Er, yes, among other things. His first goal is to regulate the US economy into the toilet by deliberately making it non competitive with the Third World as punishment and recompense for American's "colonialism," which Obama hates as a result of his upbringing by Marxists and Anti-Colonialist father.Calilasseia wrote:Oh look, it's another tiresome excursion into Randroid fantasy land on the part of Seth. Quelle fucking surprise.
Such as that hilarious line about Obama being a "Marxist". Which is Seth's favourite knee-jerk epithet for everything he doesn't like, without actually thinking about what the word "Marxist" means, Well, some of us have actually read Das Kapital, and as a corollary, understand that one of the central aspects of Marxist doctrine, is that little bit about taking control of the means of production. Does Obama want to do this? Er, no.
Oh, and I read "Das Kapital" too, as turgid and labored as the fallacious reasoning was, and concluded that Marx's entire body of work rests on a single thin reed, which is his proclamation that rents and interest are not "labor" and are therefore illegitimate means of generating profit because they do not require actual physical labor.
Deconstruct that single argument and all the rest of his turgid bloviating simply falls of its own weight.
And here's the deconstruction: The profits derived from passive capital investment are as worthy and deserving of reward as the hand labor of the worker on the assembly line, and indeed more so because of the greater risk the investor takes in investing in a business, whereas the laborer works at his job, adds the value of his labor to the product, and gets an agreed-upon wage as compensation for that labor at a rate that he expressly agrees represents the actual value of his work. And the worker gets his paycheck even if the owner never sells the widget that the worker produces, so the worker has little to no risk invested in the company, and is not therefore entitled to a greater, or indeed even an equal share of the profits from the sale of the product.
Everything Marx has to say falls before this simple, logical, rational statement of truth, and thus Marxism, and your anti-corporate arguments, vanish into the trash heap of failed Marxist ideology.
Horseshit. He wants to tax the rich into oblivion and forcibly redistribute their wealth to the workers, just like he did with GM, where he criminally defrauded the secured bond holders in GM and then gave a third of the company to the labor unions after using taxpayer money to "bail out" a moribund dinosaur of a car company that should have been liquidated in bankruptcy court.All he wants is for those currently controlling the means of production to exhibit something akin to decent, civilised and humane behaviour, instead of behaving like rapacious and piratical brigands. But then, once again, in SethWorldTM, wanting this is purportedly "Marxist".
The prosperity of the nation improves in direct proportion to the prosperity of its citizens, which improves in direct proportion to the amount of capitalistic free market enterprise the government does NOT meddle with in order to pick political and economic winners and losers.As for not understanding economics, which is more likely to increase the prosperity of a nation, I ask? Letting the big boys siphon billions out of the country and park them in offshore tax havens, where those billions are doing nothing but accruing interest for a few lucky fat cats, or harnessing, via the taxation system, those same billions for the purpose of building new infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals, which will result in a better educated and healthier populace, able to seek high-value skilled employment, and as a corollary, become higher-spending consumers? Infrastructure that those same fat cats are unwilling to spend a penny on themselves, but make use of the moment public finances are deployed to create them, in a blatant act of parasitism.
And no, building infrastructure doesn't improve economics, it's a drain on the economy. A necessary one from time to time, but no government project was ever done cheaper and better than that done by private enterprise in a competitive fair and free market economy.
Red herring and strawman argument because that's not what Libertarian philosophy claims. Everybody enjoys a taxpayer-paid primary education and everybody enjoys infrastructure...including the non-taxpaying bottom 50 percent of the public, who get to enjoy it without paying for it.Indeed, the Randroid myth that fat cat billionaires somehow magically got to the top of the greasy pole courtesy of nothing but their own efforts, is again a myth. Those fat cats enjoyed an education paid for by taxation, in order to learn how to do things, they enjoyed roads and other infrastructure features paid for again by taxation
So does everybody else, for what it's worth., here in Europe they enjoyed the benefits of a healthcare system that didn't require them to whip out their credit cards for treatment when they needed it
So do many jurisdictions in the US. Others buy from commercial sources because it's cheaper than building and maintaining their own infrastructure. Colorado Springs, for example, purchased it's electrical, sewer, water and gas systems way back in the 20's, and now runs the Utilities like a "business" so as to give customers the best service at low rates., and here in Europe they enjoyed public funding of major utilities,
Horseshit. They were NOT ALLOWED to create competing private utilities because the government claimed a monopoly power.none of which they were prepared to spend a penny on themselves because they couldn't see a way of turning those utilities into infinitely milkable cash cows.
