Dummy economic theory

[Carl]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7858686

Taverner  (1000+ posts)          Sat Mar-06-10 05:06 PM
Original message
I've posted this on other boards - so how about here: Why is Capitalism better?
   
Edited on Sat Mar-06-10 05:07 PM by Taverner
I don't think it is. It's what we have for now, and so one should do their best within the system they've got, not the one they want.

Honestly, for most people, Socialism is better. I am not talking Marxist Leninism, Rousseau, or any specific theorist.

Socialism is simply the economic model where the public or direct worker owns and administers the means of production and allocation of resources.

As a broad concept, why is this not better than Capitalism?

That is because you are an idiot.

humpty dumpty (6 posts)        Sat Mar-06-10 05:10 PM
Response to Original message
1. Why is Capitalism better?
   why is capitalism better? Because it works?

Bad poster...

Taverner  (1000+ posts)          Sat Mar-06-10 05:13 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. Socialism works. No one's ever tested distributism.
   Socialism works right now in Europe, in hybrid economies

Your ignorance speaks for itself.

Warren Stupidity  (1000+ posts)          Sat Mar-06-10 05:15 PM
Response to Reply #1
4. Actually capitalism has reached its limits and no longer works.
   It is a system that requires perpetual growth and works only within an infinite resource environment. We have reached the limits of growth, we have smacked into global warming and peak oil, and capitalism is failing. The economic crisis we are very much still in has no particular solution within the framework of capitalism. Capitalist nations do not have the tools or political will to deal with the crisis at hand and so the solution is to do nothing. The results are not likely to be pleasant.
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Radical Activist (1000+ posts)          Sat Mar-06-10 05:22 PM
Response to Original message
8. It's better that state-socialsim with government run industry.
   That form rarely goes well. It killed millions under Mao and Stalin.
But as others have written, a decentralized socialist economy with direct worker ownership of companies appears to combine efficiency and fairness better than any economic system yet attempted.

Sit around the coffee table waiting for the welfare check discussion.

Alias Dictus Tyrant (343 posts)        Sat Mar-06-10 05:30 PM
Response to Reply #9
11. I think much of the argument is what constitutes "necessity".
   The reality is that no one is happy with genuine necessity and so the definition keeps getting ratcheted upward.

Most Americans I know define it as somewhere between "comfortable" and "the lifestyle I am accustomed to". And therein lies the problem

Which is the result of OMG capitalism,you admit that you need a reversion to poverty for socialism to take root.

Birthmark (1000+ posts)        Sat Mar-06-10 05:45 PM
Response to Original message
19. Capitalism doesn't work
   However, it is exceptionally good at hiding its failures. For instance, suppose a company goes out of business and leaves a property full of toxic chemicals. Who cleans that up? The government --you and me.

If a company underpays its employees, who makes up the difference between what the employee makes and what they need to survive? The government --you and me.

Capitalism appears to work. It's Invisible Sleight of Hand.

Paulsby tries to interject some sanity...

paulsby  (1000+ posts)        Sat Mar-06-10 05:45 PM
Response to Original message
18. capitalism results in more efficiencies and better products/medicine, etc
   which benefits EVERYBODY

increased efficiencies in agriculture, electronics, heck, practically everything disproportionately comes from capitalist countries? why? because there is incentive to make a better mousetrap.

socialism doesn't reward people.

there is a reason why nearly all the things that have improved our lives came from innovators in capitalist countries.


there is a reason why socialist societies had few innovations and decrepit infrastructure

Guess where that goes.

Birthmark (1000+ posts)        Sat Mar-06-10 06:19 PM
Response to Reply #18
26.  LOL
   "there is a reason why nearly all the things that have improved our lives came from innovators in capitalist countries."

Yeah, government grants, subsidies, tax breaks, guarantees, etc.

Can't beat the capitalism, eh?
   

Birthmark (1000+ posts)        Sat Mar-06-10 06:27 PM
Response to Reply #27
28. To an evidenceless post
   But hant that mantra, baby. Maybe the great God Market will make you rich! LOL

Um, the USSR was the first to reach space, the first to put a human in orbit, the first to land on the Moon, the ONLY nation to land on Venus to this day. They had the highest number of doctors per capita in the world, and a host of other firsts. (That said, their government was abhorrent.)

