Do You View Socialism Positively?

[SAYIT]

The poll question: "Just off the top of your head, would you say you have a positive or negative image of socialism?"

Dems/left leaning - 53% pos ... 41% neg
Repubs/right leaning - 17% pos ... 79% neg
All Americans - 36% pos ... 68% neg

Strangely, Americans are almost unanimously positive about small biz (95%) and very positive about free enterprise (86%) and entrepreneurs (84%), all of which are contrary to socialism.

Socialism Viewed Positively by 36 of Americans

The question is almost too broad.

Give us your specific definition of socialism, one that doesn't conflate the theoretical differences between say Marx and Keynes, and one the doesn't ignore the degree to which the State sector (mostly through defense contracts) has delivered massive technological advances to the private sector. Also, one that acknowledges the state's roll in things like the building of the Hoover Dam (along with what the development of the Colorado tributary system made possible) and also the degree to which profit makers depend upon the defense of overseas supply chains (in unstable places). Meaning: let us know you understand the degree to which profit makers depend upon government.

But here's my answer. I believe that non-corrupted markets are far better at allocating resources than any collection of bureaucrats (i.e., the State). But I also believe that monopolized markets are destroying the country. I believe that Talk Radio and Fox News have raised a generation of voters who don't know the degree to which business leans on the State; nor do they know they degree to which business has captured the State a done more damage to free markets than the State.

Give us a definition OP. Here is one: "The social ownership of the modes of production." That doesn't sound practical, desirable or even possible. I'd rather see free suppliers compete for the dollars of free consumers; I'd rather see a collection of businesses fight to the death to give me better services and cheaper prices. What I don't want is what we have in some sectors: state protected monopolies that build a fence around necessary staples and simply charge rent. Adam Smith didn't want this either. In fact, Adam Smith sounded a lot like Marx when he wrote about monopolies. The right would know this if they turned off Rush Limbaugh.

God help us.

I don't listen to talk radio and my first choice for TV news is al Jazeera.
That said I did not conduct the poll nor do I have a prob with it despite its possible shortcomings. It looks to me like a snapshot of how we feel about socialism and over 1/3 of those polled have a positive view of it. What is more interesting are some of the other findings. For instance, over 50% of Dems hold positive feelings about it.
BTW, definitions of socialism - both dictionary and personal - are widely available on this thread.

 

[MisterBeale]

Even socialists don't view socialism positively. They view it realistically.

 

[OnePercenter]

More accurately, 'socialist ideals' should have been the question. Since everyone enjoys the benefits, you can see the uneducated percentage by the negative answers.

(chuckle)
What benefits of socialism do we all enjoy?

The psychic benefit of knowing that our hard work goes to pay for slothful slobs to watch reality TV all day while eating junk food.

It's even worse. The streets are littered with seemingly healthy - albeit scruffy - young men (and even women) sitting on my city's curbs holding signs reminding me they are hungry and would like me to buy them a meal (or give 'em some cash).

Voting for Republicans made that possible.

We've had years of Dem dominance and as much as you need to believe it, it's not like they just popped out of the closet in 2008. The number of otherwise normal looking young panhandlers has exploded in the past 2 years.

Democrats haven't had a clear majority in Congress since Ford and Carter were in office. Today, the only party that has a voting majority are Republicans.

 

[Rikurzhen]

OK, so if I chose Denmark, then how do you plan to ethnically cleanse the US so that our demographics match those of Denmark. I'm interested in your plan.

Red Herring!

Please try not to post nonsense. Most of us would like to have intelligent debates.

What red herring? You'd have to be an idiot to believe that there is no connection between a sharing society and the ethnic/racial composition of the society. Liberals keep pointing to high sharing societies which are ethnically homogeneous and declaring that this should work here. Why don't you instead find an ethnically/ racially heterogeneous society that also has a high sharing social structure and use that as an example for the US?

Telling 65% white American that we can have a social system like 98.5% white Finland is joke of a position.

Typical lib perspective: You think therefore you are racist. Woo.

I just find it bizarre how they can look at places like Finland and Denmark that are comprised of, essentially, ONE PEOPLE, admire the high sharing society and then believe it can be transferred here. It would be like admiring a nice Spanish tile roof on a home and wanting to transfer that roof to your convertible car. Such simplistic analysis totally dismisses the foundation which supports the roof. A car doesn't share the same structure as a hosue, so a car can't support a Spanish tile roof, a car will have to make do with a flimsy fabric roof for that convertible.

Like I said, Liberals are not known for being thinking creatures, they're driven by base emotions like greed and envy.

Well, one of the lefties on this thread admitted - perhaps inadvertently - that socialism does not work well in large economies and when last I checked, America still had one of those.

I must have missed that comment. I wonder on what basis he made that remark. Any evidence offered?

I don't see any reason why a Nordic social welfare system couldn't work if Finland somehow magically boosted it's population up to 250 million ethnic Finns. America made progress with SS & Medicare at a time when we were 7/8 whites and 1/8 black. America could probably have made more progress but then the traitor liberals opened the damn borders and are now actually cheering on whites becoming a minority.

It was feasible for 7 whites to carry 1 poor black. Sure it was more overhead that what Denmark had to carry but is was manageable. How though do the traitor liberals believe that 1.8 white people can subsidize every minority, as at present, and when the demographics get whites down to 50% of the population, how on Earth do they imagine 1 white person can subsidize 1 minority person?

In Denmark and Finland, people carry their own weight, in American of old there was a 7:1 ratio, but the future looks like 1:1, one person earning enough to subsidize another. That's completely unworkable.

 

[OnePercenter]

More accurately, 'socialist ideals' should have been the question. Since everyone enjoys the benefits, you can see the uneducated percentage by the negative answers.

(chuckle)
What benefits of socialism do we all enjoy?

The psychic benefit of knowing that our hard work goes to pay for slothful slobs to watch reality TV all day while eating junk food.

Since you've probably driven down a city street today without paying a toll, you must be a slothful slob.

Ya know, I thought it was just an act but you really are just plain stupid. I gather you are a leftist?

Instead of bloviating, why don't you show me where I'm wrong.

