Hey kids: Don't be a sucker for socialism

Post Reply New Topic

Your analysis is right, but I have to push back on your bit about this being planned.

There's no plan, just a bunch of people and businesses following their self-interests. Unregulated capitalism does what you describe naturally.

This is why economies need to be regulated.

On the plus side, smart capitalists will change (evern on their own) when confronted by evidence (that's as close as we got to a 'plan'). For example, Walmart is beginning to see that it is killing it's golden goose (the American consumer). As a result, they're raising wages (and supporting increases in the minimum wage) and encouraging suppliers to bring manufacturing back to the US.

They aren't doing this because they have suddenly become nice people, but because they realized that they need to reinvest in their consumer pool.

Yes, but unregulated capitalism also controls whether it's regulated or not by controlling politicians.

They are very good at coming up with propaganda that sounds intelligent to people who don't think deep enough to truly understand what is happening. In the past they used religion to justify the rule of royalty. Now they use pseudo-economics and talk of fweeeeedom to justify capitalism run amok. Freedom is pretty damn meaningless if you're a peasant who can't even afford to feed yourself.

The real problem is the issue is now grown beyond the power of any one country. Capital is mobile, labor is not. That's the bargaining imbalance that is causing the decline of the west. There is no way to bring jobs back and repeat the 1950s in the west. I'm very pessimistic. Tariffs and protectionism that pits one country against another will not work. The only solution is a global all-out assault. Unions need to rise up globally and demand higher pay everywhere. Only when capitalists can no longer find cheap slave labor anywhere on earth will the issue be solved. I'm afraid it's a long road though. Sadly it might take centuries at the pace we're going now.

I don't think they plan consciously. I think it's subconscious. On the surface, capitalists truly believe the "trickle down" will help everyone. I think on a subconscious level it is cynical though. Deep down on a level they aren't fully aware they know they are lying and gaming. They have to bury the fact that they are destroying the middle class deep in their unconscious mind in order to relieve their conscious of the burden of guilt. This is the way evil operates in most cases. It is a subconscious lizard-brain type impulse.

Instead one should be a sucker for laissez faire.

The notion of the one big, world wide union is actually not new. The Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW), or Wobblies, had had that plan in the early 20th century. And they were actually working to make that a reality, expanding not only in the US, but also into Europe and Australia. Unlike other unions of the day, they didn't allow themselves to fall for the racial bigotry of the day by excluding non-whites, thus falling into the plans of big business to divide and conquer; rather, they realized the need to unionize all labor. It was WWI that was their death knell, as their refusal to sign a promise not to strike during the duration of the war, or refusing to promise not to oppose the war, was the pretext the Wilson administration used as grounds to drive them into extinction. Only a few years ago, I discovered the IWW was still alive and kicking, though much reduced in size. I say, either reinvigorate the Wobblies to continue organizing the world's labor, or find a new labor organization to accomplish that today.

Uh oh, that sounds suspiciously like Adam Smith...

It's become notably easier and cheaper to do anything, anywhere other than the US. To wit: Try building a new home here. The median cost of regulation compliance alone, for a new home has increased 30%, since 2011.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/home-builders-say-they-are-squeezed-by-rising-compliance-costs-1462613401

The liberal socialists harp about affordable housing out of one side of their mouth, and then hammer builders with some of the most absurd regulations to justify the expansion of their code enforcement department. Then they have a convenient scapegoat in the builders, whom they accuse of greed, which appeases their loyal herd to no end.

The soviet union collapsed, in part, due to its bloated bureaucracy, which could no longer be financially sustained.

Building codes save lives. It doesn't seem to be an undue burden, I've worked on some habitat for humanity houses as a volunteer. And by the way, the regulations in some European countries are far more strict.

From USA Today: "Bernie Sanders supporters should note socialist Venezuela's descent into poverty and chaos"

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2 ... /85294346/

"As an immigrant from Latin America, I have found the current presidential election to be both depressing and terrifying — but not for the obvious reason. The negativity in rhetoric concerns me, of course. Yet it pales in comparison to the growing acceptance of socialism, which I thought I left behind in my formerly rich homeland, Venezuela....

"I understand where socialism’s young devotees are coming from. I was a teenager when Hugo Chavez came to power in Venezuela’s 1998 presidential election. Then, my countrymen were disenchanted with our trajectory and demanded a radical change, not unlike millions of Americans today. As a young and idealistic student myself, I was captivated by socialism’s promise of a more equal, fair and just society.

"Reality has opened my eyes to just how wrong I was. Venezuela’s 17-year experience with socialism has taught me a number of lessons about its inherent problems and inevitable failure.

"Perhaps the most surprising is the role that special interests play in advancing the socialist movement. The traditional argument is that socialism is anti-special-interest — that it will eliminate cronyism and stamp out corruption. The opposite is true.

"Entrenched interests, especially the well-connected and the unscrupulous, stand to gain the most in a socialist system. This stems from the simple fact that the rapid growth and centralization of governmental power gives them unprecedented opportunities to rig the system in their own favor. Far from eliminating cronyism, socialism makes it more prevalent."

Did you even read the article? I'm guessing not. Because if you had, you'd know these are not referring to building codes.

Actually it does. Around the world and over the last 200 years, there is a direct correlation between economic freedom and prosperity – not just for "billionaire hedge fund managers," but for everybody. The poorest 10% of Americans, as above, have about as much spending power as the top 10% of Italians. The bottom five percent in the US still have a standard of living, as a group, which is comparable to the top five percent in India. 

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/ ... nots/?_r=1



No, it didn't. Like every major boom-and-bust, panic, recession, or depression in American history, the current economic mess was caused by the government meddling in the economy. 

http://www.forbes.com/2008/07/18/fannie ... brook.html

Suppose a demented alien appeared and informed you that he was going to transport you to a foreign country of your choosing. You'll pop out at the other end eighteen years old, healthy, looking like a local, and speaking the language – but with no possessions save the (appropriate) clothes on your back and papers in your pocket proving that you're a local citizen and you've completed high school or the equivalent. You're free to try emigrating back to your old country, but your new starting point is as a citizen of your new country. 

Which country do you choose? I'll bet most people's choices would be from the top third of the Index of Economic Freedom, below … New Zealand, Canada, Switzerland. Some might seek non-material benefits farther down the list, figuring that it would be worth being kind of poor to live on a tropical island like Jamaica, or that one could put up with the permanent recession which is the French economy if one could read Victor Hugo in the original. (I'd be tempted by this myself.) Not many would choose Iran, or Zimbabwe, or Eritrea.

For two centuries people have been voting with their feet, and the movement's all in one direction: from less-free countries to freer ones. West Germans weren't trying to climb the barbed wire to get into East Germany, and Americans aren't risking their lives in makeshift rafts to get to Cuba … I've been to Hong Kong, it's far too crowded for my taste – but in general, the freer countries are much nicer places to live, and the least-free countries are the crappiest places to live. Some kind of crazy coincidence, I guess?

http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

^^^
Poverty is relative. Poor people in America aren't going to take much solace in knowing how they're better off than people in India, especially when they have to worry about medical care, food, housing, heating, etc. Just because a poor person owns a TV or coffee maker hardly makes them any less poor, especially when the necessities of life are too often out of reach.

For a first pass at economics, Adam Smith didn't do too badly. However, he, and others have vastly overestimated the market's capacity to act rationally.

That's why it needs to be regulated and guided.

By who?

You can shove your heritage foundation where the sun don't shine.