The objections to my list suggest a further hurdle that must be overcome before we'll have any hope of implementing improvements.
Denial.
I've provided empirical evidence that our country is in rather good shape....You've provided nothing more than anecdotal and sensational opinions that are qualified with caveats ("some socialist countries"....as if we are striving to better at ONE thing another country may do better and since we dont, we are in such bad shape and things need to be done) to make it seem the US is faltering somehow compared with the rest of the world to support your narrative.....Who is the one in denial?
You have implied that being (for example) seventh best in quality of life is fine. I'm not ok with that. We have many advantages and we shouldn't be happy about being seventh in anything, much less a broad categorization such as quality of life. We're much worse than 7th in a number of other categories as well. Our infant mortality rate for example. You've also mistakenly labeled these studies as "empirical data", but the results of these studies are not empirical. Finally - these snapshots that you selected do not give information about the downward trend.
You produced links to a few studies that you mistakenly believed that i would accept as evidence of success, but in your rush to defend yourself you failed to consider whether those rankings are as good as they ought to be.
Mediocrity of "good enough" is the enemy of success.
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Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
New comer to the thread here, and I'm pretty happy to see Italofoca, a Brazilian, with pretty good understanding of where the US actually sits. I support what he said, and I'll add my own thoughts.
1. We've lost and continue to lose competitive advantages against countries that are "more socialist" than us.
Someone who's done as much reading of Adam Smith as the original post indicates has probably come across the idea of "comparative advantage" versus "absolute advantage". It's usually included in first-year economics textbooks because the idea that you can be the best at everything is just so darn compelling to young people. In trade though, it's always comparative advantage that drives productivity, even in cases where one party has an absolute advantage in everything. If Country A produces Good X cheaper than it produces Good Y, then it will produce Good Y and the market price will adjust such that it can be sold at a price where it makes sense to make it.
Bottom line, sure, China and other countries may have a lower cost of labor than we do. They can have a comparative advantage in that. But the US has a comparative advantage in other things. Even if other "socialist" countries were more productive in every area than the US, the US would still have a comparative advantage in something that would drive the productivity of its economy.
I suggest reading this week's Time Magazine article on China. It had some interesting data that compared the cost of labor in Beijing to the cost of labor in Hanoi, which is so much lower that it's making it difficult for China to compete. The underlying argument is that unless China is able to reevaluate its comparative advantages and reallocate capital accordingly, it will be stuck in a cycle where labor will be cheap due to low quality of life, quality of life will improve due to abundant labor, but then it will decrease again due to losing its advantage. Meanwhile, more "capitalist" countries are thought of as being able to allocate capital more efficiently, and the US as a test case shows that. We've kept up on gross (not net) exports even while certain traditional industries have bottomed out. Bottom line, global competition hurts China more for the very reason that they are too socialist, and not capitalist enough.
2. Our healthcare is more expensive than many countries that have "socialist" healthcare.
I'll concede this point. And I don't really want to detract from it too much either, because data shows that profit margins in the healthcare industry are about 2x what they're expected to be elsewhere in the US economy. Health Care is one very real problem in the US.
To add to that though, I'll just say that markets for Health Care services are notoriously domestic. People stay where they are to get Health Care rather than importing it. As a result, it's hard to compare costs between countries of two different economic philosophies because the bottom line prices aren't adjusted to a global scale. So the best metric is to compare the profit margins in that US industry to those of other US industries that are equally domestic. After all, the per capita GDP in the US is still about 60% higher than in the EU, while even the median floats consistently above that of any but the most protectionist EU countries. Demand is higher at higher prices because there is more willingness to pay, and few people want to go without health care.
3. Our students are less well educated than many countries who have "socialist" educational systems in place.
It's hard to have an objective measure of how "well educated" college students are, but even so, it would be hard for this statement to escape the criticism that it's just factually wrong. Actually, top US universities continue to enroll foreign nationals at nearly the rate of top universities in the EU. When you consider the geographic, political and linguistic isolation of the US relative to the members of the EU, such a high foreign demand for our education speaks volumes to how it's valued in the global marketplace.
Honestly, I have to question whether the source of this idea is some kind of hyped up inferiority campaign that's styled to look like progressive thinking.
4. Our work-week is getting longer.
If you introduce social ideals into debate on economic policy, be prepared for the discussion to devolve into statements of subjective personal values, zero grounds for factual discussion, and ultimately just name-calling.
Put simply, it't not conclusive whether a short work week or any other social concern should be the goal of an economic policy. You have to get cultural agreement for that.
5. We are earning a reputation as a country that "works too hard"
etc...
Same as #4. I don't see anyone not buying from the US because of any one of these nebulous reasons. The US continues to be top tier in F.O.B. exports of goods, as well as the definitive leader in net exports of services by several hundred percent.
Overall, I find that the positions you're arguing against are really very pedestrian and undeveloped. No one you should be concerned with will argue that monopolies don't exist, for example. I just see that as growing pains. You're learning more about economics than the average person surrounding you seems to be capable of discussing. That's a typical occurrence in college. The solution is to stop caring what uneducated people think, start caring more about what people more educated than you think, and then surround yourself with opinions that are capable of challenging yours.
Sure, people's uninformed opinions weigh in at the ballot box. But the governing mechanisms of representative government have been designed to deal with that. Hopefully, educated people rather than movie stars and fanatics will ascend to government office more often, will be more influential once there, and will owe loyalty the the people who elected them. Whether that mechanism is functioning well enough is debatable, but it's not an economic debate.
The objections to my list suggest a further hurdle that must be overcome before we'll have any hope of implementing improvements.
Denial.
I've provided empirical evidence that our country is in rather good shape....You've provided nothing more than anecdotal and sensational opinions that are qualified with caveats ("some socialist countries"....as if we are striving to better at ONE thing another country may do better and since we dont, we are in such bad shape and things need to be done) to make it seem the US is faltering somehow compared with the rest of the world to support your narrative.....Who is the one in denial?
You have implied that being (for example) seventh best in quality of life is fine. I'm not ok with that. We have many advantages and we shouldn't be happy about being seventh in anything, much less a broad categorization such as quality of life. We're much worse than 7th in a number of other categories as well. Our infant mortality rate for example. You've also mistakenly labeled these studies as "empirical data", but the results of these studies are not empirical. Finally - these snapshots that you selected do not give information about the downward trend.
You produced links to a few studies that you mistakenly believed that i would accept as evidence of success, but in your rush to defend yourself you failed to consider whether those rankings are as good as they ought to be.
New comer to the thread here, and I'm pretty happy to see Italofoca, a Brazilian, with pretty good understanding of where the US actually sits. I support what he said, and I'll add my own thoughts.
