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I was the rep Didn't think that there was a debate to be had, as I didn't think that someone who believes in particular versions of collectivism, don't believe in what those that created the definitions of it. You are not a socialist, which you stated, but if you were, it would be silly for you to say that you are a socialist, but not a socialist in the sense of those who defined what socialism is, would it not? If you didn't believe in socialism, as it was defined by its designers, you would call yourself something else. Or you should at least write your own version of Das Kapital to redefine it first. You could call it Dusty Socialism: The final solution, this time it will work is spite of human nature.
Workers having the property rights of their labor? Don't people have a right to start their own business? If you choose to work for someone else instead of starting your own business, you are choosing to be a slave to someone else. Someone who has nothing to offer others on their own, except by being a beast of burden to another should feel lucky to have a job in the first place. (Because that someone else is making your uselessness useful.)
So I take it that you believe that labor is exploited? Well, even though I believe in human freedom, unlike collectivists of all stripes, I will agree with you here. Shocked? Yes, labor is exploited, and there are vast income inequalities. However I am pretty sure we disagree as to what are the root causes of this.
First it is the profit principle. Which is just a result of human greed and is not something that can be done away with. It would take a philosophical change, not government guns. I believe in a free market, so human nature will not eliminate the evil of profit. For my freedom loving friends, I believe the free market is ideally a market of EXCHANGE not PROFIT. The notion of profit as a virtue, is at its heart, a vile ugly human belief. Profit means to receive more than you have given. It is exploitation no matter which costume it wears. If we had a market of exchange, value for value, profit would not exist. Alas, again, human nature will prevail, and until the underlying philosophy changes, profit will still dominate are interactions. So there is nothing that can be done on this front without using aggression to destroy human freedom. And I am against any form of aggression, by any person, group, or government upon any person, group, or government.
Now we get to the real underlying problem with the entire world's most vexing problems. It is our concept of money (rather the lack of any real grasp of what our money does to us) and the slavery system we know of as "banking". This can be approached.
The foremost force that generates the confiscation of the vast majority of the world's wealth into the hand of the select few, is fiat currency and banking. Through the legalized monopolies of fiat currency, counterfeiting, usury, and partial reserve banking, there is no limit as to the amount of wealth that can be confiscated from the world that uses these private fiat or paper currencies. There is no limit as to how much of the worlds wealth can be consolidated in the hands of a few chosen families.
Currency, supposedly, is a medium of exchange and nothing else. However if some have more access to it than other, and some can create it out of thin air, then it cannot any longer be seen as a medium of exchange. It becomes a medium of confiscation of wealth. Whenever the supply expands, the value of all currency in existence falls. Only those that create that currency gain any real wealth, everyone who merely uses it, loses wealth. (This is why Kings loved paper or fiat currency so much, just by creating it they could tax the people indirectly without limit, and no one had to go and collect it )
An ideal currency would be something that everyone has equal access to, no one could horde or consolidate beyond what they have actually invested, and it had a constant tangible value. I personally would advocate a time currency. You invest your time doing something for someone else and you earn the time of another to serve you. You could not inherit it, you could save it, but it would disappear when you die, and you could not "loan" it to others and ask for usury. You could earn no more that you have actually invested, and you could spend no more than you actually invested. You could become no richer than the lifetime you invest. Everyone would have the same relative amount of time to invest, from birth to death. And finally, no matter how "successful" one could be, they could never have a life that was worth more than the life of another.
Now, usury is an abomination as it always has been since biblical times. It ties right in with the justification of exploitation known as profit. However it is even more inane in that money tokens can consolidate other people's wealth simply because it exists. Money earning money is absurd. It is a medium of exchange, it does not on its own, produce anything for anyone in the market. It simply is a token. Even the ancients saw that this scam was pure evil.
Partial reserve banking should be seen for the evil absurdity it is to anyone. But it is not. The experiment that they should undertake is to take ten of their dollars and "loan" out 1000 dollars. Charge say 6% interest. Then finally collect $1060.00 in profit. All while starting with just ten dollars. Their "noble" government would put them under a jail. But this is exactly how our "banking" system works. Creating money out of thin air with digital expansion of currency that the bank does not have and charging interest on the fictional loans. It is a license to steal with no limits whatsoever.
It is actually even worse than the above when you consider the velocity of money, the fake money originators get full value, because the expansion has not reached the market yet to deflate the value, and then they receive full inflation adjusted currency when the loan is paid off. Or even go into a bank and offer them the same loan that they would offer you, they will laugh you out of the bank.
