Don't Become a Sucker for Capitalists.

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For the last 85 years, conservative Capitalists have been yelling "Socialism" at every initiative designed to help most Americans, and "Socialist" at every opponent who wants to empower ordinary citizens with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. "Socialism" is thus the curse-word of choice for Republicans, used by them when President Roosevelt first proposed Social Security back in 1935.

Socialism is what they also call public empowerment -- Social Security, bank deposit insurance (FDIC), free and independent labor organizations (Unions), universal health care, subsidized housing and tuition -- anything that enables ordinary people to reach for and achieve the American Dream. So whenever someone on the Right cries "Down With Socialism", what they are really saying is "Down with People".

We don't want to live in a society in which economic Darwinism rules and only the richest and most powerful can endure. Our government simply must: (a) Regulate corporations, (b) Provide insurance against unforeseen medical hardships, and (c) Support government subsidies in education, infrastructure, and public transportation.

Why can’t we observe how countries with similar values as the US have implemented such things without descending into complete “big brother is watching you”->loss of rights->eventual anarchy?

It’s just very, very odd.

The next time you go outside in "Democracy" America, count all of the surveillance cameras that have been installed. You'll find them at intersections, in parking lots, on buildings, inside stores and offices, and even on private homes. We are already a "Big Brother" society, just like Socialist Europe and Communist China.

I believe a lot of people do want a social darwinism country. They might have second thoughts if it actually occurs but that is what they want. The whole American mentality is based on being too optimistic. Too many assume it will all work out in the end. Conservatives believe in a darwinist society the deserving (themselves) will get rewarded and the bad people will get punished. Trying harder is the answer to every problem.

Liberals believe we can educate ourselves out of every problem. When non liberals become not “ignorant” racism and poverty will go away

SJW’s believe we can censor our way out of everything.

All sides are under the false assumption that every problem has a solution.

The American Eagle, the Russian Brown Bear, and the Chinese Panda. Who will win the game of thrones in the end?

Edit: China is also represented by the Dragon.

The investors, of course!

"War is good for business." -- The 34th Rule of Acquisition

"Peace is good for business." -- The 35th Rule of Acquisition

There is a difference between intentions and results. For example after the BP Deep Horizon oil spill, the response team added a surfactant chemical in order to disperse the oil to facilitate more rapid environmental degradation. Based on all the knowledge at the time it was the right decision. As researchers at the university of Georgia determined years later it was exactly the wrong decision.

While the response team intended to facillitate environmental degradation of oil, the bacterial species that consume oil droplets actually prefer to consume the surfactant chemical instead. Thus in places where the oil had been dispersed by surfactant the forces that normally degraded oil where instead degrading surfactant. Thus the intervention by the well-meaning response team actually delayed environmental degradation of the oil and made the disaster worse.

All governmental socialist programs are well-intentioned, the question becomes "are people actually better off from them." The answer is not universal and in some cases decidedly difficult to answer. Government programs are necessarily funded by taxes or debt. Ever expanding debt is unsustainable, so for our purposes we can assume a stable society funds government programs through taxes. Taxes have a cost they remove money from the people who are taxed. Those people are less able to spend money how they see fit, instead a central government decides how that money is spent. Speaking strictly about economics the relationship between, tax revenue, economic growth and tax rates is represented by the Laffer curve. While various economists will debate where on the Laffer curve a given society is located, there is general consensus that this relationship exists.





So what does this mean? It means that a certain level of government is optimal for economic growth. This makes sense as some useful enterprises have profit margins to far out in the future for companies to invest and some have too large an initial investment for individual companies to feasibly manage. An example of both of these is basic scientific research and space flight. Basic scientific research pays considerable dividends to society but the paths are circuitous and usually decades away from useful products. A company investing in basic scientific research may not see the profits from their investment for 30 years. Space flight is an extremely costly endeavor that thus far can only be funded through government contracts (this may be changing in the near future.)


It also means that above the optimal level of government the economy suffers. Why? Governments operate through central decision making and extensive bureaucracy. Markets are far more efficient at allocating resources than governments. Thus when the government diverts resources from markets to government programs, the economy suffers.

Now economic growth is good for society and generally good for people but critics will point out that it does not one for one correlate with human welfare. A growing economy does not guarantee welfare for people at the bottom. It does not guarantee an even distribution of wealth to various sections of society. However, economic growth generally helps most people. Again this is consensus of economists of all stripes.

So government programs may help some people. They come at a cost though and the cost is efficient allocation of resources. So are we better off for them? It depends. It depends on what you value. With the same money you could fund 6 months of a national health system or 20 years of free college. Some programs are better than others.

I have learnt over the weeks how different American politics is in comparison to Australia in particular.
It is good that you have defined the context to be American politics.

