons survival was his right, everything else was subject to laws which the public allowed individuals to own.

"All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.” www.marksquotes.com...

Even the big guys are talking.

With an agenda of confusion naturally....

Earlier this year, the most reliable way for a billionaire to make the headlines was to compare suggested tax increases to Nazi Germany. Lately, though, the more interesting shift in the politics of the plutocracy has been more genteel.

There will be more Hitler analogies, of course, but another camp among the superrich is starting to tack in the opposite direction. Some plutocrats accept the evidence that capitalism is no longer working for the middle class, and are trying to figure out what to do about that.

It is not just George Soros, the hedge-fund billionaire, who cheerfully describes himself as a class traitor and has been worrying about the shortcomings of what he calls free-market fundamentalism for decades, anymore. Among the plutocrats, this once-radical perspective is going mainstream.

READ the entire article

originally posted by: ExPostFacto
a reply to: Semicollegiate

I must say this, our Constitution does not advocate for any particular economic system. In fact there is a good group of people who believe our founding fathers wanted a hybrid social/capitalistic economic system. Only those things necessary for to a persons survival was his right, everything else was subject to laws which the public allowed individuals to own. [

"All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.” www.marksquotes.com...

That party of Franklin's disappeared to extinction after Jefferson was elected.

It may be admitted that, so far as scientific knowledge is concerned, a body of suitably chosen experts may be in the best position to command all the best knowledge available... [Yet] scientific knowledge is not the sum of all knowledge... [A] little reflection will show that there is ... the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place. It is with respect to this that practically every individual has some advantage over all others in that he possesses unique information of which beneficial use might be made, but of which use can be made only if the decisions depending on it are left to him or are made with his active cooperation.

Friedrich Hayek Nobel Laureate in Economics 1974

en.wikipedia.org...

Socialism is a rip off con

a reply to: Semicollegiate

The German Revolution was crushed with massive state violence. The Bavarian Revolution was crushed with massive state violence. The Irish Revolution was crushed with massive state violence. In the US, at one point the Pinkerton Detective Agency, whose purpose was the crushing of workers attempting to assert their power, had more agents than the government had soldiers. The government still sent those soldiers in on the off chance the Pinkertons weren't enough. They crushed countless strikes and killed thousands of workers. The Guatemalan Revolution was crushed, leading ultimately to genocide by American-sponsored death squads. Most of the Latin America suffered similar tragedies.The Spanish Revolution was crushed by Nazis. The protesters at Tiananamen Square sang The Internationale as the capitalist roaders gunned them down. All these were brought about by capitalists using their tool, the state, out of fear to crush any manifestation of worker power. Everywhere that socialists ever have even just a slim chance of real power, they kill us. Everywhere that the workers try to throw off the control of the capitalists, they kill us.

The only sense in which money has been applied to socialist ideas is the sense that the capitalists have spent an awful lot on bombs and bullets to kill us, maim us and stop us from taking control of our lives and that to which we decide to use our time on.


No one disputes that capitalism is better than that which preceded it. As socialism and communism will be better than which preceded them.

We have been stolen from for thousands of years, since the birth of civilization. We plan to take that which has been built with our stolen lives and use it for the gain of all.

a reply to: freakwars

All of those rebellions were put down by socialistic, collectivist, centralized governments. Not capitalism.

The northern United States had many experiments in communes, but no factories.

And not a single socialistic factory anywhere in the world for 200 years.

Socialism has no basis in reality, it steals from capitalism, and it is at best a delusion.

a reply to: Semicollegiate

You're calling the Germany of Bismarck a socialist government? This is just equivocation now. Not a single one of those government abolished private ownership of the means of production. Thus, not socialist.

Socialists invented the term socialism and the term capitalism. Your twisting of those words beyond recognition is sophistry pure and simple.

originally posted by: freakwars
a reply to: Semicollegiate

You're calling the Germany of Bismarck a socialist government? This is just equivocation now. Not a single one of those government abolished private ownership of the means of production. Thus, not socialist.

