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Menino80
Joined: 10 Jun 2007
Location: Hodor?
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 Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 5:59 am Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
Meanwhile, $1.5 trillion in debt. Social democracy is the bane of democracy. |
What is this fixation on debt? We have been further in debt, as a percentage of GDP, in the past, and we went on to see the one of the largest periods of economic growth in the history of the planet.
Debt does not preclude growth. |
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Sergio Stefanuto
Joined: 14 May 2009
Location: UK
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 6:07 am Post subject: |
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| johnnyenglishteacher2 wrote: |
| I cannot control who makes my laptop. |
Perhaps not. But instead of buying a laptop, you could donate the money to UNICEF, could you not? You are aware that, whilst you splurge on luxuries like laptops and discredited garbage like 'The Spirit Level' and 'Das Kapital', people in Africa don't even have food to eat? The price of your laptop could feed a hungry man for a year. So your mushy sentimentality for the poor is only skin deep really, isn't it?
| johnnyenglishteacher2 wrote: |
| Sergio - I hope that if you are ever in any trouble and in need of help the perfect stranger you meet will be of a more benevolent disposition than you appear to be (although you might be perfectly helpful in real life). |
If there's one leftist fallacy that really winds me up, it's conflating support for welfarism and acquiescence to government with philanthropy. I've already said that I'm an avid giver of alms to my favorite charities and that's the god's honest truth.
Philanthropy is as natural to human beings as self interest is. Indeed, the latter is the cause of the former. I assume you've never read 'A Theory of Moral Sentiments' by Adam Smith nor 'The Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins? When I see a blind beggar, why is that unpleasant? After all, it's someone else, not me, so why should I care? The answer: the mirror neurons in my brain cause me to endure his suffering vicariously. I imagine myself as a blind beggar. To assuage these unpleasant sensations, I feel compelled to give alms. Humans are the only animal whose brains are of such sophistication as to be able to imagine what it's like to be someone, or something, other than oneself. Helping the blind beggar helps me.
If I'm ever in need of charity, I suspect there shall be plenty a kind soul, like myself, out there to help out.
But I've always realized that charity is nothing more than a form of hedonism. I've donated a substantial amount to charitable causes for the same reasons Bono does: to feel good about it. I didn't care that my donations might foster dependency amongst the recipients. Nor did I care that my unthinking largesse might drive local producers out of business. Nevertheless, rapacious capitalists like myself are almost always avid philanthopists, I find, whist leftists do nothing in the way of genuinely sharing, preferring instead to conflate acquiescence to state confiscation with genuine kindness, and then having the audacity to pontificate in smug moral superiority.
| johnnyenglishteacher2 wrote: |
| In not one single social democracy are large numbers of people clamouring for their government to abandon the state safety net. You can talk all you want about how evil it is, but it isn't going to disappear just because you say so. |
Radical austerity will, if current trends continue, be imposed on welfare states by the bond market. It's just a matter of when and how devastating. We all know about the PIGS, which is serious enough, but what happens if Germany whithers? |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 6:30 am Post subject: |
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| Sergio Stefanuto wrote: |
Just because the wealth of the top 1% has been arrogated from the rest and put into financial speculation (with a taxpayer guarantee) doesn't make it okay for the rabble to demand ever more free stuff. |
The money is stolen. It may have been legally stolen but it was stolen. I'm without time today so I can't go into a big rant but I sincerely hope the thieves get the French Revolution treatment.
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| rampant middle-class public sector parasitism. What could possibly be the justification for picking your nose for $85,000 per year, retiring at 50 and living til you're 90 on a state pension? And then rioting in the streets, a la the Greeks, when the government has austerity imposed on it by creditors!? Clearly, the bourgeois left must be exposed as a virus and all their most cherished state institutions - which are ALWAYS about providing jobs for them first and services for others second* - shut down, out of sheer spite if nothing else. |
Yeah, that annoys me too. We're a broken civilization right now. |
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Menino80
Joined: 10 Jun 2007
Location: Hodor?