 

[MisterBeale]

And realistically, it's wonderful if you are in government. If you aren't in government? Well, it's not so good. Even if you are poor. Ask any person that has been receiving aid for any amount of time. Sure, the aid is great, but you give up all your freedom for the aid. The government controls you. You are a prisoner and a slave for the job, the food, and the home they give you. . . .

Even if you work all day long. What kind of life is that?

 

[SAYIT]

More accurately, 'socialist ideals' should have been the question. Since everyone enjoys the benefits, you can see the uneducated percentage by the negative answers.

(chuckle)
What benefits of socialism do we all enjoy?

The psychic benefit of knowing that our hard work goes to pay for slothful slobs to watch reality TV all day while eating junk food.

Since you've probably driven down a city street today without paying a toll, you must be a slothful slob.

Ya know, I thought it was just an act but you really are just plain stupid. I gather you are a leftist?

Instead of bloviating, why don't you show me where I'm wrong.

So let me guess ... you try to learn a new word everyday and "bloviating" is today's winner. Here's a clue, Princess: it does nothing to make you appear smarter and if you can't discern how stupid a comment like "Since you've probably driven down a city street today without paying a toll, you must be a slothful slob" is, you're too stupid to stay on this forum.
Carry on!

 

[francoHFW]

Recurring theme: Socialism is FAR from communism.

 

[SAYIT]

Red Herring!

Please try not to post nonsense. Most of us would like to have intelligent debates.

What red herring? You'd have to be an idiot to believe that there is no connection between a sharing society and the ethnic/racial composition of the society. Liberals keep pointing to high sharing societies which are ethnically homogeneous and declaring that this should work here. Why don't you instead find an ethnically/ racially heterogeneous society that also has a high sharing social structure and use that as an example for the US?

Telling 65% white American that we can have a social system like 98.5% white Finland is joke of a position.

Typical lib perspective: You think therefore you are racist. Woo.

I just find it bizarre how they can look at places like Finland and Denmark that are comprised of, essentially, ONE PEOPLE, admire the high sharing society and then believe it can be transferred here. It would be like admiring a nice Spanish tile roof on a home and wanting to transfer that roof to your convertible car. Such simplistic analysis totally dismisses the foundation which supports the roof. A car doesn't share the same structure as a hosue, so a car can't support a Spanish tile roof, a car will have to make do with a flimsy fabric roof for that convertible.

Like I said, Liberals are not known for being thinking creatures, they're driven by base emotions like greed and envy.

Well, one of the lefties on this thread admitted - perhaps inadvertently - that socialism does not work well in large economies and when last I checked, America still had one of those.

I must have missed that comment. I wonder on what basis he made that remark. Any evidence offered?

In post #234 BFGRN stated: "As a purely economic system, socialism is a lousy way to run a large scale economy." He seems to have some lucid moments.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Recurring theme: Socialism is FAR from communism.

Everyone knows how gateway drugs function.

 

[Bfgrn]

More accurately, 'socialist ideals' should have been the question. Since everyone enjoys the benefits, you can see the uneducated percentage by the negative answers.

(chuckle)
What benefits of socialism do we all enjoy?

The psychic benefit of knowing that our hard work goes to pay for slothful slobs to watch reality TV all day while eating junk food.

It's even worse. The streets are littered with seemingly healthy - albeit scruffy - young men (and even women) sitting on my city's curbs holding signs reminding me they are hungry and would like me to buy them a meal (or give 'em some cash).

Voting for Republicans made that possible.

It's always been possible, moron. There have always been people in this world who don't want to work or who are mentally unfit for work. Republicans aren't responsible.

For your next trick you'll blame Republicans for cancer.

No, they ARE the cancer.

"Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic and power adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place."
Friedrich August von Hayek-The Road to Serfdom

"In general, it can probably be said that the conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes. He believes that if government is in the hands of decent men, it ought not to be too much restricted by rigid rules. Since he is essentially opportunist and lacks principles..."
Friedrich August von Hayek-Why I am Not a Conservative

 

[Bfgrn]

The paragraph I posted does a good job of explaining socialism.

"Socialism is not a political system, it's a way of distributing goods and services."

Here is an expanded view...

What is Socialism?
Central to the meaning of socialism is common ownership. This means the resources of the world being owned in common by the entire global population.

But does it really make sense for everybody to own everything in common? Of course, some goods tend to be for personal consumption, rather than to share—clothes, for example. People 'owning' certain personal possessions does not contradict the principle of a society based upon common ownership.

In practice, common ownership will mean everybody having the right to participate in decisions on how global resources will be used. It means nobody being able to take personal control of resources, beyond their own personal possessions.

Democratic control is therefore also essential to the meaning of socialism. Socialism will be a society in which everybody will have the right to participate in the social decisions that affect them. These decisions could be on a wide range of issues—one of the most important kinds of decision, for example, would be how to organise the production of goods and services.

Production under socialism would be directly and solely for use. With the natural and technical resources of the world held in common and controlled democratically, the sole object of production would be to meet human needs. This would entail an end to buying, selling and money. Instead, we would take freely what we had communally produced. The old slogan of "from each according to ability, to each according to needs" would apply.

So how would we decide what human needs are? This question takes us back to the concept of democracy, for the choices of society will reflect their needs. These needs will, of course, vary among different cultures and with individual preferences—but the democratic system could easily be designed to provide for this variety.

We cannot, of course, predict the exact form that would be taken by this future global democracy. The democratic system will itself be the outcome of future democratic decisions. We can however say that it is likely that decisions will need to be taken at a number of different levels—from local to global. This would help to streamline the democratic participation of every individual towards the issues that concern them.

In socialism, everybody would have free access to the goods and services designed to directly meet their needs and there need be no system of payment for the work that each individual contributes to producing them. All work would be on a voluntary basis. Producing for needs means that people would engage in work that has a direct usefulness. The satisfaction that this would provide, along with the increased opportunity to shape working patterns and conditions, would bring about new attitudes to work.

- See more at: What is Socialism World Socialist Movement

That's a lovely cut & paste and all, but you didn't answer my question.

In your own words, please walk me through what you posted:

In socialism, "more people have some say in how the economy works"

If you're not going to do this, or if you can't, just say so, and I won't burn any more time on this.