Your worship of the screwdriver, er, capitalism tool is amusing. However, overlooking capitalisms many, many drawbacks isn't very interesting.

38. What century are you living in?
   one thing is certain. i have yet to hear about teeming hordes trying to get IN to socialist countries.

metric assloads try to get out. many fail and die, even.

From what "socialist countries" is this happening? 

As for the rest, you are judging on a single dimension over a very limited time-frame. It amounts to little more than spin, I'm afraid. Capitalism, as practiced (and as it is always practiced) is about privatizing economic gains while socializing economic losses, environmental destruction, and social ills caused by capitalism.

So, yeah, if I could get someone else (or everybody else) to clean up my messes --economic, environmental, and social-- I'd look pretty damned good, too. I can't, and so, I'm stunningly average.

Unlike capitalism, though, I'm honest about it. Maybe if I bought some good PR...
   

Highlighted to laugh at the irony given global warming idiocy.

[The Village Idiot]

Can someone name me one country where the workers and NOT GOVERNMENT owns the "means of production"???

[Lord Undies]

Can someone name me one country where the workers and NOT GOVERNMENT owns the "means of production"???

I was about to ask the same question. 

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Can someone name me one country where the workers and NOT GOVERNMENT owns the "means of production"???

Yes, well, the government has to own it for them so the corrupt bourgeois don't try to steal it back. It's for their own protection.

No. Really.[/du]

[Carl]

Can someone name me one country where the workers and NOT GOVERNMENT owns the "means of production"???

I doubt there is one DUmmy that can even begin to extrapolate on the means and COSTS of production.
They think every product they desire or purchase was created free of charge,no tooling expense or justification of floor space/sales of product in relation to that floor space needed.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

I doubt there is one DUmmy that can even begin to extrapolate on the means and COSTS of production.
They think every product they desire or purchase was created free of charge,no tooling expense or justification of floor space/sales of product in relation to that floor space needed.

Typical capitalist reactionary comments. Who paid you? Halliburton?

You paid-off concern trolls will say anything to muddy the waters and confuse and scare people out of their rights because you hate prosperity for the poor, freedom and baby black Jesus and her husband, President Obama.[/du]


BTW - How'm I doin' on my DU trolling?

[Carl]

Typical capitalist reactionary comments. Who paid you? Halliburton?

You paid-off concern trolls will say anything to muddy the waters and confuse and scare people out of their rights because you hate prosperity for the poor, freedom and baby black Jesus and her husband, President Obama.[/du]


BTW - How'm I doin' on my DU trolling?

Okay...guilty,

So hate me.

[Lord Undies]

I doubt there is one DUmmy that can even begin to extrapolate on the means and COSTS of production.
They think every product they desire or purchase was created free of charge,no tooling expense or justification of floor space/sales of product in relation to that floor space needed.

"Cost of goods sold" was never the Little Goon's strong suit.  Also, I never hear about what to do with the human nature denied by socialism.

[jukin]

The thing about capitalism is that it has yet to kill close to 500 million people like socialism has.  So it has that going for it.

[JohnnyReb]

Give every worker an equal share of the company....by the end of the week half of them will have sold their share to buy dope....by the end of the year a hand full will own the company.....and we're right back where we started.

[USA4ME]

Taverner

Socialism is simply the economic model where the public or direct worker owns and administers the means of production and allocation of resources.

I consistently see posts on Skin' island where the primtives claim conservatives don't know what socialism means.  Well, let's use the above as a defintion since I see no one there has said it isn't.  Breaking it down:

"The economic model where the public owns and administers the means of production and allocation of resources."

And who is the public?  The government.  So gov't owns and administers the means of production and allocation of resources.

"The economic model where the direct worker owns and administers the means of production and allocation of resources."

As has been pointed out, where does this exist?  The only economy that even comes close to direct workers owning anything is under capitalism.

