@orathaic, you asked me about two things: my favorite system and freedom. This post will be about freedom.

To someone who spent all his life in a democracy, freedom of speech seems like just one of the things he should be fighting for, along with a higher salary, better education etc. But once you lose freedom of speech, everything else pales in comparison.

Just imagine how you would feel if you were allowed to say only good things about Trump, if you were forced to praise his statements and policies, day after day, to write essays about his enlightened leadership and compose poems in his honor.

People think that losing freedom of speech means having to keep silent. It means more than that; it means you're forced to lie every day.

@orothaic
"And the middle ground is what i would call Socialism. Where luxury goods are provided by private enterprise (iphones, cars, fancy clothes) and necessities are probided by the state (education, health care, roads etc)."

Yes, that would be perfect (no sarcasm). If people didn't have to worry about their well-being at all because the government took care of it and only worked for luxury goods our society would be perfect. However, I recognize that that is only possible in a utopian society. Humans are not perfect. What is to say that the government won't consider more and more industries "essential"? What if the government takes control of internet regulation(more than now) and uses it to boost its agenda forcefully? It could then take over "luxury" goods like iphones because they are now deemed "necessary" for life in the modern world? "The Government" isn't an omnipotent, benevolent being. It is a group of flawed humans in charge of other flawed humans. What I am trying to say is that Socialism would be perfect if we didn't have to account for humans' imperfection.

We can't allow our governments that much power and risk losing our individual freedoms either. That free healthcare is going to have to be paid by someone, and I bet that task will go to the rich folks. Having 50%+ on taxes would be ludicrous and greatly discourage individual ventures. Rich people will have less money to invest in other revolutionary fields like space travel just to keep up their businesses.

This is the reason I'm not a liberal and never will be. I'm not willing to put trust in a flawed group of individuals and hope they work for the greater good.

@Leth - previous to the capitalist age, the British were only happy to exploit the slave trade, and do great damage to African nations - once capitalists/industrialists wanted to invest their capital in foreign markets (because there was no more room at home, at least for railways, i'm sure other industries also became saturated) the state stepped in to secure colonies which would allow greater investment possibilities.

This is the claim i am making. It was the accumulation of Capital in Britian, which drove the Empire to its height (Capital accumulated through Colonialism). And it was this which lead to the 19 Century expansion (well expansion into Africa wasn't possible until railways and machine guns were developed, die to tropical disease and native resistance, and this coincided with post-industrial society... So it is far more complicated than i am making it out to be).

I specified the great famine in Ireland, and the unspecified famine in India which happened while the British exported food, as an example of a policy driven by capitalistic government ideology. Directly comparable to the Russian famine driven by Communist collectivisation.

Does anyone have an opinion about Coulter's article that America and Russia have a common enemy, radical Islamic terrorism and that this justifies overlooking putin's many flaws.

@Zmaj, the reverse extreme is being able to speak but feeling it is pointless, because it will not make any difference anyway. Trust me, there is a large part of the British population, who rioted in 2011 and could have taken down the state if they had any ambition, and who just went home at the end of the day because they have very little belief in themselves (they are, i suspect, the ones who don't bother to vote, pretty clearly different from the people who voted to leave the EU as a 'fuck you' to David Cameron, but who didn't think their vote would matter... I don't know how large that group is, but they also feel powerless; though less so after Brexit won out against the wishes of the corporate elites).

So while i don't disagree with you, freedom of speech is necessary, it is not sufficient.

This is honestly an awesome conversation.

@orathaic, as for my favorite system, well, that's more complicated...

I live in European "semi-socialism", so to speak. For a long time, I thought it was a better system than free-market capitalism. After all, we have free health care and free universities.

With time, however, I grew tired of the state taking almost half my earnings to fund its socialist projects. I began to realize it wasn't worth it.

What happens in socialism is that the state pampers you in your youth (free education) and old age (free health and pension schemes), but finances it from the work you do in your best active years. Not only are you prevented from deciding how to spend your money when you're earning it, but you're also prevented from deciding what your education, health and pension are going to look like: "It's all free, so don't complain!" It's a sleight of hand.

I concluded I'd be better off with free-market capitalism despite its risks. Basically, I'd trade security for freedom to decide.

Couldn't you argue though that the way communism manifested itself in the Soviet Union, the Russian soviet particularly, that the results were similar to pure, unregulated capitalism? You had a wealthy upper class exploiting the lower working class.

@Mitomon, 'what is the state slides down a slippery slope' is onviously a slippery slope arguement. Of course it would be great if internet access becomes a 'necessity' and all people can hve a greater quality of life, if we can have state infrastructure which is managed by competing companies (so you own the national rail system, but rent time on it to private companies, and they in turn charge members of the public to use it - this mixes the benefits of public ownership with the benefits of private enterprise) - but the real answer is checks and balances. Not necessarily how the US implements it, but by have a diversity of the populance invested in the state and making sure it protects their interests - ie explicitally NOT what is happening to the lowest classes in Britian today (and other countries, but i'm more familiar with Britian).

Disenfranchise voters, and low voter turnout is a massive threat to this kind of social democracy. And not because 'the state' is secretly planning to take over... But because marginalised people can be safely ignored.

Ideally you want people to pay taxes, not so that you can extract their wealth (or steal from them as some Libertarians would put it) but because when you rely on your people as a major source of incone they have power. This may be a more signifigant source of power than voting on its own, infact, most populations will force their governments to grant them voting rights if they can - whereas if the state doesn't rely on the population to raise taxation (to pay for the army and police) then that populatipn has no leverage to compell the government to do anything (like not crushing them with said army and police).

