Profile: Impacatus
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• • Once more, Obama will be President!

  • Originally posted by Fishermage
    
    

    Please don't chop up my words.

    Are food costs spiralling out of control? Are people cryng for universal food service? no. That proves my point.

    I'm not saying anything is that simple. Socialism however, to the extent that it is used anywhere, fails. The more socialistic, the worse things are. That works everywhere at all times and all places, without exception.

    I decided that the private sector is better because in every place in every country in the history of earth, and we have hundreds of examples, it's better every time.

    The reason the entire world isn't capitalism is because only socialism keeps the people at the top on top, and that's what we have, more and more socialism, and more and more oligarchies taking control. Capitalism is a threat to the rich and powerful, so it is being killed by them wherever they can kill it.

    As far as successful socialist countries there are NONE. The on;y successful countries are capitalist countries, and they all have mixed economies, parasites that they support with the wealth produced by capitalism. The more capitalistic they are, the better they are doing -- and in some sense the more socialism they can support -- like a successful family can support the ne'er do well brother.

    The problemwith the private mercanary argument is, that MIGHT work, but we HAVE a constritutional liberal society, so I want to move forward from there. If we were starting out fresh I'd be willing to experiment with private security firms, but i like how the rule of law and constitutionalism evolved and feel it is best to stick with that UNTIL we start forming interpplanetary economies -- then we can experiment with full anarcho-capitalist systems. For now that is unrealistic. I am a pragmatist.

    Capitalism as we know it definitly comes from government and rule of law and constitutionalism. I love all of that. I am not an anarchist. I am a liberal.

    In the united states land came from government distribution of it -- again, the product of a liberal constitutional order. I know it came from government. I am a believer in liberal democracy, just not socialism.

     

     

    Why not?  You're responding point by point just like me.  The only thing that chopping up the post does is make it easier for the reader to understand which point a given section is responding to.  If you want to do it this way, fine, but if I have to waste time clarifying something to you that would have been obvious otherwise, I'm going back to section by section.

    You must be aware of the differences between food and healthcare/education as commodities.  Food has finite demand and requires relatively low skilled labor, to name a couple of differences.

    I suppose it's too much to ask for you to back up your claims about the relative success rates of the two systems.  Actually, your claims are in a way unfalsifiable, since you'll attribute any success in a country to market elements and blame any failure on the government.  However, could you at least try to explain the mechanism by which this phenomenon occurs?

    What is a government besides a large, powerful corporation?  What is a corporation besides a small government?  What is so different about their natures that you have absolute faith in the success of one and the failure of the other?

    In fact, if you have the kind of free market that allows monopolies and makes them the only thing between a worker and starvation, they have basically as much power as a government.  Perhaps more than a democratic government, since they're not accountable to the voters.  So what's so different about them that makes them superior?

    If capitalism was the magic national panacaea you claim it to be, I'm sure most leaders would embrace it.  It would be much better to be the leader of a rich, advanced, and successful country than a poor and dying one.  Even if only a minority of leaders went this way, the socialist countries would not have survived in the more warlike eras. 

    I think you're being rather inconsistant with your terminology.  One minute the US and Europe are socialist, the next they're capitalistic with mixed economies?

    So why is security different than any other industry?  You've been insisting this whole time that the private sector always does everything better than the government, why not put it in charge of defense, if you're so sure?  Why is there any doubt that it would work better, when you have none when it comes to other industries?  You're basically saying you want to use the less effective option out of tradition.

    So if you acknowledge that wealth began with the government re-distributing stolen land, isn't property itself force?  The only thing that makes a piece of creation yours and not someone else's is if you have the force to keep them off it.  You didn't make that land, you didn't buy it from the creator, only force makes it yours.  This doesn't mean anything in the real world, of course, but philosophically, I don't see how taking the use of land away from others is any less theft than taxation.

    You're really setting up a false dichotomy with capitalism vs. socialism.  It is, like I keep saying but you refuse to acknowledge, like arguing whether it's better to have modern medicine or an immune system.  You can have both.  They're not necessarily at odds with each other. 

    Would it ever be a rational economic decision for anyone but the government to build large scale infrastructure?  A road and highway network benefits almost everyone, but only a little bit in the short term.  As I see it, it's not worth the investment unless you directly benefit from everyone else's success, the way the government does through taxation. 

    Just out of curiosity, would you be in favor of putting an end to road building and maintenance?   Repealing child labor laws?  Anti employment discrimination laws?  Getting rid of the FDA?

    This doesn't have much to do with this discussion, but I think it's pretty demonstrably false that everyone has the same opportunity regardless of class.  Yes, once in awhile you see someone from a poor family get rich, but the vast majority of the poor stay poor, and the rich tend to say rich.  If it was truly equal, wouldn't the background of each social class contain proportional numbers of rich and poor? 

  • Posted: 11/13/08 4:53 PM
    General Discussion
• • Once more, Obama will be President!

  • Originally posted by Fishermage
    

    
    

    the fact is the subsidies are there to keep prices HIGH, and we would be better off if it were not sub subsidized as well. As America becomes more and more socialist, it gets harder and harder to find examples of free markets. I used food because it was a PRIMARILY market system, and does MUCH BETTER than health care or education which are now dominated by socialism, and are therefore failing.

    How are you measuring this?

    Basically all you are saying is because YOU believe in government and force, it's the better choice. No amount of evidence will convince you otherwise because your faith tells you so.

    You're the one preaching a faith, not me.  You've basically declared that logic is over and we already have the answer to life's problems.  You've decided that the private sector is better because it is.  That the government is always bad because it is.

