RE: Capitalism is the BEST System
The premise of this entire post is based upon a few common illusions.
The first illusion is that progress in the west is a result of "free market" capitalism. No. We have not been running some purified version of capitalism all these years. We have been running a corrupt capitalism based on the genocide of millions of native American people. We stole an entire continent with basically unlimited resources, killed off the millions who inhabited it, brought a slave wage force from Africa on which to build our industrial revolution, then when that was over we replaced it with wave after wave of immigrant populations from Europe, Asia, Mexico, and South America.
This recent surge in capitalistic splendor you refer to since 1981 corresponds with the move to importing goods made in countries with their own slave labor forces. Now we shop at massive corporate big box stores which use supply chains that save money by operating warehouses in coutries with abysmal human rights policies. Walmart and Lowes have gotten the most recent press, but any corporation that is scrutinized will show the same thing. And they are selling products like iPhones which are also being produced with slave labor. If that isn't bad enough our corporations are also using slave labor in a for-profit prison system to produce goods domestically.
Your "free market" is a fairytale - an illusion used to make the obscene palatable.
And it gets worse. Much worse. Now look at the military industrial sector of the economy where the banks, in order to prop up the US dollar value have been funding oil wars in the middle east for decades, making contractors and weapons manufactures rich at the cost of countless millions of civilian lives and human misery on an unprecedented scale.
You might want to take a few minutes to consider where your charts and graphs are coming from and why. Even what numbers that have any shred of validity are overlooking the millions who died to make them possible. It's all a load of crap.
Is capitalism better than socialism? It's a false question. Capitalism by itself is awful. Capitalism by itself is the wealthiest crushing everybody else. Same thing for socialism. Socialism and capitalism together with an informed populace and a conscientious government can use socialist type laws to protect the rights of workers and oversee corporations so that they aren't allowed to do what they otherwise would do if left unregulated. If corporations and the wealthy are taxed properly and FORCED to play fair, then capitalism can be FORCED to yield fair results for a population a la the 1950s and 1960s but that is not the normal way of things.
Capitalism is not some "new thing." It has been around basically since the invention of money and has presented in some form in all parts of the world ever since. Unfortunately all that time we have also had corruption, and corruption takes capitalism and creates human misery in exchange for the profits of the wealthy, whether that be Dutch trading costers, Roman gladiator houses, Taiwanese merchant lords, or African slave markets.
For the love of God almighty, wake up.
All of these corporations paid lower tax rates than I did over the last decade, and IN ADDITION TO THAT, they got money back, as in paid by me to them (thanks to the corrupt government that enforced it):
■ AT&T ($38.1 billion)
■ Wells Fargo ($31.4 billion)
■ JPMorgan Chase ($22.2 billion)
■ Verizon ($21.1 billion)
■ IBM ($17.8 billion)
■ General Electric ($15.4 billion)
■ Exxon Mobil ($12.9 billion)
■ Boeing ($11.9 billion)
■ Procter & Gamble ($8.5 billion)
■ Twenty-First Century Fox ($7.6 billion)
■ Time Warner ($6.7 billion)
■ Goldman Sachs ($5.5 billion)
Here are some companies who paid zero in taxes from 2008 to 2015:
Pepco Holdings
PG&E Corp.
Wisconsin Energy
NiSource
International Paper
FirstEnergy
Priceline.com
Amos Energy
General Electric
American Electric Power
Ryder System
Duke Energy
NextEra Energy
Xcel Energy
Ameren
CMS Energy
Sempra Energy
Eversource Energy
Meanwhile I am required by the US government to purchase liability insurance (rather than insuring my own vehicle). I am required to pay for corporate health insurance. I am required to pay for 8 ongoing military conflicts at the cost of 1 mill per bomb and these wars are not based on the consent of my representatives in Congress.
This is what happens. It always happens. It has always happened, and it always will happen because people are easy to trick, especially if you threaten to label them as unpatriotic or as welfare recipients. Unlike human beings, however, corporations do not have the slightest objection to taking welfare. They will take as much as they can pay our representatives to give them. That last list is companies who paid zero taxes from 2008 to 2015. They paid nothing.
Corruption isn't good when it's capitalism and it isn't good when it's socialism.
In fact, it's the opposite way around: Capitalism is great when it's the utopian ideal version of capitalism. Same for socialism. But NEITHER ONE is ever the case, and in the real world all economic models are converted by corruption into misery machines unless people use common sense and compromise to step in and stop it from happening. That requires information, morality, and moderation.
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What are you talking about? The whole post is based on statistics, not illusions if you will say something like this maybe the best that you can do is demostrate it.
Thanks to the Capitalist system the Industrial Revolutions had the impact that this had meant HUGE world progress. No one can say that it was thanks to invasions and continental looting that the progress that we see today emerged... If that were the case, Argentina and Venezuela would not have been strong economies long time ago.
On what evidence do you base your claim that the free market is a "fairy tale"?.
"You might want to take a few minutes to consider where your charts and graphs are coming from and why. Even what numbers that have any shred of validity are overlooking the millions who died to make them possible. It's all a load of crap." What the...? And I suppose you have the truth in your hands, right?, man, not everything is a conspirancy of USA... Prove yourself that they are wrong and stop basing your comment on "I believe, I feel..."
"If corporations and the wealthy are taxed properly and FORCED to play fair, then capitalism can be FORCED to yield fair results for a population a la the 1950s and 1960s but that is not the normal way of things." Why should they be forced to "Fair Play" if they are in free competition and a liberal economy?, do you understand that you look like a socialist?