In social welfare states the unemployed classes lose both self-esteem, and leverage over the government, when they become dependent on state hand-outs. And this is a problem which needs fo be addressed.

@orathaic, I agree that the freedom of speech is just a basic building block, and that the powerlessness you describe is a big problem.

After all, the French have a famous slogan: "Dictatorship says *shut your mouth*, democracy says *keep talking, who cares*."

"Ideally you want people to pay taxes, not so that you can extract their wealth (or steal from them as some Libertarians would put it) but because when you rely on your people as a major source of incone they have power."

ideally, you want gov't to protect your life, your liberty and your property

the power of the people shouldn't be "we have laws demanding you pay us taxes, or we can arrest you"

there is no power here. come on liberals, you like power structures: the people can't just "turn off income taxes" and say "screw you gov't" because either A. you don't pay taxes and get arrested or B. you have no income and are poor and destitute.

don't pretend like taxes give people power over gov't. people have a natural power over gov't. if the gov't tries to step on our rights, we have an obligation to overthrow it. Locke and Jefferson 101

@Zmaj, nice :)

@General Smac, i don't know.

@Hauta, i don't give Coulter the time of day. Islamaphobia is a form of racism, and for all the ills in the US today, i do not wish to see the states become anyway similar to Putin's Russia.

There was a time when immigration and the labor of people unambiguously added to the wealth of all. I fear that automation has ended that calculus and that immigration from ANYWHERE, particularly of unskilled labor, has no net positive value.

actually @Hauta that's incorrect. Immigration hurts native populations.

http://cis.org/node/4573

nowadays with automation it entirely depends on your supply of labor and demand for labor, as it always has. we simply are seeing increases in automation.

REAL changes in the value of labor are based off how much it costs to employ humans, vs how much efficiency capital will bring.

wil the employment cost index on a STEADY rise (an important statistic everyone seems to ignore) it's no doubt that looking for automated capital is preferential to labor efficiency via human labor at a higher proportion.


sorry if my first post seemed a bit aggressive, your post is somewhat correct, but the terms it is based upon are quite temporary, and in some cases reversible

So are you down with stopping all immigration right now (skilled and unskilled), temporarily, until circumstances change? Or do you prefer special paths for rich people to buy citizenship or entrepreneurs to oversee a new investment in America?

I don't think automation is quite as robust as you think it is. There are still a lot of jobs that can't be replaced by machines.

It just has to be enough automation to create worker insecurity -- kinda like 1 chair too little in a game of "Musical Chairs" can create panic. Such a condition of too few jobs (in this case, caused by automation) creates a drag on nearly ALL workers.

@hauta

Haha of course not. I want to make employees was expensive to have, so we can hire more.

Also, marketwatch has some interesting analyses of the rate spikes and growth rates. A lot of predictions of a recession ahead.

Also I'm tired and should sleep

Love you all goodnight

Less* expensive LOLOLOL

That Coulter is one fine sex machine.

Well Russia is run by a bunch of crooks..murderers and thieves, and it looks like the USA is going the same way...maybe an amalgamation ? Get the Russian mafia and the American mafia to run the combined show ?

Yes ok let's pretend you have the slightest grip on what you are talking about.

Pretending is fun.

Well, fiedler, you may pretend that you have the lightest grip on that part of yourself with which you are constantly playing.

@Zmaj - i think you will find that the worst excesses of 'Free market' neo-liberalism infact require greater state involvement - because the corporations become a huge base of power from which to push the state around, see for example George Monbiot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuMntvVwwWM

@Zmaj: in a narrow sense YOU might be better off. A system where everyone pitches in to make education, health care, and old-age care accessible to everyone costs wealthier people money.

But the hidden cost of the American system is that we miss out on the contributions of people who don't have the financial resources to get education, or who can't devote energy to work and a career because they can't meet their basic needs. If you only give education and health care to people with money, you ensure that society doesn't benefit from the talents of poor people.

Read the histories of some of America's recent innovators and you'll see how that applies. Steve Jobs parents saw that was a genius and so they moved to Silicon Valley. Mark Zuckerberg went to Phillips Exeter, one of the most exclusive private high schools in the US, and had access to everything he wanted to teach himself about networking and programming. Bill Gates also went to an elite pre school that was able to buy computer time on a mainframe so that he could write his first program in 8th grade, in 1969.

No question that these guys are all geniuses...but they were able to contribute to society through a combination of genius and the opportunity to use it. We'll never know what we missed out on because we don't give opportunity to everyone. And of course these are extreme examples--America is missing out on the talents of millions of people because we don't give opportunity to everyone.

Remins me of Who song from Tommy..."You won't shout as I fiddle about"
Now I know why he's called himself Fiedler!

To be fair, we probably can't give *that* opportunity to everyone. Everyone can't attend the best schools, and we probably can't afford to make every school that good. But there is still a question of giving *more* opportunity to everyone.

I think Zmaj's response will be something along the lines of decrying the degree to which public education does that, but we'll see.

@pastoralan, let me remind you of Terman’s Law of Innovation: If you want a track team to win the high jump, you find one person who can jump seven feet, not seven people who can jump one foot.

A socialist wants to be fair and handicaps the guy who can jump seven feet. Then he marvels at the fact that his nation keeps losing at the Olympics.

This example is not meant for Lethologica because he doesn't like things to be simple.