At what point did Socialists become something to rant about?

tony007 · 20-03-2012 4:29pm

Sergeant wrote: »

If they are not the result of a capitalist society then can you enlighten us as to what they are a result of?

State intervention in the economy.

Nodin · 20-03-2012 4:33pm

Bipolar Joe wrote: »

I've just noticed this lately. It's like Americans blathering on about Communists. When the Hell did this happen?

When the right fucked up the economy.

benway · 20-03-2012 4:34pm

secretambition wrote: »

It was primarily a state failure. It was the decision to bail out the banks that burdened the taxpayer with private sector debt. Anyone adhering properly to the principles of capitalism would have let them fail, or at most picked a couple of strategic banks such as AIB and BOI to support while definitely letting Anglo go. I would go along with the idea that better regulation would have helped, but even without strict regulation, it did not have to be this bad.

The decision to to bail out the banks wouldn't have been necessary had the banks not failed, owing to the inherent weakness of neoliberal economics. This is what it boils down to. You can question the state's response, but you can't deny that the problem came from a failure of regulation ... or more so a conscious attempt to remove restraints in the financial services sector.

Plus, do you seriously think that it would have cost nothing to clean up the mess after they were allowed to fail? I've covered this in a previous post, but I don't think it would have been pretty. In fact, I could easily see it leading to absolute chaos.

K-9 · 20-03-2012 4:37pm

af_thefragile wrote: »

The problem arises when morality is many times ignored from teaching. When university students studying economic and business studies are taught and encouraged to come up with new forms of exploiting people, there is no doubt these same university students then graduate, go to work in wall street and big corporations and use what they've learnt in university to exploit the system and the population. These are the people who then go to work in banks and come up with new investment funds which are morally fraudulent but they use their university education to fool people with and exploit them for their own gains. While others find more ways to spread their business to new 3rd world countries and use political influence to exploit foreign labour.

What do you mean by Universities teaching them these immoral ways? Most of the criticism I see of Universities is that they are often too left wing leaning!

The recent controversy about Goldman Sachs would suggest that it when they get into the big finance companies that greed corrupts, pressure for profits, bonuses etc. Its happened in most cases, thinking of Enron, Bearings etc.

I think believing the free market will largely cure all this is a bit naive. People will always want to make profit and as long as stocks are traded or profit is the end all and be all, the small minority will ruin it for the majority who want to trade morally and respectfully.

af_thefragile · 20-03-2012 4:42pm

pawnacide wrote: »

I'm guessing you consider yourself middle class. I find it strange that the middle classes so often defend capitalism, I can only assume it's a result of the fear of loss that those at the top of the Capitalist tree like to instill in them.
Loss of income, loss of homes, loss of lifestyle. In a capitalist society the middle classes are the most exploited income group of all. They pay and consume the most while receiving the least. The advertising world has them down to T. Watch the prime time adds on t.v sometime there'll all directed at the middle classes.

A properly managed egalitarian system gives far more back than any capitalist system could. I've said it before and I'll say it again a Capitalist system cannot have the public interest at its heart and therefore needs to be policed .. simples.

I will agree I have been lucky to be born in a good house but I would not consider myself to be wealthy or privileged. My family has worked very hard to achieve what they have. I have worked very hard to do well in school and get into university to pursue a degree that will get me a good job.

I do not support capitalism because I'm scared that without capitalism I'll lose what I have because in reality there are people on the dole who live more luxurious lives than I do. Now I will not deny there are many people in Ireland and across the world who live with very little and I will probably put myself in the top 20-30% of the world's population, like most other people in this country. But I will say most people in Ireland live better than I do.

The reason I support capitalism is because of the opportunity it gives people to be able to create the life they want to live. I do not want to settle for less. I want to be able to get a good job, make lots of money and then my dream is to build cars which one day I wish to achieve. Capitalism makes it possible for me to achieve my dream. I also want to help the poor, underprivileged and deprived people with the money I would make, if I ever get there.

secretambition · 20-03-2012 4:43pm

benway wrote: »

The decision to to bail out the banks wouldn't have been necessary had the banks not failed, owing to the inherent weakness of neoliberal economics. This is what it boils down to. You can question the state's response, but you can't deny that the problem came from a failure of regulation ... or more so a conscious attempt to remove restraints in the financial services sector.

