10 ms·

Don't take it out on socialism! Under those principles, the banks either would not have existed in this form in the first place, or been allowed to go bankrupt

Don't take it out on socialism! Under those principles, the banks either would not have existed in this form in the first place, or been allowed to go bankrupt just as you suggest. What happened with the bank bailout was pure capitalism, the banks simply bought the government!

byEngineer 12y ago
Tea Party members voted against bank bailouts. Not democrats, not old-republicans. My point is, yes, you can buy democrats and some republicans to vote in favor of more government spending. But you apparently can't buy them all to do it. During cold war you could try to buy Moscow communists as much as you wanted so they allowed you open bank branch in USSR, but this would never happen. You can try buy guys like Ron Paul all day long in attempt to get bailout, but you won't get it. The problem is with the voter. If the feeling at the Capitol was that there will be severe punishment for the bailouts, our beloved Senators and Representatives would be too worried to loose their office to vote for that nonsense. Mind you they can sell their services to other industries too and make money in the process without the risk of loosing office (aka "everything"). The voter allowed them to do that. Because voter doesn't understand that bankruptcy and crisis are important parts of economic cycle. And are needed! To remove excesses from the system. To relieve workers from BS jobs too! So you can start over after 1-2 years in healthy economy without zombie banks. We didn't allow capitalism to work. Blaming capitalism for that doesn't add up. BTW, I respect socialism and socialist movement. I'm liberal on social issues as liberal you can get. But for the economic issues Right just gets it.
- dognotdog 12y ago
  How can the voters exert punishment when who's even running for office is determined by the amount of money available for campaigning? Even disregarding direct corporate sponsorship, the rich who mostly contribute are still affiliated with the industry & finance sector. Average Joe can vote for puppet A or puppet B. People like Ron Paul, with firm principles, and the means to finance themselves despite sizable opposition, are the rare exception. Add to that the fact that no ordinary citizen directly voted for the bailouts, how can you blame this on the voter? The problem is not the voter, but the system.
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    There's nothing stopping you the voter from voting for anyone running, even the person with no monetary support. The fact that you vote for one of the people with the most ads is your failing, not the system's.
  - byEngineer 12y ago
    > How can the voters exert punishment when who's even running for office is determined by the amount of money available for campaigning? There are a few issues I have with this statement, hence I decided to slice your post. I hope it is ok. Here is what I can't agree on: 1. From the very sentence above my understanding is that you notice something very important here: is it that in your opinion democracy doesn't work? You see this point you make isn't about capitalism. It's all about Democracy. Your claim here is that (sorry for vulgar interpretation): democracy doesn't work because I see elections after elections that voters vote for guys with most money for the campaign. But that's issue with democracy. Not capitalism. As long as money exists, rich&poor exist -- democracy won't be perfect. I take different view than that on this. I think you need more than just money to kind of "cheat" in democracy. You need stupid populous too. You need dumb people who care just about 6-packs and entitlements. So whoever promises them the most for the vote casted, gets elected. And then that gets funded by cheap credit, forever low interest rates (FED) and public spending. No wonder both parties do the same. This is late stages of democracy though. Not issue with capitalism. Last time I checked capitalism worked fantastic for a country - namely China -- but without the fallacies of democracy. 2. You are not the only one who notices that. US Government noticed that as well. And compared to China, it seems democracy and capitalism aren't as effective as authoritarian system and capitalism. It's not only China. Look at South-East Asia in general. If you ask, why we have more militarization of police, huge prison population, NSA eavesdropping, etc, etc -- it's all about the elites in the US seeing on the example of China that democracy doesn't really work. 3. Another issue with the statement: would you voted for Hitler given he had the most money in elections in 1933 ? Right, democracy isn't idiot-proof. That's the real problem with it. You can't really let 6-pack-joe voting, that's idiotic notion. Again, nothing to do with capitalism. >Add to that the fact that no ordinary citizen directly voted for the bailouts, how can you blame this on the voter? The problem is not the voter, but the system. Democratic system that is. Ordinary citizen not knowing how to vote. Poor idiots. Almost like Jews voting for NSDAP. (Sorry, couldn't help myself). Your disbelieve in American voters is mind blowing! The distrust in democracy horrifying! EDIT: voted <-> voting ; stop <-> help
- shkkmo 12y ago
