tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5583355899739522283.post5010549613365611256..comments2015-11-25T18:56:04.143-05:00Comments on Defend Rights Now: Common Fallacies About Capitalism 1Psychmstrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03087940311060157473noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5583355899739522283.post-3600977261244977242010-06-21T18:45:01.108-04:002010-06-21T18:45:01.108-04:00I do not agree with your comments on capitalism. ...I do not agree with your comments on capitalism. In my view, capitalism is simply the spontaneously arising order that occurs among free people when force and the threat of force has been abolished from human relationships.<br /><br />Unemployment must always arise among free human beings since individuals make choices that end some relationships and begin others. If I decide to buy a Toyota rather than a Ford, or to hold on to my old clunker for another year, I am making choices that in the aggregate profoundly affect the number of people, for example, who are employed by Ford or Toyota, or by local repair shops who will see an increase in business. So long as we are human and have the ability to make choices, there will arise a discontinuity between what a businessman can plan for and what the reality turns out to be. If he is a good businessman, his plans will be highly accurate. If he is a poor businessman, he will misjudge the market, lose money, and he may even go bankrupt if his mistakes are large enough.<br /><br />Unfortunately, we also have a fractional reserve currency that distorts the judgments people make, as was seen in the recent housing boom. When government actions corrupt the value of currency they greatly distort the information the price mechanism is able to provide investors, investors make investment decisions based on inaccurate price information and a boom results, to be followed by a bust, or deflationary cycle. During this time, historically, we have had high unemployment, since it takes so much time for good information to once again be available to investors and they get up the courage to take further risk and invest in profit-making businesses that incidentally create jobs for the unemployed.<br /><br />Under a free capitalistic economy, however, where government's actions are strictly prohibited from intervening into the private economy, such adjustments would be quite rapid, first because the maladjustment wouldn't be that serious since the government would not be controlling the currency, and because we'd then have a free labor market, where wages could decline sufficiently for there to arise full employment, really quite rapidly. <br /><br />In the United States today we have a mixed economy that is speeding very rapidly toward a hybrid fascist/socialist system of state administrative control of all aspects of economic, social, and cultural life. We do not now have laissez-faire capitalism.Tom Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08751520166380173550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5583355899739522283.post-5951562023813323382010-06-21T18:24:15.597-04:002010-06-21T18:24:15.597-04:00According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the pr...According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the primary definitions are these:<br /><br />Socialism - A theory or policy of social organization which aims at or advocates the ownership and control of the means of production, capital, land, property, etc., by the community as a whole, and their administration or distribution in the interests of all.<br /><br />Communism - A theory which advocates a state of society in which there should be no private ownership, all property being vested in the community and labour organized for the common benefit of all members; the professed principle being that each should work according to his capacity, and receive according to his wants.<br /><br />The OED, unfortunately, offers only a circular definition for fascism. If we turn to Merriam-Webster, we find:<br /><br />Fascism - a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition; 2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control.<br /><br />I have chosen to focus on the conceptual identity of these different forms of totalitarianism, and ignore the historical peculiarities. I do this for purposes of clarity only. I do not deny that Mussolini's Fascists differed in important respects with Hitler's Nazis and that they, in turn, differed from Stalin's Communists. For example, the Nazis were racists, the fascists and communists were not. All were highly nationalistic, all made war on their own citizens and enslaved their subject populations.Tom Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08751520166380173550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5583355899739522283.post-22968572610904788182010-06-21T14:07:28.358-04:002010-06-21T14:07:28.358-04:00LOL...
We'll go one at a time, Tom! Let's...LOL...<br />We'll go one at a time, Tom! Let's begin with your last entry, concerning the definitions of economic systems.<br />According to your own prose:<br />"socialism" = government ownership and control of the means of production<br />"Communism" = government ownership and control of the means of production<br />"fascism" = government control of the means of production, but technical "ownership" remains in the hands of private citizens<br /><br />I beg to differ on all of these definitions, as they simply do not comport with the accepted universally-defined definitions for those terms.<br />Communism and Socialism do not have the same meaning, or their dictionary entries would be identical. Fact: the terms simply aren't analogous, and to insist that there are no differences is disingenuous, though I can readily see how you use them interchangeably in order to demonize ANYTHING that we do for ourselves, absent the profit motive, as "communist", in the finest McCarthy-ite tradition.<br />Fascism, as fairly benignly defined in your post, actually is defined as: "a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation on corporatist perspectives, values, and systems such as the political system and the economy".<br />I believe that the benign definition of fascism was entered to deflect attention to the fact that what you espouse, "a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology, organizing the United States on corporatist perspectives, values, and systems such as the political system and the economy" is, actually fascism, and you'd really like to avoid that label, even though it most closely aligns with your ideology.<br /><br />I am not a communist, nor am I a socialist, nor am I a fascist. I can readily see the faults in every economic system. I am not blind to the fact that capitalism, as practiced in the United States, has huge flaws. One such glaring flaw is that capitalism keeps a permanent percentage of Americans unemployed. Our system does this for two reasons: 1) a permanently unemployed class provides a large pool of incredibly cheap labor, which leads directly to point: 2) a huge pool of unemployed Americans depresses the overall real wages of the American worker.<br />It's all about balance, Tom. Fascists clearly do not respect labor, and look at workers as a necessary evil, rather than as partners in a capitalistic venture. <br />There is no balance in a system wherein corporatists hold all of the cards and have all of the political power (and are purchasing the votes of politician after politician to keep their predatory system in-place).<br />We will always have a hybrid economic system in this country, much like those in virtually every other advanced nation. As capitalism is our "chosen" economic system, we cannot wear blinders and ignore the short-comings of said system, and that's where public programs like unemployment insurance(termed "socialist" in nature by yourself) step in.<br />We become flaming communists at our own peril, just as we become flaming fascists at our own peril...<br />Peace!RJhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14014446992491884175noreply@blogger.com