Red herring argument. Nobody claims that a free market economy does not work without regulation. The complaint heard today is the AMOUNT and PURPOSE of the regulatory structure, which at present is not intended solely to provide a fair and free marketplace, but rather is intended to reward some companies with political favors while punishing other with burdensome regulations in order to achieve SOCIAL goals, not economic goals. That's what makes it Marxism. The federal government, since about 1912, has been moving slowly towards a regulatory system that is capitalist in name only which so minutely regulates every aspect of business and indeed the everyday lives of individuals that it has all the functional power and control over the "means of production" without actually seizing the infrastructure. Obama overplayed his hand with GM by doing exactly that: seizing outright government control of a failed company, criminally stealing the money and rights of the secured owners of the company, and then giving it to the labor unions as booty for their political support.Furthermore, the only reason their activities are subject to legislation, is because time and again, they've demonstrated that they can't be trusted to behave themselves without said legislation in place.
The problem is not fair-market regulation, it's redistributive regulation intended to pick and choose economic winners and losers in the marketplace in order to a) achieve greater economic equality by outright theft of assets and their redistribution to others; and b) in order to exercise Marxist control of the means of production by the Progressive expedient (just as Hitler did) of regulating the markets so strictly and minutely that the owners and managers of those companies are owners and managers in name only and have no practical control of their businesses, but rather run them according to the dictates of government bureaucrats who determine what's "fair" and what's not.
Bullshit. Nobody's arguing that health and safety regulations, and regulations to ensure fair markets are not appropriate, but you are conflating one type of reasonable regulation with all the rest, which has as its purpose detailed control of the markets by the government in order to achieve the desired political and social goals of the administration, which is not appropriate.Charles Dickens had a few words to say on that subject. Without legislation, these people would be cutting lethal corners in order to bulk up their bank balances, dumping toxic wastes into drinking water supplies, pressing untrained and inexperienced (and therefore cheap) labour into service in dangerous factories with unguarded machinery, paying sweatshop rates to the people who make their riches possible, whilst awarding themselves gigantic "bonuses" and other perks, and generally behaving in the all too well documented manner of the "fuck you" plutocrat
And nobody's complaining about punishing companies for exported harm and fraud, not even the Libertarians. What we're complaining about is the Marxist Progressive agenda of redistributing wealth on socialist/communist principles for no better reason that Marxist ideology.. We know this because they've been caught doing it time and time again whenever the opportunity has arisen.
Good for him. Of course you present another bullshit red herring argument by implying that nobody else does anything like this and that all other corporations are inevitably and universally greedy bastards who care nothing for anything but profit, which is of course a simplistic and juvenile bit of Marxist propaganda.The honourable exceptions are all the more notable precisely because they are exceptions, people such as Josiah Salt in Bradford, who saw the value of using his riches to build a proper community and give something back to the people who made his wealth possible.
Again, horseshit. Corporations exist to make money for their investors by selling products and services to customers. If their customers are "plebs" whom they "tread on" and are abused by the corporations, then their customers will not buy their products, and the corporation will not make money to pay its investors, which results in the leadership of the corporation being changed by the owners (shareholders) to leaders who will respect customers and provide them with the products they want at prices they can afford. And plenty of corporations have learned that being irresponsible and arrogant, and being environmentally harmful, is a good way to lose market share in today's environmentally aware society, so they've changed their models and their operations to appeal to their customers ethical and moral beliefs, because that's just good business.Unfortunately, the "tread on the plebs" mentality is alive and well in boardrooms right across the corporosphere, and the idea of exercising some restraint in the name of common humanity is anathema to these people,
You falsely and mendaciously imply that corporations are enslaving people, which is horseshit, when what they are actually doing is responding to free market demand for products from consumers.
Blah, blah, blah, Marxist "hate the bourgeois merchant class" class warfare rhetoric right out of the Communist Manifesto. Boring.which is why legislation exists to stop them from pushing their avarice to criminal levels.
You mean like Libby, Montana, where billions of corporate dollars are being spent on remediating the asbestos hazard?A lesson you might one day learn the hard way, Seth, if you find that one of your beloved corporations has shit on you from on high by contaminating your environment with blue asbestos.
And that's what the courts are for. If a corporation does something wrongful and exports harm, the law provides for remedies. But your implication that all corporations are the same is just more Marxist bullshit propaganda.
