communeart said:

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This.  I am consistently amazed that people who produce and want to keep the fruits of their labor are branded selfish and greedy while the loser assholes who don't produce but want to take from others are not.

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i am as well, fuck the rich bastard exploiting my work.

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Perhaps the most fundamental problem is that socialism eliminates all competition and creates a monopoly of massive scale (with police and legislative power to boot) in order to prevent the amassing of wealth and undue influence in certain.  What the fuck?  It doesn't even make sense in with the simplest analysis.

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human nature is competitive, socialism help keeping down that nature so that the product of work is distributed to the maximum efficiency for all there is no need to reinforce the competition nature of humans, it is already very strong.

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I swear to god that I hadn't read anna's post yet when I mentioned, in the above, that the examples of capitalist failings are inevitably the most highly regulated and restrained industries- specifically naming banking  and medicine.

Seriouslyl...

I'm very impressed with myself that I predicted this, and very disappointed that anyone is convinced by these examples that are so spectacularly bizarre.

Now, Anna, please explain how the massively regulated banking/investment and healthcare economies are examples of free markets failing?

Is there any industry you could pick that has more government intervention and regulatory actors with legislative authority?  To call this capitalist and an archetype of capitalist failings is absurd on its face.

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the fact that it has become massively regulated and a healthcare economy is one of the proof that capitalism always or often end up in cronyism, just saying. i might be wrong. my main point to this is how do you enforce true capitalist competition in a capitalist system? profit always go down as competition comes into play, it requires imperialism or new technology to gain a higher profit rate. when there is no or close to no profit being made anymore, the system is fucked. there can never be a true capitalist system, because it doesn't work for the capitalists themselves and they rule society.

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So don't work for him.  By the way, you are exploiting his work as well

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Forget the competitive nature (which is debatable) and "maximum efficiency for all" slavery (that is what it is) what about simple incentive?  Who would work if not compelled to by some force?  I would much prefer the compulsion not be supplied by men with guns.

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That's pretty greedy of you.  And yet you would waltz through my door, confiscate my goods and give them to him.  What a mensch.

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You do not enforce capitalism, you can only enforce socialism.

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They don't want the government to protect them quite as much as it seems to be tending towards.  Examples include nanny state bullshit about transfats and salt,  They think they can do a better job themselves.  For most of the country that is entirely correct. 

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The greatest single force for human suffering is communism.  By far.  No system will ever alleviate all human suffering and failure and it is ludicrous to destroy personal freedom in the quest for that unicorn.  The harder you try the worse it gets.

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the first and second world war,starvation,crime,state corruption, illiteracy,genocide, death due to preventable disease, death due to lack of healthcare such as during childbirth, anticommunist repression/american funded deathsquads,colonial wars, ethnic rivalry caused by colonialism like rwanda,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Book_of_Capitalism

is it really so fucking hard for any capitalist to believe that capitalism causes war? i mean what the fuck .

as for the black book of communism ,how can you argue taht famine was not due to incompetence of the regime?

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Two of the Black Book's contributors, Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Margolin, sparked a debate in France when they publicly disassociated themselves from Courtois's statements in the introduction about the scale of Communist terror. They felt that he was being obsessed with arriving at a total of 100 million victims. They instead estimated that Communism has claimed between 65 and 93 million lives.[25] They also rejected his equation of Soviet repression with Nazi genocide. Werth said there was still a qualitative difference between Nazism and Communism. He told Le Monde, "Death camps did not exist in the Soviet Union",[26] and "The more you compare communism and nazism, the more the differences are obvious."

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the first and second world war,starvation,crime,state corruption, illiteracy,genocide, death due to preventable disease, death due to lack of healthcare such as during childbirth, anticommunist repression/american funded deathsquads,colonial wars, ethnic rivalry caused by colonialism like rwanda,

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zappaisgod said:

I think the combined murders committed by Stalin Mao and Pol Pot may well have eclipsed the two world wars.

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The greatest single force for human suffering is communism.

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zappaisgod said:

Oh yeah?  Pick something else that has killed or enslaved billions of people.

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For fuck sake start your own business.  I did.  It isn't that hard if you have a work ethic and a reasonable amount of intelligence.


I think the combined murders committed by Stalin Mao and Pol Pot may well have eclipsed the two world wars.  And capitalism does not cause war.  That is utterly fallacious.

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The total number of casualties in World War I, both military and civilian, were about 37 million: 16 million deaths and 21 million wounded. The total number of deaths includes 9.7 million military personnel and about 6.8 million civilians.

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World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history. Over 60 million people were killed. The tables below give a detailed country-by-country count of human losses.

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luvdemshrooms said:

zappaisgod said:

Oh yeah?  Pick something else that has killed or enslaved billions of people.

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Religion.

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communeart said:

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For fuck sake start your own business.  I did.  It isn't that hard if you have a work ethic and a reasonable amount of intelligence.


I think the combined murders committed by Stalin Mao and Pol Pot may well have eclipsed the two world wars.  And capitalism does not cause war.  That is utterly fallacious.

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i don't have any fucking money, because i am poor. you know i'm starting to suspect you sold drugs to start up your business, but i will leave you the benefit of the doubt.

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The total number of casualties in World War I, both military and civilian, were about 37 million: 16 million deaths and 21 million wounded. The total number of deaths includes 9.7 million military personnel and about 6.8 million civilians.

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World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history. Over 60 million people were killed. The tables below give a detailed country-by-country count of human losses.

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that makes 76 million people.  now if you could understand the obvious, taht the black book of communism is fucking stupid. that starvation in the third world is the SOLE responsibility for capitalism. that unlike starvation in communist regime which was due to incompetence, IT IS A WELL KNOWN,ACCEPTED AND TOLERATED FACT, even by you, who will then claim that africans gotta stop reproducing themselves.

now tell me how many people were directly executed by communist dictators? there is 600 000 by stalin , which all communist despise, and i think about 100 000 by mao.