I will take serious some of the ideas of those who advocate slavery to the State, collectivists, when they start to at least address the real causes of wealth inequality, deprivation, wars, etc. It is not "businesses" or "capitalism" and certainly not individual human freedom which cause the ills that so abhor. It is the Money Cartel, and the puppet governments that they have bankrupted and owned throughout the world. Kill the monetary system and the governments, then you will see human freedom and more equality among the human population. Slavery to the State or fictional collective is not the answer and never will be.
You are way too smart for us[/sarcasm]. Since you Marx says socialism is the precursor to communism then it must be so.
By all means keep repping people for stuff you disagree with.
If you really truly believe in the bolded above you are definitely in the wrong country.
You are way too smart for us[/sarcasm]. Since you Marx says socialism is the precursor to communism then it must be so.
By all means keep repping people for stuff you disagree with.
If you really truly believe in the bolded above you are definitely in the wrong country.
Yeah, using the the person who defined what socialism is as a source of what socialism means is foolish. Huh? Wait!
Did you have a problem with the bolded statement? It is just an idea is all, I thought it could be a point of agreement I might have with collectivists/statists. I guess there really is no compromise between slavery to the State and human freedom. No need for sarcasm, as it is not necessary. I thought I was reaching out to someone with the opposite ideology than myself. I guess no good deed...
He's a communist piece of scum the lowest form of life on planet Earth. If he was in charge he would be exactly like the pigs on George Orwell's Animal Farm we're all animals were created equal but some animals are more equal than others.
I will take serious some of the ideas of those who advocate slavery to the State, collectivists, when they start to at least address the real causes of wealth inequality, deprivation, wars, etc. It is not "businesses" or "capitalism" and certainly not individual human freedom which cause the ills that so abhor. It is the Money Cartel, and the puppet governments that they have bankrupted and owned throughout the world. Kill the monetary system and the governments, then you will see human freedom and more equality among the human population. Slavery to the State or fictional collective is not the answer and never will be.
irspow -- I'm chuckling, you have gone waaay over the heads of many reading here. Methinks they have no idea what you're talking about.
I'm with you on this paragraph. And, NO slavery for me, let's be clear about that.
P.S. Not going to bother answering Dusty's rebuttal to me. Too much hair-splitting for my taste. Pointless.
I was the rep Didn't think that there was a debate to be had, as I didn't think that someone who believes in particular versions of collectivism, don't believe in what those that created the definitions of it. You are not a socialist, which you stated, but if you were, it would be silly for you to say that you are a socialist, but not a socialist in the sense of those who defined what socialism is, would it not? If you didn't believe in socialism, as it was defined by its designers, you would call yourself something else. Or you should at least write your own version of Das Kapital to redefine it first. You could call it Dusty Socialism: The final solution, this time it will work is spite of human nature.
Workers having the property rights of their labor? Don't people have a right to start their own business? If you choose to work for someone else instead of starting your own business, you are choosing to be a slave to someone else. Someone who has nothing to offer others on their own, except by being a beast of burden to another should feel lucky to have a job in the first place. (Because that someone else is making your uselessness useful.)
So I take it that you believe that labor is exploited? Well, even though I believe in human freedom, unlike collectivists of all stripes, I will agree with you here. Shocked? Yes, labor is exploited, and there are vast income inequalities. However I am pretty sure we disagree as to what are the root causes of this.
First it is the profit principle. Which is just a result of human greed and is not something that can be done away with. It would take a philosophical change, not government guns. I believe in a free market, so human nature will not eliminate the evil of profit. For my freedom loving friends, I believe the free market is ideally a market of EXCHANGE not PROFIT. The notion of profit as a virtue, is at its heart, a vile ugly human belief. Profit means to receive more than you have given. It is exploitation no matter which costume it wears. If we had a market of exchange, value for value, profit would not exist. Alas, again, human nature will prevail, and until the underlying philosophy changes, profit will still dominate are interactions. So there is nothing that can be done on this front without using aggression to destroy human freedom. And I am against any form of aggression, by any person, group, or government upon any person, group, or government.
Now we get to the real underlying problem with the entire world's most vexing problems. It is our concept of money (rather the lack of any real grasp of what our money does to us) and the slavery system we know of as "banking". This can be approached.
The foremost force that generates the confiscation of the vast majority of the world's wealth into the hand of the select few, is fiat currency and banking. Through the legalized monopolies of fiat currency, counterfeiting, usury, and partial reserve banking, there is no limit as to the amount of wealth that can be confiscated from the world that uses these private fiat or paper currencies. There is no limit as to how much of the worlds wealth can be consolidated in the hands of a few chosen families.
