"Emlyn (hotmail)" wrote:
>
> > Bull. a) resources are only as limited as the inefficiencies of
> > socialist governments make them.
>
> Last I heard, resources were limited.
What does limited mean? Practical unlimited resources mean that the
resource utilization efficiency provided by present day technology
causes the supply of a resource to exceed demand, forcing suppliers to
participate in a commodity market. For example, the retrofit kit I
invented for exit signs reduced power demands of those signs from 40
watts down to 1/3 of one watt. If all lighting products attained such
efficiency in short order, then there would be a huge surplus of energy
supply, prices would drop, and producers would have to purposely
restrain their production to try to bring prices back up. So long as
efficiencies increase over time, they cannot ever return to the previous
monopoly/oligopoly price points.
There is no shortage of food. A person in the US today can eat their
full Recommended Daily Allowance of all nutrients for less than $5.00.
There is no reason a person should suffer from malnutrition or
starvation unless it is intentionally. What I do see in behaviors in
homeless people is that they spend their money on luxury items:
espresso, booze, drugs, cigarettes, etc. These are intentional choices.
They can choose to drop bad habits (been there, done that, so don't cry
to me how hard it is).
For those that think I'm talking out of my ass, I was homeless once too,
back in 1991 before I started my lighting business. I knew where every
place there was in Seattle to get stuff for free or little money, where
to get daily cash jobs, etc. One of the most interesting things was the
daily bag lunch. There was this charitable group that would give out bag
lunches in front of the federal building every other day in Seattle. I
found it to be rather insidious programming to have the handout in front
of the federal building, a subliminal reinforcement of the idea that big
government was the solution to all your problems...
>
> > b) current production efficiency and
> > capacity here in the US are such that every person could live quite a
> > nice life. As it is, only about a third of the population or so actually
> > works.
>
> And yet many live in (abject) poverty; this supports your position?
No, as it is, a third of the population supports the other two thirds
(kids, retirees, disabled, homemakers, etc.) Many live in abject poverty
because they made the choices that excluded them from the market
economy.
>
> > c) food production, with spoilage, would provide a 3500 calorie
> > diet to every person on earth if the socialist governments got out of
> > the way and let their people acheive.
>
> We are talking about the planet Earth, yes? The food's already available;
> it's just that some people have it (more than they need), and some don't.
No. Some people have it, and want to sell it so they can pay off their
cost to produce and distribute the food, and pay for their own labor in
producing and distributing it. If the producers and distributors go
bankrupt, then there really will be not enough food.
>
> There should be made a further distinction here between forms of socialism.
> World System theory makes a rough (maybe quite distinct) division between
> countries in what it calls the Capitalist World System. The two types are
> Core and Peripheral countries (there are also in-between countries termed
> the Semi-periphery, but that's not so important here).
>
> The Core countries are the wealthy capitalist countries, where industry is,
> where the wealth is. The Peripheral countries are the poor countries (the
> third world), where industry and wealth is not. There is a history of
> centuries of the core countries of the world dragging natural resources out
> of the periphery, and using them internally; wealth moves out of the
> periphery and into the core.
>
> The distinction between forms of socialism then is between core country
> socialism (really semi-periphery, since socialist countries are not part of
> the capitalist core) and socialism in the periphery - basically, between
> eastern-european socialism and third world socialism (I'm not sure where
> China fits in here).
>
> Many third world countries may call themselves socialist, but are just your
> common or garden tyrranies when you get down to it. Similarly there is an
> idea of substantive and formal democracy; throughout the third world you
> find countries which call themselves democratic (and capitalist), but are
> nothing more than military dictatorships. I would suggest calling both forms
> of political/economic system simply dictatorships, because that's how they
> work.
There is, in fact a hyrbid called mercantilist socialism, where the
oligarchs in a country control the leadership, use the government to
externalize their business costs onto the population, while packaging
those externizations as 'socialist reforms' Most european countries, the
US, and many smaller countries actually use this system, but call
themselves other things for propaganda purposes. Just as many communists
claim that true communism has never been done, true capitalism, which
was once the primary economic system of the early US, currently only
exists on the local level here in many areas.
>
> So back to the point above... when you talk about socialist governments
> "getting in the way", there is a large class of countries, mostly poor, that
> call themselves socialist but are nothing of the sort; they should be
> treated seperately in any argument re the above.
>
> However, there is much to discuss regarding third world, or peripheral,
> countries, and their utter exploitation by multinationals and foreign
> governments wielding massive amounts of foreign capital (& foreign debt). It
> is the modern colonialism. It involves the core stripping the wealth from
> the periphery, it renders their economies massively impoverished in the long
> term, and it means that "if the socialist governments got out of the way and
> let their people acheive", the result would be sweet f*ck all.
>
> Note that peripheral countries cannot opt out of this lock, or fight their
> way out; when they try to opt out, they usually go socialist (capitalism
> we'rnt treetin em so gud) and are reviled and economically sanctioned by the
> core, sometimes attacked; when they try to fight their way out, they are
> squashed like puny bugs by certain "world police" that shall remain nameless
> here.
This is apparently NOT the case, considering that most countries
economically peripheral to the US are socialist, and we don't squash
them.
>
> > NOTE: starvation only happens in
> > socialist and econimically authoritarian countries.
>
> hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo the pain hoo hoo hoo hoo oh I forgot, america has
> dumpsters where you can put the spoiling food from the supermarkets
The only people that eat out of dumpsters are those that pointedly
refuse to participate in the market, due to mental or other personal
problems. There are plenty of private charitable organizations that will
feed anyone who comes to their door.
>
> >
> > Demanding that a small minority do all the productive work, confiscating
> > half their production as 'taxes', so a majority can live in sloth is
> > what is really greedy and inconsiderate. Its modern slavery.
>
> So quit your job and bludge. Go on. Better to die on your feet than to live
> on your knees, and all that stuff.
Since I'm self employed, I'm pretty close. Because I can expense many
things that an employee cannot, my taxable income is extremely small.
Once I get my banking done offshore, then I should be home free.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:13:28 MDT