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 6:34 am Post subject: |
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| Sergio Stefanuto wrote: |
Radical austerity will, if current trends continue, be imposed on welfare states by the bond market. It's just a matter of when and how devastating. We all know about the PIGS, which is serious enough, but what happens if Germany whithers? |
How is austerity working out for the UK? Also how many Greeks made 85k a year? And where is your proof for why they were rioting? Same lame talking points, all of which stems from a juvenile obsession on "being a good boy" with your paper route and expecting the whole world to be good little boys too. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 6:47 am Post subject: |
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| johnnyenglishteacher2 wrote: |
| Sweden has reformed it's social democratic model, not abandoned it. |
Reformed it by reverting back to logical, free market principles (in order to avoid bankruptcy and ruination). Abandoning it would have been all the better. It's like saying it's better to merely cut off some of the blood supply to a tumor, as opposed to just removing it altogether.
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| In not one single social democracy are large numbers of people clamouring for their government to abandon the state safety net. You can talk all you want about how evil it is, but it isn't going to disappear just because you say so. |
Actually I could say the exact opposite and it would be true. Your worldview is just one of several. It also less to do with what 'people want', and what is feasable/sustainable. It's certainly not going to remain in place just because you say so.
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| Not much point in talking to me about the USSR and China, as I'm neither a Stalinist nor a Maoist. |
Socialism is socialism - to varying degrees. Communist China is the inevitable conclusion to your worldview - it's also the direction the West is currently headed.
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| If you are going to talk about socialism, can you please give me your definition of the word? Not value judgements, just what your definition is. It's a bit difficult trying to talk about the subject with somebody who lumps together the USSR, China and the USA. |
If you need a definition, how about one by the subject of this thread:
"Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good."
-- Ayn Rand
Actually sums it up pretty nicely I think. |
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Menino80
Joined: 10 Jun 2007
Location: Hodor?
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:16 am Post subject: |
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| visitorq wrote: |
Socialism is socialism - to varying degrees. Communist China is the inevitable conclusion to your worldview |
You're a complete nutjob and have no business discussing politics or economics if you believe this to be true. China is getting *less* socialist as time goes on, not more. So how does that work with your little model? We want the US to try to beat the UK in steel production? And then when it turns out we already do, just skip the Cultural Revolutions and jump ahead 30 years in our China fantasy to dual track pricing and segmented labor? What year will this be in real time? Is there some kind of Inception style split screen graph you can show us?
What, * specifically*, do liberals in the US want to emulate about China? Not only emulate, but what do they want to copy? What possible aspect of Chinese society would ANYONE in the west want to copy? Not policy, or speeches, or ideas, SOCIETY. Specifically, some examples, or please STFU, forever.
You Ayn Rand types are complete cuckoos and the Miike handle doesn't do much to bolster your sanity credentials. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:23 am Post subject: |
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| Menino80 wrote: |
| Sergio Stefanuto wrote: |
[
I don't think huge swathes of the population being unable to feed or clothe themselves without the largesse of the rich is, itself, wrong or unjust. The randomness of genetic mutation gurantees that some will always be superior to others. |
You really didn't, did you? You can't seriously believe you can post crap like this and people will take you seriously?
Wacko Nietzschean supermen come out of the woodwork on the internet. |
Maybe when you finally move out of your parents' basement you'll figure it out: it's a big bad world out there. |
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Menino80
Joined: 10 Jun 2007
Location: Hodor?
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:26 am Post subject: |
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| visitorq wrote: |
Maybe when you finally move out of your parents' basement you'll figure it out: it's a big bad world out there. |
I guess that's both barrels huh? Thanks for the life lesson. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:29 am Post subject: |
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| Menino80 wrote: |
| visitorq wrote: |
Maybe when you finally move out of your parents' basement you'll figure it out: it's a big bad world out there. |
I guess that's both barrels huh? Thanks for the life lesson. |
Pearls before swine.
Anyway, you'll probably be banned soon for referring to me as a 'nutjob' (not that I'd ever report you, but that's how things go around here). So you can just scurry off back to asiafinest and tell all the lads about your brief yet exciting foray onto Daves (where you got to hang out with the big kids for 15 minutes). Adios.
