The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.
More companies are now giving in to Muslim pressure over Geert Wilders’ Islam-critical movie. I keep bashing Marxists in my writings, and they usually deserve it. I honestly believe it is impossible to write anything meaningful about what ails the West without taking the prolonged and highly destructive influences of Marxism into account.
Yet Marxists are not powerful enough by themselves to generate all the problems we are now facing. You would have to be pretty blind not to see the importance of business ties in relations between the West and the Islamic world, certainly in the case of Europe and the Middle East, but also with the United States and Saudi Arabia. Money makes the world go around, after all. One does not have to be a Socialist to see that the short-term interests of Big Business are not always identical to the long-term interests of the nation as a whole, especially not when it comes to immigration. Multinational corporations, which by their very definition have loyalty towards no nation, should not be allowed to direct national immigration policies.
Is capitalism always a force for freedom? It is easy for “conservatives” to think so, but is it always true?
There are several perspectives one can use when trying to understand the European Union, for instance. One is that it is somehow related to the Communist utopia and the unaccountable, transnational bureaucracy of the Soviet Union. This does make some sense, but on the other hand, the EU cannot be properly understood simply as a Marxist organization. It has always held the backing of Big Business interests who want easy access to greater markets. They do not automatically care about national sovereignty or borders, which are vital to the continued existence of any truly free society.
I am particularly concerned over the recent attempts by various Western corporations to appease Islamic demands for sharia censorship. Both regarding the Danish cartoons and the Wilders movie in Holland, business interests have been among the most prominent in denouncing these attempts to defend Western freedoms because they care only about their market shares and not about the wider issues.
When we also know that many companies support mass immigration because they want easy access to cheap labor, including Muslim immigration, this means that they contribute to Islamization, at home and abroad. Can we then say that capitalism is always a force for freedom? I think not. As Thomas Jefferson said, “Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.”
Dutch companies have given into a Jordanian boycott by placing newspapers advertisements condemning the film Fitna- - - - - - - - -
De Volkskrant reports that Dutch companies have given into a Jordanian boycott. The companies Zwanenberg and Friesland Foods have placed advertisements in Jordanian newspapers saying they oppose the film Fitna by populist politician Geert Wilders.
Last week the group ‘The Messenger of Allah Unites Us’ brought a case against Wilders in a Jordanian court, accusing him of racism and incitement to hate Muslims. Wilders said he feared Jordan would issue an international warrant for his arrest.
The group, which had already mounted a boycott of Danish products because of the Muhammad cartoons, also began a boycott of Dutch companies. De Volkskrant tells us:
“On Wednesday all travel agencies in Amman received a letter asking that they not do business with KLM. The letter will also be distributed in other Arab countries.”
The chairman of the Messenger of Allah Unites Us, Zakaria Sheikh, says he has printed a million posters calling for a boycott of Dutch products. He says the only way Dutch companies can get themselves off the list is to take out ads in newspapers condemning the film.
In its advertisement, the Zwanenberg Food Group says it “rejects the opinions and statements” in Wilders’ film. “We strongly condemn the anti-Islam comments which we believe don’t have any other purpose than to insult.”
The company also expressed its “Solidarity with the campaign by The Messenger of Allah Unites Us in its attempts to pass international legislation banning insults to religion, including Islam and the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be with Him).”
From the Brussels Journal:
VNO-NCW, the Federation of Dutch Employers, has ordered its lawyers to see whether it is possible to claim damages from Mr Wilders for the loss of income which Dutch companies may possibly suffer as a result of a boycott of Dutch products by Muslims who are angry at Mr Wilders and at the fact that the Dutch have not been able to shut him up. “Companies like Shell, Philips and Unilever are easy to recognize as Dutch companies,” VNO-NCW chairman Bernard Wientjes told the newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad. “I do not know how rich Geert Wilders is, or how well insured he is, but if we suffer from a boycott, we will investigate whether it is possible to claim damages from him.” Last November, Doekle Terpstra, a member of the board of Unilever, called upon the Dutch to “rise in order to stop Wilders” because “Geert Wilders is evil and evil has to be stopped.”
Dutch businesses threaten to sue Wilders over Fitna
Big Business, the Driving Force behind Immigration
113 comments:
Thank you for posting, Baron.
We have an increasingly empty culture. We take pride in nothing, and we measure everything in terms of money alone. Take the oft-repeated mantra that mass immigration should continue because it is "good for the economy" and we "need it to pay for future pension." Yes, it's a lie, but why did they choose this particular lie, and why has it been effective for so long? Because we live in a culture where man is homo economicus, the economic man. This is in a strange way shared by both Marxists and capitalist-liberalists.
Let's assume for a moment that mass immigration actually did have some economic benefits. Would it then be OK? No, it would not, because our nations will cease to exist. You cannot put a prize tag on our continued existence, yet both left-wing and right-wing globalists are totally indifferent towards our continued physical existence as a people.
It may be as you say. On the other hand, companies must take the safety of their employees into account, and any observer can see that EU governments make little effort to protect their citizens from violent Muslims.
As Milton Friedman said, history shows us that capitalism is a necessary force for political freedom.
Socialism is a force for the emasculaton of man. In Europe, when socialism failed to acheive it's Marxist objectives, it merely stooped to use capitalism as its golden goose. That goose has been gelded.
Interesting thoughts. With capitalism, everything is about maximising profits. Though I can understand this perfectly, I do think people need stand up to Islam, even if it means losing money. Unfortunately, people can be greedy and just want more and more money, so we'll have to see if things will change.
What if capitalism is not the source of freedom, but the result of freedom?
Capitalism is the force for freedom, the freedom fascism that is the force for our civilizational suicide.
I have no idea why people discuss left and right and take it seriously. It's like chocolate or strawberry flavour. Capitalism is internationalistic, just as Communism. That's all we need to know about it. I do not particularly care if the nihilistic internationalism that is killing our civilization has chocolate or strawberry flavour.
Is Capitalism Always a Force for Freedom?
If by "freedom" you mean the need to overthrow historical civilisational cultural constraints then yes, it is a force for freedom. If some people want the freedom to be themselves and live and exercise control on the land of their forefathers as they and their co-nationals/ethnics wish to then capitalism must be put on a leash.
I first realised corporate capitalists were not conservative around 1990-1 when the Wall Street Journal ran an article showing that the driving force behind Ted Kennedy's 1990-1 Civil Rights Act (re. racial and gender quotas) was corporate America.
Since then corporate America has backed La Raza and other illegal alien causes. See here
Historical cultures, nations, traditions, habits, and other barriers get in the way of the flow of capital. It is no surprise the corporate world holds hands with the Marxist Left. If big business is happy to engage in "creative destruction" and to fund social engineering then getting full control of the state is no longer all that vital to the Left.
"Is Capitalism Always a Force for Freedom?"
Of course not! Actually, it is really the other way around!!!
Capitalism is only better than... Communism, and virtually everything to its left.
Capitalism, (we have three kinds of Capitalism: "Wild Capitalism" where money is everything [The Jews and the Russians are sometimes stereotyped as "wild capitalists], "Normal Capitalism", the Capitalism the West has, especially America, and then we have a "Domesticated Capitalism", that does not exist, in which we have all its virtues but we are not "slaves" of the capital nor limited by it)
Capitalism, would be a force of freedom if the richest men were also the most vituous. That is not what happens. Wealth does not eqaul virtue.
We should domesticate Capitalism. Like in the middle ages the Nobels were the wealthier, we should aloud only the virtuous to get rich.
The "burguoise" or "Jew" hating derives exactly from this, the perception that the rich people are not virtuous.
P.S.- This "burguoise" type of society can only lead towards cultural, social and economical leftism because the "burguoise" hate Tradition and can only see money and profit. You can see that those who "miraculously" or "unscrupolously" get rich, will tend towards leftism, just like the leftists who get rich tend to become "burguoise". I will read the text and comment it (before the Germany beat the hell out of te Turks, I hope) then.
Well Fjordman, great post but I don't agree with you.
I think that a true Conservative would make money in foreign lands to serve his country.
Those Capitalists of the "burgoise" type are undoubtedly somehow marxists, or at least, hypocrates eneogh to impose marxism on others under the condiction that that will not hurt them (pure lunacy!).
A Capitalist of the "Noble" type would not do this. (But we have to becarefull because nobility itself has always been internationalist too...) I think a somehow good example of this would be Silvio Berlusconi when compared to Soros...
After all, Europeans started colonising the world (capitalism) for the benefit of their own countries.
But we had that good sense that many people today call "racism".
Is Capitalism Always a Force for Freedom?
My inclination is: Yes.
It comes with qualifications, of course, and some issues I simply haven't figured out yet. Most important is the division of power between business and government. When these get too cozy, ugly things happen, as in 'wars' and the like.
That combination also tends to trample citizens' rights, because they get to be regarded as 'consumers', not as individuals with rights to be respected. That is quite visible in the draconian copyright regime we're under.
The European Union has a tight coupling between big business and the Bryssel government. That means hard times for small business, who don't benefit from the EU 'Gleichschaltung', but great profits for the big, who can adhere easier to EU standards, and even use them as a stepping stone to outsource to China.
A related problem is monopolies and the like, taking in a 90+ % market share.
A third is corporate disloyalty to the countries they operate in. With little national identity or specialization, Big Business is free to move where it makes the larger profit.
Not that I mind profit. For the record.
Back to capitalism per se. Britain used to be a 'nation of shopkeepers', with lots of small businesses merrily minding their own business, knowing their craft and fulfilling the needs of others. Decent people being responsible and productive citizens. That, in turn, is one of the best bulwarks against tyrrany - for what is a tyrant without resources to purchase loyalty?
I consider capitalism, properly implemented, as a force for freedom. Between the Scylla and Charybdis of fusing power with the State or running unreasonable monopolies, a path forward just might be found to make this clear again.
I'm happy to inform you that the Muslim boycott of Danish goods - now running for more than two years - had only marginal effect on one company, ARLA FOODS (half Swedish). If memory serves me well they lost around $100,000,000 in revenue. Initially all Danish businessmen were alarmed and whined about the dire consequences of the boycott, but quite the opposite happened: overall Danish exports surged, our economy is booming and the Muslim countries continue to be laughing stock. I guess our losses in the ME were more than compensated by the goodwill of civilized countries around the world.
And the irony is that ARLA hurried to "apologize" to the Muslims (without any effect). By doing so they got a local, nation-wide boycott on their hands. Consequently they lost considerable home markets and several smaller Danish dairies popped up, doing really fine.
And they never learn: right after the recent bombing of the Danish embassy in Pakistan ARLA and another big business, GRUNDFOSS (machine tools, pumps) repeated the mistake and criticized our government for its "agressive foreign policy" - without any effect, of course. Such companies have a very special name here: "Vaernemager" (in English something like "Trade-tors" - used during the Nazi occupation for people who assited and traded with the Germans).
"Værnemager" is an appropriate term, indeed.
These persons and companies made billions at the expense of Denmark and Danish citizens. The post-war reaction was swift and effective:
Since the Germans had paid them with stolen money (right from our national bank), large fortunes based on this kind of trade were confiscated.
Under a capitalist economic structure, long term flexibility and survivability is built into the program. That does not exist under any form of top down managed economic model.
There seems to be some confusion as to what capitalism actually is, and is not. Much of what is put forward as anti-capitalism is simply regurgitation of tired old propaganda from the class warfare and state management crowd.
Under a capitalist structure, each business entity is in direct competition against all the other business entities within its service and/or goods sector. This has a tendency to promote practices that favor the consumer in both prices and quality.
Under a capitalist structure, we, the consumers, have some recourse to address business entities that offend. We can do this by refusing to utilize them and, instead, seek other business entities to supply the goods and/or services.
You don't have that under a state managed system.
If, as in this particular situation, a business entity is conducting themselves in such a way that offends their market base, then that market base has the means to provide counter pressure that could, eventually, force the board of directors to replace the management, or can even cause the dissolution of that business entity. Other business entities will then fill that void.
It aint perfect, of course, but nothing done by man ever will be.
A little OT. I am not much for conspiracy theories but there is a new book out called "The rise of the fourth reich". The gist is that after ww2 a lot of Nazis moved into places of power in government and multi-nationals along with the usual suspects (tri-lateral commission, Bilderburger and Council on foreign relations) to eventually turn the US and the world into a fascist state. The EU, Muslims, Multicult, media and universities will push the west into a reactionary crackdown that will usher in the fourth reich. I think for the most part it is bunk. More paranoid leftists looking for more Nazis behind every tree? But the theory is interesting.
Spackle, I believe there's a core of truth in what you're saying. Not that it's particular Nazi-orientated, but the idea of the Perfect Total System to end all problems lives on, in the European Union:
It has, from a democratic point of view, a lot of flaws, large and subtle. It's not overtly fascist, yet retains some distinctly fascist features, such as the call for 'Unity', 'Strength' and 'Power', and the closeness between business and government (as mentioned above), as well as the perpetual powergrab-through-crisis practice.
Understanding what I'm hinting at here is not trivial, and I'm mired in all kinds of weird details trying to do so. Not to mention how to deal with it and bring political power back to the citizens. I epxect at least a decade of struggle doing so.
I believe that the Bilderberg meetings may play an important role in this, as it might be the place where our leaders and the press coordinate their agendas and agree on stuff like avoiding referendums for the EU Constitution (now Lisbon Treaty).
Tracking these meetings, finding a complete list of participants, even figuring out what goes on there - just might be worthwhile in the attempt to bring back transparency to an increasingly opaque system of government in Europe.
Good post, Fjord.
You are correct that many businessmen favor mass illegal immigration in order to get cheap labor. They only care about the profits of their company, and ignore the costs to the taxpayers and the other problems.
Here is an example Vince Orza was once chairman and largest stockholder of Eateries Inc. He definitely needed the cheap labor for busboys and dishwashers.
henrik r. clausen -
"Tracking these meetings, finding a complete list of participants, even figuring out what goes on there - just might be worthwhile in the attempt to bring back transparency to an increasingly opaque system of government in Europe."
Agreed. But the main problem is how? And more importantly, how does one infiltrate these groups without being tagged a conspiracy crackpot looking for problems where none exist? How does one crack a meeting between "private individuals" that is not under the auspices of government?
Spackle, I can name at least two Bilderberg participants:
Anders Fogh Rasmussen (Danish PM) and Tøger Seidenfaden (editor of Danish politically correct rag Politiken).
It just might be possible to piece together a complete list, bit by bit. That the meetings do take place is hardly a secret. Figuring out the 'who' and 'what' of those meetings is sound journalistic effort.
Update: Found a reasonably credible list of Bilderberg attendees.
That wasn't so hard :)
What's left is now the 'what' part. Any takers?
Henrik r clausen-
Perhaps I want clear enough but the "what" was what I meant. The who is easily documented by just standing around with a zoom lens. : )
Am absolutely aware that 'who' was the easier part :)
Wasn't aware until know that the participant list was well known.
As for the 'what', I think it's rather crucial. These meetings constitute a major violation of the democratic principle of transparency.
Capitalism is indifferent to any sort of moral or cultural value (unlike Marxism, which openly displays hostility or hatred for some of these values). From the Capitalistic viewpoint, anything is good as long as it is profitable.
To choose between Capitalism and Communism means to answer the old question if you prefer a person who hates you or one who is indifferent. Communism was awful, but at the same time the communists were passionate about their creed. Consequently, the opposition to Communism was equally passionate (I'm speaking as somebody who was born and lived for 14 years in a Communist country). As an anti-Communist, you know precisely who is your enemy and what you need to destroy him, because his ideology is clear, and the counter-ideology is equally clear.
What I want to say is that in same respects indifference is worse than hatred, because you don't know what means to use to fight against it. Actually the only means is to convince somehow the corporate world that on the long run the open-borders society is damaging for their business. Otherwise, they are indifferent to any kind of argument.
"after ww2 a lot of Nazis moved into places of power in government and multi-nationals..."
Yes, after the death of the Nazi Van Braun, NASA has achieved only failures.
"The EU, Muslims, Multicult, media and universities will push the west into a reactionary crackdown that will usher in the fourth reich"
Let that fourth reich rise so! I really think people should stop shaking everytime they here "nazi" or the sort. I really thought we had overcomed that...
By the way, well done Germany! First, you saved us from that tyrant, Scolari, and now you've sent those Turks back to Central Asia, to where they should have never left! Now, the next step is for you to start play good football, right?
And Henrik! Please, let's demonize the Union by the real demons here, let's compare it to the Soviet Union, shall we?
As I recently have read on Takimag, some important American with a funny name said:
"Neo-cons change their minds with every news cycle, the Catholic Church every cupple of centuries (...) here in the right you can lean towards the left as much as you want, there are no enemies on the left, and you can see that the majority of the neo-cons are indeed leftists, but if you lean just a little bit more towards the right, you are an evil bastard and a great enemy of the Nation."
This referring to Buchannans's new book "Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War" which Fjordman himself has putted in the "list to burn" claiming that the man who wrote the book had "joinned the dark's side forces" in a way that scared me.
You would be astonished to know that the all innocent Poland had actually anexated part of Checoslovakia and that more than 8 millions Germans were killed compared to some 400 thousand Britts. Also, to create this new Poland, German land for centuries and German historical... well, part of Germany had to be ceeded to Poland, and 15 million Germans had to leave their homes to escape the red terror.
We should try to understand that War instead of screaming Nazi everywhere we don't like something, or making Nazi a synonym with "bad".
@ Henrik R Clausen
Interesting List. Though not up to date. The question really becomes: who is speaking and who is listening obediently.
This is a conspiracy across generations: who is or has been the the dominating principals. I am going to bet it isn't the American contingent.
Thanks for voicing in on this topic. I think a lot of us realize Islam is bad, and a lot of us realize communism is bad, but very few of us realize capitalism, democracy, and individualism is bad. Since we grew up being taught all of these things are so good, we've never looked with a critical eye at our own prejudices. Just like the muslims who simply blindly obey their faith, we blindly obey ours without any attempt to get outside the box.
The amount of money necessary to escape the misery of crushing poverty is very low. After this point, any additional wealth capitalism can bring must be weighed against other, just as vital goods. For instance, let us say that a completely free market with no restrictions would raise the per capita GDP to 100,000 instead of the 45,000 today our crippling socialist ways have imposed. How would life look in this totally free world? Well, you'd have a lot of unemployed, unemployable people starving in the streets. Your jails would be chock full of 'rejects.' The environment would be a total mess. Drugs, alcohol, sex and ciggarrettes would be gigantic markets sold to children and adults indiscriminately. There would be no labor laws and no public education or health care. There would be no infrastructure or scientific research going on open to the public good. Immigrants from all corners of the earth would come in and swamp every position high and low in order to 'cut costs.' Wealth would be accumulated into a few hands with the vast majority poorer than ever, and this wealth would pass uninterrupted generation to generation with no taxes. In short, you will have created hell on earth, and all for the sake of economic freedom.
What economic level would I be willing to live at, to reclaim the ancient virtues and community solidarity of our past? The answer is a mud hut and a bowl of rice a day, death by age 30 would be fine by me. In those times, our culture and race passed unthreatened for thousands of years, fathers to sons, mothers to daughters, in an unbroken chain of family, community, and genetic survival. Capitalism has proven it is the best way to make money. So what? Who cares? Is it the best way to make families, communities, nations, cultures? Is it the best way to make a good soul in your own breast? Why are no important questions ever asked about anything?
If your goal is poverty in riches, rat races, standardization, massification, loss of local culture (in exchange for lots and lots of sheckels) Multinationals are the way to go. Some businesses are better off that way, but would cafè life be better in Italy with Starbucks instead of the zillions of small, private and family owned bar-cafes? When I lived in the USA eons ago, I remember great hamburgers, diners that had a soul, now it's fast food nation with not only the fare, but even the attitudes decided thousands of miles away by suits.
Then of course there's the vaguely philosophical / religious angle: it seems to me that as far as arbeit goes most European nations in the grand scheme of things are fantastically wealthy, but when it comes to family values and social harmony, it can get pretty shocking. The UK has fallen apart and yet on paper, that is on the ledger that only measures sheckels it's tops.
I remember in the old days, a man with a job could support a family. Now the wife needs to work and the kiddies (if they bother to make them) get brought up by professionals. This is progress? Well yes if all you know how to measure is money.
Japan has tons of multinationals, lots of smarts... but they're going through a suicide binge. Where's the end goal to all this wealth accumulation? Broken families, immigrants galore, crime, kids brought up by strangers... and alienation. So the GDP of Holland went up 2.3% Hurray! And Switzerland went up 3.2% Hurray! But does it really play out as a better life? Are people happier, are cities safer, is the grub tastier and served with great conviviality, are the young and old provided the love they need, are neighbors more neighborly?... or has some sort of insane greed crept into the picture? (As in sure, now we're so free, people in Holland can screw in public parks, but strangely that same free Holland sends 10 cops to arrest a cartoonist. So rationality remains but bereft of principles. Now it's a matter of economic convenience and so it's no longer right vs wrong, but trouble-free vs troublesome... and that way of thinking in today's world of abortion/Divorce/euthanasia will invariably, inexorably FOLLOW THE MONEY. (Let us not queer the big deals to be made in Dubai over some piddling problem with the Muslims!) Let's build those nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia! Let's do big big BIIIG business in the land that still has the man who murdered six million - sorry - sixty million people, in a mausoleum and whose party is still in power and whose politics slaughters monks in Burma and has reduced the North Koreans to cannibalism.
So what are we living for? To have goods and services delivered in 10 minutes instead of overnight? Cities like Hong Kong, New York and London with 35% foreigners? People working in kitchens for years (or sometimes their entire lives) who don't learn anything about food, except perhaps how to serve it faster?
This thread is about multi-nationals. Well money and trade and work are wonderful things, but my sensation is that the whole ethic has shifted away from Man, family, God and country or anything resembling truth, goodness and beauty, and focused on money for more money for more money. I'm not so sure we know what wealth means anymore.
Another outstanding article, Fjordman! You address something that needs to become a very strong issue before the battle against Islam concludes.
As a clarification, this problem has nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with the greed and promiscuity of multinational corporations.
The chairman of the Messenger of Allah Unites Us, Zakaria Sheikh, says he has printed a million posters calling for a boycott of Dutch products. He says the only way Dutch companies can get themselves off the list is to take out ads in newspapers condemning the film.
This is nothing but blackmail and companies who knuckle under to it only invite more of the same. It also starts to circumscribe the limits of just how "multinational" a company can become before conflicting aims and consequences kick in.
In its advertisement, the Zwanenberg Food Group says it “rejects the opinions and statements” in Wilders’ film. “We strongly condemn the anti-Islam comments which we believe don’t have any other purpose than to insult.”
This shows how morally blind the executive management of Zwanenberg Food Group is. If they had even the slightest concern about keeping this Free Market truly free, they would understand that Islam is a force of corruption and artificial marketplace controls.
The company also expressed its “Solidarity with the campaign by The Messenger of Allah Unites Us in its attempts to pass international legislation banning insults to religion, including Islam and the Prophet Muhammad (May Bees Pee Upon Him).”
A company which sells pork products that expresses its "Solidarity with the campaign by The Messenger of Allah Unites Us" has to either be insane, morally bankrupt or both.
