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Ignotum
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04 May 2017, 3:02 am

Mikah wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
I have no problem with capitalism, as long as it's regulated to protect consumers and workers, and in which everyone shares in prosperity.


Last bit tends to be a sticking point, since the fair share is a matter of opinion and eternally shifting. In England now, not having internet access is considered abject poverty, right up there with having to walk 5 miles for fresh water as far as the Left are concerned. The poorest working people and even some of the non-working in Western societies arguably have more material wealth than kings of old. How do we decide if someone is truly sharing in the prosperity?


You take the items and services that the average middle class citizen has and then compare that to the same items and services that the poverty-stricken person has. Then the system itself should be regulated so that even the poor people have the same basic needs to function as the middle class person has, by comparing the two. Internet is so required and cheap in this day and age that I think not having it would be a fair measure of poverty. What is considered poverty in other places or what was considered poverty ages ago doesn't factor in the equation for me.



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04 May 2017, 3:05 am

Equality of opportunity cannot guarantee equality of outcome.



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04 May 2017, 2:31 pm

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06 May 2017, 5:50 pm

End-stage socialism:

Venezuela Is Starving

YARE, Venezuela— Jean Pierre Planchart, a year old, has the drawn face of an old man and a cry that is little more than a whimper. His ribs show through his skin. He weighs just 11 pounds.

His mother, Maria Planchart, tried to feed him what she could find combing through the trash—scraps of chicken or potato. She finally took him to a hospital in Caracas, where she prays a rice-milk concoction keeps her son alive.

“I watched him sleep and sleep, getting weaker, all the time losing weight,” said Ms. Planchart, 34 years old. “I never thought I’d see Venezuela like this.”

Her country was once Latin America’s richest, producing food for export. Venezuela now can’t grow enough to feed its own people in an economy hobbled by the nationalization of private farms, and price and currency controls.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuela- ... 1493995317


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06 May 2017, 5:55 pm

Darmok wrote:
Very good column in USA Today for any young folks (especially) who haven't yet been completely brainwashed by the SJWs of the Junior Socialist League:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2 ... /32613393/

"It is a common misconception that socialism is about helping poor people. Actually, what socialism does is create poor people, and keep them poor. And that’s not by accident."


Giving poor people what they need to live is bad?

DOES NOT COMPUTE


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06 May 2017, 11:37 pm

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12 May 2017, 4:36 pm


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Shrapnel
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12 May 2017, 7:23 pm

DarthMetaKnight wrote:
Darmok wrote:
Very good column in USA Today for any young folks (especially) who haven't yet been completely brainwashed by the SJWs of the Junior Socialist League:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2 ... /32613393/

"It is a common misconception that socialism is about helping poor people. Actually, what socialism does is create poor people, and keep them poor. And that’s not by accident."


Giving poor people what they need to live is bad?

DOES NOT COMPUTE


Poor people earning what they need to live is bad?



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12 May 2017, 10:19 pm

According to the conservatives and libertarians definition, the US in the 50s was socialist, and it was working pretty well; but then again they define as "socialist" everyone who ask for sane economic policies along with those making insane economic policies. Also, what is defined as "conservatives" and "libertarians" in the US are only peoples asking and making insane economic policies.


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13 May 2017, 2:15 am

I don't really know. As a "Kid" I just want to live my life peacefully and have access to higher education that is unbiased and transparent, but I don't want to be bored out of my mind in some strict and closed off society where no progress is made. No hidden agenda or conspiracy theories ruling my life. I want environmental protection so there's somewhere where I can get the hell away from people, and I want to travel the world freely with the possibility of taking my family with me and returning to the United States. I don't care what others say or want or do as long as it doesn't ruin my life. I experience things every day that both increase and decrease my loyalty to the US, not that it's ever been low enough for me to desire relocation, I'm generally happy. A few of the problems I do experience in this open market capitalism is the sh***y f*****g EXPENSIVE PRIVATE PARKING!! ! Also racism, which is worsened by a lack of limitation on the media and the bias in schools. I go to a school which is very left leaning, good for someone of my ancestry, but bad if I was conservative to any degree. I would be rejected immediately. Don't think I'm against free speech though, I dislike getting insulted but I want freedom of speech for myself and everyone else who I live with on a daily basis.

The US has always been an interesting country for me. I live here obviously so it's difficult to dislike a country that you love and live in, and where every thought you have is "American" in nature. I haven't even been out of the country. So as a result, I have two perspectives. On one hand I feel that it's easily the greatest country there ever was and I have total allegiance to it, and it's democratic and capitalist institutions don't interfere with my life and actually give me services I wouldn't get elsewhere. On the other hand I worry that there are better systems that I COULD be peacefully and happily living in, and I'm just so use to the one I'm in now. I read about the Norwegian human development and feel like Scandinavian socialism sounds like paradise, but then I'm literally getting this information from letters on a wiki page so I can never be sure.