  I was always sad the the Tea Party and the Occupy movement never managed to figure out that they were on the same side...
  - baggachipz 12y ago
    Let's be honest here: Racism got in the way of that. The Tea Party started very differently from where it ended up.
    - delecti 12y ago
      Well, racism and religious fundamentalism.
    - shkkmo 12y ago
      I think the racism of the Tea Party and the hooliganism of the Occupy movement were deliberately overplayed in the media to keep the two groups from seeing each other as allies.
  - LordKano 12y ago
    I'm not sure if I agree with that assessment but I do think that they have the same enemy. The collusion between big business and big government is the root of the problem that they both rail against. The Tea Party focuses on the government part and Occupy focused on the business part. They'd be a lot more effective if they focused on their common ground.
  - vectorpush 12y ago
    They really aren't on the same side and were mostly orthogonal to each other. Of course, both movements share some common grievances against the government, but the concrete ideas of both groups are just about 100% incompatible. As a glaring example, consider the Citizen's United case; Occupy supporters would almost unanimously point to the Citizen's United ruling as extremely damaging to American democracy, Tea Party supporters on the other hand overwhelmingly side with the government regarding the treatment of money as speech. Pick pretty much any issue and you'll find that the two movements bitterly disagree, just about the only thing they can agree on is that the government is corrupt and the country is moving in the wrong direction, but that's a universal platitude that everyone will nod their head at.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  "But you apparently can't buy them all to do it." I'm sure Bill Gates, when he goes shopping, just buys the eggs he expects to need. That doesn't show us that he can't buy all the eggs in the store.
- spenuke 12y ago
  Wow. Are you saying that you adhere to the Libertarian/Ayn Rand philosophy of personal responsibility, equitable rewards for creating value to society, and all that jazz? You know, the type of philosophy that purportedly values personal integrity and creativity above all else? ... And yet you happily pull down a six-figure paycheck for a job you believe is worthless? Because, if so, you should know that the sense of moral superiority that you seem to share with most modern Randroids is outstandingly hypocritical.
  - byEngineer 12y ago
    Who is a hypocrite here? I thought you would be happy to hear I'm exploiting these evil big banks, too big too fail. I like Ayn Rand but don't agree on everything she said. But for the sake of argument let's say I agree with her 100%. So, then: I use the company's money and time to work on my own Projects. I selfishly exploit stupid and weak that should die in the natural capitalistic process, but democratically elected Government didn't let it happen. I'm a parasite on the sick system because I want it to die. I don't see anything against Ayn Rand philosophy here. But then again, I'm not her cult follower or whatever. And then being in this position I also see that the party can't go on forever and probably the day of reckoning will come. Most of these 300k employees wasting their time on BS jobs now, will eventually loose them. Maybe as soon as next year granted the FED raises interest rates substantially.
    - spenuke 12y ago
      "I'm a parasite on the sick system because I want it to die. I don't see anything against Ayn Rand philosophy here." Oh, I agree with you completely. Most of her critics will say that her system is obfuscatory bullshit to distract from the fact that it's no more sophisticated than the plain old selfishness that you see in every preschool. It's just that Randroids don't usually admit that they are societal parasites, so your candor is refreshing. Also, to be clear, I'm not sure if you're joking about exploiting the banks. Isn't your beef with Congress that they used taxpayer money to bail the banks out? Is it really that hard to see that you're exploiting the taxpayers, too? Don't you see that "the banks" are nothing but a bunch of people just like you, thinking they're not part of the exploitation of the taxpayer?
sklogic 12y ago
In fact, large corporate entities are nearly as wasteful and inefficient as the socialist bureaucratic state-controlled monsters from the USSR. Looks like key here is in being monstrous, not in the underlying ideology.
- jerf 12y ago
