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Things like food, housing, heath care, and education in the US would all benefit from more democratic, as opposed to oligarchic, control in my opinion. Economic democracy, which postulates a shift in decision making power from corporate shareholders to a larger, more diverse group of public stakeholders, including workers, customers, and suppliers, for example, would seem a better public choice to me than our current private model.Are you denying the need for some agency to control the monopoly of violence today?
No.
If not, are you in favor of public or private control?
Public. And it should be strictly limited. What's this got to do with democratic control of everything else?
Economic democracy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
You are not being raped. This is the type of hyperbolic nonsense that makes it easy to discount your world view as irrelevant and meaningless ideology that is not based on reality.
I would suggest you find a nation that agrees with you but every single industrialized nation disagrees with your assessment. When you live in civilization people actually care about the well being of one another.
No, it's only hyperbole in YOUR mind. You lack the education to use the term by it's defined meaning. The definition of rape is seizing and taking away by force, your accusation that it only pertains to sex acts, points out what a little mind you have.
You want videos of the rape being performed by our IRS agents?
While I can see why some folks like to be the benefactors of theft, talking nice about it is nothing more than pandering to the violent act you are benefiting from.
Then you point to other nations, like Rwanda where they hack peoples heads off as a basis for using criminal acts on citizens and that makes it ok in your mind?
What you just said is literally crazy. UHC that exists in every single industrialized nation is the topic. Not people getting their head cut off in Rwanda.
We live in a society together. Other members of our society have fought and died for one another. We help each other, depend on one another, and what separates the US from Rwanda is not any individual but the civilization that we have cultivated together.
The fact that we provide health care for the poor isn't even really up for debate in reality.
I admit to being taken by hyperbole but you clearly favor corporate control because you understand it as 100% voluntary ergo no control. This is easily rationalized when you believe you can only comply by force or choice and you identify correctly that corporations are not using force. I submit this is a false dichotomy. I know corporations are not synonymous with government and therefore violence, but corporations are people that effect the government far more than any individual citizen does. Naturally we think of a line in the sand between government's authority to use force and corporate lack of such authority. This is less clear of a line when you investigate which you must avoid doing to maintain your views.
You may live remote region of USA like myself but I know you aren't off the grid involved in subsistence farming. This is no attack on your life choice (I agree with you often) but you are given to manufactured consent, a necessary delusion if you think you are under no corporate influence (this includes media and all private corps). Our ego centric economy is driven by personal distraction and delusions from meaningful issues like human atrocities done without justification. The justification is often in the fact that we need more resources to continue our pursuits.
Upon recognizing that private corporation uses every device possible to subdue free press like framing of issues, public relations among other devices one can realize this is at least a tacit effort between competing companies and essentially between elites to protect their interests. Institutions and people are not about to allow total change, they will bitterly resist. So with general control of the mainstream press the information is filtered for the public in fragmented slices rather than the organic whole; many historical examples show the press presenting the side that makes USA look good often when we are supporting atrocities. This is about expansion and resource control. Who owns minerals? Not so much governments but private corporations are the major resource owners--remember, private property? It is in their (the corps.) best interest to have unfettered access to resources and have a hand in government policy, the media etc. Thus tricking us into going along with their interests through distortions making us think its in our interest too. It's been the game of the police since its creation to enforce business interests over human interests. The elites are inclined to squash natural inquisition--diametrically opposed to human need for creativity and expression. It might lead to a genuinely free society where they don't have the same power and authority.
Things like food, housing, heath care, and education in the US would all benefit from more democratic, as opposed to oligarchic, control in my opinion. Economic democracy, which postulates a shift in decision making power from corporate shareholders to a larger, more diverse group of public stakeholders, including workers, customers, and suppliers, for example, would seem a better public choice to me than our current private model.Are you denying the need for some agency to control the monopoly of violence today?
No.
If not, are you in favor of public or private control?
Public. And it should be strictly limited. What's this got to do with democratic control of everything else?
Economic democracy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Things like food, housing, heath care, and education in the US would all benefit from more democratic, as opposed to oligarchic, control in my opinion. Economic democracy, which postulates a shift in decision making power from corporate shareholders to a larger, more diverse group of public stakeholders, including workers, customers, and suppliers, for example, would seem a better public choice to me than our current private model.No.
Public. And it should be strictly limited. What's this got to do with democratic control of everything else?
Economic democracy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
That's fine. You have a right to your opinion. But your opinion is not based on evidence, history, or rational thought.
