seriously, the guy has a point


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @djls45 said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    @japonicus Basically, left-wing means more government programs and more government control, regulations, and involvement in corporate business activities (and the rest of society). Right-wing means less of all of those, resulting in more individual responsibility and opportunity. At least, these are the descriptions used in the USA by the right-wing, in order to make the left-wing look bad. @Groaner provides the opposing definitions here.

    FTFY.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @Dragoon said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    @anonymous234
    Why would anyone need to defend capitalism? It defends itself by being better than all alternatives.

    Almost - pure capitalism is not very good either. Moderated capitalism, in the form of mixed economies, tends to be much better.



  • @anotherusername said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    Uh, just how much demand do you think all those uneducated slaves who couldn't travel off their plantations were putting on the south's roads, bridges, schools, fire departments, airports (assuming those existed yet), etc.!?

    Where does all the cloth come from to clothe said slaves? What about all the food to feed them? Unless everything is sourced from the plantation itself, there has to be some extra traffic to create and provide those goods.

    Hell, if the slave quarters caught fire, they'd probably just let it burn down. They might make some effort to get their valuable slaves out, at least...

    Doggone near lost a $400 handcart!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiUdtxe2YnU

    Anyway, they weren't taxpayers; they served only to enrich their owners. Allocating congressional representation for them, as if they could be represented, was a cruel joke.

    No disagreement there.



  • @Groaner said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    Where does all the cloth come from to clothe said slaves? What about all the food to feed them? Unless everything is sourced from the plantation itself, there has to be some extra traffic to create and provide those goods.

    I reject this argument. You could say as much for the goods necessary to keep cattle fed, sheltered, and healthy, but strangely enough I don't hear Texas cowhands clamoring to have their herds counted in the national census so that they'll get more congressional votes.

    The southern states wanted to count their slaves as people, for purposes that benefited them, the white landowners, while treating them like cattle for all other purposes, which coincidentally happened to also benefit them, the white landowners. It was a bad situation all around for the slaves, and counting them in the national census would've only made the situation worse. So the 3/5ths compromise was reached.



  • @Dreikin
    What is wrong with pure capitalism?


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @Dragoon said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    @Dreikin
    What is wrong with pure capitalism?

    For the quick version, see @Groaner's video above.



  • @Dreikin That has absolutely nothing to do with pure capitalism.



  • @Dreikin said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    @Dragoon said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    @Dreikin
    What is wrong with pure capitalism?

    For the quick version, see @Groaner's video above.

    There's also this:

    http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/fe368a613e/regulation-vacation-celebration



  • @Groaner
    Pure (or laissez faire ) capitalism, does not advocate for the removal of the government. Despite what many people seem to think, it is not based in anarchy.



  • @Dragoon said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    @Groaner
    Pure (or laissez faire ) capitalism, does not advocate for the removal of the government. Despite what many people seem to think, it is not based in anarchy.

    I think it's one of those questions where if you ask ten people about the defining characteristics, you might get general agreement on the big picture, but ten different answers on the specifics.



  • @Groaner In the nuances that is a given, but in the fundamentals (capitalism != anarchy) we can reach an agreement.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @Dragoon AIUI, pure capitalism makes a number of assumptions about human nature that don't pan out in real life: namely that people will always choose the best option for their situation and know the downstream results of their choices. It's like modelling the flow of a river while ignoring friction.


  • FoxDev

    @Jaloopa said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    namely that people will always choose the best option for their situation and know the downstream results of their choices

    Whereas in truth they pick the shiniest option without thinking, then act all entitled and shit when something goes wrong.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Dragoon said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    What is wrong with pure capitalism?

    It's been tried a few times in quite a lot of parts of the world and has been found to tend to lead to people doing monstrous things to other people just to make a little more profit. Because of that, we instead use a version that adds some regulation to the mix to stop the worst abuses; the exact rules vary from place to place, but usually include minor things like not poisoning your customers and not using a private army to burn down your competitor's factory. These are, of course, terrible restrictions on the ability of the capitalist to trade in a way that maximises his profits, but for some reason they're pretty popular with just about everyone else…

    Capitalism doesn't make people nice. Laws and the threat of lynch mobs (or nicer versions like police raids) work better at that.


