Saving the Internet from the NSA

[Seth]

And the point of denigrating central control and central planning is because it does not and cannot work...

Mmmm yeah. Tell that to McDonald's. Or Apple Computer. Or Walmart. Or Exxon. Or any big successful enterprise you've ever heard of...

Private Enterprise=Central Control.

Nope. Private enterprise is the antithesis of central planning. You just don't know what "central planning" actually means.

[pErvinalia]

1. State of the planet.

Globally (from UNfigures) forest cover is increasing as nations plant more than they cut down, with a few exceptions. But overall, very healthy.

Fish stocks increasing (mainly due to over-fishing of large predators). But total fish biomass is growing.

Plant growth faster than before due to warmer conditions and more CO2.

OK, I know there are problems, like global climate change. But your statement, rEvolutionist, was too damn general for me to swallow.

2. World economies.
Average global economic growth is about 3% per year right now. In Africa, it is closer to 5%. Only in the already wealthy west is it below 2%.

Wow. You are spectacularly deluded. I don't even know where to begin.

[pErvinalia]

And the point of denigrating central control and central planning is because it does not and cannot work...

Mmmm yeah. Tell that to McDonald's. Or Apple Computer. Or Walmart. Or Exxon. Or any big successful enterprise you've ever heard of...

Private Enterprise=Central Control.

How has France been working since Napoleon, if not since Louis XIV?
Central control, and private enterprise has worked pretty well too.

Yeah, but you're a Stalinist nation. You have gulags.

[pErvinalia]

By the way, interesting article on capitalism/socialism etc by the creator of The Wire series.

David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

[rainbow]

And the point of denigrating central control and central planning is because it does not and cannot work...

Mmmm yeah. Tell that to McDonald's. Or Apple Computer. Or Walmart. Or Exxon. Or any big successful enterprise you've ever heard of...

Private Enterprise=Central Control.

Nope. Private enterprise is the antithesis of central planning. You just don't know what "central planning" actually means.

Does too!

The main difference between Monopoly Capitalism and Centrally Planned Socialism is that in one the economic power is in the hands of a small minority, and in the other case it is in the hands of a small minority.


See?

[pErvinalia]

No true capitalistman!!1!

[Blind groper]

This comment from rEvolutionist

"Wow. You are spectacularly deluded. I don't even know where to begin."

You can begin by telling me why official United Nations statistics represent delusion!

[piscator]

And the point of denigrating central control and central planning is because it does not and cannot work...

Mmmm yeah. Tell that to McDonald's. Or Apple Computer. Or Walmart. Or Exxon. Or any big successful enterprise you've ever heard of...

Private Enterprise=Central Control.

Nope. Private enterprise is the antithesis of central planning. You just don't know what "central planning" actually means.

Does too!

The main difference between Monopoly Capitalism and Centrally Planned Socialism is that in one the economic power is in the hands of a small minority, and in the other case it is in the hands of a small minority.


See?

Good one.

Seth's just excreting Conservative hyperbole to erect a strawman. And when he invokes The Obama, he's just chanting the coded mantra in a vain attempt to transform himself into...

[Seth]

And the point of denigrating central control and central planning is because it does not and cannot work...

Mmmm yeah. Tell that to McDonald's. Or Apple Computer. Or Walmart. Or Exxon. Or any big successful enterprise you've ever heard of...

Private Enterprise=Central Control.

Nope. Private enterprise is the antithesis of central planning. You just don't know what "central planning" actually means.

Does too!

The main difference between Monopoly Capitalism and Centrally Planned Socialism is that in one the economic power is in the hands of a small minority, and in the other case it is in the hands of a small minority.


See?

Strawman argument. You are artificially limiting the description of "private enterprise" by conflating it with "monopoly capitalism."

Plus, this is not about economic power, it's about physical control of the populace through control of goods and services (like healthcare). "Central planning" in the socialist/Marxist sense, is about bureaucrats inside the government deciding what goods will be manufactured, by whom, and in what quantity, and how they will be made available to the public. The purpose of State Socialism is to centralize the power over the economy in order to centralize political and operative power over the populace. By controlling the markets the government gains the ability to serve or sanction individuals and groups to achieve social planning goals by providing or denying products or services in ways that forward the social goals of the government.