From the Brussels Journal:
VNO-NCW, the Federation of Dutch Employers, has ordered its lawyers to see whether it is possible to claim damages from Mr Wilders for the loss of income which Dutch companies may possibly suffer as a result of a boycott of Dutch products by Muslims who are angry at Mr Wilders and at the fact that the Dutch have not been able to shut him up.
As usual, the Politically Correct are entirely immune to cause and effect. Wilders did not cause any loss of business for these traitorous companies. It is Islam's routinely violent response and blackmail that has caused the harm. Far be it from these craven cowards to recognize that.
I strongly urge everyone at GoV to write Zwanenberg letters of protest. Especially so for our European members. Here is their email:
export@zwanenberg.nl
Here is the text of my email that I sent to them.
To Whom,
Your company's submission to Muslim blackmail over "Fitna" is a display of total moral bankruptcy. Islam seeks to control the entire world. In such an Islamic world, your company would be burned to the ground for selling pork products. By bowing to Muslim blackmail, you empower Islam and its eventual goal to destroy your company.
The shortsightedness of your strategy is damaging to your own corporate viability and endangers the liberty of all freedom loving people everywhere. This represents an unacceptable business practice and must be responded to by initiating a total boycott of all your products. If you think losing Muslim business is damaging to your profits, wait until you lose the business of all the non-Islamic countries you ship to.
If you refuse to reverse this morally corrupt position regarding Geert Wilders' personal Freedom of Speech, I will do everything in my power to legally block the sale of your products at all stores in my city, county and state. I will base this campaign upon the fact that your company has chosen to cooperate with the demands of those who condone or sponsor global terrorism.
Due to how cowardly your organization has behaved in the face of Muslim blackmail, please rest assured that I sincerely doubt your company will have the courage to reply to this email.
Armance: Capitalism is indifferent to any sort of moral or cultural value (unlike Marxism, which openly displays hostility or hatred for some of these values). From the Capitalistic viewpoint, anything is good as long as it is profitable.
[emphasis added]
Wrong. Zwanenberg is a perfect example of this. A pork selling company kowtowing to Muslims is the height of illogic and economic suicide. Whatever profits Zwanenberg makes in the MME (Muslim Middle East) can in no way compensate for eroding the freedoms of the Free Market they themselves operate in.
This is craven cowardice, corporate greed, shortsightedness and profound mismanagement all rolled up into one. The CEO, CFO and board of directors should all be fired for this bit of malfeasance.
"Yes, after the death of the Nazi Van Braun, NASA has achieved only failures."
Say what? What about Pathfinder and the most recent craft to land on Mars? Sorry Afonso but I think you are wrong on this one. It may not be as sexy as walking on the moon but it is not a failure.
Almost every example of "capitalism gone awry" given above is caused by government interference in economics. Because the government gets involved in the control of business, business turns around and lobbies for the best it can get under the system.
If the government stayed out of business and did not allow itself (or was actually forbidden) to become entangled in playing favorites, in allowing some of the players to avoid competition because they have pull, a business that did not satisfy its customers would die - AND BE REPLACED BY ONE THAT DID.
Almost all of "big businesses" supposed evil is the result of favors given out by the government.
There is a reason that Ayn Rand entitled her book, "Capitalism - The Unknown Ideal." For most of its existence, capitalism has been hobbled by greedy bureaucrats their spineless business partners who are afraid of competition.
No one is forcing anyone to be a mindless consumer - get off it.
There is not enough room or time to adequately discuss whether the legions of incompetent non-thinkers who feel they deserve to be taken care of, are morally entitled to enslave the competent wealth creators.
Capitalism itself always is for freedom. Because of how it functions at its core. However it also has some requirements or else you get a perverse form of capitalism.
At its core, capitalisms value system is in making people happy. If I can figure out a way to make you happy, you might exchange some of your labor for that. And when I get that labor exchange, someone else will wish to make me happy for some of it. The exchange is one of mutual desire and fulfillment. The pursuit of happiness is capitalisms core, its soul. When people don’t understand why an actor makes 30 million or a model makes 30k for 3 mins on a runway, or a speech maker get 200k per speech, you only have to explain that they make the people interested happy. Make a lot of people happy at one time; you get a lot of money. Don’t make them happy, you get less money, make them unhappy, and they find somewhere else to spend their largesse.
I have been wanting to write a piece explaining this and more, because the understanding was fundamental to the educated men prior to our modern indoctrinal existences.
So real capitalists have no need to cheat. When you watch older movies, and you read about business before Harvard business school went socialist, you realized that the American revolution was all about the realization of this discovery.
Why is America actually less polluted than Russia? China? Etc. because this round robbin of happiness is based on whats important to people and since most people are actually good (or else 8 million of them couldn’t live together in a small area like ny), they tend to want to do good things. when they have enough money and wealth, it makes them happy to share. They are willing to pay a premium for that good.
So again. its all about happiness. So what about freedom? Well, freedom is integral to this process. A prisoner in a jail controlled by some overlord is not free to decide where to spend the fruits of their labor. They are not made happy by this, their work don’t make them happy, and their life doesn’t make them happy. All negatives to productivity.
We are voluntary creatures. When a zoo takes in a new animal, either that animal mates or a zoo can run out of animals for the future. Some animals are such a way that they cant be held in captivity. Oh, you can imprison them, but you cant control them to the point that you can keep going.
Good morals is a pre-requisite for capitalisms healthy function. This is the power to understand that poisoning the well is poisoning the well.
Large companies have been perverted by our system which has been perverted by socialists. So even if we are not a communist state, we have people whose idea of what capitalism is and allows and how it functions is defined by an entity that hates it and never tried to understand it.
However a lot of what goes wrong in capitalism needs certain restraints on things to actually work. again, as with anything economical and complex, I am really cutting everything on this (which would be book length) to a small thing. So bear with me.
Newspapers make their money by reporting the news. When a business does bad things that’s news, yes? So in essence in a free uncompromised press, they can make a lot of cash by telling people what some people in business are doing that isn’t honest capitalism.
Why don’t they do that then?
And there you start unraveling the threads. You can start anywhere. But you will find some odd thing that doesn’t work. a honest paper in a free capitalist system would make people happier by telling them what’s going on, so why don’t they do that, and why are they willing to go out of business refusing to?
Are they complicit with the business guys? Is it another case of Abilene’s paradox? Are they actually a fulcrum point whose choice of behavior either filters the economic waters or poisons them changing behavior?
This is a print of an article in forbes magazine. (I don’t know the site that is storing and displaying it, I only know the article which I read in forbes, and now can use this online version to discuss things).
Man in the shadows. (USSR Politburo member Oleg Shenin)
(Hidden assets of the Soviet Communist Party)
By Vladimir Kvint and Natalia Darialova
28 October 1991
Forbes Magazine
www.vkvint.com/documents/man_in_shadows.pdf
our illustrious host wanted to know how there is enough money to do things, this article explains a lot. Though you still have to put together other pieces. Like reading george kennans long telegram and noticing what he said about groups like Africans, women, etc.
you just might get to the commiterm orders in which the idea was to get into businesses, and help others into them, and then use capitalist companies to act, support, and fund things.
in addition to this, we don’t realize that it doesn’t take huge wealth to get in the door, and get to a place. Especially if this process has been going on for 60 years and accelerated in the past 20.
However, this article points some things that people may not have realized or thought otherwise about money.
Also for the sake of making my point about newspapers, and such, there is a paragraph at the end.
Where it has been identified, party property inside the country is being transferred to local authorities. Local governments have already taken control of more than 4,000 party publishing and printing houses, 40 of them being among the world’s biggest. Many of them will soon be used to form joint ventures with major foreign publishing conglomerates. Other foreign governments have received similar requests from the Yeltsin government.
The world now knows Communist rule in Russia was corrupt and its socialism utterly unworkable. But the world doesn’t yet know how utterly corrupt and rotten it was.
So the thing is that leftists still dream of some utopian state.. and so many of them are in publishing, and other places and they do their little bit for the cause.
When they know a business supports the left cause, they leave it alone!! Businesses quickly figure this out, and so they pay their extortion to the causes. They take profits and get into political causes as a means of not having their other things redressed.
The kicker is that this changes the very nature of the system. Also high taxes, and protectionism by the state, changes the very nature of capitalisms behavior.
Socialism, and the morally bankrupt behavior that it creates as you have to lie to sell it, creates the same expediency in the companies and the same collectivist attitude.
So you have publishers that will stay quiet because Avon gives X dollars to breast cancer, feminists, and so on and so forth… well that removes profits by force, that makes for indignance and so the attitude of those running the company changes. Then you add the state taxes, minimum wage laws, and tons of other things that are a constant drain on them, and what you get is a recipe that says that you have to cheat to survive. well its not long before that small company that learns that lesson, grows, and that is part of its corporate culture.
It could all clean up fast. If all actually were greedy enough to do their part!!!!
You see, the newspapers owners if greedy not ideologic, wouldn’t restrict reporting, and so they would clean up. Notice how the bloggers are hated, and there is a lot of effort to shut them down. Why?
Because all the newspapers have been playing the same restriction game, and so have been competing in other areas. Like kissing women and having a hersday version, and so on. Fluff, and other things.
Now here come the bloggers. The bloggers are doing the job of old newspapers before the key ones were bought by Carnegie and a few others to give them control. well they are dead, and the agglomerations are still together, and so each way the termites can they feed this negativity into the system that changes its nature.
Well, the bloggers are winning the business competition. Why?
Because the bloggers are technically capitalists!!!! Remember capitalism is mutual exchange for mutual benefit. It says NOTHING as to whats being exchanged!!!!!!
The bloggers are trading their value and feelings that come back and their service to an audience that makes them happy!!! The audience is trading their time, and often money, to support the ones that are discussing the things that make them happy and expose things going on!!!!
You see. They are the ANTITHESIS to collective news, and the newspapers were holding back and still are because they became the antithesis to classical news.
Like Machiavelli said, you don’t start new organizations you enter inside and change them from within so as not to disturb the support that they have. Well, these old businesses were supported and grew to a size that could only exist by state intervention and barriers to entry (the same ones that force honest to be a little dishonest to get over the hump).
As they were collected into one message, they also were not beholden to their customers as much as to the ones that protected them and gave them extra to stay alive. otherwise they wouldn’t be nimble to keep up.
So the old system had a lock on the flow of information in a bottle neck. That then was targeted and taken. The internet came a long, and since there is free market competition again, the people have choices as to who to listen to. The bottle neck is broken.
This is why the founders made freedom of speech so important. Because these things that they set forth aren’t moral abstractions, they are the qualities that when preserved create the fertile ground for true capitalism.
If you look at the things that are the core of the constitution you will see that they are all bent on preserving the condition in which real capitalism flourishes. Free speech creates news that reports bad that keeps companies in line. State is minimal, but weapons are allowed to prevent the worst of statism. Ownership of property is important because one cant help or make happy another person if one has nothing.
Many of the things done today are forms of extortion, not capitalism, but since we have a left view, we think that such extortion, force, manipulation and such, is Marx’s capitalism with the mask off.
A con is not capitalism…
So yes. Capitalism always brings freedom, or rather comes riding in on its coat tails granting prosperity, but not all transactions are capitalism!!! Only a free man with ownership of their own property can have a mutual beneficial exchange.
Remember a socialist sees a person doing well, and says “no one should live like that”
A capitalist sees the same person doing well, and says, “everyone should live like that”
thank you, Ethelred.
My sentiments exactly.
If you haven't visited this place, I think you'd like it:
The Acton Institute
See esp. F. Bastiat's ideas on freedom -- sorry, I meant liberty...
__________
Yes, y'all, I'm still in hospital. The outside world seems far away. Fjordman has a way of bringing it back, though.
I'll be home in the next few days and we will discover if the part of my brain that writes posts has rusted out...
Oops, lights out. Here, the nurses have final say. The ones on duty tonight are wonderful...and my doctor claims a wise physician always makes friends with the charge nurse...so I have a wise doctor, hmm?
Talk to you soon. Take good care of the Baron.
@ethelred:
'No one is forcing anyone to be a mindless consumer - get off it.'
Perhaps not forcing, but if you are brought up to be a mindless consumer, if prestige is linked to how much money you make, if the media and popular culture lionizes money-making, if 'progress' is defined solely as raising your GDP, if all political issues consult only the 'bottom line' and never morality, then you will have CONVINCED them to be mindless consumers. Most people, everywhere, believe what their parents and television tells them. This is why religion is passed down mostly from parent to child, and India has remained Hindu while the rest of the world hasn't converted to Hinduism. The idea that everyone has freely, rationally, and from a completely informed position, chosen to become mindless consumers flies in the face of reality. People don't know what's best for them. The fact that there are 1.5 billion muslims a priori proves this. They just know what their 'minders' tell them. Right now our 'minders' are nihilists attempting to destroy themselves and bring us all down with them. Switch the minders, and the people's views would also change. Then they would be just as appalled at mindless consumption as they now joyously embrace it.
Capitalism is unrestricted greed, it means that the government has no right to impede anyone's desire to make money no matter what effect it has on others. This absolutist view is fine with watching immigration and outsourcing steal our jobs, it's fine with exploiting the young and the stupid into buying stuff they don't need and shouldn't want, it's fine with trapping people into debt slavery, it's fine with polluting the environment, it's fine with tearing apart families, it's fine with reducing the birth rate below replacement levels, it's fine with everything.
Western Survivalist must stand for something. If we wish to survive, our birth rate cannot remain at below replacement, immigration must stop, the environment must be protected, children must be protected from noxious and debilitating ideologies/media/ 'pop' culture as well as self-destructive substances, crime must stop, our military must be strong and WILLING to kill to ACTUALLY deter aggressors, and the economy must be self-reliant/linked only with allies we can count on. Capitalism has not produced any of this. It is time to move on.
Diamed, I disagree quite strongly with your comments. First off, I don't understand your point in the second paragraph. How would such a scenario come about, and why? In your third paragraph, why would you ever want to return to such a primitive way of living? Humans have advanced so much and in many countries we have wonderful luxuries. I'm sorry, but I honestly doubt you'd really be satisfied with "death by age 30".
Capitalism has proven to be the best way to make money. And money can buy anything, even happiness, in my opinion.
Yes Capitalism is about making people happier. And that's why people in Starbucks are happier than in small cafés. Or are they? Does more happiness reign in all the 1000000000 McDonalds (which feels the need to remind its clients "I'm lovin' it") than in the old diners? Is happiness ordering, paying, gobbling and giving out a burp of relief in under five minutes. It would seem so, wouldn't it? Is happiness working years and years in the "food" business and not learning a damned thing about food?
Capitalism is about making money. If killing mothers-in-law were made legal, there would be Capitalists investing in it, just as they have invested in killing the pre-born. Yes, they would make those who'd like to kill their mothers-in-law "happy"... They would satisfy that need, but don't tell me they work for "Happiness" in the broader sense of the word. Think of something nefarious, but legal, like pornography or twinkies and there you will find Capitalism making people happy. Now get rid of the pesky government and you'd have a rush of big multinational firms vying to sell nuclear bomb components to Iran (some do even despite the restrictions). Where there's money to be made, a profit to be snatched, no matter how nasty, or even suicidal, just watch the capital flow... with absolutely no allegiance to any values. Let's legalize crack! Watch Capitalism make a lot of happy crackheads! Yahoo and Google see the money in Red China, but Red China doesn't want their search engines finding talk about falun gong or animal rights or freedom of assembly? No problemo! Yahoo and Google the upholders of freedom here, will for a price become the supporters of oppression there! And the Chinese will be happy! Capitalism always delivers freedom! It's magic! It always works!
Capitalism satisfies needs and no one is forcing anyone to be a mindless consumer... so apparently we really needed twinkies and Burger King Strawberry Milkshakes (with no strawberries). And all the publicity we're bombarded with everywhere we turn doesn't create "needs." Don't tell the good folks at Madison avenue who work for our benefactors.
I'm so happy that my 14 year old daughter has the opportunity to be intrigued not only by the music but also by the suicidal lifestyle of Amy Winehouse. She's happy and no doubt will carry that happiness with her, just like half of black America is happy with the mysogenist, racist, family-destroying, drug-praising, kop-killin' hip hop.
It's amazing! The kids are antsy! Not a problem! The pharmaceutical companies are here to help? What's it called? Ritalin?
Just give us what we want and we'll be happy: atomic bomb components, drugs to settle our children, crack for our crackheads, strawberry milkshakes without strawberries, pornography, abortions, victimization songs, suicidal artists... twinkies and mother-in-law zappers and automatically, there will be happiness.
(it's magic)
@natalie: Well, if there are no laws restricting capitalism (because, as we are told, capitalism is an absolutist creed that says Nothing can impede two voluntary consensual people from entering any transaction they please), we must abolish the labor laws, because perhaps some workers want to work in hellish conditions, and we shouldn't interfere with their free choice.
We shouldn't have much taxes, and since having money is the easiest way to make money, money will continuously accumulate into the pockets of the rich higher and higher, and their descendants, ad infinitum.
We can't protect the environment, so it will obviously be ruined.
We can't stop immigration, so obviously it will happen, as employers and immigrants are both quite willing to make transactions together.
We can't stop the drug trade, as the buyer and seller are willing. The same for prostitution, alcohol, cigarettes, body parts, etc.
Advertising, even when it tricks the weak-minded into overconsumption of useless gew-gaws, is a fair tactic and after all they chose to buy it willingly.
No one could ever go bankrupt, as that would be interfering with the transaction they agreed to make, the debt must be paid forever.
The poor, having no safety net, would either starve in the streets or resort to crime, as companies conspire to keep wages low through machines, immigrants, outsourcing, etc and the supply of labor will ALWAYS outnumber the demand, as this is how corporations like it.
And taxes, not being allowed, would of course be unable to finance anything public like education or research.
In short, how would any of my predictions not come true?
I don't want to return to a primitive lifestyle. I would simply prefer it to CERTAIN EXTINCTION which adhering to capitalism is going to deliver to us. Face it, even if all marxists disappeared tomorrow, we'd still have to fight the wall street journal and the like, who would still be calling for infinite immigration. No matter how wonderful our luxuries, there's not enough money in the world to make me take that deal. And no, money can't buy you happiness, because money can't buy you love.
And actually scientific studies of happiness have shown that once you aren't starving to death poor, money no longer has any correlation to happiness. So that debate is no longer a matter of taste, but just a settled question.
Your idea that with enough money people can be fulfilled, I assure you is just as extraordinary to me, as my claim sounds crazy to you.
What we have today is not "capitalism!" It's fascism. The word fascism is used so much today that we have forgotten it's original meaning. The real meaning is simply an economic system in which corporations, labor unions and governments all cooperate to create a totalitarian state. In which case, the government gets all totalitarian so it can screw the multi-nationals' competitors and potential competitors, as well as us, "the little guy." In the 1930s, it was supposed to be the "Third Way" between liberal capitalism and Communism. No coincidence then that Tony Blair called his system of government, which combines elements of cultural Marxism with corporate fascism, the "Third Way."
I read through some of the comments and its interesting. VERY interesting how some are formed by people that know history, and others are spontaneous generations of views in which ideology is applied to the snapshot they see, and then they point blame. not knowing any history or who did what. i cant address them all of course, but maybe just to point a few.
ypp had it the most right.. when there is no interference by the state other than to insure fair contracts etc... then capitalism is what happens as a natural state of man. its how man biologically operates. (because outside of modern life, its a matter of life and death. in the artificial now it is too, but we dont understand so we dont see it).
Well, you'd have a lot of unemployed, unemployable people starving in the streets. Your jails would be chock full of 'rejects.' The environment would be a total mess. Drugs, alcohol, sex and ciggarrettes would be gigantic markets sold to children and adults indiscriminately. There would be no labor laws and no public education or health care. There would be no infrastructure or scientific research going on open to the public good.
wow... sounds like an ancient relic of the past!!!
someone TOTALLY ignorant of history... like who sold and donated who food? who caused starvations? who actually kept the lowest levels of unemployment for more than 100 years? who had the highest?
that list is all the scary prognostications from the late 1800s on the industrial revolution!!! thats how recycled it is..
how is the employment in venezuela, north korea, russia, cuba, etc?
i hear the starving people of the united states who have no work are about to get slammed for 840 billion to help the know it all better economic people who are fat with productive output.
i am sad to say that most who believe such things have a very simple view of the world, and not much science under their belt.
let me hit you with something actually MORE plausible.
the vastly increased wealth of the few, is leading them to waste it on things like, 10 hour space rides. thats funding a huge amount of science to offer this for less and expand the market.
the west is MUCH less poluting than the countries that you lean towards. not only that, but the lions share of technology that cleans things up is in the west.
wealth allows for people to choose to pay more for something than the lowest price if they value things like clean water and a better world. however, you have political people who have learned the art of crisis. telling us there is human induced global warming when they just announced that there is going to be a heck of a cold period coming on...
the point i am taking too long to get to is that all the things you are asying were said long ago. they were proved wrong long ago. a modern society has things like space at its disposal. new things like that change the whole dynamic.
this was the same kind of proclaiming as the men who said that everything has been invented already, and that there is nothing new to discover in physics.
so it seems to be a historical tendency in a lot of areas.
With capitalism, everything is about maximising profits.
really? one only needs to open ones eyes to see that that isnt true. open source is part of capitalism, is that all about maximizing profits? the exchange between bloggers and readers is capitalism, is that about maximizing profits? for some maybe, for others not so much.
if this were true then there wouldnt be small time businesses that are happy the way they are, they would always be trying to grow with averice. do you see that?
only places i see that is where the state and the corporation collude to push out competition, and control outcomes. and that isnt capitalism (thats fascism).
we look at the few and assume the rest are all the same, when there is this majority we are not even often aware of that are not like that setting what examples we use to judge the world are exceptional not average.
you make people happy, you will earn money. ever order take out? do you think that all places you order take out from are trying to cheat you with only profit as their motive?
would you actually choose to buy from such? if not, would you do so by going some place else?
the assertion is a perversion of waht capitalism is, not really waht it is.
profit is important, but not the only reason. there are not for profit companies that exist. they pay salaries, they do certain things, the take in money, but they arent about profits.
the huge companies that by their collusion with the state exist without competition (ever wonder why no one has used the net to make 10 dollar phones that work in wifii areas? heck it could work the same as kazaa in connecting to others. you cant do this because there are too many laws governing telecommunications, and so you cant make disruptive technology that would topple the huge firm. thats not capitalism)
Some businesses are better off that way, but would cafè life be better in Italy with Starbucks instead of the zillions of small, private and family owned bar-cafes? When I lived in the USA eons ago, I remember great hamburgers, diners that had a soul, now it's fast food nation with not only the fare, but even the attitudes decided thousands of miles away by suits.
and your point is what? that the italians valued a certain cultural atmosphere because their nation hasnt been the center of social attack for 40 years trying to remove and destroy culture so as to make a collective state?
you saw that chanage because you saw the results of the laws and the change agents, useful idiots and things redefining our lives.
in the US, the SBA has an 8a program. the 8A program provides huge pluses to small businesses, like cafe's. however, the sba will only give the big pieces of the pie to minorities or women.
so here those businesses you loved, they were put out of business by another group who got big perks from the state. and so the small businesses couldnt compete. (the way the cook the books in such places with immigrant labor is quite clever if you know how they do it).
so those businesses were pushed out by competitors that got loans, free equiment, mentorships, and more.
then you also had leftists who complained that enough poor people arent buying houses. so they pressured the lenders to lend to poor people and bad risks or risk lawsuits for racial discrimination. that upped the price of the properties artificially (bubble) and so the places with the minority and or woman businesses were pushed out in favor of high volume chains that could pay the rents.
so if you really want to study what happened, then maybe take a look at all the tweaking to create change is usually at stake.
dont you think that if little coffee shops could make it they would exist? of course.. so if your in ny city, get out of manhattan, and go to queens and you can find lots of streets that are strips of small restaurants coffee shops, and the kind of thing you are talking about. go to brighton beach if you like russian style... go to astoria if you like greek, and lots of other ethnic foods including a czech beer hall.
if it makes money, then its still around. if it doesnt, then its not. many of the chains you despise actually started like the small restaurants you would love. take stubbs barbecue... check out the history of stubbs in the south...