  • BINNED

    @Jaloopa said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    namely that people will always choose the best option for their situation and know the downstream results of their choices.

    It's a good thing we don't let people vote then.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @anotherusername said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    @Groaner said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    it wouldn't be as much of an affront to human rights as, say, the 3/5 compromise

    The only affront to human rights inherent to the 3/5ths compromise was that the slaves being so counted were not permitted to vote, ever: they weren't able to vote before it, and they weren't able to vote after it, and the 3/5ths compromise didn't change that one single bit.

    Yes, and so it gave more power to slave states. Obviously the best solution would have been no slaves, a lot worse that that but slightly better than 3/5 would have been 0 representation for slaves.

    Of course, we've replaced that with 1/1 for illegal aliens.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @anotherusername said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    @Groaner said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    My objection to it is that the U.S. Constitution, a document often held up as an exemplar of the ideals of the Enlightenment, the wisdom of the Framers, and the ideals of a people contains a section about how some humans are worth less than others. Specifically, 60 percent of others.

    For the time, 60 percent was a hell of a lot better than what they were worth at the polling place.

    60% is still more racist than 0%. 60% was what the slave owners wanted. It wasn't about their worth as people (that was determined in the market, duh! 🚎) but about slavers trying to game the system in their favor.

    Almost everyone gets this backwards, though.



  • @boomzilla said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    60% is still more racist than 0%. 60% was what the slave owners wanted.

    100% was what the slave owners wanted, but they were negotiated down to 60%.

    @boomzilla said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    slavers trying to game the system in their favor

    @boomzilla said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    Almost everyone gets this backwards, though.

    Also, yes.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Groaner said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    I'm just an asshole who came along two centuries later to condemn such language as racist, rightfully by the standards of my day.

    And, as is usual for that sort of asshole, got things exactly backwards!



  • @dkf said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    It's been tried a few times in quite a lot of parts of the world

    Where? I am not aware of any attempt to apply pure capitalism.

    @dkf said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    not poisoning your customers and not using a private army to burn down your competitor's factory.

    Why do people think capitalism doesn't have laws? To a capitalist the idea that the FDA needs to be a government agency is the problem, not that such a thing should not exist. This can easily be an independent third party and provide the same service. In a true capitalistic society, there would probably be several.



  • @bb36e said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    Why is this being talked about? Because Di Modica, the artist behind the bronze bull, wants 'Fearless Girl' removed. I'm not arguing for either side, but I just thought how it was kind of funny how the bull, intended to represent the spirit of the people and paid for by the artist himself, has been turned into an icon representing greed and the 1% by the investment-fund-financed girl.

    1. not kind of funny but extremely scary and depressing, when you realize that
    2. it's just an example of what is currently going on in all spheres of "intellectual" discourse, women fucking up everything because feminism so nobody else needs to be listened to or even acknowledged to exist.

    it's talked about precisely because of the conotations and precisely because the media spin on the little bitch statue intentionally invokes those conotations and turns them around on their head to make a strawman from opposers of feminism.

    THAT'S why it's talked about. Because if you ignore each milimeter of slippery slope because it's just a milimeter, after some time, you'll find yourself slipped to the complete bottom.

    Because she's the embodiment of feminist newspeak and newthink. And that's what makes ignoring her and the issue around her the most dangerous thing society can do.

    Btw this is Modus Operandi of whole feminism. Ideology claiming a part of society is oppressed, funded and supported by most of society so it can claim how unfunded and oppressed it is so it can destroy the civilization as we know it which it claims to have no power over while simultaneously being the best practical demonstration how this kind of ideology is the only thing that can ever have any power because we are stupid ape-born retard-beings who forget that the only thing they care about is their own survival as soon as the question of survival gets a little further than "how do I ensure I'm even going to wake up tomorrow morning?".

    Same modus operandi as the "nonprofit humanitarian" organizations currently executing invasion of europe, and btw they have the same modus operandi because they are the same thing trying to achieve the same thing.