  While I sometimes describe myself as "libertarian", this is actually closer to one of my core positions. Large organizations become large because somehow, at some point in their past, they discovered how to produce some sort of wealth greatly in excess of what they were spending to produce it. This creates security for the entity. This security means that they are no longer getting feedback from the real world about what is working and not working; long before the feedback reaches the people in the organization it needs to reach, it has been absorbed by the buffers of high wealth and a lot of people. Consequently the entity begins acting without feedback from the real world. As control systems theory would teach us, the system begins slowly-but-inevitably spinning out of control until it finally exceeds its buffers and comes down in one or another form of catastrophe. I've phrased this in "wealth" and "feedback" because it has jack-shit to do with "capitalism" or "socialism" or anything else. It's a general problem with things that get too big. (It does so happen to be a special case of this problem that many, many people want to pile everything into one big entity and call it the "government", but the problem is very widespread beyond just that one case.) Everything needs feedback to stay connected to the real world, and any time that an entity gets too large to respond to feedback, trouble is assured. The bigger the entity, the bigger the trouble. Big governments, big corporations, big anything is dangerous. And it's not because of some mystical badness due to largeness, it's very specifically their ability to operate without or even despite feedback from the real world. It isn't magical thinking to think that's trouble... it's magical thinking to think that entity could ever operate without feedback. Despite how this may appear to be ideology, I consider this engineering, and rather simple engineering at that. Smaller organizations can still do very bad things. My parents happen to live in a township (a local government entity that stands in for a town/city in the rural area they live) that did something very financially stupid and now they've got some disturbingly substantial extra taxes to pay for a few years to pay it off. Smallness didn't prevent the township government from doing something stupid. However, the people who did that stupid thing were immediately outsted and will never serve again... that's feedback. When's the last time you heard that last bit from a big company or government? (Who in the Federal government has ever paid for any of the bad things that you can name in the past 14 years? It's not an empty list, but it's a short one for such a massive entity and long time.) And there's a township full of people now keeping a closer eye on what financial commitments it makes. So, with that foundation, I'd submit a lot of these bullshit jobs are themselves an expression of the fantastic, astonishing wealth we've generated as a society. We have them because we can afford to have them. And don't forget the fact that the people with bullshit jobs are applying their full human intelligence to the task of looking busy, whether they are doing it on purpose or otherwise. When an entity is large and flush with cash, it lacks the motivation to push through the fog of deception and start ensuring that people are actually generating value.
deelowe 12y ago
s/capitalism/corporatism Many capitalists (myself included) tend to not support corporatism. Capitalism assumes individuals owning smallish businesses. The minute a business becomes large enough to influence the federal government, things get weird and I'm not sure the system works as intended.
- tatterdemalion 12y ago
  That's not actually what corporatism means. The word you're looking for is corporatocracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
  - deelowe 12y ago
    Thank you for the correction.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  In addition to your misuse of "corporatism" as identified by tatterdemalion, you seem to be redefining "capitalism" to mean "what deelowe likes"; capitalism historically -- from the time that name was first given to an economic system by nineteenth century critics of the then-existing system in developed countries -- has always referred to a system which features unfettered accumulation of capital, and it is a system which was formed by cpaital accumulating so much in the hands of a few wealthy influencers outside of the feudal aristocracy despite feudal rules that restricted many kinds of capital flows that the elite of that new capitalist class were able to influence the existing governments to remove the feudal restrictions. The exact thing that you say is "weird" and doesn't seem to be capitalism working as intended is the origin and essence of capitalism, and the thing which motivated its early critics to bother criticizing -- and in the process naming -- capitalism.
  - AnimalMuppet 12y ago
    You seem to be repeating this idea over and over - that this is what a few people 200 years ago meant when they said "capitalism", and therefore that's what capitalism is. But that is not exactly what most people today mean by the term. Even if you were right 200 years ago, you're wrong today. Your approach therefore winds up changing the use of the term, to make it more useful for your side of the debate. That's not an especially valid debating tactic...
zo1 12y ago
You can't have a government, which is by definition a monopoly backed by a military and police force. And then turn around and blame "pure capitalism" because it appears to have somehow influenced the government monopoly.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  Sure you can. "Capitalism" has always been a name for a system in which governments exist, and by which governments structure property rights. Certainly, you don't think that the dominant economic system of the late nineteenth century for which socialist coined the term "capitalism" in their critique of that system (a term later adopted by defenders of that system) somehow didn't feature government as a prominent feature?

