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airclay
Morbid and Wrong




Registered: 05/13/11
Posts: 2,788
Loc: Texas
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Re: Can we all agree [Re: Webster10]
#22336060 - 10/05/15 08:39 AM (8 years, 3 months ago) |
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Webster10 said:
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airclay said:
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Webster10 said:
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airclay said: what exactly are you referring to in your blanket "communism"? where has it been put into practices; and what were it's failures as both a whole to it's society and as systemic/intrinsic to (insert your blanket communism definition)?
It was put into practice in the USSR. It's failure is that the USSR ceases to exist and the people of Russia lived in poverty and oppression when it did exist.
are you reading a 9th grade history book?
Intelligent point you raise. Let me rebut. You're a stupid head!
If you'd like to take it ad-hominem then ok but, to be honest that's really the only place where communism would labelled and described as such. I find your simple conjectures on the nature of success, failures or practices of "communism" fall short of a full understanding of marxism and the critiques of capitalism.
last word, bye
-------------------- Give no fucks, take no orders, smash the prisons and the borders. Circle that A motherfucker!
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The Ecstatic
Chilldog Extraordinaire


Registered: 11/11/09
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Re: Can we all agree [Re: airclay]
#22336198 - 10/05/15 09:18 AM (8 years, 3 months ago) |
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Capitalism was tried in Rome and Rome failed therefore capitalism doesn't work.
Yeah, the transitive property doesn't really apply to economic philosophies and their real world attempts.
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Webster10
Up like Trump


Registered: 12/03/13
Posts: 9,966
Loc: Strawberry Fields
Last seen: 6 years, 3 months
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Quote:
The Ecstatic said: Capitalism was tried in Rome and Rome failed therefore capitalism doesn't work.
Yeah, the transitive property doesn't really apply to economic philosophies and their real world attempts.
When has a communist country ever prospered more than a capitalist one?
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The Ecstatic
Chilldog Extraordinaire


Registered: 11/11/09
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Re: Can we all agree [Re: Webster10]
#22336566 - 10/05/15 11:40 AM (8 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
Webster10 said:
Quote:
The Ecstatic said: Capitalism was tried in Rome and Rome failed therefore capitalism doesn't work.
Yeah, the transitive property doesn't really apply to economic philosophies and their real world attempts.
When has a communist country ever prospered more than a capitalist one?
Ill let you know once a communist country exists.
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Webster10
Up like Trump


Registered: 12/03/13
Posts: 9,966
Loc: Strawberry Fields
Last seen: 6 years, 3 months
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Do you belive one ever will?
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The Ecstatic
Chilldog Extraordinaire


Registered: 11/11/09
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Re: Can we all agree [Re: Webster10]
#22336705 - 10/05/15 12:14 PM (8 years, 3 months ago) |
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Probably not for another two centuries at least.
It will take a lot of change to bring about a feasible communist system, but I'm not ready to call it impossible.
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Webster10
Up like Trump


Registered: 12/03/13
Posts: 9,966
Loc: Strawberry Fields
Last seen: 6 years, 3 months
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Eh, I am
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The Ecstatic
Chilldog Extraordinaire


Registered: 11/11/09
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Re: Can we all agree [Re: Webster10]
#22337774 - 10/05/15 05:33 PM (8 years, 3 months ago) |
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well that's your opinion, I think we should at least try something first before we call it a failure. And even then, a failure could have nothing to do with the tenets of communism and everything to do with the people who implemented it.
All I know is I see the means to feed and clothe and house every person on this planet but it's not being done so the insanely wealthy can get even more insanely wealthy.
Now why do the wealthy get away with it? Because they hold the rest of us hostage with the economy. "Tax us and we'll have to fire people. Regulate us and we'll have to fire people." Etc. So it seems like a logical first step to take the economy out of the hands of the super wealthy and put it into the hands of the people. There's no universal law of society that prevents democracy in the economic realm. Why shouldn't we be able to come together as a society and say "Ok, here's what we have, and here's what we can produce, let's have a debate and take a vote on how best to use it to our advantage." Now, of course the scary part is ceding this power to the government. But by the time a populace has voted in favor of socialist policies, they're more than capable of continuing to vote to assure the system's efficiency. The transition from capitalism to socialism isn't even the hardest part. Moving from socialism to communism (which is essentially socialism without the coercion or existence of the state) seems to be an extremely difficult task.
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hostileuniverse
Stranger