.

What is so hard to understand? Socialism means EVERYONE has an equal say in how goods and services are distributed.

Come on.

In socialism, HOW does everyone have an equal say in how goods and services are distributed? Precisely?

And your affection for socialism is clear. Fair enough to say you would join Franco and MikeK and proclaiming you're a socialist?

Two very clear questions, easy to answer.

.

In pure socialism, there is no private ownership. Pure socialism calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources.

I am not a socialist. I am a liberal and a capitalist. What I strongly believe in is democracy; everyone has a say in how their government works. I believe in free and open elections. I believe our founding fathers understood that a pure democracy was not the best model. That is why the form of democracy they chose was a representative republic. Beliefs I have that could be called 'socialist' has to do with our environment. They are beliefs that go all the way back to the Magna Carta...the rule of the commons; the air we breath, the water we drink, the soil we seed. The 'commons' are owned by all of us.



The most insightful and in depth understanding of a true free market comes from one of my favorite liberals, an environmental lawyer who is a member of my favorite liberal family.

I urge you to read the whole speech.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

"I want to say this: There is no stronger advocate for free-market capitalism than myself. I believe that the free market is the most efficient and democratic way to distribute the goods of the land, and that the best thing that could happen to the environment is if we had true free-market capitalism in this country, because the free market promotes efficiency, and efficiency means the elimination of waste, and pollution of course is waste. The free market also would encourage us to properly value our natural resources, and it's the undervaluation of those resources that causes us to use them wastefully. But in a true free-market economy, you can't make yourself rich without making your neighbors rich and without enriching your community.

But what polluters do is they make themselves rich by making everybody else poor. They raise standards of living for themselves by lowering the quality of life for everybody else, and they do that by evading the discipline of the free market. You show me a polluter; I'll show you a subsidy. I'll show you a fat cat using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and to force the public to pay his production costs. That's what all pollution is. It's always a subsidy. It's always a guy trying to cheat the free market.

Corporations are externalizing machines. They're constantly figuring out ways to get somebody else to pay their costs of production. That's their nature. One of the best ways to do that, and the most common way for a polluter, is through pollution. When those coal-burning power plants put mercury into the atmosphere that comes down from the Ohio Valley to my state of New York, I buy a fishing license for $30 every year, but I can't go fishing and eat the fish anymore because they stole the fish from me. They liquidated a public asset, my asset.

The rule is the commons are owned by all of us. They're not owned by the governor or the legislator or the coal companies and the utility. Everybody has a right to use them. Nobody has a right to abuse them. Nobody has a right to use them in a way that will diminish or injure their use and enjoyment by others. But they've stolen that entire resource from the people of New York State. When they put the acid rain in the air, it destroys our forest, and it destroys the lakes that we use for recreation or outfitting or tourism or wealth generation. When they put the mercury in the air, the mercury poisons our children's brains, and that imposes a cost on us. The ozone in particular has caused a million asthma attacks a year, kills 18,000 people, causes hundreds of thousands of lost work days. All of those impacts impose costs on the rest of us that in a true free-market economy should be reflected in the price of that company's product when it makes it to the marketplace.

What those companies and all polluters do is use political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and to force the public to pay their costs. All of the federal environmental laws, every one of the 28 major environmental laws, were designed to restore free-market capitalism in America by forcing actors in the marketplace to pay the true cost of bringing their product to market.

At Riverkeeper, we don't even consider ourselves environmentalists anymore. We're free marketers. We go out into the marketplace, we catch the cheaters, the polluters, and we say to them, "We're going to force you to internalize your costs the same way that you internalize your profits, because as long as somebody is cheating the free market, none of us get the advantages of the efficiency and the democracy and the prosperity that the free market otherwise promises our country. What we have to understand as a nation is that there is a huge difference between free-market capitalism, which democratizes a country, which makes us more prosperous and efficient, and the kind of corporate-crony capitalism which has been embraced by this (Bush) White House, which is as antithetical to democracy, to prosperity, and efficiency in America as it is in Nigeria.

There is nothing wrong with corporations. Corporations are a good thing. They encourage us to take risks. They maximize wealth. They create jobs. I own a corporation. They're a great thing, but they should not be running our government. The reason for that is they don't have the same aspirations for America that you and I do. A corporation does not want democracy. It does not want free markets, it wants profits, and the best way for it to get profits is to use our campaign-finance system -- which is just a system of legalized bribery -- to get their stakes, their hooks into a public official and then use that public official to dismantle the marketplace to give them a competitive advantage and then to privatize the commons, to steal the commonwealth, to liquidate public assets for cash, to plunder, to steal from the rest of us.

And that doesn't mean corporations are a bad thing. It just means they're amoral, and we have to recognize that and not let them into the political process. Let them do their thing, but they should not be participating in our political process, because a corporation cannot do something genuinely philanthropic. It's against the law in this country, because their shareholders can sue them for wasting corporate resources. They cannot legally do anything that will not increase their profit margins. That's the way the law works, and we have to recognize that and understand that they are toxic for the political process, and they have to be fenced off and kept out of the political process. This is why throughout our history our most visionary political leaders -- Republican and Democrat -- have been warning the American public against domination by corporate power.

And what we have to understand as Americans is that the domination of business by government is called communism. The domination of government by business is called fascism. And our job is to walk that narrow trail in between, which is free-market capitalism and democracy. And keep big government at bay with our right hand and corporate power at bay with our left.

In order to do that, we need an informed public and an activist public. And we need a vigorous and an independent press that is willing to speak truth to power. And we no longer have that in the United States of America. And that's something that puts all the values we care about in jeopardy, because you cannot have a clean environment if you do not have a functioning democracy. They are intertwined; they go together. There is a direct correlation around the planet between the level of tyranny and the level of environmental destruction.

The only way you can protect the environment is through a true, locally based democracy. You can protect it for a short term under a tyranny, where there is some kind of beneficent dictator but, over the long term, the only way we can protect the environment is by ensuring our democracy. That has got to be the number-one issue for all of us: to try to restore American democracy, because without that we lose all of the other things that we value."

Kennedy is such a BIG frigging hypocrite he would be a nobody if his last name was not Kennedy.