1. We've lost and continue to lose competitive advantages against countries that are "more socialist" than us.
Someone who's done as much reading of Adam Smith as the original post indicates has probably come across the idea of "comparative advantage" versus "absolute advantage". It's usually included in first-year economics textbooks because the idea that you can be the best at everything is just so darn compelling to young people. In trade though, it's always comparative advantage the drives productivity, even in cases where one party has an absolute advantage in everything. If Country A produces Good X cheaper than it produces Good Y, then it will produce Good Y and the market price will adjust such that it can be sold at a price where it makes sense to make it.
Bottom line, sure, China and other countries may have a lower cost of labor than we do. They can have a comparative advantage in that. But the US has a comparative advantage in other things. Even if other "socialist" countries were more productive in every area than the US, the US would still have a comparative advantage in something that would drive the productivity of its economy.
I suggest reading this week's Time Magazine article on China. It had some interesting data that compared the cost of labor in Beijing to the cost of labor in Hanoi, which is so much lower that it's making it difficult for China to compete. The underlying argument is that unless China is able to reevaluate its comparative advantages and reallocate capital accordingly, it will be stuck in a cycle where labor will be cheap due to low quality of life, quality of life will improve due to abundant labor, but then it will decrease against due to losing its advantage. Meanwhile, more "capitalist" countries are thought of as being able to allocate capital more efficiently, and the US as a test case shows that. We've kept up on gross (not net) exports even while certain traditional industries have bottomed out. Bottom line, global competition hurts China more for the very reason that they are too socialist, and not capitalist enough.
2. Our healthcare is more expensive than many countries that have "socialist" healthcare.
I'll concede this point. And I don't really want to detract from it too much either, because data shows that profit margins in the healthcare industry are about 2x what they're expected to be elsewhere in the US economy. Health Care is one very real problem in the US.
To add to that though, I'll just say that markets for Health Care services are notoriously domestic. People stay where they are to get Health Care rather than importing it. As a result, it's hard to compare costs between countries of two different economic philosophies because the bottom line prices aren't adjusted to a global scale. So the best metric is to compare the profit margins in that US industry to those of other US industries that are equally domestic. After all, the per capita GDP in the US is still about 60% higher than in the EU, while even the median floats consistently above that of any but the most protectionist EU countries. Demand is higher at higher prices because there is more willingness to pay, and few people want to go without health care.
3. Our students are less well educated than many countries who have "socialist" educational systems in place.
It's hard to have an objective measure of how "well educated" college students are, but even so, it would be hard for this statement to escape the criticism that it's just factually wrong. Actually, top US universities continue to enroll foreign nationals at nearly the rate of top universities in the EU. When you consider the geographic and linguistic isolation of the US relative to the members of the EU, such a high foreign demand for our education speaks volumes to how it's valued in the global marketplace.
Honestly, I have to question whether the source of this idea is some kind of hyped up inferiority campaign that's styled to look like progressive thinking.
4. Our work-week is getting longer.
If you introduce social ideals into debate on economic policy, be prepared for the discussion to devolve into statements of subjective personal values, zero grounds for factual discussion, and ultimately just name-calling.
Put simply, it't not conclusive whether a short work week or any other social concern should be the goal of an economic policy. You have to get cultural agreement for that.
5. We are earning a reputation as a country that "works too hard"
etc...
Same as #4. I don't see anyone not buying from the US because of any one of these nebulous reasons. The US continues to be top tier in F.O.B. exports of goods, as well as the definitive leader in net exports of services by several hundred percent.
Overall, I find that the positions you're arguing against are really very pedestrian and undeveloped. No one you should be concerned with will argue that monopolies don't exist, for example. I just see that as growing pains. You're learning more about economics than the average person surrounding you seems to be capable of discussing. That's a typical occurrence in college. The solution is to stop caring what uneducated people think, start caring more about what people more educated than you think, and then surround yourself with opinions that are capable of challenging yours.
Sure, people's uninformed opinions weigh in at the ballot box. But the governing mechanisms of representative government have been designed to deal with that. Hopefully, educated people rather than movie stars and fanatics will ascend to government office more often, will be more influential once there, and will owe loyalty the the people who elected them. Whether that mechanism is functioning well enough is debatable, but it's not an economic debate.
It's no good to use phrases like "first year, young, learning..." and a few other comments that are more subtly dismissive like the one where you suggest a path for future learning. If you're interested in my background you should've just asked about it. Regarding that - no I did not take any economics classes. If there's any argument I've made that you feel I'm not qualified to make then you should feel free to point it out.
Back to the broader topic: Economic arguments are social arguments. It's counterproductive to pretend otherwise.
It's no good to use phrases like "first year, young, learning..." and a few other comments that are more subtly dismissive like the one where you suggest a path for future learning. If you're interested in my background you should've just asked about it. Regarding that - no I did not take any economics classes. If there's any argument I've made that you feel I'm not qualified to make then you should feel free to point it out.
Back to the broader topic: Economic arguments are social arguments. It's counterproductive to pretend otherwise.
Suggesting a path for future learning is being dismissive?
First time hearing that for me. And it seems like a fair thing to do when you bring up Adam Smith. I'm sure you're aware that the positions you take on him and the positions you seem to be arguing against don't exactly represent the "cutting edge" of economic theory. They might be the apparent underpinnings of a cross-section of talk radio diatribe, but not much more. I don't need to see a printed diploma to listen to what someone else is saying, but the grounds of debate being what they were in this thread, it shouldn't come as a shock that intelligent minds have been thinking about these things for hundreds of years, and most of them have written their thoughts much more clearly than we have here. I think it's fair for me to point it out rather than crudely replicate it.
And economics is very different from social policy, really. I admit that the umbrella of what's considered "economic debate" is expanding, especially in public discourse rather than academics, but if you open the discussion quoting Adam Smith and summarizing a few modern economic schools, you'll find the debate pointed mostly at production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. There's a lot to say outside of that, of course. And if the point is to show that Adam Smith said a lot more than the common person who's never read Adam Smith thinks he did, I guess you've succeeded. But unless you're illustrating concepts like markets, efficiency, regulation, specialization, and supply and demand, then there's not a lot of place for the science of Economics. And ultimately, one person's "could'a, would'a, should'a" is as good as the next one's if you don't have a sound basis for debate.
It's no good to use phrases like "first year, young, learning..." and a few other comments that armore subtly dismissive like the one where you suggest a path for future learning. If you're interested in my background you should've just asked about it. Regarding that - no I did not take any economics classes. If there's any argument I've made that you feel I'm not qualified to make then you should feel free to point it out.
Back to the broader topic: Economic arguments are social arguments. It's counterproductive to pretend otherwise.
Suggesting a path for future learning is being dismissive?
First time hearing that for me. And it seems like a fair thing to do when you bring up Adam Smith. I'm sure you're aware that the positions you take on him and the positions you seem to be arguing against don't exactly represent the "cutting edge" of economic theory. They might be the apparent underpinnings of a cross-section of talk radio diatribe, but not much more. I don't need to see a printed diploma to listen to what someone else is saying, but the grounds of debate being what they were in this thread, it shouldn't come as a shock that intelligent minds have been thinking about these things for hundreds of years, and most of them have written their thoughts much more clearly than we have here. I think it's fair for me to point it out rather than crudely replicate it.