Plus, do you seriously think that it would have cost nothing to clean up the mess after they were allowed to fail? I've covered this in a previous post, but I don't think it would have been pretty. In fact, I could easily see it leading to absolute chaos.

I didn't say it would have cost nothing, in fact, for that reason, I acknowledged that we might have picked banks to save. But I would have picked them strategically. We could have done without a lot of the debt. We don't owe banks any duty of loyalty. They're commercial enterprises and they take their chances.

The problem from failure of regulation was a global one and we can see that other countires are faring better as a result of cutting bad banks loose.

KyussBishop · 20-03-2012 4:44pm

KyussBishop wrote: »

Ok agreed on this point; so it can be agreed, that in the unregulated free market system you propose, it is inevitable that a bank will at some stage be subject to fraud or gross mismanagement, and it will collapse, losing all (or most) of its customers money.

The customer has no way to inform himself of the risks (as banks would not be transparent about their practices), and no matter what bank that person chooses in the market, he is taking a gamble (as there is no way to determine which is less riskier than another).

Those customers will either have their lives destroyed, or will effectively lose many years from their lives due to time spent earning the lost money.

That seems inherently unfair to me, and not acceptable; it is something than can only be prevented with enforced transparency, and some amount of regulation.

What are the negative aspects of regulation which can in any way come close to making things worse than the above situation?

For the sake of argument (so we don't get into an absolute "all or nothing" discussion regarding regulation), lets restrict this proposed regulation to the absolute minimum amount required to prevent this kind of fraud/embezzlement or mismanagement of customers money.

Can anyone advocating a lack of regulation, please explain how some amount of regulation, is worse than the situation quoted above?

pawnacide · 20-03-2012 4:45pm

af_thefragile wrote: »

I also want to help the poor, underprivileged and deprived people with the money I would make, if I ever get there.

But, again I'm guessing, you don't want the state making you do it where as I do.

Bipolar Joe · 20-03-2012 4:47pm

Holy sh!t, seven pages? This is almost as good as that time I punched a wasp.

coffee_cake · 20-03-2012 4:47pm

Bipolar Joe wrote: »

Holy sh!t, seven pages? This is almost as good as that time I punched a wasp.

3 pages

czx · 20-03-2012 4:48pm

tony007 wrote: »

It doesn't have to be one or the other. The Soviet Union wasn't socialist.

ya, they were raging capitalists

Chuck Stone · 20-03-2012 4:52pm

benway wrote: »

Is there any real evidence that such a system could ever work in practice?

Not that I know of. There are times in history libs point to but they tend to ignore little things like slavery and children working in mines.

For me, it's as much of a pie-in-the-sky utopian ideal as anything that ever came out of the looney left.

Oh it's total pie in the sky for sure, almost to the point of being a cult with some people imo. It doesn't assure utopia though but it does claim that society would be a lot fairer so it is kinda preachy.

It's absolutely clear in my mind that what we're going through is the consequence of a failure of neoliberal, free market ideology. The way it worked was that the state stepped away - free movement of capital, light touch regulation, etc. - having been assured by the ideologues of The Markets that everything would be much more efficient, and generally better. Only to step back in when the thing overheated and and threatened to burst.

I'd see the state as being wholly complicit in the neoliberal (anything but free market) strategy.

Personally, I see the state as an invaluable bulwark against unrestrained corporate and gangster power.

I see it as a monopoly of decision making and force that gets infected by lobby groups, corporations, cartels, weapons manufaturers, PS/CS unions. It has control of the public purse so special interests rush in to influence it as best they can.

Why do you think the likes of AJF O'Reilly are so keen on pushing the small state agenda?

