Slogan/motto:
For as much as it depends on you, live at peace with others.
Reputation:
December 1st, 2011, 08:37 AM
I agree.. but our current issue with greed has more to do with companies exploiting government benefits then actual market greed.
The entire idea of corporations that receive benefits from government (limited liability, tax advantages, etc.) needs to be done away with and true risk needs to be added back into the system.
After a corporation, partnership, llc, etc are all artificial entities created by our governments.. as such they should not complain when the government regulates them how it sees fit.. and they are perfectly capable of dissolving a corporation if the burdens get too high.
Slogan/motto:
All hail our Dark Mother, Destroyer of Illusions, may she liberate us from false consciousness and feast on the blood of demonic capitalism.
Reputation:
December 6th, 2011, 10:59 AM
Couple of flaws with this loser's passé ideas.
1) Russia and China were not communist. They were/are state-capitalist Bonapartist bureaucracies. The reason you can't point to a perfect already-existing alternative is because "socialism in one country" is not a socialist idea, it is a Bonapartist ideological hijacking of socialist ideas. How can you point to a concrete alternative to something which necessarily does not exist yet? Capitalism is a world system, as such it must be defeated on a world scale. No "socialist country", being a part of the world economy, will be immune from the negative effects of world capitalism.
First used in reference to the government established by Louis Bonaparte, who had been elected to the office of presidency in 1848. Three years following, on 2 December, 1851, he staged a coup d'etat against his government, setting up a military dictatorship in its place.
Marx soon after wrote a popular pamphlet called the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte "demonstrating how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero's part."
Bonapartism has been used to describe a government that forms when class rule is not secure and a military, police, and state bureaucracy intervenes to establish order. Nineteenth century Bonapartism is commonly associated with Twentieth century fascism and stalinism.
Further readings: Trotsky, The Rise of Hitler and Destruction of the German Left; and The Workers' State, Thermidor and Bonapartism.
2) Einstein was a scientific socialist (that is, a Marxist). Funny how this Mr. Brain-Fried Man points to Einstein as a great product of capitalism... who supported socialism! Nevermind that Einstein had to flee his home because of Nazi capitalism (third positionists who safeguarded private enterprise by diverting class struggle into national chauvinism.)
Milton Friedman is an ignorant old fart who's hyper-defensiveness betrays his inability to admit to the failure of his philosophy of economics. He's nothing more than an apologist for blind, stupid, greed. And blind, stupid, greed is not sound economic policy, nor is it a reasonable definition of good business practice.
His whole spiel is based on his own confusion regarding the difference between ambition and greed. He quite wrongly thinks they are the same things, and so he imagines that the engine fueling commerce is greed, when it is in fact ambition. Ambition is the desire to improve one's own conditions by improving the environment in which one exists. An ambitious employee, for example, will look for ways of improving the quality and efficiency of his company's product or services so as to make more money for himself by increasing the profits overall. An ambitious entrepreneur will look for better products and services to sell, or better and cheaper ways of selling them, so as to improve his own profit margin by offering a better deal to his customers. The result of this ambition is that everyone "wins". Products and services become better and cheaper, while their producers and sellers make more money providing them.
Greed, on the other hand, is the desire to get as much as possible for one's self, while giving as little as possible for it. A greedy employee, for example, will try to do as little work as he can, yet want to be paid as much as he can get for it. A greedy entrepreneur will look for the cheapest product or service to sell, and employ whatever method he can get away with to sell them for the highest price. Because he seeks to maximize his own profits at the expense of everyone else involved, rather than by improving the deal for everyone.
Because Milton Friedman has never clearly understood the difference between greed and ambition, he has convinced himself that we must accept greed as the intrinsic impetus of commerce and as a necessary expression of business. And he has also wrongly convinced himself that in spite of the suffering that greed causes when it's accepted as a business practice, that in the end society is always better off for it than without it.
And sadly, old Milton has been spouting off his thoroughly mis-conceived vision of commerce and it's imaginary positive effect on society for so many decades that he now has business schools all over the world teaching the same nonsense. There are, after all, plenty of people in the world who WANT to believe that greed is good, and have been only too pleased to adopt his excuses and justifications as their own.