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13 May 2017, 2:49 am

Darmok wrote:
Image


Its like a shield wall the vikings used to defend against arrows...I like it.


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13 May 2017, 2:53 am

Anyways f**k it, socialism is the way forward, democratic socialism with the people having a say that is the most important part...but really capitalism fails, for it to have any chance without screwing over most of the people it has to have elements of socialism. So its time people quit fearing the term socialism so much and think about what it really means. Oh yeah so terrible to try and have a system that serves people equally, instead of giving the wealthy special privileges.

I mean I have already 'fallen for socialism' I suppose, at least over unregulated capitalism. of course it actually has to serve the people otherwise it is false socialism and actually authoritarianism, which socialism and authoritarianism are a very, very bad mix. But democratic socialism certainly could be a way forward.


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13 May 2017, 3:00 am

Shrapnel wrote:
DarthMetaKnight wrote:
Darmok wrote:
Very good column in USA Today for any young folks (especially) who haven't yet been completely brainwashed by the SJWs of the Junior Socialist League:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2 ... /32613393/

"It is a common misconception that socialism is about helping poor people. Actually, what socialism does is create poor people, and keep them poor. And that’s not by accident."


Giving poor people what they need to live is bad?

DOES NOT COMPUTE


Poor people earning what they need to live is bad?


Just world hypothesis eh?

Come on man. Some people work hard for their whole lives and are still poor. Some people inherit their wealth and never have to work a day. If this doesn't sound so bad, you probably aren't poor.

Communism, socialism and anarchism exist because some poor people have nothing left to lose. If you have nothing to lose, you have nothing to fear.

Socialism is what you get when poor people fight for their rational self-interest. Thanks to the internet, the propaganda machine which spreads false consciousness is failing.


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27 May 2017, 3:42 pm

Why is Venezuela starving? It's the socialism, stupid.

With all that farmland, why are Venezuelans starving?

With all of the unrest, riots and murders in Venezuela these days, it’s easy to overlook one very basic question about the abysmal conditions its citizens are enduring. Venezuela has some of the richest farmland in the western hemisphere and was a net exporter of agricultural products until very recently. How can the people be starving? That’s the question being tackled at the Washington Post this week and the answer comes down to a single source: it’s the socialism, stupid.

Quote:
At a time of empty supermarkets and spreading hunger, the country’s farms are producing less and less, not more, making the caloric deficit even worse.

Drive around the countryside outside the capital, Caracas, and there’s everything a farmer needs: fertile land, water, sunshine and gasoline at 4 cents a gallon, cheapest in the world. Yet somehow families here are just as scrawny-looking as the city-dwelling Venezuelans waiting in bread lines or picking through garbage for scraps.

Having attempted for years to defy conventional economics, the country now faces a painful reckoning with basic arithmetic.

“Last year I had 200,000 hens,” said Saulo Escobar, who runs a poultry and hog farm here in the state of Aragua, an hour outside Caracas. “Now I have 70,000.”

The case of Escobar’s chicken farm is only one of thousands of such examples, but it’s an excellent one to describe the problems the farmers are facing. He had a ranch with nearly a quarter million hens in a country where people are starving to death. That would mean the opportunity of a lifetime in any free portion of the world. But the socialist regime in Venezuela has taken charge of every aspect of the food production and distribution supply chain. They determine how much Escobar will be paid for his eggs and it turns out to be a net loss for him rather than a profit. Unable to buy sufficient amounts of feed and new chicks to raise, Escobar’s farm is withering and will soon be gone.

That basic reality would be enough to put the farmer out of business eventually all by itself, but Escobar faces other problems as well. He’s been raided and extorted by both armed criminal gangs and government troops. They’re not paying anything for eggs or chickens… just taking them. And nobody from the government is protecting him. These are the hallmarks of socialism, particularly in its final throes. Insufficient law enforcement resources to protect the people and corrupt government and military leaders who roam the land taking what they want for themselves. So in a place completely capable of producing more than enough food for its citizens and their neighbors as well, farms are underutilized or sitting vacant, producing nothing.

The cause of the starvation is obvious. Even under the most benevolent of socialist regimes, the government is ill equipped to operate such a complex system. And this one is far from benevolent, with the party leaders more interested in ensuring their own comfort and security than that of the rank and file. But all of this was predictable because, as we’ve said here more times than I can count, this is how socialism ends. Every. Single. Time.


http://hotair.com/archives/2017/05/27/f ... -starving/


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15 Jun 2017, 2:03 pm

The Fruits of Socialism: Venezuela in Shocking 13 Photos

After spending 18 years under socialism, Venezuela has collapsed and is on the verge of having all of its institutions collapse around it as out of control debt has destroyed the country.


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15 percent of the Caracas population digs through garbage to eat.

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Even the animals in the zoo are starving.

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http://americanlookout.com/rms-the-sout ... ins-photos


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StinkyDog
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15 Jun 2017, 2:29 pm

Meh, there is also Sweden.