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

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin
a reply to: MarlinGrace

And you talk about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Billionaires who made their billions from exploitation. Funny how the richest people make their money from the poorest people, eh?

Almost as if money is actually a representation of social capital, and those with it are powerful because those without must become dependent on labouring their whole lives.

Tell me Mr. American Dream, what is so great about being a billionaire? Why are you trying to tell me that being a billionaire is a great success of capitalism?

The only thing being a billionaire means is that you know how to play the system, how to accumulate the wealth from many others for yourself. Over half of America lives paycheque to paycheque, and lose everything if they miss it once.

But that whole statement is completely untrue. They were middle class kids who started in their garage and produced an innovated product that people wanted for a price they were willing to pay. They were not wealthy starting out, they were average. They built their money by providing something people wanted--not exploiting them.

Methinks your ideology blinds you to the facts.

It's you who is blind. You're telling me that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates mined the minerals, refined them, then put the pieces together on the production lines and delivered the finished products to the consumers?

Obviously not. And I wouldn't expect you to know because you've already shown that you don't know anything about capitalism.

Profit produced under the capitalist process is from exploiting variable labour. Variable labour is the cost of wages. The more workers you can employ while paying them relatively less means you can produced more product to sell.

This is one of the defined contradictions of capitalism. The lower the wages, the higher the profit. Therefore, the tendency is to continuously lower wages. But how can consumers afford products if they don't get paid? Contradiction of capitalism.

By the way, since I just schooled you with knowledge, I'd like to question you on your comment "your ideology blinds you". What ideology would that be? I just laid out the process of capitalism. I just don't realize how having an education in political science blinds me by ideology. So explain to me what ideology I am ascribing to that is "blinding" me.

LOL. I don't know why you are jumping in again when your comment about Jobs and Gates starting out as billionaires demonstrated that you talk about things without knowing anything about them.

And obviously the above shows you know nothing about Capitalism. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had an idea, a concept. They started out in their garage. They needed materials they couldn't produce themselves so they bought, in free exchange, goods from other companies who had it. As they grew and grew they hired more workers and bought their labor from them in a free exchange and bought more materials from those that produced them. They needed something, the other company had something they needed and they had a free exchange of goods and services. Both companies made money and the workers made money and everyone was better off due to this free exchange of goods and services.

LOL. "Exploited." You are one of those people who think that any and all success is exploited. Gates created a product that people wanted and he supplied it. No one was "exploited." Did someone hold a gun to your head to buy the computer you are typing on or did you buy it because you wanted to surf the net and type stuff and look at porn? Of course, you were not exploited. You desired a good and someone provided it to you.

Being a billionaire would be great. I would love to be one and so would you. The great success of capitalism is that it has brought the most to the most people as efficiently as possible. Sure, it created Billionaires but it also lifted the quality of life of everyone. Certainly I most likely be a billionaire, but capitalism brought me from poverty to reasonably well off and I'm happy with that. The difference between you and I is that I didn't sit around and blame other people for my poverty, I worked my way out of it.

You are incorrect. It is untrue in capitalism that the lower the paycheck, the higher the profit. In the skilled trades, where the labor is very valuable, paychecks are very, very high. The secret of capitalism is in providing the best goods and services at the best price to the public. If you pay your workers too low, quality goes down and you lose profit. If you pay them more than the market will bear, no one will buy your goods because they are too expensive and you lose profit.

You haven't schooled anyone with "knowledge," just the same old tired ignorant leftist propaganda. The ideology that blinds you is one of the stupid notion that no success is possible without "exploitation," profit and success are evil, and that all your failings are someone else's fault.

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: LittleByLittle
a reply to: NoRulesAllowed

Can you give me an example on a class less communistic country that did not have an implemented power pyramid system both politically and economically?

Cuba is a bit on the socialistic side but it is not classless, China had their party and Russia had Ukraine as the place where the important "some people are more equal then others" could have fun as tourists.

Maybe your perception of "class" is wrong.