byEngineer 12y ago

Tea Party members voted against bank bailouts. Not democrats, not old-republicans. My point is, yes, you can buy democrats and some republicans to vote in favor of more government spending. But you apparently can't buy them all to do it. During cold war you could try to buy Moscow communists as much as you wanted so they allowed you open bank branch in USSR, but this would never happen. You can try buy guys like Ron Paul all day long in attempt to get bailout, but you won't get it. The problem is with the voter. If the feeling at the Capitol was that there will be severe punishment for the bailouts, our beloved Senators and Representatives would be too worried to loose their office to vote for that nonsense. Mind you they can sell their services to other industries too and make money in the process without the risk of loosing office (aka "everything"). The voter allowed them to do that. Because voter doesn't understand that bankruptcy and crisis are important parts of economic cycle. And are needed! To remove excesses from the system. To relieve workers from BS jobs too! So you can start over after 1-2 years in healthy economy without zombie banks. We didn't allow capitalism to work. Blaming capitalism for that doesn't add up. BTW, I respect socialism and socialist movement. I'm liberal on social issues as liberal you can get. But for the economic issues Right just gets it.

dognotdog 12y ago
How can the voters exert punishment when who's even running for office is determined by the amount of money available for campaigning? Even disregarding direct corporate sponsorship, the rich who mostly contribute are still affiliated with the industry & finance sector. Average Joe can vote for puppet A or puppet B. People like Ron Paul, with firm principles, and the means to finance themselves despite sizable opposition, are the rare exception. Add to that the fact that no ordinary citizen directly voted for the bailouts, how can you blame this on the voter? The problem is not the voter, but the system.
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  There's nothing stopping you the voter from voting for anyone running, even the person with no monetary support. The fact that you vote for one of the people with the most ads is your failing, not the system's.
- byEngineer 12y ago
  > How can the voters exert punishment when who's even running for office is determined by the amount of money available for campaigning? There are a few issues I have with this statement, hence I decided to slice your post. I hope it is ok. Here is what I can't agree on: 1. From the very sentence above my understanding is that you notice something very important here: is it that in your opinion democracy doesn't work? You see this point you make isn't about capitalism. It's all about Democracy. Your claim here is that (sorry for vulgar interpretation): democracy doesn't work because I see elections after elections that voters vote for guys with most money for the campaign. But that's issue with democracy. Not capitalism. As long as money exists, rich&poor exist -- democracy won't be perfect. I take different view than that on this. I think you need more than just money to kind of "cheat" in democracy. You need stupid populous too. You need dumb people who care just about 6-packs and entitlements. So whoever promises them the most for the vote casted, gets elected. And then that gets funded by cheap credit, forever low interest rates (FED) and public spending. No wonder both parties do the same. This is late stages of democracy though. Not issue with capitalism. Last time I checked capitalism worked fantastic for a country - namely China -- but without the fallacies of democracy. 2. You are not the only one who notices that. US Government noticed that as well. And compared to China, it seems democracy and capitalism aren't as effective as authoritarian system and capitalism. It's not only China. Look at South-East Asia in general. If you ask, why we have more militarization of police, huge prison population, NSA eavesdropping, etc, etc -- it's all about the elites in the US seeing on the example of China that democracy doesn't really work. 3. Another issue with the statement: would you voted for Hitler given he had the most money in elections in 1933 ? Right, democracy isn't idiot-proof. That's the real problem with it. You can't really let 6-pack-joe voting, that's idiotic notion. Again, nothing to do with capitalism. >Add to that the fact that no ordinary citizen directly voted for the bailouts, how can you blame this on the voter? The problem is not the voter, but the system. Democratic system that is. Ordinary citizen not knowing how to vote. Poor idiots. Almost like Jews voting for NSDAP. (Sorry, couldn't help myself). Your disbelieve in American voters is mind blowing! The distrust in democracy horrifying! EDIT: voted <-> voting ; stop <-> help