Never heard of him.

Many libertarians don't seem to grasp is the kind of chaos that would likely have been unleashed had the banks been allowed to fail.

Those banks? Perhaps. In libertopia, as it goes, those size banks would not emerge because there would be no mega-banks.

I mean, we may not have to pay the bondholders out of the public purse, we'd just have to watch as the country goes all Mad Max on us.

I couldn't care less about the bond holders tbh and I think it's immoral that those debts be passed on to people who had no part in it.

Not meaning to pigeonhole your views or anything, btw, I have no idea what you think about these things, not specifically addressing this to you ... but hey, it's the internet ....

I wouldn't describe myself as a libertarian although I do find many libertarian ideas interesting and possibly usefull in preventing future bailouts (which are inevitable currently in my estimation).

RichieC · 20-03-2012 4:53pm

czx wrote: »

ya, they were raging capitalists

Still a false dilemma. Ireland and indeed most of Europe have sat quite happily in the middle for a long time. in fact, so have the states. But don't tell the republicans that. it's been kept a secret from them.

pawnacide · 20-03-2012 4:54pm

czx wrote: »

ya, they were raging capitalists

nope just greedy communists. This is what this thread started out as. The distortion and bastardization of the word 'socialism' by the right to mean all things evil, untenable and anti individuality.

af_thefragile · 20-03-2012 4:57pm

K-9 wrote: »

What do you mean by Universities teaching them these immoral ways? Most of the criticism I see of Universities is that they are often too left wing leaning!

The recent controversy about Goldman Sachs would suggest that it when they get into the big finance companies that greed corrupts, pressure for profits, bonuses etc. Its happened in most cases, thinking of Enron, Bearings etc.

I think believing the free market will largely cure all this is a bit naive. People will always want to make profit and as long as stocks are traded or profit is the end all and be all, the small minority will ruin it for the majority who want to trade morally and respectfully.

Its the whole financial system which is based on exploitation. To correct it the whole system needs to be scrapped for a new one which is too much of an asking but its something Ron Paul dares on achieving in USA if he becomes the president. When you learn the "tricks of the trade" in the modern economic system, its all based on new ways to exploit capital and labour.

Its only a handful of financial corporations that work without morals and ethics. There are lots of entrepreneurs who spend a lot of money helping the poor and deprives.

Bill Gates is a very good example of an entrepreneur who has spend a big portion of his wealth helping poor people around the world and there are many others than him.

In fact private organisations have done more to help the poor around the world than any government has. All governments do is work on their own interests any help only those people who benefit them, ignoring those who don't.

benway wrote: »

Because a tipping point in technology was reached towards the end of the 19th century. More fundamentally, "businesses and competition" haven't driven innovation nearly as far as US state subsidies in the guise of military spending did - most of our high tech gadgets owe their existence to this. The internet is a good example.

And this "you can't have an iPhone and take a critical view of capitalism" line is weak, weak, weak. Must try harder.

There's no such thing as tipping point in technology. Many civilisations in the past made many great technological improvements and then perished.

You simply cannot ignore the contribution simple everyday objects like fridge, washing machines, televisions, cars etc. have made to modern life.

Car manufacturers are a great example. Cars have come a long way over the past century. Its not because of government spending and military research. Its because of competition driving innovation.

British car manufacturers used to make exciting but rubbish cars back in the 70s. Then the Japanese imports came in and their cars worked. Hence the Brits had to step up their game and start making cars that work to stay in the competition. Unfortunately most British car manufactures could not compete with the Japs and had to close down. But then the Germans showed they could make reliable cars like the Japs but better quality and more luxurious and it goes on. The car manufactures constantly compete with one another to build more reliable, cheaper, safer, faster, more luxurious etc. cars than the other one and the eventual benefit is ours because if it wasn't for the competition we would all be driving around in Lada Rivas.

Same with TVs and other electronics. Sure the government puts in a lot of money into military research but its the private corporations which take the military technology and put it to use for consumer products. You wouldn't have cheap LED TVs it wasn't for competition between Sony, Samsung, LG, Panasonic etc.