"A corporation cannot do anything philanthropic." Says Kennedy. Just discount him right there. How about donations to breast cancer, donations to scholarships, donations to preserve our heritage, on and on and on. It is BS and people that want to debate honestly have to recognize that or be considered charlatans. The amount of money donated just to hospitals and medical research is astounding. Kennedy spouts this bile only to keep his political bona fides current.

I have been a member of the Apalachicola Bay and river keepers. They needed a token fisherman and I was one of the few with a full set of teeth and an education. Trust me, they are happy to receive monies from corporations as well as donations from people whose wealth was accrued by working or investing in corporations.

But what really set me against Robert Kennedy was when this chapter wanted him to come speak at a fundraiser. This guy had the gall to say that it would cost us 15,000 dollars to get him to come to speak in support of the environmental organization he created and is promoting. So it is all about the money not the cause for this piece of dung. Our organization was very poor and his demands were out of the question. Kennedy is as bad or worse than any corporation.

Reality always busts the academic bubble.

Corporate Charity Accounted for Only 5% of Giving in 2011

 

[Mac1958]

Blatant deflection noted.

I'll assume you're admitting I'm right. Why so defensive then?

And oh, by the way, I think we should add two personal marginal tax rates at 44.9% and 49.9% (see, I'm not afraid to get specific), and I agree with the Tea Party on very few topics.

Did you think you "had" me there?

Do you think you could be more wrong?

Partisan ideologues are just too freakin' easy.

Speaking of "brainwashed".



.

You are the biggest liar on this board. You feign non partisanship, then you ALWAYS side with the right, IMMEDIATELY, without hesitation.

I see.

What are my positions on foreign policy, war, personal income taxation (see above, maybe?), gay rights, abortion and health care, all of which I have discussed thoroughly on this board?

Your partisan ideology has blinded you. Absolutely blinded you.

Not my problem.

.

It's getting old. You keep spouting the same BS, Yet on every thread you ALWAYS side with the right, IMMEDIATELY, without hesitation.

“If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.”
Douglas Adams

It is a lot tougher being a liberal. We actually THINK. It would be so much easier to be a right wing pea brain.

ALL our problems are caused by government. There is nothing else to even consider. Our beloved captains of industry and Wall Street bankers are always the good guys. And all we have to do is get government off their backs and PRESTO...they will suddenly stop swindling the people, they will suddenly stop polluting our environment and they will suddenly offer health insurance that isn't garbage..

So now you're just completely making stuff up, tossing out straw men all over the place.

You're just another partisan ideologue, dime a dozen. You don't think for yourself. Everything is so simple and black & white for you people.

Always a good sign when others misrepresent my positions, and this one was a gem.

Stop lying.

And by the way, here's the post that has you so upset:

There are clearly many Americans who would be perfectly comfortable living under a significantly more authoritarian central bureaucracy.

Are you claiming that I'm wrong?

And, once again, please stop lying.

.

NOTHING is black and white to me, except life and death, and right and wrong. The liberal mind is able to comprehend nuance, hold dissenting views at the same time and see all sides of issues. Liberals come up with pragmatic solutions.

Conservatism is driven by fear. Conservatives only see black and white. But where there is no grey matter, there can be no shades of grey.

I have no desire to live under any type of authoritarian bureaucracy. I do support social programs, especially for the citizens who are the most vulnerable; children and the elderly. We see every other industrialized nations run successful government health care programs. None of them slid down a 'slippery slope' to socialism. But that is where FEAR engulfs the conservative mind.

And I am VERY strongly against government intruding into our privacy. That is why liberals and most Democrats voted against the Patriot Act.

SO, let's address your premise Mac...

There are clearly many Americans who would be perfectly comfortable living under a significantly more authoritarian central bureaucracy.

YES, you are right Mac...they are called Republicans and tea partiers...

The tea party hates BIG government? The same tea party who voted 122 to 17 FOR renewal of the Patriot Act??

And the 'evil' left who would have ENDED the Patriot Act if it wasn't for the overwhelming YEA votes by the right???

House Vote Roll Call on 2006 Patriot Act Renewal on March 7, 2006

FYI...

2011

And how did the 'Tea-party 'patriots' vote?

122 Tea Party Members of Congress who voted FOR final passage of H.R. 514, reauthorizing the Patriot Act without reform

17 Tea Party Members of Congress who voted AGAINST final passage of H.R. 514, reauthorizing the Patriot Act without reform

So if you think I'm "right", why did you get so defensive and personal?

You just put out a great deal of effort proving I'm "right".

As I said, I agree with the Tea Party on little.

You're arguing with a ghost. You clearly don't know my politics.

.

 

[Rikurzhen]

That's a lovely cut & paste and all, but you didn't answer my question.

In your own words, please walk me through what you posted:

In socialism, "more people have some say in how the economy works"

If you're not going to do this, or if you can't, just say so, and I won't burn any more time on this.

.

What is so hard to understand? Socialism means EVERYONE has an equal say in how goods and services are distributed.

Come on.

In socialism, HOW does everyone have an equal say in how goods and services are distributed? Precisely?

And your affection for socialism is clear. Fair enough to say you would join Franco and MikeK and proclaiming you're a socialist?

Two very clear questions, easy to answer.

.

In pure socialism, there is no private ownership. Pure socialism calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources.

I am not a socialist. I am a liberal and a capitalist. What I strongly believe in is democracy; everyone has a say in how their government works. I believe in free and open elections. I believe our founding fathers understood that a pure democracy was not the best model. That is why the form of democracy they chose was a representative republic. Beliefs I have that could be called 'socialist' has to do with our environment. They are beliefs that go all the way back to the Magna Carta...the rule of the commons; the air we breath, the water we drink, the soil we seed. The 'commons' are owned by all of us.



The most insightful and in depth understanding of a true free market comes from one of my favorite liberals, an environmental lawyer who is a member of my favorite liberal family.

