Socialism, and Why it's a Dirty Word to Some

reply to post by Senser

You won`t find ciritical notes about the USA in history books you read in school, these will tell you that the USA is out to spread peace and democracy and will protect the good citizens of the world against all evil, without even mentioning the economical and geopolitical motivations for going to war for example.

There are a number of ways to look at this one. Humans are not above or below ideological war - The end of World War II saw the start of the Cold War and that a number of world leaders would, in fact, fight wars on the principle of ideology. We also see this in many of the Crusades.

Of course, no acquisition of land will ever -not- come with various economic advantages and benefits. The problem is determining primary driving factors. Since it is rare for one person to ever have enough control to start wars - it is likely that different interests are focused on different reasons for a war. Some will be more concerned with the resources gained, more room to expand, a new group of people to introduce to your culture, the removal of an opposing or disliked ideology - the reasons are many.

Of course - the U.S. policy in handling territories and allied/friendly nations is to engage in relatively free economic exchange. A good example would be Korea - a number of American goods and services go to Korea and Korea is a rather vital part of our communications industry and is an important ship-builder. By comparison to the practices of almost every other empire through history - we don't really have such a bad policy.

We have learned to take war - a destructive and horrific event, and come away with both our own status and the status of countries we have invaded/controlled improved. Again - look at Japan, Korea, (West)Germany; Iraq and Afghanistan are having some growing pains, but also are showing improvement.

I'm not going to say that it was all in the name of freedom, democracy, etc - there are certainly financial benefits to be had, but it is usually not at the expense of these other nations (they usually come out way ahead compared to where they were, and the people generally enjoy a higher standard of living and degree of freedom).

Again - I'm not saying economic factors are not a role - but we don't rape and pillage as a matter of policy - some douches wearing the same uniform try it - and they aren't liked very well.

But as you stated that stupidity is a common trait amongst most humans, this stupidity is easilly exploidable
by people who have the knowledge and means to furher their own agenda. no?
To state that all the sh#t in the world is just caused by circumstancial stupidity is quite a copout to say the least,

I'm not saying that all of the crap in the world is caused by stupidity. However - I am saying the majority of it is, and that what most people perceive as a "plan" or "control" is really just coincidence.

There are people who have plans and agendas - but stupidity works both ways. People have plans for generally good things, and others for generally bad things - and still others just for things (that can end up going good or bad because of stupidity).

Example: the portrayal of the father-role in many movies and sitcoms as generally stupid, lazy, and/or incompetent. Then, you take shows aimed at kids and teens where parental figures are either completely exempt or portrayed (along with other adults) as being more incompetent than the children staring in the show.

You could connect the dots and say that there is a plot in the media to disrupt the family structure. "Kids, your parents are stupid, as are adults - don't listen to them." - then, as they get older: "Marriages involve men being incompetent and ineffective parents who no one should listen to, anyway."

Personally, I think it's just what sells. Kids and teens don't appear to respond as favorably to shows that depict adults behaving in a competent manner, or that impedes their teenage fantasies. In the case of fathers being portrayed as incompetent/foolish, men respond to this by criticizing this character and seeing how they could do better. Women respond to the character in supporting the female character and vilifying the male character.

My father seemed to think there was a sort of plan behind it - citing quotes from Stalin saying "We will take over America without firing a single shot." His economics class at University of Missouri: Rolla (Now the Missouri Institute of Science and Technology) did predict, back in the 60s, that Russia and the U.S. would flip-flop; Russia would become a free market democracy and the U.S. would become a socialist republic - if not full out communist.

I don't think there is any more organization or plotting behind the trend except for complacency. I sometimes wonder if some people in the government are planning to spend as much as they are to knowingly devalue the dollar - or if they genuinely think it is a smart idea.

I know the Republicans will not be as hard-line as a number of people on the conservative end of things want them to be - it would shock me if they were to go in and slash the wasteful spending and instate some constitutional reform. It's part of the woes of having political parties.

There are a lot of things going on out there - too many for any one group or organization to be even partially in control of. I also know what it is like to manage people at a few different levels of expected intelligence (IE - managing managers should be less frustrating than managing line-workers where the minimum intelligence involved is how not to kill themselves in the line of work) - stupidity somehow makes its way into everything. Even my own actions.

It was Bushes stupidity for invading Iraq right? incompetence of norad that did not prevent 9-11 right?

Depends upon how deep you dig into the facts. 9/11 was a genuine slip-up. Thousands of similar reports come in every week and no agency has the manpower to follow up on every one of them. At some point - someone is going to pass up a lead that should have been followed up on. At some point, someone is going to get arrogant and think "Bah, I know this job well enough, and that is not something we need to worry about." - It will happen again regardless of how much money and manpower we throw at CONUS ATFP.

Further, it should be noted that few airbases, at the time, had Alert-5 watches maintained. Standard protocol for dealing with hijackers at the time was not to intercept them with military aircraft - though I would have to check to see what the SOP was, if there was one drafted, at all.

As for the invasion of Iraq - WMDs were found in Iraq - along with plenty of evidence that the facilities for development and production of more chemical and biological weapons were present recently as well as signs of chemical scrubbing in an attempt to destroy evidence of recent activity.

stupidity of the banks handing out those loans and and selling them as packages on Wall Street while on the side betting against them right?