That does not mean you are not entitled to your opinion. By all means. But the rest of us need something more than some idealized mythical "workers paradise" of economic democracy.
These empty shelves are from Venezuela. Above the shelves it says Made in Socialism.
Three million 'unable to get NHS dentistry appointment' - Telegraph
"Three million people in England have been unable to get an appointment with an NHS dentist in the last two years, according to a new study. "
Economic Democracy.
And I could go down the list of hundreds of examples. Socialized anything, never works. Only the free-market Capitalist system, provides the most benefit to the most people. Not perfectly, because there is no perfect. But it provides the *MOST* benefit to the *MOST* people. Far better than your "economic democracy" system ever has.
Equality, is only equally impoverished.
No, it's only hyperbole in YOUR mind. You lack the education to use the term by it's defined meaning. The definition of rape is seizing and taking away by force, your accusation that it only pertains to sex acts, points out what a little mind you have.
You want videos of the rape being performed by our IRS agents?
While I can see why some folks like to be the benefactors of theft, talking nice about it is nothing more than pandering to the violent act you are benefiting from.
Then you point to other nations, like Rwanda where they hack peoples heads off as a basis for using criminal acts on citizens and that makes it ok in your mind?
What you just said is literally crazy. UHC that exists in every single industrialized nation is the topic. Not people getting their head cut off in Rwanda.
We live in a society together. Other members of our society have fought and died for one another. We help each other, depend on one another, and what separates the US from Rwanda is not any individual but the civilization that we have cultivated together.
The fact that we provide health care for the poor isn't even really up for debate in reality.
Bull shit. Cultivate your own damn income and GTFO me and mine. We have absolutely no interest in your panhandling, blood sucking, or burning down of our country.
Lazy, good for nothing, ... then I have no interest in helping you at all. None. You want a hand up.. maybe we can talk about how to get you off your ass and becoming self reliant.
You want to reduce the voters to only people who have actually served in the military? I'm good with that. We'll see just how long it takes for there to be zero democrats in DC.
No, it's only hyperbole in YOUR mind. You lack the education to use the term by it's defined meaning. The definition of rape is seizing and taking away by force, your accusation that it only pertains to sex acts, points out what a little mind you have.
You want videos of the rape being performed by our IRS agents?
While I can see why some folks like to be the benefactors of theft, talking nice about it is nothing more than pandering to the violent act you are benefiting from.
Then you point to other nations, like Rwanda where they hack peoples heads off as a basis for using criminal acts on citizens and that makes it ok in your mind?
What you just said is literally crazy. UHC that exists in every single industrialized nation is the topic. Not people getting their head cut off in Rwanda.
We live in a society together. Other members of our society have fought and died for one another. We help each other, depend on one another, and what separates the US from Rwanda is not any individual but the civilization that we have cultivated together.
The fact that we provide health care for the poor isn't even really up for debate in reality.
The thing that separates us from Rawanda is that we aren't required to follow the herd into the abattoir. However, the U.S. is becoming more and more like Rawanda with each passing day.
What you just said is literally crazy. UHC that exists in every single industrialized nation is the topic. Not people getting their head cut off in Rwanda.
We live in a society together. Other members of our society have fought and died for one another. We help each other, depend on one another, and what separates the US from Rwanda is not any individual but the civilization that we have cultivated together.
The fact that we provide health care for the poor isn't even really up for debate in reality.
Bull shit. Cultivate your own damn income and GTFO me and mine. We have absolutely no interest in your panhandling, blood sucking, or burning down of our country.
Lazy, good for nothing, ... then I have no interest in helping you at all. None. You want a hand up.. maybe we can talk about how to get you off your ass and becoming self reliant.
You want to reduce the voters to only people who have actually served in the military? I'm good with that. We'll see just how long it takes for there to be zero democrats in DC.
The entire industrialized world is BS to you? You think me, and the rest of the civilized world has to "GTFO" to placate your ideology?
Personally I have an absolutely awesome health care plan. When you make it about me you just demonstrate that you live in a narrow minded world where everything is about you so you assume I think the same way. I don't.
Well, I wouldn't call them my best friends, but no, they don't have a monopoly. In any case, I'm not required to do business with them. And I am required to 'do business' with the monopoly of government. That's the difference. And I realize it's a difference that doesn't seem to register with you, but it's not a fantasy. It's very real.
Well, I wouldn't call them my best friends, but no, they don't have a monopoly. In any case, I'm not required to do business with them. And I am required to 'do business' with the monopoly of government. That's the difference. And I realize it's a difference that doesn't seem to register with you, but it's not a fantasy. It's very real.
dblack, this is about the best description you will find regarding our fundamental opposition.