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Holy shit

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Mao's policies and political purges from 1949 to 1976 are widely believed to have caused the deaths of between 40 to 70 million people.

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You are now officially a representative of the Twilight Zone, where fact and fiction have no boundary.  By that I mean you are a liar.

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you know man, i'm really sick of arguing with other people, i mean, you accuse me of bloody murder, and you know, i'm not an anarchist, i just think every revolution requires bloody murder, just like the american revolution, just like the french revolution. else it ends up like the paris commune. i just want a world without war, without starvation, without political corruption. you seem to be content with the world the way it is, i mean that's just it. you are happy with a war every 20 years, you are happy with 50-60 million people dieing each year, and you might not be happy with political corruption, but you sure as hell won't propose to do anything about it except elect the 'right' person.

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What in your fantastic world has ever led you to the notion that corruption is not a main feature of every communist government that ever existed?  There will never be a world without starvation, people are animals and reproduce to the limit, or wars, some people demand dominion over others.  My belief is that those things are best tackled through individual freedom for those who do not abuse it and withheld from those who do.

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Communist superpowers fight to rule the world.  Capitalism, since it does not involve coercion, spreads best in peace time.  Communism, since it requires coercion, spreads only through conquest.  Contrast the two Russian revolutions in the 1910 (millions dead) and the 1980s (none dead, as far as I know).

And at this point you have to be an egregious idiot to think we fought in Iraq to get oil.  Because we didn't fucking get any.  There is some serious neuronal sclerosis going on if this is still being bandied about.

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Mao's policies and political purges from 1949 to 1976 are widely believed to have caused the deaths of between 40 to 70 million people.

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What in your fantastic world has ever led you to the notion that corruption is not a main feature of every communist government that ever existed?  There will never be a world without starvation, people are animals and reproduce to the limit, or wars, some people demand dominion over others.  My belief is that those things are best tackled through individual freedom for those who do not abuse it and withheld from those who do.

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communeart said:

religion kept people backward for a long fucking time. communist fought religious dogma for a long time as well , we were excommunicated from church for being communist, seriously zappa, you have no respect for people who are spat on by the majority of this society without having an adequate idea of their ideas. when you talk about capitalism, am i screaming bloody murder for the crime i believe to be linked to capitalism? but taht's what you do and it's frigging double standard.

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why do i ahve to tell college kids about communism and they come up with stupid stereotypes like omg, everyone is paid the same, doctor or janitor. then when i explain them it isn't so. they say that they don't give a fuck about politics. this is exactly what i mean, people who dont give a fuck about politics, but would beat your ass for politics. just like if i was a communist 80 years ago, i would be spat upon for being atheist. and you, my friend, do not respect our tenacity and hard will.

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if anything ,you should think about the freedom fighters of america  or france and their persecution before the revolution.

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zappaisgod said:

Oh yeah?  Pick something else that has killed or enslaved billions of people.

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War
But since you were talking about "the greatest single force for human suffering"...
Maybe something more abstract like greed?
Hard to tell for sure, but it's quite definitely not the concept of communism...
And did I mention that the regimes of Mao and Stalin had little to do with (marxist) communism?

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There is no crime linked to capitalism.  Not even theft.  Theft is no less a problem iun communist society than in capitalist society.  Nor does capitalist society preclude charity and compassion.  What is NOT compassion is one select group of individuals (for instance a ComIntern) that decides who gets their property confiscated and who receives it.  You live in a fucking fantasyland.  Chutes and ladders and candy from unicorn breasts.

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Do not for one second think I am a college student with false notions of the evils of communism.  And your hard will, tough guy, is, unfortunately for you, directed falsely at theft and not so much toward actually working.  Oh yeah, I'm an atheist.  But I'm not an atheist because I am compelled to be, Komrade.  And I have never been spat on.  It would be a bad idea.  You have no fucking idea what tenacity and hard will are.

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Tell me about the wonders of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.  As well, the American Revolution was about individual freedom.  Something that is utterly nonexistent in a communist state.

Another bit of nonsense in your previous post which I failed to respond to was that bullshit about starvation in Africa caused by capitalism.  Starvation in Africa is caused by too many people and too few resources.

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zappaisgod said:

Another bit of nonsense in your previous post which I failed to respond to was that bullshit about starvation in Africa caused by capitalism.  Starvation in Africa is caused by too many people and too few resources.

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What causes the war and the killing?

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Metamorph said:

zappaisgod said:

Another bit of nonsense in your previous post which I failed to respond to was that bullshit about starvation in Africa caused by capitalism.  Starvation in Africa is caused by too many people and too few resources.

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It's actually not that simple. Just think about pirate fishing by international trawlers just off the West African coast and the consequences for local fishermen. Or about capitalist countries and companies buying off ressources from various African countries, and the long-term consequences for their own developing economy again...

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What causes the war and the killing?

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Greed?

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I guess maybe.  Thirst for dominion and power over others.  Is that greed, necessarily? 

I think it is a genetic feature of humanity, to tell you the truth, since it is so completely pervasive in that at least some individuals in almost all societies desire it.  I don't think there are any bonobo human societies.

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I guess maybe.  Thirst for dominion and power over others.  Is that greed, necessarily? 

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I'd say it boils down to the same

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I think it is a genetic feature of humanity, to tell you the truth, since it is so completely pervasive in that at least some individuals in almost all societies desire it.  I don't think there are any bonobo human societies.

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Yeah, I'm afraid so. Something for Philosophy etc.