    Which, in reality, is not what they claim they're trying to achieve, nor what their supporters believe they're trying to achieve in opposition of their own claims, but a completely separate third thing designed to totally fuck over everyone, dissenters, supporters, notgivingafuckers....



  • @bb36e problem is the yarn of bullshit on this one is so huge and complicatedly nonsensical that it would take about 2 years for me to gradually explain all the sociopolitical context needed for you for it to be at least a small chance you'll start to realize why this is not just some silly inconsequential thing, but one of the sadly important points in the ideological battle for:
    "we that rule the society are oppressed and powerless and need government to chime in for us"
    "that's bullshit and you bloody well know it each month when you get your millions in funding from George Soros plus all the useful idiots you duped into funding the murder of their own future"


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Dragoon said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    Why do people think capitalism doesn't have laws?

    Pure capitalist systems shouldn't need laws. Nothing about capitalism mandates the presence of laws. Not even laws of contract are actually required.

    But we have laws anyway, and we value things other than contracts as well. Technically speaking, that means our economies are actually mixed economies, with some parts operating in a mostly capitalist fashion and other parts not doing so. This doesn't bother me in the slightest. We operate this way because we have experience with not doing so: we know from history (e.g., much of Europe and the US in the 19th century, modern China) that we actually need quite a bit of (actually enforced) regulation to prevent all sorts of bad things being done by capitalists in pursuit of a bit more profit. We have no reason to believe that people have actually changed all that much in thousands of years; without ways to prevent it, there's always someone somewhere who'll abuse their fellow men for a bit more personal gain. (Heck, it looks like we've had yet another outbreak of this sort of problem with the management of tower blocks in London over the past few years, with tragically-predictable results. Another example? Well, there's the operation of clothing factories in Bangladesh, which have a nasty habit of catching fire or suffering structural collapse while containing many workers.)

    The ideal of capitalism is alegal; it requires no laws at all. The reality is sadly very different. Because jerkwads. For all capitalism's strengths, it is a beast that must be shackled if it is to serve mankind. The nature of the laws that constrain it will vary from place to place and time to time; that's totally expected. (Some laws protect customers. Some laws protect investors. Some laws protect workers. Some laws protect management. Some laws protect the wider population, or specific segments of them. There's a lot of variation in the details.)

    To a capitalist the idea that the FDA needs to be a government agency is the problem, not that such a thing should not exist. This can easily be an independent third party and provide the same service. In a true capitalistic society, there would probably be several.

    “The Pfizer Drug Safety Company says that all Pfizer Inc.'s drugs are totally safe and nobody else's are! Believe us, we're an Honest Independent™ drug safety company!”

    Look, I'm sorry if I really don't believe your assertions, but history says what you are proposing won't work. At the very least there would need to be regulation as to truthfulness and minimum standards. The on-the-ground enforcement actions don't need to be done by the regulatory agency (and in fact the FDA probably leaves most of the work to the drug companies, unlike say the TSA which to my eyes has far too many local employees) but there needs to be something there.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @dkf said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    Pure capitalist systems shouldn't need laws. Nothing about capitalism mandates the presence of laws. Not even laws of contract are actually required.

    Yes, but it has to be such pure capitalism that there are no people involved. It's the involvement of people that require laws.

    @dkf said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    The reality is sadly very different. Because jerkwads

    As they say:

    The problem with capitalism is capitalists.
    The problem with socialism is socialism.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @boomzilla said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    As they say:

    The problem with capitalism is capitalists.
    The problem with socialism is socialism.

    People. People are the problem. Always. We are why we can't have nice things.



  • @Dragoon So, how would you manage natural monopolies in "pure capitalism"?



  • @Rhywden said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    @Dragoon So, how would you manage natural monopolies in "pure capitalism"?

    Also, with "pure capitalism", you don't get stuff like "police" or "fire departments" or "roads".



  • @ben_lubar you can get roads but you have to pay to drive down them.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @Dragoon said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    In a true capitalistic society, there would probably be several

    :xkcd_standards.png:


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @ben_lubar said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    Also, with "pure capitalism", you don't get stuff like "police" or "fire departments" or "roads".

    Huh?



