40 helpful tips for Anti-Communists.

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You are only talking about one type of planned economy. Look up anarcho-collectivism and anarcho-communism.

my point was it was hypocrisy for her to criticise a institution that she spent her career criticising and later depended on while at deaths door.

So why is it when libertarians like Rand pay in (as we all do) then when they take it back its claiming back their dividends when they need it and when anyone else does its theft or larceny?

Just for the record, the US was instrumental in the Ba'ath Party rising to power in Iraq, and they are still very far from a stable nation. The rising economy is all oil-based, with the majority of the cash going to US corporations and the elite Iraqis with government connections.

The people who rebelled against Gaddafi were a loose groups of individual tribes and "freedom fighter" organizations who largely opposed some of his most recent initiatives to give women the right to vote, surrendering all nuclear development programs for aid from the west, and to provide every citizen with a share of the oil profits. Don't get me wrong, Gaddafi was an absolute turd, but no one bothered to think what would happen to all those weapons and supplies we provided the rebels. A large portion are now being employed in Syria by a whole host of loosely allied terrorist groups (fighting on both sides). The only focus was: Gaddafi is bad. Let's get rid of him. Pretty standard for western involvement in the Middle East.

And the bloodshed and power struggles in Libya are far from over.

These are not black and white situations, and make for poor examples.

31. Preach populist left-wing pseudo-socialism 90% of the time... b***h about capitalism 99% of the time, but balk when someone suggests Communism as an alternative

Well they nailed me.

You seem to have really weird taxes in your country, if you dont benefit from them.

I pay oil taxes, and they are used for building streets and similar traffic infrastructure. Until now, noone has denied me to use them, because of me having payed for it, and so being forbidden to benefit from it myself.

The same goes for the health insurance taxes. Until now, I have not been denied health care with the reasoning, that I payed for it, and so was not allowed to benefit from it.

I payed as well social taxes, but noone ever told me, that I was only allowed to visit public Kindergarten and school, if I sign a contract, that I will later not pay any taxes for it.

As well that even when I was paying job insurance taxes, I have not been denied, unemployment help, when I was unemployed for short time.

So exactly what kind of taxes are you paying, that only goes to others, while the benefit of them is denied to you? O_o

My country is full of taxes, but unless yet, I have not heard of one, that I was denied the benefit of a certain tax, while being forced to pay for it?

How about providing any historical examples of socialism/communism working well, OR at all.

And don't say China, since even they have completely endorsed capitalism. Ask the folks who lived in the USSR how it worked, or ask any Cuban, or Venezuelan how it's working for them.

I think more then about 50%of the western european countries have social based democracies. Actually it works pretty fine for me, thanks for asking. You can as well ask millions of people, living in rather nonnoscial, and capitalistic countries, that live a sh***y life. So both systems produced well functioning systems, and garbage.

But most of the time it's neither.

Take your upthread example of cleaning toilets. To me, that's a neutral activity. I do it frequently in my own home and so should you and so should everybody. Many years ago I also did it professionally as part of my job as a post-move-out cleaner (I cleaned the apartments in a complex after the tenants moved out to ready the apartment for the next tenant). Like so very much work it was neither liberating nor enriching nor punitive nor degrading. It was just a way to earn money.

Trying to shoe-horn jobs into this false dichotomy is a real disconnect from work. I support the legislation to make work safe and fairly paid (OSHA and minimum wage in the U.S.). When work is not reasonably compensated or made as safe as it can be within the definition of the job (being a cop will never be truly safe), this is a failure of the legislation or its enforcement. But I don't think it's reasonable to try to divide all work into this false dichotomy and then label all the jobs that don't fit in the liberating/enriching category as somehow being akin to slavery and shouldn't be done by any human. A lot of work is neutral and the problems with it are problems of unfair financial compensation or unsafe/unfair working conditions.

For the record, the sewer cleaners in your upthread example are well compensated, at least in the U.S.

http://money.howstuffworks.com/10-high- ... htm#page=6

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ80lwz6uWg[/youtube]

What kept the Ba'ath Party in place was the USSR. Gorbachev didn't turn his back on Saddam Hussein until the early 1990's, Castro and Chavez supported him to the bitter end, and most European socialists didn't want the west to intervene, since Saddam Hussein had every right to invade Kuwait. The oil was nationalized in 1967; the US didn't get a drop of it, so why would they want to be allied with the Ba'ath Party?



This is how revolutions usually work (Cuba, Iran, the USSR and so on)--whether we're talking about people's rebellions, a petite burgeois who wants a bigger slice of the cake or simply a guerilla who wants to rule the country.



Nobody said it was. Revolutions usually do not mean that the people instantly gets peace once the tyrant is gone. Regardless, Libya is actually growing, after years of economic hard times.



Since they're not black-and-white situations, then we're not talking about imperialism, but difficult choices and the fact that powerful democratic nations have a responsibility.

41. Join the communist party!

Define "socialism".

China is not a capitalist country. Even though international coorporations are established there, the economy is highly regulated and centralized.

Modern China can be classified as a mixed economy, as there are elements of market capitalism in place and they trade heavily with capitalist countries.

More on topic, the article you reference to pretty much lists arguments against totalirarian communism not communism in general. One could make the argument that true communism has to be totalirarian to some degree I suppose.

I've more recently seen communism as a method of developing a country rapidly. In cold economics, communism is pretty efficient at developing countries whose economies are outdated. The gains will outweigh the losses if the economy transitions to a different form of socialism or a form of capitalism after a certain amount of time. This is the problem however, as inept regimes are pretty much required for this to happen and inept regimes are much less efficient by definition. A stable efficient regime will stay in power and not transition according to my model. You see this happening in china today.

In recent years I've usually advocated for a socialist government system different from communism. I think that in the future capitalism will not make sense due to the advanced means of production that will be present. Eventually billions will be unemployed due to automation being a much cheaper alternative (robots). How will capitalism work when there are many many people who literally can't get a job? Some sort of socialist system would have to be in place so the population can actually get resources for themselves that goes beyond simple welfare.

Any country that isn't Hong Kong and North Korea is a mixed economy. China's economy is heavily centralized and key decisions are made by politicans, thus it's socialist.



Karl Marx wrote that during the first phase of communism, despotism might be inevitable (although I doubt that he imagined monsters like Lenin, Stalin and Mao).



The gains would be superior without communism. The difference between North and South Korea is the perfect example here.



If the Russian revolution had never happened, Russia would be on par with the rest of Europe today.



The unemployment today in the US hasn't been lower since 2007. The unemployment rate during the great depression would sometimes reach 35%, back when the assembly line and the AM radio were the pinnacle of technological achievements.

Last edited by Kurgan on 23 Jan 2014, 2:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ya know? As a slacker, maybe communism IS the right way to go. hey! I can slack off and be as lazy as I want to be, and society will still take care of me. Anyway, why bother putting in too much effort, because whatever extra I do will be taken and distributed among all of the community.