[onlooker]

You hit it out of the ballpark with that one Ghung. But be careful to point out anything in which the Govt had a hand in, because rabid Capitalists are quick to say, "Look see, it is the Government's fault". Not taking a moment to reflect that the requisites of modern Capitalism require severe underfunding of the Govt and weakening of it. And also not taking into account how Capitalism has created an environment very difficult to allow ordinary folk to do anything other than work as wage slaves. That is why the middle class of America is a dying class. Where are they? Not in middle heartland America suffering from neglect and being adandoned by Corporations via Outsourcing. Not in the decaying cities of many states left no option but to become wards of the Federal Govt. Not in the suburbs where people are in over their heads with Debts and have to work and commute most of their hours awake to pay the bills. Where oh where is the Middle Class?

[GHung]

Where oh where is the Middle Class? A question with complex answers which boil down to one small end of the economic spectrum, in KJ's Darwinian world, feeling it's important to take far more than they need, the other end essentially dysfunctional in terms of producing anything tangible (essentially dead weight from a purely practical perspective), both mining the vast middle class who are trying to keep up the appearance of being middle class. All of them consuming stuff and ignoring their waste streams.

I agree that it's at least a warped sense of priorities; no "spiritual" throttling of our culture's need for more, whether or not we can pay for it in terms of real-time true capital.

So we steal from the future.

[KaiserJeep]

Oddly enough, i don't disagree with any of that, except one thing. It's not Capitalism that is the problem, nor would things be any different if we were all pinkos born and indoctrinated for life. There would still be 7.7+ Billion of us, and we would still be running short of the necessities. That problem is caused by apes doing what apes do.

The only difference is that in a Marxist world, no middle class exists, and everybody everywhere is equally miserable.

[Yonnipun]

https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2016/12/02/why-mao-is-still-a-hero-to-so-many-chinese/

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')fter Mao, the malnutrition rate in China is 7%.
After Indian capitalism, the malnutrition rate in India is 51%.

[KaiserJeep]

....so starving 65 million Chinese in outlying provinces with a planned famine to achieve a political goal is a "mistake"?

Would you like to apologize for Hitler and his Nazis now? His 17 million in the Holocaust seems pretty paltry beside Mao or Stalin or any other Marxist despot.

[Yonnipun]

LINK

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')o, they like them because they are Social Darwinists and they think they won the genetic lottery. Not only that, they think everyone who lost the lottery shouldn’t even get a chance to play. Or maybe even not get a chance to live. That’s what it’s all about. All HBD’ers hate socialism because it requires people to share. HBD’ers are unbelievably selfish. They don’t want to share with even one other human being. Their motto is as Adam Smith wrote, “Everything for me, and nothing for anything else.” Capitalist fanboys who love Smith fail to note that that philosophy was also one of the most evil philosophies that exists.

[Yonnipun]

LINK

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')adical neoliberal free market capitalism doesn’t “work better” than socialism, at least not in my book anyway. I believe in survival. Radical capitalism doesn’t allow people to survive. I am against that. What it boils down to is that I will always support a system that allows people to survive (socialism) against a system that doesn’t (radical free market socialism). So to me security > wealth. You’re free to differ.

[Yonnipun]

LINK
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')The power of capitalist propaganda is immense. According to the ruling class media, the only system that starves anyone anymore is Communism.

One hears this platitude over and over – Communism = starvation. It is true that 600,000 have starved to death in North Korea since the 1990’s. However, 14 million starve to death every year in the world – mostly in South Asia but also 1 million in Latin America – almost all under capitalist regimes. Not one word of this from the ruling class mouthpieces.

This has been going since at least 1986 (when the figure was calculated) with no end in sight.

[onlooker]

I would add the icing on the cake. Capitalism has given free reign to all the excesses and urges of mankind such as greed, selfishness, vanity, sloth/indolence among others. It has the invisible hand of money and wealth to usurp control of every major human institution including the governing structures of this planet.

What it is about is setting up an economic system virtually worldwide that incorporates the urges and impulses cited above. This has led as it was bound to, to an extremely unjust/unequal worldwide social structure. Even worse it is strongly implicated in humanities propensity for growth both in numbers and economic throughput. This above all is leading us to total ruin as we are dismantling the support beams for the web of life on this planet

[KaiserJeep]

Again, I must point out that the only form of economy with a record of lasting success is the Capitalist system. To claim that it is broken, while endorsing Marxism/Socialism/Communism, is silly. The dreams of Marx and Engels have an unbroken record of failure.

[GHung]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'A')gain, I must point out that the only form of economy with a record of lasting success is the Capitalist system. To claim that it is broken, while endorsing Marxism/Socialism/Communism, is silly. The dreams of Marx and Engels have an unbroken record of failure.