We had this brilliant idea in the 70s to improve everyone's standard of living. In the 80s, we went a little farther with FHA-insured loans to banks. This essentially said that any loan qualifying for an FHA and filed through the Federal Housing Administration is guaranteed by the government. IE - even if this poor sap doesn't have a chance in hell of paying off the loan, if he qualifies for an FHA loan, there is no financial penalty for issuing him a loan. This may initially sound irresponsible - and it is, to a degree - however, if one bank won't give him a loan - another bank will. Banks work off of having capital, and only require about 10% of their net worth to be in capital holdings (the rest being in loans). Not loaning money when there's no penalty for doing so is a disservice to stock holders.

So, you have all of these people going out and knowingly committing to loans for houses that they should have enough common sense and basic math skills to realize they cannot afford. This creates artificially high demand for houses and inflates prices astronomically. People who would have never bought a house now become interested in buying a house. We are now sitting on a bubble and loans begin to default as the demand levels off and market values deflate (so the actual value of these assets is far less than what was paid for them).

The FDIC also does not help much when it comes to standard loans and banking as it acts in a similar manner to the FHA.

In the end - no one makes you take out a loan. You should have enough common sense and basic math skills (you were not taught faulty math by the government) to realize when you cannot afford a loan. No one makes you get a credit card or use it. People should be held liable for their own faults with this.

Still it is only the tip that we see, and people think the structure beneath it is still good and sound but in fact the whole good old system has rotted and it is ready to collapse under its own weight.Its not only corruption perse but if money and economcic growth is regarded the most important over everything else, the social cohesion will fall apart and you will get situations like in 3rd world countries especially if there is a serious economic meltdown, which is unavoidable as the amount of debt all of the world and the other crap traded on wallstreet will make sure of that.

People have basic and enhanced needs to go on living in anything resembling their current standard of living. The goal of businesses and the economy is to provide those things, mutually, to everyone. It is a system that is inherently functional and good. It can only be corrupt when it has handles that allow it to control factors that would normally remain outside of its control (government is one such thing that should be kept as far away from being able to control businesses as possible).

In this sense - an economic melt-down is virtually impossible unless it comes to pass that people are unwilling to go to work and produce the things that are necessary for society to continue.

You should go to India and see what you think of that capitalist society, where 6 year olds are prostituted in abominal conditions, where 1% is rich rand the other 99% are dirt poor and the corruption is rampant, provoked by the measly wages of goverment workers.

There is a difference between a capitalist society and a free market society. India lags China by a decade or two in their economic maturity. China's current economy cannot be sustained until moving away from Communism even further than they already have. India will, similarly, not be able to survive much longer with such a high concentration of wealth - the economic trends will see the birth of a middle class.

No spreading of wealth you said? If this is ur utopia than than i think your country will have it soon, and uless
you are not filthy rich by now you won`t get into the 1% club i`m afraid, you might get to make them sandwiches though.

You don't seem to get it. You can't redistribute wealth because wealth is productivity. I can't give you my skill-sets in electronics and various qualifications. I can teach you, and you can learn them and start your own practice - but that's not distributing wealth, that's you creating that wealth.

You can redistribute capital - but that does not redistribute wealth or make the nation more productive.

As for getting into the "1% club" - people go into and out of the "club" all the time. Most of them are made up of people receiving inheritances or one-time bonuses of some kind. Though, I don't have to be in the 1% to be able to have what I want.

The error many make is to look at things from the standpoint of "I will never have more than that guy." Maybe you will, maybe you won't. What does it matter, so long as you are being productive and improving your own standard of living?

You used to have to be in the top 20% to own a cell phone. Now that's changed. You also used to have to be in the to 20% to own a number of the nicer homes on the block. That's also changed, along with the price of cars.

The goal of the free market is never to remove the percentiles. There will always be a person making less than you, and another person making more. The goal is to make it so that more people can afford to live with a higher standard of living. A perfect example of this is the computer/technology industry - computers and technology, in general, have gone down considerably over the years by comparison to GDP - and a lot of that has to do with free-market competition and productivity.

The west has had the lion share of the wealth of the world, after the collapse things will chamge drastically.
Hope you will see it coming when it does...

I'm not too worried about it. If something that drastic happens, life will change. People in this area will begin growing crops for human consumption rather than for feeding livestock, and we'll revert back to a time when money was used mostly for trading between communities and local goods/services were bartered or provided pro-bono as it was known the other person would return the contribution.

As I said - the need for people to have resources would over-ride any government jurisdictions and ties to currency. A number of private industries are already pretty well set to work out a currency standard. Take facebook-credits, for example - you essentially exchange your currency for a privately-developed form of currency that can be redeemed for a number of services and products. If it really needed to be done - employers could end up working with facebook or some intermediary business that essentially paid you in facebook credits, or microsoft points, or whatever. These companies would then work with others (such as major credit card companies and banks, or even individual retailers like walmart) to allow you to purchase goods and services.

People may be stupid as a whole more often than not - but they are very creative and driven to survive. It is my observation and experience that people are game-day performers.

Socialism, and Why it's a Dirty Word to Some - My Story