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Not even climate change will kill off capitalism
Re: Not even climate change will kill off capitalism
by americandream » Sun 09 Mar 2014, 19:01:55
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'T')he whole idea that socialism will stop climate change is silly. Socialists are quite capable of burning coal and building cars and spewing CO2 into the air.
Rather functionally useless than functionally dead.
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Re: Not even climate change will kill off capitalism
by Plantagenet » Sun 09 Mar 2014, 19:02:53
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Shaved Monkey', 'C')apitalism invented and thrives on planned obsolescence.
Socialism inevitably produces unplanned obsolescence.
For instance, the entire infrastructure of the socialist USSR and socialist eastern Europe is obsolete. Virtually very factory and every other bit of misplanned Soviet socialist infrastructure had to be abandoned after the socialists were booted out because it was so badly done. The same thing is true of almost all socialist infrastructure built in eastern Europe during the Soviet occupation. When I visited Soviet research centers and universities it was hard not to laugh----their whole educational and scientific infrastructure was incredibly out of date, mostly broken, and functionally useless.
Socialists don't plan obsolescence----but because every decision and every command structure is centralized in the goverment under Marxism, they are so inefficient and incompetent that most everything they do badly built and either breaks or becomes obsolescent almost immediately.
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Re: Not even climate change will kill off capitalism
by radon1 » Sun 09 Mar 2014, 19:09:11
There is still a sheer misconception with respect to what "marxism" is.
Marxism is not a set of beliefs to be applied to obtain a result. This is an objective science (even if incomplete in some aspects) that can be used, inter alia, to forecast the macro trends of an economic and political development. In this respect, its results have been remarkably successful. In this sense, Marxism as a description of the social-economic processes is the same as "Newtonism" as a description of physical processes (which is also an incomplete theory by the way).
What is often called "marxism" is, in fact, the economic modelling toolbox developed by the Soviet Gosplan (the central planning authority) back in 1920s on, in order to implement the modernization of the country. This toolbox was a major invention in its own right, even though inspired by and largely based on the works of Marx, and was a creation of economic and entrepreneurial genii, virtually unknown in the west. It was also remarkably successful given the practical outcome of the modernization effort in the Soviet Union, if we set aside the results of the furious political infighting that accompanied it. This political infighting was not necessarily objectively driven by that modernization effort. A guy called Leontiev took the system of the linear equations developed by Gosplan and obtained a Nobel prize on economics for it in 1973.
The other thing which is also often called "marxism" is that political infighting above itself. This one was a very complex process with lots of local specifics, oftentimes of a tangential relation to marxism as such.
Various dictatorships that are willing to run a modern economy, or forced to do so mostly in order to be able to support a modern military able to protect them from outside elite's intervention, utilize this Soviet toolbox. They are not able to rely on free markets because under a free markets regime, the size of their system of the division of labor is insufficient to develop and support complex technologies in an autonomous manner. So, the Soviet toolbox is the only option that they have in absence of any other. This does not make those dictatorships either "marxist" or "socialist". North Korea is a good example of such a dictatorship.
Using this Soviet toolbox for modernization of the economy is one thing. Running it unaltered on a on-going basis over an extended period of time is totally another.
Marxism is not a set of beliefs to be applied to obtain a result. This is an objective science (even if incomplete in some aspects) that can be used, inter alia, to forecast the macro trends of an economic and political development. In this respect, its results have been remarkably successful. In this sense, Marxism as a description of the social-economic processes is the same as "Newtonism" as a description of physical processes (which is also an incomplete theory by the way).
What is often called "marxism" is, in fact, the economic modelling toolbox developed by the Soviet Gosplan (the central planning authority) back in 1920s on, in order to implement the modernization of the country. This toolbox was a major invention in its own right, even though inspired by and largely based on the works of Marx, and was a creation of economic and entrepreneurial genii, virtually unknown in the west. It was also remarkably successful given the practical outcome of the modernization effort in the Soviet Union, if we set aside the results of the furious political infighting that accompanied it. This political infighting was not necessarily objectively driven by that modernization effort. A guy called Leontiev took the system of the linear equations developed by Gosplan and obtained a Nobel prize on economics for it in 1973.
The other thing which is also often called "marxism" is that political infighting above itself. This one was a very complex process with lots of local specifics, oftentimes of a tangential relation to marxism as such.
Various dictatorships that are willing to run a modern economy, or forced to do so mostly in order to be able to support a modern military able to protect them from outside elite's intervention, utilize this Soviet toolbox. They are not able to rely on free markets because under a free markets regime, the size of their system of the division of labor is insufficient to develop and support complex technologies in an autonomous manner. So, the Soviet toolbox is the only option that they have in absence of any other. This does not make those dictatorships either "marxist" or "socialist". North Korea is a good example of such a dictatorship.
Using this Soviet toolbox for modernization of the economy is one thing. Running it unaltered on a on-going basis over an extended period of time is totally another.
Last edited by radon1 on Sun 09 Mar 2014, 19:15:27, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Not even climate change will kill off capitalism
by Lore » Sun 09 Mar 2014, 19:11:34
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Shaved Monkey', 'C')apitalism invented and thrives on planned obsolescence.
No better way to produce lots of CO2 than to waste resources and artificially manufacture demand.
No better way to produce lots of CO2 than to waste resources and artificially manufacture demand.
Good example of that is the lowly iPad....
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')pecifically, the CO2 emissions from one iPad equal the CO2 output of a 515-mile drive. And the new iPad is responsible for more CO2 emissions than its older brothers: The new iPad emits 180 kg of CO2, compared to 130 kg and 105 kg of CO2 for the original iPad and the iPad 2, respectively. When you average out the emissions from all 55 million iPads sold (7,590,000 kg CO2), it equals the emissions of 1.2 million cars in one year.
http://mashable.com/2012/04/20/how-green-is-the-ipad/
Since that article, Apple is now on v4 with some 170 million sold.
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
... Theodore Roosevelt
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