  • @ben_lubar said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    @Rhywden said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    @Dragoon So, how would you manage natural monopolies in "pure capitalism"?

    Also, with "pure capitalism", you don't get stuff like "police" or "fire departments" or "roads".

    That is exactly what Capitalism expects a government to provide.

    @Rhywden said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    @Dragoon So, how would you manage natural monopolies in "pure capitalism"?

    Why do they need to be managed? Further, we do such a good job now with our enforced monopolies, we can give it a try, how could it be worse?

    @dkf said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    we know from history (e.g., much of Europe and the US in the 19th century, modern China) that we actually need quite a bit of (actually enforced) regulation to prevent all sorts of bad things being done by capitalists in pursuit of a bit more profit.

    For Capitalism to work, it requires a mobile workforce. People have to be willing to leave their job at any time. If this mobility is there, exploitation of the worker can not occur.

    @dkf said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    Look, I'm sorry if I really don't believe your assertions, but history says what you are proposing won't work. At the very least there would need to be regulation as to truthfulness and minimum standards. The on-the-ground enforcement actions don't need to be done by the regulatory agency (and in fact the FDA probably leaves most of the work to the drug companies, unlike say the TSA which to my eyes has far too many local employees) but there needs to be something there.

    So Pfizer makes their own testing company and so does J&J and so does Mylan. If they all are biased for their own products, that leaves the door open for an independent body to test them. Not all drugs are FDA approved today, so a system without the FDA based on non-government owned entities could very easily work. Now, 50 years ago, I would of said it probably can't work. But today with the internet and instant communication, I think independent review bodies replacing the FDA would be viable.

    @dkf said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    (Heck, it looks like we've had yet another outbreak of this sort of problem with the management of tower blocks in London over the past few years, with tragically-predictable results. Another example? Well, there's the operation of clothing factories in Bangladesh, which have a nasty habit of catching fire or suffering structural collapse while containing many workers.)

    Oh look I can take things that are in NO way related to Capitalism but since this is a fear thrown out against Capitalism I will spew it out anyway.



  • @Dragoon said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    @Rhywden said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    @Dragoon So, how would you manage natural monopolies in "pure capitalism"?

    Why do they need to be managed? Further, we do such a good job now with our enforced monopolies, we can give it a try, how could it be worse?

    Are you serious. It can be plenty worse.

    We have several municipalities in Germany now who want to buy back their water infrastructure because they privatized it. And got higher fees and worse quality as a result.



  • @Rhywden

    They did it wrong. The city owns the lines (whether they be power/water/internet) and they are rented to the company, so a new company can come in at any time and offer a better product.

    Admittedly it is more complicated with water, and this is one case where the government handling it is not a horrible idea. Again, Capitalism isn't against government they just want it small. As this would be on local level, it could work out okay.



  • @Dragoon said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    @Rhywden

    They did it wrong. The city owns the lines (whether they be power/water/internet) and they are rented to the company, so a new company can come in at any time and offer a better product.

    Admittedly it is more complicated with water, and this is one case where the government handling it is not a horrible idea. Again, Capitalism isn't against government they just want it small. As this would be on local level, it could work out okay.

    If you want the government taking tax money to provide services, that's socialism.

    Nobody wants pure capitalism. Nobody wants pure socialism. Everybody has a different place in between that they want.



  • @ben_lubar said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    If you want the government taking tax money to provide services, that's socialism.

    Enough trolling. Capitalism has taxes and a government that provides services.



  • @dkf said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    Nothing about capitalism mandates the presence of laws.

    That's because it's an economic system rather than a legal system. Nothing about capitalism suggests that a legal system isn't still necessary, though.

    Actually I'd say that capitalism does mandate the presence of certain laws... specifically, property ownership rights instead of "might makes right" rights. It's impossible to have a capitalist system when anybody with a bigger gun (or tank or jet) can just take whatever wealth you create. Capitalism depends on the assumption that what's yours is yours and someone can't just come along and take it away without due process of law.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @ben_lubar said in seriously, the guy has a point:

    If you want the government taking tax money to provide services, that's socialism.

    Thanks, Humpty.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole




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