Trump II

[JoeKitchen]

Well, that's the way Trump made his money...for him it's a zero-sum game. I've known many people in business that behave the same way. I know from personal experience that was the way my father did business. He was a pretty slimy operator although he never actually broke the law.

I personal think thing should be decided on a win-win situation where one builds a consensus where everybody gains and nobody actually looses...sadly that's not the way politics is running these days.

BTW, as it relates to Wikipedia, your position may be a bit behind the times...Professors See Shift in Academic Attitudes on Wikipedia

Of course, I can understand if Wikipedia is seen as a socialist tool for the liberation of knowledge and information. Academia is slow to accept anything new that will rattle certain cages...

Personally I admire the Wikimedia Foundation and the volunteers.

What, is this too "liberal" for you?

On Wikipedia, you do realize that Universities tend to be more liberal then conservative overall.  So I guess that means Wikipedia is too liberal even for the liberals.   

Anyway, the reason you cant use Wikipedia as a reliable, or scholarly, source is because any person can alter the content.  A source is no longer scholarly when it is edited by a person who is not highly educated in the subject and not peer reviewed.  To even suggest that Wikipedia is reliable is ludicrous, especially since there have been several examples, sited in the press, of Wikipedia pages be grossly wrong. 

Some professors changing their view on it is different then most professors.  The consensus is still it is not reliable, and this has nothing to do with Socialism vs Capitalism, liberalism vs. conservatism. 

You claim to be for science and technology advancement, for greater education, but then you're perfectly fine with using a source that is not verified or peer reviewed. 

That is not very scientist like and a contradiction. 

Second, who and how is it decided what a win-win situation is?  How does innovation happen when things need to get approval first? 

Should we do things like single out Solyndra for a massive amount of government money, but then oops, they went bankrupt because their idea and management sucked. 

How do we deiced who the next Steve Jobs is?  How do we find him, and should we suppress other possibilities as well?

Last, your still are not proving your point with the Trump reference.  Bad deals happen and some business people are slimy, sometimes, but that does not imply that all wealth is created by robbing the poor.  Not to mention, business don't last that don't produce an overall positive. 

Furthermore, loosing is a part of growing.  To create a society without loss would be fool hearty, regressive, and probably impossible.  People like to say wisdom comes with age, but I prefer the German take on it.  We gain knowledge from our successes and wisdom from our failures. 

I've had my failures, they were a source of great growth. 

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

...do a Google search ... There's nothing in the results relating to communists and marxists...

Except the essence of the phrase, that is. Why do you think there is Lenin on that t-shirt?


Btw, that's what happens when one's knowledge of the subject is based on a PhD in googling

[Alan Klein]

Well, that's the way Trump made his money...for him it's a zero-sum game. I've known many people in business that behave the same way. I know from personal experience that was the way my father did business. He was a pretty slimy operator although he never actually broke the law.

I personal think thing should be decided on a win-win situation where one builds a consensus where everybody gains and nobody actually looses...sadly that's not the way politics is running these days.

You can't run a successful business if you screw people all the time.  You've got to give them value for value over the long term.  Win-lose or Lose-win make lousy deals.  If you get stuck as a loser in one that isn't Win-Win, you cut corners to make it work for you.  Nobody is happy.  Now I wouldn't work for Trump because of his reputation as a tough real estate builder.  But then again he never offered me a job. 

Now I agree with you that the same is true in politics.  It wasn't good when the Democrats jammed Obamacare down everyone's throat.  It created resentment.  The same would have been true had the Republicans unilaterally succeeded with their legislation.  Interestingly, Trump is not an absolutist.  He tried real hard to satisfy the Republicans on the right and left to get Repeal and Replace passed.  He just couldn't split the baby.  I think now that he was burned, he's going to go to the Democrats to get help the next time.  Remember he ran against the Republican elites who wanted and some still want to destroy him.  So he owes them nothing.  He will work with anyone to get his policies implemented.  He doesn't have to get 100% of everything he says he wants.  Those are just negotiating positions to work down from.  As long as he gets a deal that's Win-Win, he'll be happy and so should we. 