Last edited by visitorq on Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:35 am; edited 1 time in total |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:33 am Post subject: |
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| Menino80 wrote: |
What, * specifically*, do liberals in the US want to emulate about China? Not only emulate, but what do they want to copy? What possible aspect of Chinese society would ANYONE in the west want to copy? Not policy, or speeches, or ideas, SOCIETY. Specifically, some examples, or please STFU, forever. |
Depends on what you consider a liberal. T.L.Friedman has guru-style love from American liberals, but I sure wouldn't consider him on the left. Unless liberal is neo-liberal. Dunno. Nothing means what it meant before 65.
http://reason.com/blog/2010/05/24/thomas-l-friedman-wants-us-to |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:38 am Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
| Menino80 wrote: |
What, * specifically*, do liberals in the US want to emulate about China? Not only emulate, but what do they want to copy? What possible aspect of Chinese society would ANYONE in the west want to copy? Not policy, or speeches, or ideas, SOCIETY. Specifically, some examples, or please STFU, forever. |
Depends on what you consider a liberal. T.L.Friedman has guru-style love from American liberals, but I sure wouldn't consider him on the left. Unless liberal is neo-liberal. Dunno. Nothing means what it meant before 65.
http://reason.com/blog/2010/05/24/thomas-l-friedman-wants-us-to |
The globalists/banking elite consider China the model of the future: authoritarianism, censorship, police state, population control, slave labor... what's not to love? |
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Menino80
Joined: 10 Jun 2007
Location: Hodor?
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:41 am Post subject: |
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As I said, society, not policy. Policies can exist in any number of societies, that does not mean we want to emulate the actual societies.
The Netherlands have minimal tarrif, so when libertarians want to lower tarrif, does that mean they the US to be like the Netherlands? Of course not, they're just advocating a certain policy position that another country already has taken.
He could just as easily have said Japan in 1950, or SK/Taiwan from 45-89, or any number of countries that enacted trade policy without legislative gridlock. China is the easiest example, and Friedman is nothing if not a lazy lazy surface level journalist.
Also, that Reason article is a huge pile of crap. If I think that the US should look into de salinization policies that the UAE has, does that mean I want the US to enact the same kind of vice laws as them? No of course not. lazy journalists covering a lazy journalist. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:44 am Post subject: |
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| Menino80 wrote: |
| As I said, society, not policy. Policies can exist in any number of societies, that does not mean we want to emulate the actual societies. |
Yeah, and you don't get to set the parameters of the debate. Too bad for you.
"Societies" rarely decide for themselves (certainly not in China's case). It's the elite who decide. The elite decide the policy. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:47 am Post subject: |
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| Menino80 wrote: |
As I said, society, not policy. Policies can exist in any number of societies, that does not mean we want to emulate the actual societies.
The Netherlands have minimal tarrif, so when libertarians want to lower tarrif, does that mean they the US to be like the Netherlands? Of course not, they're just advocating a certain policy position that another country already has taken.
He could just as easily have said Japan in 1950, or SK/Taiwan from 45-89, or any number of countries that enacted trade policy without legislative gridlock. China is the easiest example, and Friedman is nothing if not a lazy lazy surface level journalist.
Also, that Reason article is a huge pile of crap. If I think that the US should look into de salinization policies that the UAE has, does that mean I want the US to enact the same kind of vice laws as them? No of course not. lazy journalists covering a lazy journalist. |
Friedman and others like him have explicitly praised China's authoritarian politics many times. Google will give you all the details.
Liberal does not mean liberal anymore. Post-65 (or so) everything needs a hyphen. Conservatives are now "neo-cons". Liberals are now "neo-libs". The left is the "new-left". Modernity is now "post-modernity". Everything has changed and these labels no longer mean what they once did.
Last edited by mises on Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:55 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Menino80
Joined: 10 Jun 2007
Location: Hodor?
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| Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:51 am Post subject: |
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| visitorq wrote: |
| Menino80 wrote: |
| As I said, society, not policy. Policies can exist in any number of societies, that does not mean we want to emulate the actual societies. |
Yeah, and you don't get to set the parameters of the debate. Too bad for you.
"Societies" rarely decide for themselves (certainly not in China's case). It's the elite who decide. The elite decide the policy. |
Societies are the product of climate, geography, culture, demography, history, and policy, among others. |
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