Socialists invented the term socialism and the term capitalism. Your twisting of those words beyond recognition is sophistry pure and simple.

Von Bismark joined the many autonomous, aboriginal German states into a collectivist, socialist, centralized state.

State Socialism was a term introduced to describe Otto von Bismarck's social welfare policies. The term was actually coined by Bismarck's liberal opposition but later accepted by Bismarck.[1] They refer to a set of social programs implemented between 1884 to 1889 as remedial measures to appease the working class and detract support for socialism and the Social Democratic Party of Germany following earlier attempts to achieve the same objective through Bismarck's anti-socialist laws.

en.wikipedia.org...(Germany)

Socialism is manned by lemmings and fools. Socialism is theft.

a reply to: Semicollegiate

" implemented between 1884 to 1889 as remedial measures to appease the working class and detract support for socialism"

this was after he passed a series of laws essentially criminalizing being a socialist in Germany, and those laws failing to curb support for the illegal Social Democratic Party.

not to mention the fact that it doesn't meet the simple criterion for socialism. Did they abolish private ownership of the means of mass production.

a reply to: freakwars

Socialism requires state control of all property. Control is a part of ownership.

All modern democratic states can claim to be socialist because there is no law preventing the government from taxing and there by taking any property within its borders.

Socialist 1 outlaws socialist 2. Socialist 1 is still socialist.

Socialism uses totalitarian means to achieve moral ends, and calls permission freedom.

Socialism is a fraud.

a reply to: Semicollegiate

"Socialism requires state control of all property."

there you go mixing up socialism and communism again

not really helping your case

a reply to: sirhumperdink

Socialism always includes control the state, otherwise just do it.

You never just do it.

Socialism is a fraud -- a plausible excuse for totalitarianism, which has been implemented only by socialists.

a reply to: Semicollegiate

Except that's not what socialism is. Socialism is not when the government owns the means of production, it's when the workers own means of production as a group. Ex. if I work in factory A with worker X Y and Z, in capitalism Boss 1 owns it. In socialism, Me, X Y and Z own the factory. This applies to any other business.

Taxing does not confiscate the means of production. Taxing mostly confiscates that which was stolen from the workers by the bosses in the form of profit. So it's a theft of a theft. Really, profit constitutes an additional tax on the workers.

Conservative 1 is labeled a socialist by Conservative 2. Socialism is a rising political force in Europe, so Conservative 1 takes the label Socialist 1 despite the fact that he had just outlawed Socialist 2.
That story fits the facts better.

If anything, capitalism is a fraud (your argument certainly is). Capitalism promises freedom and individuality, but really a capitalist economy is more collectivist than anything else. The consumer rules, but only in the aggregate. The worker can only really properly negotiate against the bosses in the aggregate. Thus under capitalism we are subsumed into vast archetypes depending on which sphere of life we are acting in at that moment.

a reply to: freakwars

OK Socialists are incompetent.

Socialists were never able to make a socialistic economic unit in a free society.

Either you ism is intellectually bankrupt or you need the whole society or both.

Taxing does not confiscate the means of production. Taxing mostly confiscates that which was stolen from the workers by the bosses in the form of profit.

You are not the government but you collect taxes as part of your economics?

a reply to: Semicollegiate

Yeah I know, we should have just dodged all those bullets instead of getting killed by them.

Arguably there is the Mondragon Corporation which is a federation of worker's collectives which employs 80,000 people and is the 7th largest company in Spain. There were also the many anarchist worker organizations which existed in pre-Franco Spain. In addition there were a great many communes which existed in the United States.

a reply to: Semicollegiate

You are not the government but you collect taxes as part of your economics?

I have no idea what you mean by this please expound further.

a reply to: Semicollegiate

www.nceo.org...

i dunno man these companies are all (at least partially and many in whole) employee owned and they seem to be doing better than alright

but i guess they dont exist because thats never happened and is impossible