A quick question for communists before bed...

reply to post by daskakik

I am more than willing to let it go.

Well that is very easy when you were holding nothing to begin with... I have totally just proved I was right because he has just came and told you himself! How you can spin it any other way is beyond me! He says he supports the people in the video and then goes on to tell you THEY are thieves! And that he can go "take it back" just like I said...

Then he says property itself is theft... Just like I told you... But hey, what does that matter... Support the sickness all you like...

That seems to happen a lot. See what I mean about missing the message in the posts? I explained it twice. I will try again. This is not aimed at you and is in regard to historical revolutions in general. The revolutionaries often claim that they fight for the people but as soon as the new government is in place the power goes back into the hands of a small group.

Again you make total BS claims that are infact in reverse... I DO NOT CARE if you were specifically talking to me! What does that matter? I was telling you about MY revolution... Why do you have such a problem with that? Absolutely crazy...

The way I see it, we are not giving that small group the monopoly, they are taking it and they are willing to kill any and all that try to take it away from them.

Nope you talk to anyone about getting rid of the government completely. Instantly they will say... What about the roads? What about the rapists, what about the murderers and the gremlins that live under the bed?

Most people are in support of having at least SOME government... So they give their consent... No government or army could do anything if everyone just sat down and said F U... I agree that they will not give it up easily, but that is no reason to give up, just because it is hard...

I've already heard the whole philosophy before and have come to the conclusion that it is flawed.

Raising your children with non-violence and a knowledge of property rights is flawed? Hmmmm... Even though the brain scans show the damage from abusive parents? I mean for a start I haven't explained the full philosophy but you declare it void... Look it is cool, you gave up... But why discourage others just because YOU can't see a way?

My philosophy on it all is that I'm only going to be here for a short stint. If I am allowed to die of old age, I am at about the half way mark. I'm at peace knowing that I am not going to change the way things are. I refuse to take part because, as the revolutions of the past have shown, nothing really changes. The power structure, use of force, exists at every level.

This is why anarchism is the ONLY choice! For the very reasons you are describing...

I remember going back and forth with another member of ATS which was an anarcho capitalist where I pointed out that under anarcho capitalism there would be nothing to keep a gang/criminal organization/mob/mafia/warlord or whatever you want to call it to come together and extort the citizens under the threat of force.

But we have that NOW, and they have tricked people into thinking they are the sole authority and that if you resist you are a terrorist or a criminal etc... It has allowed governments all over the world to cause MASS destruction and mass killings... Millions and millions of people... Also mafias exist BECAUSE of the state! The state criminalizes something and then groups grow up around that, because where there is a demand you will get a supply!

Many many people agree that just ending the war on drugs would save countless lives and ruin the cartels... I'm sorry but the argument doesn't stand up... To say that the government protects you is beyond a joke! You seen all the police shootings? Kids getting tased and shot... Victims of crimes that called the police getting killed or locked up and beaten... I just can't take these arguments seriously.

The only thing he could come back with was that he would rather pay the extortion by this type of organization than pay the government. Honestly, I didn't see a difference.

I would rather have a gun and defend my own damn self... Maybe in band together with some of the locals... Hey maybe even hire private security. There are a ton of options. Maybe home security would be a option on your insurance...

Just because one guy doesn't have the answers doesn't mean they aren't there...

reply to post by daskakik

Sorry to cut your words short but I thought this was the main idea. I think that the answer is a very personal one. I see three options. Become a criminal and work the system, which in a way is a form of compliance, take the role of the victim, which is also compliance, or fight it and become a statistic. I guess that to answer your question about seeing a way out, the answer is obvious, the only way out is the final way out.

That is a very sad thing to read indeed... I would say this... If you are going to be a slave then you are not truly alive in the first place! Even if you last 1 day and become that statistic you lived longer than everyone else!

reply to post by shansen

It's not possible to have a civil convo about "communism is good or bad?". Period. Communism is a pest, communism is hell. Period. The people in this thread - without any intention to offend someone - are like Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotski and the rest of the bunch: they're talking about the good of the working class but in the same time they don't have the slightest idea what the working class is, because they're enjoying a comfortable life, provided by the "evil capitalism". For them, I only wish that one day they will wake up in a communist country, to live their lives in the "perfect system" they're claiming it to be; maybe even a Gulag experience would be great for them. Enjoy! To debate if communism is good or not is nothing more than a huge offense to the tens of millions who died by the hands of these regimes and to the more others who are still living it around the world and suffer for the single second of their life. In the meantime, you, theoreticians of communism, apologists of a criminal system, believers in the justice of a system which represents injustice by itself, at least have the common sense to shut up or if you can't, how about splitting everything you have and worked for with the others because, as they say, in communism "we are all equal".

Couldn't agree more... Tell me, would would you say to them when they say that business owners didn't build anything, they just got the business from thin air or because they "got stuff" and so it is quite alright to "take back" what they stole?

What would you say to them when they say that REAL communism wasn't tried or things like that?

I have asked anok his address at one point but he wasn't willing to give it to me... I told him I was moving in but he didn't seem that keen on the idea...

Originally posted by mee30
That is a very sad thing to read indeed... I would say this... If you are going to be a slave then you are not truly alive in the first place! Even if you last 1 day and become that statistic you lived longer than everyone else!