shkkmo 12y ago
I was always sad the the Tea Party and the Occupy movement never managed to figure out that they were on the same side...
- baggachipz 12y ago
  Let's be honest here: Racism got in the way of that. The Tea Party started very differently from where it ended up.
  - delecti 12y ago
    Well, racism and religious fundamentalism.
  - shkkmo 12y ago
    I think the racism of the Tea Party and the hooliganism of the Occupy movement were deliberately overplayed in the media to keep the two groups from seeing each other as allies.
- LordKano 12y ago
  I'm not sure if I agree with that assessment but I do think that they have the same enemy. The collusion between big business and big government is the root of the problem that they both rail against. The Tea Party focuses on the government part and Occupy focused on the business part. They'd be a lot more effective if they focused on their common ground.
- vectorpush 12y ago
  They really aren't on the same side and were mostly orthogonal to each other. Of course, both movements share some common grievances against the government, but the concrete ideas of both groups are just about 100% incompatible. As a glaring example, consider the Citizen's United case; Occupy supporters would almost unanimously point to the Citizen's United ruling as extremely damaging to American democracy, Tea Party supporters on the other hand overwhelmingly side with the government regarding the treatment of money as speech. Pick pretty much any issue and you'll find that the two movements bitterly disagree, just about the only thing they can agree on is that the government is corrupt and the country is moving in the wrong direction, but that's a universal platitude that everyone will nod their head at.
dllthomas 12y ago
"But you apparently can't buy them all to do it." I'm sure Bill Gates, when he goes shopping, just buys the eggs he expects to need. That doesn't show us that he can't buy all the eggs in the store.
spenuke 12y ago
Wow. Are you saying that you adhere to the Libertarian/Ayn Rand philosophy of personal responsibility, equitable rewards for creating value to society, and all that jazz? You know, the type of philosophy that purportedly values personal integrity and creativity above all else? ... And yet you happily pull down a six-figure paycheck for a job you believe is worthless? Because, if so, you should know that the sense of moral superiority that you seem to share with most modern Randroids is outstandingly hypocritical.
- byEngineer 12y ago
  Who is a hypocrite here? I thought you would be happy to hear I'm exploiting these evil big banks, too big too fail. I like Ayn Rand but don't agree on everything she said. But for the sake of argument let's say I agree with her 100%. So, then: I use the company's money and time to work on my own Projects. I selfishly exploit stupid and weak that should die in the natural capitalistic process, but democratically elected Government didn't let it happen. I'm a parasite on the sick system because I want it to die. I don't see anything against Ayn Rand philosophy here. But then again, I'm not her cult follower or whatever. And then being in this position I also see that the party can't go on forever and probably the day of reckoning will come. Most of these 300k employees wasting their time on BS jobs now, will eventually loose them. Maybe as soon as next year granted the FED raises interest rates substantially.
  - spenuke 12y ago
    "I'm a parasite on the sick system because I want it to die. I don't see anything against Ayn Rand philosophy here." Oh, I agree with you completely. Most of her critics will say that her system is obfuscatory bullshit to distract from the fact that it's no more sophisticated than the plain old selfishness that you see in every preschool. It's just that Randroids don't usually admit that they are societal parasites, so your candor is refreshing. Also, to be clear, I'm not sure if you're joking about exploiting the banks. Isn't your beef with Congress that they used taxpayer money to bail the banks out? Is it really that hard to see that you're exploiting the taxpayers, too? Don't you see that "the banks" are nothing but a bunch of people just like you, thinking they're not part of the exploitation of the taxpayer?

sklogic 12y ago

In fact, large corporate entities are nearly as wasteful and inefficient as the socialist bureaucratic state-controlled monsters from the USSR. Looks like key here is in being monstrous, not in the underlying ideology.