Registered: 05/14/15
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Last seen: 6 years, 7 months
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Quote:
The Ecstatic said: well that's your opinion, I think we should at least try something first before we call it a failure. And even then, a failure could have nothing to do with the tenets of communism and everything to do with the people who implemented it.
All I know is I see the means to feed and clothe and house every person on this planet but it's not being done so the insanely wealthy can get even more insanely wealthy.
Now why do the wealthy get away with it? Because they hold the rest of us hostage with the economy. "Tax us and we'll have to fire people. Regulate us and we'll have to fire people." Etc. So it seems like a logical first step to take the economy out of the hands of the super wealthy and put it into the hands of the people. There's no universal law of society that prevents democracy in the economic realm. Why shouldn't we be able to come together as a society and say "Ok, here's what we have, and here's what we can produce, let's have a debate and take a vote on how best to use it to our advantage." Now, of course the scary part is ceding this power to the government. But by the time a populace has voted in favor of socialist policies, they're more than capable of continuing to vote to assure the system's efficiency. The transition from capitalism to socialism isn't even the hardest part. Moving from socialism to communism (which is essentially socialism without the coercion or existence of the state) seems to be an extremely difficult task.
Knowing you are serious is terrifying... You actually would condemn millions to impoverished conditions and suffering in the name of something you "think" could work...
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hostileuniverse
Stranger



Registered: 05/14/15
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The fact is, communism has actually been tried in america, it was tried by the pilgrims... and without further ado, I present to you, the TRUE story of Thanksgiving...
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The True Story of Thanksgiving -- The story of the Pilgrims begins in the early part of the seventeenth century ... The Church of England under King James I was persecuting anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil and spiritual authority. Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those who believed strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down, imprisoned, and sometimes executed for their beliefs." In England.
So, "A group of separatists first fled to Holland and established a community. After eleven years, about forty of them agreed to make a perilous journey to the New World, where they would certainly face hardships, but could live and worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from? From the Bible. The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example.
"And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work. But this was no pleasure cruise, friends. The journey to the New World was a long and arduous one. And when the Pilgrims landed in New England in November, they found -- according to Bradford's detailed journal -- a cold, barren, desolate wilderness." The New York Jets had just lost to the Patriots. "There were no friends to greet them, he wrote." I just threw that in about the Jets and Patriots. "There were no houses to shelter them. There were no inns where they could refresh themselves. And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims -- including Bradford's own wife -- died of either starvation, sickness or exposure. When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats.
"Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper! This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end. Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than as a devout expression of gratitude grounded in the tradition of" the Bible, "both the Old and New Testaments. Here is the part that has been omitted: The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well." Everything belonged to everybody. "They were going to distribute it equally. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well.
"Nobody owned anything." It was a forerunner of Occupy Wall Street. Seriously. "They just had a share in it," but nobody owned anything. "It was a commune, folks." The original pilgrim settlement was a commune. "It was the forerunner to the communes we saw in the '60s and '70s out in California," and Occupy Wall Street, "and it was complete with organic vegetables, by the way." There's no question they were organic vegetables. What else could they be? "Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage," as they saw fit, and, "thus turning loose the power of the marketplace. That's right. Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism.
"And what happened? It didn't work!" They nearly starved! "It never has worked! What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation! But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years -- trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it -- the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild's history lesson. If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future." If it were, there wouldn't be any Occupy Wall Street. There wouldn't be any romance for it.
"The experience that we had in this common course and condition,'" Bradford wrote. "'The experience that we had in this common course and condition tried sundry years...that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing -- as if they were wiser than God,' Bradford wrote." This was his way of saying, it didn't work, we thought we were smarter than everybody, everybody was gonna share equally, nobody was gonna have anything more than anything else, it was gonna be hunky-dory, kumbaya. Except it doesn't work. Because of half of them didn't work, maybe more. They depended on the others to do all the work. There was no incentive.
"'For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense,'" without being paid for it, "'that was thought injustice.'" They figured it out real quick. Half the community is not working -- living off the other half, that is. Resentment built. Why should you work for other people when you can't work for yourself? that's what he was saying. So the Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford's community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the under-girding capitalistic principle of private property.
"Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result? 'This had very good success,' wrote Bradford, 'for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.' ... Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s? Yes," it did. "Now, this is where it gets really good, folks, if you're laboring under the misconception that I was, as I was taught in school. So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians." This is what happened. After everybody had their own plot of land and were allowed to market it and develop it as they saw fit and got to keep what they produced, bounty, plenty resulted.
"And then they set up trading posts, stores. They exchanged goods with and sold the Indians things. Good old-fashioned commerce. They sold stuff. And there were profits because they were screwing the Indians with the price. I'm just throwing that in. No, there were profits, and, "The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London." The Canarsie tribe showed up and they paid double, which is what made the Canarsie tribe screw us in the "Manna-hatin" deal years later. (I just threw that in.) They paid off the merchant sponsors back in London with their profits, they were selling goods and services to the Indians. "[T]he success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans," what was barren was now productive, "and began what came to be known as the 'Great Puritan Migration.'
But this story stops when the Indians taught the newly arrived suffering-in-socialism Pilgrims how to plant corn and fish for cod. That's where the original Thanksgiving story stops, and the story basically doesn't even begin there. The real story of Thanksgiving is William Bradford giving thanks to God," the pilgrims giving thanks to God, "for the guidance and the inspiration to set up a thriving colony," for surviving the trip, for surviving the experience and prospering in it. "The bounty was shared with the Indians." That's the story. "They did sit down" and they did have free-range turkey and organic vegetables. There were no trans fats, "but it was not the Indians who saved the day. It was capitalism and Scripture which saved the day," as acknowledged by George Washington in his first Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1789,
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paperbackwriter
Edward Lear