And economics is very different from social policy, really. I admit that the umbrella of what's considered "economic debate" is expanding, especially in public discourse rather than academics, but if you open the discussion quoting Adam Smith and summarizing a few modern economic schools, you'll find the debate pointed mostly at production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. There's a lot to say outside of that, of course. And if the point is to show that Adam Smith said a lot more than the common person who's never read Adam Smith thinks he did, I guess you've succeeded. But unless you're illustrating concepts like markets, efficiency, regulation, specialization, and supply and demand, then there's not a lot of place for the science of Economics. And ultimately, one person's "could'a, would'a, should'a" is as good as the next one's if you don't have a sound basis for debate.
You have used a series of ad hominems.
I didn't assume at first that it was meant in that spirit and i offered you a chance to backpedal but since you pushed the issue i'll talk about it.
On the increasingly slim chance that you're surprised that i just said that to you i'd like to offer you a piece of advice. Don't talk about a person's education in this kind of setting. First because you don't know how educated the other person is and you might run into a problem by making an assumption. In this case you've misinterpreted the fact that i haven't responded to certain arguments.
In any event the level of education of any particular person who is involved in a message-board discussion is of little consequence. Arguments are to be evaluated on merit alone.
I'm aware that my message to you has a condescending air to it but by this point you've earned that much. Questioning the source of the argument is an ad hominem. Asking me about how much education i've had is not overtly dickish (as calling me stupid would've been) but you've managed to divert attention away from the topic and onto my qualifications all the same. It was actually so deftly done that i feel that some of the tactics you've used deserve additional exploration.
You started by selecting a post that you felt had been unfairly passed over. You mistakenly assumed that i wasn't comfortable discussing the message conveyed within and you also made a subtle dig by implying that the foreigner knows more than the american. You complimented the other user which increases the chances that he will support you in turn and you also complicated the credibility of the argument by tying your argument with his. This would've been of greater value if i had been the type of person who likes to undermine the credibility of my opponents, since there is no easy way to attack your credibility without also attacking the other poster. Of course you don't know if anyone is going to attempt that sort of argument but it doesn't hurt to prepare a safety valve. You then divided my list up into pieces, which sometimes makes certain types of arguments easier to attack. That could've been yet another false argument tactic but you didn't actually gain anything from that one this time. That particular tactic was repeated by a number of posters and i'm realistic enough to admit that most of you probably had no idea that it's not a nice thing to do. I've seen it used a hundred times by a hundred people and i don't think any of them were doing it because they thought that it would help them make a false argument. It's a little bit easier to keep your own thoughts straight when you format it that way, isn't it? Nonetheless it is bad practice.
Even the other stuff that i pointed out isn't necessarily something that you planned. Message boards are a training ground for debate. Unfortunately the format does not offer any formal policing. The most obvious way to see that a message "worked" is when the other side fails to respond to it. If the message was victorious for the wrong reason we don't always recognize it. We learn tactics from the victors and add our own twists as we go along. You do eventually run into people like me who are aware enough to point out the obviously underhanded tactics but we sometimes get into a situation such as this one. You probably think that you've eliminated false tactics from your repertoire and are offended by this. I am hoping that you'll consider what i've said. Intentional or not, you've employed a pretty polished set of tricks against me in the last two days. I don't think that it was intentional because a few of them weren't really necessary. I would bet that you felt that you were just participating.
Now as for the original topic. The scope of debate is not expanding. It has always been and always will be social. There is no grounds for making a decision about the economy except for attempting to address social concerns. There is on the other hand an advantage to be gained (by certain wealthy parties) to limit the scope of economic decision making. The fate of a corporation is of greater interest to the politician than the fate of any group of poor individuals. The corporation is also self-interested of course. The interests of the politician and the corporation align and together they initiate discussions about how valuable they are, how much harm would be done if they're not free to make profit, etc... The poor people don't have any way to align their interests with anyone and they don't have the resources to fight the battle on other grounds. The weapons of the poor include elections and refusal to work. The elections have been compromised in many ways by both of the dominant parties and the unions have been neutered or eliminated altogether.
This brings us back to smith who predicted that the poor would begin to align themselves with whatever wealthy interest seems most likely to provide protection. That's the people who need to be reached right now. As long as those people are defending the sovereignty of corporations they're undermining the efforts of the rest of us.
Now compare this to the present day. The tea party and occupy wall street movements are the first stirrings. The efforts of many minimum wage workers to force concessions from mcdonalds and walmart is another example. These are fully within the scope of my argument, as you'll notice that the workers first asked those companies to give the raises. the workers are trying to align themselves with a wealthy power. If the companies refuse then they'll go to the politicians instead. If the politicians refuse too then bad stuff is on the way.
The objections to my list suggest a further hurdle that must be overcome before we'll have any hope of implementing improvements.
Denial.
That's not an ad hominem. That's a conclusion from the argument. Nice try, though.
On the greater issue, I think a lot of the problem is the focus on a "service economy", meaning minimizing actually producing something. I don't get the logic to this, but there you go.
(And yeah, I know, we can say on a grand scale, yay, we're better-off than Sudan!)
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Suggesting more reading, saying that you might do yourself a service by arguing against more sophisticated positions, and making general statements about the thinking common to people of a certain education level are not ad hominem. In fact, no single criticism by itself is ad hominem.
Ad hominem is an informal fallacy where you personally discredit someone with statement X in support of conclusion Y, that their position isn't correct. Essentially, the form is X therefore Y. What's missing in, say, 99% of the ad hominem I see people accusing others of on the internet is the conclusion Y, that the person's position must be false on that basis. Really, it's quite rare to see someone arguing that everything an idiot says must be false, because he's an idiot.
So even if I made some statement that indirectly discredited you, or even if I openly insulted you, which I didn't, it's not ad hominem. It's when you try to use such things to discredit someone's position that it becomes an ad hominem. I haven't done that.
I was arguing against the validity of the statements you made above, and I did that based solely on the merits. Whatever else I said, notwithstanding.
Now as for the original topic. The scope of debate is not expanding. It has always been and always will be social. There is no grounds for making a decision about the economy except for attempting to address social concerns. There is on the other hand an advantage to be gained (by certain wealthy parties) to limit the scope of economic decision making. The fate of a corporation is of greater interest to the politician than the fate of any group of poor individuals. The corporation is also self-interested of course. The interests of the politician and the corporation align and together they initiate discussions about how valuable they are, how much harm would be done if they're not free to make profit, etc... The poor people don't have any way to align their interests with anyone and they don't have the resources to fight the battle on other grounds. The weapons of the poor include elections and refusal to work. The elections have been compromised in many ways by both of the dominant parties and the unions have been neutered or eliminated altogether.
This brings us back to smith who predicted that the poor would begin to align themselves with whatever wealthy interest seems most likely to provide protection. That's the people who need to be reached right now. As long as those people are defending the sovereignty of corporations they're undermining the efforts of the rest of us.