Your just as much of a slave but are buying into the Austrian School of Economics to help you find a way out. It's a dead end street.

As for your take on the rest of my post I see that you have a problem understanding what people are trying to say. Point out where I said that the government protects the citizens?

I said that in the absence of a power structure one will always develop, usually in the form of one of those groups I listed. Always happens and your right we have that now, it is what the communist countries had and it is what just about every group of humans has had for thousands of years.

Austrian School of Economics does nothing to solve the problems of capitalism. It just makes capitalism even more authoritarian than it is now. It would fail for all the reasons you claim socialism would fail. Except there actually would be an elite, with more wealth than the majority, allowing them to economically dominate the majority.

Capitalism is capitalism is capitalism, the only way to solve the problems it causes is to end it.

We should be evolving, but we're stagnating. Socialism is the next logical step in economic evolution, the Austrian method would set us back to the industrial revolution.

You only have to look who founded the school. For example, Carl Menger...

Menger was born in Nowy Sącz in Austrian Galicia, now in Poland. He was the son of a wealthy family of minor nobility; his father, Anton, was a lawyer. His mother, Caroline, was the daughter of a wealthy Bohemian merchant. He had two brothers, Anton and Max, both prominent as lawyers.

Carl Menger

Elite!

Born in Vienna, the son of Privy Councillor Leopold von Wieser, a high official in the war ministry, he first trained in sociology and law.

Friedrich von Wieser

Elite!

These people did not care about the majority working people. They only cared about money, economy, power, not people. When they talk about "property rights" what they mean are 'economic property rights'....

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Property rights are a controversial, theoretical construct in economics for determining how a resource is used, and who owns that resource - government, collective bodies, or by individuals.[1] Property rights can be viewed as an attribute of an economic good. This attribute has four broad components[2] and is often referred to as a bundle of rights[3][4]:

Property rights (economics)

They're not talking about peoples rights to their personal property. They are talking about the right to use property in an economic capacity. In other words the right to use property to hire labour and make profit from the production of that labour. Remember the land owners created the need for "jobs" by taking away the peoples right to live on unused land, the Inclosure Acts. It is not the natural order of things, and in the history of man it's an extremely new system.

No matter how you try to organise it, you really can't, it will always be the same system, and at it's most basic an exploitative system. Exploitative simply because the worker has to produce more than they are paid for, in order for the capitalist to make profit. That is theft!

Difference between a worker's wages (exchange value) and the value of goods and services he or she produces (use value).

surplus value

Originally posted by mee30
reply to post by shansen

Tell me, would would you say to them when they say that business owners didn't build anything, they just got the business from thin air or because they "got stuff" and so it is quite alright to "take back" what they stole?

Well, taking the risk to be pinched by the mods, I'd say that they're plain stupid, in a clinical way. I mean, what the heck are these people thinking? That the State can, want and would provide them with all the necessities to live a decent life? I wonder if these people are really using the Internet to get informed or just for watching adult orgies?
It's these business owners who are the essential factor of their current life. The fact that they have so many choices is because the business owners are there, not because the State is overlooking on its citizens with care, c'mon!

What would you say to them when they say that REAL communism wasn't tried or things like that?

Hmm... there is a bit of a truth here.
Okay, I'll try to manage my anger induced by the word "communism" and to reason a bit. If one would read "The Capital", there is, indeed, a perfect system, ready to drive the humanity to the "supreme happiness". The theory is as much perfect as much it is a perfect utopia. Indeed, the theoreticians of the communism did a good job by imagining a society where all people have access to the big jar of resources. The only thing they missed in all of this is one element which, added to this "communism" thing, will screw it up big time: the human element. In other words, the humans, for whom the communist system is the perfect one, are the ones who are altering it, in order to get a greater good. Circular logic? Maybe, but this is a reality, trust me. I lived it for a quarter of my life.

I would ask them this: find a... let's say a north-Korean "defector" and tell him/her that "dude, communism is a great system". I bet money on rocks that ten seconds later they might end laying on the ground, with some broken bones. That would be the answer to this moronic assertion about the worse system humanity ever experienced.

Sorry for the possible grammar or syntactic mistakes; English isn't my native language.

Originally posted by shansen
I would ask them this: find a... let's say a north-Korean "defector" and tell him/her that "dude, communism is a great system".

ATS member freethinker123 might agree. In this post he/she states that life in communist Yugoslavia was better than in it's present "democratic" system.

Originally posted by daskakik

Originally posted by shansen
I would ask them this: find a... let's say a north-Korean "defector" and tell him/her that "dude, communism is a great system".

ATS member freethinker123 might agree. In this post he/she states that life in communist Yugoslavia was better than in it's present "democratic" system.

edit on 21-11-2012 by daskakik because: (no reason given)

Well, it's his/her point of view; I respect that.
On the other hand, I'd rather not start debating about this with him/her. My experience - and my anger, too - come from more than 20 years of miserable life, being humiliated and treated like dust in my own country, by the people who were supposed (according to the Constitution) to protect my rights as a human being.
Now, the country is in the same #, ruled not by communists but by a bunch of thieves who are stealing the money even from the pension funds. Who are the worse? None. All are the same, the scum of the Earth, the garbage of human species.
But at least now I can choose my own way because our "leaders" don't give a flying f..k about people leaving the country forever.

All the rest is a matter of perspective, IMO.

Live well.