I urge you to read the whole speech.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

"I want to say this: There is no stronger advocate for free-market capitalism than myself. I believe that the free market is the most efficient and democratic way to distribute the goods of the land, and that the best thing that could happen to the environment is if we had true free-market capitalism in this country, because the free market promotes efficiency, and efficiency means the elimination of waste, and pollution of course is waste. The free market also would encourage us to properly value our natural resources, and it's the undervaluation of those resources that causes us to use them wastefully. But in a true free-market economy, you can't make yourself rich without making your neighbors rich and without enriching your community.

But what polluters do is they make themselves rich by making everybody else poor. They raise standards of living for themselves by lowering the quality of life for everybody else, and they do that by evading the discipline of the free market. You show me a polluter; I'll show you a subsidy. I'll show you a fat cat using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and to force the public to pay his production costs. That's what all pollution is. It's always a subsidy. It's always a guy trying to cheat the free market.

Corporations are externalizing machines. They're constantly figuring out ways to get somebody else to pay their costs of production. That's their nature. One of the best ways to do that, and the most common way for a polluter, is through pollution. When those coal-burning power plants put mercury into the atmosphere that comes down from the Ohio Valley to my state of New York, I buy a fishing license for $30 every year, but I can't go fishing and eat the fish anymore because they stole the fish from me. They liquidated a public asset, my asset.

The rule is the commons are owned by all of us. They're not owned by the governor or the legislator or the coal companies and the utility. Everybody has a right to use them. Nobody has a right to abuse them. Nobody has a right to use them in a way that will diminish or injure their use and enjoyment by others. But they've stolen that entire resource from the people of New York State. When they put the acid rain in the air, it destroys our forest, and it destroys the lakes that we use for recreation or outfitting or tourism or wealth generation. When they put the mercury in the air, the mercury poisons our children's brains, and that imposes a cost on us. The ozone in particular has caused a million asthma attacks a year, kills 18,000 people, causes hundreds of thousands of lost work days. All of those impacts impose costs on the rest of us that in a true free-market economy should be reflected in the price of that company's product when it makes it to the marketplace.

What those companies and all polluters do is use political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and to force the public to pay their costs. All of the federal environmental laws, every one of the 28 major environmental laws, were designed to restore free-market capitalism in America by forcing actors in the marketplace to pay the true cost of bringing their product to market.

At Riverkeeper, we don't even consider ourselves environmentalists anymore. We're free marketers. We go out into the marketplace, we catch the cheaters, the polluters, and we say to them, "We're going to force you to internalize your costs the same way that you internalize your profits, because as long as somebody is cheating the free market, none of us get the advantages of the efficiency and the democracy and the prosperity that the free market otherwise promises our country. What we have to understand as a nation is that there is a huge difference between free-market capitalism, which democratizes a country, which makes us more prosperous and efficient, and the kind of corporate-crony capitalism which has been embraced by this (Bush) White House, which is as antithetical to democracy, to prosperity, and efficiency in America as it is in Nigeria.

There is nothing wrong with corporations. Corporations are a good thing. They encourage us to take risks. They maximize wealth. They create jobs. I own a corporation. They're a great thing, but they should not be running our government. The reason for that is they don't have the same aspirations for America that you and I do. A corporation does not want democracy. It does not want free markets, it wants profits, and the best way for it to get profits is to use our campaign-finance system -- which is just a system of legalized bribery -- to get their stakes, their hooks into a public official and then use that public official to dismantle the marketplace to give them a competitive advantage and then to privatize the commons, to steal the commonwealth, to liquidate public assets for cash, to plunder, to steal from the rest of us.

And that doesn't mean corporations are a bad thing. It just means they're amoral, and we have to recognize that and not let them into the political process. Let them do their thing, but they should not be participating in our political process, because a corporation cannot do something genuinely philanthropic. It's against the law in this country, because their shareholders can sue them for wasting corporate resources. They cannot legally do anything that will not increase their profit margins. That's the way the law works, and we have to recognize that and understand that they are toxic for the political process, and they have to be fenced off and kept out of the political process. This is why throughout our history our most visionary political leaders -- Republican and Democrat -- have been warning the American public against domination by corporate power.

And what we have to understand as Americans is that the domination of business by government is called communism. The domination of government by business is called fascism. And our job is to walk that narrow trail in between, which is free-market capitalism and democracy. And keep big government at bay with our right hand and corporate power at bay with our left.

In order to do that, we need an informed public and an activist public. And we need a vigorous and an independent press that is willing to speak truth to power. And we no longer have that in the United States of America. And that's something that puts all the values we care about in jeopardy, because you cannot have a clean environment if you do not have a functioning democracy. They are intertwined; they go together. There is a direct correlation around the planet between the level of tyranny and the level of environmental destruction.

The only way you can protect the environment is through a true, locally based democracy. You can protect it for a short term under a tyranny, where there is some kind of beneficent dictator but, over the long term, the only way we can protect the environment is by ensuring our democracy. That has got to be the number-one issue for all of us: to try to restore American democracy, because without that we lose all of the other things that we value."

Kennedy is such a BIG frigging hypocrite he would be a nobody if his last name was not Kennedy.

"A corporation cannot do anything philanthropic." Says Kennedy. Just discount him right there. How about donations to breast cancer, donations to scholarships, donations to preserve our heritage, on and on and on. It is BS and people that want to debate honestly have to recognize that or be considered charlatans. The amount of money donated just to hospitals and medical research is astounding. Kennedy spouts this bile only to keep his political bona fides current.

I have been a member of the Apalachicola Bay and river keepers. They needed a token fisherman and I was one of the few with a full set of teeth and an education. Trust me, they are happy to receive monies from corporations as well as donations from people whose wealth was accrued by working or investing in corporations.

But what really set me against Robert Kennedy was when this chapter wanted him to come speak at a fundraiser. This guy had the gall to say that it would cost us 15,000 dollars to get him to come to speak in support of the environmental organization he created and is promoting. So it is all about the money not the cause for this piece of dung. Our organization was very poor and his demands were out of the question. Kennedy is as bad or worse than any corporation.

Reality always busts the academic bubble.

Corporate Charity Accounted for Only 5% of Giving in 2011

During the entire Hobby Lobby case I kept reading demon Liberals telling everyone that a corporation can't have a religious point of view. That being your viewpoint, how on Earth do you expect a corporation to have a viewpoint on charity?