This is written from the vantage point of 2096 looking back over the century but it was written in 1996:
"As long as their political discourse was dominated by the notion of ''rights'' -- whether ''individual'' or ''civil'' -- it was hard for Americans to think of the results of unequal distribution of wealth and income as immoral. Such rights talk, common among late-20th-century liberals, gave conservative opponents of redistributionist policies a tremendous advantage: ''the right to a job'' (or ''to a decent wage'') had none of the resonance of ''the right to sit in the front of the bus'' or ''the right to vote'' or even ''the right to equal pay for equal work.'' Rights in the liberal tradition were, after all, powers and privileges to be wrested from the state, not from the economy.
Of course socialists had, since the mid-19th century, urged that the economy and the state be merged to guarantee economic rights. But it had become clear by the middle of the 20th century that such merging was disastrous. The history of the pre-1989 ''socialist'' countries -- bloody dictatorships that paid only lip service to the fraternity for which the socialist revolutionaries had yearned -- made it plausible for conservatives to argue that extending the notion of rights to the economic order would be a step down the road to serfdom. By the end of the 20th century, even left-leaning American intellectuals agreed that ''socialism, no wave of the future, now looks (at best) like a temporary historical stage through which various nations passed before reaching the great transition to capitalist democracy.''1
The realization by those on the left that a viable economy required free markets did not stop them from insisting that capitalism would be compatible with American ideals of human brotherhood only if the state were able to redistribute wealth. Yet this view was still being criticized as ''un-American'' and ''socialist'' at the beginning of the present century, even as, under the pressures of a globalized world economy, the gap between most Americans' incomes and those of the lucky one-third at the top widened. Looking back, we think how easy it would have been for our great-grandfathers to have forestalled the social collapse that resulted from these economic pressures. They could have insisted that all classes had to confront the new global economy together. In the name of our common citizenship, they could have asked everybody, not just the bottom two-thirds, to tighten their belts and make do with less. They might have brought the country together by bringing back its old pride in fraternal ideals."
He returns to this idea later saying,
"Here, in the late 21st century, as talk of fraternity and unselfishness has replaced talk of rights, American political discourse has come to be dominated by quotations from Scripture and literature, rather than from political theorists or social scientists. Fraternity, like friendship, was not a concept that either philosophers or lawyers knew how to handle. They could formulate principles of justice, equality and liberty, and invoke these principles when weighing hard moral or legal issues. But how to formulate a ''principle of fraternity''? Fraternity is an inclination of the heart, one that produces a sense of shame at having much when others have little. It is not the sort of thing that anybody can have a theory about or that people can be argued into having."Fraternity Reigns - NYTimes.com
Written by Richard Rorty.
You use the description of humans having rights but that rights don't coincide with economic rights, so you speak of economic freedom instead. A phrase that allows anything to happen like present inequality instead of securing humans assurance to food.
Shifting control of the means of production from a relatively small group of private shareholders to a much larger group of public stakeholders is the exact opposite of monopoly.Things like food, housing, heath care, and education in the US would all benefit from more democratic, as opposed to oligarchic, control in my opinion. Economic democracy, which postulates a shift in decision making power from corporate shareholders to a larger, more diverse group of public stakeholders, including workers, customers, and suppliers, for example, would seem a better public choice to me than our current private model.No.
Public. And it should be strictly limited. What's this got to do with democratic control of everything else?
Economic democracy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
So, basically replacing competing corporations with a monopoly?
Shifting control of the means of production from a relatively small group of private shareholders to a much larger group of public stakeholders is the exact opposite of monopoly.Things like food, housing, heath care, and education in the US would all benefit from more democratic, as opposed to oligarchic, control in my opinion. Economic democracy, which postulates a shift in decision making power from corporate shareholders to a larger, more diverse group of public stakeholders, including workers, customers, and suppliers, for example, would seem a better public choice to me than our current private model.
Economic democracy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
So, basically replacing competing corporations with a monopoly?
Mondragon seems a viable starting point:
"Noted poverty expert and sociology professor Barbara J. Peters (Southampton College, Long Island University) has studied the incorporated and entirely resident-owned Basque town of Mondragón, Spain. 'In Mondragón, I saw no signs of poverty. I saw no signs of extreme wealth,' Peters said. 'I saw people looking out for each other…..It's a caring form of capitalism.'"
Mondragón - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Capitalism begins with a fundamental redistribution:It is Capitalism that ultimately funds redistribution.
