Did you remember to turn your clock forward?

[JBean]

Is it just me, or did the title of this thread change drastically?

haha

[Dead Rabbit]

"Capitalism would force a balancing of these trade figures. It would keep countries honest."

I'm not sure I get that. In a pure capitalistic world balance of trade would be dictated by the demand of goods at a certain price, end of story.

Case in point:
Country X has limited resources and, due to a natural disaster, a limited labor pool incapable of specialization . Except for really sweet authentic, hand-made shaman masks, country X doesn't really make anything people want. If country X could only make poop at a high price, the balance of trade would be out of whack. Who wants high priced poop?

(then again, people do buy Montecristo snus)

Now, your probably going to say that country X would still have balanced trade equal to hand-made shaman masks. But, they keep printing money and also get injections of charity. Currency collapses and rise again like a phoenix. I suppose I just broke the rule with a "pure capitalistic world". But, what else can "x" do? Starve? Thus we're back to the out of whack balance of trade and the very good chance that you, zero, are talking about utopia.

[Dead Rabbit]

" a "pure capitalistic world". But, what else can "x" do? Starve?

Cannibalism: Ending Capitalistic hunger... One person at a time.

lol

[Dead Rabbit]

JF - One thing I've learned - stubbornly but surely - is that the best answer is always somewhere in the middle of two opposing views. Moderation.

Starcadia....I am awaiting permission to return to your ditties that have you posted on your profile. I remember complimenting you on them. Yet, the other day, you blame of stalking.... :twisted:

[Maximus]

A favorite quote of mine from a fictional character:

"Beyond a critical point within a finite space freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules within a sealed flask. The question therefore is not how many will survive, but what kind of existance is possible for those who do survive?"

Also a utopia would be more akin to the communist belief as a true marxist communism would account for everyone sharing equally in not only the work but also the rewards. Capitalism comes more from the idea of fair trade but does not necessarily mean that everyone will be equal just that everyone would be fair in trade.

[lxskllr]

I've really been digging the topic du jour :^D

[Premium Parrots]

........umm......I'll take mine Bar-B-Qued

[Xobeloot]

" a "pure capitalistic world". But, what else can "x" do? Starve?

Cannibalism: Ending Capitalistic hunger... One person at a time.

ROFLMAO! Greatest post ever!

[Starcadia]

JF - One thing I've learned - stubbornly but surely - is that the best answer is always somewhere in the middle of two opposing views. Moderation.

Starcadia....I am awaiting permission to return to your ditties that have you posted on your profile. I remember complimenting you on them. Yet, the other day, you blame of stalking.... :twisted:

:roll: I'd enjoy your compliments, except you're kind of an asshole. With mild to moderate stalker tendencies. :wink:

[Dead Rabbit]

JF - One thing I've learned - stubbornly but surely - is that the best answer is always somewhere in the middle of two opposing views. Moderation.

Starcadia....I am awaiting permission to return to your ditties that have you posted on your profile. I remember complimenting you on them. Yet, the other day, you blame of stalking.... :twisted:

:roll: I'd enjoy your compliments, except you're kind of an asshole. With mild to moderate stalker tendencies. :wink:

May your hands remain soft as I'm sure they have always been....

[Zero]

"Capitalism would force a balancing of these trade figures. It would keep countries honest."

I'm not sure I get that. In a pure capitalistic world balance of trade would be dictated by the demand of goods at a certain price, end of story.

Case in point:
Country X has limited resources and, due to a natural disaster, a limited labor pool incapable of specialization . Except for really sweet authentic, hand-made shaman masks, country X doesn't really make anything people want. If country X could only make poop at a high price, the balance of trade would be out of whack. Who wants high priced poop?

(then again, people do buy Montecristo snus)

Now, your probably going to say that country X would still have balanced trade equal to hand-made shaman masks. But, they keep printing money and also get injections of charity. Currency collapses and rise again like a phoenix. I suppose I just broke the rule with a "pure capitalistic world". But, what else can "x" do? Starve? Thus we're back to the out of whack balance of trade and the very good chance that you, zero, are talking about utopia.