I remember in the old days, a man with a job could support a family. Now the wife needs to work and the kiddies (if they bother to make them) get brought up by professionals. This is progress? Well yes if all you know how to measure is money.
yeah.. i do too. but the progressives were communists.
Feminism, Socialism, and Communism are one in the same, and Socialist/Communist government is the goal of feminism." - Catharine A. MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (First Harvard University Press, 1989), p.10
"A world where men and women would be equal is easy to visualize, for that precisely is what the Soviet Revolution promised." - Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York, Random House, 1952), p.806
"The Women's Caucus [endorses] Marxist-Leninist thought." -- Robin Morgan, Sisterhood is Powerful, p. 597
wow, turns out the top feminists were communists... maybe thats why the family was being destroyed? yup... thats it... cause
"What is the present family based on? On capitalism, the acquisition of private property... The bourgeois sees in his wife nothing but production." -- Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
you see it was his idea to get women out of the home so that the state could use their labor and tax it not her family.
"[I]f even 10 percent of American women remain full-time homemakers, this will reinforce traditional views of what women ought to do and encourage other women to become full-time homemakers at least while their children are young.... This means that no matter how any individual feminist might feel about child care and housework, the movement as a whole [has] reasons to discourage full-time homemaking." -- Jane J. Mansbridge, Why We Lost the ERA, p.100
and here is one of my favorites
"No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one." -- Interview with Simone de Beauvoir, "Sex, Society, and the Female Dilemma," Saturday Review, June 14, 1975, p.18
so who caused the 'progress' that your complaining about? capitalists who gave you leave it to beaver, father knows best, norman rockwell familis of many generations near each other...
or
the communists who wanted the kind of world that we have believing that it would rot us out from inside a la gramsci? if you want to know why all the sex you can read about lukacs too...
heck.. i can show you that most of this progress has been communist progress... socialist, same thing...
but if you are brought up to be a mindless consumer, if prestige is linked to how much money you make, if the media and popular culture lionizes money-making, if 'progress' is defined solely as raising your GDP, if all political issues consult only the 'bottom line' and never morality, then you will have CONVINCED them to be mindless consumers.
read the millionair next door. you will find that your image of wealthy and status is not what most of us do, and definitely not what the wealthy do...
the few who are loud and easy to identify are not the mass who are mostly quiet, lead boring lives, and drive boring cars, have only one credit card.
one of my favorite interviews in the book was about a man who made a lot of money selling off a business and decided to give his wife a gift of 8 million. he said she said thanks and went back to clipping coupons.
the wealthy are the peopel who dont listen to others telling them how to live. like the person whose argument is like out of a book.
who is brought up to be a mindless consumer? have you ever even thought about what your saying? or did it sound good the first time you heard it and you adopted it into your persona.
you lose either way you answer. either your independent thinker (and your assertion is wrong unless your a human exception) or mindless drone (in which case your assertion is not your own). which is it?
it's fine with exploiting the young and the stupid into buying stuff they don't need and shouldn't want
if they were stupid would they have disposable income above the amount in your previous argument that states that you only need a certain amount to live and then after that its waste. why did they waste this excess on stupid people then allow the stupid people to waste it again to buy stuff THAT YOU THINK they dont need.
who are you to decide what they need or dont need stalin?
your making the case against yourself by asserting your case.
you think that totalitarianism is better than capitalism. why? because stupid people are rich enough to buy stupid things.
i think that perhaps someone is not bright enough to be as rich as the stupid.
that's why people in Starbucks are happier than in small cafés. Or are they? Does more happiness reign in all the 1000000000 McDonalds (which feels the need to remind its clients "I'm lovin' it") than in the old diners? Is happiness ordering, paying, gobbling and giving out a burp of relief in under five minutes. It would seem so, wouldn't it? Is happiness working years and years in the "food" business and not learning a damned thing about food?
your point is lost in the fact that people choose those places over the places your lamenting about.
before mcdonalds the places your lamenting about were so expensive that most couldnt go to them. i remember as my family couldnt eat in restaurants!! i remember always wanting to each chinese food, but it was WAY too expensive. i would walk past jade garden, and thats when chinese food was real fancy.
when the burger joints showed up, the restaurants had to compete against them. so the prices went down. even in these bad hard times, i can get a great thai meal for under 20 dollars... my wife an i can eat good greek in a sit down restaurant for about 25 dollars with my having some wine.
my point is that unless your stalin you dont get to tell these people that they are not happy eating mcdonalds over chez bourgeois...
you dont like that they have a choice, and that they dont choose what you want so that the world isnt full of what you love.
you want a world full of smarter people who save their money and want good movies and so forth. but alas, socialism has the state molding them to make the new socialist man... not doing what those pesky capitalist free people who started this country watned for them, but hey! socialists didnt want to move to a country that had what they were creating, so they worked hard here.
the fruit of their work is now, after 50 years effort.
we get what we want here. and if we want slavery by god we are going to get it, and people like you are greasing the slide thinking the entrances are the exits.
your argument about murder incorporated was not valid. i didnt say that capitalism existed in a atate without government or law. but that those laws were consistent with protecting LIFE liberty and the persuit of happiness.
so the argument is dumb. it not even an argument as it assumes that i will not notice that you removed the minimal state that facilitates the environment, not controls it.
I'm so happy that my 14 year old daughter has the opportunity to be intrigued not only by the music but also by the suicidal lifestyle of Amy Winehouse. She's happy and no doubt will carry that happiness with her, just like half of black America is happy with the mysogenist, racist, family-destroying, drug-praising, kop-killin' hip hop.
well i aint.. you see, the amy winehouse thing is a form of socialist realism. she is the product of adorno and the primitivization of music for the purpose of destroying capitalism.
he wrote about it. its why we went from brahms, and the tops of classical, to primitive music in wh ich the listener would no longer pay attention to the messages that they were taking in.
that art forms and such should no longer be uplifting.
they wanted a kind of nihilistic malaise to hit us, and that would allow for the destruction of the west.
so again.. your blaming the wrong ones... this is socialisms idea from the frankfurt school...
you can also read the commintern stuff on promoting amorphous art forms, discordant music, etc.
polumorphous perversion is what herbert marcuse fomented. you remember him? "if it feels good do it?".. those were his words.
[and by the way, anotehr guy named normans is who went to the black community. bet you didnt notice that the founders of rap are actually imortalizing the poetry of a man named h rap brown, who is now the islamic guy they are protesting to free. of course the shakurs were part of the founders of what social club?]
what you dont understand is that the capitalists live history, the communists create history.
in other words we try to live day to day, they try to manipulate day to day to create a utopia.
your childs love of amy winehouse is the product of their work.
your list at the end is interesting too in that you should find out where each of those things are from or about.
drugs to settle children (boys) are about who changing communist deweys school system to one disfavoring boys so that girls can get ahead?
crack... why what socialist groups army protects them? what socialist group gives advice and weapons for the heroin trade? so again, where is this rot coming from?
none of it is capitalism since illegal drugs are not sold in forms that a company with liability and such would do. again, a wilful ignorance of parts of the system for convenience.
pornography... part of marcuses stuff to help make a socialist state.. the aclu, whose founder was a communist, said that thats what they would make.
so they fought for pornography, and they faught for margret sangers negro project (you know that 70% of black children are aborted, right?)... you know hitlers people wrote to her organization to get some information?
victim feminism is socialism...
twinkies are capitalism... (and they dont have as much preservatives that legend says).
you forget there was a time here in america where the place was pretty magical. where the children had not ben sexualized, you know... before the 60s socialist revolution! marcuse was a big part of it... so were the communists...
but hey! go ahead, give them a free pass, and keep helpig them..
Your definition is wrong. It's very typical though.
At the core of Fascism is Collectivism. Because Collectivism goes against human nature, it is usually led by a dictator to implement and maintain it.
@Art: I think you are arguing by definition. Any bad or immoral practice is 'communist,' and any decent or upright behavior is 'capitalist,' and therefore of course capitalism is always good.
Everything bad in the west is due to its 'communist elements.' Everything good is due to the capitalist parts. Never mind that America is more capitalist than Europe but is dying even faster than Europe and showing no signs of resistance at all ((MCCAIN VS. OBAMA!!)), unlike Europe's Vlaams Belang, Northern League, BNP, etc. The years 0-1800, before either communism or capitalism were invented, apparently don't exist and you cannot see anything good that happened in them, since they were pre-capitalist, the fount of all things good.
In truth Communism and Capitalism are both materialism and assert that money is the highest and best end of life, there's not a dime's worth of difference between them. For people arguing that 'true capitalism' works and only 'corrupted capitalism' produces the social ills I speak of, how very much alike you sound to communists! After all, 'true communism' has never occurred either, and there's every assurance that if it were only ever adopted fully, all the problems of 'corrupted communism' would vanish.
So, if 'corrupted communism' can indict communism, 'corrupted capitalism' can indict capitalism.
Collectivism goes against human nature
The entire history of the world would suggest otherwise. People prefer to be a part of a collectivity - usually a tribe.
Homo economicus (homo americanus?) is the problem here. People are defining their politics through economics. That's very American.
artfldgr - feminism, pornography, multiculturalism and many anti-traditional ideas have had a greater impact in the more capitalist West than in the old communist Eastern Bloc countries.
The dynamism of capitalism has been successfully utilised to promote such cultural leftism. The "marketing" of leftist ideas has been so successful that unlike in the Eastern Bloc, where everyone knew they were being lied to by the state, a significant proportion of Westerners trully believe in these leftist ideas.
I dont know what definition of Collectivism you're using but it's not the standard English one.
- the political principle of centralized social and economic control, esp. of all means of production.
- The principles or system of ownership and control of the means of production and distribution by the people collectively, usually under the supervision of a government.
- a political theory that the people should own the means of production
Avery Bullard you are talking about consumerism. Consumerism posits there is no fundamental difference in choosing a political philosophy than a bar of soap, they are all the same.
Consumerism is fine if informed by careful value shopping for consumer products. One bar of soap may well substitute for another. It's deadly when applied to fundamental cultural values or political philosophies.
This is the heart of our problem.
What capitalism? We're being taxed to guarantee profits for other people, for example this huge bailout for real estate speculators. When I see some capitalism, I'll be able to compare it with other systems.
There's on old saying: "Business is business and Moses is Moses."
The influence of big business is often exaggerated especially among leftist circles. However, I find this Henrik Clausen's statement fairly accurate in describing the current situation in Europe.
"The European Union has a tight coupling between big business and the Bryssel government. That means hard times for small business, who don't benefit from the EU 'Gleichschaltung', but great profits for the big, who can adhere easier to EU standards, and even use them as a stepping stone to outsource to China."
Profit can be made in free market competition, but there is also money (perhaps more) to be made in rent-seeking i.e. manipulating the economic environment.
EU enables precisely that. The big companies can afford lobbying costs that are absolutely necessary to get favorable legislation.
And Brussels is particularly suited for that. It is easier to influence a single legislative body than 27 national governments. With the lack of openness and accountability Brussels is also more inclined to listen to lobbyists' concerns.
Wow. Long comments today. Even by GoV standards...
Diamed is wrong on one very significant point, namely the dating of Capitalism. It was not invented as a consequence of the steam engine or to compete with Communism. Capitalism is a form of organizing business and financing that is roughly 800 years old, stems from the Italian city-states, and is invented with active cooperation from the Church. Capitalism provided freedom then, it provides freedom now. Taxation levels and regulations pose problems, though.
The rise of Capitalism is joyfully documented by Rodney Stark in his little book Victory of Reason. And he does provide a definition of what the term means (rather than just a derogative in the writings of Marx), and moves on to show that the economy of the Middle Ages fits that definition.
Capitalism is amoral. Freedom comes from a moral code that respects and preserves individual liberty. To the extent that people have equality of opportunity, capitalism is very positive contributing factor to quality of life (which is something different than freedom). The 'freedom' offered by capitalism is that it presents people with a greater range of opportunities, material well being, and financial wealth. But it is not the root source or primary enabler of freedom.
Free markets and competition are far more efficient as self correcting mechanisms, For this reason believe that capitalism has less potential to oppress than socialism or communism - systems in which monopoly power and inefficiency are inherent and free market forces are distorted. Capitalism, like everything else in the world, requires a moral counterweight. Judeo-Christian values have complemented Capitalism nicely, because those values speak directly to a human nature predisposed to embrace the seven deadly sins, rather than the seven virtues. But with the seven virtues becoming so increasingly unfashionable, the prospect of capitalism feeding our vices is somewhat frightening. But government stepping in to 'play God' and 'make things right' is even more frightening.
It was Max Weber, who said,that the national bureaucracys are the counterbalance to the bureaucracies of the multinational companies. The problem is, that the EU-bureaucracy is not a counterbalance, but an instrument to the multinationals. So the EU makes Europe not strong, but weak. To Hegel, the civil service is the elite of a nation. But the bureaucrats of Brussels are, together with the politicians, mercenaries of our several ennemies.
Ciao Chalon,
You're making sense, but as far as I'm concerned, you're still not there.
"Free markets and competition are far more efficient as self correcting mechanisms"
To me this is ear candy. True enough they, the capitalists are far quicker to service the needs and desires of the market (forgetting that they also create many of those needs). But there is no self-correction in that, only greater efficiency. Efficiency unto itself, is no virtue. It depends entirely on what its object is.
You mention Judeo-Christian values at the service of Capitalism and I'm inclined to agree with you, but on closer scrutiny you will see that in the moral realm those Judeo-Christian values are mostly about restraint... a sort of "freedom from freedom itself which paradoxically renders freer (and IN THE LONG RUN) happier. Is there anything like that in the more-more-more-now-now-now of Multi-National Capitalism?
Is it wrong that something like 75% of marriages end up in divorce? Does it represent a problem? Was not a vow made, for better or for worse, in health or sickness? How does such required fidelity despite "mental cruelty" jibe with more-more-more-now-now-now?
When entire societies go astray, also thanks to the efficiency of Capitalism which will ride any trend no matter how suicidal, will the supposedly inherent self-corrective mechanisms come to the rescue? Will it swim against the stream in Judeo-Christian fashion or will it follow the flow?
One example of corporate fascism is how they've hijacked our welfare states. They use our welfare states in every Western country to subsidize their "cheap labor" needs. Middle-class Western taxpayers get screwed so many times by this 1.) we must pay for all the "free" services that the Third World "immigrants" use -- and since the number of those coming is limitless, it's a bill that can never be fully paid, even if we paid every damn dime we've got for their "free" services. 2.) Our wages and quality of life go way down. Our children suffer from lowered educational standards (which we pay for through our taxes) as the Third World immigrants' children flood in. Our women and children are often violently attacked. We must pay more money for increased police and court costs just to survive. We also must pay more for things like "diversity training" and "racism" lawsuits to keep the Third Worlders happy. 3.) The Third Worlder mass immigration pushes up the cost of housing, utitlies, water and other necessities for the natives. We get nothing from this "enrichment" nothing at all.
Diamed: I think you are arguing by definition. Any bad or immoral practice is 'communist,' and any decent or upright behavior is 'capitalist,' and therefore of course capitalism is always good.
No… not at all. I can point out bad in other things too. However, my definitions of peace, and capitalism, and so forth are not defined by Marx, who didn’t like it because he was a loser washout with nothing to contribute to society except a means that sociopaths could create a layered piss cake.
I give credit where credit is due, and you are assuming that I have done such a cursory examination of history and philosophy as you. I have read extensively (not making argument by authority), and have updated my histories with more FACTS, not revisioned new views created by selective looking at the past. this is called stalinism, because it hopes to mold the future, by pretending we come from a different past than we do. the idea being that if history brought us to the remarkable western culture that has uplifted BILLIONS from subsistence and desease, then if we change our perception of it, we can cause us to become something else. in truth you get schizo cultureless people who are demoralized they die early and don’t have kids.
Everything bad in the west is due to its 'communist elements.' Everything good is due to the capitalist parts.
Not at all. your trying to win your point by changing the magnification of our examination. We were examining specific things that were brought up and misattributed to the wrong side. I didn’t choose those things that you and others defined as sources of ill, you did. I only said that this is their historical source.
Since 1930, how many people graduated from Harvard, and Yale? Hundred, or thousands? Well Harvard puts out about 20,000 students a year of some sort. And yale is similar.
Well, russia in the soviet era and even now, has several schools like Harvard and yale, except that they teach people to be operatives. www.fas.org/irp/world/russia/kgb/su0522.htm
KGB intelligence gathering in the West increased markedly after the era of détente began in 1972. Détente permitted a vast influx of Soviet and East European diplomatic, cultural, and commercial officials into the United States and other Western countries. KGB officers and their East European counterparts operated under various guises, posing as diplomats, trade officials, journalists, scientists, and students. The proportion of Soviet citizens abroad who were engaged in intelligence gathering was estimated to range from 30 to 40 percent in the United States to over 50 percent in some Third World countries. In addition, many Soviet representatives who were not intelligence officers were nevertheless given some sort of assignment by the KGB
Hows that for numbers… if you add up that there are several colleges that produce people that are in state (like putin who went to it), AND you understand the changed nature of the organization of inner and outer areas. then you would know that 20,000 people each year since before we were born were produced. And that’s just KGB, not GRU..
In the west intillegence organizations were only in existence during war. We dissolved our intelligence after wwii, but guess who didn’t? guess who emptied the prisons and stoked their intelligence agencies since 1917 with sociopaths, and people willing to literally do anything. so when russia basically announced a permanent state of revolution till peace (as defined as no opposition to socialism) was in existence.
We in the west act as if there was nothing happening, or that it had little effect. We in the west also are leftist mostly, apologetic to the horrors of socialism, and revisionist in minimizing what occurred, and the intents.
We have hundreds of movies that make nazi’s out to be bad, but how many show the gulags? Red terror? The kulaks starvations? And on and on…. its one big empty nothing for hollyweird.
Your problem is that you never understood capitalism. Capitalism is not an ideology, communism is an ideology! You see, communists wanted to equivocate their ideology with the natural state that is capitalism.
Capitalism is basically I do you a solid, you do me a solid. I will help you if you help me. I will take what you don’t need off your hands because I need it, and you will take what I have off my hands.
There are no laws, rules, or such to understand how it works. There is no dialectical learning to become proficient. From the first whore that walked the earth exchanging a bit of fun for a haunch of meat, capitalism is in our natural behavior as a social species.
Even wolves have capitalism. The males hunt, then protect the carcass, they then eat first and the rest then eat… that’s capitalism as they exchange their ability to get food for tribal status.
You see, the very thing that communism opposes is the very engine of life. This is why it fails… among so many other reasons.
However what you fail to understand is that the communists never worked on good governance. They worked on how do deviantly manipulate to make the kind fo state in which a few sociopaths own everything including the people!
Never mind that America is more capitalist than Europe but is dying even faster than Europe and showing no signs of resistance at all
Your ability to ignore things that are in front of you could be legendary. What country has been a target since 1930? Of course the TARGET would experience more malaize than others.
Do you understand what a lynch pin is? that in a complex arangement of mechanisms, there are points of incredible sensitivity to the systems and its arrangement.
America is such a lynch pin. Americans values as to individual self determination, and their willingness to die for others that hate them. their moral conviction that slavery, no matter how sweetly sold was not a goodness.
They are the sweet wood that all termites converge on. so yes, we have a lot of ills. But your wrong as to who is faling apart faster. EU is falling apart… (speigal is blaming neocons for irish voting! So it shows how stupid lefts are, and how much germany forgot how nice it was after the war on the west side befor the east over ran it and spouted hate hate hate).
In truth Communism and Capitalism are both materialism and assert that money is the highest and best end of life, there's not a dime's worth of difference between them.
Ah… when you don’t have a factual argument, and your not going to attack the messenger, then use socialist relativism to equate things that are not equatable.
The fact that you can say that shows you are floating adrift in a sea with no mooring and absolutely not enough historical knowledge to place everything in context.
Communism has been responsible, and its ideology, for billions MURDERS by the state or its ideological outcomes in the west in some of the most horrible ways in human history.
If you took every war that the united states fought in, and you blamed her for every death, the total would be a very tiny percentage of what socialists have done to their own people!!!!!!
When America with England got France back for the French, what happened? Did France become a part of American world union? When Russia took over the Ukraine, what happened? They starved about 10 million people by confiscating all their food and selling it to the west for cash.
When america beat japan, what happened? Did america make japan a annnexed nation? Nope. But russia entered the war in the last few days and grabbed some islands because no one wanted to fight her for it… they are still arguing today… you don’t see japan arguing that we have her islands with oil and wont give them back, do you?
Take a look at a satellite picture of north Korea compared to south Korea… is south Korea owned by the US and the US takes tribute and bleeds it dry the way Russia bled its captured nations dry and murdered its people?
Right now the life expectancy in the US just went up.. its almost 80 years old.. the life expectancy in russia is 58. And yet their leaders don’t give a damn about the people and have what they call sovereign democracy. Basically an administrative feudal state in which the few siloviki in putins pocket control the vast wealth of the nation which is in excess of Americas wealth but completely mismanaged.
Lenin and Trotsky killed 4 million people - men, women and children - by mass executions, death camps, and state-caused famine. You can read of how women took their children to the railways and threw the babies onto passing trains in hopes that someone outside the area would find them and raise them! you can read the stories of mothers and fathers with children murdering the youngest and cooking them up to keep the family alive. Yeah. The same as capitalism.
Lets throw up some figures, and you tell me if communism and capitalism are the same
Lenin killed 4 million people - men, women and little children. He is the 5th greatest murderer of the 20th century (after Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Chiang Kai-shek).
As leader of the Red Army in Lenin's war on the peasants, Trotsky was a mass murderer. He was Lenin's prime henchman in the killing of 4 million innocent people - men, women and children.
Stalin killed 42 million people (including my own family) - men, women and little children. In all of history, only Mao could possibly have killed more.
As premier, Khrushchev killed around 4 million people.
Brezhnev killed around 2 million people (He was also the imperialist Butcher of Moldova 1950-52, and the Butcher of The Prague Spring 1968.)