Now compare this to the present day. The tea party and occupy wall street movements are the first stirrings. The efforts of many minimum wage workers to force concessions from mcdonalds and walmart is another example. These are fully within the scope of my argument, as you'll notice that the workers first asked those companies to give the raises. the workers are trying to align themselves with a wealthy power. If the companies refuse then they'll go to the politicians instead. If the politicians refuse too then bad stuff is on the way.
Ok, I'm going to be frank and say that I'm not very clear on what you're arguing anymore.
In your OP, you bring up Adam Smith, not to argue against anything he said, it seems, but just to make the point that he said it to those people who may be under the mistaken belief that he said something else. I don't see any room to argue against that. All I added to that was the statement that you might do yourself a service instead to point your counter-arguments against people who are not overtly misinterpreting the text, and who are making actual statements about what Adam Smith said.
I've since seen scattered statements about the social conditions in the US being unsatisfactory, mainly without direct factual support. Also, I don't see any real room or reason to argue against that either. Though it's a matter of interpretation and opinion, I happen to agree that social conditions in the US aren't 100% perfect. To that, I only added the statement that you'd do yourself a service by being more specific about what social circumstances you're talking about, and then using economic metrics to make your case. At the risk of being accused further of ad hominem, I'd suggest that a good place to start might be "The Price of Inequality" by Joseph Stiglitz. It's a good place to start for an example of an economics argument that incorporates social data, not just the circular "it's unfair because it's unfair" line.
And up to that point, I didn't really feel it worthwhile to enter the debate just to say how ineffective the debate has been. Where I did jump in is where you used a series of untrue or misleading statements about the US to support the conclusion that "other places are more pleasant places to be", or more broadly, that the US is somehow a failed experiment of economic policies that you judge to be too capitalist. That conclusion, I happen to disagree strongly with. Even then, I probably would've left it alone unless specific premises were actually advanced in support of that conclusion. When they were, I very much argued on the merits for why those facts were either untrue, misleading, or both.
To that, I only added the suspicion that you, an American yourself, had come by the common sort of inferiority campaign that's styled to look like humility, open-mindedness and progressive thinking. I thought it was relevant to point out that a Brazilian has a much more level-headed assessment about the prominence of the US and the social aspects of American capitalism.
I don't really have anything else to add, at least as long as the particulars of the discussion continue to be as nebulous and subjective as they have been. It's not that people need to be linking survey data to have a discussion. I don't expect that. After all, this is a Magic the Gathering forum. If you wallow with pigs, you can expect to get dirty. I am just going to stay out of things myself unless people bring actual factual premises to the table. You've done that on the one singular instance that I responded to, and you've yet failed to respond to my counter-arguments on the merits (speaking of ad hominem). So, what's been said in defense of the US economy has been said for everyone to read, and if you're prepared to resume the debate instead of arguing how one side or the other has been unfair, it's on you to do that.
That's not an ad hominem. That's a conclusion from the argument. Nice try, though.
An ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"[1]), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument.
He rejected arguments based of some irrelevant claim of denial.:dance: Bascially, because I do not agree with him, I'm in denial.
An ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"[1]), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument.
He rejected the arguments on the basis of some irrelevant claim of denial.
You tried so hard just to prove you do not know what ad hominem means
The objections to my list suggest a further hurdle that must be overcome before we'll have any hope of implementing improvements. Denial.
[QUOTE]
[QUOTE]
What argument is he rejecting? He rejected the "objections" at face value with out considering the merits of what was presented. His reasoning? We, the objectors, are in denial! In other words, he believes my purported denial makes my arguement inconseqential.
It's rather clear he cant dicuss solutions with me because I am are in "denial". His rejection has nothing to do with any arugment I've made.....just that I've object to it, so I msut be in denial. Some irrelevant fact about my state of mind has led him to address my suitablity to dicuss this. Unless, of course, he can prove I'm actually in denial.
Either way, he can not draw conclussions to arguments he never considered.
"No one may threaten or commit violence ('aggress') against another man's person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a nonaggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory." - Murray Rothbard, Cited from "War, Peace, and the State"
You do realize there's a difference between socialism and communism right? Socialism is essentially where the public community controls things and makes decisions that benefit the community, where communism is that the government controls things and is responsible for making decisions that benefit the government.
Che Guevara was a terrible human being. However, it is fallacious to condemn socialism because one of its defenders was a violent racist psychopath. Otherwise, ten choice quotes from Timothy McVeigh would be sufficient to condemn libertarian capitalism as well. Condemn an idea by looking at the idea, not at the man who espouses it. (What's Latin for "at the man"?)
You do realize there's a difference between socialism and communism right? Socialism is essentially where the public community controls things and makes decisions that benefit the community, where communism is that the government controls things and is responsible for making decisions that benefit the government.
No, socialism is the belief that the means of production ought to be held in common by the whole society, and communism is a specific type of socialism that fixates on the idea of class struggle as the way to bring about this common ownership. Marxist communism, in particular, holds that "state socialism" is a transitional phase between capitalist and communist society, and that the true communist society will be stateless.
That's the theory, anyway. In practice, of course, communist states are just totalitarian dictatorships with a certain rhetorical flavoring.
But that's exactly it, the common whole of the society, as in the society itself is responsible, whereas what you said with communism is more extreme, but the government actually is what controls everything in communism, there is as you said no state level in communism. You can't just buy land if you want, the government is what distributes land and wealth in the name of the whole of the community to make sure there is equity among all members, which of course get's taken advantage of. Socialism could really just be 100,000 people in their own country who vote on every single issue and collectively decide what amount of land is fair. But, that's slow, and that's partly why the founders of the US constitution decided to set up a system where there's representatives to speed things up, and the other reason is at the time people weren't educated and so they thought the government and state laws would better be controlled by educated elective officials in a Republic and allow people to buy land, but still have regulations on how it could be bought, they didn't anticipate that one day just any random person could study law and the government and have the ability to run for a public office or save up enough money to buy land, it might be a little less based on a Republic if they did. In socialism, the ownership and distribution of land goes to the community, and in communism the responsibility goes completely to the government in the name of the community, which ends up being used to just benefit the government anyway. Chinese people use to not be able to buy property or start businesses when it was communist, and supposedly there still is problems with that. They both have the idea of things being fair for everyone, but power isn't shared the same in both of those systems. You could also define communism simply as a single political party that controls all economic and social activity, which is why it's good that no single party has power for too long.
But that's exactly it, the common whole of the society, as in the society itself is responsible, whereas what you said with communism is more extreme, but the government actually is what controls everything in communism, there is as you said no state level in communism.
Not "state" as in "the United States has fifty of them". "State" as in "government". There is no government in post-socialist communism as Marx envisioned it.
Socialism could really just be 100,000 people in their own country who vote on every single issue and collectively decide what amount of land is fair. But, that's slow, and that's partly why the founders of the US constitution decided to set up a system where there's representatives to speed things up...