Registered: 03/31/14
Posts: 1,888
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If you're going to quote Rush Limbaugh you should at least give him credit for his work.
Here's Rush's version and five more.
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/11/27/6-true-history-thanksgiving-stories-which-do-you-believe-158045
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The Ecstatic
Chilldog Extraordinaire


Registered: 11/11/09
Posts: 33,368
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Quote:
hostileuniverse said:
Quote:
The Ecstatic said: well that's your opinion, I think we should at least try something first before we call it a failure. And even then, a failure could have nothing to do with the tenets of communism and everything to do with the people who implemented it.
All I know is I see the means to feed and clothe and house every person on this planet but it's not being done so the insanely wealthy can get even more insanely wealthy.
Now why do the wealthy get away with it? Because they hold the rest of us hostage with the economy. "Tax us and we'll have to fire people. Regulate us and we'll have to fire people." Etc. So it seems like a logical first step to take the economy out of the hands of the super wealthy and put it into the hands of the people. There's no universal law of society that prevents democracy in the economic realm. Why shouldn't we be able to come together as a society and say "Ok, here's what we have, and here's what we can produce, let's have a debate and take a vote on how best to use it to our advantage." Now, of course the scary part is ceding this power to the government. But by the time a populace has voted in favor of socialist policies, they're more than capable of continuing to vote to assure the system's efficiency. The transition from capitalism to socialism isn't even the hardest part. Moving from socialism to communism (which is essentially socialism without the coercion or existence of the state) seems to be an extremely difficult task.
Knowing you are serious is terrifying... You actually would condemn millions to impoverished conditions and suffering in the name of something you "think" could work...
Millions are already in impoverished conditions because of something we KNOW can't work.
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hostileuniverse
Stranger