These are the camp estimates AFTER stalin
950,000 dead 1954-5 (Khrushchev)
3.1 million dead 1956-60 (Khrushchev)
1.6 million dead 1961-70 (Khrushchev, Brezhnev)
780,000 dead 1970-82 (Brezhnev)
200,000 dead 1983-7 (Andropov, Chernenko, Gorbachev)
Putin has had more than 300 journalists murdered…
Here is a list of Russian butchers you can look up and read about:
Abakumov, Agranov, Antonov-Ovseenko, Beria, Bukharin, Bulganin, Dekanozov, Dzerzhinsky, Kaganovich, Kalinin, Kamenev, Kirov, Kosior, Krestinsky, Kruglov, Krylenko, Kuznetsov, Malenkov, Menzhinsky, Mikoyan, Molotov, Ordzhonikidze, Postyshev, Pyatakov, Radek, Rakovsky, Rudzutak, Rykov, Serov, Smirnov, Sokolnikov, Suslov, Sverdlov, Tomsky, Tukhachevsky, Ulrikh, Voroshilov, Voznesensky, Vyshinsky, Yagoda, Yezhov, Zhdanov, Zinoviev. Many of them killed each other!
So care to tell me about the similar crimes of capitalism? After all I only gave you numbers on one communist country. Care to hit the BIGGER numbers of china?
The estimate for Mao is between 35 and 65 million people. we know more about russia since the archives were opened, and since they pretended to create a fresh wash of it by letting the west know the truth (glasnost).
Here is a similar list of people you can read about and see if you can find one person in the entire history of the united states that can compare to these people
Deng Xiaoping, Deng was a mass killer of millions - by executions, gulags and state-caused famine - under Mao, He is also of course the Butcher of Tiananmen Square, Hua Guofeng, Jiang Qing (Madame Mao), leader of the Gang of Four, perhaps the most evil female human that ever lived, Lin Biao, Liu Shaoqi, Mao (also here), perhaps the most evil human being that ever lived, Wang Hongwen of the Gang of Four, Yao Wenyuan of the Gang of Four, Ye Jianying, Zhang Chunqiao of the Gang of Four, Zhou Enlai
Ah… but you see… you defend communism, so do you want to know the kinds of things that would get you in trouble?
Well, if you lived in a small village, you might have been randomly selected as a kulak. Yes there were kulaks, but not every village had them. but every village had to find at least one. so even if everyone was poor, you could be selected to be the rich person to get punished in the camp.
Then there was the sedition. What constituted sedition? Well, you may have missed reading Pravda, and so you missed the news that grains harvests were record large. Of course your hungary, there isnt any bread, but there is the news that the grains were huge. So you better not talk that your hungry! To do so is to go against party line, and you could end up some place nasty.
My favorite (sarcasm), is the one the Chinese used. You see if you wore glasses, you had to be smart, and so you got shot. That’s it. You wore glasses you were murdered. Often in front of your family and your community.
Care to understand who is backing up Mugabe? When the germans and Americans built roads in Africa, that was bad. but now that china is building roads, and equipping Mugabe with arms and material to murder his own people, you think that is great. Of course you also think the iraq war is horrible, right? Well are these two things equivalent? I mean do American troops run around the country doing gang rapes, setting people on fire alive, and generally hacking off body parts with machetes?
The Nazis are pikers and amateurs compared to the communists. In fact Hitler copied stalins camp and methodologies. Stalin used envy to redirect the hatred that would have festered towards the state, and directed it randomly, so no one knew what to do, or how to move, or how to hide from ‘problems’ as they called them. Hitler directed the hatred also towards a class enemy.
Lenin anticipated many of Stalin's innovations in murder - the systematic use of starvation, the mass deportation of racial minorities, and the practice of taking hostages to ensure good behavior. Lenin ordered hostages to be taken from the families of workers in critical industries, such as those who cleaned snow from the railroad tracks: "And if the lines aren't swept properly, the hostages are to be shot."
Care to relate to me similar from the capitalists?
How about the apartment designs? Each apartment had two entrances. One for the people to go and come, and a second hallway and entrances for the state organs to enter any house at any time and not be seen by the neighbors. You woke up and your neighbor was gone. And you were happy it wasn’t you.
Right now in an economic boom in oil, chavez polices are leading to starvation of the peasants.
Same old same old.
So you go ahead… be what Lenin called a useful idiot. There will not be a place for you after the revolution because they despise people like you. Traitors to your own country and way of life who rationalize that they are doing a greater good. You are their disposable tool that they get rid of as soon as there is no more reason to hide.
Care to find out what happened to those students in tianeman after we in the west stopped watching.
They were all mostly dead within a week. Except for the teachers and a few others who turned out to be communists acting in opposition to communism to gather up all the protestors and get their names. The protest and things were designed to allow them to make a lot of noise so as to prove they were anticommunist, and so the students would join. Once the usefulness of this move was over the plants were promoted, and all the students murdered. The Russians did similar in Afghanistan, which is how bin laden was made… you see they created freedom fighters, and let those freedom fighters attack their own troops successfully killing Russians. With those credentials, they then could gather resistance fighters under one area, then create a operation the would remove them all at once.
So ya need to update your history from left pablum… its rotted your brain.
Homo economicus (homo americanus?) is the problem here. People are defining their politics through economics. That's very American.
no, thats dialectical materialism, which is communist marxism.
it was marx that defined all these money classes and did so not lookign to the future of things, but looking at the past at the lord and ladies and such which had been slowly on the out fro before the american revolution.
and like the ludittes was not creative enough to imagine solutions the problems and crisis they were able to imagine. they painted themselves into little mental prisons in which their poor view of their fellow man could not allow them to see real progress... (which is why they are dismal economists).
could marx see nano tech? space programs? lasers? genetic engineering?
no... so he and other of this ilk are really people with a heavy lack of imaginatino who think they haev a lot, and because they cant see a solution, then there isnt any.
note that the average person cant work their way out of a simple real world problem, and its easy to understand that this political system was intended to wrest control from teh people and give it back to the elite.
Chalon... capitalism is a tool, and all tools are amoral.
they are not there for the benifit of a guiding light to make your way.
your steak knife and care are amoral too. so is a bush, the dog, and the grass on your lawn.
however, ideology is something else, and capitalism isnt an ideology. capitalism is the formalization and expansion of a basic biological ability to trade, determine value in context, and cooperate to mutual benifit over the other animals and nature herself.
so things like amish barn raisings are the more natural side of real capitalism. and since we are so programmed to see things that arent capitalism and connect them, we cant see that amish barn raisings are capitalism.
Cl;ausen has a great point and historical reference just above your post...
though he is talking as to the discovery and formalization of what was going on. but the trading and the dealing in form happens even in chimpanzee tribes where a pievce of meat can get you a better grooming. of course they will not know they are capitalists until they get smart enough to step above it and formalize what they are doing.
the kicker is that what we are seeing is teh exploitation that the benifit of intelligence always comes with a weakness.
you cant have a one sided coin.
the weakness is that we can be smare tnough to be tricked enough to overide our fundemental lives and choices if the people we trust or choose to follw are not fit leaders or are people with designs on using us.
when we reletiviate we allow our leaders to be sociopaths. sociopaths dont fee power unless they provide pain. got that?
they like pain the way you like sunsets. because only when you hurt someone and they cant retaliate do you know you have power. they are not content with the knowing, they have to feel it.
so you see that the socialists work with a complete hubris that lets them win when they are right, and get the pleasure of the pain they cause when they are wrong, and duping delight in tricking the nice person into givein them anotehr chance to hurt them.
thats the reality of socialism. since everyone is selling something that the nice people dont want, everyone who is a part of it and not a useful idiot, is making a deal with the devil against his own people for the benifit of their future children at the expense of the nations children
they are still playing the old dynasty game while convincing us to note compete, not educate, party and ignore them. etc.
time to wake up
by the way, i forgot to add, that if you read about the franfurt school and the ideology at the elite top, you will find that the promotion of the seven deadly sins over the virtues was planned.
if americas strength came from the virtues, then perverting this to the sins as virtues would do what to the strength and pillar that was america?
IoshkaFutz, I encourage you to actually do some 'closer scrutiny' of Christianity instead of just talking about it. I gave you one reference above, and would like to add a similar title, Thomas E. Woods How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization.
Our forefathers were not stupid, far from it. In many respect I see them acting much more constructively and responsibly than we do at the present time, even though their physical conditions were radically worse.
Yes, I am obsessed with history :)
Capitalism isn't an ideology.
Fortunately :)
Capitalism is a set of practical tools that permit much greater sharing of responsibility and tasks, for mutual benefit and profit, and benefit of the customer as well. It is a complex set of financial tools and includes shares in projects, double bookkeeping, bonds, loans, investments and calculated risks.
This is no mere formalization of 'Trade', it constitutes a formal framework for free enterprise and invention far beyond that scope.
This is all from the supposedly 'dark' Middle Ages - which would much more accurately be described as the 'First Renaissance'.
The later backlash (Inquisition, Galileo etc.) has led us to believe that the Middle Ages were worse. Not so.
I probabily am too late but,
Isn't it that all fault of the women!?? (I mean, femininism?)
Yes, it's all Maria's fault (what's the most Traditional english female name?)!!!
Why man persue money? Only to get laid. So, capitalism aloud man to get laid... as, I said, look at nobility!!!
We have to stop treating women (or themselves, because they are all femininists) like goods and start treating them like Princesses!
I mean, if the "nobelest" man, the man of virtue, can take the top girl instead of the man with the greater house and faster car, Capitalism will not make any sense!!!
(So femininism is related to Capitalism)
WOMEN, I DON'T BELIEVE YOU PREFER BAD BOYS, YOU MAY PREFER SOMETHING THAT AVERAGE WESTERN GUY SEEMS TO LACK, LIKE COURAGE, BRAVERY, AND TO STAND UP WHEN IT'S NEEDED BUT WHY?
WHY AND WHEN DID YOU LEFT THE CHARMING PRINCE FOR THE MISTER DOLLAR?
I would really apreciate a female's answer.
"Wrong. Zwanenberg is a perfect example of this. A pork selling company kowtowing to Muslims is the height of illogic and economic suicide. Whatever profits Zwanenberg makes in the MME (Muslim Middle East) can in no way compensate for eroding the freedoms of the Free Market they themselves operate in."
Zenster, I agree with Armance.
They follow that (il)logic because it make them profit from it. You can't say they are persuing profit, all you can say is that they are short sighted.
Spackle,
"It may not be as sexy as walking on the moon but it is not a failure."
Ok, but it ain't sexy. My point continues the same, people still demonize nazis when they say that the nazis had no technology. Or, as was said, that if the Nazis had won the war, the world would not have become so technological advanced. Please, when criticising the nazis, lets stuck to what they have really done bad, like, who knows? Try to erradicate the Jews from Earth and try to subjugate Europe to the wills of the Germans?
Read the Artfldgr comment here.
It is exactley what's wrong with capitalism. It is ruled by mediocre people.
He says something like "capitalisms value system is in making people happy" but people are happy with sex and booze so capitalism does not estimulate grandness out of the Human soul.
IT IS JUST BECAUSE OF THAT THAT MUSLIMS ARE INVITED TO OUR LANDS!!!
Let's get back to the nobility ideal, shall we?
It doesn't makes me happy to help an old lady cross the street, does it? But that's the right thing to do.
A "burguoise" and thus true capitalist, will never help a old woman to cross the street because he can not profit (become happy) with that.
So, and as Conservative Swede said, maybe illimited freedom is not good after all.
If it was, I'd be on a Anarchist forum, and you to "freedom fighters"!
AND WHEN DID YOU LEFT THE CHARMING PRINCE FOR THE MISTER DOLLAR?
I would really apreciate a female's answer.
Well, I'm a female and I've thought about this, Afonso. I'll try to answer it...
I think feminists made Prince Charmings too "sensitive" and essentially emasculated them. They continue to attempt it. Charmings end up thinking they have only two choices: to give up women or to join the money makers in order to attract women. Otherwise, what is the point, if being charming doesn't get you anywhere but bitter?
What real women look for (The Princess is rare, too) is a man who is a mensch. A mensch is both strong AND compassionate. Money is a means to him, not an end in itself. He uses it to support those he loves, or sometimes to support people that he might not love, but his wife does care for.
It is not easy being a mensch, but it is possible. Staying away from government-sponsored anything is a good beginning. Homeschool kids at least until they are old enough to be able to handle themselves in the world of bullies.
There are lots of other ways to protect and to challenge boys into becoming real men. Current societal norms is not one of those ways.
thank you Yoshka Futz. I tried to answer Artfldgr but I was starting get into a depression.
Good job!!!
Isn't it that all fault of the women!?? (I mean, femininism?)
depends on whether you want to actually lay the blame in the right place.
if you want you can blame the majority of women for beig useful idiots and relying on their inborn trust of their own sex over another sex (which left them vulnnerable to the worst of their own kind)
i would rather lay the blame on the fellow travelers, those who by design decided to target the weak points of society to create a state by their design that replaces whatever state that they targeted. americas richness is not in its money. its its capitalism and resourvfulness. which is why we may be very socailist, but we have held out against a 80 year ideological assault and done so while letting our enemies wander among us and make changes.
whethe that will end up ok remains to be seen. however the common woman was duped. she is only to blame for refusing to wake up and stop being duped. which isnt much blame becuae people would rather go forward and believe they are right, driving over a cliff, than accept that they were useful idots working for the destruction of their own families and the society around them for a presumption.
the end does not justify the means in this logical discourse. no, the game is the PRESUMPTION of an end justifies the means. at least in end justifies the means you get what you paid for, though the price is too high, the thing they are following you pay the price you never get the result.
Why man persue money? Only to get laid. So, capitalism aloud man to get laid... as, I said, look at nobility!!!
well thats a pretty low view of your fellow man. i would say that was an oversimplification that doesnt stand up to scrutiny. a whore is cheaper than a wife and family, so if getting laid was it, then the powerful would have modled a different societ way before we got to this. (probably along the lines of margret meades fantasy science).
no... the men want mates that they can trust for the long term, its just that on the short term they are more flexible. but they are not really happy jumping from bed to bed, the fantasy is much better than the reality. (which is true of most of them).
We have to stop treating women (or themselves, because they are all femininists) like goods and start treating them like Princesses!
no... no one ever did that, and that form of condescension woudl create a class of women even more demanding than the harpies we have now.
ultimately we have to start making distinctions again. thats how they made it htis way, and thats the road back. today there is no difference between all the words used to describe women, but in the past there were distnictions.
the ideological feminist communists knew that by relativism, they could break down the distinctions, the destinctions were the way that society decided who should get the benifits.
so hester prynn's situation is awful in their eyes, and they cant see past only her situation. so in defense of women and the ability to make princesses which have total control but no responsibility (till their sociopathic overlords push the weak males away, and take control), and the only way to do that is either force people to stop using the distinctions, or to make the distinctions meaningless.
in stalins world they went with the first, in ours they went with the latter.
they dumbed us down until we cant see the differences in the meanings of woman, women, ladies, girls, sluts, whores, tramps, and on and on. thanks to slut femniism, they took over that word, and now its been made equivalent to lady.
if we stopped using it so loosely it would have the power it had, and that would restrict women from open and irresponsible behavior (which would then do the same for men).
you can read here www.physorg.com/news133617019.html
Half of women have negative feelings about 1-night stands
and if you take a bit of time to pyut the anger aside, you will see that the women were sold on a lie.
to blame the victim for being conned by the con artist, serves little purpose other than to make things easier for the con artist.
(So femininism is related to Capitalism)
only in the respect that its a economic class war recasted into a gender dialectic where the only end result is men and omen living separately in barracks.
as far as bad boys, they do prefer them... for the short term. but they are also more keenly aware of status than men. because womens status is through others. when women are 'allowed' to be feminine their status symbols are all relatively the same. the adopt the fashions nad things that say "i dont work".
faulting women for being hypergamous is also faulting the things that got us to this point to be able to discuss it.
so thats not where the problem comes from. it comes from ignoring that biology is destiny and life exists in a framework.
screw with it, and the species self distructs. it doesnt know there arent other tribes out there. but in the wild such behavior would be a negative group sacrificing itself for the existence of other groups that if not doing the same thign will do better.
so we even have our own social suicide built in.
it prevents permanent despotism...
in other words despotism is so antilife that life has a biological edict behind it. which is why the more they move to a culture that ignores life, the more sick life becomes till there are no more people for them to control and to move against others.
like a sensitive wild animal in captivity we refuse to breed, and we refuse to do that fast enough so that the leaders can replace us with their progeny. so we take their chidlren down too over teh several generations it takes to accomplish this.
western society sans the socaiailsm was on a course for a long time of prosperity and sharing that with everyone...
that was derailed because that only leaves low places for everyone.
after all in a commnuist state, the party members are everything, teh alpha and omegas.
but in a free society, tehre are hundreds and thousands of alphas and omegas and no one can easily collect them under one thing.
their success or failure is left to nature, and so the species is allowed to progress and adapt. with those better able having more kids, and those less able having less.
if your careful you can see that they flipped this over with socialism, and if peopel only knew basic genetics they would understand that whats happening is that they are createing a two class society that is established in genetic terms.
the morlocks and the eloi so to speak.
rather than let capitalism build robots and let us progress naturally, they are going to create worker robots by genetically manipulating the classes.
its soft eugenics for a master race over a slave race.
while capitalists say... hmmm... let us all be free, cause i cant do business with slaves, and lets make robots for slaves that way everyone can live well.
the point is that you have to let capitlaism progress to do that.
but lots of robots and such is a leveler. just the way the gun was a leveler against the skilled fighters.
how can the state control a distributive system?
they cant... and they are not willing to accept a smaller role in history of man... so they are unwilling to be like jefferson or washington (who when offered to be king of america, went home).
tribes are not collectives... even though they are trying to sell a romantic past that never existed and so have us pine for a life that also never existed.
the female never left the charming prince. she looked to what the lead females were defining as status. and that was ho0w thy knkew were they stood in the pecking order.
so all they did was give high status to women with the libidos of gay men who loved other women.
either the women fell into line with the queen bees or they were sociailly out.
the men are different, they dont get the best mates by folding into the social system but by distinquishing themselves.
which is why marx and others states that these changes are done through the women. women are the anchor of the family.
a hunter gatherer leaves his family and belongings with his mate while he goes out. he comes back to them later. she is the hub of the family...
get her to abandone the family and you remove the intelligence stored in the culture by hot potatoe.
like childrens games never written down, the intelligence exists as long as we pass it along and we keep it, we conserve it.
once that was done, then who do we look to to know? how about dr spoke he had all the answers for a generation...
sadly his child killed themselves.. and we raised kids baserd on his teachings before we looked to the outcomes.
so no... blame the harpies that are using women... dont blame the common woman that lost her common sense and accepted a doctrine of hate to her mate, over love to her family.
she was promised a whole lot for it.
which is why, the bible warns from genisis onwards that women are vulnerable to this, and if we let it, they will drag everyone down for a short sighted gain.
but they are always women, and they are what got us here too. so its not so easy... and the hate doesnt lead to a useful end. but an end tht serves the peopel who put the spike in between the two to start with.
Alphonso, It doesn't makes me happy to help an old lady cross the street, does it? But that's the right thing to do.
A "burguoise" and thus true capitalist, will never help a old woman to cross the street because he can not profit (become happy) with that.
First of all being an ass and throwing people to a site intended to put viruses and crap on their system shows what kind of mook and sociopath you are.
You enjoy pain, you understand pain. You don’t undersand the joy and pleasure of helping others.
Your seeing a sociopathic definition of capitalism because you can only see value in power, and money is equivalent to power in your eyese, and nothing else is what the world is about.
I have met your kind even if you don’t know your that way.
Your definition of a true capitalist is not a capitalist. Being a capitalist doent mean you become a monetary sociaopath. Your still human idiot.
No one ever said that anarcho capitalism was capitalism!!!
The arguiong style is purile as it slams any reasonable person bouncing off the ropes. Its like the exchange in dummer and dumber in which the guy working for the hamburger joint starts a argument about a cripple in a wheelchair and mixes up anne frank and others in history, and is sooo stupid that he thinks he made and won his point when all he did was have mental diarreah that drwoned the other in crap.
@art: I'm not a communist. But if you'd like to hear the horrors of capitalism, how about the slave trade? So long as it was legal, capitalists applied all their power to make it as efficient and profitable as possible, like good capitalists. None of them gave a damn about the morality of it, or had any compassion for their human goods. Sort of like prostitution and the drug trade today, more bulwarks of the capitalist spirit.
Or how about mass immigration? This is done by capitalists to undercut the wages of their workers and keep more of the profit to themselves. Very efficient, only, it's genociding hundreds of millions of people and is the greatest crime in history. When Cambodia killed 1/3 of its people, the country quickly regenerated and all of cambodian stock. When we go, there will be no trace left of us, we will be wholly extinguished. Therefore I'd rather be ruled by communists (who DIDN'T allow immigration) than capitalists.
The point is capitalism is a method, it should be how we do business, but not why we do business, or what business we do. Capitalism must be forbidden from doing acts that hurt the larger community, while required to act in a humane way towards its workers and customers. The law must watch it like an eagle every day, because the natural impulse of capitalism is to screw anyone they can out of anything they can. People arguing for the limitless right to do any kind of business like libertarians or objectivists have no community sense and therefore, do not mind if they live in a 1% white country or a 99% white country, since only they the individual matter. They will continue to import immigrants if it helps them in some narrowly tailored way, all the while claiming what they are doing is moral. They will continue to assault the race, the extended family, and the family until everyone is an isolated individual like them, completely bereft of love or fellow-feeling. These self-declared rogues and traitors are not the answer to communism--only nationalism can defeat capitalist/communist/islamic/liberal universalism.
Diamed, thanks for clarifying, but I still disagree. The scenario you outlined still sounds like it would occur if we had no laws whatsoever, which is never something I'd advocate.
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Just out of curiosity, what kind of system would you advocate instead of capitalism? Even if capitalism does have its drawbacks, it's much better than communism or socialism.
Vince, i don't think corporativism is against Human Nature.
Traditional families are somehow based in corporativism, the same goes with small villages.
Weather you people like it or not it is truth. (Natural) Corporativism is a very nice thing.
When Dymphna uses this blog to help soldiers in Iraq, that is corporativism.
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Also, thank you Diamed for stating the obvious:
"In truth Communism and Capitalism are both materialism and assert that money is the highest and best end of life."
When people stop seeing money as a just a mere mean to an end but as the end through each they can achieve all means...
Diamed :I'm not a communist. But if you'd like to hear the horrors of capitalism, how about the slave trade? So long as it was legal, capitalists applied all their power to make it as efficient and profitable as possible, like good capitalists. None of them gave a damn about the morality of it, or had any compassion for their human goods. Sort of like prostitution and the drug trade today, more bulwarks of the capitalist spirit.
Maybe you are and maybe your not, more likely you’re a useful idiot who is running into a burning building.
Slavery… hmmm…. You call the era of kings and queens a capitalist time? the capitalists did not do what your saying. Some people did, but have you ever visited jeffersons home?
They recently dug there to discover the truth. the slaves owned imported china from England and the dutch. They had their own quarters, and were paid a wage.
And I am SOOOOOO glad you brought that up… because you see, the ones that stopped slavery were the right… not the left.