You simply cannot undermine what capitalism has done for us and if you do, you're blind and a hypocrite!

czx · 20-03-2012 4:59pm

pawnacide wrote: »

nope just greedy communists. This is what this thread started out as. The distortion and bastardization of the word 'socialism' by the right to mean all things evil, untenable and anti individuality.

The Socialist party of Ireland has done most of the bastardization themselves. Or are they not socialist?

tony007 · 20-03-2012 5:01pm

czx wrote: »

ya, they were raging capitalists

No, they were communists. You should read into it a bit more.

Kensington · 20-03-2012 5:03pm

pawnacide wrote: »

nope just greedy communists. This is what this thread started out as. The distortion and bastardization of the word 'socialism' by the right to mean all things evil, untenable and anti individuality.

I don't think "the right" have distorted the meaning of socialism at all - the self-proclaimed socialists of this country have done that all by themselves!

My understanding of socialism is your reward is in direct proportion to your contribution and that you must contribute to the best of your ability.

When you see the likes of the ULA and Sinn Fein coming out protesting for the rights of people who have lived in a council house, drawn down the dole and never held a job down in their lives but should continue to be handed out benefits indefinitely while calling to "tax the rich" because they're bad, disgusting, evil people for going out, working hard and earning so much money - is it any wonder people perceive a distorted understanding of what socialism really is?

af_thefragile · 20-03-2012 5:04pm

pawnacide wrote: »

But, again I'm guessing, you don't want the state making you do it where as I do.

No, I wanna be free to live my life as I do on my terms.
I believe I can spend my money more wisely than the state does.
If I'm a millionaire, I can do more to help the poor people than the state will do. I can set up non-profit charity organisations which work more efficiently than government run organisations. I can make sure the money goes to the people who need it rather than getting skimmed away by middle men and politicians.

Basically If I had the money, I can make better use of it than the government does.

Problem is this requires a moral conscience. Unfortunately there are many people who lack this and will want to keep all the money for themselves. This needs to change. People need to become more morally conscious. And I believe we don't need the government for this. People need to be able to think for themselves. It mostly comes from good parenting. Which seems to be something the modern world lacks!

Very easy to shift parental responsibility from the parents onto the state!!

happyman81 · 20-03-2012 5:08pm

Because so many of them are incredibly negative and moany, like every member of the ULA, bar none. Even when the rare bit of good news comes out about this country, they are all over it, moaning away. Impossible to like them.

pawnacide · 20-03-2012 5:11pm

af_thefragile wrote: »

No, I wanna be free to live my life as I do on my terms.
I believe I can spend my money more wisely than the state does.
If I'm a millionaire, I can do more to help the poor people than the state will do. I can set up non-profit charity organisations which work more efficiently than government run organisations. I can make sure the money goes to the people who need it rather than getting skimmed away by middle men and politicians.

Basically If I had the money, I can make better use of it than the government does.

Problem is this requires a moral conscience. Unfortunately there are many people who lack this and will want to keep all the money for themselves. This needs to change. People need to become more morally conscious. And I believe we don't need the government for this. People need to be able to think for themselves. It mostly comes from good parenting. Which seems to be something the modern world lacks!

Very easy to shift parental responsibility from the parents onto the state!!

So in order for Capitalism to become egalitarian all we need to do is rid the world of greed and hope that the new socially minded elite will cover all the basic needs of the population through their charitable works .. cool that shouldn't take too long.

K-9 · 20-03-2012 5:14pm

af_thefragile wrote: »

Its the whole financial system which is based on exploitation. To correct it the whole system needs to be scrapped for a new one which is too much of an asking but its something Ron Paul dares on achieving in USA if he becomes the president. When you learn the "tricks of the trade" in the modern economic system, its all based on new ways to exploit capital and labour.

So how does he propose to deal with the human intrinsic trait of greed?