Socialism is where the gov't controls, and/or some imiginary place that doesn't exist where direct workers control.  Gov't control actually exists, the other doesn't.  When we conservatives say that socialism is gov't control, then we've been completely accurate.  I see no reason to discuss the "direct worker owns and administers" since there isn't an instance in socialist economies where it even exists.

And then, you get the occasional primitive who says things that all the rest of them believe but won't come out and say:

Fool Count

52. Not one single example? I will give you one.

Socialism worked just fine in USSR for over 70 years, turning a backwards illiterate
desperately poor peasant country into the second most powerful military-industrial
empire in the world. That happened also in the face of relentlessly aggressive
hostility from the rest of the world, and despite USSR having to fight several
costly wars, most devastating of which (WWII) left the country in complete ruin
and 25 million less in population. And, please, don't give me that crap, about how
terrible a totalitarian dictatorship USSR was. I was born and spent 25 years of my life
there, and it was nothing of the sort. It was a dynamic vibrant society full of happy, free
and creative people - it would not have been able to compete with the US for so long
otherwise. All the propaganda lies drilled into the brains of the gullible western
mass media consumers is just a reflection of how afraid the capitalist masters are
of people finding out that a human society can exist, thrive and progress without
a profit motive.

.

[JohnnyReb]

a human society can exist, thrive and progress without a profit motive.

....and in just a few years we can progress all the way back to making stone tools.

[Specbid]

Fool Count

And, please, don't give me that crap, about how
terrible a totalitarian dictatorship USSR was. I was born and spent 25 years of my life
there, and it was nothing of the sort. It was a dynamic vibrant society full of happy, free
and creative people ...

HAhahaha..."free and creative"? Yeah, creative in how they tried to get out of your damned country. Creative in how they amused themselves while standing in line for toilet paper or some effin' bread. Don't know of ANY athletes who visited the ussdamnedr, who defected to stay there. Don't know ANY people who were killed trying to get INTO the ussdamnedr. Oh, and DUmmie foolasscount,   and theussdamnedr.

[GOBUCKS]

All democrats, especially those in the DUmp, are socialists who hate the idea of a prosperous capitalist America, but the DUmp is sort of divided into two camps. On one side are all the DUmmies whose ultimate dream is to be a ward of the state. They're the ones who constantly trade tips on how to get in on the various disability scams, and spend their time complaining about how stingy productive people are with their money. They just want to sit at home and wait for checks from the taxpayers. On the other side are all the democrat DUmmies who yearn for a collapse of America resulting in an authoritarian communist dictatorship. This group includes the most ardent worshippers of the jug-eared muslim, the Yugo cheerleaders, and the socialized medicine hawks. These are the DUmbasses who think they would be the ones given lakeside or beachfront dachas by the American democrat Politburo. They actually believe that in communist America they would be the elite. I'm not sure which pack of DUmmies is the largest.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Dummy economic theory

A field as rich and valuable to human progress as the bovine take on quantum physics.

[Carl]

All democrats, especially those in the DUmp, are socialists who hate the idea of a prosperous capitalist America, but the DUmp is sort of divided into two camps. On one side are all the DUmmies whose ultimate dream is to be a ward of the state. They're the ones who constantly trade tips on how to get in on the various disability scams, and spend their time complaining about how stingy productive people are with their money. They just want to sit at home and wait for checks from the taxpayers. On the other side are all the democrat DUmmies who yearn for a collapse of America resulting in an authoritarian communist dictatorship. This group includes the most ardent worshippers of the jug-eared muslim, the Yugo cheerleaders, and the socialized medicine hawks. These are the DUmbasses who think they would be the ones given lakeside or beachfront dachas by the American democrat Politburo. They actually believe that in communist America they would be the elite. I'm not sure which pack of DUmmies is the largest.

That is as concise and accurate description of them as one will find.

[The Village Idiot]

So Socialism is Wal-Mart employees owning all the Wal-Mart shares? Don't most of them already own shares? They post the daily share price in the doorway to the break room at the Wal-Mart here. I doubt they would do that if the Associates didn't own any shares.