[JoeKitchen]

Anyway, I'm still waiting for a list of all the positives on the actual socialist countries in the world, like Venezuela.  You know, a response to the areas of my posts selectively edited out. 

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... I personal think thing should be decided on a win-win situation where one builds a consensus where everybody gains and nobody actually looses...

And while we are at it, why not have a free ice-cream day in the land of butterflies and unicorns at the same time?

[Schewe]

Anyway, I'm still waiting for a list of all the positives on the actual socialist countries in the world, like Venezuela.  You know, a response to the areas of my posts selectively edited out.

Hum, is Venezuela a socialist government? According to the CIA, it's a "federal presidential republic" and as far as I can tell, while the ruling party claims to be socialist, (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) it's really just a communist dictatorship. The irony here is a next door neighbor to Venezuela is a successful socialist country, Bolivia. As socialist Venezuela collapses, socialist Bolivia thrives. Here’s why.

What’s clear is that the supposedly obvious link between socialism and economic ruin doesn’t check out. It’s not just that it’s easy to find counter examples of socialist governments that fail to set off economic collapse, like Bolivia. It’s also that catastrophe has more often than not come at the hand of committed anti-socialists. Bouts of acute economic chaos ending in hyperinflation broke out in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and even in Bolivia itself back in the 1980s, each time under centrist or right-wing governments deeply at odds with the socialist left.

Socialism, it turns out, explains nothing about why some countries turn into economic basketcases. Instead, it muddles the debate for political ends, delegitimizing progressive policies that have often been shown to work while convincing conservatives that it’s okay when they recklessly overspend. After all, if it isn’t economic recklessness that causes economic chaos, but rather an abstract noun (“socialism”), why shouldn’t right-wingers overspend?

When it comes down to discussions of Capitalism vs. Socialism the lines get blurred because nothing is ever completely anything in a political or governmental sense.

Capitalism and socialism are somewhat opposing schools of thought in economics. The central arguments in the socialism vs. capitalism debate are about economic equality and the role of government. Socialists believe economic inequality is bad for society, and the government is responsible for reducing it via programs that benefit the poor (e.g., free public education, free or subsidized healthcare, social security for the elderly, higher taxes on the rich). On the other hand, capitalists believe that the government does not use economic resources as efficiently as private enterprises do, and therefore society is better off with the free market determining economic winners and losers.

The U.S. is widely considered the bastion of capitalism, and large parts of Scandinavia and Western Europe are considered socialist democracies. However, the truth is every developed country has some programs that are socialist.

Pure capitalism is unworkable...the free market determining economic winners and losers is a rigged system (in that both Trump and Sanders were correct). Is it right that 8 men own over 50% of the world's wealth? (Just 8 men own same wealth as half the world. Yeah, they earned it...but shouldn't they be willing to give back to the society that allowed them to succeed? Do the "1%" really need more tax breaks? Should people over 65 receive less tax breaks for health insurance?

Socialism or more properly democratic socialism (which I prefer). I think this article tells it well Bernie Is Not a Socialist and America Is Not Capitalist. Scandinavia is, by one measure, a freer market than the United States.

Heck, even Albert Einstein had socialist leanings...Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein

Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society. It is quite possible that the relative strength of these two drives is, in the main, fixed by inheritance. But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its appraisal of particular types of behavior. The abstract concept “society” means to the individual human being the sum total of his direct and indirect relations to his contemporaries and to all the people of earlier generations. The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society—in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence—that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is “society” which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word “society.”

Nobody can live and work in a vacuum...nobody can personally prosper without the help and encouragement of the society around them. Pure capitalism is a fantasy...

[Schewe]

Why do you think there is Lenin on that t-shirt?

Why does anybody put anything on a teeshirt?


Gang signals (useful for living on the South Side of Chicago)


Ironically, the same site selling the Lenin teeshirt


I like this one, but not in green


If you don't like Trump you probably won't like me...and I'm okay with that (you probably would like that one).

Get the point? It was a teeshirt somebody might buy in the great tradition of capitalism.