Question: Is American right-wing politics truly as feral as many people here in this forum maintain?
Or are these harsh opinions merely the manifestation of partisanship?

But don't both political sides misrepresent each other through gross simplification?
The left can be categorised as virtue signalling, self-righteous and emotionalistic, which I believe in comparison to a conservative political viewpoint they are to a large extent, but that is hardly the entire picture, surely.

Part of the problem with left-wing politics is their position regarding economic.
Maggie Thatcher said it well:

The politics of envy featured large in the recent Australian erection.
And it failed decisively.

Here in Australia, every left-wing government besides the Hawke-Keating model was shown to be totally, completely and irredeemably irresponsible, fiscally speaking.
And the success of the Hawke-Keating government was predicated on infusing conservative policies into the socialist agenda.
Bob Hawke wasn't particularly on good terms with the far left of his party but his right-leaning leftist position served him well for an extended period with the Australian people.
Pragmatic socialism for the people rather than the virtue-signalling latte sipping well to do urban dwelling leftists of today worked back then.
The last erection was lost to the left to a significant degree due to sanctimonious, self-righteous, virtue-signalling, man-made-climate-change hugging alarmists of the far left.

Bob Brown's convoy using carbon emitting transport was hilarious hypocrisy which only helped with the conservatives win the unwinnable erection.
The Greens travelled thousands of miles from the socialist republic of Victoria to Queensland to protest the opening of the Adani coal development, only to be met by irate locals who depended on the mine for employment.
The local businesses even refused to serve the Green protesters.
And the protest was matched by anti-protestors in force.
Talk about the left and the Greens having a political brass ear. <chuckle>
It shows how out of touch the left here in Australia is with the "common" people.

The Left stated the election was a referendum on man-made climate change.
It put virtue-signalling ahead of the survivability/prosperity of the working people in Queensland and it failed.
It failed to fight for the workers since it no longer truly represented the people.

What most of the left here in Australia, at least, seem to ignore is the importance of having a strong economy so there is the financial strength to support social policies such as welfare, pensions and free medical care.

In America, your medical system, from what I can see, is an "abortion".
No wonder there is so much hate in political debates when such inequity is present.
Bad Republicans. <hit the elephant on the nose with a rolled up fake news paper>
But this inequity isn't the case in all conservative governments.

I am saying in essence:
-Gross simplification does not add to clarity.
-Gross simplification encourages groupthink.
-Amerika, get your shite together.
-Not all conservative government are against the people.
-Find a middle ground.
-No one political doctrine can cover the needs of all people.
-Just because you call yourself a socialist doesn't mean you are working for the good of the worker.
-And the best for last: Down with big business.

I wish I could tattoo a proper, narrow definition of capitalism on people's foreheads: Capitalism is a particular system of property rights which enable generational passing of affluence and a particular form of finance/ownership that centralizes familial wealth.

Yes I know early capitalist writers spoke greatly about the nature of commerce, but commerce has been occurring long before this system I just defined matured into what we know today. Understand the management of resource limitations and social engineering to accomplish a goal, be it profits or pyramids, is nothing new. Neither is free trade and understanding the basics of supply and demand. Neither is seeking patronage to begin a hopefully profitable venture. What is new is the proliferation of advanced technology which heightens the complexity of commerce.

How is it not obvious that capitalism as I have defined it is a mechanism to preserve dynastic influence in the absence of title by birth status? People laud the accomplishments of entrepreneurs, but actual analysis shows the wealthy to be overwhelmingly entitled to it by the merit of their ancestors, not themselves. This makes arguments by conservatives about capitalism and merit to be hollow and oxymoronic when this knowledge is paired with analysis regarding the life outcomes and general wellbeing of the various classes. Yes...on a probabilistic level, the child of wealthy parents will fare better than a poor child. They are, once again probabilistically, born with innate genetic advantages as their ancestors have adapted to resource abundance and lack of "survival stress." If you go back far enough, the disparity in nutrition was so severe that stunted growth among the lower classes was somewhat common.

Over generations this causes distinct social classes with severe inequalities. How exactly does one progress from barbarians with slight differences in living between social classes to the kind of disparities one would have seen in France by the reign of Louis IX? A successful collection of families codify their advantage, delude the masses into acceptance, and serially outcompete the rest as these differences widen. Sometimes power shifts and families fall and rise, or war (and various other crises) perturbs the steady passing of influence, but overall the system typically works as desired by those in control of it.

Capitalism is how you do this when society becomes too literate, wealthy, and culturally sophisticated to buy into titled aristocracy without revolution as the mercantile social climbers agitate the masses with an aspiration to noble privilege themselves.

Once you strip capitalism of its "commerce" connotations, being anti-capitalist appears rational unless one is a beneficiary of this system, in which case I severely distrust your motivations on the subject.