Communism's doctrine of a classless society really only implies having a single class. In every other social paradigm, there has always been two fundamental classes: those who own the means of production, and those who do not. Under the doctrine of communism, all people own the means of production.

However, under Communism there will be classes--those higher in the party, those who manage "the people's", means of production, those who are smart and can manipulate the system for their own benefit. There never will be a "single class" society and Communism will never, ever reach it's stated goal for the simple reason that people are not insects. Some people have more ambition, or talent, or intelligence,or beauty, or drive than someone else. People have greed and jealousy and anger and love and lust and compassion--all in different balances in every individual. True communism is only possible if you have mindless automatons and will always fail if society is comprised of human beings.

Have you ever stopped to look around you in your capitalist society? Have you ever really talked to people casually about the bigger picture?

We definitely live in an insect-like society where our status is typically determined before we are even born.

As for natural hierarchies, they exist no matter what, because that's a human thing. What communism provides is a different set of laws to provide social guarantees of social equality. Universal rights are guaranteed by the state, especially the right to equal opportunity.

The communist doctrine that Lenin set in place in the USSR had various steps. Needless to say, it did not make it all the way. The pinnacle step of communism is the abolishment of the state as a redundant institution, because as Lenin describes the state in any previous paradigm becomes separated from the people and exploits the people. However, the USSR could not abolish the state when it was continuously in a state of war with capitalist forces.

Nonsense. We have a very upwardly mobile society for those who put in the time and talent. The majority of our wealthy are first generation--they made the money themselves. You can rise from a grocery bagger to business owner in the US still.

The Soviet Union failed because their founding premise and steps are flawed. Communists like to blame everyone but themselves.

So you're a navy man, eh?

How many billions do you have from putting in your "time and talent"?

How many enemies have you killed overseas to protect your country?

EDIT:

And as for your country, it will fail because you and your people only blame yourselves for not working hard enough.

(Of course, in realityland, being a billionaire wouldn't mean anything if everybody was a billionaire, would it)

I don't have billions--yet. I started out dirt poor and worked hard and got an education and built myself up and now am highly educated, successful, and own several businesses. Your premise is not just misguided, it is patently and demonstrably false.

Excuse me? You're the only who claimed that "The majority of our wealthy are first generation--they made the money themselves", and you used Bill Gates as an example.

Your definition of wealthy is far different from mine. You seem to believe that wealthy means out of debt, middle-class. My definition of wealthy is upper-class, ie, millionaires and above. In other words, people who can do whatever they want without worrying about money.

And yes, the majority of millionaires and billionaires in the US are first generation. They made it themselves. Bill Gates started out with nothing and is now one of the richest men in the world. He is a great example of this.

a reply to: Wrabbit2000

Primitive accumulation is what you described in the post I was responding to. Essentially, it's how capitalism forms. The state or a similar actor comes in, moves people off the land they are farming or hunting on and then enters the land into the capital market. This creates both an initial wealth for the capitalist to make use of a landless proletariat to work in the factories.

originally posted by: Wrabbit2000
a reply to: freakwars

If communism is responsible for every famine death in their borders, why is capitalism not?

That would be a key difference in how you're debating this topic from how I am. I'm not claiming anywhere that "all" of anything bad came from Communism.

Hell, on paper, communism is one of, if not THE best form of Government ever devised by the hand of man. Therein lay the rub...hand of man...and that hand never stays pure of heart.

Add man to that nice utopian mix, and it goes down the crapper, every time. Capitalism seems to take longer to rot, but it all rots given enough unchecked time to morph and grow as well. We're living in the morphed and misshapen growth of it now.


However, famine is a product of many many things, from economic and political system to micro issues like local leadership history or future with little things like industrial presence or lack of controls playing a role equally to rolling drought by natural cycles.

A good % of the dead under Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao were from famine, not gunshot. Dead is dead and leaders own the outcome, but famine isn't political. It just hits stupid equally, wherever nature doesn't do it herself.

And with so much whining about famine deaths under communism, nobody here has yet explained why that happened.