 

[Bfgrn]

What red herring? You'd have to be an idiot to believe that there is no connection between a sharing society and the ethnic/racial composition of the society. Liberals keep pointing to high sharing societies which are ethnically homogeneous and declaring that this should work here. Why don't you instead find an ethnically/ racially heterogeneous society that also has a high sharing social structure and use that as an example for the US?

Telling 65% white American that we can have a social system like 98.5% white Finland is joke of a position.

Typical lib perspective: You think therefore you are racist. Woo.

I just find it bizarre how they can look at places like Finland and Denmark that are comprised of, essentially, ONE PEOPLE, admire the high sharing society and then believe it can be transferred here. It would be like admiring a nice Spanish tile roof on a home and wanting to transfer that roof to your convertible car. Such simplistic analysis totally dismisses the foundation which supports the roof. A car doesn't share the same structure as a hosue, so a car can't support a Spanish tile roof, a car will have to make do with a flimsy fabric roof for that convertible.

Like I said, Liberals are not known for being thinking creatures, they're driven by base emotions like greed and envy.

Well, one of the lefties on this thread admitted - perhaps inadvertently - that socialism does not work well in large economies and when last I checked, America still had one of those.

I must have missed that comment. I wonder on what basis he made that remark. Any evidence offered?

In post #234 BFGRN stated: "As a purely economic system, socialism is a lousy way to run a large scale economy." He seems to have some lucid moments.

And just as TRUE, as a pure economic system, laissez-faire is a lousy way to run a large scale economy.

Just as Friedrich August von Hayek states:
"Conservatism is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic and power adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism"

SO true...

The closest twin we have in America today to the communists and Marxists in Russia are the 'Marketists'; conservatives, libertarians and 'free marketeers' who have turned government non-intervention and 'laissez faire' into a religion. It has created 'malaise faire'

Blind Faith

For a country that has prided itself on its resourcefulness, the inability to address our problems suggests something deeper at work. There is something, powerful but insidious, that blinds us to the causes of these problems and undermines our ability to respond. That something is a set of beliefs, comparable to religious beliefs in earlier ages, about the nature of economies and societies. These beliefs imply the impropriety of government intervention either in social contexts (libertarianism) or in economic affairs (laissez faire).

The faithful unquestioningly embrace the credo that the doctrine of nonintervention has generated our most venerated institutions: our democracy, the best possible political system; and our free market economy, the best possible economic system. But despite our devotion to the dogmas that libertarianism and free market economics are the foundation of all that we cherish most deeply, they have failed us and are responsible for our present malaise.

The pieties of libertarianism and free markets sound pretty, but they cannot withstand even a cursory inspection. Libertarianism does not support democracy; taken to an extreme, it entails the law of the jungle. If government never interferes, we could all get away with murder. Alternatively, if the libertarian position is not to be taken to an extreme, where should it stop? What is the difference between no government and minimal government? Attempts to justify libertarianism, even a less than extreme position, have failed. Laissez faire, or free market economics, characterized by minimal or no government intervention, has a history that is long but undistinguished. Just as the negative effects of a high fever do not certify the health benefits of the opposite extreme, hypothermia, the dismal failure of communism, seeking complete government control of the economy, does not certify the economic benefits of the opposite extreme, total economic non-intervention.

It may seem odd, given the parabolic arc of our financial markets and the swelling chorus of paeans to free market economics, but despite the important role of the market, purer free market economies have consistently underperformed well-focused mixed economies. In the latter part of the nineteenth century the mixed economies of Meiji Japan and Bismarck’s Germany clearly outperformed the free market economies of Britain and France. Our own economy grew faster when we abandoned the laissez faire of the 1920s and early 1930s for the proto-socialist policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It has become increasingly sluggish as we have moved back to a purer free market. Data of the past few decades show that our GNP and productivity growth have lagged those of our trading partners, who have mixed economies characterized by moderate government intervention.

The persistently mediocre track record of laissez faire casts doubt on the claim that an economy free from government interference invariably maximizes the wealth of society. In fact, there are sound reasons the pure free market must underperform well-focused mixed economies.

But despite laissez faire’s mediocre track record and despite powerful arguments that it cannot possibly provide what it promises, the notion of the unqualified benefit of the free market has become deeply embedded in our mythology. Apologists have exulted in claims that glorify free market mythology at the expense of reality, and also at the expense of society. Free market principles, even though they have failed in economics, have been eagerly applied to sectors ranging from politics to education, where they have contributed to societal dysfunction.

One politically popular myth, that free market economics and government non-intervention provide the basis for true democracy, flies in the face of history.

As we moved toward an ideology driven 'free market' ONLY belief economically, and away from a mixed economy, the results have been disastrous.

Over the past half-century we have seen lower tax rates and less government interference. We have come a long way toward free enterprise from the proto-socialist policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Since the Kennedy Administration we have reduced the marginal tax rate on our highest incomes from the 91% that remained in effect from the 1940s into the mid-1960s (and a brief peak of 94% during World War II) to 28% in the 1986 tax code. Yet our economic growth has slowed.

Decade/Average Real GNP/per Capita GNP Growth
1960-1969 4.18% 2.79%
1970-1979 3.18% 2.09%
1980-1989 2.75% 1.81%
1990-1994 1.95% 0.79%
(Maddison, Monitoring the World Economy 1820-1992 p. .183, 197)

Despite our adoption of the most enlightened free market policies, our performance resembles that of a declining Great Britain in the late nineteenth century.

Free market apologists contend the closer we come to pure laissez faire, the better. But there is little evidence for even this position. The U.S. has come closer to laissez faire than most other countries, especially since the Reagan Administration. If free market policies are the best economic policies then we should have experienced the most robust growth in the world during this period. But this has not happened. We have been outstripped by our trading partners.

Myths Of The Free Market

The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
President John F. Kennedy

 

[Bfgrn]

What is so hard to understand? Socialism means EVERYONE has an equal say in how goods and services are distributed.

Come on.

In socialism, HOW does everyone have an equal say in how goods and services are distributed? Precisely?

And your affection for socialism is clear. Fair enough to say you would join Franco and MikeK and proclaiming you're a socialist?

Two very clear questions, easy to answer.

.