Currency, supposedly, is a medium of exchange and nothing else. However if some have more access to it than other, and some can create it out of thin air, then it cannot any longer be seen as a medium of exchange. It becomes a medium of confiscation of wealth. Whenever the supply expands, the value of all currency in existence falls. Only those that create that currency gain any real wealth, everyone who merely uses it, loses wealth. (This is why Kings loved paper or fiat currency so much, just by creating it they could tax the people indirectly without limit, and no one had to go and collect it )
An ideal currency would be something that everyone has equal access to, no one could horde or consolidate beyond what they have actually invested, and it had a constant tangible value. I personally would advocate a time currency. You invest your time doing something for someone else and you earn the time of another to serve you. You could not inherit it, you could save it, but it would disappear when you die, and you could not "loan" it to others and ask for usury. You could earn no more that you have actually invested, and you could spend no more than you actually invested. You could become no richer than the lifetime you invest. Everyone would have the same relative amount of time to invest, from birth to death. And finally, no matter how "successful" one could be, they could never have a life that was worth more than the life of another.
Now, usury is an abomination as it always has been since biblical times. It ties right in with the justification of exploitation known as profit. However it is even more inane in that money tokens can consolidate other people's wealth simply because it exists. Money earning money is absurd. It is a medium of exchange, it does not on its own, produce anything for anyone in the market. It simply is a token. Even the ancients saw that this scam was pure evil.
Partial reserve banking should be seen for the evil absurdity it is to anyone. But it is not. The experiment that they should undertake is to take ten of their dollars and "loan" out 1000 dollars. Charge say 6% interest. Then finally collect $1060.00 in profit. All while starting with just ten dollars. Their "noble" government would put them under a jail. But this is exactly how our "banking" system works. Creating money out of thin air with digital expansion of currency that the bank does not have and charging interest on the fictional loans. It is a license to steal with no limits whatsoever.
It is actually even worse than the above when you consider the velocity of money, the fake money originators get full value, because the expansion has not reached the market yet to deflate the value, and then they receive full inflation adjusted currency when the loan is paid off. Or even go into a bank and offer them the same loan that they would offer you, they will laugh you out of the bank.
I will take serious some of the ideas of those who advocate slavery to the State, collectivists, when they start to at least address the real causes of wealth inequality, deprivation, wars, etc. It is not "businesses" or "capitalism" and certainly not individual human freedom which cause the ills that so abhor. It is the Money Cartel, and the puppet governments that they have bankrupted and owned throughout the world. Kill the monetary system and the governments, then you will see human freedom and more equality among the human population. Slavery to the State or fictional collective is not the answer and never will be.
While I appreciate the depth of this response, I do have to say, almost none of it has anything to do with what I said.
Bernie Sanders is not a communist. This point I made remains true and nothing you said disproves it.
You claim that a socialist cannot disagree with the "designer" of socialism, Karl Marx. That on it's own is objectionable, but the real issue is that Karl Marx did not think up socialism. It had been around for quite some time, tracing it's roots back to at least the French Revolution (a period that Marxists thought incredible). The term 'socialist' was first used in 1827, and while Marx was around at that point, he was also 9 years old.
So indeed, one can be a socialist without being a communist since socialists between 1827 and 1848 (when the Communist Manifesto was first written) pretty much had to be.
As for collectivism, I think westerners have an inherent (and understandable) bias against it. Often, people who are more right wing describe a country like Sweden as being collectivist. This is frankly ridiculous. Sweden is very much keen on individualism, it just happens to have social systems in place that are particularly good as taking care of individuals. Unlike most non-western societies, which are generally very collectivist, or places like the USSR and Nazi Germany, which were radically collectivist.
I also sort of gather that you think I'm lying when I say I am not a socialist. I assure you, I am not.
He's a hate merchant pandering to a radical base for his own ends. He needs a following or he's worthless and would be punted aside by the DC power brokers. He's also spineless and a sell out who took the money and ran when Hillary screwed him over. Plus his wife belongs in prison for what she did to her college in Vermont.
By his own rules he should be forced out of office but he's a hypocrite.
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Didn't think that there was a debate to be had, as I didn't think that someone who believes in particular versions of collectivism, don't believe in what those that created the definitions of it. You are not a socialist, which you stated, but if you were, it would be silly for you to say that you are a socialist, but not a socialist in the sense of those who defined what socialism is, would it not? If you didn't believe in socialism, as it was defined by its designers, you would call yourself something else. Or you should at least write your own version of Das Kapital to redefine it first. You could call it Dusty Socialism: The final solution, this time it will work is spite of human nature. 
And, NO slavery for me, let's be clear about that.
