the concept of communism is good but its done the wrong way, in order to be a good country you have to do both capitalism and communism even environmental and for the intellectuals. like tropico.
Since we are actuly talking real life political philosophy here and not WoW lore, allow me to add my 2 copper pieces: Communism works perfectly fine as long as it is strictly voluntary (see Mandragora Corporation or Kibbutz villages in early 20th century Izrael or many isolated protestant communities in the States). But as soon as you mix it with an implied threat of force/violance of a centralized state government, you get an inevitble spiral into totalitarian dystopia. It happened literally every single time communism was mixed with a threat of force used in order to actually “build it”. That’s the long and short of it.
You can have a perfectly happy circle of frinds/colleagues practising communism, but as soon as you try to force another guy into your little system, to give acording to his ability and take acording to his need, else you gonna beat him up, it turns very dark very fast.
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Seems neither of you are very well-versed on this topic. Allow me to educate you.
Your first statement is categorically wrong, capitalism, i.e. economic freedom of individuals, allocates resources via prices, and you would do well to understand this. Prices in a system of diversified knowledge indicate what people want/value, and their being determined by individuals (rather than state planners) circumvents the knowledge problem inherent in central planning. More on the knowledge problem, here: [Google “the knowledge problem” & “Lynne Kiesling”, and also see FA Hayek’s paper called “The Use of Knowledge in Society”].
The US healthcare system isn’t truly a private system, try reading the legislation since 1910. Calling something private does not make it so, and in fact US healthcare has lost the attributes of a truly private system (e.g. being properly subject to supply and demand). All very unfortunate, and actually all very easy to blame on government meddling. [Google: “Mises, How Government Regulations Made Healthcare So Expensive” and check the first link.]
Your ramblings about what people feel or believe are irrelevant do the definition of socialism or communism. Your feelings do not make an argument. I elaborate on the distinction between these brain-dead ideologies below. Further, there’s no such thing as “social capitalism” socialism and capitalism are inherently contradictory, quit making up terms.
The difference between socialism and communism is simply a matter of degree. How one feels they ought to be or how one attributes the stated egalitarian or charitable goals of socialism is wholly irrelevant to its factual/practical definition. Both socialism (regardless of whatever prefix you attach to it, be it democratic or otherwise) and communism, in essence, necessitate state or planning board direction of economic affairs, rather than these being determined spontaneously by free individuals (the latter being capitalism at its most distilled). The direction inherent in socialism renders them victim to the knowledge problem, and prevents them both from being able to rationally calculate prices and therefore from being able to allocate resources efficiently, in a manner even remotely equivalent to the free market. As market errors manifest and proliferate, both systems fail for the same reason, communism is simply further along and collapses earlier.
Further recommended reading so you can adequately educate yourselves before replying with more inane assumptions and poorly written rubbish:
[Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell - available on Amazon]
[The Road to Serfdom by FA Hayek - available on Amazon]
[Socialism - The Fatal Conceit by FA Hayek - available on Amazon]
[Socialism by Ludwig von Mises - available on Amazon]
You can snidely bash any of these thinkers all you like, but I reckon you won’t have a substantive critique of a single one of the principles they have highlighted.
You know there’s an underlying misconception you’re basing it all off of, right?
To start with, “social capitalism” is just me using a combination of words to communicate a more accurate depiction, so yeah, that isn’t an “official term”. What it refers to however, is social democracies with ideologic decisions mimicking capitalistic approaches to problems. (And vice versa.)
Easier to just say social capitalism though. Also, I didn’t make it up. Google it.
As for the rest of your post, you’re making the fatal mistake of only viewing capitalism as an ideal (all your arguments for it are idealistic), yet all your critique of socialism is based on the failures in its practical applications.
Guess what? Capitalism suffers practical problems too. Your view of it isn’t realistic.
As for your attempt to combine socialism with communism, communism is the far-left. It’s called far, because it represents an extreme version of it. While capitalism is usually associated with the right (not always), while the far-right is deeply rooted in, well, let’s just say if you don’t know it by now then you probably never will no matter what anyone says.
You’d do well to remember there are very big differences between each step.
You also completely glossed over the fact that the weak does get weeded out, because capitalism is based on one’s worth being determined by one’s abilities and circumstances. It’s a directly deterministic ideology. If you do well, you get paid more, but if you’re so bad you can’t hold a job then you don’t get paid at all. So those who can’t do well because of handicaps and such, suffers debt & often early deaths. Privatized insurance takes on the role of helping the handicapped, but without rights like in socialist countries, then there’s little to no regulation of ways to screw over the handicapped for the sake of increasing profits.
But remember, the fatal flaw in your arguments is that capitalism works great as an ideal. Only as an ideal. It’s like the communists thinking the ideal of communism is great, yet it has always been riddled with corruption. Because the system itself doesn’t distribute the power properly.
I’m not a social democrat btw. I may seem like it, but I’m actually more of a believer in a meritocracy.
It’s just foolish to believe capitalism leads to optimal distribution of resources though.
“have any of you actually tried communism? it works well in my experience”
Laughs in 94+ million dead worldwide
Excuse me, but let me tell you, there are ideologies in the 30’s and 40’s that accumulated WAY BIGGER “dead worldwide” numbers than the ideology of communism, that we know, IF YOU HAVE EVER READ A BOOK, has never been implemented in its true form!
oh yeah?
which ideologies would that be?
pretty sure no other ideology even comes close when it comes to (FRIENDLY) death tolls.