[JoeKitchen]

Schewe, From your article:

"The point here isn’t to idealize Bolivia’s socialists: The country remains badly governed in important ways. Corruption remains endemic in Bolivia’s public sector, with most infrastructure contracts given out on a no-bid basis to ruling-party cronies. And while nowhere near as extreme as Venezuela’s turn to dictatorship, Bolivia’s political scene has seen worrying authoritarian drift, closing down the spaces for dissent that any proper democracy needs to function.

Even the social achievements have to be taken with a grain of salt. There’s a good case to be made that poverty reduction would’ve been faster and more sustainable if the Bolivians hadn’t needlessly antagonized the private sector. As it stands, facing a sometimes hostile administration, the foreign companies that actually operate Bolivia’s mines and gas fields are working aggressively to squeeze out their deposits as fast as possible and get out, investing little or nothing on risky exploration and development."

So in essence, your example works ... so long as you know someone in government who can give you contracts, you say nothing out of line with what you are told, and already have the needed investment in place before things turn towards socialism. 

Lets see how they fair in 10 years when all the private companies that actually did the hard work of exploring no longer are willing to foot the bill, just like what is happening next door.  Let's not forget that Venezuela did fine in the beginning, living off of the work done by the companies that built the mines and drilling operation.  After they depleted what was being mined/drilled and needed to explore themselves, things went south pretty damn fast. 

Socialism really sucks as soon as you run out of other peoples' money, or, in this case, investments. 

It's also great that you provide me with an article that backs up my point that socialistic governments almost always move towards dictatorships.  I thank you for that. 

Furthermore, what is wrong with the free market deciding who are losers and winners?  Should we, like I mentioned before prop up losers, like Solyndra, just because they knew someone, with tax payers' money? 

Or should we, for example, give the contract to design and administer the national health care website to a company just because an executive there went to school with the first lady while ignoring the fact that they massively screwed up Canada's website a year before, all on the tax payers' dime of course? 

[Alan Goldhammer]

I did not mean for you, but for your medical provider.  How much of a hassle do they have to go through to get paid. 

I think Medicare is pretty automatic but the doctors might not like the reimbursement rates.  It's all computerized these days.

[Alan Goldhammer]

Who determines where that help comes from and how much?  You?  This is "The Road to Serfdom".  As much as Trump and Ryan say things you don't agree with, they are limited by our Constitution.  But the Constitution also protects us from people like you who would make the world in their own image of what they think is "right".  The road to hell is made with good intentions. 

Remember that Hayek who wrote that book was in favor of government sponsored healthcare.  From the book, "Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance, where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks, the case for the state helping to organise a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong."

[Alan Goldhammer]

Anyway, I'm still waiting for a list of all the positives on the actual socialist countries in the world, like Venezuela.  You know, a response to the areas of my posts selectively edited out.

I believe the Nordic countries are all socialistic to a degree.  Certainly other European countries have had such governments in the past and still have many of the programs those governments put into place.  The most socialistic healthcare is probably the UK's National Health Service and no government has ever touched it since it's implementation after WW-II.  Most countries other than the US have government imposed price controls on healthcare services and products.  Singapore which is always held up as a beacon by many libertarians have some of the most stringent price controls. 

[Alan Klein]

Heck, even Albert Einstein had socialist leanings...Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein

Nobody can live and work in a vacuum...nobody can personally prosper without the help and encouragement of the society around them. Pure capitalism is a fantasy...

I think you are mixing up Socialism with charity.  With Socialism, the government puts a gun to your head over your objection.  It decides where your hard work and resources that you earned should go.  It decides which anonymous people deserve the fruit of your labor.  In the process you lose liberty.  Political, economic and personal freedoms are reduced and lost in Socialism's extreme.  Resentment toward your fellow man follows because you're being forced.  No one sends their tax reimbursement back to the US Treasury.

Charity is something way different.  It's commanded by God; one circumcises their heart with humility as one helps his fellow man.  It is given with delight.  It frees the spirit.  It changes ego and self-centerness into love.  If you re-read your Einstein quote, there is nothing there that spoke of government doing what man himself should do on his own. 

[Alan Goldhammer]

No one sends their tax reimbursement back to the US Treasury.

