Squeers “Under our system the spoiled rich evade it utterly”

Maybe, but their effort is not yours to measure.

As for the rest

You sound more like Grim everyday

The same small minded envy, the mad blood lust, fraudulently demanded in the name of equality.

All the same old elements which marked Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin Mao and Pol-Pot for the evil which they were.

Just remember, it is my system of “libertarian capitalism” which allows you freedom to hold the twisted views you here espouse.

The reality of yhr sort of collectivist horror you support would see those who dare oppose your tyranny reduced to bones and fertiliser as Lenin did to the kulaks and Pol Pot did to any Cambodian who could read.

I think, on balance, tolerating those who might have an easier life than I is a better option than imposing a collectivist tyranny which would leave me with an existence not worth living.

Stern:
<You sound more like Grim everyday

The same small minded envy, the mad blood lust, fraudulently demanded in the name of equality.

All the same old elements which marked Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin Mao and Pol-Pot for the evil which they were.

Just remember, it is my system of “libertarian capitalism” which allows you freedom to hold the twisted views you here espouse.>

Dear Stern,
you appear to be losing your composure and descending into tirades, "licking the chops of your own malice" all the while, as Cassandra once observed of a foe. However satisfying that may be, I'm afraid it cannot salvage your position unless it tallies with observable facts or has the compelling virtue of logical argument.
You honour me by hoisting me to the level of Grim's intellectual attainments and ideological emancipation, but while I cannot comment on whether that savant of OLO is dragged down by those flaws of character you attribute to him, I do have some claim to being free of, or at least on my guard myself against, those base enemies of reason that tempt us all.

I am also anxious to disabuse your good self of that leap of "logic" you seem wont to take when your intuitive grasp of our state of affairs is brought into question. Specifically, my thinking does not default as a desire for that "collectivist horror" you seem so troubled by and keen to assign as my dark motive. Nor am I motivated by "the mad blood lust" you perceive. Verily, such tropes are simply the cliches and hyperbole with which you have been afrighted, and with which you arm yourself against dissenting voices of reason, counting, as you may, on lots of popular support. One sympathises with yours and your brethren's benighted condition, but one cannot allow such calumnies to pass unchallenged, and so I am obliged to observe that you already abide under a tyranny of sorts---the tyranny of deluded popular opinion.

Very good, Squeers - I liked that.

This is somewhat like watching ye olde tennis tournament. I can almost hear Stern salivating over his keyboard in response - jolly good debate from both of you. (hope I don't spoil it too much by butting in)

*The moguls love blokes like you!*

Squeers, you do seem to have a chip on your shoulder about
business. I have yet to see the politicial moguls, the religous
moguls or the academic moguls, scrubbing their own toilets at work.

Squeers, trust me, my composure is, as always under full control

but you and your buddy, Grim, are the ones using gratuitous expressions like -

the "spoiled rich" and "obscenely rich" and "morally vacuous, blood sucking parasites".

and when I consider the words of the reprehensible Lenin, followed by the actions of the reprehensible Lenin, in the name of the sort of model of economic ownership you seem to be promoting, and your ignorant criticism of the capitalist model of economic ownership -

I feel on matters of "composure" and debating technique, you have more than met your match.

The likes of the left are consistently marked by grandiose plans and no substance.

Lenin had 5 year plans
Stalin had 5 year plans
the incumbent state and federal governments wither have plans or are making plans for every situation and event known to mankind

but for all the socialist plans there is no substance.

simple example, the Victorian public transport ticketing system

A huge waste of public money, billions of dollars

and for what

nothing which actually works or comes close to the "planned" deliverables.

That simply would not have happened in a privately owned transport network

So too the Victorian Green Wedges, abandoned because they are not economically sustainable after they caused higher housing costs by reducing available land stocks.

When collectivists get hold of commercial assets and opportunities the following happens

Monopoly trading.. which screws the consumer.
Subverted economic agendas, neither open nor commercially or competetively motivated.
Stagnation of product development and investment -

in short, further screwing everyone

the left consistently fail to deliver any economic progress or benefits

the right leave the business community do what they do best, run businesses and

the politicians doing what they do best...

just talk about stuff.

your collectivist policies have produced, at best, a complete waste and at worst, mass murder.

Charles Darwin once calculated that a pair of common house flies, at their ordinary rate of reproduction, would within a year cover the earth in a layer of house flies 20 metres thick, or something to that effect.

I suppose capitalism is driving this unsustainability too?

Of course the reason it doesn’t reach that stage with flies is because large numbers of them die in each generation. Are the anti-capitalists really arguing that the fault of capitalism is that it is the cause of large numbers of people being alive and healthy who would otherwise be dead or diseased?

Anti-capitalists argued for over a century that capitalism grinds the faces of the poor, even while the living standards of the masses under capitalism rose to the highest levels in the history of the world. But wait, it gets worse. Anti-capitalists *still* argue that capitalism makes the mass of people poorer, while *simultaneously* arguing that it makes the mass of the people too rich.

And what exactly do you propose to put in its place? Obviously public ownership of the means of production is not an option, because even if it could support the same population at the same standard of living, which it can’t, it would be *more* unsustainable because it would use more resources to achieve the same result, because it would lack the necessary means of economic calculation. The only alternative is the orgy of government spending, government debt, government wars, and government jailing, regulating and taxing that we are witnessing in the western world. The idea that this is a more sustainable or desirable solution than peaceful exchange based on private property is just more criminal stupidity.

The anti-capitalists are like religious adherents. They are not interested in learning about the disproofs of their beliefs. They are like one of those plastic punching clowns with a bias at base. The more you punch them down, they more they just keep on popping up with that silly enthusiastic grin on their face.