Free markets work in precisely the opposite fashion. They rely upon the needs and desires of consumers to drive the production of goods and services through the billions of individual purchasing choices of consumers. A company that makes goods that are popular with the public will prosper, while companies that make inferior or too-costly goods will fail...and will eventually be replaced with another competitor for the market share of the popular goods who will try to provide better goods or the same quality goods at a lower price. This competition is what keeps prices low and supplies adequate to meet the demand and it's all based on individual consumer choices and trends.

Socialist central planning presumes that the government knows better than the populace does what they should want to satisfy their needs while not just ignoring but actually rejecting the freedom of choice that makes any economic system operate in the first place. The corrosive effects of central planning go far beyond just limitations on the availability and quality of goods, it extends right back into the manufacturing process itself where the economic factors involved do not produce more or better goods at a lower price, they produce fewer, inferior goods at a higher price.

Your "Monopoly Capitalism" strawman attempts to discard the actual functioning of the free market by replacing it with a pseudo-capitalistic argument that does nothing but replace "government" with "private monopoly," which simply doesn't happen in real life. Only governments themselves can be, or can support an economic monopoly of any kind because only government has the necessary force and law at its disposal to forbid and prevent free-market competition against the monopoly. And that's exactly what Socialist and Marxist central planning are all about; giving government the monopoly on the production and distribution of goods and services.

So yet again your claim is thoroughly debunked.

[Seth]

Good one.

Seth's just excreting Conservative hyperbole to erect a strawman. And when he invokes The Obama, he's just chanting the coded mantra in a vain attempt to transform himself into...

Now you're imputing racism? Go fuck yourself.

[Blind groper]

Seth

Most of us here would advocate the use of the free market. In fact, my country is the epitome of the free market. While the USA subsidises industry and agrculture to hell, making a mockery of the free market ideal, NZ has done away with all such subsidies, and forces its enterprises to stand on their own feet. In fact, in the current negotiations between NZ and the USA looking for as free trade deal, the sticking point is American government support for its enterprises.

However, even in such a pure free market society as NZ, we realise that it must be leavened with government control and a degree of socialism. Government control to prevent the Enrons and the banking failures of this world. Socialism because the free market does not look after those who do not have the abilities to thrive in such a society. Until we establish a Soylent Green for sure, we are not prepared to let those people starve to death.

[Seth]

Seth

Most of us here would advocate the use of the free market. In fact, my country is the epitome of the free market. While the USA subsidises industry and agrculture to hell, making a mockery of the free market ideal, NZ has done away with all such subsidies, and forces its enterprises to stand on their own feet. In fact, in the current negotiations between NZ and the USA looking for as free trade deal, the sticking point is American government support for its enterprises.

Well, international economic competition and protectionism are something entirely separate from the theory of free-market economics. That's a political matter more than an economic one. The fact that NZ can't compete with US producers because the US subsidizes domestic production doesn't disprove the value of free-market capitalism. There are both strategic and national security considerations involved as well. Take the steel industry for example. It was the American embargo on exports of US steel products to Japan prior to Pearl Harbor that was one of the main triggers for Japan going to war with us.

Now the situation is entirely reversed, and American steel manufacturing has all but gone extinct and we import most of our steel from China and Japan. This was a very, very bad political and strategic decision by our government, which absolutely should have worked much harder to upgrade and subsidize modernization of our steel manufacturing because the ability to produce steel domestically is a vital strategic and national defense capability we should not have sacrificed in the name of "free trade."

The same is true of agriculture and energy fuels production. There are other than pure economic considerations that come into play with government subsidies of essential domestic manufacturing and supply capacity. The main reason for agricultural subsidies is to prevent arable agricultural lands from being permanently converted to other incompatible uses such as residential, commercial or industrial uses. This is because arable farmland is a very limited national resource and it's a strategic mistake to allow domestic food production to be permanently impaired because relying on foreign imports for the essential food needs of the nation gives whoever supplies that food enormous political and social control over the populace, as the events in Mogadishu,Somalia prove.

Another reason for agricultural subsidies is that farming is a learned skill, and losing the national pool of experienced farmers could result in catastrophic shortages of food in the event of emergency. This is proven by the Dust Bowl days of the Great Depression, where the federal government thought it could take out-of-work city-dwellers, ship them to Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado, give them 40 acres and a tractor and then expect these neophytes to begin producing crops immediately.

The Dust Bowl occurred precisely because inexperienced farmers tilled their fields according to the recommendations of the Department of Agriculture, which had literally NO experience with dry-land farming on the Great Plains. It's farming practices recommendations were based on knowledge of farming in the east and south, where there is abundant rainfall and soils are much more dense than the sandy soils of the Great Plains.