It all had to do with modes of production. Russia and China were both feudal states where the agrisector was neglected by the state. In Russia, the czar allowed western nations/corporations to build factories in Russian cities (for much the same reasons American corporations now have factories in China), which turned Russia into a semi-modern state. China was just a mess with all kinds of factions vying for control.

The communist policies implanted after the revolution were designed to modernize the agrisectors. What this meant was that machines, workshops and mechanized farming in general was supplied by the industrial sector to farmers. The farmers were mere serfs, who were used to plowing fields with cattle. It took generations for the agrisector to adapt.

The famines occurred due to agrisector adapting. Remember, these communist countries were isolated from the world outside them (for the most part), and the entire population of these countries depended on their agrisectors to feed them.

Once agrisectors became modernized, the famines stopped. The reason why there were so many growing pains in the agrisectors is because they skipped the capitalist stage of development and went from feudal straight to communist. But this was a necessary step, because the feudalist aristocracies, who collected rent from owning the farms, had no intention of just letting these lands go into the hands of entrepreneurs or labourers.

The communist revolution in both Russia and China was successful because it overthrew feudalist-era states. The famines and other hardship were the result of modernizing the infrastructure neglected by the aristocracies.

a reply to: Semicollegiate

Capitalism didn't exist before 1834, and even then it only existed in Britain.

What you're talking about something called a market. A market is not capitalism anymore than a fish is water.

originally posted by: Vovin
Capitalism is an ideology FUNDAMENTALLY BASED ON social differentiation. It requires disparity; poor masses to pay the rich minority.

Incorrect.

Capitalism is fundamentally based on private entities trading goods, and/or services for profit. That's it.

The rest are social issues that get mistakenly attributed to economic systems because, well because everybody needs a goat, and an economic ideology which has made you comfy is the perfect goat.

It is purely grotesque to claim that "global population exploding" as a good thing, because it's widely accepted fact that population growth booms in third-world conditions and stifles in the first-world.

It is also a widely know fact (except for ATS, apparently) that the boom is primarily from the change in death rates, not birth rates, and the majority of the death rate reductions have come from capitalist countries.

As for food? Well, why are corporations buying up massive tracts of agricultural land from African dictatorships? And it's not to build farms to feed the locals.

Actually, it will eventually feed the locals as well as non locals. The capitalist nature kind of demands it. Market that needs a product, company that has ability to provide product...bada-boom.

a reply to: NavyDoc

Bill Gates went to Harvard and as far as I can tell did it without any financial aid. That's not called starting with nothing. That's starting with quite a lot, actually.

a reply to: freakwars

Thanks for the reply.. Your ability to be all encompassing in what is blamed on a system you don't like is truly incredible.

a reply to: freakwars

The only reason we had such high percentages in the first place was because most of the major industrial centers outside the US had just been devastated by WWII in the 40s

World War II could not have happened without the centralized states made by the socialistic, collectivistic, and populist memes.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

en.wikiquote.org...

a reply to: Wrabbit2000


I'm simply applying the same criteria that gets applied to communism.

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin
a reply to: MarlinGrace

And you talk about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Billionaires who made their billions from exploitation. Funny how the richest people make their money from the poorest people, eh?

Almost as if money is actually a representation of social capital, and those with it are powerful because those without must become dependent on labouring their whole lives.

Tell me Mr. American Dream, what is so great about being a billionaire? Why are you trying to tell me that being a billionaire is a great success of capitalism?

The only thing being a billionaire means is that you know how to play the system, how to accumulate the wealth from many others for yourself. Over half of America lives paycheque to paycheque, and lose everything if they miss it once.

But that whole statement is completely untrue. They were middle class kids who started in their garage and produced an innovated product that people wanted for a price they were willing to pay. They were not wealthy starting out, they were average. They built their money by providing something people wanted--not exploiting them.

Methinks your ideology blinds you to the facts.

It's you who is blind. You're telling me that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates mined the minerals, refined them, then put the pieces together on the production lines and delivered the finished products to the consumers?

Obviously not. And I wouldn't expect you to know because you've already shown that you don't know anything about capitalism.