So it was the radical republicans fighting against states rights to determine slavery above the dicta of the constitution. They were the ones that invited black leaders intot he white house. The democrats would not have that. the democrats were the party of jim crow, the wkkk, the kkk, and Margret sangers negro project and her eugenics movement.
And its funny… that you can equate the American slave trade and not realize that working 23 million people to death as slaves in work camps in the modern era (like today), is better!
The slave trade was not a horror of capitalism. It was a horror of royalty, and it took years for the Americans to throw off the bad habits of their forefathers.
May I ask whats socialisms excuse that this same thing still goes on today in re-education camps and work camps?
I think you should read what bella dodd said. She was the leader of the communist party usa during their games in the 30s with the bankers and such.
Again… SHE WAS THE LEADER OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY USA…
I will give you some quotes, as I don’t have time for people who spout party nonsense like you, even if you don’t knw where it coems from.
Note that bella was a good communist, till she figured the game out, then like MANY famous others she then tried to warn us of whats going on. but she was preaching to the people she helped create.
So here are some quotes from her book (out of print) school of darkness.
The Communist Party operates by infiltrating and subverting social institutions like the churches, schools, mass media and government. Its aim was "to create new types of human beings who would conform to the blueprint of the world they confidently expected to control." (162)
Dodd reveals that the CPUSA had 1100 members become Catholic priests in the 1930's. It also subverted the American education system by taking over the teacher's unions and learned societies. Only people who accepted the "materialistic, collectivistic international class struggle approach" advanced. (98)
How many of these ‘priests’ were ordered to abuse their charges, and then have that reputation soil the church?
After all, if you study the tuskeegee event, and ask the question, who funded it. you will find that it was the head of sears, who was working towards a communist government, and not only that he funed the highlander school. the leaders of that group trained martin luthor kink, and rosa parks before the school was shut down for sedition. They purchased homes in white neighborhoods in the south, and then proceeded to create a more racist America by blowing the houses up and lynching the blacks when the whites didn’t act racist.
Lets see what dodd has to say about the changes SHE HELPED CREATE.
Involving women in the war effort fitted the long-range program:
"The party did all it could to induce women to go into industry. Its fashion designers created special styles for them and its songwriters wrote special songs to spur them.... War-period conditions, they planned, were to become a permanent part of the future educational program. The bourgeois family as a social unit was to be made obsolete." (153)
There was to be no family but the party and the state. Dodd helped organize the Congress of American Women, a forerunner of the feminist movement.
"Since it was supposedly a movement for peace, it attracted many women. But it was really only a renewed offensive to control American women... Like youth and minority groups, they are regarded as a reserve force of the revolution because they are more easily moved by emotional appeals." (194-195)
So still think your smart and you know whats going on when you accept the party line and spout it the way you do and don’t knw where its from?
"The Communist Party now assumed the responsibility of establishing a rigid discipline over the working class. No employer was more effective or more relentless in checking strikes among the workers, or minimizing complaints...while wages rose a little during those years, they did not compare with the rise in profits and in monopoly control of basic necessities...war production was chiefly in the hands of ten large corporations...the Communists carefully muted such information." (153)
So was it capitalists running the businesses the way your saying, or was it communists who targeted the key ones and then went into them acting out the myth to create the history? I don’t know, you tell me.
"I now saw that with the best motives and a desire to serve the working people... I and thousands like me, had been led to a betrayal of these very people.... I had been on the side of those who sought the destruction of my own country." (229)
Eventually Dodd was expelled and smeared as "anti-Negro, anti-Puerto Rican, anti-Semitic, anti-labor and a defender of the landlord." (220).
Sound familiar? After more than 20 year of tireless sacrifice, she was without family or friends. The party had been her family. Its "hates had become my hates."
"This is the key to the mental enslavement of mankind. The individual is made into nothing ... he operates as the physical part of [a] higher group intelligence... he has no awareness of the plans the higher group intelligence has for utilizing him." (158)
each of the nine floors of the party-owned headquarters at 35 E. 12th St. was devoted to CPUSA business. The Sixth Floor held "the publication offices of the Yiddish newspaper, the Freiheit, and the "Jewish Commission." (162)
Jews were prominent among Communist dupes. Just as they were used by the germans. They are smarter than the average, and so do that kind of work and find themselves often as part of some of the worst things in the world just as a good tool like the ak47 is found involved all over. but ak47s are not responsible for what they are used for.
“What now became clear to me was the collusion of these two forces: the Communists with their timetable for world control, and certain mercenary forces in the free world bent on making profits from blood." (229)
In the days that have gone since we enunciated these statements so confidently I have had many occasions to see that this cataloging of people as either “right” or “left” has led to more confusion in American life than perhaps any other false concept. It sounds so simple and so right. By using this schematic device one puts the communists on the left and then one regards them as advanced liberals -after which it is easy to regard them as the enzyme necessary for progress.
Communists usurp the position of the left, but when one examines them in the light of what they really stand for, one sees them as the rankest kind of reactionaries and communism as the most reactionary backward leap in the long history of social movements. It is one which seeks to obliterate in one revolutionary wave two thousand years of man’s progress.
During my thirteen years of teaching at Hunter I was to repeat this semantic falsehood many times. I did not see the truth that people are not born “right” or “left” nor can they become “right” or “left” unless educated on the basis of a philosophy which is as carefully organized and as all-inclusive as communism.
I was among the first of a new kind of teacher who was to come in great numbers to the city colleges. The mark of the decade was on us. We were sophisticated, intellectually snobbish, but usually fetishly “democratic” with the students. It is true that we understood them better than did many of the older teachers; our sympathy with them was a part of ourselves.
Wow… she is one of them telling you what she did. care to argue against the history?
May I ask what your going to pull out of your butt to reletivate?
You conflated the slave trade 200 years ago, with organized work camps of the modern era… work camps that are still going on. may I ask where is the American slave trade, and where are the Russians that fought to free the Russians? Want to know how nasty and uncaring they were. when Russian soldiers got to nazi camps that had Russian women in them, they gang raped them leaving many for dead.
Here is what she said about those southerners… she knew them before they had been poisoned by history that you believe, that she knew better.
Why?
Because she helped make that false history
I knew how devoted he was to the South and its people and after our marriage we went to visit his home. I had never been South before, but I now realized why so many of its children went to Northern cities for a livelihood.
John’s people were not plantation owners nor did they have share croppers. They owned a lot of land and they worked it themselves. The women worked as hard as the men. I visited some of the Dodd children at the Martha Berry Schools near John’s home and I was struck by the independence and sturdiness of these people. Never after that first visit did I read morbid literature on the South without a sense of resentment at the twisted picture it gave of a section which has great reservoirs of strength, based not on material wealth but upon the integrity of its people.
And your ideas of materialism… something that capitalism isnt until in the hands of the materialists… and they are commnuists..
Please pay attention about the people being eager to be used.
and note that that behavior is there to support a good leadership, the way a knife is there to eat with and work with. if someone decided to bury it in the chest of someone, that is a perversion of intent. Your problem is that your have been educated by dodds students and you cant tell the difference!!!
I did not become a Communist overnight. It came a little at a time. I had been conditioned by my education and association to accept this materialistic philosophy. Now came new reasons for acceptance. I was grateful for communist support in the struggles of the Instructors Association. I admired the selfless dedication of many who belonged to the Party. They took me into their fraternal circle and made me feel at home. I was not interested in any long-range Party objectives but I did welcome their assistance on immediate issues, and I admired them for their courage. Most of all I respected the way they fought for the forgotten man of the city. So I did not argue with them about the “dictatorship of the proletariat” which they talked about, or about its implications.
Of course some of my friends were unhappy about my new course. One day when Ruth Goldstein and I were walking down Sixty-eighth Street she spoke bitterly about my new affiliations.
“You are getting too involved, Bella,” she said. “You will get hurt. Wait and see!”
I laughed at her. “Oh, Ruth, you are too concerned about promotions and tenures. There are other things in life.” “What about this one-party system that they favor?” she demanded.
“Well, you know we really have only a one-party system in America right now,” I retorted. “Remember the Harvard professor who says that both political parties resemble empty bottles with different labels?”
Ruth continued arguing and I finally said: “Oh, Ruth, I am only interested in the present. What the Communist Party says about the future is not important to me. The sanity of the American people will assert itself. But these people are about the only ones who are doing anything about the rotten conditions of today. That is why I am with them, and,” I ended truculently, “I will stay with them.”
Of course I was not the only American who thought one could go along with the good things the Communists did and then reject their objectives. It was a naive idea and many of us were naive. It took a long time for me to know that once you march with them there is no easy return. I learned over the years that if you stumbled from weariness they had no time to pick up a fallen comrade. They simply marched over him.
The saddest situation I saw in the Party were the hundreds of young people eager to be used. And the Party did use this mass of anonymous people for its immediate purposes. And so young people were burned out before they could reach maturity. But I saw, too, how inexhaustible was the supply of human beings willing to be sacrificed. Much of the strength of the Party, of course, is derived from this very ruthlessness in exploiting people.
The point is that like she says… there is no way to be just a little bit pregnant. And so even if you say your not a communist. If you’re a socialist you’re a communist, since they are the same thing. and if you’re a progressive, you are a socialist, and so a communist, and so the same thing.
All empty labels, like putting the same soap in three different brand boxes and laughing athte buyers for competing over the same thing in ignorance.
Since 1932 the Communist Party had publicized itself as the leading opponent of fascism. It had used the emotional appeal of anti-fascism to bring many people to the acceptance of communism, by posing communism and fascism as alternatives. Its propaganda machine ground out an endless stream of words, pictures, and cartoons. It played on intellectual, humanitarian, racial, and religious sensibilities until it succeeded to an amazing degree in conditioning America to recoil at the word fascist even when people did not know its meaning.
Today I marvel that the world communist movement was able to beat the drums against Germany and never once betray what the inner group knew well: that some of the same forces which gave Hitler his start had also started Lenin and his staff of revolutionists from Switzerland to St. Petersburg to begin the revolution which was to result in the Soviet totalitarian state.
There was not a hint that despite the propaganda of hate unleashed against Germany and Italy, communist representatives were meeting behind the scenes to do business with Italian and German fascists to whom they sold materiel and oil. There was not a hint that Soviet brass was meeting with German brass to redraw the map of Europe. There was no betrayal of these facts until one day they met openly to sign a contract for a new map of Europe — a treaty made by Molotov and Von Ribbentrop.
Time for you to read more history and less party propaganda.
Thank you Dymphna!
And that word "mensch", I had yet to have known its existence...
I understand the concept of "strong" and "compassionate", I also went look for it in the first dictionary on the web and it was translated as "having admirable carachteristics; decency" so I have really understood the meaning of it.
But, isn't that extremely close of simply "generous"?
And for what my (not vast comparing to the "average" at Gates of Vienna) experience tells me, girls like generosity because they can also profit from it...
By the way, being mensch, was included in mine "Charming Prince" as well.
Thank you Dymhpna, really, but my little problem persists:
Why are women so more eager to consider wealth atractive in men when comparing to men thinking of wealth as atractive in women?*
I have to recognise, wealtier women are more atractive than middle class women, but that is because of "class" or "chique" or (I really don't hava a English word for it...) maybe "distintion" rather tham money, wealth or what it may buy.
We here have a say: "Who was once King, never lose his majesty".
Well, to girls it mantains, who has "class" or "distintion" always has it independent of how wealth she is. That's how men (me and many others, not all though) think.
When considering women, you seem to think that when a man loses his wealth, he's not a King no longer...
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* Except Joe Berardo types. Joe Berardo was a very poor Portuguese boy, so poor he immigrated to early nineties South Africa where he married a very very rich and old South African women. He than returned to Portugal after her death as one among the top ten wealtiest here.
Well art,
You made some good points about women though you miss half of what I meant.
Reading what I wrote, I do agree that it was probabily my fault.
Concerning Capitalism, I am with Diamed.
Yes, I am a bad person, I am a pessimisic.
But there are many people worst than me, those kind of people that are Capitalists by nature, what I've called "burguoise".
You are way too optimistic.
Capitalism is all about what Humans have worst, its all about pessimism and manipulation.
I'll say how capitalism is governed not by generosity but by greed:
Rule nº one: Make the more profit you can with the less amount of money you can use.
That means, your workers shall work by the lower salaries possible. And by the lower relation price/quality of the job they are suposed to realise.
That means, contract Mexican illegals if you have to!!!
You have to stop consider Capitalism a synonym of "good".
afonso, all i can say is that you dont realize your a capitalist. have you ever traded for a back rub? thats capitalism. its not monetary, which is what you refuse to grasp. barter is capitalism. doing a favor for a freind is capitalism. donating some money you have is capitalism.
capitalism is not a synonym for good... its a definition of mutually benificial transaction.
which most people thing is really good.
did you make the computer you are working on? did you go out and dig up silica, then go dig up some phosphorous. get metal, and then go and make a computer that you can sit and type your hate tripe on?
no. beacuse your a capitalist, without realizing it beacuse your definition of it (which is not the definition of it), says its somethjing else, so all these things that you do that are capitalism, you think is something else. heck you miught ont have a name for it at all, or you might call it "generous".
but even there you cant be generous with what you down own, and in capitalism you have to earn what you own so you can choose to be generous.
i am looking at your logic and it doesnt add up. i see your a product of our broken school system.
first. what is the definition of greed?
An excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth
first you have to make the distinction of the negative that makes greed different. and excessive is usually indicative that the acts are harmful to the person doing them, not that you have an opinion that its too much.
what is excessive sex? when having sex so much interferes with normal life.
the small number of politicians that will get and own everything once idiots like you give everything to them like love struck moonies, are the GREEDIEST.
but lets look at your logic..
first of all capitalism has to do with who owns the means of production.
what you dont get fella is that the means of production is not the factory, the office, the computer. the means of production is YOU, or rather your labor.
so the question between these systems is whether what you do belongs to you to do with as you please, or does it belong to the few at the stop of the state to do with since they own it. (this is why stalin could work people to death. you see they owned the people, the means of production, and if you want to run your car till an engine blows, or you break it, you can do whatever you like to what you own).
so your first rule has nothing to do with capitalism.
both capitalism and communism seeks to do your first rule. do you think putin is giving machine guns to african despots keeping raw materials off the market are not a way to maximize raw materials profits for his fellow owners?
since the country has no economy, which is capitalism, they really only have raw materials to trade. and how do you accomplish getting the most exchangeable value out of that? you destabilize competing sources, you remove it from the earth in the most damaging manner, you collude with others to fix prices.
now on the other side of the world, we have the capitalist system that you hate.
they do not make their most money from raw materials, they make their most money from taking those materials and turning them into other things which have much more value than a lump of plastic, glass, metal, and silicon that makes your computer. your only about 200 dollars in chemicals, but worth much more as a functioning means of production.
so under capitalism you buy ther raw materials on the socialist manipulated market at huge prices, and you take that and presto, you make cars, and computers, and ipods, and all manner of things that people like and makes them happy. (its not for you to say what should make them happy. which is a big problem of yours. you dont see that your a mini totalarian, and yet you dont get in this authoritarian state you like your not going to be a lord, but a work unit)
so lets move to number two.
what do you do when your boss wont pay you more? what are your options in both systems. have you actually examined it?
ok. lets do so.
That means, your workers shall work by the lower salaries possible.
true of both systems. in the communist system they dont pay you. you get a ration. and everyone is paid the same ration except the military and the party.
so you get x grams of bread a day. x amount of toilet paper. etc. the bare minimum. according to their needs.(not wants my friend). to each acording to their ability. the military has more ability, they get more, the party has the most ability they get the most.
thats the system they are making. (remember i have family that lived a few types of it, its not a article clipping).
in the west, the outcome depends on the person working. which is why so many illegals come here. in the authoritarian system the illegals are shot, and the peopel that hire them are shot, and their familes are sent to the camps or re-education.
here though, they work hard, they save their money they give the boss the finger. they leave, they start their own business, and they get free education from the SBA, and bankers and assistance. they dont have to worry about medical during this low period, they go to the emergency room and give a false name. when they start their business, say a deli, they pretent to give their family members jobs. then they hire other illegals and they pay them out of the absentee salaries of the other family members. (the immigrants prey on their own most!!! useless ids, illegal jobs, live in maids, etc)
in general after a while they become citizens for being here so long and paying taxes and so forth.
since my family is immigrants, and my wife is, and i know this commujnity well, your not going to be able to claim that htis isnt so. ask them.
if you notice they are not complaining about workers. they are complaining about people doing crap and not being good citizens.
kfyi.com/cc-common/mainheadlines3.html?feed=118695&article=3875223
go ahead, read that. a few mexican soldiers in military garb and weapons hired by those on the other side of the border, to do push in robberies and assasinations. they also mentioned that they were ready to fight the police.
care to comment on the illegals now?
no one really cares about burger flippers. do you think its really hard to find these people? they all live in the same place!! so no one really gives a crap about good people!!!
we complain about the illegals because the minimum wage laws creates a situation where the africans in this country are stuck. hows that for anotehr reason|?
you see, the africans are citizens, and the welfare and other things have decimated their communities, and more for a long time. so what you have is that these businessmen who are forced to cheat by high taxes (or sle what would they do to live?) and competition and so hire illegals under minimum wage. the illegals for the most part dont pay taxes (many do!), and so they make more from that less amount thatn the african who would be paid legal as he has a ss # and so forth.
so now the two are killing each other over this.
witout these manipualtions there would be more than enough work. we wouldnt ship to china (who pays even less! and you cant switch jobs so thats how they can do that), we would have paid those coming in to do the work.
in this country, people move up the ladder if they work hard.
you see, your descriptions only work if the person is an idiot. or they expect to do only one task allt heir lives, or their not willing to use their leisure time to learn something else quite and move to a new job.
you have the attitude of those who sit around and gripe that the world isnt giving them everything.
like marx did.
but the truth is that you dont understand the system because you have all these lies about it...
and your not even willing to look at whats in front of you and what you do and how you make choices and think these things mean nothing.
did you choose from several computers? did you use one in a cafe because you cant aford to own one?
do you realize that all this neat stuff that you think is great, and all the junk you think is awful, are inseprable?
that you cant have one witout the other. you cant just sit and design the best something and only make that. thats why russia failed, and why china is succeeding.
howcver, a lot of that labor is near slave labor. you didnt notice that nike scandal, the women were living in barracks, they had no lives, but everyone was too distracted by the other point.
now remember, these people had even less before nike. and these businesses are raising their standard of living wherever they go EXCEPT in commnist countries.
and now we are so freindly with them, the perverted large fascist types can work with them.
you see. if we hated communism, then these large corporations couldnt exploit slave labor. but since they helped make us like it, they get to do that.
but the fun really starts when you get your wish.
you have not looked at it. you have not imagined that you only get 1800 calories a day and thats it. you havent imagined that you might only be allowed 1 hour of electricity in your neighborhood a night. or that you only get so many gallons of gas. even if you could get things together, it would be taken since you are to be what they tell you to be.
oh... but dont worry, the really pretty women will do well. since your allowed to get gifts, guess how they get by? (guess how some men get by with such women for wives?)
you dont get to save anything for a rainy day, since your not allowed to own property. if they tell you to move to the other side of the country, you go. you dont get a choice.
your thinking its not that way... but choice of jobs is a free market mechanism of capitlism, and we are discussing the full implications of socialism.
dont worry though... you will be lonely... drink alot... not have many friends.
friends are a danger. speaking your mind is a danger. all thats safe is work, drink alone, and sleep.
thats why the life expectancy is now 58 in russia. even thought hey are more free than before, they cant do anything as they are locked down tight by things.
by the way... you better hope that this would not be a feminist authoritarian state... cause the leaders ahve all thought that reducing the male population to 10% of its current level would be pragmatic. (i can give you quotes)
you better study history and see what it really is... not what they are pretending to sell you liek a capitalist!!
they are not capitalists, so they are not selling you something real.
you havent realized that the fact that people come back for more business makes it not in the interest of a business to screw their customers. so your list is silly. its completly ignorant, and whats worse is that you dont know it.
so go study... read about people who lived it the way it is and were not the rulers, or the favors. odds are that you would not be favored, so read how they fared.
then realize that you are a means of production, and since you own yourself in a free capitalist country, you are the one that decides where the fruit of your labors go. or even where you choose to labor. you exchange your labor for what you want. if you cant get it, you can learn more, earn more, or find out that some things you cant have and if you cant live with that, then you dont realize that your goodness and superiority complex is coming from ENVY. you spoke of greed. a deadly sin... well, ENVY is its brother.
you envy so much that your willing to destroy it all rather than let someone else have more. if you cant have it no one can.
i would study what really happens, not what the con men are saying and lying to get you to give them the gun for just a minute.
In truth Communism and Capitalism are both materialism and assert that money is the highest and best end of life.
Not all that obvious to me.
In (well functioning) Capitalism, people become rich because they've done a lot of things that people value enough to have parted with their money voluntarily. That fosters responsible behaviour (OK, there are issues, like pollution, to deal with).
In Communism, OTOH, money and ownership is coerced from the productive people, and the link between doing something of value to others and an economical return is eliminated. That fosters irresponsible behaviour.
What we have in the European Union is neither well-functioning government nor well-functioning Capitalism. Perhaps 'Syndicalism' is the closest term to describe this fusion of business and government?
Why are women so more eager to consider wealth atractive in men?
My personal notion is that this is a Good Thing not really in need of being questioned :)
Now, if only that State would tax me less...
Artfldgr: capitalism is in our natural behavior as a social species.
I would go so far as to say that humans are hardwired to be capitalistic. Our brain structure epitomizes capitalism. Nuerons that provide a useful service receive extra nutrients and electrical stimulation which enables them to grow more dendrites. In turn, the adjacent neurons related to this function gain more synaptic traffic and, by association, thrive more because of their conjunction with a more successful nueron.
This nuerophysical schemata is mirrored in honest commerce where the ability to provide useful goods or services attracts more profitable interaction with others. This comparison extends perfectly well into socialist hatred of capitalism. Notice how so many socialists cannot create wealth? They can redistribute it like world class champions but can’t make it appear for the life of them. Notice how so many liberals and socialists are almost terminally afflicted with cognitive dissonance or outright psychotic breaks? This is because their own brains are not permitted to function rationally and therefore cannot establish the correct neural patterns or thought processes required for productive existence.
In light of how many Christians there are here at GoV, I wonder if they would agree with me that capitalism best reflects The Golden Rule. All legitimate players in the capitalistic system desire that there be an equal application of the rules (i.e., law). As Ethelred pointed out:
Almost every example of "capitalism gone awry" given above is caused by government interference in economics. Because the government gets involved in the control of business, business turns around and lobbies for the best it can get under the system.
Artfldgr noted this as well in stating:
Good morals is a pre-requisite for capitalism’s healthy function.
It is only when unfair preference is shown or unequal application of the law happens that things go astray.
I will also congratulate Artfldgr for demonstrating such adamant persistence in debunking all of the communist overlays that have been put in place to smear capitalism. It is almost astonishing to see otherwise intelligent people here at GoV fall hook, line and sinker for the extensive misinformation about capitalism that revisionist communism has artificially injected into the modern record. It’s like watching those kids with implanted memories of sexual abuse that never even happened.
Afonso Henriques: I agree with Armance.
They follow that (il)logic because it make them profit from it. You can't say they are persuing profit, all you can say is that they are short sighted.