The foundation of the United States predates socialist theory by a good half-century. What you're thinking of is direct democracy. And the redistribution of land was a nonissue (except insofar as new land was to be "redistributed" from Indian tribes to American settlers).
...and the other reason is at the time people weren't educated and so they thought the government and state laws would better be controlled by educated elective officials in a Republic and allow people to buy land, but still have regulations on how it could be bought, they didn't anticipate that one day just any random person could study law and the government and have the ability to run for a public office or save up enough money to buy land...
Some of the Founding Fathers were just some random people who studied law and government and ran for public office. At the extreme we have Alexander Hamilton, who was born a bastard, swiftly abandoned by his father, raised in poverty by his single mother, effectively orphaned at age eleven, and managed to earn his education basically by winning the colonial version of an academic scholarship. But even Thomas Jefferson, generally viewed as the archetypical Virginia aristocrat, built his own farm on land he and his father had surveyed and claimed themselves. The opportunity for anybody to own their own land was the single biggest reason colonists came to America.
You could also define communism simply as a single political party that controls all economic and social activity...
It bears little resemblance to the conventional definition. By this definition, Nazi Germany was communist, even though the Nazis were rabidly anti-communist.
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Che Guevara was a terrible human being. However, it is fallacious to condemn socialism because one of its defenders was a violent racist psychopath. Otherwise, ten choice quotes from Timothy McVeigh would be sufficient to condemn libertarian capitalism as well. Condemn an idea by looking at the idea, not at the man who espouses it. (What's Latin for "at the man"?)
The big difference is that you don't see people walking around with Tim shirts. Che has become an icon, although I'm sure most people who wear him don't actually realize what he actually did.
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"No one may threaten or commit violence ('aggress') against another man's person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a nonaggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory." - Murray Rothbard, Cited from "War, Peace, and the State"
The big difference is that you don't see people walking around with Tim shirts. Che has become an icon, although I'm sure most people who wear him don't actually realize what he actually did.
And the United States tortured people and committed a holocaust on the Indians and locked up Japanese-Americans guilty of no crime and so and and so forth yet people still wear shirts with the American flag on them. Sometimes a symbol can grow past the people it symbolizes.
But that's exactly it, the common whole of the society, as in the society itself is responsible, whereas what you said with communism is more extreme, but the government actually is what controls everything in communism, there is as you said no state level in communism.
Not "state" as in "the United States has fifty of them". "State" as in "government". There is no government in post-socialist communism as Marx envisioned it.
But there's also no other parties or body controlling the distribution of land and wealth either. In the US, buying property takes place at a state level, you file deeds specific for a state which can have their own laws.
The foundation of the United States predates socialist theory by a good half-century. What you're thinking of is direct democracy. And the redistribution of land was a nonissue (except insofar as new land was to be "redistributed" from Indian tribes to American settlers).
Yeah and ancient Greece's form of democracy predates US voting laws which us to be men only just it was in ancient Greece, does that mean ancient Greece invented the US constitution or invented the US voting system? I think not, ideas or inspirations for really any form of government have been around for a while.
Some of the Founding Fathers were just some random people who studied law and government and ran for public office. At the extreme we have Alexander Hamilton, who was born a bastard, swiftly abandoned by his father, raised in poverty by his single mother, effectively orphaned at age eleven, and managed to earn his education basically by winning the colonial version of an academic scholarship. But even Thomas Jefferson, generally viewed as the archetypical Virginia aristocrat, built his own farm on land he and his father had surveyed and claimed themselves. The opportunity for anybody to own their own land was the single biggest reason colonists came to America.
So why do you think the US has electoral colleges instead of just straight up popular vote? It's because at the time most people weren't educated, there wasn't a public education system and so they thought the ultimate decision was best left to more educated officials.
China is still avowedly communist. And people still can't technically buy land there; they only lease it from the state.
It seemed to be more complicated when I was dealing with real estate with Chinese investors. But, there's something weird about China; they somehow have an upper, sort of middle and lower class which really doesn't happen that obviously in actually communist societies, and if I recall there were definitely protests in China about giving people more of a free-market.
It bears little resemblance to the conventional definition. By this definition, Nazi Germany was communist, even though the Nazis were rabidly anti-communist.
The Nazi party used many lies to gain power. Besides, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/communism?s=t which also shows the other definition I was saying, which is that there is a third-party who is "ascribed" to distribute land in the name of the community.
The big difference is that you don't see people walking around with Tim shirts. Che has become an icon, although I'm sure most people who wear him don't actually realize what he actually did.
Look, I'm basically on your side here. Wearing a Che shirt is one of the best ways to provoke me to scorn and contempt. But the set of all the idiots who wear Che shirts and the set of all socialists are not coterminous. Many socialists know better than to wear Che shirts, and many Che-wearers don't even know enough to claim to be socialists (they just see a symbol of youthful rebellion or something). So as an attack on socialism, your case simply does not go anywhere.
And the United States tortured people and committed a holocaust on the Indians and locked up Japanese-Americans guilty of no crime and so and and so forth yet people still wear shirts with the American flag on them. Sometimes a symbol can grow past the people it symbolizes.
All of those are examples of Americans breaking their own highest laws. The flag does not represent them. But it's just a bit harder to say that that there's a disconnect between person and symbol when the symbol is actually the face of the person. Nobody wears George Armstrong Custer t-shirts.
No, people buying Che shirts are just ignorant. Possibly willfully.
But there's also no other parties or body controlling the distribution of land and wealth either. In the US, buying property takes place at a state level, you file deeds specific for a state which can have their own laws.
Stop thinking "state" in the American sense of the term. This discussion has nothing to do with regional sub-federal governments.
Yeah and ancient Greece's form of democracy predates US voting laws which us to be men only just it was in ancient Greece, does that mean ancient Greece invented the US constitution or invented the US voting system? I think not, ideas or inspirations for really any form of government have been around for a while.
The Athenian democracy was direct. The electorate voted on everything. The United States set up a republican system in contrast to this, not in contrast to what you describe as "socialism", because the idea of socialism did not exist at the time.
So why do you think the US has electoral colleges instead of just straight up popular vote? It's because at the time most people weren't educated, there wasn't a public education system and so they thought the ultimate decision was best left to more educated officials.
Yes, but you also claimed that ordinary people couldn't receive an education and find a place in government, and that was not true.
But, there's something weird about China; they somehow have an upper, sort of middle and lower class which really doesn't happen that obviously in actually communist societies, and if I recall there were definitely protests in China about giving people more of a free-market.
No, China is not actually communist. There is no actually-communist society at the nation-state level on the planet; the system simply doesn't work in practice. China is just an authoritarian single-party oligarchy. But it wants to say it's communist, which means it tries to ground its policies in communist theory, such as by saying that you're only leasing land from the government (because the land is supposedly owned in common by the Chinese people and the government supposedly represents the people).