Registered: 05/14/15
Posts: 8,602
Loc: 'Merica
Last seen: 6 years, 7 months
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Quote:
The Ecstatic said:
Quote:
hostileuniverse said:
Quote:
The Ecstatic said: well that's your opinion, I think we should at least try something first before we call it a failure. And even then, a failure could have nothing to do with the tenets of communism and everything to do with the people who implemented it.
All I know is I see the means to feed and clothe and house every person on this planet but it's not being done so the insanely wealthy can get even more insanely wealthy.
Now why do the wealthy get away with it? Because they hold the rest of us hostage with the economy. "Tax us and we'll have to fire people. Regulate us and we'll have to fire people." Etc. So it seems like a logical first step to take the economy out of the hands of the super wealthy and put it into the hands of the people. There's no universal law of society that prevents democracy in the economic realm. Why shouldn't we be able to come together as a society and say "Ok, here's what we have, and here's what we can produce, let's have a debate and take a vote on how best to use it to our advantage." Now, of course the scary part is ceding this power to the government. But by the time a populace has voted in favor of socialist policies, they're more than capable of continuing to vote to assure the system's efficiency. The transition from capitalism to socialism isn't even the hardest part. Moving from socialism to communism (which is essentially socialism without the coercion or existence of the state) seems to be an extremely difficult task.
Knowing you are serious is terrifying... You actually would condemn millions to impoverished conditions and suffering in the name of something you "think" could work...
Millions are already in impoverished conditions because of something we KNOW can't work.
are you referring to capitalism? because everyone with a brain knows that has brought millions OUT of poverty...
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The Ecstatic
Chilldog Extraordinaire


Registered: 11/11/09
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Then why are most nations capitalist and most nations poor?
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hostileuniverse
Stranger



Registered: 05/14/15
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Quote:
The Ecstatic said: Then why are most nations capitalist and most nations poor?
Depends on what your definition of "poor" is, the poor in America live pretty fucking good...
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airclay
Morbid and Wrong




Registered: 05/13/11
Posts: 2,788
Loc: Texas
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Quote:
hostileuniverse said:
Quote:
The Ecstatic said: Then why are most nations capitalist and most nations poor?
Depends on what your definition of "poor" is, the poor in America live pretty fucking good...
what about folks that are living in singapore, taiwan, chile, mexico, peru, columbia uruguay, el salvador or guatemala?
-------------------- Give no fucks, take no orders, smash the prisons and the borders. Circle that A motherfucker!
Edited by airclay (10/06/15 08:14 PM)
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burgerbrain
Freedom Lover



Registered: 09/18/15
Posts: 962
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Re: Can we all agree [Re: airclay]
#22348353 - 10/08/15 12:56 AM (8 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
airclay said:
Quote:
hostileuniverse said:
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The Ecstatic said: Then why are most nations capitalist and most nations poor?
Depends on what your definition of "poor" is, the poor in America live pretty fucking good...
what about folks that are living in singapore, taiwan, chile, mexico, peru, columbia uruguay, el salvador or guatemala?
Capitalism is a natural economic form (of course it's going to be everywhere), while Socialism is a forced system using corruption, intimidation, brainwashing, and the stupidity of the American voter.
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The Ecstatic
Chilldog Extraordinaire


Registered: 11/11/09
Posts: 33,368
Loc: 'Merica
Last seen: 1 hour, 53 minutes
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Quote:
burgerbrain said:
Quote:
airclay said:
Quote:
hostileuniverse said:
Quote:
The Ecstatic said: Then why are most nations capitalist and most nations poor?
Depends on what your definition of "poor" is, the poor in America live pretty fucking good...
what about folks that are living in singapore, taiwan, chile, mexico, peru, columbia uruguay, el salvador or guatemala?
Capitalism is a natural economic form (of course it's going to be everywhere), while Socialism is a forced system using corruption, intimidation, brainwashing, and the stupidity of the American voter.

That's weird, because when our species was first getting its start, it was the tribes of people that prospered and survived and the solo artists died out.
There's a reason we've evolved with things like empathy, and altruism, it's because looking out for other human beings is beneficial to our race.
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hostileuniverse
Stranger



Registered: 05/14/15
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Quote:
here's a reason we've evolved with things like empathy, and altruism, it's because looking out for other human beings is beneficial to our race.
Problem is, confiscating someone's wealth to give to someone else IS NOT altruism or empathy...
Conservatives give way more to charity than liberals, and we do it with our own money
***insert slogan here
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The Ecstatic
Chilldog Extraordinaire


Registered: 11/11/09
Posts: 33,368
Loc: 'Merica
Last seen: 1 hour, 53 minutes
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Quote:
hostileuniverse said:
Quote:
here's a reason we've evolved with things like empathy, and altruism, it's because looking out for other human beings is beneficial to our race.
Problem is, confiscating someone's wealth to give to someone else IS NOT altruism or empathy...
Conservatives give way more to charity than liberals, and we do it with our own money
***insert slogan here
Two non sequiturs in one post.
My god boys, it's self sustaining
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