As a result, the method used to till huge expanses of virgin prairie created vast areas of flour-fine tilled seed-beds, which promptly dried out, picked up and blew away with the unobstructed and high-velocity winds on the Great Plains, stripping the farms of the relatively thin layer of topsoil they had and burying entire houses and farms in wind-drifted piles of dirt.

Dry-land farmers in Colorado and other places tried to tell the Agriculture Department that their farming practices were wrong, but FDR's administration, being a Progressive Marxist one disregarded the experience and knowledge of the locals and insisted that it knew better. THAT is what caused the Dust Bowl.

As a result, Colorado, along with other states, actually passed laws that make it illegal to over-till your fields, and that allow your neighbors to re-till your fields if there is a threat of topsoil erosion by wind. We around here know that the proper way to till dry-land fields on the plains is roughly, leaving large clods with roots, and then to plant and compact the clods rather than making an easy-to-plant finely-grained field like they do in the east. This practice both conserves moisture in the soil over the winter and prevents the topsoil from blowing away.

Such things were not taught to city-dwellers moved to the Great Plains to become instant farmers, and it took generations for those who made it through the Dust Bowl to learn the necessary skills and information they needed to profitably farm these lands.

Farming is not learned overnight, and it is in the best strategic and economic interests of EVERY country to subsidize and maintain an adequate pool of both arable land and individuals skilled in their use and management in order that the nation can feed itself if and when food imports are used as a political or military weapon by our enemies.

That's why the USDA offers crop insurance and crop subsidies and soil conservation programs to farmers...to ensure the future of American farming in order to ensure the future ability of the nation to feed itself.

However, even in such a pure free market society as NZ, we realise that it must be leavened with government control and a degree of socialism. Government control to prevent the Enrons and the banking failures of this world. Socialism because the free market does not look after those who do not have the abilities to thrive in such a society. Until we establish a Soylent Green for sure, we are not prepared to let those people starve to death.

Again, you repeat your most common error of conflating "free-market" with "unregulated market." "Free-market" does NOT mean that government is unnecessary or undesirable or that the markets go unregulated. Not at all. This position, which I can only conclude is a deliberate, malicious and mendacious mischaracterization of the definition of "free-market economy" given the number of times it's been debunked in detail is absolutely typical of Marxist demagogary and ideological polemicisim.

The essential distinction between Collectivism and Individualism is very simply stated as the distinction between physically forcing someone to labor on behalf of others because of an assumed or imposed duty to the well-being of the collective and persuading him to do exactly the same things willingly and voluntarily for the betterment of society and the economy by appealing to his altruistic, charitable and rational self-interest motivations.

[piscator]

Good one.

Seth's just excreting Conservative hyperbole to erect a strawman. And when he invokes The Obama, he's just chanting the coded mantra in a vain attempt to transform himself into...

Now you're imputing racism? Go fuck yourself.

Can it wait until I get off ur mom?

Racism is at the core of Conservative resentment to entitlements. Shame you have to talk in code these days, but you fit the profile...

[pErvinalia]

This comment from rEvolutionist

"Wow. You are spectacularly deluded. I don't even know where to begin."

You can begin by telling me why official United Nations statistics represent delusion!

Because they don't address in the slightest what I'm talking about. If you can't see the damage we are doing to our environment, and our unsustainable use of resources, then you are off with the fairies.

[Blind groper]

Seth

Couple of corrections to your post.

Subsidies are the antithesis of the free market. The way a free market works is that it permits cut throat competition, and any industry that cannot compete goes bust, and gets replaced by those others that can. The American government provides subsidies precisely because the agriculture and industry it subsidises are too damn inefficient to compete otherwise.

Nor is NZ's unsubsidised agriculture unable to compete. In fact, our farmers have got so incredibly efficient that they shit all over others. That is why NZ is now the number one greatest exporter of dairy products in the world, accounting for 40% of all dairy exports globally. Our farmers were exposed to cut throat competition on the basis of adapt or die. They adapted.

One result is that desperate governments, like the USA, lump excess tariffs on NZ imports, and subsidise the shit out of their own suppliers. That is a tacit admission of incompetence.

The result of a true free market is a culling of those who are incompetent and inefficient, replaced by those who can do better. The end result is a level of productivity and a reduction in costs that is shown by the NZ dairy industry.