Hi, I'm Ben!!!

[ebacon]

What's the practical difference between communism and capitalism run amok? It's not like our votes give us any say anymore either. We just choose the puppets that are for sale, but it's the buyers that make them do their bidding.

We also have for-profit jails, the highest incarceration rate on the planet, and the death penalty.

Nothing to be proud of. We are on par with China, the Middle East, and North African nations.

[piece-itpete]

How can a government have complete control over a society, and the society be free? It seems at odds with each other....

Pete

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by piece-itpete

How can a government have complete control over a society, and the society be free? It seems at odds with each other....

Pete

You're doing it again, Pete. Totalitarianism and Communism aren't the same thing.

John

[d-ray657]

Once again - the economy is not the society. It makes no difference in a communist economy whether gay folks can marry one another, what passes for entertainment, where we go to church or what we read.

Regards,

D-Ray

[piece-itpete]

Perhaps I'm not being clear - how can the government, say, tell me what to plant or produce, or where I can live or how much a house I can have, and I still be a free man?

Pete

[d-ray657]

Originally Posted by piece-itpete

Perhaps I'm not being clear - how can the government, say, tell me what to plant or produce, or where I can live or how much a house I can have, and I still be a free man?

Pete

So you're more of a free man when a corporation is telling you those things? If you're a farmer, are you a free man when bees cross-pollinate your crops with patented pollen, and you have to pay for something you did not ask for? Are you a free man when an insurance company tells you what doctor you can see, or what brand of medication you can use? Are you a free man when a company tells you to move or go broke? Are you a free man when the air and water in you neighborhood have become so polluted you are sick?

How do you assume that the government will not let you change jobs or locations simply because the means of production have been dedicated to the public good?

Regards,

D-Ray

[budgetaudio6]

with out society one cant have an economy. When the economy is dictated by the government, that is in effect dictating the society. Some good points here though. If communism can be done with out going totalitarianism, just maybe an interesting.

[ebacon]

Originally Posted by budgetaudio6

with out society one cant have an economy. When the economy is dictated by the government, that is in effect dictating the society. Some good points here though. If communism can be done with out going totalitarianism, just maybe an interesting.

Pure communism and pure capitalism end up at the same place -- a ruling class.

Neither of them last peacefully, and that's the operative word, peacefully, because the ruling class ends up in a pecker contest and abusing its underlings. It's just human nature.

Our government and France's government were the first to try to implement self-government after the enlightenment and open publication of the Bible. We did well for a while and the French are still doing well. It is easier for them because they are closer to the old churches and teachings.

On the other hand we are alone on an island and far removed from the source of enlightenment. In our hunger for truth we tend to attach to snake oil salesmen such as Ayn Rand and wealth evangelists.

It's a nasty game and the Communists are winning. They are so good at it that not even American Christians can smell it out. Here is a video of them flailing. They beat on atheist Marx but turn a blind eye to atheist Rand.

http://youtu.be/SH8LkIqu1c8

[MacKat]

I completely agree, pure anything simply doesn't work. While I'm more Communist than Capitalist, I think people should not be 'forced' into Communism, and that there should also be a free market option for those folks. However, there should also be Communist benefits.

I think that's called So************************m, if I'm not mistaken.....


Ben aka MacKat

[bobabode]

Originally Posted by piece-itpete

Perhaps I'm not being clear - how can the government, say, tell me what to plant or produce, or where I can live or how much a house I can have, and I still be a free man?

Pete

Look at communism as a employee owned company with a voices/votes/power coming from both labor and management equally for the benefit of the whole company/country. Tie wages/compensation/bonuses(i.e. vacation time) to production and initiative. (Yeah,I'm an old piecework type of guy) Sounds like a kinder, gentler form of capitalism, doesn't it? Except the only owners/shareholders are us. Of course there are a lot of details to be worked out and those should only be implemented by a vote of the citizens. It would undoubtably be a mixture of old style and new style economics and actually take a century or more to achieve. Mao tried to do it in a generation and screwed the pooch and two or three generations of Chinese in the process. Who can forget the massively stupid & sick anti intellectual Great Leap Forward that he tried in the sixties?


As others have said it has only been attempted at gunpoint and so destined to fail. We get hung up on words that don't resemble the actual construct envisioned due to propaganda both for and against. That communism failed as the Soviets tried to do it was a clusterfuc*k before it got off the ground. Stalin was a gangster plain and simple who murdered any opposition real or imagined and became an ally of convenience only when the blitzkrieg was turned on him. Just look at their previous 300 years of Czarist history. There's no way a leopard changes their spots that easily or quickly.

We have a unique condition of being an egalitarian country from the git go (allegedly) without a deeply authoritarian societal structure like Russia and China. Yeah, I'm being an apologist towards the British crown in this argument, (though they had the Magna Carta and a nasty civil war to build on). Please don't tar and feather me!

I think whatever we come up with will be uniquely American but having the one per centers in the driver's seat of the bus is foolish and shortsighted. They aren't qualified by their track record as displayed by their handling of the economy both in this century, the last century and the one before that. Like Stalin and Mao they are more sociopathic gangsters than someone to be admired IMO. I don't see Romney as any expert. So far he's more like King Midas in reverse.