The Nazi party used many lies to gain power. Besides, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/communism?s=t which also shows the other definition I was saying, which is that there is a third-party who is "ascribed" to distribute land in the name of the community.
That definition is pretty clearly a reference to fake-communist states like China and the Soviet Union of yore. In practice, the difference between those states and the Nazis is not too wide: they are all authoritarian, dictatorial, not keen on the democratic process or human rights. But what makes the Maoists and Soviets "communist", and the Nazis not, is this theory of common ownership they espouse/reject.
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Look, I'm basically on your side here. Wearing a Che shirt is one of the best ways to provoke me to scorn and contempt. But the set of all the idiots who wear Che shirts and the set of all socialists are not coterminous. Many socialists know better than to wear Che shirts, and many Che-wearers don't even know enough to claim to be socialists (they just see a symbol of youthful rebellion or something). So as an attack on socialism, your case simply does not go anywhere.
I wasn't trying to make a well thought out attack on socialism just some commentary on an article I saw recently and possibly inform some people who didn't realize. In my "first year enrichment" group at RIT there was a guy from Argentina who wore che shirts frequently, joined the international socialist club and told us all how great he was. Lol...
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Mediocrity of "good enough" is the enemy of success.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Someone who's done as much reading of Adam Smith as the original post indicates has probably come across the idea of "comparative advantage" versus "absolute advantage". It's usually included in first-year economics textbooks because the idea that you can be the best at everything is just so darn compelling to young people. In trade though, it's always comparative advantage that drives productivity, even in cases where one party has an absolute advantage in everything. If Country A produces Good X cheaper than it produces Good Y, then it will produce Good Y and the market price will adjust such that it can be sold at a price where it makes sense to make it.
Bottom line, sure, China and other countries may have a lower cost of labor than we do. They can have a comparative advantage in that. But the US has a comparative advantage in other things. Even if other "socialist" countries were more productive in every area than the US, the US would still have a comparative advantage in something that would drive the productivity of its economy.
I suggest reading this week's Time Magazine article on China. It had some interesting data that compared the cost of labor in Beijing to the cost of labor in Hanoi, which is so much lower that it's making it difficult for China to compete. The underlying argument is that unless China is able to reevaluate its comparative advantages and reallocate capital accordingly, it will be stuck in a cycle where labor will be cheap due to low quality of life, quality of life will improve due to abundant labor, but then it will decrease again due to losing its advantage. Meanwhile, more "capitalist" countries are thought of as being able to allocate capital more efficiently, and the US as a test case shows that. We've kept up on gross (not net) exports even while certain traditional industries have bottomed out. Bottom line, global competition hurts China more for the very reason that they are too socialist, and not capitalist enough.
I'll concede this point. And I don't really want to detract from it too much either, because data shows that profit margins in the healthcare industry are about 2x what they're expected to be elsewhere in the US economy. Health Care is one very real problem in the US.
To add to that though, I'll just say that markets for Health Care services are notoriously domestic. People stay where they are to get Health Care rather than importing it. As a result, it's hard to compare costs between countries of two different economic philosophies because the bottom line prices aren't adjusted to a global scale. So the best metric is to compare the profit margins in that US industry to those of other US industries that are equally domestic. After all, the per capita GDP in the US is still about 60% higher than in the EU, while even the median floats consistently above that of any but the most protectionist EU countries. Demand is higher at higher prices because there is more willingness to pay, and few people want to go without health care.
It's hard to have an objective measure of how "well educated" college students are, but even so, it would be hard for this statement to escape the criticism that it's just factually wrong. Actually, top US universities continue to enroll foreign nationals at nearly the rate of top universities in the EU. When you consider the geographic, political and linguistic isolation of the US relative to the members of the EU, such a high foreign demand for our education speaks volumes to how it's valued in the global marketplace.
Honestly, I have to question whether the source of this idea is some kind of hyped up inferiority campaign that's styled to look like progressive thinking.
If you introduce social ideals into debate on economic policy, be prepared for the discussion to devolve into statements of subjective personal values, zero grounds for factual discussion, and ultimately just name-calling.
Put simply, it't not conclusive whether a short work week or any other social concern should be the goal of an economic policy. You have to get cultural agreement for that.
Same as #4. I don't see anyone not buying from the US because of any one of these nebulous reasons. The US continues to be top tier in F.O.B. exports of goods, as well as the definitive leader in net exports of services by several hundred percent.
Overall, I find that the positions you're arguing against are really very pedestrian and undeveloped. No one you should be concerned with will argue that monopolies don't exist, for example. I just see that as growing pains. You're learning more about economics than the average person surrounding you seems to be capable of discussing. That's a typical occurrence in college. The solution is to stop caring what uneducated people think, start caring more about what people more educated than you think, and then surround yourself with opinions that are capable of challenging yours.
Sure, people's uninformed opinions weigh in at the ballot box. But the governing mechanisms of representative government have been designed to deal with that. Hopefully, educated people rather than movie stars and fanatics will ascend to government office more often, will be more influential once there, and will owe loyalty the the people who elected them. Whether that mechanism is functioning well enough is debatable, but it's not an economic debate.
Good luck with trying to create utopia.
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It's no good to use phrases like "first year, young, learning..." and a few other comments that are more subtly dismissive like the one where you suggest a path for future learning. If you're interested in my background you should've just asked about it. Regarding that - no I did not take any economics classes. If there's any argument I've made that you feel I'm not qualified to make then you should feel free to point it out.
Back to the broader topic: Economic arguments are social arguments. It's counterproductive to pretend otherwise.
Suggesting a path for future learning is being dismissive?
First time hearing that for me. And it seems like a fair thing to do when you bring up Adam Smith. I'm sure you're aware that the positions you take on him and the positions you seem to be arguing against don't exactly represent the "cutting edge" of economic theory. They might be the apparent underpinnings of a cross-section of talk radio diatribe, but not much more. I don't need to see a printed diploma to listen to what someone else is saying, but the grounds of debate being what they were in this thread, it shouldn't come as a shock that intelligent minds have been thinking about these things for hundreds of years, and most of them have written their thoughts much more clearly than we have here. I think it's fair for me to point it out rather than crudely replicate it.
And economics is very different from social policy, really. I admit that the umbrella of what's considered "economic debate" is expanding, especially in public discourse rather than academics, but if you open the discussion quoting Adam Smith and summarizing a few modern economic schools, you'll find the debate pointed mostly at production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. There's a lot to say outside of that, of course. And if the point is to show that Adam Smith said a lot more than the common person who's never read Adam Smith thinks he did, I guess you've succeeded. But unless you're illustrating concepts like markets, efficiency, regulation, specialization, and supply and demand, then there's not a lot of place for the science of Economics. And ultimately, one person's "could'a, would'a, should'a" is as good as the next one's if you don't have a sound basis for debate.
You have used a series of ad hominems.
I didn't assume at first that it was meant in that spirit and i offered you a chance to backpedal but since you pushed the issue i'll talk about it.