[KaiserJeep]

All of that is quite theoretical, as nobody can reliably forecast the future. PRESENTLY Capitalism rules and supports 7.7+Billion humans. That is the very epitomy of success. Any Marxist regime would be in profound collapse with much environmental damage.

Which of course is yet another prediction of a future not yet real. However, my prediction is based on a consistent history of a couple of millenia of success with Capitalism, and the miserable eventual failure of all attempts at Marxism in dozens of variations.

Really - just think about it. Can you point to ANY Marxist system more than 50 years old?

[GHung]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'A')ll of that is quite theoretical, as nobody can reliably forecast the future. PRESENTLY Capitalism rules and supports 7.7+Billion humans. That is the very epitomy of success. Any Marxist regime would be in profound collapse with much environmental damage.

Which of course is yet another prediction of a future not yet real. However, my prediction is based on a consistent history of a couple of millenia of success with Capitalism, and the miserable eventual failure of all attempts at Marxism in dozens of variations.

Really - just think about it. Can you point to ANY Marxist system more than 50 years old?

[KaiserJeep]

All of us in the PO Forum are among the most fortunate of men. We exist in a world of plenty. More food than we can eat, more liquor and other intoxicants than we can consume, a warm soft comfortable place to sleep, virtual companions on the internet, work if we choose it, and medical care, and retirement income. I could go on and on, but you understand my point.

YOU didn't do that, centuries of Capitalism did that. Yet you must complain. You are drowning in marshmallows, and you refuse to even open your mouth and chew. You insist that you must have doom, doom, and more doom.

Capitalism did not put 7.7+ Billion Kudzu Apes on this ball of dirt and water. Mother Nature shaped us through evolution to be the most successful species ever. Now some of you insist upon perceiving flaws in our successful domination of our environment.

Well, "Capitalism" is jusr a label for how apes behave. Now go find a mirror and gaze into it at the Capitalist.

[mmasters]

I love it when people complain about capitalism yet they have an iPhone. That was created with capitalism.

[GHung]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mmasters', 'I') love it when people complain about capitalism yet they have an iPhone. That was created with capitalism.

[KaiserJeep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GHung', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mmasters', 'I') love it when people complain about capitalism yet they have an iPhone. That was created with capitalism.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GHung', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mmasters', 'I') love it when people complain about capitalism yet they have an iPhone. That was created with capitalism.

[Yonnipun]

https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2018/09/14/a-look-at-the-chinese-model-of-communism-market-socialism/

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')ncidentally, China still has 5-year plans and the whole economy is planned. The business sector has to go along with the plan, and if you do not go along with it, they can confiscate your business. A party committee sits on the board of all large corporations. The government owns every inch of land in China. The state invests an incredible amount in the economy and also overseas where it makes vast investments. This is because some Chinese government companies are very profitable. A number of Chinese government companies are on the list of largest companies in the world.

[KaiserJeep]

You need to study History. In the 1960s, Mao Tse-Tung starved approximately 65 million people in outlying Chinese provinces in a deliberate and planned famine that he used to consolidate his political power in the country as a whole. It is the largest act of genocide in the modern world, and makes the Nazis with their paltry 17 million in WW2 look like pikers by comparison.

As a practicing EE in Silicon Valley I had to deal with Chinese contract manufacturers, often we could not even get US manufacturers to respond to our RFPs. It was a miserable experience for me, appalling product quality and endless problems. By the time you had worked your way through one issue, two more equally serious had occurred.

As an example, we had to comply with a European standard called ROHS (Reduction of Hazardous Substances) which essentially meant that you had to use the least dangerous material to build products with. The Chinese could not consistently produce screws that were Chrome plated to specifications. The screws they submitted for testing used Chromium plating made via safe Cr(III) (Trivalent) solutions. But random samplings of finished products showed screws plated using Cr(VI) (Hexavalent) Chromium solutions. Hexavalent Chromium is a dangerous carcinogen that became infamous in the Erin Brockovich scandal. I had to recall finished computers and replace the screws! To say nothing of more complex quality issues with products such as disk drives and integrated circuits.

Are you familiar with the way that Chinese manufacturers are monopolizing the solar photovoltaic marketplace? They produce 6" and 8" monocrystalline silicon wafers on wafer-fab machinery that they got here in Silicon Valley back in the 1990's, when US manufacturers upgraded to 10" and 12" diameter wafers to produce cheaper and bigger micro-processors. They got those wafer-fab machines through a US Government grant for "developing nations", after making a $13M donation to the Clinton Library! Now that they can produce cheap solar PV through US generosity, they are dumping the Chinese solar panels in the US and Europe below cost, putting everybody else out of business.

China has nothing to admire, given a second look.