Its only a handful of financial corporations that work without morals and ethics. There are lots of entrepreneurs who spend a lot of money helping the poor and deprives.

Bill Gates is a very good example of an entrepreneur who has spend a big portion of his wealth helping poor people around the world and there are many others than him.

In fact private organisations have done more to help the poor around the world than any government has. All governments do is work on their own interests any help only those people who benefit them, ignoring those who don't.

And Gates was perfectly happy to use his position to block new entrants or other competition in the market. The ends justify the means I suppose!

Machiavelli would have been proud!

af_thefragile · 20-03-2012 5:22pm

pawnacide wrote: »

So in order for Capitalism to become egalitarian all we need to do is rid the world of greed and hope that the new socially minded elite will cover all the basic needs of the population through their charitable works .. cool that shouldn't take too long.

Yes and No.

Yes that in order for humans to succeed and for hunger and poverty to be eradicated, people need to become more charitable and morally conscious.

No in that the world is not a pretty place, greed is something that will always remain and there will always be a handful of morally deprived people who will make things difficult for the rest.

But I don't give up on hope. I do believe 99.999999% of the world's population is good and people do care about others.

Problem lies in the current financial system which has bound us all. That is the root of all evil. It is this financial system which is destroying both the poor, the middle class and also the rich entrapping them in perpetual debt. When a person is trapped in debt, all he cares about is paying off his bills and mortgage, while the government is trapped in the similar situation of paying off its debts. That's where the problem arises. That's where humans become selfish because they need to acquire as much money as they can to pay off their debts and have nothing left to help other less fortunate people.

This picture illustrates it very well:
http://www.funnyphotos.net.au/images/net-worth-bank-loan-student-loan-credit-card-car-l1.jpg

The only ones who gain in this system are the bankers and the politicians who keep this whole system afloat.

If we need to improve out condition as humans, the current financial system needs to be scrapped first because it is this system (not capitalism or anything else) that is destroying us.

Watch this documentary on how the current financial system exploits us all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXt1cayx0hs

af_thefragile · 20-03-2012 5:35pm

K-9 wrote: »

So how does he propose to deal with the human intrinsic trait of greed?

And Gates was perfectly happy to use his position to block new entrants or other competition in the market. The ends justify the means I suppose! Machiavelli would have been proud!

Again, greed has always been considered a great sin in almost every religion. I'm not saying we all should become religious but the way greed had been dealt with throughout history has been through religion and morality. If people lack that, there will be nothing stopping people from letting their greed run wild and they'll end up destroying the society. People need to develop moral conscience. I said in my previous post, that happens through good parenting.
Lately we all want the government to take over the responsibility of our parents and expect the schools to teach our kids what good or bad is rather than it being the parents responsibility to teach the kids what morality is.

Also 99.99999% of the people are intrinsically good. Yes people have intrinsic traits of greed but people also have intrinsic trails that makes them share and contribute to others.

Well, I don't exactly see Bill Gates stopping competition. It will always be very difficult to compete against an established product which people have come to trust over the years. Yet Apple is a competitor to Microsoft which is doing pretty good. Linux is always there and there are new ones like ubuntu, joli cloud, google os etc.
Again you target your product to the audience. Most of the world's population thinks all computers look either like windows or Mac hence they will not like to work with anything other than what they recognise.

But then in phones HTC has been a relatively new brand in the market and it has been doing really well. Nokia used to be the leader in cell phones market a decade now, now people rarely buy a Nokia because the free market has allowed other manufacturers to take over that spot by producing better products.

pawnacide · 20-03-2012 5:37pm

af_thefragile wrote: »

If we need to improve out condition as humans, the current financial system needs to be scrapped first because it is this system (not capitalism or anything else) that is destroying us.

Watch this documentary on how the current financial system exploits us all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXt1cayx0hs

Just so I'm clear, you want to scrap the current financial system for a purely capitalist one and trust those said capitalists with the well being of society as a whole. You believe this will improve peoples lives ?