On the increasingly slim chance that you're surprised that i just said that to you i'd like to offer you a piece of advice. Don't talk about a person's education in this kind of setting. First because you don't know how educated the other person is and you might run into a problem by making an assumption. In this case you've misinterpreted the fact that i haven't responded to certain arguments.
In any event the level of education of any particular person who is involved in a message-board discussion is of little consequence. Arguments are to be evaluated on merit alone.
I'm aware that my message to you has a condescending air to it but by this point you've earned that much. Questioning the source of the argument is an ad hominem. Asking me about how much education i've had is not overtly dickish (as calling me stupid would've been) but you've managed to divert attention away from the topic and onto my qualifications all the same. It was actually so deftly done that i feel that some of the tactics you've used deserve additional exploration.
You started by selecting a post that you felt had been unfairly passed over. You mistakenly assumed that i wasn't comfortable discussing the message conveyed within and you also made a subtle dig by implying that the foreigner knows more than the american. You complimented the other user which increases the chances that he will support you in turn and you also complicated the credibility of the argument by tying your argument with his. This would've been of greater value if i had been the type of person who likes to undermine the credibility of my opponents, since there is no easy way to attack your credibility without also attacking the other poster. Of course you don't know if anyone is going to attempt that sort of argument but it doesn't hurt to prepare a safety valve. You then divided my list up into pieces, which sometimes makes certain types of arguments easier to attack. That could've been yet another false argument tactic but you didn't actually gain anything from that one this time. That particular tactic was repeated by a number of posters and i'm realistic enough to admit that most of you probably had no idea that it's not a nice thing to do. I've seen it used a hundred times by a hundred people and i don't think any of them were doing it because they thought that it would help them make a false argument. It's a little bit easier to keep your own thoughts straight when you format it that way, isn't it? Nonetheless it is bad practice.
Even the other stuff that i pointed out isn't necessarily something that you planned. Message boards are a training ground for debate. Unfortunately the format does not offer any formal policing. The most obvious way to see that a message "worked" is when the other side fails to respond to it. If the message was victorious for the wrong reason we don't always recognize it. We learn tactics from the victors and add our own twists as we go along. You do eventually run into people like me who are aware enough to point out the obviously underhanded tactics but we sometimes get into a situation such as this one. You probably think that you've eliminated false tactics from your repertoire and are offended by this. I am hoping that you'll consider what i've said. Intentional or not, you've employed a pretty polished set of tricks against me in the last two days. I don't think that it was intentional because a few of them weren't really necessary. I would bet that you felt that you were just participating.
Now as for the original topic. The scope of debate is not expanding. It has always been and always will be social. There is no grounds for making a decision about the economy except for attempting to address social concerns. There is on the other hand an advantage to be gained (by certain wealthy parties) to limit the scope of economic decision making. The fate of a corporation is of greater interest to the politician than the fate of any group of poor individuals. The corporation is also self-interested of course. The interests of the politician and the corporation align and together they initiate discussions about how valuable they are, how much harm would be done if they're not free to make profit, etc... The poor people don't have any way to align their interests with anyone and they don't have the resources to fight the battle on other grounds. The weapons of the poor include elections and refusal to work. The elections have been compromised in many ways by both of the dominant parties and the unions have been neutered or eliminated altogether.
This brings us back to smith who predicted that the poor would begin to align themselves with whatever wealthy interest seems most likely to provide protection. That's the people who need to be reached right now. As long as those people are defending the sovereignty of corporations they're undermining the efforts of the rest of us.
Now compare this to the present day. The tea party and occupy wall street movements are the first stirrings. The efforts of many minimum wage workers to force concessions from mcdonalds and walmart is another example. These are fully within the scope of my argument, as you'll notice that the workers first asked those companies to give the raises. the workers are trying to align themselves with a wealthy power. If the companies refuse then they'll go to the politicians instead. If the politicians refuse too then bad stuff is on the way.
Before you get too preachy:
calling liberals loons=not okay
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That's not an ad hominem. That's a conclusion from the argument. Nice try, though.
On the greater issue, I think a lot of the problem is the focus on a "service economy", meaning minimizing actually producing something. I don't get the logic to this, but there you go.
(And yeah, I know, we can say on a grand scale, yay, we're better-off than Sudan!)
On phasing:
Suggesting more reading, saying that you might do yourself a service by arguing against more sophisticated positions, and making general statements about the thinking common to people of a certain education level are not ad hominem. In fact, no single criticism by itself is ad hominem.
Ad hominem is an informal fallacy where you personally discredit someone with statement X in support of conclusion Y, that their position isn't correct. Essentially, the form is X therefore Y. What's missing in, say, 99% of the ad hominem I see people accusing others of on the internet is the conclusion Y, that the person's position must be false on that basis. Really, it's quite rare to see someone arguing that everything an idiot says must be false, because he's an idiot.
So even if I made some statement that indirectly discredited you, or even if I openly insulted you, which I didn't, it's not ad hominem. It's when you try to use such things to discredit someone's position that it becomes an ad hominem. I haven't done that.
I was arguing against the validity of the statements you made above, and I did that based solely on the merits. Whatever else I said, notwithstanding.
Ok, I'm going to be frank and say that I'm not very clear on what you're arguing anymore.
In your OP, you bring up Adam Smith, not to argue against anything he said, it seems, but just to make the point that he said it to those people who may be under the mistaken belief that he said something else. I don't see any room to argue against that. All I added to that was the statement that you might do yourself a service instead to point your counter-arguments against people who are not overtly misinterpreting the text, and who are making actual statements about what Adam Smith said.
I've since seen scattered statements about the social conditions in the US being unsatisfactory, mainly without direct factual support. Also, I don't see any real room or reason to argue against that either. Though it's a matter of interpretation and opinion, I happen to agree that social conditions in the US aren't 100% perfect. To that, I only added the statement that you'd do yourself a service by being more specific about what social circumstances you're talking about, and then using economic metrics to make your case. At the risk of being accused further of ad hominem, I'd suggest that a good place to start might be "The Price of Inequality" by Joseph Stiglitz. It's a good place to start for an example of an economics argument that incorporates social data, not just the circular "it's unfair because it's unfair" line.
And up to that point, I didn't really feel it worthwhile to enter the debate just to say how ineffective the debate has been. Where I did jump in is where you used a series of untrue or misleading statements about the US to support the conclusion that "other places are more pleasant places to be", or more broadly, that the US is somehow a failed experiment of economic policies that you judge to be too capitalist. That conclusion, I happen to disagree strongly with. Even then, I probably would've left it alone unless specific premises were actually advanced in support of that conclusion. When they were, I very much argued on the merits for why those facts were either untrue, misleading, or both.
To that, I only added the suspicion that you, an American yourself, had come by the common sort of inferiority campaign that's styled to look like humility, open-mindedness and progressive thinking. I thought it was relevant to point out that a Brazilian has a much more level-headed assessment about the prominence of the US and the social aspects of American capitalism.