It's nice to redefine things how you like, but the definition of capitalism:

Google: "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state."

Merriam-Webster: "an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market"

Britannica:
"Capitalism, also called free market economy or free enterprise economy, economic system, dominant in the Western world since the breakup of feudalism, in which most of the means of production are privately owned and production is guided and income distributed largely through the operation of markets."

Synthesizing these definitions we can accurately state that capitalism is an economic system in which goods are privately owned and resources are allocated through markets. To be anti-capitalist is to be against either private ownership of goods or anti-market allocation of resources.


Well when you define something by other than its definition...



This assumes that ones own merits and the merits of one's ancestors are not linked. Take the children of famous athletes. They become successful athletes at a proportion far greater than the average person. Typically they receive from their parents good athletic genes, a focus on athletics at a young age, superior training, and a wealthy lifestyle. This all results in superior athletic ability to the general population. Their upbringing confers advantage, but if they're better athletes how can you say they aren't meritorious?



Thing about market capitalism is that no one is truly in control. Ask the Sears company how in control of the market they were? Or the A&P grocery chain that was once the mightiest in the land but nowadays most have never heard of. They were wiped out by a former Oklahoma farmer named Sam Walton. You may have heard of his family. American capitalism is littered with the corpses of once great companies that were out-competed by upstarts with better business models.

I'm not certain how to quote small portions of your text. The last time I tried that it just displayed the prompt for quoting in the brackets, literally. I apologize if this is difficult to read in context of your statements.

Yes I am against the private ownership of large economic entities. I will emphasize the word "ownership' as it is distinct from "management." So, by your words, I am "anti-capitalist."

No...this theoretical athlete's accomplishments are not entirely due to their individual merit. They owe a debt to every aspect of what you have mentioned which permitted them to be great athletes, especially the access to superior training and a wealthy lifestyle. An athlete who performs at an equitable level to this theoretical athlete who did not have access to superior training and a wealthy lifestyle is performing at a more impressive level in reality. The obstacles to that performance were greater. As to merit being linked, I suggest an examination of epigenetics and poverty. It is increasingly being found that those born into generational poverty have increased vulnerabilities (on a fundamental level that would be witnessed even if they were immediately transplanted to a wealthy environment) to environmental stressors that cause maladaptive behavior, whether this is increased vulnerability to PTSD or instant gratification shopping tendencies. This is a statistical statement, not an absolute one regarding all individuals. This is an adaptation through generations and yes it can be undone with correction of the circumstances causing these issues. It takes time of course. In this sense, much of the merit of accomplished individuals (barring clear displays of "outlier" talent and ability) is predicated upon birth circumstances.

Regarding the market and dying businesses....this is where I go back to my original definition of capitalism. It doesn't matter if "this" business fails or "that" one. The wealthiest families collectively own a sufficient diversity of assets that they're benefiting from general economic growth, not the specific success of a particular company. Only fools put their eggs in one basket, especially when planning long term dynastic inheritance of affluence.

Read my example again. I never said the athlete's accomplishments were due entirely to individual merit. What I said is if they perform better than people who did not have those advantages they are still better performing and more "meritorious" than someone who did not have those advantages but is worse performing.

There's a saying in basketball: "You can't teach height."

There are reasonable limitations to the distribution of genes which cannot be controlled and probably shouldn't be. However, the genomic adaptations to resource scarcity and constant stress are not reasonable, are unnecessary, and ought to be rectified as effectively as possible.

You may not be able to confer height, but you can confer the absence of the above limitations.

On the merit point, let's use a silly example. Let's say we're playing one of the "Battlefield" games and I am using assault weapons and you are exclusively using a knife. We might end up with the same K/D ratio and kill count, but what you have accomplished is far more impressive and everyone would realize it innately. It took more talent and skill to achieve that K/D and kill count.

Help workers of a major capitalist company.
https://act.united4respect.org/onlineac ... l_06052019

Certainly it is more impressive but it is not more effective. Let's change your scenario a bit. I am using a knife but only achieve 90% of your kill-death ratio. I'm honestly rubbish at real time games and don't play Battlefield or any similar game, but I'll assume based on real world mechanics that this is still a more impressive feat. Now for the basis of equivalency let's say I can only use a knife. That is either it is impossible to give me assault weapons or because I've used a knife my entire life I am better with a knife than with assault weapons.

There's a battlefield tournament. A person is putting together a team, and can recruit one of us to their team. Do they take impressive me with my cool knife skills, or you with the better kill/death ratio?

Or it put it this way: who is more deserving of the position on the team, the person who can only use a knife and gets an impressive kill/death ratio with that, or the person who has a better kill/death ratio?