Envy didn't destroy the national economy, wipe out millions of people's jobs and retirement funds, and cost the American people hundreds of billions of dollars.
Envy isn't the reason millions of Americans have lost their homes.
Envy isn't the reason none of these people have been prosecuted, and most have been given huge bonuses for their part in a massive corporate fraud.
Envy isn't the reason people are protesting on Wall Street.
Slogan/motto:
Most Christians worship the false god of Public Acceptance.
Reputation:
December 12th, 2011, 12:01 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by PureX
Envy didn't destroy the national economy, wipe out millions of people's jobs and retirement funds, and cost the American people hundreds of billions of dollars.
Envy isn't the reason millions of Americans have lost their homes.
Which specific greedy people are you talking about? Let me guess. Are you talking about the Democrats who ran Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae over the past 18 years? You know, the same liberal Democrats who, obsessed with political correctness for their own greedy re-elections, pressured banks into writing mortgages with no money down and no proof of income to high-risk borrowers and demanding banks accept welfare payments and unemployment benefits as valid sources of income to qualify for a mortgage? Those greedy people? You know, the same Democrats who used taxpayer money to bail out their friends on Wall Street who raise a lot of money for the Democrats? Are those the greedy people you're talking about? Now, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, middle-class taxpayers are going to be forced to bail out the Democrats' 2 most important constituent groups: rich Wall Street bankers and welfare recipients. Now that's greed!
Quote:
Envy isn't the reason none of these people have been prosecuted, and most have been given huge bonuses for their part in a massive corporate fraud.
Are you talking about the greed of the liberal Democrats being the reason none of these people have been prosecuted? It was the liberal Democrats 2010 "Financial Reform" bill that saw to it that Fannie Mae's operators kept their multi-millions. Are those the greedy people you're talking about?
Quote:
Envy isn't the reason people are protesting on Wall Street.
They're protesting because they're mostly a bunch of losers who just enjoy creating mayhem. Those stuck-in-the-60s flea bags say they want Obama re-elected, but claim to hate Wall Street. These morons are completely unaware that it's Wall Street that gave its largest campaign donation in history to Obama, who, in turn, bailed out the banks. By contrast, the Tea Party got it's name from CNBC's Rick Santelli in 2009 when he called for another Tea Party in response to Obama's greedy self-promotional plan to bail-out irresponsible mortgagers.
Which specific greedy people are you talking about? Let me guess. ...
Blah, blah, blah. All the same stupid hate and prejudice.
Greed doesn't care about republicans or democrats or liberals or conservatives. Greed is about the greedy. They bribe whoever they can. They exploit whoever they can. And they'll rob whoever they can. You think Bernie Madoff cared whether he stole from republicans or democrats? Or who was in office and who wasn't? You think the bankers who sold all those debts as phony assets and trashed the economy and the housing market cared who got hurt? Or that they did it because of some political agenda? They distract dummies like you from their crimes by stirring up your bile and stupidity and aiming it at your neighbors, and you fall for it like some dumb animal.
Last edited by PureX; December 12th, 2011 at 11:05 PM.
Blah, blah, blah. All the same stupid hate and prejudice.
Greed doesn't care about republicans or democrats or liberals or conservatives. Greed is about the greedy. They bribe whoever they can. They exploit whoever they can. And they'll rob whoever they can.
Why do you and other's of your mindset automatically think that the free market has to involve greed in order to make it work?
Are you that tainted from corporate and government corruption that you don't think that there is such a thing as an honest businessman?
"Smoking cannabis makes people more intelligent."
Dope smoker and attempted Presidential assassin Oscar Romero Ortega-Hernandez
PureX wrote - "That's what Milton Friedman teaches, and that was the subject of this thread. I disagree with him. I DON'T believe that we must accept greed as the engine of commerce. But we aren't going to begin weeding it out of business practices until we understand the difference between greed and ambition, and between commerce and exploitation. Right now, thanks to people like Milton Friedman and the greed worshippers who hold up his misconceived ideas about commerce as divine wisdom, most people can't understand the difference."
Nick M - Why should I "repent" for writing this? Do think Milton Friedman is some sort of divine being, that to speak against him is to 'blaspheme'?
Last edited by PureX; December 13th, 2011 at 03:30 PM.
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