Profit produced under the capitalist process is from exploiting variable labour. Variable labour is the cost of wages. The more workers you can employ while paying them relatively less means you can produced more product to sell.

This is one of the defined contradictions of capitalism. The lower the wages, the higher the profit. Therefore, the tendency is to continuously lower wages. But how can consumers afford products if they don't get paid? Contradiction of capitalism.

By the way, since I just schooled you with knowledge, I'd like to question you on your comment "your ideology blinds you". What ideology would that be? I just laid out the process of capitalism. I just don't realize how having an education in political science blinds me by ideology. So explain to me what ideology I am ascribing to that is "blinding" me.

LOL. I don't know why you are jumping in again when your comment about Jobs and Gates starting out as billionaires demonstrated that you talk about things without knowing anything about them.

And obviously the above shows you know nothing about Capitalism. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had an idea, a concept. They started out in their garage. They needed materials they couldn't produce themselves so they bought, in free exchange, goods from other companies who had it. As they grew and grew they hired more workers and bought their labor from them in a free exchange and bought more materials from those that produced them. They needed something, the other company had something they needed and they had a free exchange of goods and services. Both companies made money and the workers made money and everyone was better off due to this free exchange of goods and services.

LOL. "Exploited." You are one of those people who think that any and all success is exploited. Gates created a product that people wanted and he supplied it. No one was "exploited." Did someone hold a gun to your head to buy the computer you are typing on or did you buy it because you wanted to surf the net and type stuff and look at porn? Of course, you were not exploited. You desired a good and someone provided it to you.

Being a billionaire would be great. I would love to be one and so would you. The great success of capitalism is that it has brought the most to the most people as efficiently as possible. Sure, it created Billionaires but it also lifted the quality of life of everyone. Certainly I most likely be a billionaire, but capitalism brought me from poverty to reasonably well off and I'm happy with that. The difference between you and I is that I didn't sit around and blame other people for my poverty, I worked my way out of it.

You are incorrect. It is untrue in capitalism that the lower the paycheck, the higher the profit. In the skilled trades, where the labor is very valuable, paychecks are very, very high. The secret of capitalism is in providing the best goods and services at the best price to the public. If you pay your workers too low, quality goes down and you lose profit. If you pay them more than the market will bear, no one will buy your goods because they are too expensive and you lose profit.

You haven't schooled anyone with "knowledge," just the same old tired ignorant leftist propaganda. The ideology that blinds you is one of the stupid notion that no success is possible without "exploitation," profit and success are evil, and that all your failings are someone else's fault.

You are a joke. Not only are you delusional but you've managed to twist my words around. Obviously Bill Gates did not start off as a billionaire.

But the truth is, you cannot be bothered to understand. People like you justify human misery as the fault of the victims for not working hard enough. You disgust me, and you actively work to hold back our species as a whole.

originally posted by: freakwars
a reply to: NavyDoc

Bill Gates went to Harvard and as far as I can tell did it without any financial aid. That's not called starting with nothing. That's starting with quite a lot, actually.

Bill Gate dropped out of Harvard. However his father was a very established lawyer and Bill Gates won in court 4 times.

Bill Gates is not the personal computer.

The personal computer, and computer science as a whole,

was made by millions of capitalists all working for their own benefit.

For better of for worse it is the only system that will arise in a non artificial manner.
It is brutal, but natural.
I would love the state to provide for my inadequacies, but my suspicion is that it never really will or can.

The globalization of capitalism, was premature and not properly thought through.
If global capitalism can balance out, things will be better and self sustaining.

The 80/20 rule applies very much to capitalism.

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: peck420

originally posted by: freakwars
If communism is responsible for every famine death in their borders, why is capitalism not?

Since 'capitalism' has reined supreme, on our planet, the global population has exploded, and global starvation rates have plummeted.

In the +- death game (as macabre as it is), capitalism is grotesquely ahead of communism.

Capitalism is an ideology FUNDAMENTALLY BASED ON social differentiation. It requires disparity; poor masses to pay the rich minority.