jerf 12y ago
While I sometimes describe myself as "libertarian", this is actually closer to one of my core positions. Large organizations become large because somehow, at some point in their past, they discovered how to produce some sort of wealth greatly in excess of what they were spending to produce it. This creates security for the entity. This security means that they are no longer getting feedback from the real world about what is working and not working; long before the feedback reaches the people in the organization it needs to reach, it has been absorbed by the buffers of high wealth and a lot of people. Consequently the entity begins acting without feedback from the real world. As control systems theory would teach us, the system begins slowly-but-inevitably spinning out of control until it finally exceeds its buffers and comes down in one or another form of catastrophe. I've phrased this in "wealth" and "feedback" because it has jack-shit to do with "capitalism" or "socialism" or anything else. It's a general problem with things that get too big. (It does so happen to be a special case of this problem that many, many people want to pile everything into one big entity and call it the "government", but the problem is very widespread beyond just that one case.) Everything needs feedback to stay connected to the real world, and any time that an entity gets too large to respond to feedback, trouble is assured. The bigger the entity, the bigger the trouble. Big governments, big corporations, big anything is dangerous. And it's not because of some mystical badness due to largeness, it's very specifically their ability to operate without or even despite feedback from the real world. It isn't magical thinking to think that's trouble... it's magical thinking to think that entity could ever operate without feedback. Despite how this may appear to be ideology, I consider this engineering, and rather simple engineering at that. Smaller organizations can still do very bad things. My parents happen to live in a township (a local government entity that stands in for a town/city in the rural area they live) that did something very financially stupid and now they've got some disturbingly substantial extra taxes to pay for a few years to pay it off. Smallness didn't prevent the township government from doing something stupid. However, the people who did that stupid thing were immediately outsted and will never serve again... that's feedback. When's the last time you heard that last bit from a big company or government? (Who in the Federal government has ever paid for any of the bad things that you can name in the past 14 years? It's not an empty list, but it's a short one for such a massive entity and long time.) And there's a township full of people now keeping a closer eye on what financial commitments it makes. So, with that foundation, I'd submit a lot of these bullshit jobs are themselves an expression of the fantastic, astonishing wealth we've generated as a society. We have them because we can afford to have them. And don't forget the fact that the people with bullshit jobs are applying their full human intelligence to the task of looking busy, whether they are doing it on purpose or otherwise. When an entity is large and flush with cash, it lacks the motivation to push through the fog of deception and start ensuring that people are actually generating value.

deelowe 12y ago

s/capitalism/corporatism Many capitalists (myself included) tend to not support corporatism. Capitalism assumes individuals owning smallish businesses. The minute a business becomes large enough to influence the federal government, things get weird and I'm not sure the system works as intended.

tatterdemalion 12y ago
That's not actually what corporatism means. The word you're looking for is corporatocracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
- deelowe 12y ago
  Thank you for the correction.
dragonwriter 12y ago
In addition to your misuse of "corporatism" as identified by tatterdemalion, you seem to be redefining "capitalism" to mean "what deelowe likes"; capitalism historically -- from the time that name was first given to an economic system by nineteenth century critics of the then-existing system in developed countries -- has always referred to a system which features unfettered accumulation of capital, and it is a system which was formed by cpaital accumulating so much in the hands of a few wealthy influencers outside of the feudal aristocracy despite feudal rules that restricted many kinds of capital flows that the elite of that new capitalist class were able to influence the existing governments to remove the feudal restrictions. The exact thing that you say is "weird" and doesn't seem to be capitalism working as intended is the origin and essence of capitalism, and the thing which motivated its early critics to bother criticizing -- and in the process naming -- capitalism.
- AnimalMuppet 12y ago
  You seem to be repeating this idea over and over - that this is what a few people 200 years ago meant when they said "capitalism", and therefore that's what capitalism is. But that is not exactly what most people today mean by the term. Even if you were right 200 years ago, you're wrong today. Your approach therefore winds up changing the use of the term, to make it more useful for your side of the debate. That's not an especially valid debating tactic...

zo1 12y ago

You can't have a government, which is by definition a monopoly backed by a military and police force. And then turn around and blame "pure capitalism" because it appears to have somehow influenced the government monopoly.

dragonwriter 12y ago
Sure you can. "Capitalism" has always been a name for a system in which governments exist, and by which governments structure property rights. Certainly, you don't think that the dominant economic system of the late nineteenth century for which socialist coined the term "capitalism" in their critique of that system (a term later adopted by defenders of that system) somehow didn't feature government as a prominent feature?