Political Compass

[supercanuk]

If Heyrabbit is still around and willing to continue the debate:

 

You say that capitalism rewards productivity and you're right. Did it occur to you that we might not want to reward productivity? Productivity requires consumption - rewarding productivity encourages consumption. Given the Earth has finite resources and finite dumping space, an ever-growing economy will one day make the planet uninhabitable - that is a mathematical fact.

That and what makes production at the whim of central, unaccountable persons a good thing? Its not like the workers can take control of the pace in which they choose to work since the state protects the owners property and throughout history have had an active involvement in suppressing workers. Read A People

[heyrabbit]

If Heyrabbit is still around and willing to continue the debate:

 

You say that capitalism rewards productivity and you're right. Did it occur to you that we might not want to reward productivity? Productivity requires consumption - rewarding productivity encourages consumption. Given the Earth has finite resources and finite dumping space, an ever-growing economy will one day make the planet uninhabitable - that is a mathematical fact.

Absolutely. Many people agree with your first assertion and they're all Socialists.

 

Getting rid of Capitalist influence in the government would not abrogate the collection of waste.Waste management is an issue of morality. I'm not happy with it either, but it's not Capitalisms fault. Communism makes societies unlivable as we speak.

 

supercanuk: you can attribute that largely to the Socialist influence in our government which is responsible for creating monopolies everywhere. What would you like private business owners to be held accountable for, and to whom?

 

3rd world countries live under totalitarian rule. Effort and production are not rewarded in these places. that's why they're 3rd world countries.

[Bizud]

They're 3rd world countries because of the legacy of decades of colonial rule, and then decades of economic blackmail forcing bad policy on them, and because those that occupy their high offices are corrupt and in the pocket of one special interest group or another (usually foreign businesses).

 

Socialism can mean a great many things, but I'm specifically talking about democratic control over the means of production and collective worker self-management through unions. Just because company X owns factory Y doesn't mean they have a right to own it. Ownership isn't self-justifying. Workplaces should belong to their workers. If this sounds crazy, remember that before the feudal system was abolished, nobles owned all the land and collected dues from the peasants who worked it. That system was finally recognized as fundamentally unequal and wrong, and the peasants became landowners.

 

Socialism is of course by no means a cure for waste, only a means of empowering the masses to (hopefully) take action and implement rational economic planning to avert a global environmental crisis. This cannot happen under capitalism because capitalism is all about maximizing short-term profit. CEOs who place other concerns above short-term profit can be fired. Our government's current form of capitalism also involves cleaning up big business's pollution on the public tab, and subsidizing polluters.

[heyrabbit]

If company X paid for factory Y they absolutely have a right to own it.It's called property rights. you want to change that and that's why you advocate Socialism. That would deny people of their individual rights. That's the whole argument.

 

Of course, most only ever agree with theft when it's in their benefit. You would say that it's unfair for worker X to work and not get compensated for is effort. Well, tell me why should owner Y work for free? That's a complete double standard. You can't just agree with individual rights when it suits you and then disregard it when it applies to someone else.

 

I don't understand why you're trying to pin environmental problems on capitalism. Industrialism would exist in any type of government.

[Bizud]

Yes it would, but under capitalism, the worst polluters are not subject to popular controls.

 

Ownership is not work. Profit, rent, and interest on loans - these are not work. They are income derived from ownership rather than work. Most capitalists advocated the abolition of serfdom - was it "theft" when serfom was abolished and the peasants who had always worked the land became its owners? It would no more be theft if capitalism were abolished and factory workers became owners, merely a social revolution.

[heyrabbit]

You're using a 19th century analogy about agriculture to prove a point about how these ideologies relate to the present time and it doesn't work. you picked the one type of ownership that's completely morally debatable. Ownership of land is different than ownership of factories, which is what we were originally talking about. There's no ambiguity surrounding property rights of a factory. If you build it it's yours. land is not built but discovered.

 

I'll give you an analogy about what you think is morally just.

 

Let's say that I decide that I want a truck to start a delivering company, yet I don't have enough money. I decide to work a second part time job until I can afford my own truck. while you decide to stay at your current job, I work hard two jobs and save my money.

 

I save enough money to buy a second truck, and eventually I hire employees to work for me.

 

Eventually I earn enough money to start a second small business.

 

Then you come along and decide that you want to be a truck driver. But wait... you don't have a truck! I got three trucks and you have none. Wouldn't it be fair for me to just give you one? What right do I have to own that company?

[supercanuk]

Let's say that I decide that I want a truck to start a delivering company, yet I don't have enough money. I decide to work a second part time job until I can afford my own truck. while you decide to stay at your current job, I work hard two jobs and save my money.

 

I save enough money to buy a second truck, and eventually I hire employees to work for me.

 

Eventually I earn enough money to start a second small business.

 

Then you come along and decide that you want to be a truck driver. But wait... you don't have a truck!  I got three trucks and you have none. Wouldn't it be fair for me to just give you one? What right do I have to own that company

- I would like private business owners to be accountable to the people, in a real democracy this would occur, but most especially the people who live in the land they are directly benefiting from. But on to your analogy

Edited May 21, 2006 by supercanuk

[heyrabbit]

There is absolutely a select group of people who benefit directly from the positions they hold in large corporations and political positions. It's a monopoly without a doubt, you're right about that. From what I've read I get the impression that you're suggesting that this is a result of Capitalism.

 

why do these monopolies exist?

Is it becuase people used Capitalism as means of gaining positions in our work-force so powerful that they are able to shut the door on competitors?

Is it because individuals gained property rights? No.