I am not a huge fan of Jordan Peterson, but one of his speeches really resonated with me. It went along the lines of, if there ever was and utterance that should condemn a person instantly and without any recourse, it’s “Communism was never tried in it’s true/proper form”. What it implies is that if only you yourself (or another person you find worthy) was at the helm, the attempt at building communism would result in an actual utopia.
To have the chutzpah to think that, after the untold millions who died directly and indirectly in the attempts of making communism work during the 20th century! Jordan is right, after saying that, nothing can redeem you. I dearly hope you never achieve even a smidge of power over others.
But that is where you are wrong, I never stated I should be the one in charge, there are people better suited for that, for an example, Bernie Sanders. I was just saying the way of running things (communist system) has never been implemented right or outside situation was unfavourable.
Personally, I would see myself contributing 100% in a communist system in field of culture and arts. I am not a manual labourer or truck driver for an example, I could only contribute at most 90% of what other people could, so I would be unoptimal for those works in real communism.
For an example, Cuba and Castro had no control over USA disgustingly blocking entire the country, which led to dried up exports and imports.
Oh? How adorable! Off to the prison camp building sailing canal between two seas. Hard labour will scourge those burgeoise tendencies right out of you!
You want to know what crime you commited to deserve this? “Insufficient dedication to the party efforts”.
I do not have “burgeoise” tendanancies, thank you very much, and it would be favourable if we would not go to insults here and would try to stay constructive.
What you just said just proves people have no idea that real communism would work.
You know there are other economic perspectives than Von Mises’s school, right?
Also, you still seems to wrongly assume that economic freedom is intrinsically desirable. Flash news: for most people it really isn’t. At the very least, it’s something to weight against other values and forms of freedom - environmental concerns, social/labor security concerns, and so on.
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Books are over rated. I read one once. It was called “The very hungry caterpillar”.
That’s two months of my life i’ll never get back.
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The initial troll was good but the one claiming capitalism is good was even better
Freedom is intrinsically valuable because it produces better results.
What other schools?
Marxism? Completely discredited and categorically wrong and damaging.
Keynesianism, completely bastardized by central banks and governments, abject failure leading to the present problems in our system.
Those concerns can all be alleviated in a free system in any case so your point is moot. Having the state solve them only creates more problems.
Your equation missing the variable “Onyxia”.
So, by your logic, environmental and labor laws are inherently bad just because they limit economic freedom?
I mean, we’ve already seen what happens in a free, fully deregulated system - just look at Northern Rock, Lehman Brothers or AIG. The solution is not Marxism, Keynesianism or whatever other school you feel the need to bash on, but a fair system with clear and efficient rules that can ensure a thriving economy while limiting the possible risks and damage the market can cause.
This thread has truest been the best troll bait in years! It’s till going over two weeks after it started! OP has been elevated to top tier troll!
Who ever does that troll raising system needs to make them all 10’s!
On a side note and to fan the flames, I wonder of all the people advocating for the socialist utopia of communism figured out that to whole premise of it relies on every one having the exact same IQ, same level of education and same aptitude’s for jobs. People must be equal themselves before that style government can exist, and social communism type situations tend to base themselves off the lowest common denominator, why should the intelligent industrious person strive to work harder if the lazy lout who lives next door just wants to sit on his but playing wow 24/7/365… unless of coarse there is some state appointed mandate or a labour quota… oh dear… we’re getting very close to a work or off You go to the gulag ideals right now…
As much as the whole capitalism thing sucks for a lot of people it does reward the higher educated, higher IQ, higher drive type people, it’s just it’s a multigenerational thing which means if your great grandparents / grandparents / parents were lazy or stupid you’re pretty messed up as a result, all you can do is pass it on and hope your grandchildren will benefit from your efforts if you’re good enough to rise. It could be three/four generations of effort to break from one class to the other. And very few people are willing to admit they aren’t the sharpest tool in the shed, ego is a bugger! And before anyone says why do I feel I’m smarter than that, I’m not… I’m
A dumbass… just a highly educated one.
Those are a result of immense interference by government. The near opposite of free system. Without government protection (paid for by those companies), they would be completely wiped off an actual free market. But that’s an aside.
Labor laws and environmentalism are whole different can of worms, but there is no reason to believe they can only ever be present via government fiat. If government protected corporations didn’t wipe out the unprotected environmentally and socially conscious small players…
Uh… no, it’s the exact opposite. Between the Clinton and the Bush administration, nearly every restriction to the stipulation of mortgages was removed and this caused the massive surge in subprimes and derivatives that led to the crash of these institutions (NR and LB because they were indebted banks, AIG because it was deeply indebted in credit default swaps with LB). And the government’s decision to let LB fail, instead of saving it, is what ignited the financial crisis.
This is as stupid of a narrative as it possibly gets. The “environmentally and socially conscious small players” you speak of have absolutely no way of competing with unregulated enterprises that sustain no cost to reduce their impact on the environment. Just look at the world and you’ll see that, everywhere in the world, the best countries in terms of environmental protection are those that actually enable laws in this sense. Same story with labor laws - just look at European and Anglo-saxon countries and you’ll see the difference.