Capitalism and Democracy. What do YOU think?

Originally posted by Wicknight


To be honest with you I don't know. The reason they were taken of the register is because convicted criminals cannot vote in presidental elections in Florida. The corruption happened when people (over half African American), who were never convicted of a crime, were taken off because they had similar names, similar dates of birth, or similar social security numbers as a person who did commit a crime. They accepted an 80% match to the actual person who had commited the crime. The state then put the responsibility on the person to prove that they were not the crimial by getting finger printed. Of course most couldn't do this because they only found out they couldn't vote they day the went to vote.
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yeah, but that can only be done once,to each individual involved, there was suffecient time, for any victim of that to get registered , and provide proof that they weren't a criminal prior to the congressional elections.
It *can* be put down to over zealousness, even if the motive might have been to take down as many democrats as possible.
mm

Meh

Originally posted by Wicknight
Giving total power to the minority elite is Rightwing Capitism!!!! You want total economic power to be given to the heads of huge corportations, who care nothing for the people of a country and only care about themselves and making money.

This is a perfect example of a straw man.

shotamoose

Originally posted by Meh
This is a perfect example of a straw man.

But it also needs to be pointed out that when people attack 'socialism' with the examples of the USSR and other central-command economies, they are also using 'straw man' arguments, because socialism does not equate to central command. While the state is ideally placed to implement many types of socialist policy, such as publicly owned essential services, social safety nets and infrastructure, it is fundamentally against socialist prinicples for the state to control every aspect of economic activity.

Co-operatives, not for profit companies, small market enterprises ... all these are consistent with socialism and can (and do) thrive outside of state control.

I'm not sure that most of the people arguing here against communism and central-command 'socialism' really have a problem with the above aspects of socialism, but they do have a problem with socialism when it goes 'too far', and I suspect with capitalism when it goes 'too far'. Obviously it comes down to what your definitions of 'too far' are.

Personally, I'd say I've got a lower threshold than most for capitalism: I believe that even if markets could work perfectly, they would only deliver market-efficient and market-desirable results, which do not necessarily have anything to do with (and are sometimes directly contrary to) socially or environmentally desirable results. The problem is that markets do not even work perfectly - there are unequal and distorting distributions of market power and different participants have different and imperfect information - and so often produce grossly inequitable or undesirable results.

I think the evidence (especially the post-war history of Europe) implies that market forces produce the best (ie most socially desirable) results in a context of strong and effective government regulation consistent with principles of democracy and social justice (while acknowledging that there are exceptions either way). I know there's different conceptions of 'socially desirable', but I'd stick quite closely to something like the UNDP's 'Human Development' criteria: economic security, absence of poverty, long life expectancy, high quality health and education services with equal access, gender equality, democratic participation, and so on. These are far better criteria, IMO, for judging a society than how close it comes to abstractions such as free market efficiency or some communist equivalent.

xm15e3

I'm on a short lunch, but can add this to the fire:

It's a good read from the Von Mises, Hayek (sp), Milton Freedmon point of view. It does a good job outlining the troubles of government intervention in the free market.

http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1166

Éomer of Rohan

Good grief, I am away for a little while and my posts get hijacked lol. PS thanks to the administrators for letting me back a little earlier than billed lol.

Slutmonkey57b

Money: Tokens based on an agreed value for use in exchange between individuals to compensate for good or services provided. In ancient times called barter and involving real goods. EG: a cow would be bartered for grain, eggs, metal goods. Barter of this type is only useful at short range, and at low values since the actual items involved must change hands. Money replaces the actual goods or services with the typically agreed value of said goods. Instead of posessing a cow in exchange for other items, one would possess the value of the cow.

Property: The concept of an individual having inalienable control over physical items of value. Property requires Law in order to be fully realised, otherwise the concept may only be enforced through physical means.

Capital: The linking of available MONEY to individuals who require PROPERTY.

Capitalism: the structures of society necessary to allow the creation of LAW, MONEY, and PROPERTY to allow the flow of CAPITAL about the society.

The concepts of personal property, law and money are inherent in the human condition. Without these conditions modern society does not exist.

Socialism: The control of capital to provide goods and services according to specific political agenda. The limiting of the ability of individuals to influence society as a whole through the choice of the distribution of their capital.

Communism: The removal of capital into the hands of the government and the distribution of said capital to the society according to arbitrary inflexible conditioning. The removal of personal property rights. The removal of the individual's right to self-determination and the allocation of resources (individuals or objects of value) by a decision making process.

Democracy: The formation of the rules of a society according to the wishes of the majority of its population.

Given the above definitions, I find it frankly amusing that the poll has degenerated into the state it is, but hardly suprising given the other posts of Eomar I've read. You'll find, I think, that Democracy has no specific link to capitalism at all. Capitalism is the abstraction of the system that people have lived by for millenia in order to allow the "value" of someone's time to be measured and for that individual to have the means to trade what they have (in modern society usually time) for what they want (goods and services). Socialism and communism do not "destroy" capitalism - they seek to harness or control it. Both in fact depend upon it.

Democracy, as a political concept, has no links with any economic system. The corruption of democracy comes about not through the application of or failings of the capitalist system, but through the failings of the humans that are appointed to adminster the decisions of the society, and indeed those decisions themselves.

In short, remove capitalism and you remove the ability of the individual to barter what he has (ability, property, knowledge), for what he wants. You destroy modern society and reduce man to a state of existance, rather than to life.

In short, I think:

"Dogma is the luxury of the young and the foolish."