Voters steer Europe to the right
POSTED BY: Geezer
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 18, 2026 16:35
VIEWED: 24282
PAGE 17 of 23
double post
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Quote:Alas, there you go again speaking for the community.
Originally posted by citizen:
I think we've all come to the conclusion that you don't believe you have to back up anything you say.
I think you came to that conclusion.
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Quote:I'll bet the Cayman Islands are up there, too! (Luxemburg is the Cayman Isles of the EU)
I finally got back here today and saw that list and of course saw the immediate truth of the data, but you beat me to it.
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We should have strapped him into a glider, filled it nose heavy w/ explosives, and dropped his Allah lovin' ass into a large, empty field. After which, release wild boars into the area so they could make good use of his remains. Now THAT's justice.- rappy
Yeah, that's what Sheikh Issa said. Seems you both have a lot in common.- signy
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Quote:You have not answered my question from 2 days ago signy.
Originally posted by SignyM:
I'll bet the Cayman Islands are up there, too! (Luxemburg is the Cayman Isles of the EU)
What is in a Marxist society for me?
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Quote:
Originally posted by bluesuncompanyman:
Alas, there you go again speaking for the community.
I think you came to that conclusion.
And there you go again, ignoring all the on topic posts to troll.
Quote:
Originally posted by bluesuncompanyman:
You have not answered my question from 2 days ago signy.
What is in a Marxist society for me?
And considering you've not answered any question put to you throughout the thread, you have no right to complain.
So you admit you haven't got even the slightest ability to support your paper thin rhetoric, or are you happy to just prove it without admitting it?
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Quote:I did, but under a different login, so the header name was jkiddo and the answer was "freedom". Not meaning to be confusing but I'm changing my emailer and the system won't let me use "someone else's" (ie my) name.
What is in a Marxist society for me?
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We should have strapped him into a glider, filled it nose heavy w/ explosives, and dropped his Allah lovin' ass into a large, empty field. After which, release wild boars into the area so they could make good use of his remains. Now THAT's justice.- rappy
Yeah, that's what Sheikh Issa said. Seems you both have a lot in common.- signy
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Quote:
Generating wealth was not the only problem at hand around the time that socialism was developed as a concept. The generated wealth was concentrated in a starkly heterogenic way, with a growing mass of extremely poor people with bad political representation.
Why is socialism not a "natural" innovation to deal with that problem at hand?
I laid out two problems to be solved: one to generate maximum wealth and two to ensure society as a whole benefits from it to the maximum extent. Any invention that improves the situation in either of these problems is welcome to my mind.
I get the feeling 'innovation' is the wrong word to describe Marx's philosophies but sure, they came naturally, and I'm sure with good intentions. My problem with marxism/socialism is that it aims to solve the second problem by completely overhauling the system that has been evolving for centuries towards the goal of solving the first - this seems reckless to me. It may be an 'innovation', but not towards solving the problem of making money - so it is kind of 'unnatural' when applied to that system (the one for making money).
Really I think I'm just defending conventional wisdom: capitalism is the accepted method of generating wealth, and social welfare is the accepted system of making sure society is fair and healthy (note my distinction between social welfare and socialism - I don't think socialists should have the monopoly on social welfare). I personally think and have already stated in this thread that US society seems to me quite unfair (relative to others) and unhealthy in parts, and that more could be done towards fixing this.
Heads should roll
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Quote:
FYI- socialism is trying to solve the economic problems of capitalism. The BIGGEST problem in capitalism is the regular "boom and bust" created by over-concentration of wealth and the creation of monopolies. This leads to a destruction of productive capacity and a LOSS of wealth. The second problem is the focus of production for exchange value rather than use value, leading to a distortion in resource use. The third problem (which I don't think Marx envisioned) is the stagnation of innovation due to treating ideas as property. The fourth is, of course, the trajectory towards grossly unequal distribution of wealth, which is an economic problem for the vast majority who don't see the fruits of their labor.
Even if all this is true, then you can just treat a capitalist economy as a natural system that is in some ways unstable, and so interfere with it just to keep it as steady as you can, through government regulation etc. Maybe it's impossible to dampen the boom and bust cycles of capitalism completely but at least there's an upwards trend of economic growth, so I personally can live with the cycles. Lax regulation is unforgivable though, of course. Marxism to me seems to want to overhaul the 'naturally evolved' system from the outside, with its own arbitrary (albeit idealistic) ordering of things. It doesn't surprise me that it's never worked.
Heads should roll
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Quote:
I did, but under a different login, so the header name was jkiddo and the answer was "freedom".
Hmm. Maybe put that little fact in your signature, I might've responded more to your alias' posts.
Quote:
IF the essence of capitalism's "naturalness" rests in its outgrowth from previous systems (as an "evolutionary step" in economic development), how do you know that FURTHER evolution would not create something even better?
I'm hopeful that it will, and even is. First of all I'm looking for evolution not revolution, so bad luck marxists. Hmm I'll prolly have to do some research but I think I've heard such a term as an 'ideas based economy' - in a digitised world starting capital becomes less important, and 'ideas' (which anyone can have) become the most valuable thing.
It seems quite an encouraging thing to me, but I'll eagerly await all you guys' left-wing pessimism on the issue.
Quote:
You should try reading Man Against Myth. The myth of capitalism being "natural" is well-entrenched, but it's false. It's no more "natural" than Marxism, or communism, or feudalism.
I'm not going to read left wing text books in a hurry, but I'm interested, could you explode the myth a little for me? I said before that capitalism has never seemed unnatural to me in how it's developed/became adopted, but alas I'm no scholar, so I could be ignorant.
Heads should roll
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KPO- There are about a half- dozen flawed (IMHO) assumptions in your argument.
The first is that "natural" is inevitably better. I'm not sure what you base that on, but I'm assuming that's because you think evolution inevitably creates a superior result. I dispute that notion of evolution. Rather than heading towards a goal or developing something "better", it's a probabilistic/ random process: more like a piece of junk on the highway, which comes to equilibrium between the lanes not because that's where it "wants" to be but simply because it doesn't get kicked out of that spot very often. (And then a meteor comes along and knocks it back into traffic.)
The second problematic assumption is that ONLY competition is natural. In fact, nature creates all kinds of relationships: Primary producers, secondary producers, parasites, symbiotes, commensals, mutualists, and predators. Even the mitochondria which power every cell are thought to have been originally independent organisms which reached a symbiotic relationship with a host cell. Mulitcellular organisms themselves are an example of cooperation. Cooperation is part and parcel of the natural world.
Another problem is the assumption that wealth creation is somehow inherent in the human psyche. If by wealth you mean "money" then I can assure you that it is not.
Another is that wealth distribution is somehow NOT an economic problem. It is. There is literally NO POINT to generating more wealth UNLESS it can be distributed. Beyond that, the inevitable concentration of wealth under capitalism is not only unfair, its self-destructive. Marx's point (I believe) is that this process is the seed of capitalism's own destruction. So capitalism seems to have an inherent problem even beyond the philosophic sense.
I have several more but am out of time.
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We should have strapped him into a glider, filled it nose heavy w/ explosives, and dropped his Allah lovin' ass into a large, empty field. After which, release wild boars into the area so they could make good use of his remains. Now THAT's justice.- rappy
Yeah, that's what Sheikh Issa said. Seems you both have a lot in common.- signy
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