If you call slitting your own throat “profit” then I suppose it is profit. You are wrong, of course, but that hasn’t stopped you before so why should it now. You really need to pay closer attentio Artfldgr’s diligent comments. They are truly lucid and cogent disproofs of all the taurine fecal matter that’s being slung about in this thread.
Artfldgr: A whore is cheaper than a wife and family, so if getting laid was it, then the powerful would have modeled a different society way before we got to this.
A most excellent disproof of all this rubbish being strewn about these parts regarding how gold was refined strictly so that women could be lured into marriage and what such nonsense.
In other words despotism is so antilife that life has a biological edict behind it. which is why the more they move to a culture that ignores life, the more sick life becomes till there are no more people for them to control and to move against others.
Like a sensitive wild animal in captivity we refuse to breed, and we refuse to do that fast enough so that the leaders can replace us with their progeny. So we take their chidlren down too over the several generations it takes to accomplish this.
[emphasis added]
Outstanding, simply outstanding. One of the finest explanations for Europe’s low birth rate that I’ve ever seen in print.
Artfldgr: how about dr spoke [sic] [Spock?] he had all the answers for a generation...
sadly his child killed themselves.. and we raised kids based on his teachings before we looked to the outcomes.
Naughty, naughty, Benjamin Spock’s children are alive and well, unlike the son of John B. Watson. Please do what you do best and stick to the facts. It was Spock’s grandson that jumped from a museum roof on Christmas Day.
Natalie: Just out of curiosity, what kind of system would you advocate instead of capitalism? Even if capitalism does have its drawbacks, it's much better than communism or socialism.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for an answer. I doubt he has one.
Afonso: Yes, I am a bad person, I am a pessimisic.
Then how is it that your perpetual ramblings should be granted any credibility if you admittedly view things in the very worst light? You discredit yourself by your own admission, as if Artfldgr wasn’t doing an already devastating job of it.
It is almost astonishing to see otherwise intelligent people here at GoV fall hook, line and sinker for the extensive misinformation about capitalism that revisionist communism has artificially injected into the modern record.
Personally, I'm judging capitalism by its results, not commie propaganda.
Why has cultural Marxism been more successful in the more capitalist West than in the Eastern bloc countries that lived under communism for decades?
Natalie: Just out of curiosity, what kind of system would you advocate instead of capitalism? Even if capitalism does have its drawbacks, it's much better than communism or socialism.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for an answer. I doubt he has one.
Capitalism within a state would be fine by me. It is international capitalism unrestrained by national loyalty that is problematic. Globalisation means deracinated post-national elites. The social democrats and right wing capitalist firsters both seem quite happy with that. The latter get their global market and the former get to do some social engineering on a global scale. Both have an interest in cultural homogenisation, breaking the nation-state, and centralising political power at the supra-national level. George Soros, Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, and all the others are corporate capitalists, right?
We don't have a choice between capitalism and communism. It is not 1952. The Marxist left and the corporate capitalists are "tranzis". They are both enemies of those of us who believe in devolved political power through local democracy and national sovereignty.
@Natalie: Well here would be a sensible three step plan to replace capitalism.
1. Decide, as a united people, what we value, what are our goals, what we want out of life. Divide society up into units that are actually in agreement with each other, and give each of them sovereignty and a homeland to pursue those goals as they see fit. The current mishmash of people can't possibly form a stable state and must be reorganized.
2. Implement laws that would secure our highest priority first, and our second highest priority second, and so on down to the last. Making money would be lower down on the priority list than many things (in my dream community at least) and therefore would not be allowed to trump or interfere with anything above it.
3. Wherever capitalism doesn't interfere with our higher priorities, allow the private sphere to do its magic.
I'll give a list of priorities I would put over the economy: the sanctity of marriage (straight, monogamous, faithful, for life), the raising of kids (both the number necessary to sustain our survival, and the quality upraising we desire for them), the teaching and promotion of virtue, and the simultaneous merciless squelching of vice and crime, long-term sustainability resource/environment wise, self-reliance (no more trading with our enemies), a strong military, the preservation of our unique identity (genetic and cultural), and community connectedness, love, solidarity, and support. (think church groups and how they all look after each other, see each other frequently, care about each other's lives, are there for each other, but many such groupings and making sure everyone is caught up in this anti-loneliness) I'm sure there are more, and that others could think of more and add on to the list. But none of these should be sacrificed to making money, no matter how much money is to be made by sacrificing them.
anti-loneliness?
Diamed, I don't think your draft makes one ounce of sense. Totalitarian regimes are constructed on basis of plans like that.
Honestly, Art, I can not continue argueing with you when you say something like "capitalism is not a synonym for good... its a definition of mutually benificial transaction".
We have both made our minds ant it seems that when one talks, the other answers in "Marcian language", you can't understand what I say and I - at least - think that you are speaking of an unreal world (if you want, too theorethical).
Not obstanding it would (have) be(een) needed a face to face talk, a confrontation, a "mano a mano" for one of us to change his mind for the better or for we at least, to understand each other.
Internet has not replaced a real conversation yet, and I feel it never will.
"i see your a product of our broken school system."
I may be. I don't know who that "us" is but in case you have not noticed I am not American (neither a Mexican for that matter) and I've never put a foot in that side of the Atlantic.
"politicians that will get and own everything once idiots like you give everything to them like love struck moonies"
????????????
"so your first rule has nothing to do with capitalism."
"both capitalism and communism seek to do your first rule."
You see! We don't speak the same language! Despite the fact that I somehow manago to understand English good eneough to have a conversation... or so I thought...
" we have the capitalist system that you hate."
I do not hate Capitalism. But I definetly do not worship it as you do. That's the utter sense of Capitalism, money replaces God, and the divine. But maybe that's too deep for you, right?
"its not for you to say what should make them happy. which is a big problem of yours. you dont see that your a mini totalarian"
Yeah, f*ck the old folks! We're hipies! Also, be aware! We are not aloud to prevent third world rapes on our women because that prevent third worlders for being happy.
"That's a great problem of ours!!!"
Yes I am totalitarian, and the world would be a better place under my totalitarianism or if our society were to be as totalitarian as I am (or maybe a little less. It would do as well)...
"and yet you dont get in this authoritarian state you like your not going to be a lord, but a work unit"
Yes, because it all goes around money and blindly make people "happy" don't matter what.
Sorry for the Anti-Semitism, but here it goes:
We here have a say: If you see a Jew throw himslef into the abyss, go with him. Because the money there will soften your fall.
You are so materialistic that makes that stereotype of a Jew not all that bad.
"what are your options in both systems."
Which systems fellow? Man, I am not a communist! I hate Communism with all my strenghts (except when aplied to Bolivians and other Native Americans :) )!
Now seriously, of course Capitalism is better than Communism. That doesn't make Capitalism stop being "a lesser evil" with great potential, whem "domesticated".
Also, according to your logic immigration is always good! Even if it is illegal immigration of Third Worlders. Potentially agressive third worlders... they're competitive, right? Yes, I am pitty for you. Your world turns around materialism, that's what I "hate" in wild Capitalism:
It sucks the soul out of people!!!
"since my family is immigrants, and my wife is, and i know this commujnity well, your not going to be able to claim that htis isnt so."
Now of a sudde, I realise that in three generations of my family, I can assure you that I have more "experience" on immigration (though not me, personally) than you. Every different type of immigration. You know what? They all suck!!!
Now ask why your beloved "immigrants" have migrated. You will be surprised.
"care to comment on the illegals now?"
When (if) you are to gain another perspective of things but the purely materialistic one, I'll comment it.
Reading that, I'll only state one thing, you may understand it, you may not.
I saw a "program" on the TV recently in which an American-Cuban (white and legal) went to live with an illegal Mexican family to see if he was to change his opinion abou illegals. Of course he did!!!
He opposed the Mexican invasion mainly (some 85% of it) because it was, that, illegal.
"we complain about the illegals because the minimum wage laws creates a situation where the africans in this country are stuck"
Yeah, poor Africans...
"so now the two are killing each other over this."
Yes they are. But also because both want to be the one who killed America, alone that is. Those who are killing each other are only the ones who belong to gangs and the like. You do not see "respectable" blacks and mestizos killing each other, do you? It's not civil war yet. Go to yugoslavia where respectable family fathers picked guns to protect their families and Nations. That is "killing each other".
"did you choose from several computers? did you use one in a cafe because you cant aford to own one?"
Men, what a boring question to be asked. No, I didn't use a PC on the cafe. Yes, I can not afford to buy a P.C.. Meanwhile, I have three PCs at home and two portitiles. Also, I was the one who choosed some of the computers from several others, though I had not paciance enough to compare them; I do not understand a thing about computers and am not very interesting. Not obstanting I chosed between one or another and required people to buy them according to what I "desired".
How does this fit in your "Capitalism". Now I'm really curious...
Sorry for the oh-so-long comment.
Hi Henrik!
""In truth Communism and Capitalism are both materialism and assert that money is the highest and best end of life.
Not all that obvious to me."
Well. In Capitalism the ones who rule, the most powerfull ones, are the ones who have made more money, don't matter what.
In Communism, the more powerfull ones... well, here I think you agree. Whoever wages a war class directed against those who have more because they have more, don't matter how miserable they are, are undoubtedly materialists.
So, in Capitalism, money opens you the door to power. So, in the end, money is what really matter; society will look to you according to how much money you make. Money rulles. It pretty much follows this line...
"My personal notion is that this is a Good Thing not really in need of being questioned :)"
Well, when Croatia starts to seem pretty atractive because of that... you will start questioning... :) :) :)
Talking of Croatia, I just had an invitation...
Anyway, in a Capitalist society you can have some degree of separation between money and political power, which is useful. That separation is failing in the European Union.
Zenster,
"Yes, I am a bad person, I am a pessimisic.
Then how is it that your perpetual ramblings should be granted any credibility if you admittedly view things in the very worst light? You discredit yourself by your own admission, as if Artfldgr wasn’t doing an already devastating job of it."
Besides the fact that I don't see how Art is so right, I think it is not all that bad to be a pessimistic. Maybe in English the word has a different conotation - I doubt it - but I usually use the word "péssimista" to describe, not a lunatic as you seem to believe, but someone who, have been given something to think about (ex. immigration), after thinking about it for a while, is able to see the situation under a widespread variation of angles (you can study a problem and get vatious solutions can't you? various results) and, among all those angles, the pessimist tends to think that the worst outcome will materialise (like, in case of immigration, the destruction of Europe , that is the worst outcome of many others outcomes possible).
Just two questions Zenster.
First, what is wrong with the West? The muslims only?
Second, if you answer is the socialists/communists also, why do Capitalism as an idea, under Capitalism, an idea that is "the best", is "of quality" is not supported by a ever growing quantity of iluminati? Why are still so many communists/socialists/people who do not believe in Capitalism?
A third question, if Capitalism is so great, why does it need to be cosntantly expanding like the only professor of Economy - an assumed Communist - I had (for three years) said to the whole class not so long ago?
"We don't have a choice between capitalism and communism. It is not 1952. The Marxist left and the corporate capitalists are "tranzis". They are both enemies of those of us who believe in devolved political power through local democracy and national sovereignty."
Yes, right on! If the loving-capitalism-don't matter what were to realise that the Cold War is over... if they were to realise what a "tranzi" is. A Tranzi is always a capitalist. People are too materialistic even here at Gates of Vienna (Americans, what was to expect of a country that claims to be a Nation due to wealth, materialism, and shared common idea(l)s), some as Henrik, can see the right-left divide as purely Economic.
Others, like Art have aquicsented that Capitalism is a synonym of good, as he himself mentioned "capitalism is not a synonym for good... its a definition of mutually benificial transaction".
It's a pitty the West, and its greater countrym the U.S. are so dead inside. As Ioshka Futz said, we are under the Union of the European Socialist Sovietic Republics (and Monarchies) but we have Lega Nord, Vlaams Belang, BNP, we have the Serbs, we have Russia near by. But you? If you want to change, what will you do, elect Obama?
Latin America is even worst. Maybe in a handfull of years Argentina can become a baluart of European Civilisation but it is curently going the leftist path, as well as importing every kind of immigrants but Europeans (who, by the way, are 8% of the new arrivals in America [excluding those of non-European Nations]), Ausralia and New Zeland are to weak to give a fight. There are 250 millions Indonesians near by and China up North. As those racist extremists have been said for a while, or we abandon (I've said "domesticate". I am for domesticating it because Capitalism is the best system I know that can create wealth. Though, thinking of it, I have to study more Hitler's methods...) Capitalism or the West will perish!
"Talking of Croatia, I just had an invitation..."
Life is really, really UNFAIR!!!
And I that have tried so hardly for two weeks to reservate a place and a way to go there... where me and more four or five fellows and five ladies and all the Croatian girls who would want to join us were to become like Kings but as oh-so-low cost of living/prices...
It was so obvious it was impossible that now I am happy with a week in the oh-so-vulgar Algarve...
I envy you. Don't you have another ten invitations? (Kidding, huh, i don't really have the money to leave this Peninsula and live properly).
If you want to change, what will you do, elect Obama?
I think that would work, radically.
some as Henrik, can see the right-left divide as purely Economic.
Ehm...
I thought I had been extolling the virtues of Christian culture extensively on these pages, as fundamentally inseparable from Europe, democracy and freedom.
Obviously not enough yet. I just have to repeat my recommendation of Rodney Stark, for starters.
if Capitalism is so great, why does it need to be constantly expanding?
It doesn't have to. Capitalism in many countries was doing just fine without it, for centuries on end. We just don't hear that much about these people who just mind their own business.
Then, if there's an opportunity to expand, there'll be a capitalist to take it. That's natural.
Communism and Islamism, on the other hand, are inherently so ineffective that they need to expand into productive countries just to survive.
Avery Bullard : Personally, I'm judging capitalism by its results, not commie propaganda.
Good thing too. Now, why don't you tell our studio audience and all the folks at home just how it is that us capitalist wage slaves landed a man on the moon, repeatedly, while all the other socialist utopias have barely come close.
While you're at it, I invite you to go ahead and explain how, in two or three short centuries, America's evil and greedy misers have created more transportable wealth, invented more life-improving and lifesaving technologies, elevated the collective quality of this entire world's human life while originating history's single greatest experiment in human freedom ever seen on the face of this earth.
Other civilizations many thousands of years older than that of America have not achieved diddley squat by comparison. Why is that?
It is international capitalism unrestrained by national loyalty that is problematic.
You still don't get it, do you?
The problem with multinationalist corporations is that they frequently abandon the moralistic structure required in order for capitalism to function benignly. Once that happens, capitalism no longer applies and corrupt ideology steps in to fill the void. How is that capitalism's fault. Go back a carefully re-read Artfldgr's comments before wasting more of this board's time continulally reposting the same communist disinformational smears.
Globalisation means deracinated post-national elites.
It certainly appears so. Too bad that has exactly nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with hyper-corrupt elitists gaming (along with their political cronies), the once-free and now canted market to their own personal advantage.
George Soros, Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, and all the others are corporate capitalists, right?
Oligarchs, more like. Especially Soros.
The Marxist left and the corporate capitalists are "tranzis". They are both enemies of those of us who believe in devolved political power through local democracy and national sovereignty.
I'm obliged to agree, save that one more time, your observation has nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do woth hyper-corrupt individuals and their F&%CKED UP ideologies. Remember, capitalism is NOT an ideology, it is an amoral tool, just like a gun.
Diamed: The current mishmash of people can't possibly form a stable state and must be reorganized.
The rallying cry upon which mountains of skulls have been built.
Henrik R Clausen: Diamed, I don't think your draft makes one ounce of sense. Totalitarian regimes are constructed on basis of plans like that.
I'm more than happy to let Henrick finishing speaking for me on this one.
Afonso Henriques: Sorry for the oh-so-long comment.
No you're not. Otherwise you would not so consistently go on at incredibly boring length. Your arguments are so frequently anecdotally based and NOT fact-based that I have long since refused to read the vast majority of them. Unlike others, at least you've progressed far enough to use paragraphs but that in no way validates the rhetorical vomiting that you so love to indulge in.
Besides the fact that I don't see how Art is so right, I think it is not all that bad to be a pessimistic.
Said the pessimist as he continues to club everyone in sight with his own slanted anecdotal ramblings. GAH!
... Art have aquicsented that Capitalism is a synonym of good, as he himself mentioned "capitalism is not a synonym for good... its a definition of mutually benificial transaction".
Exactly NONE of which has penetrated your obviously thick skull. If someday it does, you will blush to think that you ever wrote the foregoing drivel.
Zenster, great point about Capitalism abandoning our classical moralistic structures.
I have a book by Adam Smith (yes, Wealth of Nations) "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" which addresses the need to have a moral structure in order for society to function properly. Didn't read it yet, though.
George Soros, with his 'independent' think-tanks, is wrecking havoc on democracy, for his abstract recommendations are detatched from the sentiments of common people. It's an interesting aside that some of his wealth came from his attack on the Exchange Rate Mechanism, that complete and comprehensive disaster that preceded the Euro.
But then, what does it take for an Eurocrat to admit failure? I can't think of anything right away.
A note to those writing long, unstructured comments:
I don't read them.
"I thought I had been extolling the virtues of Christian culture..."
Don't take me wrong Henrik but I think I've confused you with the Dutch guy, you're the Danish right?
Yes, I can't recall his name, I am almost certainly he is the one who sees "right wing" as "free market".
I usually like his comments but I can't really recall his nick...
There is no pure business, capitalist or otherwise. Power and money are totally incestuous. So fine, blame it on the communists that 35% of all meals in the USA are from the fast food nation or that Ford and Budweiser and Ivory Soap openly finance gay liberation (as in BJs on the street).
Along with blaming the Commies, you might also want to consider the contribution of the Libertarians and the Calvinists. Don't put it all on Gramsci and Lukacs. Underneath it all, I blame it on Martin Luther and company... but that's a long story and I doubt he was aware of the consequences just as I doubt that even Gramsci and Lukacs were.
You say, "Even wolves have capitalism"... yes indeed! You hit the nail right on the head. So let's take after the wolves! Blessed is the Charles Dicken's factory owner who saw fit to hire children and make them work 16 hours a day! And accursed are those reformers who saw something wrong and ugly in child labor and therefore started to wreck the intrinsic beauty of Pure Capitalism with their senseless demands for humanity, justice and a shred of social harmony. They didn't understand that Capitalism was "hard-wired" into us as someone here insists.
This hard-wired business is interesting, because along with wolfishness, I believe that other things are in our human circuitry and ONLY in our human circuitry. But maybe they are only soft-wired and so can be discounted.
Yes, you know, on a soft-circuitry note, well, just looking at my old dad who won't be much longer of this world, sometimes I wonder... Who created a society in which an old guy like him who should no longer drive, (but still can walk) no longer has small shops nearby where he is known and even loved, where he is not just Mr. Consumer, but "Mr. Futz Senior" and where he can talk about soccer or women or politics (or whatever his heart desires), to the man or woman behind the counter who is not just "Mr/Ms Employee, but "Gianna" or "Remo"... Efficiency 0 from one point of view, but 100 from another. If he manages to reach the mega-mall, he will be able to buy a lot more stuff, but he won't have anyone who gives a damned, who knows his name. Well my daddy is lucky, he still has "capitalists" "Remo" and "Gianna," but Mr. Futz Junior won't be... I have "Capitalists" Carrefour and Panorama who clobbered most of the "Giannas and Remos" in terms of anything that can be easily counted in Excel.
In the big rush to enfranchise the handicapped, certainly noble, why have the old-timers been forgotten? It's easy to build wheelchair ramps, but healthy societies for children, teenagers, mothers and fathers and old-timers would cost much too much. Maybe it would be better to consider all of humanity handicapped, needful of special attention, to be known, appreciated as different, requiring of real social interplay at a heightened and not shallow level.
Yes Capitalism can make us fantastically rich, but there reaches a point where it is poverty in riches. Because unless one makes money the measure of all things, the wealth of a nation is not just in its GDP. This is obvious to anyone except the hard-wired wolves. Either greater wealth is an all-round "well-rounded" improvement or it's just money.
It should be easy to understand that the mega-expansion of Starbucks or McDonalds, despite the zillions of megabucks raised, is also a form of poverty, real poverty and not just poetic poverty. What was unique, special, caring, local, is now ubiquitous, uncaring, massified... and possesses tons of marketing power.
You won't see Remo and Gianna running nationwide commercials. They might brag when they have something to brag about, but they might also apologize; they won't have their own private radio station playing at a volume pre-set by a professional behaviorist, but they might sing. Try belting out "Me and Mrs. Jones" at your great American "we are the freest people on the face of the earth" Starbucks and I bet you'll get escorted to the door, if not arrested. I've already done it at Remo's and I got laughs, applause, razzes and even a few voices joining in. I belonged, I had people and not workers (though they are tireless and wonderful workers!), I had culture. I was a wealthy man. You'd have to drink 5 beers to get up the courage to be as free as I am as a full-fledged human being and not some hard-wired wolf dealing with other hard-wired wolves.
But we're losing this, because money and efficiency (the capacity to make more money) is overpowering: it's funny and cute and has the kiddies singing jingles and it gives out free balloons and it's modern and hip and is sponsored by million dollar talent and is always the highest bidder and it can get its goods from the far-flung corners of China from other even hungrier wolves.
It has the incredible intelligence of hundreds and thousands of professionals. They study the size and color of the balloons and the effectiveness of the jingles and in cahoots with the flatland New Jersey taste factories they can come up with a new super-duper "mint" flavor that has never even been within walking distance of a real mint plant. And that NEW mint flavor (a bewildering formula even for most scientists) will become synonymous with "Mint"... In fact real mint will seem mild and unsatisfactory.
America is the freest nation on earth! "Me and Mrs. Mrs. Jones!" Please give me the oppression of Remo and Gianna, keep your wolfish professionals. I want a society, a community.... even a vaffanculo, but not a jingle, a balloon, a Star Wars figurine, a have-a-nice-day.
Thanks, Afonso, duely noted :)
As for Capitalism, I think Ioshkafutz is confusing the consequences of invention of fuel-powered machinery with capitalism as such.
For some 500 years, long before those inventions, Capitalism was doing very well indeed in various parts of Europe, systematically giving rise to the freest and most egalitarian societies anywhere, anytime.
Later, when it became possible to centralize around machine powered factories and science came up with an unprecedented variety of processes, chemicals and waste products, we got some, well, interesting new challenges. But that's another (worthwhile) story.
Mega-concentration of political and economical power has always created problems not trivial to solve.
Take the USA and the role of 'Policeman of the Planet'. Some argue that EU should take a similar role, so we'll have two huge players duking it out where possible. I'm not quite sure that's the proper response to the US foreign policy mistakes...
Or take Microsoft. It has built a near-monopoly in desktop software. Should it be challenged by the government, left alone completely or have its business environment modified for increased competition? I'm not sure.
There's one factor, though, that might work well in many contexts, and that's transparency. Adam Smith in his "Wealth of Nations" noted that transparency is a precondition for a truely free market, and that actually holds for government as well.
Zenster, checking Wikipedia on Capitalism quickly, only this have pleased me:
"The concept of capitalism has limited analytic value, given the great variety of historical cases over which it is applied"
My long comment has disapeared and I will try to resume it:
Fjordman tricked us, nobody know what capitalism is.