If yes, I have a couple of questions

1. Are you nuts ?
2. What age are you ?
3. Where have you been for the last 5 years ?
4. How ?

czx · 20-03-2012 5:40pm

tony007 wrote: »

No, they were communists. You should read into it a bit more.

Looking through the Communist Party of Ireland website:

'The Communist Party of Ireland is an all-Ireland Marxist party founded in 1933. Its aim is to win the support of the majority of the Irish people for ending the capitalist system and for building socialism—a social system in which the means of production, distribution and exchange are publicly owned and utilised for the benefit of the whole people.'

benway · 20-03-2012 5:42pm

af_thefragile wrote: »

Its only a handful of financial corporations that work without morals and ethics.

No corporation has morals and ethics. They're exclusively driven by the profit motive, their only responsibility is to their shareholders. Not saying this as a criticism, just stating facts.

af_thefragile wrote: »

In fact private organisations have done more to help the poor around the world than any government has.

Examples or gtfo.

af_thefragile wrote: »

Car manufacturers are a great example. Cars have come a long way over the past century. Its not because of government spending and military research. Its because of competition driving innovation.

And the fact that obscene amounts of money was put into these same manufacturers for the purposes of building military materiel during the second world war had nothing to do with these advances. Oh no.

Blinkers, son. Ron Paul is a nutjob as well, btw.

KyussBishop · 20-03-2012 5:43pm

af_thefragile wrote: »

Well, I don't exactly see Bill Gates stopping competition.

Judge Jackson issued his findings of fact on November 5, 1999, which stated that Microsoft's dominance of the x86 based personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly, and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, including Apple, Java, Netscape, Lotus Notes, Real Networks, Linux, and others. The judgment was split in two parts. On April 3, 2000, he issued his conclusions of law, according to which Microsoft had committed monopolization, attempted monopolization, and tying in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. Microsoft immediately appealed the decision. On 2000-06-07, the court orders a breakup of Microsoft as its remedy. According to that judgment, Microsoft would have to be broken into two separate units, one to produce the operating system, and one to produce other software components.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft#Judgment

The European Union Microsoft competition case is a case brought by the European Commission of the European Union (EU) against Microsoft for abuse of its dominant position in the market (according to competition law). It started as a complaint from Novell over Microsoft's licensing practices in 1993, and eventually resulted in the EU ordering Microsoft to divulge certain information about its server products and release a version of Microsoft Windows without Windows Media Player.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_competition_case

Microsoft lost both those cases.

tony007 · 20-03-2012 5:45pm

czx wrote: »

Looking through the Communist Party of Ireland website:

'The Communist Party of Ireland is an all-Ireland Marxist party founded in 1933. Its aim is to win the support of the majority of the Irish people for ending the capitalist system and for building socialism—a social system in which the means of production, distribution and exchange are publicly owned and utilised for the benefit of the whole people.'

You were talking about the Soviet Union. Look at the policies there. The policies there decreased worker control over production. Therefore, not socialist.

af_thefragile · 20-03-2012 5:47pm

pawnacide wrote: »

Just so I'm clear, you want to scrap the current financial system for a purely capitalist one and trust those said capitalists with the well being of society as a whole. You believe this will improve peoples lives ?

If yes, I have a couple of questions

1. Are you nuts ?
2. What age are you ?
3. Where have you been for the last 5 years ?
4. How ?

I never said we need to scrap the financial system for a capitalist one. I said the current financial system is destroying world economies, which if you don't believe you are blind or like to hold blind faith in the government and the financial system.

What should be replaced in place of the current financial system is a whole other topic and it has nothing to do with capitalism.
In short the financial system needs to be replaced with an interest free system where the amount of money circulating in the economy is very tightly regulated (gold backed currency helps in tight regulation but its not necessary). But its a very large topic as its a whole different school of economics to the current keynesian and debt-interest based system. Two lines cannot explain it, either watch that documentary or look it up somewhere else. I'm not going to discuss it here because its a very big topic in itself.

At what point did Socialists become something to rant about?

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