If you want to look at our recent history, read about the antitrust laws in Canada and the U.S. and you might realize just why it is that these monopolies exist. Monopoplies definitely don't exist because of free exchange in the free market and by the same token, they definitely weren't hindered by antitrust laws either.

 

I'm all for policies that benefit the environment, but Im against completely democratizing everything. some level of hierarchy HAS to exist. If you're worried about the environment and redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor, vote for the NDP .if you let people vote on every issue you might have a nicer environment, but you'd also destroy the economy. people are generally stupid and need to be told what to do.

[supercanuk]

"if you let people vote on every issue you might have a nicer environment, but you'd also destroy the economy. people are generally stupid and need to be told what to do."

 

But i guess this also ask's the question, what is the economy. Well its a system obviously of wealth production, from taking materials from the environment, which directly cause the environment to decline quickly. Because the economy is in direct opposition to the enviornment, you will destroy the economy to have a nicer environment ( unless things are made sustainable, but not everything is). But do you want to live? Do you know that the breast milk of every woman on the planet, for example, is contaminated not only with dioxin but 350 other chemicals such as heavy metals and pesticides? These are cancerous causing agents, dioxin is incredibly dangerous introduced by industrial development and the beloved economy. Did you know that 90% of the worlds natural forests are gone? Do you know what that does to the carbon cycle? What that does to the greenhouse gas effect? For every action, there is a reaction and we are seeing it today. Personally id like to live, and if that means that Exxon Mobile makes less then 1.4 trillion dollars next year i wont loose sleep.

I think the belief that people are generally stupid is a little over-simplifying, often we simplify what we dont understand.People are not stupid, people are strong, and the democratization of institutions works, we've seen it work in Kibbutznic's and in Spain and in many other parts of the world. I think that power in a concentrated few hands is really stupid, its killing us, literally. At least if we democratize every institution if a town fails and destroys its population then its the fault of that town, not one person, and another town can learn its lessons from it.

This is what happens when you break down hierarchy, you get a deeper wide ranging responsbility, so that people are not ruled by the few.

[ecnarf]

I'm all for policies that benefit the environment, but Im against completely democratizing everything. some level of hierarchy HAS to exist. If you're worried about the environment and redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor, vote for the NDP .if you let people vote on every issue you might have a nicer environment, but you'd also destroy the economy. people are generally stupid and need to be told what to do.

This begs the question as to what is more important: an environment we can sustain or profits we can't.

[supercanuk]

This begs the question as to what is more important: an environment we can sustain or profits we can't.

Exactly, the problem with capitalism, why i think its a bad thing, is that it focuses on short term gains. Maximize profits, for the next quarter or you loose your job is basically the mantra that the stockholders can loom over a CEO. So what are they left to do in any situation that any other human is going to do in that situation? Well maximize profits no matter what. Capitalism pins people against the enviornment in ways that are kinda scary, because it requires that we destroy our host ( no other pest does this) to live, but then ultimately as we destroy our host, we die too, like the host. We need long term insight to big problems we're facing.

[ecnarf]

For the record, I am by no means a socialist or a communist. Anyone who's read a bit of history will know that they simply don't work.

 

I think capitalism is, unfortunately, the best system we've got. I'm not particularly thrilled about it, but neither am I against it. I think that capitalism has the capacity to work, but it needs checks and balances, just like the government. You just can't trust people (CEO's, companies, corporations) who will put their paycheck above your drinking water. The quality of life of over 6 billion people is, to my mind, more important than the profits of a select group of shareholders. As you pointed out, the inherent flaw in capitalism is short-term profits for the individual or the group, and not considering the people who are affected by, but take no part in, corporate actions.

[supercanuk]

For the record, I am by no means a socialist or a communist. Anyone who's read a bit of history will know that they simply don't work.

 

I think capitalism is, unfortunately, the best system we've got. I'm not particularly thrilled about it, but neither am I against it. I think that capitalism has the capacity to work, but it needs checks and balances, just like the government. You just can't trust people (CEO's, companies, corporations) who will put their paycheck above your drinking water. The quality of life of over 6 billion people is, to my mind, more important than the profits of a select group of shareholders. As you pointed out, the inherent flaw in capitalism is short-term profits for the individual or the group, and not considering the people who are affected by, but take no part in, corporate actions.

For sure, and I want to be clear that im not a socialist or a communist, I believe in a living democracy where the people actually do rule, not this complete illusion. Capitalism could work, I don

[heyrabbit]

Everyone is quick to blame capitalism for things that happen in our mixed economy when the actual fact is that true capitalism has never even existed. people can only hypothesize about the effects it has in society. I'm quite positive that capitalism does effect the environemnt negatively, when it's subjected to and retarded by socialist policy. And that's the case right now. Whether or not laissez faire capitalism would be any more effective, well everyone can have their own opinion on that.

[Bizud]

Well, the biggest contributor to capitalist pollution is "dirty" subsidy.

[supercanuk]

Exactly, we can sit here and completely disagree, but i respect that you have your own opinions, its nothing personal, we just comppletely disagree which is completely normal...

On another strikeing note, Left/Libertarian has been voted for 34 times... holy shit, when you think about it thats definetely quite a large number.

[ecnarf]

Everyone is quick to blame capitalism for things that happen in our mixed economy when the actual fact is that true capitalism has never even existed. people can only hypothesize about the effects it has in society. I'm quite positive that capitalism does effect the environemnt negatively, when it's subjected to and retarded by socialist policy. And that's the case right now. Whether or not laissez faire capitalism would be any more effective, well everyone can have their own opinion on that.

How would letting corporations run free without any sort of regulation possibly be better for the environment?