Did you remember to turn your clock forward?

[texasmade]

no
u
didnt
stop
drinking
coffee
oh yea did you ever get that latte lite i got you??

[JBean]

I think I'm going to go buy some cheese. NY extra sharp white cheddar. /drool

holy crap.. GIMME SOME!!!!

pleeeease???

[Xobeloot]

JB

Next time I go to visit my sister we'll go to the store and get fruit punch and cheese and eat/drink until we're sick

[JBean]

JB

Next time I go to visit my sister we'll go to the store and get fruit punch and cheese and eat/drink until we're sick

yes!!

does your sister live in PA?

[CaptNihil]

thats what happened to some guy that knows a guy i know on here

holy crap.. I know that guy! He was the dude that was brothers with a guy my best friend's sister's god-daughter who was also friends with the brother used to date!

It is amazing how comlicated simple things become when you are tipsy. I had to read the above few times. JBean's statement is also fairly involved. No more shots for me tonight.

[JBean]

thats what happened to some guy that knows a guy i know on here

holy crap.. I know that guy! He was the dude that was brothers with a guy my best friend's sister's god-daughter who was also friends with the brother used to date!

It is amazing how comlicated simple things become when you are tipsy. I had to read the above few times. JBean's statement is also fairly involved. No more shots for me tonight.

lol I wouldnt spend too much time on my statement.. I just made it up as I went along...

[Xobeloot]

does your sister live in PA?

Pittsburgh

[JBean]

does your sister live in PA?

Pittsburgh

oh geez.. thats like 5 hrs away...


ROAD TRIP!!

[Xobeloot]

Road trips are fun!

[JBean]

Road trips are fun!

oh yeah they are!
I'm actually planning one for end of April..

[Judge Faust]

For what it's worth, some people seem to have things totally backwards here. Capitalism is not a philosophy or an ideology or a program or a system of government. Not surprising, because it sounds like very few here actually know what they are talking about. This is how flamewars grow.

Capitalism is just an acceptance of a few basic principles - that you should not steal from another person, that you should not use violence to achieve ends, that every interaction between human beings should be the result of mutual agreement and that no transaction should arise by use of violence or coercion. Communism, on the other hand, is the exact opposite - that no matter how hard you work or what things you have, nothing is safe from the state. You must work the job the state decides for you and you must take only what they decide you deserve.

Er... what?

Communism and capitalism are religious theories largely dealing with what the government may or may not take from private citizens? Oh, my.

On the positive side, you have advanced a theory that I have never heard before. On the negative side, you are completely and utterly wrong.

Let's get this out of the way: Communism and capitalism are two competing economic ideologies. Nothing more, nothing less. If you truly believe that capitalism somehow prevents the big scary government from depriving you of private property, you may want to read up on the theory of eminent domain. I assume that it will scare you silly.

And the whole "your government picks your career for you" claim? You may want to spend a little more time studying elementary Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Communism seeks to maximize human happiness and productivity. Forcing people to take jobs which they hate accomplishes neither. Cute scare tactic, though. Blatantly erroneous, but cute.

[TBD]

does your sister live in PA?

Pittsburgh

oh geez.. thats like 5 hrs away...


ROAD TRIP!!

My brother lives about 3 hours north of the Pitt, and me in columbus. Maybe we need a regional snuson dinner.

[chainsnuser]

All I can say is that, quite frankly, you don't know what you are talking about.

Zero, I have a master degree, just guess yourself in which science.

I don't give to much about it myself, but I think you really should learn to draw a distinction between theory and reality, I've learnt to do so against the confession of my own professors, who where everything else but idiots, but partly weren't able to do so.

Become a member of your national libertarian party and you'll know what I mean. The bunch of selfish people (I personally have no problem with them), but also anarchist "freaks" and "do-gooders" that you'll learn to know there will be enough to give you an idea that theory and reality is not the same.

Cheers!

[Premium Parrots]

.













.................and the cheeze stands alone.

[Zero]

All I can say is that, quite frankly, you don't know what you are talking about.

Zero, I have a master degree, just guess yourself in which science.

I don't give to much about it myself, but I think you really should learn to draw a distinction between theory and reality.

Of course I draw the distinction. In reality, we don't have anything near capitalism. My whole point is that the vast majority of things which people percieve to be the problems in current society - in specific, things which have given rise to this economic collapse - have been brought about by the numerous ways in which society has deviated from the rules it ought to have in place to protect the integrity of a capitalist society.

Even your own comments on the eventual failings of capitalism are predicated on the existence of anti-capitalist forces built into the system of government. It's like saying that a gasoline car is doomed to explode because somebody, sooner or later, is going to put nitroglycerin in the tank. Of course this is ludicrous - there's nothing wrong with a gasoline powered car if you simply make sure that people put gasoline in it. Same with capitalism. To say that it leads to oppression or exploitation is to assuume that the laws which should be enforced are not.

Consider just the problems of central banks, fiat currency, and fractional reserve lending. This is a totally anti-capitalist collection of bureaucracy and it lies at the very heart of the entire economic system. How can we blame capitalism for failing when we've built it on a corrupt system which has fraud built into it from the top down?

Perhaps it has just been so long that we have gotten used to calling economic fascim "capitalism" that we have forgotten what the difference is. At any rate, I mean capitalism, when I say it, to mean what it used to mean - economic liberalism. The notion that social freedoms must be accompanied by economic freedoms. That to have free speech and freedom of association and freedom from the aggressions, violence, and oppression of your fellow man must, ipso facto, be based on equal economic freedoms.

To say that liberal policy leads to slavery is insane. Liberal policy is to take slave owners and put them in prison - to free slaves from slavery, not to condemn them to it. If you see someone who calls themselves a liberal and yet who owns slaves, they are simply liars, not liberals. The very fundamentals of liberal policy are that every man should be free to do as he pleases while being forbidden from impinging upon the freedoms of his fellow man. In all cases where there is conflict between the two, the only solution is mutual agreement. Both parties must be allowed to reach a solution which they both agree on. If one party is being coerced by the other, then there is not a problem with liberalism, there is a problem with the state's enforcement of it. The solution to this problem is not for the state to resort to fraud and coercion of its own, but to rectify its deficiency in enforcing the rules of fairness.

to be honest, we, in western societies can't really argue as our whole standard of living is to a great extent built on the exploitation of so-called third-world-countries.

On this I agree completely with you. But it's not because the west is capitalist - it is exactly because the west is NOT capitalist. In fact, we probably both agree that there is a ton of real exploitation which goes on in the world. The only point I'm debating is whether the root cause of this exploitation is founded in the tenets of capitalism or not. I argue emphatically that it is not - because there is no capitalism that I can see which could be doing it. The US, for example, has carried a negative balance of trade for decades now. More goods and services flow into the country than flow out of it. This is not capitalism. Capitalism would force a balancing of these trade figures. It would keep countries honest.

State-intervention is indeed needed (but not necessarily in the way it's actually done in the western countries, that's no question).

I'm interested to hear how. Consider arguments in Chapter XXVI of Human Action ("The Impossibility of Economic Calculation under Socialism"), as well as Chapters 2-5 of Power and Market (Rothbard) on the problems of binary and triangular intervention. How do you resolve these paradoxes?