I don't really have anything else to add, at least as long as the particulars of the discussion continue to be as nebulous and subjective as they have been. It's not that people need to be linking survey data to have a discussion. I don't expect that. After all, this is a Magic the Gathering forum. If you wallow with pigs, you can expect to get dirty. I am just going to stay out of things myself unless people bring actual factual premises to the table. You've done that on the one singular instance that I responded to, and you've yet failed to respond to my counter-arguments on the merits (speaking of ad hominem). So, what's been said in defense of the US economy has been said for everyone to read, and if you're prepared to resume the debate instead of arguing how one side or the other has been unfair, it's on you to do that.
He rejected arguments based of some irrelevant claim of denial.:dance: Bascially, because I do not agree with him, I'm in denial.
calling liberals loons=not okay
The standard to which the forum moderators apply the rules here.
You tried so hard just to prove you do not know what ad hominem means
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What argument is he rejecting? He rejected the "objections" at face value with out considering the merits of what was presented. His reasoning? We, the objectors, are in denial! In other words, he believes my purported denial makes my arguement inconseqential.
It's rather clear he cant dicuss solutions with me because I am are in "denial". His rejection has nothing to do with any arugment I've made.....just that I've object to it, so I msut be in denial. Some irrelevant fact about my state of mind has led him to address my suitablity to dicuss this. Unless, of course, he can prove I'm actually in denial.
Either way, he can not draw conclussions to arguments he never considered.
calling liberals loons=not okay
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Found this excellent blurb:
calling liberals loons=not okay
The standard to which the forum moderators apply the rules here.
I always figured Ad Hominem was for irrelevant complaints, like "billy can't speak korean, how could he possibly have a relevant opinion on wine"
Art is life itself.
http://the-libertarian.co.uk/che-guevara-10-great-quotes/
You do realize there's a difference between socialism and communism right? Socialism is essentially where the public community controls things and makes decisions that benefit the community, where communism is that the government controls things and is responsible for making decisions that benefit the government.
Che Guevara was a terrible human being. However, it is fallacious to condemn socialism because one of its defenders was a violent racist psychopath. Otherwise, ten choice quotes from Timothy McVeigh would be sufficient to condemn libertarian capitalism as well. Condemn an idea by looking at the idea, not at the man who espouses it. (What's Latin for "at the man"?)
No, socialism is the belief that the means of production ought to be held in common by the whole society, and communism is a specific type of socialism that fixates on the idea of class struggle as the way to bring about this common ownership. Marxist communism, in particular, holds that "state socialism" is a transitional phase between capitalist and communist society, and that the true communist society will be stateless.
That's the theory, anyway. In practice, of course, communist states are just totalitarian dictatorships with a certain rhetorical flavoring.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
The foundation of the United States predates socialist theory by a good half-century. What you're thinking of is direct democracy. And the redistribution of land was a nonissue (except insofar as new land was to be "redistributed" from Indian tribes to American settlers).
Some of the Founding Fathers were just some random people who studied law and government and ran for public office. At the extreme we have Alexander Hamilton, who was born a bastard, swiftly abandoned by his father, raised in poverty by his single mother, effectively orphaned at age eleven, and managed to earn his education basically by winning the colonial version of an academic scholarship. But even Thomas Jefferson, generally viewed as the archetypical Virginia aristocrat, built his own farm on land he and his father had surveyed and claimed themselves. The opportunity for anybody to own their own land was the single biggest reason colonists came to America.
China is still avowedly communist. And people still can't technically buy land there; they only lease it from the state.
It bears little resemblance to the conventional definition. By this definition, Nazi Germany was communist, even though the Nazis were rabidly anti-communist.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
The big difference is that you don't see people walking around with Tim shirts. Che has become an icon, although I'm sure most people who wear him don't actually realize what he actually did.
And the United States tortured people and committed a holocaust on the Indians and locked up Japanese-Americans guilty of no crime and so and and so forth yet people still wear shirts with the American flag on them. Sometimes a symbol can grow past the people it symbolizes.
But there's also no other parties or body controlling the distribution of land and wealth either. In the US, buying property takes place at a state level, you file deeds specific for a state which can have their own laws.
Yeah and ancient Greece's form of democracy predates US voting laws which us to be men only just it was in ancient Greece, does that mean ancient Greece invented the US constitution or invented the US voting system? I think not, ideas or inspirations for really any form of government have been around for a while.
So why do you think the US has electoral colleges instead of just straight up popular vote? It's because at the time most people weren't educated, there wasn't a public education system and so they thought the ultimate decision was best left to more educated officials.
It seemed to be more complicated when I was dealing with real estate with Chinese investors. But, there's something weird about China; they somehow have an upper, sort of middle and lower class which really doesn't happen that obviously in actually communist societies, and if I recall there were definitely protests in China about giving people more of a free-market.
The Nazi party used many lies to gain power. Besides, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/communism?s=t which also shows the other definition I was saying, which is that there is a third-party who is "ascribed" to distribute land in the name of the community.
Look, I'm basically on your side here. Wearing a Che shirt is one of the best ways to provoke me to scorn and contempt. But the set of all the idiots who wear Che shirts and the set of all socialists are not coterminous. Many socialists know better than to wear Che shirts, and many Che-wearers don't even know enough to claim to be socialists (they just see a symbol of youthful rebellion or something). So as an attack on socialism, your case simply does not go anywhere.
All of those are examples of Americans breaking their own highest laws. The flag does not represent them. But it's just a bit harder to say that that there's a disconnect between person and symbol when the symbol is actually the face of the person. Nobody wears George Armstrong Custer t-shirts.
No, people buying Che shirts are just ignorant. Possibly willfully.
The Athenian democracy was direct. The electorate voted on everything. The United States set up a republican system in contrast to this, not in contrast to what you describe as "socialism", because the idea of socialism did not exist at the time.
Yes, but you also claimed that ordinary people couldn't receive an education and find a place in government, and that was not true.
Well, that explains your preoccupation with land policy, at least.
No, China is not actually communist. There is no actually-communist society at the nation-state level on the planet; the system simply doesn't work in practice. China is just an authoritarian single-party oligarchy. But it wants to say it's communist, which means it tries to ground its policies in communist theory, such as by saying that you're only leasing land from the government (because the land is supposedly owned in common by the Chinese people and the government supposedly represents the people).
That definition is pretty clearly a reference to fake-communist states like China and the Soviet Union of yore. In practice, the difference between those states and the Nazis is not too wide: they are all authoritarian, dictatorial, not keen on the democratic process or human rights. But what makes the Maoists and Soviets "communist", and the Nazis not, is this theory of common ownership they espouse/reject.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I wasn't trying to make a well thought out attack on socialism just some commentary on an article I saw recently and possibly inform some people who didn't realize. In my "first year enrichment" group at RIT there was a guy from Argentina who wore che shirts frequently, joined the international socialist club and told us all how great he was. Lol...