When you speak of Capitalism, it's not the same as my Capitalism.
To you, Capitalism its fine because of the American favourite sport (and strenght till the 60s) is its National-Capitalism.
For me Capitalism, when without domestication, is basicly the "Tranzi movement" and all its tendence to "cultural marxism" because in it, money is a vallue per se, and whoever has money has the power. It smach people and morality because it promotes a society based on wealth rather than on Traditional Vallues.
I also felt I had to say that I am not against Capitalism, I just think we have to domesticate it otherwise it will eat us.
Rodney Stark in Victory of Reason identifies and addresses exactly this weakness of defining 'Capitalism' noted in Wikipedia. For centuries, a definition was hardly needed - why bother defining something so universally natural? Only later, when Socialists and Marxists started pondering alternatives did Capitalism become a kind of ideology, because alternatives were presented.
Stark (page 56) defines Capitalism thus:
Capitalism is an economic system wherein privately owned, relatively well organized, and stable firms pursue complex commercial activities within a relatively free (unregulated) market, taking a systematic, long-term approach to investing and reinvesting wealth (directly or indirectly) in productive activities involving a hired workforce, and guided by anticipated and actual returns.
The term "complex commercial activities" of course covers the procedures of the international banking system, which was established some 800 years ago, along with the invention of responsible accounting (double bookkeeping), another nice thing out of the Church.
Ciao Henrik,
No I'm not confusing the consequences of invention of fuel-powered machinery with capitalism. I know that a Monk taught the western world to keep ledgers and for me work, trade, profits are sacrosanct, if not sacred.
I am saying that present-day capitalism doesn't give a rat's ass about human beings and that is not even capitalism's fault, but a consequence of humanity's own misconception of the value of human life. If the trend is abortion, divorce and euthanasia, why should man qua man even enter the picture? I am not confusing Moses with Business (though without the Law there would be no business). I simply refuse the automotic acceptance that progress equals better, that more money equals greater wealth, that more efficiency is better. If the soul of America is Wall Street, that is unfortunate.
I refuse to believe that any system automatically brings good or harmony. Or that more money is the solution to all our problems. Look at schools, each American student costs how much a year compared to some little and crowded "old-fashioned" school in the boondocks that on account of reasons deemed "miraculous" comes out with better educated kids?
I know that if someone tried to hurt Remo or Gianna, though I don't have a dime invested in their shops, I'd rise to their defence. I also know that if someone caused trouble in a McDonalds, even if I had thousands of dollars invested in McDonald's Incorporated, I'd just silently wait it out and then probably have lawyers telling me that I could sue McDonalds.
Both are Capitalists, both keep books and exult at higher profits, but in one, man is still man and in another he's been downgraded. He's a consumer.
Freedom chooses what works, over time.
Capitalism with a (enlightened self-interest) conscience is less dangerous than "socialism with a human face".
All collectivist fantasies run counter to human nature.
Such single answers cannot satisfy everybody.
Its monotony sows its own chaos.
("Communism will always fail because it believes people are basically good; Capitalism will always succeed because it knows they're not."- grafitti.)
Ioshka Futz, I agree with you 100%
It's those little things that make a NATION. Americans can scream away all they want that they live in the Nation of Freedom, but in the deepness of the American heart, they know the truth. They are no Nation. And now, they are ever less a Nation.
That's what we should preservt Ioshka, not through Capitalism or free speach - not even democracy - but with Nationalism!
A case study. I believe there are many Italian immigrants all over the world (France, Brazil, Argentina, U.S.A) as well as there are many Portuguese ones. There are three generation Portuguese people who have born abroad who still feel somehow and somewhat Portuguese. They have migrated en mass, but they haven't truly been asimilated. They may assimilate into the society, but they will not be diluted by it, they will not be assimilated by the "foreigners".
Now think about the Argentinians immigrants. With the economical crisis many went to Spain and Italy. Will their sons and daughters feel somehow Argentinians or feel completeley Spaniards or Italians? I do think they will be assimilated and assimilate because they are returning to the origins. Argentina is no Nation.
When Capitalism can not see a Nation or a comunity but only money and profit, then, I will not glorifiy it. There are things more important, like the carachter of Lisbon, or Rome, or London, or Coimbra or Barcelona who have suffered a gradual evolution and each city has now created a specific, almost quintessential, carachter.
A Carachter that Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Rio, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Montvideu or Mexico can hardly aspire.
Too bad Italy lost the Euro. I did bet on the Squadra Azzurra.
Hi Henrik here it goes
Something interesting about Capitalism I've been reading:
"Nothing is more evident than that modern capitalism is just as subversive as Marxism. The materialistic view of life on which both systems are based is identical; both of their ideals are qualitatively identical, including the premises connected to a world, the centre of which is constituted of technology, science, production, “productivity,” and "consumption." And as long as we only talk about economic classes, profit, salaries, and production, and as long as we believe that real human progress is determined by a particular system of distribution of wealth and goods, and that, generally speaking, human progress is measured by the degree of wealth or indigence—then we are not even close to what is essential, even though new theories, beyond Marxism and capitalism, might be formulated."
"a firm rejection of the principle formulated by Marxism, which summarizes the entire subversion at work today: The economy is our destiny. We must declare in an uncompromising way that in a normal civilization the economy and economic interests—understood as the satisfaction of material needs and their more or less artificial appendices—have always played, and always will play, a subordinated function. We must also uphold that beyond the economic sphere an order of higher political, spiritual, and heroic values has to emerge, an order that neither knows nor tolerates merely economic classes and does not know the division between "capitalists" and "proletarians"; an order solely in terms of which are to be defined the things worth living and dying for."
"the true antithesis is not between capitalism and Marxism, but between a system in which the economy rules supreme (no matter in what form) and a system in which the economy is subordinated to extra-economic factors, within a wider and more complete order, such as to bestow a deep meaning upon human life and foster the development of its highest possibilities"
"I have previously suggested that the uprising of the masses has mainly been caused by the fact that every social difference has been reduced to those that exist between mere economic classes and by the fact that under the aegis of antitraditional liberalism, property and wealth, once free from any bond or higher value, have become the only criteria of social differences."
This is materialism.
And now, I'm tired...
the true antithesis is not between capitalism and Marxism, but between a system in which the economy rules supreme (no matter in what form) and a system in which the economy is subordinated to extra-economic factors, within a wider and more complete order, such as to bestow a deep meaning upon human life and foster the development of its highest possibilities.
Afonso, I recognize this idea, also known as the 'Third Way'. I encourage reading Liberal Fascism, for understanding the true nature of this mythical idea is very useful.
"There are things more important, like the carachter of Lisbon, or Rome, or London, or Coimbra or Barcelona who have suffered a gradual evolution and each city has now created a specific, almost quintessential, carachter. A Carachter that Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Rio, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Montvideu or Mexico can hardly aspire. "
Afonso-
That is the same nonsense that has been coming from Europe for the past 300 years. While I think you are an intelligent guy I think you are showing youre youth and inexperience. Travel and spend some time in the cities you list and you will see how wrong you are. As someone who was born and raised in NYC I can say without a doubt it has its own character. That is universally known.
Also, I am becoming a little concerned with you. Did I read right before that you need to study more of "Hitlers methods"!? Say what? Could you expand on that?
Spackle,
"Travel and spend some time in the cities you list and you will see how wrong you are."
I wish spackle, really.
Maybe it's just imaturity (I hope so) but I will say that what worries me is not a sentiment of repulsion of the New World or nothing of the sort.
Probabily I am generalising but here it goes: First, I recognise that every place "changes", that's not the question.
I hear many people who've lived in Rio de Janeiro in the 60s and returned saying how it is different and changed and has nothing to due with what it once was. I have heard some Americans said the same about the big apple.
It also applies of course, to South Africa and then Portuguese rulled cities in Angola and Mozambique.
Meanwhile European main cities continue to have the same "soul", or carachter that changes more gradually and softly.
Meanwhile, the de-caractherization of cities also happens in Europe. Portugal, for instance. If you go to any middle city in the interior it has lost the life. If you travel along the majoriy of the outskirts of great cities, it is also lost forever... I don't know if I made myself clear.
"Did I read right before that you need to study more of "Hitlers methods"!?"
Yes you read. But don't worry. Those are note "those" methods. Those one shall know in order to not repeat them. I meant economically:
The Republic of Weimar (or Weimar's Republic) was in bunkruptency. It was of the most miserable countries in Europe. From 1918 that Germany was devastated and if I get it right, it was still devastated in 1933.
So, how was it possible to create the first world power in so many aspects in just 5 years?
Was it Capitalism, was it Communism? What was it?
My simple vision can only gather a strong sense of solidarity among the German volk, a putting the cause first than the individual by the Nazis and continue somehow with the same ancient order (nobility, high classes and low classes stood more or less the stable). So, how was it possible?
That's what I mentioned needs to be studied.
You know the colonialism thing? It started not with Portugal but with Spain. When Spain started trying to opress/anexate its neighbours, both the Portuguese and the Catalan people started to venture on the see to colonise the world.
The Catalans had the Mediterranean and tried to colonise Southern Italy. They did not went far, they were then anexated. We had the luck to be on the Atlantic side...
If you study the causes you will learn something. That's something I managed to learn...
-------------
Henrik, those were citations of Julius Évola. I found them somehow noble, but difficult or impossible of implementating. But my point was to show the materialism of Capitalism.
zenster is a true fanatic.
Avery Bullard : Personally, I'm judging capitalism by its results, not commie propaganda.
zenster: Good thing too. Now, why don't you tell our studio audience and all the folks at home just how it is that us capitalist wage slaves landed a man on the moon, repeatedly, while all the other socialist utopias have barely come close.
Who cares about the moon? (Though wasn't the Soviet space programme better than those of capitalist European societies and weren't some Nazis prominent in America's early space programme?) It doesn't matter as much as the importation of Third World workers for the short term benefit of capitalists and long term destruction of the nation itself. But we'll always have the moon!
zenster: While you're at it, I invite you to go ahead and explain how, in two or three short centuries, America's evil and greedy misers have created more transportable wealth, invented more life-improving and lifesaving technologies, elevated the collective quality of this entire world's human life while originating history's single greatest experiment in human freedom ever seen on the face of this earth.
First of all you're exaggerating. (Why is it when Americans are talking about their country they always have to say "greatest...history of...the face of the earth"?)
Freedom is not an end in itself, nor is wealth.
Why has the US been so successful - and smaller countries like Canada and Australia? A quality genepool and a political culture inherited from England.
Here's a question to hyper-capitalist zenster. Why is it that semi-socialist countries such as those in Scandinavia have produced more wealth than most small government countries in the world? Could it be the quality of the people and the culture they created?
Can you just imagine an American capitalist like Larry Kudlow or the GOP discussing that? Me neither. That would be verboten. The capitalist, like the communist, thinks he has a universal explanation for all the worlds ills. American "conservatives" (as if capitalism conserves anything important) have turned their obsession with the free markets into a religion. As zenster proves by calling me a communist. Capitalist firsters like him have more in common with communists than I have with either.
"I hear many people who've lived in Rio de Janeiro in the 60s and returned saying how it is different and changed and has nothing to due with what it once was. I have heard some Americans said the same about the big apple."
Afonso-
On this we can agree. The culture of NY has definatley changed. The strongest change has been in Manhattan itself. Which jibes with the whole Capitalism thing. Up until the 70s Manhattan still had proper middle class "Neighborhoods" where folks knew one another and kids played out on the street together. It wan not unusual to find kids playing stickball or running under the fire hydrants during the infamously hot summers.
Those days along with the middle class are long gone. That is one of the beauties and faults of Capitalism. While it allows rapid change and progress it has no patience for the past. Is that building in the way? Tear it down. Has that person lived in that building for generations? Tough s**t get out, this place is going condo! So the character has not gone it has just changed. The question is which character do you prefer? If that is what you were getting at then I agree.
This has always been my personal dilemma. While I am a Capitalist I also identify with the working class (being one myself) and am sick of them being worked over. But like someone said earlier I think it is government interference that has stacked the deck. If you want an example of what I am talking about as far as the changing character of NY neighborhoods go over to my blog "escape from freedom" listed in the GOV sidebar and read "why do yuppies and hipsters suck".
Avery Bullard:
It is international capitalism unrestrained by national loyalty that is problematic.
zenster:You still don't get it, do you?
The problem with multinationalist corporations is that they frequently abandon the moralistic structure required in order for capitalism to function benignly. Once that happens
Once that happens give me a call. On this board (slighlty paraphrasing Don Rumsfeld) I'm going to war with the capitalism we have not the one we would like to have.
Clearly a capitalism that is NOT functioning benignly - as is the case today - must be restrained.
Diamed said... here would be a sensible three step plan to replace capitalism.
Ha ha ha, ho ho ho…. Oh… sorry… that was painful..
Lets show you how much your broken in thought patterns. I am not blindly asserting you are and doing an ad hominem. If I call a person crazy when they are not, that’s ad hominem, if I call them crazy and they are, then what?
Decide, as a united people, what we value, what are our goals, what we want out of life. Divide society up into units that are actually in agreement with each other, and give each of them sovereignty and a homeland to pursue those goals as they see fit. The current mishmash of people can't possibly form a stable state and must be reorganized.
Ah… so what your supposing is the creation of the American state as it was before the socialists came here to change it.
The first problem with your plan is how socialism/commnuismt defines peace. The definitnio is no opposition to socialistm/communism.
So that’s why America is the way it is. the socuialist and commujnists here did not want to leave and go to the other nation state!!! in fact the other nation state sent literally 10s of thousands of operatives to tear the place apart and put in a different government than the people here want.
The people that did this were like you and afonso!!! The American people wanted to be left alone. But they found that they couldn’t live in isolation as long as there was another state, states, or factional group who would not stay home and leave the US alone.
We desolved the OSS, and only created the CIA and others after russia didn’t desolve the chccka, and so was declaring subversive war till the whole planet was communist. By the way, want to read the speeches of the leaders talking, they still are on the same plan!
The American society was the way you are talking about. The states each had their sovereignty, and so were capable of creating a market of different ways to live. But our collective state decide to bribe them with social programs to get their money back.
This homogenized the states. That was done starting with the civil war, and really changed by the communists/collectivists, etc.
Prior to this socialism, a person could say… I don’t like the way the people run this state, let me go to Wyoming and live differently. The judeo Christian form of tolerance was in play, which basically said. You can go to hell your own way, and your on your own. That was the social contract. A gay person could be a gay person, they just couldn’t get the perks from society for doing so. those were reserved for what the people liked. Obviously if you can read oscar wilde, you can understand that they were not hunted down to extinction (they are a product of a mating system in which there are many potential mates but only a few real ones, and a maximizing of sexual drive with a need for social cohesiveness).
In case you didn’t know, that’s why the puritans and the settlers left the old world and created a country on a far away contentent and died to create it in a way in which they could fulil the very idea your promoting as a solution.
Now you know why I was laughing painfully. Your illustrating what I said. They have painted entrance on the exits and your walking away from what you really want under the belief that your going to get what you want if you walk away! clever eh? Better to get the cows to walk into the slaughter house thinking that they are going to get some sex or something grand. What happens after they get there is of no consequence as they don’t matter then any more as they did when they were free and could choose not to enter.
Implement laws that would secure our highest priority first, and our second highest priority second, and so on down to the last. Making money would be lower down on the priority list than many things (in my dream community at least) and therefore would not be allowed to trump or interfere with anything above it.
Ah.. what your proposing is the American constitution. Rights are our highest priority… the regular laws are our second highest priority insuring separations of powers so that these rights could not be lost by the people who are chosen to protect them.
If you read the document you derisively don’t support… you would find that making money is no where there. But pursuit of happyness is… you will find that a progressive tax is a communist plank, and forbidden by the constitution, and you will find that charity by the state is also not allowed.
If you wanted that, you were free to leave and move to that other place and live. How many American and western expats are there living in other lands.
The point that your making that would give you what you want above is the point of equality under the law!!!!!!!! That all are equal before the law even though they have different outcomes… not what the socialist improvers have been making it. equal outcomes through unequal treatment.
The American system said do what you want, but the outcomes are yours to suffer. Want to work hard, go ahead. Want to ride the rails and do odd jobs and such, go ahead. Since taxes were not legal for the individual but only companies and owners of such, the bum didn’t have to have an address to have mail go to. want to live in another country, go ahead. want to take peyote and pretend your talking to god, go ahead. want to own firearms and go shooting weapons, go ahead.
The rules were simple. you can do whatever you wanted as long as you didn’t deny someone else the key first primacy laws of rights. (that was before they were made into nonsense).
You see, before the nanny totalitarians, you could do whatever you wanted as long as you didn’t take rights away from others with your actions!
But people like you and afonso didn’t like that. they didn’t like that people would have lots of kids, but work less to enjoy them, that was not progress. they didn’t like that people got wealthy and could choose not to work, that was a waste to the state from which they, like you believe everything came from.
By increasing the state to do and provide what it shouldn’t, it changed the very nature of where we live from the dream ideal that your talking about, to what it is now. isnt if funny that your ideal is the kind of country you want to destroy? How did you get that far away and not understand what it meant to be FREE?
There is a few caveats that you didn’t put up or cover in your second statement. That the state has to be small, that it is not involved int eh business of whats moral and whats right, nor is it in the business to guarantee outcomes, or deny one the fruits of ones labor.
And that last line is clear… the socialist believe that one should not suffer the fruits of ones own labor, since most don’t want to work. and they don’t want their fruits to be an apportionment of nothing!!! so they play a game that its unfair that a person who works 60 hours a week, then works weekends, forgoes chasing women and alcohol, saves and invests, then starts a companhy taking the risk of losing all that, and then builds something that puts him financially on top.
However you don’t get that once the socialists went after the wealthy, they were going to defend themselves. do you think that free people will not protect what they and their families worked for over centuries because a bunch of poor lazy people think they can convince politicians with their masses to steal from the people whose money pays for politicians? Of course not.. they will fund politicians that will lie to the masses and lock them down so that they never can do that again.
What are the masses offering the nation? Extortion by ruining productivity if they don’t comply? Yes.
Is it any wonder that after they do this, businesses then work to empower the state to murder the protestors and relieve them of the problem?
These slackabouts will be controlled… they want to take the fruits of someone elses labor which lowers productivity, in exchange that they are not going to lower productivity more? that’s the same thing as protection money!!!!
They don’t sit still when thugs do this… they choose to give that money not to their enemies, but to their friends. they create power networks. They get the idea that the common man just wants to steal, and so they get pjunitive in their employments. You want to take their fruits? Fine then its only fair that they take yours. You want to tell them how to act, fine then its only fair that they control how you act.
Care to realize the position that the communists put the proletariat in?
The positin in which the hard workers are willing to imprison the others in order to keep going unmolested.
Which leads to your last rule
Wherever capitalism doesn't interfere with our higher priorities, allow the private sphere to do its magic.
Capitalism was never antagonistic to small government and freedom.. PEOPLE with earnings became bothered that a gang who doesn’t want to work will collude to steal their labors from them.
You haven’t stated how do you determine this part and stop people? because you just went through the motions and led yourself to the red terror.
Now maybe you might start to understand that the red terror was a product of trying to implement your third point.
I'll give a list of priorities I would put over the economy: the sanctity of marriage (straight, monogamous, faithful, for life), the raising of kids (both the number necessary to sustain our survival, and the quality upraising we desire for them), the teaching and promotion of virtue, and the simultaneous merciless squelching of vice and crime, long-term sustainability resource/environment wise, self-reliance (no more trading with our enemies), a strong military, the preservation of our unique identity (genetic and cultural), and community connectedness, love, solidarity, and support. (think church groups and how they all look after each other, see each other frequently, care about each other's lives, are there for each other, but many such groupings and making sure everyone is caught up in this anti-loneliness) I'm sure there are more, and that others could think of more and add on to the list. But none of these should be sacrificed to making money, no matter how much money is to be made by sacrificing them.
Well marriage, your first priority is the point of the judeo Christian west, communism, socialism, feminism etc, are all religions of poltics, and like islam they will not tolerate a competitor that makes them look bad.
Communism the polity you support is atheist. Religion is bourgeoisie… and so the state of marriage has to be dissolved if your going to implement your rules. Karl marx said that the heterosexual family is capitalistic. The wife does work that she trades for the fruits of her husband labor. The husband gets kids and a home. the children do chores and learn to work to get what they want.
So your first edict is in contradiction to your rules. I hope I am waking you up to what your helping to work towards, and what it is.
So far your description is that your not a socialist, you’re a capitalist who loves small government interference. The wester judeo Christian ethose of work to play, and sanctity of the union of man and woman, and such… well that’s everything that the left is tryig to remove. So in essence you gave me the opportunity to show you that your sidig with the people that said you will make the rope to hang yourself with.
Then we get to the teaching of virtue. Who decides? Before it stemmed from judeo Christian ethos. Now it comes from the state as you wished. The state has determined that the virtues are greed, envy, sloth, avarice, etc… those are the freedome virtues of socialism. maybe now you see why so many religious people get on board against it. they don’t think greed, envy sloth etc. are virtuies.
They think that fidelity, piety, humility, work, etc… are the virtues, so they are the enemy of the socialist state!!! the power needed to mold what you say, once given to those who want power, is used to mold what THEY want, not what youw ant.
Once the state is bigger than the people, it no longer needs to be the slave of the people. so if the people misuse the state, the state will be their monster they fed too much.
A state that can do anything for you, can do anything to you!!!!
The last part is sad… because the virtues were about honest dealings between people. fairness. The ability to do what you want and have resources to do it.
Your so twisted up, that you think up is down, down is up, and that the side destroying the house, is the ones building it. of course from a static picture you cant tell if they are building and destroying, but they are taking it apart, you take a pic, they tell you they are building. You forget and don’t compare. They tell you that the other side that’s building what you want, is tearing it down faster than they can build, that’s why when you look at more pics there is less.
But its opposite… they are tearing it down, and the more that side with them, the more they tear down, but the more you think the other side is succeeding, and so you give the side doing the tearing down more of your labors, they tear down more.. and now your panicking the other side will win… and finally in desperation you give it all to them, and find out that that’s what they wanted and after they get it, they can stop being nice. as you no longer matter, there is nothing left to get from you except your life itself. and either you give that too to them, or they will remove it for you to make room for someone else that will.
Its pragmatic, the arbiter of socialism… not moral the arbiter of religion.
Afonso Henriques said... Honestly, Art, I can not continue argueing with you when you say something like "capitalism is not a synonym for good... its a definition of mutually benificial transaction".
We have both made our minds ant it seems that when one talks, the other answers in "Marcian language", you can't understand what I say and I - at least - think that you are speaking of an unreal world (if you want, too theorethical).
Ah… the last refuge of a losing socialist. Relativism and the idea of personal definitions.
We have not both made up our minds. You have decided to work from a dictionary that doestn exist. You conflate the personal versions in your ehad of what these are, and think I am doing the same. that makes my opinion equal to yours…
However my opinion is not an opnion, its fact. Its not a personal version. Its defintitions reflect a knowledge of both sustems in detail. Something that you hace shown you don’t know at all.