In pure socialism, there is no private ownership. Pure socialism calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources.

I am not a socialist. I am a liberal and a capitalist. What I strongly believe in is democracy; everyone has a say in how their government works. I believe in free and open elections. I believe our founding fathers understood that a pure democracy was not the best model. That is why the form of democracy they chose was a representative republic. Beliefs I have that could be called 'socialist' has to do with our environment. They are beliefs that go all the way back to the Magna Carta...the rule of the commons; the air we breath, the water we drink, the soil we seed. The 'commons' are owned by all of us.



The most insightful and in depth understanding of a true free market comes from one of my favorite liberals, an environmental lawyer who is a member of my favorite liberal family.

I urge you to read the whole speech.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

"I want to say this: There is no stronger advocate for free-market capitalism than myself. I believe that the free market is the most efficient and democratic way to distribute the goods of the land, and that the best thing that could happen to the environment is if we had true free-market capitalism in this country, because the free market promotes efficiency, and efficiency means the elimination of waste, and pollution of course is waste. The free market also would encourage us to properly value our natural resources, and it's the undervaluation of those resources that causes us to use them wastefully. But in a true free-market economy, you can't make yourself rich without making your neighbors rich and without enriching your community.

But what polluters do is they make themselves rich by making everybody else poor. They raise standards of living for themselves by lowering the quality of life for everybody else, and they do that by evading the discipline of the free market. You show me a polluter; I'll show you a subsidy. I'll show you a fat cat using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and to force the public to pay his production costs. That's what all pollution is. It's always a subsidy. It's always a guy trying to cheat the free market.

Corporations are externalizing machines. They're constantly figuring out ways to get somebody else to pay their costs of production. That's their nature. One of the best ways to do that, and the most common way for a polluter, is through pollution. When those coal-burning power plants put mercury into the atmosphere that comes down from the Ohio Valley to my state of New York, I buy a fishing license for $30 every year, but I can't go fishing and eat the fish anymore because they stole the fish from me. They liquidated a public asset, my asset.

The rule is the commons are owned by all of us. They're not owned by the governor or the legislator or the coal companies and the utility. Everybody has a right to use them. Nobody has a right to abuse them. Nobody has a right to use them in a way that will diminish or injure their use and enjoyment by others. But they've stolen that entire resource from the people of New York State. When they put the acid rain in the air, it destroys our forest, and it destroys the lakes that we use for recreation or outfitting or tourism or wealth generation. When they put the mercury in the air, the mercury poisons our children's brains, and that imposes a cost on us. The ozone in particular has caused a million asthma attacks a year, kills 18,000 people, causes hundreds of thousands of lost work days. All of those impacts impose costs on the rest of us that in a true free-market economy should be reflected in the price of that company's product when it makes it to the marketplace.

What those companies and all polluters do is use political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and to force the public to pay their costs. All of the federal environmental laws, every one of the 28 major environmental laws, were designed to restore free-market capitalism in America by forcing actors in the marketplace to pay the true cost of bringing their product to market.

At Riverkeeper, we don't even consider ourselves environmentalists anymore. We're free marketers. We go out into the marketplace, we catch the cheaters, the polluters, and we say to them, "We're going to force you to internalize your costs the same way that you internalize your profits, because as long as somebody is cheating the free market, none of us get the advantages of the efficiency and the democracy and the prosperity that the free market otherwise promises our country. What we have to understand as a nation is that there is a huge difference between free-market capitalism, which democratizes a country, which makes us more prosperous and efficient, and the kind of corporate-crony capitalism which has been embraced by this (Bush) White House, which is as antithetical to democracy, to prosperity, and efficiency in America as it is in Nigeria.

There is nothing wrong with corporations. Corporations are a good thing. They encourage us to take risks. They maximize wealth. They create jobs. I own a corporation. They're a great thing, but they should not be running our government. The reason for that is they don't have the same aspirations for America that you and I do. A corporation does not want democracy. It does not want free markets, it wants profits, and the best way for it to get profits is to use our campaign-finance system -- which is just a system of legalized bribery -- to get their stakes, their hooks into a public official and then use that public official to dismantle the marketplace to give them a competitive advantage and then to privatize the commons, to steal the commonwealth, to liquidate public assets for cash, to plunder, to steal from the rest of us.

And that doesn't mean corporations are a bad thing. It just means they're amoral, and we have to recognize that and not let them into the political process. Let them do their thing, but they should not be participating in our political process, because a corporation cannot do something genuinely philanthropic. It's against the law in this country, because their shareholders can sue them for wasting corporate resources. They cannot legally do anything that will not increase their profit margins. That's the way the law works, and we have to recognize that and understand that they are toxic for the political process, and they have to be fenced off and kept out of the political process. This is why throughout our history our most visionary political leaders -- Republican and Democrat -- have been warning the American public against domination by corporate power.

And what we have to understand as Americans is that the domination of business by government is called communism. The domination of government by business is called fascism. And our job is to walk that narrow trail in between, which is free-market capitalism and democracy. And keep big government at bay with our right hand and corporate power at bay with our left.

In order to do that, we need an informed public and an activist public. And we need a vigorous and an independent press that is willing to speak truth to power. And we no longer have that in the United States of America. And that's something that puts all the values we care about in jeopardy, because you cannot have a clean environment if you do not have a functioning democracy. They are intertwined; they go together. There is a direct correlation around the planet between the level of tyranny and the level of environmental destruction.

The only way you can protect the environment is through a true, locally based democracy. You can protect it for a short term under a tyranny, where there is some kind of beneficent dictator but, over the long term, the only way we can protect the environment is by ensuring our democracy. That has got to be the number-one issue for all of us: to try to restore American democracy, because without that we lose all of the other things that we value."

Kennedy is such a BIG frigging hypocrite he would be a nobody if his last name was not Kennedy.

"A corporation cannot do anything philanthropic." Says Kennedy. Just discount him right there. How about donations to breast cancer, donations to scholarships, donations to preserve our heritage, on and on and on. It is BS and people that want to debate honestly have to recognize that or be considered charlatans. The amount of money donated just to hospitals and medical research is astounding. Kennedy spouts this bile only to keep his political bona fides current.