It is purely grotesque to claim that "global population exploding" as a good thing, because it's widely accepted fact that population growth booms in third-world conditions and stifles in the first-world.

As for food? Well, why are corporations buying up massive tracts of agricultural land from African dictatorships? And it's not to build farms to feed the locals.

Nonsense. Capitalism is based on the free exchanges of goods and services and property rights, both intellectual and physical. It does not depend on class, and in fact is one of the least "class-ist" systems there is. Not only does it not "require" disparity, it actually does better when there are less poor and there is less disparity. A poor man can't buy as many of the Capitalist's goods and services as a person who is better off. Capitalism has raised the standard of living and those poor people under African dictatorships, as you pointed out, are poor because of less capitalism and less economic freedom and those African Kleptocracies are by and large the result of socialist revolutions sponsored by, you guessed it, the Soviet Union in the 1960's and 1970's.

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: peck420

originally posted by: freakwars
If communism is responsible for every famine death in their borders, why is capitalism not?

Since 'capitalism' has reined supreme, on our planet, the global population has exploded, and global starvation rates have plummeted.

In the +- death game (as macabre as it is), capitalism is grotesquely ahead of communism.

Capitalism is an ideology FUNDAMENTALLY BASED ON social differentiation. It requires disparity; poor masses to pay the rich minority.

It is purely grotesque to claim that "global population exploding" as a good thing, because it's widely accepted fact that population growth booms in third-world conditions and stifles in the first-world.

As for food? Well, why are corporations buying up massive tracts of agricultural land from African dictatorships? And it's not to build farms to feed the locals.

Nonsense. Capitalism is based on the free exchanges of goods and services and property rights, both intellectual and physical. It does not depend on class, and in fact is one of the least "class-ist" systems there is. Not only does it not "require" disparity, it actually does better when there are less poor and there is less disparity. A poor man can't buy as many of the Capitalist's goods and services as a person who is better off. Capitalism has raised the standard of living and those poor people under African dictatorships, as you pointed out, are poor because of less capitalism and less economic freedom and those African Kleptocracies are by and large the result of socialist revolutions sponsored by, you guessed it, the Soviet Union in the 1960's and 1970's.

This is absolutely garbage and not worth my time. During your Navy tour did you write propaganda leaflets?

a reply to: freakwars

No, you're not. Not even remotely close. You've outright stated all hunger in the world is the fault of or can be laid at the feet of Capitalism. You've now said even what wasn't Capitalism in historic example...really is still viable to blame on it, because it led to it.

No, I don't see anyone else trying to make generalized wrongs in the world the fault of the communist system or where it's been tried and failed.

Communism didn't cause some global catastrophe, and neither has Capitalism. I suppose it's fair to say both systems have caused different levels of true hardship to their own peoples. The early phase of the industrial revolution is especially brutal for a period of both exploitation and oppression right here in America, as well as Britain. It's an incredible period to read about and far beyond what we've seen in the modern time.

However, to make grand sweeping statements of global ills being directly caused by any one economic system is ignoring the complexity real life always has. It's never anything close to that simple. Either direction.

originally posted by: freakwars
a reply to: Semicollegiate

Capitalism didn't exist before 1834, and even then it only existed in Britain.

What you're talking about something called a market. A market is not capitalism anymore than a fish is water.

Capitalism is private ownership. The natural human behavior of capitalism has always existed in a free and moral society.

Socialism defined capitalism in order to condemn it. It is not a real definition.

My first posts here I tries not to use it, the word capitalism, but no communication is possible to the brainwashed population with out it.

originally posted by: freakwars
a reply to: Semicollegiate

Capitalism didn't exist before 1834, and even then it only existed in Britain.

What you're talking about something called a market. A market is not capitalism anymore than a fish is water.

No, capitalism existed long before Marx gave it that label. Banking and loans and investments and ownership of the means of production predate that by thousands of years. Ancient Roman and Egyptian businessmen were capitalists.

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin
a reply to: MarlinGrace

And you talk about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Billionaires who made their billions from exploitation. Funny how the richest people make their money from the poorest people, eh?