You are an ignorant person pretending not to be. you have no idea what capitalism is, and you have no idea what communism/socialism is. all you have is the wispers on the wind that you like and thing sound right, and you assume that EVERYONE is like you and those who are not, are just acting or pretending.
Guess what? that’s the paranoiac mind of socialism from the ignorant proletariat.
You cant discuss both sides. that’s why you cant debate. They haven’t given you the canned answers to spit to oppose a person who actually understands the syustems, the meanings, and their implications!!!
Your wrong as to the mano el mano way… we would never see eye to eye because I have no desire to control you or your beliefs. Which is why I am not a communist or socialist but a capitalist. I will let you believe in utopia, sell you a che shirt to make you happy, and not oppose your thoughts. Only oppose them when you start to dictate from your high horse that you think x is bad, this is a waste, etc.
You want the state to impose things. for some bizarre reason you think that the politicans of a socialist state are more honest and fiar and less political than the ones in a free state.
You haven’t realized that they are the same people. mean junkhouse dogs that when chained up work for you, when unchained work for themselves. and as always they work to unchain themselves. by tricking you to giving them power you would never give the other side, they trick you into giving the same people all the power.
After that why should they caer about you? your opinions? What you want out of life?
They are socialists, atheistic, they have no morals but pragmatism and expediency.
We like that in people that fight for us, but you have to keep them chained or else they will fight for themselves.
It was pragmatic to exterminate people, it still is. stalin said, no man, no problem. once they have all the power, then your mouth and demands become the problem. do you think they will sit there and listen to you and not remove you?
Why? what prevents them? fear of god? Fear of the law (they are the law, you granted them that)? fear of the people? heck they only fear the people when the army is of the people and wont shoot into the crowd. But once these jerks have all the power the military people become a higher class. thehy shoot into the crowd, they go back to being the people abused by the people they are saving. See how your attitude is building the machine that will end up doing yuou in?
Tell me what prevents them once they have this power to impose whatever you think is better, that if they think its better to get rid of you to save carbon footprint, they wont.
And don’t say its not produictuive… we left capitalism, production is not a reason any more.
Want to know how they got production? they drive up to your block. They do it very early… while your too tired and confused. They ask you to leave your house. Everyone is outside… then someone says everyone get into the trucks. People go to get into the trucks… someone like you then asks a question “why…” before you can finish they shoot you in the head. “any more questions?”.
That’s not a story, that’s how it really happened. If your number three in line do you ask a question or get into the truck?
Welcome to the adult version of socialism where the state has been given enough power to insure outcomes. Nothing is too bad. nothing is evil. Everything is towards a better end and if you are in a bad place, too bad, you are a hero a martyr to the cause. (see the parallels with islam?
I may be. I don't know who that "us" is but in case you have not noticed I am not American (neither a Mexican for that matter) and I've never put a foot in that side of the Atlantic.
Doesn’t matter much. the people that orchestrate your beliefs had more success in Europe. You guys gave away your rights… to a body that isnt elected and controls everything. Basically that’s called a soviet…
"politicians that will get and own everything once idiots like you give everything to them like love struck moonies"
????????????
Moonies are cultists who in exchange for being taken care of, sign all their belongings to the church. They are a commune… so their structure is communist… everything to the reverend, who is the state for them. so it’s the same thing.. they convince good people to sign their lives over to someone else to control.
If your too afraid to compete, and too afraid tofind out where you stand, it’s a form of security.
I do not hate Capitalism. But I definetly do not worship it as you do. That's the utter sense of Capitalism, money replaces God, and the divine. But maybe that's too deep for you, right?
I don’t worship a natural thing. I am not a pagan. I do not worship the sun, I do not worship the cooperation that social species negotiate. That’s capitalism. The male wolves bring back food for the others… that’s capitalism… why? because if another wolf from another place came to get their share, theywoudlnt, they need to earn it to get it. if a wolf doesn’t hunt, it doent get meat.
So you are not educated enough to understand that communism is a system of thought worked out by people. capitalism went on for thousands of years before someone gave it a name and then spent centuries trying to fiture out the rules of this system we as a species have to work with limited resources, different contributions, contextual value, and more.
Your purile attempt to diminish what I say by first trying to place it in equivalence to plain old opinon or sophistry… do you see that your arguing style is not merit. It is not proposing another way.
All its doing is saying capitalism is bad, and socialism is good, and whatever you think to the contrary is wrong.
You project that onto me, and think I am saying the same thing. but thast because you have no real arguments on your side… so your not listening to mine. Your selecting the things to equivocate them, and thereby neither has merit.
However, I have explained in detail what each part means, what it leads to. the social operations to it. how it devolves, and so on.
The two arguments are not even arguments. I am debateing your blind asserting. Where are the principals of operation.
I have shown how it becomes authoritarian, and totalitarian. I explained that if they told you that’s what they are making you wouldn’t support it. so you ahev to work out the end result on your own and determine it. not parrot their points and then expect to win for the cause with blind fealty to an end result you ASSUME to be ther.
I have explained that my family lived uinder this. that many of them died under this. I have put up links to others hwo found out the truth. not nobodies like david mammett, but leaders of major international organizations who are trying to tell you to.
I gave you real world examples, from any country you want that has socialism.
I have shown in her own words bella dodd explaining how they did this to capitalism.
And yet, you can only keep blindly asserting your side.
Now you know how Hitler won. He played to women, and the young and ignorant. With special attention to the disenfranchised!!!
They are like the ugly girl at the dance who no one wants. The handsome man can get her to do anything he wants if he just pays attention to him. oh yeah, deep down she knows whats going on. but the slight chance that its not what she thinks will make her dance to his tune to her embarrassment and horror.
The reason we go no where is that you don’t know operating principals. You don’t know how A can cause B that changes C… so you are stuck believing the liars when they tell you that if you give them A, then they will provide you Z… don’t worry how we get there.
Its interesting that it took this long to show that your more racist than the capitalists!!! Your more like the Nazis, than you would ever admit. Even jewish rhetoric…
Such ‘jokes’ had a purpose in nazi germany. The idea was to paint those that have more as those that cheat. That the jews have more money because they are greedy and evil is an explanation that an idiot like you can accept. The alternative is that they have money because they are smarter than you, more capable than you, have a more moral life of less problem than you, and work much harder than you, as well as cooperate with more people than you.
This is why the Chinese used to be minorities in the west and now aren’t. Damn guys worked to hard, did too well, and didn’t need the state to help them!
The rest of your stuff isnt worth dealing with.. it’s the kind of thing that the guys from dumber and dumber find funny… in their own little world…
"Want to work hard, go ahead. Want to ride the rails and do odd jobs and such, go ahead. Since taxes were not legal for the individual but only companies and owners of such, the bum didn’t have to have an address to have mail go to. want to live in another country, go ahead. want to take peyote and pretend your talking to god, go ahead. want to own firearms and go shooting weapons, go ahead.
The rules were simple. you can do whatever you wanted as long as you didn’t deny someone else the key first primacy laws of rights."
Unless you're black or fricking Indian!!!
Guess what? We, Europeans are just that, Natives...
"The state has determined that the virtues are greed, envy, sloth, avarice, etc…"
Which state? No, no, no, please tell me!!!
No state have had this. The only ones pushing for this are the ones I called "burguoise" CAPITALISTS!!!
That's exactly the Capitalism I despize!!!
"isnt if funny that your ideal is the kind of country you want to destroy?"
Man, don't be ridiculous, your American ex-National-Capitalistic (and now only Capitalist) system was always better than this E.U. led ever more Socialist one. No doubt.
But it is so far to be all that good that it hurts. And as so I can not glorofy it. Sorry. You don't know what a Nation is. When America becomes poor, you will be the first to left her...
Really, this last two to three days I have turn more pro Russian (but never Communist, fellow) than ever. Especially thanks to you and Zenster and of course, Obama, that made me see that America will soon become just a big and powerfull big army. I start to lose faith in America when I see so big materialism and simultaneously Christian extremism among normal (relativley educated(?)) people.
Art, I don't know if you have already noticed but 1989 has already passed...
Berlim is now a vibrant and unified city. Did you know that?
Yes, it is true. Nowadays the only great European city divided by a wall is Sarajevo, not Berlin any longer.
You are afraid of having a face to face talk, a mano a mano. Ok, that's because you know that what you say has little to due with the real world.
"I have shown in her own words bella dodd explaining how they did this to capitalism"
Yes, you're right. I really apreciated that. But seriously, you're the one who's not arguing. You have believed that there are only two ways: Capitalism and Socialism. I hava already said that I prefer Capitalism over Socialism many times. Anyway, you ignore it. I've stated that Capitalism is not a synonym with good, you answer me that it is a BENEFICAL exchange or something...
No, money is not all that important. You have not proove me wrong.
So, Hitler is the handsome guy who seduced the ugly girl who is the German people.
Why do I feel that reality does not fit in this?
"Its interesting that it took this long to show that your more racist than the capitalists!!! Your more like the Nazis, than you would ever admit. Even jewish rhetoric…"
Yes. if by racist you consider to put a people before money tham the answer is emphatically yes! I am a nazi bastard and a racist.
Now I'd like to understand what you mean with "Jewish rethoric" but nevermind...
Also, do not forget. My problem with the Capitalists is exactley that. You people are lacking racism.
"That the jews have more money because they are greedy and evil is an explanation that an idiot like you can accept."
I could tell you 10 reasons a European can have to hate Jews but I won't in respect to this blog. Wait until a more liberal debate is to be made about Jews...
So, basically, you're saying the Jews are superiors to Europeans, right? If not, how did they get more? Let's not get there, shall we?
"they have money because they are smarter than you, more capable than you, have a more moral life of less problem than you, and work much harder than you, as well as cooperate with more people than you"
So, the Jews are superior Human beings.
"This is why the Chinese used to be minorities in the west and now aren’t."
You see, the typical "lack of racism" of Capitalists that I dispise. Despite the Chinese being ethnically, culturally, physically, different from European-Americans, for you the are equal just because they can make as much money as the Europeans.
It's too deep for you to reckon that one fricking dollar is just a fricking piece of paper.
Henrik, I know you probabily don't read this any longer but I must recommend you this.
If you go, have fun for me in Croatia!
Sfssfssvf
Afonso Henriques said... Second, if you answer is the socialists/communists also, why do Capitalism as an idea, under Capitalism, an idea that is "the best", is "of quality" is not supported by a ever growing quantity of iluminati? Why are still so many communists/socialists/people who do not believe in Capitalism?
Ah.. now I know what tin hat you crawled out from under. The protocols of the elders of zion crowd. (started as one thing, and renewed and distributed by russia as propaganda fo years. its known as the longest most successful propaganda in history).
You see. you are attempting to argue from a point of ignorance. Its VERY interesting watching it in action.
You have thise questions on principals of operation, they confuse you, and you cant work out the reasons. you also cant accept what many of us are trying to tell you, your definitions are wrong, your understanding is off. etc. so rather than correct that, and then be able to work from principals, you instead use what you don’t understand as proof to others that they are wrong. cause if you cant work it out, they cant either, and if they cant work it out, then you think you scored a hit in debate. Quite amusing.
Anyway. lets answer you…
The illuminati have been gone a long time. what you are referring to are people of wealth who have chosen to use that wealth certain ways. Ultimately though, these people your referring to are a small number. they do what they do DESPITE the rest of us. they don’t control things, they steer things. they influence things.
I will answer the second of your questions first as that leads into the first one. why don’t so many believe? Well of the people from the communist states, all their education and history has been modified to leave out the things that would show them its wrong. a key way is to blame something else!! so the reason so many communist socialists hate capitalism is that capitalism is the scapegoat for their failures as a political system the way that the jews in germany were the scapegoat for the failures of the average person to work hard and make something of themselves instead of playing. The same way that the evils are being pegged to the morals of the judeo Christians, which turn out to be the morals that everyone thinks is great… (which are not to be confused with a magic potion that when added makes everyone moral. It makes people more moral. Something the other system doestn do at all… but the other system faults it for not bringing perfect morality… something that the other system cant give, but promises that it will)
Of course this is an old con. If you remove all the others from the race but one, who is the winner? The best runner, or the one that removed the others? ah… so capitalism is the enemy because capitalism is a better system. it provides more, its cleaner, the top have less power than the top in socialism, etc.
And that leads me to the answer to your second point. Why would these people wish to make communism instead of something else. Well, they are power people, NOT CAPITALISTS… the two are not the same. When you combine power people with the progress of capitalism and allow the state to protect them, you get the fascism you believe is capitalism.
These people don’t see the game the way capitalists do!!! they see the game as a big version of king of the hill and power. So they strive to change the rules of the game so that they can protect what they have cheated to get.
Unlike capitalists, they are not trying to create real value, they are basically big scale con men. they didn’t get to where they are through capitalistic methods, they got their through collusion, cooperatuion, etc… with power people in the state… and with the newspapers power people also created by the state, refusing to inform the public and so not have what happens in capitalism happen to them.
This is a sociopathic, or socialist mentality. The end justifies the means. it’s a grab it and be damned the future of it.
I will give you a clear example… do you really think that a company like hersheys got to be where they are by collusion with the state, forcing their consumers to buy their products, removal of competitors from thje market, forcing of tarrifs, etc.
No.. hersheys is not the kind of business in which power people can directly use the business for fascist games. Telecommunications, power energy, etc… they are more likely as they are the fulcrums of where the system can be shorted.
Hershey was created by a man who knew nothing about chocolate. He basically really wanted to make it, and went about it. he made it wrong. and so Hershey chocolate has a bit of a sour taste to it and it was VERY different than European chocolates. It wasn’t gritty, it was sweet, it also had a sour taste, and was less bitter.
You would be amazed at the volumes that they deal with. well AFTER the capitalist owner dies, or leaves, then things change. the place is a target for socialist. As someone tried to explain to you above, they cant innovate, invent or create. But they can manipulate, force, collude, etc… so you get sociopaths targeting the system because that success brings a lot of money.
That’s what happened with the ford foundation. Ford was kicked out of it by socialists and so was his son. the wrote back as to how can a charity who owes its existence be taken over by communists and then use the money from the capitalist system to destroy it!!! so fell many of the good institutions that these capitalists made! Andrew Carnegie. Started poor with nothing… he said a man should spend the first half of his life making money, and the second half of it giving it all away!
Ever go to a public library? Well you have him to thank. He took his money, and he made a deal with the state. he said he would build the libraries, and he would stock them with books, if the state would maintain them. why? because when he came here, he was able to study for free and learn if he applied himself. And he saw that as one of the greatest engines. So rathe than do what you socialist would do, use power and force, he did a really great thing. he created the library system and inter library loans cam from it and so from that point on, any one who wanted to learn as in college (which was only for the wealthy who could afford it), could learn from the same books for free.
Of course the socialist capitalists of today want to get rid of the libraries to force you to pay for each view of what you paid for. But those arent capitalist, they are pragmatists!!!!!!
Well, getting back to your answer. What political system would guarantee those who have already succeeded a top positin, and then lock down everyone else that comes after from ever being a threat again?
Fascism or soft communism. you see, as I explained, if the masses are going to go after them by a false argument justifying theft, then they will have to protect themselves.
And they are. this is how they can work for a system in which they would normally be opposed.
Once the state gave out free money, they too were forced to compete for it. They were forced or sucked into the states power games. This is fascism, the thing you think is capitalism.
You may think that permits and things are something that the state needs to do… but technically not. ever buy an electrical item? ever see united laboratories? Well they are the old business form in which a free market entity provides a permitting business.
So licensing of doctors, professionals, and other things do not have to be done by the state!!! and they weren’t… but the state once it went socialist had to keep finding more and mor money as the need is larger than reality. It’s the size of imagination.
The problem is that the state is the arbiter of altercation… so once they did this to get revenue instead of these businesses, the thing went down hill. You see, a entity that is not the state, that licenses, is an entity that relies on it doing that job well, with a free press, a bad person gets through, and the licencing beureaus whole basis of economics goes out the window. When things don’t work out, they are liable… and so there is recourse, and all the things that would prevent the negatives. The state being there to decide the fairness of the specific situation.
Now move forward… the agency that decides whats fair is the same agency that gives out the licences, and the same agency that also you go to for recompense.
Starting to see the problem?
So licencing becomes a political tool of power people precisely because its tied to the interests of the state, and not its own interests. It has no more need for self preserfation, as long as the state lives, it lives… so it has no more need to do a good job! it only has need to make sure that everying in that area goes across its table. How it works, does its job doesn’t matter. there is nothing youc an to do punish it, order ti to change, nor will it do whats not in the power states interests.
In the previous model, it could oppose the state, and in fact it would. Because it was a company just like the others, and it could go to the state to prevent others from controlling it under equal proection.
Afonso… whats sad is that you are not talking from an understanding of both systems. your only talking from the promises that you like that you heard from both sides.
One side says they will stop wars… you like that… so you say I am with that.
Easiest way to stop a war, give up to your enemy who is the friend of the side that says they will stop it (not your friend, you have nothing to offer them in this new system you have nothing you can take from them. so you are inconsequential).
One side will say… I will stop poverty and make everyone better off.
How?
Well if ther is no money, and money defines poverty in your minds, if I take all the money away, and everything you own, are you poor? No. poor is a relative term, and so if everyone is living subsistence are they poor? No, they are all equally rich!!!!
They say we will make everyone equal!
Ever go to a graveyard. Everyone is equal, but you looking are more equal than the rest.
They say we will make the carbon load the same as it was in 1880!!!
How?
By removing the proletariat till there are fewer people than then, and whats left can live like now, but have the carbon load of 1880..
These may or may not be the way… but I am trying to illustrate that your not working out methods and means, only accepting blindly end premises!
You are assuming that they will do it a way that you think is right.
Wake up afonso..
lhklkhlkh
Afonso Henriques said...
"Talking of Croatia, I just had an invitation..."
Life is really, really UNFAIR!!!
And I that have tried so hardly for two weeks to reservate a place and a way to go there... where me and more four or five fellows and five ladies and all the Croatian girls who would want to join us were to become like Kings but as oh-so-low cost of living/prices...
Ding ding ding!!
I get the kewpie doll!!!!!!
Envy the green eyed monster raises his head!!!!
How does afonso determine fairness?
Why is it unfair afonso? Your reaction was selfish and much like a child!
Only concerned with what your nto getting, not concerned with WHY your not getting it.
I will point out that henrik has shown that he is a much nicer fellow to be with. that he is about freedom, not envy. He is about self determination, not whining the state doesn’t do enough, not whining “life is really unfair!”.
May I ask you why its unfair? I can now tell you are young. whats worse, is that you are showing your colors so much now… that I can actually explain a lot, and point out a lot.
Henrik also espouses, and I agree, his Christian culture. do unto others as they would have done unto you… this is not your creed afonso… for do you really want others to take all you own? No.
Afonso.. what you have is a socialists desease. Not a social desease, a socialist desease.
So do your friends.
And THAT’S why life is unfair.. you think things fall from the sky for people like henrik, that they are not a product of how he lives his life. your all to quick to want what nice thing he has, but are you willing to lose what he lost to get it?
No.
And that’s why you think life is unfair. You are not willing to work, you imagine somewhere that life owes you. and so you are not going to give to life till life gives to you! and your going to show life you mean business and threaten it with your non work.
Henrik on the other hand works by a different code. I know his code. I would come to him to do business., I would go to him for help, and he would help knowing that I follow the same code, and would reciprocate.
You are sick and I am going to show you how.
You live not in the US, but in Europe? No? spain? I know its not philipines, because you would never have sadi what you just said, and you would have told henrik that you might meet him there!
My wife comes from a poor country.. she got to travel the world, beause she works as a capitalist!!!
You are a socialist. Your waitiong for the stae to steal from someone like henrik and grant you a trip.
Here is how a capitalist would do it.
You have 10 to 12 people!!! and you cant get to croatia? My granparents were Slovaks, I never thought that eurpeans would sink that far down!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here is what you do.. go to a store, and buy some sponges. And some soap. Then go to a card shop and buy some oak tag and such…
Then spend a fun day all making signs… croatia, or bust!!! Make it fun and bright..
And then make signs that say… CAR WASH, and and charge a FAIR low price.
Within a few days, maybe one day, you will earn enough to go to croatia.
Heck my wife and I together worked hard and just payed for a trip for three to Indonesia for a month! How… well, unlike nihilist, socialists, who don’t work, and want to party first, pay later…
We earned it.. and I will bet a bottom dollar that henrik earned it.
You could EARN it too… but you don’t want to. you want to wait till some government program for young people who do nothing!!!
Your wrong… life is VERY fair… its just that you feel so special that your idea is fair is a life that is unfair to others and more fair to you.
Life is the most fair thing that ever existed. It plays NO FAVORITES, and its final sentence is death. No one gets out alive, and so no one can hold it all!!! and so no one can have it all, and do so forever.
This is why they sell this to young people!!!
Your so used to getting things for free…
after all, that’s the natural state of a child till they mature!!!
Then they stop being children (users) whose needs are met, and start being adults (providers). Socialism attempts to extend the users period till death, that way they shift their mouths from moms tit, to dads wallet, to the states breast
If you were becoming an adult, you would be thinking of some way to earn, and become a provider. Even if its to provide for only yourself.
The minute you do that you will find that your friends will be upset and saying life is unfair, and that your getting all the good stuff… and you will start resenting that they want you to pay for the pizza, and the gas… and its always your car…and they never work, and so on.
Then you meet some capitalists, who also don’t want to be under the thumb of a provider other than themselves. and you mught turn that teen croatia gig into a carwash company. You might recycle the water, sicne you are green… maybe promote that, and others will come.
Before long, you hire someone else and they run it. you took the risk, youbuilt it, you gave up sitting around doing nothing with your ‘friends’ whining as to not having anything, and how your soooo self imoortant that it should be different and so its unfair.
No.. instead your traveling to another country.. falling in love with it, maybe trying to figure out how to do some business, there… after all the people are nice, and if you can start some business, you can make jobs, and they can do better..
Which is why most businesses are in business and no where near as ruthless as you think…
You wont figure out any of this till you put an ad in the paper that says you provide a service for a decent fee, and then find that more people call than you can do the work. this is especially true if you do a great job!!!!
Keep it up and you will be old, sitting at the same table lamenting all the good lives that others have, and never realizing that you could have had such or better (Cause your hungrier), but couldn’t get off your duff and do something about it.
And who did ths help?
Oh. it helped the elite on the top!!! how? They get to never worry about your class being a threat to their position, company, family, or politics!!!
They foud it was easier to demoralize you and let you think lies that keep you still and whining, than it was to teach you, and have you potentially build something that would challenge their position with some disruptive technology!!!
You and henrik are in a race. It’s a friendly race to henrik, he is happy with the position he can take running it…
And for ever afonso that refuses to run, he and others running it go farther and have more.
If there is a race between 10 people and the slowest one is the only one to show up, who wins?
Well, if I can convine the fastest runners that they could never win, don’t even try. Etc.
I just psyched them out and won the game!!!!
They psyched you and the others out, they are winnig not because they are better, no far from it, they are winning because better people with real desires to do good (useful idiots) have abdicated their position in the race and are leaving the field to sociopaths who made them feel bad and gave up…
This thread has outlived its usefulness, so I am closing it.
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