Capitalism begins with a fundamental redistribution:It is Capitalism that ultimately funds redistribution.
"Surplus labour is a concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy.
"It means labour performed in excess of the labour necessary to produce the means of livelihood of the worker ('necessary labour').
"According to Marxian economics, surplus labour is usually 'unpaid labour'.
"Marxian economics regards surplus labour as the ultimate source of capitalist profits."
Surplus labour - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Capitalism begins with a fundamental redistribution:It is Capitalism that ultimately funds redistribution.
"Surplus labour is a concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy.
"It means labour performed in excess of the labour necessary to produce the means of livelihood of the worker ('necessary labour').
"According to Marxian economics, surplus labour is usually 'unpaid labour'.
"Marxian economics regards surplus labour as the ultimate source of capitalist profits."
Surplus labour - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"the Mondragon Co-op was founded in 1956 in the Basque region of Spain when 3 metal workers from a small technical college started a decade earlier by a young Catholic priest named José María Arizmendiarrieta co-operatively opened a small workshop producing paraffin heaters in the town of Mondragón .Shifting control of the means of production from a relatively small group of private shareholders to a much larger group of public stakeholders is the exact opposite of monopoly.So, basically replacing competing corporations with a monopoly?
Mondragon seems a viable starting point:
"Noted poverty expert and sociology professor Barbara J. Peters (Southampton College, Long Island University) has studied the incorporated and entirely resident-owned Basque town of Mondragón, Spain. 'In Mondragón, I saw no signs of poverty. I saw no signs of extreme wealth,' Peters said. 'I saw people looking out for each other ..It's a caring form of capitalism.'"
Mondragón - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If it's such a stunning success, then why isn't it being emulated all over the world?
"On 16 October 2013, Fagor filed for bankruptcy under Spanish law in order to renegotiate 1,1 billion of debt, after suffering heavy losses during the eurocrisis and as consequence of the poor finance management putting 5,600 employees at risk to lose their jobs.[12] This was followed by the bankruptcy of the whole Fagor group on 6 November 2013.[13]"
FAGOR is a subsidiary of Mondragon.
"the Mondragon Co-op was founded in 1956 in the Basque region of Spain when 3 metal workers from a small technical college started a decade earlier by a young Catholic priest named José María Arizmendiarrieta co-operatively opened a small workshop producing paraffin heaters in the town of Mondragón .Shifting control of the means of production from a relatively small group of private shareholders to a much larger group of public stakeholders is the exact opposite of monopoly.
Mondragon seems a viable starting point:
"Noted poverty expert and sociology professor Barbara J. Peters (Southampton College, Long Island University) has studied the incorporated and entirely resident-owned Basque town of Mondragón, Spain. 'In Mondragón, I saw no signs of poverty. I saw no signs of extreme wealth,' Peters said. 'I saw people looking out for each other ..It's a caring form of capitalism.'"
Mondragón - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If it's such a stunning success, then why isn't it being emulated all over the world?
"On 16 October 2013, Fagor filed for bankruptcy under Spanish law in order to renegotiate 1,1 billion of debt, after suffering heavy losses during the eurocrisis and as consequence of the poor finance management putting 5,600 employees at risk to lose their jobs.[12] This was followed by the bankruptcy of the whole Fagor group on 6 November 2013.[13]"
FAGOR is a subsidiary of Mondragon.
"At the end of 2011 it was providing employment for 83,869 people working in 256 companies in four areas of activity: Finance, Industry, Retail and Knowledge.
"Scholars such as Richard D. Wolff, American professor of economics, have hailed the Mondragon set of enterprises, including the good wages it provides for employees, the empowerment of ordinary workers in decision making, and the measure of equality for female workers, as a major success and have cited it as a working model of an alternative to capitalism."
Mondragon operates within a global capitalist framework and can't be held responsible for economic events beyond its control, like the Great Recession, for example. Employees who lost their jobs at Fagor were likely put back to work in other Mondragon enterprises.
The Mud Report: The Success of Spain's Mondragon Co-operative Shows That There are Alternatives to Capitalism
Capitalism begins with a fundamental redistribution:It is Capitalism that ultimately funds redistribution.
"Surplus labour is a concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy.
"It means labour performed in excess of the labour necessary to produce the means of livelihood of the worker ('necessary labour').
"According to Marxian economics, surplus labour is usually 'unpaid labour'.
"Marxian economics regards surplus labour as the ultimate source of capitalist profits."
Surplus labour - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