You'll forgive me because, in total honesty, I am absolutely terrible at trying to figure out the difference between when people are being serious and when they're being deliberately silly for the sake of comedy. This... is a joke, right?

[Zero]

Also a utopia would be more akin to the communist belief as a true marxist communism would account for everyone sharing equally in not only the work but also the rewards.

The fundamental problem with this idea is that human beings are absolutely not fungible things. We are not just clones of each other, all walking around with exactly the same desires and wants and goals and needs. There is no way to homogenise production in this way so as to make everyone "equal" - either in terms of what they produce and in terms of what they should recieve as a "fair" share of what they do. All value is entirely subjective. If you could somehow make everyone equal, you would necessarily create massive inequality in happiness. A gothic dominatrix would probably rather kill herself than work serving sandwiches so that she could have a normal house and normal clothes and a normal car for her two normal kids, etc.

How does communism provide for the cornucopia of human wants? By what metric can you calculate the value of someone who makes black rubber dildos or chromatic harmonicas or radio-controlled helicopters? How many chromatic harmonicas do you have to make to contribute "equally" to a communist society, such that you are deserving of an "equal" share of the rewards? Does everyone get a chromatic harmonica, whether they want one or not? Do you simply not make chromatic harmonicas? What about the people who would be happier if they could have one? How do you reconcile the infinite combinations of desires of human beings with a centrally directed system? It's impossible - this is what Mises was talking about. Are you going to have a government bureaucrat in charge of counting the demand for all the millions of different products and allocating them properly?

A worker makes 10 fuel-injection nozzles every day. He would like a chromatic harmonica, a loaf of bread, two beers, a shirt for his son, and a bucket of paint today to paint his house. Is there enough stuff in society to provide this? How does the communist government figure it out? Where do you stop on his list of wants and say "ok, now you have enough of them" - your happiness is now equal to everyone else's. The garden trowel you want will have to wait for tomorrow. It's impossible - an absolute fantasy that such a system could ever work. The only alternative is that everyone gets, more or less, the same stuff, and the happy people are the people who happen to want the same stuff that the government decides they should get. Everyone else is miserable. Welcome to dystopia.

[Coffey]

Zero is exactly right. The old Communist saying "To each according to their need, from each according to their desire" or something like that, doesn't work very well when peoples needs and desires don't match up. If you can do whatever you want, I very highly doubt anyone (or at least not enough of the people) will want to work in the peoples toilet paper factory. If you can do whatever you want, there are going to necessarily be needs that go unfulfilled. Not just luxuries, but basic needs will go unfulfilled. The only way around this is for the all knowing Gov't to decide what people will have what desires. Like Zero says, doesn't sound so very Utopian to me....

[TexDis]

Communism and capitalism are two competing economic ideologies.

Communism and capitalism are two sides of the same coin. To quote the late, great Dr. Sam Francis:

Capitalism, an economic system driven only, according to its own theory, by the accumulation of profit, is at least as much the enemy of tradition as the NAACP or communism, and those on the "right" who make a fetish of capitalism generally understand this and applaud it. The hostility of capitalism toward tradition is clear enough in its reduction of all social issues to economic ones. Moreover, like communism, capitalism is based on an essential egalitarianism that refuses to distinguish between one consumer's dollar and another. The reductionism and egalitarianism inherent in capitalism explains its destructive impact on social institutions. On the issue of immigration, capitalism is notorious for demanding cheap labor to undercut the cost of native workers. But it is not only in America that it has done so.

[Zero]

But pursuit of profit can be anything. Free time sitting on the dock, fishing, and enjoying the breeze is profit. Spending time with your children is profit. Having dinner is profit. Painting a picture or singing a song is profit - it's just "what you want to do". Economics is just figuring out how we do this, and capitalism only says that "everyone should be free to attempt to do what they feel will get them what they want". If you find that working two extra hours today will give you time to take the afternoon off tomorrow, then you do the extra work today if you would rather have the free time off later - this is economising. It's making the best use of the things at your disposal to maximise your happiness. It's not about piling up a bunch of stuff for the sake of it - it's about means and ends.