I do because I owe estimated taxes every year and as much as I try to get it to even out I usually have a small refund coming.

[LesPalenik]

Although Norway just slipped to number 2 from number 1. New Zealand beat them out. THE LEGATUM PROSPERITY INDEX™ 2016. USA is #17...ouch!

This shows that the idea of growth at any cost and large size required for prosperity is outdated and flawed. A small and well managed enterprise will result in a much more favourable outcome.

[JoeKitchen]

Schewe, unless you can answer yes to this, all your comments are for not. 

Are you willing to give up your studio, all that you own in Chicago, all those nice computers and that studio space behind you in your profile image on your website, to the government to be controlled by people whom you don't know for the greater good?  Would you give all that up, all that you worked for to be controlled by others?

[Alan Klein]

Remember that Hayek who wrote that book was in favor of government sponsored healthcare.  From the book, "Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance, where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks, the case for the state helping to organise a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong."

You took my post out of context  You also left out my second paragraph.  I was responding to an "all or nothing" false choice statement.   Here's my whole post.

-------------------

Who determines where that help comes from and how much?  You?  This is "The Road to Serfdom".  As much as Trump and Ryan say things you don't agree with, they are limited by our Constitution.  But the Constitution also protects us from people like you who would make the world in their own image of what they think is "right".  The road to hell is made with good intentions. 

You also offer a false choice.  It's not a matter of helping our fellow man or stepping on them.  We all help our fellow man with government aid through taxes and with private help.  But too many taxes strangle business, jobs and freedom. Taxes are not friendly.  In effect they are putting a gun to your head and forcing you to "pay up".  You lose economic and personal freedoms the more government takes your money and forces you to do things through regulation and taxes.

[Schewe]

Would you give all that up, all that you worked for to be controlled by others?

That's not socialism, that's communism...and no, I don't espouse that. Socialism doesn't demand total public ownership, that's communism.

I'm perfectly happy to pay taxes for the government to provide services for myself and society in general. But again, you are demanding a binary answer while the actual reality of "socialist government" is far more complex and is a blend of multiple ideologies...

Pure capitalism couldn't work any better than pure communism.

[kers]

That's not socialism, that's communism...and no, I don't espouse that. Socialism doesn't demand total public ownership, that's communism.

I'm perfectly happy to pay taxes for the government to provide services for myself and society in general. But again, you are demanding a binary answer while the actual reality of "socialist government" is far more complex and is a blend of multiple ideologies...

Pure capitalism couldn't work any better than pure communism.

+1
Many of the EU-countries have a mix of capitalism and socialism. One of the basic ideas is that the state has to do the things that are neglected by the companies.
The companies only think for what is good for them- the state has to deal with the welfare of the country and the people in it as a whole.
Who would otherwise built the roads? and public transport? etc and more discussed here: who takes care that people can make use of some basic healthcare no matter what they earn.
Is that something the state should care about? In the EU we think it should; if you are living in one of the richest countries in the world than you should have a proper healthcare system that works for everybody.
To pay tax is not so bad if you see it is well spend.

[Peter McLennan]

With Socialism, the government puts a gun to your head over your objection.  It decides where your hard work and resources that you earned should go.

Preposterous and indefensible.  I live in a "socialist" country and nobody's putting a gun to my head, metaphorically or realistically. We're smarter than that.

I pay taxes willingly, given the benefits that accrue TO ME as a result. Would you prefer a for-profit system for, say, the fire department?  The police?  Or gawd help us, the prison system?  How about libraries?  Do you really think that in the current capitalism-at-all-costs climate that anyone could countenance public libraries?  Piracy!  Copy protection!  You're stealing my work! Ask Schewe what he thinks about public libraries letting people use his work for free.

Alan, it's not an all-or-nothing thing.  There are degrees, shadings, subtleties. Kinda like midtones.

A clever blend of capitalism and socialism is what gave Norway their trillion dollar bank account and health care for everyone and superb highways relatively devoid of potholes, unlike some other countries I've driven in.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... A clever blend of capitalism and socialism is what gave Norway their trillion dollar bank account..

Not dumb oil?