    Believe it or not, I used to believe something similar.  It's only later that I realized nothing in life is ever that simple.

    I'll ask you again, in light of the fact the human body has a much better record than artificial medicine, do you still go to the doctor?

    If it were as easy as you say it is, the entire world would be capitalist by now.  As it is, there are plenty of relatively successful countries that you would consider socialist, and countries where the government is too weak and/or ineffective to control commerce are almost invariably in poverty.

    I don't believe in socialism or capitalism.  I believe in effective, rational decision making, whatever that concludes.

    The role of government is the protection of liberty and human rights; and the reason it should not be privatized is because it is the one thing that government is good at, and the one thing worth shooting people over -- which is all that government is for.

    Since government is how we will use force in our lives, we should only use it in those areas where force is a good thing.

     So why should my tax dollars go towards defending my neighbor's liberty?  If I want to spend money on that, I'll hire some private mercenaries.

    Has it occurred to you that capitalism as we know it comes from government?  For one thing, there's a body of civil law that make contracts possible, without which banking or running  a business would be much more difficult. 

    Furthermore, I've often heard the philosophical argument that no one has the right to take wealth from anyone else.  Sounds good in theory, but where does wealth come from?  Ultimately from land, whether the physical location or the natural resources.  Where does land come from?  The free market didn't make it.  So how did some people end up owning it?  Maybe they bought it from someone else, who bought it from someone else and so on.  Ultimately though, it was probably stolen, usually by a government, who in turn decides who can use it for what.  Land rights, the basis of all wealth, come from the government.

  • Posted: 11/12/08 12:57 PM
    General Discussion
• • Once more, Obama will be President!

  • Originally posted by Fishermage
    
    

    I don't buy that. Is much of the public unable to buy food? The more we rely on markets, the CHEAPER things are, the MORE people are able to get them.

    Force is never the best way to get things to the people -- that is why government fails. Why are provate schools so expensive? Because, like health care, the dominant force in the market is the government.

    You ask for guarantees -- there ARE NONE. And government is no better guarantor than the market. Therefore, logic says go with the one that has a better record -=- the market.

    That is my point, actually. It is a guarantee that the government will mess it up -- they already have -- no matter how much we spend.

    Let us try the way that has always worked best in all times and all places -- let the people be free.

    Food is heavily subsidized, in many ways.  There are also safety nets to prevent people from starving.  There's enough extra food around that a huge amount of discarded food can be scavenged in a pinch.  Even so, plenty of people have trouble maintaining optimal nutrition.

    Education is a very different commodity though.  It's not essential to immediate survival, so it's more likely to be neglected for short term gain, and it can't be stolen or scavenged (at least not usually).  I'm not to clear on the history, but before the public school system, do you think literacy was higher then than it is now?  I doubt it.  I seem to recall child labor being rather common at some points.

    I'd like to go back to my metaphor of medicine.  The human immune system has a much, MUCH better record than any sort of artificial medicine.  Does that mean we should abandon its study and practice?  Get rid of all the doctors and hospitals, since our natural immune system is better?

    Usually it's best to just let the body do it's thing, but once in awhile, it messes up and you see the opportunity to set it back on the right track.  You take that opportunity, right?

    I do not think it's logical to always go with the better record.  Where in life is repeating a mantra and always reacting to diverse situations the same way helpful?  Isn't it better to gather information about each individual situation and make a rational decision based on the particulars?  Make decisions based on the future, not the past.

    What DO you think the role of the government is, and why shouldn't that be privatized as well?

  • Posted: 11/12/08 2:50 AM
    General Discussion
• • Where has all the mystery and magic in games gone?

  • Yeah I know what you mean.  Just a few simple things like leaving some rare surprises in unexpected places or creating a system with some mystery attached like what we thought the jedi system would be go so far in making the game much more immersive and enjoyable.  It's not even that hard to create this feeling.  I'm always surprised so many devs fail to realize this.

  • Posted: 11/12/08 2:14 AM
    General Discussion
• • Once more, Obama will be President!

  • Originally posted by Fishermage
    

    because education is something that government is not very good at, and it is best left to the market, which will deliver it better and at a lower cost -- AND most important won't raise the ignorant little socialist 'bots it is currently producing.

    If you want people to have a better education -- GIVE THEM ONE. No reason to force others into your plan. Plus, every year we have increased the money for education and it hasn't made it better yet.

    Ok, I don't understand this.  I do understand the principle that competition can make private institutions perform better than public ones.

    But if education was completely privatized, much of the population would not be able to afford it.  How would it do our country or economy any good to suddenly have a generation that can't read?  Education gives people life skills that they can use to improve themselves and their community, and makes them more valuable as workers, which can open up the opportunity for new types of industries to establish themselves.  I would expect education greatly improves the economy of a country, and removing it would have very disastrous effects.

    Maybe the people who could afford it would get a better education than we're getting now, but I would expect the net result to be negative.  Besides, if we had no public schools, what would the children of poor parents do all day?  Work in coal mines and textile mills like the old days?

    I do not understand how anyone can be sure that one way of approaching the diverse problems a country may face is the best one.  You keep repeating that free market is best at everything, and eventually you're not making decisions based on what works, but on what's free market.  Maybe government intervention has failed you where free market has succeeded, but unless there's some cosmic entity making it so, where's the guarantee that's how it will always be?  Having no medicine is better than bad medicine, but good medicine is better than no medicine.

  • Posted: 11/12/08 1:58 AM
    General Discussion