Almost as if money is actually a representation of social capital, and those with it are powerful because those without must become dependent on labouring their whole lives.

Tell me Mr. American Dream, what is so great about being a billionaire? Why are you trying to tell me that being a billionaire is a great success of capitalism?

The only thing being a billionaire means is that you know how to play the system, how to accumulate the wealth from many others for yourself. Over half of America lives paycheque to paycheque, and lose everything if they miss it once.

But that whole statement is completely untrue. They were middle class kids who started in their garage and produced an innovated product that people wanted for a price they were willing to pay. They were not wealthy starting out, they were average. They built their money by providing something people wanted--not exploiting them.

Methinks your ideology blinds you to the facts.

It's you who is blind. You're telling me that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates mined the minerals, refined them, then put the pieces together on the production lines and delivered the finished products to the consumers?

Obviously not. And I wouldn't expect you to know because you've already shown that you don't know anything about capitalism.

Profit produced under the capitalist process is from exploiting variable labour. Variable labour is the cost of wages. The more workers you can employ while paying them relatively less means you can produced more product to sell.

This is one of the defined contradictions of capitalism. The lower the wages, the higher the profit. Therefore, the tendency is to continuously lower wages. But how can consumers afford products if they don't get paid? Contradiction of capitalism.

By the way, since I just schooled you with knowledge, I'd like to question you on your comment "your ideology blinds you". What ideology would that be? I just laid out the process of capitalism. I just don't realize how having an education in political science blinds me by ideology. So explain to me what ideology I am ascribing to that is "blinding" me.

LOL. I don't know why you are jumping in again when your comment about Jobs and Gates starting out as billionaires demonstrated that you talk about things without knowing anything about them.

And obviously the above shows you know nothing about Capitalism. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had an idea, a concept. They started out in their garage. They needed materials they couldn't produce themselves so they bought, in free exchange, goods from other companies who had it. As they grew and grew they hired more workers and bought their labor from them in a free exchange and bought more materials from those that produced them. They needed something, the other company had something they needed and they had a free exchange of goods and services. Both companies made money and the workers made money and everyone was better off due to this free exchange of goods and services.

LOL. "Exploited." You are one of those people who think that any and all success is exploited. Gates created a product that people wanted and he supplied it. No one was "exploited." Did someone hold a gun to your head to buy the computer you are typing on or did you buy it because you wanted to surf the net and type stuff and look at porn? Of course, you were not exploited. You desired a good and someone provided it to you.

Being a billionaire would be great. I would love to be one and so would you. The great success of capitalism is that it has brought the most to the most people as efficiently as possible. Sure, it created Billionaires but it also lifted the quality of life of everyone. Certainly I most likely be a billionaire, but capitalism brought me from poverty to reasonably well off and I'm happy with that. The difference between you and I is that I didn't sit around and blame other people for my poverty, I worked my way out of it.

You are incorrect. It is untrue in capitalism that the lower the paycheck, the higher the profit. In the skilled trades, where the labor is very valuable, paychecks are very, very high. The secret of capitalism is in providing the best goods and services at the best price to the public. If you pay your workers too low, quality goes down and you lose profit. If you pay them more than the market will bear, no one will buy your goods because they are too expensive and you lose profit.

You haven't schooled anyone with "knowledge," just the same old tired ignorant leftist propaganda. The ideology that blinds you is one of the stupid notion that no success is possible without "exploitation," profit and success are evil, and that all your failings are someone else's fault.

You are a joke. Not only are you delusional but you've managed to twist my words around. Obviously Bill Gates did not start off as a billionaire.

But the truth is, you cannot be bothered to understand. People like you justify human misery as the fault of the victims for not working hard enough. You disgust me, and you actively work to hold back our species as a whole.

You posited that nobody can better themselves in our capitalistic society. You are wrong on so many levels.

a reply to: NavyDoc

They didn't constitute a system, although Rome did get close to making the shift.

Rome and Egypt never made the transition away from the largely agrarian feudal system to the urban-industrial capitalist system.