http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12693#219844

Peter Hume, excellent comment, could not have said it better myself, hypocrisy is the rotten core of all loony left politics.

BTW the only difference between ALL communism & ALL socialism is method.

The communists advocate war.

The socialists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Fabian_Society advocate "creaping gradualism" http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8630135369495797236# the PC, Thought Police destroying our society over decades of "white anting" it from within. http://www.rense.com/general32/americ.htm here it is in another form.

But i suspect you already knew that.

Whenever somebody who is not a good little communazi uses derogatory language to describe their corrupt, evil actions, it is "name calling".

Whenever they call us names, it somehow becomes legitimate debate, or denial IS a river in Egypt.

Poirot
More ad hom in substitution of relevant argument.

Wow. Amazing.

And this shows collectivist authoritarianism is better than freedom …. how?

All
The two fatal defects of all socialist argument are that they
• do not make out their critique of capitalism,
• but even if they did, they don’t establish how public ownership is going to be any improvement.

The socialist critique of capitalism is invariably on the basis that it’s so obvious it goes without saying. But when asked to prove it’s exploitative, their first resort is invariably the Industrial Revolution, followed by corporate rapacity, followed by unsustainability.

As to the Industrial Revolution the fact that the population doubled in the relevant period demolishes all their arguments because, obviously if your preferred alternative involves half the population dying in infancy, or of mass starvation, that ends any humane discussion in favour of capitalism.

The socialists really show their stripes in their argument about sustainability. The solution is for the state to rationalize the problem, defined as too many people being alive.

Yet to compare a system maintaining a certain population level at a certain high standard, with another (alleged, imaginary, impossible) system (forcibly) maintaining a lower population level at a lower standard, does not compare apples with apples. (It compares apples with death, and has the gall to claim it's a better alternative to apples!)

If for reasons of sustainability, current consumption must be deferred for the benefit of a future generation, then that future generation must be under the same obligation for the same reasons, which means no-one could ever use the natural resources in issue, even though future generations might be wealthier than us.

But even if we are going to ecological hell in a capitalist handcart, the assumption that authoritarian central planning would or could be any better at preserving human life or the environment is completely false as both theory and practice have proved.

The charge that capitalism produces corporate cronyism disregards the role of the last century’s social democratic policies. Either way, the socialist argument must fail, because ...

(cont.)

… according to the social democrat view, such policies were necessary to avoid capitalist social injustice. And according to the libertarian view, such policies will produce what they do in fact produce, namely fascist corporate cronyism. So either way the socialist argument fails.

But even if the socialists had made good their critique of capitalism, which they haven’t, they still wouldn’t have got to square one in establishing that public ownership – by whatever agency – could do any better.

That’s why the problem is not Marxist socialism, but any kind of socialism. And it’s why david was completely unable to find an economic principle distinguishing Marxist from non-Marxist socialism. There isn’t any!

If the socialists could
“smash this sorry scheme of things entire,
and re-mould it closer to the heart’s desire”
they assume that the preferred solution will just materialize, either without the state (Marx) or with it (david f, Squeers).

But like Marx, they never turn their minds to what socialism would need to do in practice in order to replace capitalism, without producing worse negative consequences. They just assume that society is going to be fairer or more sustainable, without *thinking through* what effect abolition or displacement of the capital markets will have on human life and the environment.

What applies to full socialism applies to part socialism. None of the arguments for part socialism can be sustained without
a) making the same erroneous assumptions as full socialism, and
b) relying on the continued existence of capitalism for it to be viable and humane.

It is not just Marxist socialism that produces piles of corpses. For example, road socialism in the USA alone causes over 40,000 deaths per year. Now multiply that across all the countries in the world practicing road socialism. As the bureaucrats running the roads have no financial interest in getting it right, and pay no cost for getting it wrong, what else should you expect?

Freedom of person and property, subject to a general ban on aggression and fraud, is the only humane as well as the only practical system.

Peter,

In a libertarian utopia, who polices the "general ban on aggression and fraud", considering they are two extremely common human characteristics?

Poirot, I do think you're reaching for an extreme. I can't speak for Peter, but I think most people would agree that any state requires a system of laws to protect person and property.

The discussion comes down to a consideration of the balance point between intrusive, coercive laws and minimalist, nihilist anarchy.

Peter, I also think you're spot on about corporatism and socialism being concomitant upon each other. Both the Corporate state and the Socialist one operate on the same stratified collectivist oligarchical model. Both produce poor outcomes for the majority and massively disproportionate rewards for those at the top.

Poirot
There are a number of ways the status quo could be improved on, many of which are already in widespread practical application, and used by governments as well. It’s only a question of extending them, or rather restricting government’s monopoly.

However for starters, I have never claimed to stand for a “utopia”, so you’ll need to ask your question without obvious misrepresentation and bad faith before you can expect me to answer it.

And you’ll need to answer my question about the minimum wage first. It’s perfectly reasonable: your entire argument hinges on it, and I’ve asked it four or five times with you steadfastly refusing to answer it.

If the legislature in 1842 had mandated a minimum wage of 50 pounds per day, do you think that would have caused conditions for the working class to get better or worse?