I have been a member of the Apalachicola Bay and river keepers. They needed a token fisherman and I was one of the few with a full set of teeth and an education. Trust me, they are happy to receive monies from corporations as well as donations from people whose wealth was accrued by working or investing in corporations.

But what really set me against Robert Kennedy was when this chapter wanted him to come speak at a fundraiser. This guy had the gall to say that it would cost us 15,000 dollars to get him to come to speak in support of the environmental organization he created and is promoting. So it is all about the money not the cause for this piece of dung. Our organization was very poor and his demands were out of the question. Kennedy is as bad or worse than any corporation.

Reality always busts the academic bubble.

Corporate Charity Accounted for Only 5% of Giving in 2011

During the entire Hobby Lobby case I kept reading demon Liberals telling everyone that a corporation can't have a religious point of view. That being your viewpoint, how on Earth do you expect a corporation to have a viewpoint on charity?

Demon liberals? You mean like our founding fathers?

Early laws regulating corporations in America

*Corporations were required to have a clear purpose, to be fulfilled but not exceeded.

*Corporations’ licenses to do business were revocable by the state legislature if they exceeded or did not fulfill their chartered purpose(s).

*The state legislature could revoke a corporation’s charter if it misbehaved.

*The act of incorporation did not relieve corporate management or stockholders/owners of responsibility or liability for corporate acts.

*As a matter of course, corporation officers, directors, or agents couldn’t break the law and avoid punishment by claiming they were “just doing their job” when committing crimes but instead could be held criminally liable for violating the law.

*Directors of the corporation were required to come from among stockholders.

*Corporations had to have their headquarters and meetings in the state where their principal place of business was located.

*Corporation charters were granted for a specific period of time, such as twenty or thirty years (instead of being granted “in perpetuity,” as is now the practice).

*Corporations were prohibited from owning stock in other corporations, to prevent them from extending their power inappropriately.

*Corporations’ real estate holdings were limited to what was necessary to carry out their specific purpose(s).

*Corporations were prohibited from making any political contributions, direct or indirect.

*Corporations were prohibited from making charitable or civic donations outside of their specific purposes.

*State legislatures could set the rates that some monopoly corporations could charge for their products or services.

*All corporation records and documents were open to the legislature or the state attorney general.

The Early Role of Corporations in America

The Legacy of the Founding Parents

 

[bripat9643]

(chuckle)
What benefits of socialism do we all enjoy?

The psychic benefit of knowing that our hard work goes to pay for slothful slobs to watch reality TV all day while eating junk food.

It's even worse. The streets are littered with seemingly healthy - albeit scruffy - young men (and even women) sitting on my city's curbs holding signs reminding me they are hungry and would like me to buy them a meal (or give 'em some cash).

Voting for Republicans made that possible.

It's always been possible, moron. There have always been people in this world who don't want to work or who are mentally unfit for work. Republicans aren't responsible.

For your next trick you'll blame Republicans for cancer.

No, they ARE the cancer.

Wow, that was clever.

"Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic and power adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place."
Friedrich August von Hayek-The Road to Serfdom

You're right about it not being a social program. Getting rid of socialist government boondoggles is the whole point of conservatism. It does endorse massive changes in society, like abolishing government social programs, or at least greatly curtailing them. The rest of your paragraph is complete bullshit. The young are liberals because they are brainwashed in government schools to be liberals. It takes years before some of them manage to take of their blinders and understand the truth.

"In general, it can probably be said that the conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes. He believes that if government is in the hands of decent men, it ought not to be too much restricted by rigid rules. Since he is essentially opportunist and lacks principles..."
Friedrich August von Hayek-Why I am Not a Conservative

Strange, that's exactly what liberals believe.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Early laws regulating corporations in America

Do you just vomit out any thought that comes into your head?

Fine, if you want to go back to early laws on corporations, then let's restore society back to how it was in that time. Women lose voting rights, we deport all non-Europeans, only property owners can vote, the income tax is abolished, all welfare is abolished, etc.

 

[bripat9643]

Early laws regulating corporations in America

Do you just vomit out any thought that comes into your head?

Fine, if you want to go back to early laws on corporations, then let's restore society back to how it was in that time. Women lose voting rights, we deport all non-Europeans, only property owners can vote, the income tax is abolished, all welfare is abolished, etc.

In the days before the revolution a corporation was a license to run a monopoly in a given geographical area granted by the king. These entities were far more than businesses. They were virtually governments unto themselves answerable only to the crown. The British East India Company is a classic example. This is what the Founding fathers were thinking of when the referred to "corporations."

Over time the corporation evolved into a means of establishing common ownership in a business. Corporations aren't granted monopolies any longer so there's no justification for applying the rules listed.

As always, the libturd is presenting only half the facts and thereby lying.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Early laws regulating corporations in America

Do you just vomit out any thought that comes into your head?

Fine, if you want to go back to early laws on corporations, then let's restore society back to how it was in that time. Women lose voting rights, we deport all non-Europeans, only property owners can vote, the income tax is abolished, all welfare is abolished, etc.

In the days before the revolution a corporation was a license to run a monopoly in a given geographical area granted by the king. These entities were far more than businesses. They were virtually governments unto themselves answerable only to the crown. The British East India Company is a classic example. This is what the Founding fathers were thinking of when the referred to "corporations."

Over time the corporation evolved into a means of establishing common ownership in a business. Corporations aren't granted monopolies any longer so there's no justification for applying the rules listed.

As always, the libturd is presenting only half the facts and thereby lying.

My point is that I'm tiring of their game of selectively appealing to aspects of the past because they fail to recognize that features of a time are a product of the time. High marginal tax rates in the 1950s coincided with a plethora of tax deductions. When Reagan lowered tax rates he also cut out thousands of deductions. Pointing to 90% top marginal tax rates and wanting to bring them back but now without corresponding deductions is just simply a rude liberal masturbating in public.

Same with this inanity on corporation law back in 1776. It's a product of its time. If he thinks its relevant, then let's bring back the entire social structure which anchored that corporate law.

Notice that so far there has been no answer to my question of how liberals imagine a corporation can give charitable donations when they believe that corporations can't have a religious viewpoint.