Read and learn how and why these companies managed to avoid paying taxes.... It seems you didn't want to read the article where you got that information.
"Meanwhile I am required by the US government to purchase liability insurance (rather than insuring my own vehicle). I am required to pay for corporate health insurance. I am required to pay for 8 ongoing military conflicts at the cost of 1 mill per bomb and these wars are not based on the consent of my representatives in Congress." That's your problem. The system itself supports the most powerful, so there is no room for complaints in this regard. Again, you're sounding like a real socialist.
"And in the real world all economic models are converted by corruption into misery machines unless people use common sense and compromise to step in and stop it from happening. That requires information, morality, and moderation." What is the point, all governments are corrupt, what does the System have to do with the fact that human beings are corrupt?
You say my data is false, but you don't prove it, you criticize capitalism from the beginning of its history to the present day but based on sentimentality and anecdotic evidence.
I already explained every question you brought up. You aren't reading. You have a world view that you cherish and your mind is going to find a way to filter out or ignore anything that does not agree with it. This is just the normal way the mind works. It's called "cognitive dissonance."
At any rate, if you can actually say, "No one can say that it was thanks to invasions and continental looting that the progress that we see today emerged... " then we have nothing further to talk about because all you need is a history book to check my facts. No it was not the ONLY reason, but it was an associated cost of the process of "capitalism" and your graphs and charts do not factor all those deaths and centuries of slavery in.
Statistics come from every organization that has an agenda. Numbers are not "facts." I know they seem like they are when you are 18, but it is an illusion, and at some point you will probably come to realize that, just like I did.
Statistics are put together by people who want to prove something. Most of the time they leave out important numbers that contradict the premise they want to prove. In the case of your numbers, that is exactly what is happening, for reasons I already described and you have already ignored.
I suggest that you credit the people who disagree with you with having honest motives. Accusing me of being a socialist only shows me that you aren't willing to consider other points of view, and you are lashing out to defend the world view that you feel comfortable with.
I'm not a socialist, or a communist, or a capitalist, or an anything else. I'm a person who is tired of seeing this nonsense year after year. I'm tired of watching people all around the world die and live in misery and be ignored.
You live in Venezuela and so I can obviously see why right now you're on a pro-capitalism kick, but capitalism is every bit as screwed up, and right now in many other parts of the world, the results of capitalism are bringing misery and death to loads of people, like the poor civilians in Yemen who are being blown to smithereens so that the Saudis will continue to prop up the USD.
The answer is not to say socialism or capitalism is "better" and convince other people to try to join your side in a war between socialism and capitalism. The answer is to see that both sides are used to destroy the lives of the weak to make a few people rich. Then we can come together and take control of our governments and control the rich who will otherwise do whatever they want, no matter whether they are using "capitalism" or "socialism" to do it.
To them, the economic system they use to dominate the poor makes absolutely no difference. That only matters to you.
You say I only use "anecdotal evidence and sentimentality." Really, dude? Which is the extermination of the native Americans? Is that anecdotal or sentimentality? Or is it both? If you prefer to build a chart to represent those lives and all the suffering of slavery that went on, then be my guest. Think about what you're saying.
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No, you didn't. Your whole argument was based on your opinion. You didn't answer why all capitalism based its success largely on invasions. In criticizing America and the most powerful corporations. You see only the bad, the horrific, but you don't see all the positive things that the world has achieved thanks to the rise of capitalism and industrial revolutions, bad things happened, enslavement, looting, invasions? Yes, but due in part to that and to the emergence of a fairly competent system up to now as far as the economy is concerned we have made a lot of progress and this is something absolutely undeniable and you can see any statistics, any place in the occidental world today. Thanks to industrialization, the world is a much better place. You just have to read about it to understand it. You're relying on "The British and Americans did bad things. So everything after that coming from them is bad."
There have been centuries of enslavement and death and yet there was absolutely no progress comparable to what there has been for 200 years to this day.
Statistics is the basis of practical and real knowledge. And although they can be manipulated for that, there are many sources. Now, if you're against statistics because everything is a conspiracy, that's fine. Fortunately, statistics are not needed in this case to realise that thanks to industrial revolutions, the business giants and therefore the capitalist system, which I repeat is not perfect, has many flaws. We live much better than before.
You can say that I am discrediting you because I think you are a socialist, but if you are against free competition and the free market you invite me to think that. I discredit you because you haven't presented any evidence to support everything you said, you just talked about invasions, genocides, slavery and associated them with the system. After that you simply talked about personal experiences and your opinion, which is anecdotal evidence.
Maybe I live in Venezuela, but, I have read, I have a family living in capitalist countries and I have learned. Reading from the most communist to the most capitalist forums, listening to debates. Doing my own research. So I can talk.
"the results of capitalism are bringing misery and death to loads of people, like the poor civilians in Yemen who are being blown to smithereens so that the Saudis will continue to prop up the USD." Really? Again with this kind of argument? "Oh, why are we still here, just to suffer"
"The answer is to see that both sides are used to destroy the lives of the weak to make a few people rich." Let's see, I can accept your vision of capitalism, but socialism? socialism basically seeks the opposite, what are you talking about? Again I repeat something if you are "weak" is not the fault of capitalism, because the system provides the tools to be able to grow economically, if you are considering that the fault for someone being poor or miserable lies with a system that allows economic freedom lacks much self-criticism.
You can't say that the extermination of the Native Americans was the fault of capitalism. It's just ridiculous, Maybe you're the one who should think about what you're saying. By the way, if the socialist model and the capitalist model do not work, what would be the model to follow?.