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Thread: Socialist America - Page 3







Post#51 at 09-18-2013 09:47 PM by XYMOX_4AD_84 [at joined Nov 2012 #posts 3,073]
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The forms of the 19th century shall fade into history. New forms await.

The problem with what we call capitalism is, it becomes a tyranny of the market and of Mass Man. The whims of Mass Man drive the whole of the people toward disaster.

The problem with what we call socialism is, it becomes a tyranny of Leviathan. It starts out based on the premise that the fruits of productivity will be "owned" by the Prolitariat, as opposed to investors. However, in reality, it squashes all reasons for individual risk taking and individual innovation, and, in doing so, sends productivity into a death spiral. It kills what it seeks to redistribute.

So, what is next? What form or forms, which have yet to be contemplated, will move to the fore?







Post#52 at 09-18-2013 10:28 PM by Kepi [at Northern, VA joined Nov 2012 #posts 3,664]
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No, it's not the same. While in some cases people need significantly extensive long term care, in most cases people capable of working do not. State funded retirements and health care do not create scenarios where the older people need it will use more money than older ones. Older workers often require less space, and and less money as the have fewer myths too feed and a should have a paid off home.

Workers in their 20's-40's are caring for children usually, and therefore need more space, and more market space as a whole because they're providing for more people. Older people tend to be pretty much okay on their own with a few more prescriptions if they sell their large house move into smaller scale, paid off housing and live reasonably.

Younger workers have start up costs and need larger salaries to support more people. They don't have the option of having smaller housing, and while the have added care costs individually, collective health costs probably equate. I've been to the hospital once in the past 10 years; the 10 prior to that I was in at least 3. Multiply that by 2 or three times and there you go.

As Marxism goes, he didn't get extremely specific as to how socialism and then later communism would work, but there were guidelines. Socialism was to be a post revolutionary state run, no profit economic system that functions as a world wide system which was brought on because a world wide class consciousness caused the workers of the world to unite and all overthrow their governments at once.

Now as far as technology and development goes, yes, even Marx acknowledged that it was going to stunt it's growth. This doesn't deter him, largely because he viewed it as an inevitability. This is why most "Marxist" governments being failures is not an indictment against Marxism outright.

Now, keep in mind I'm not a Marxist, but when we're talking socialism, he's the guy who wrote the book. He sets the definitions.







Post#53 at 09-19-2013 11:27 AM by Bad Dog [at joined Dec 2012 #posts 2,156]
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Quote Originally Posted by Kepi View Post
. Older workers often require less space, and and less money as the have fewer myths too feed ...
I love this.







Post#54 at 09-19-2013 11:30 AM by Bad Dog [at joined Dec 2012 #posts 2,156]
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The AI in Puerto Rico for IPad is a Killer DM Cheating Bastard. Kind of like the modern workplace. As long as we let them free-range in our society, they won't change. Needless to say, I deleted Puerto Rico...







Post#55 at 09-19-2013 11:42 AM by Alioth68 [at Minnesota joined Apr 2010 #posts 693]
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Quote Originally Posted by Bad Dog View Post
I love this.
Makes an uncanny sense as worded, too. (Remembering my recently-passed Grandpa who really got to enjoy the simple pleasures in old age, like watching the ball game while munching on $1 Totino's frozen pizzas, even though he had a pretty good pension... no grand illusions about anything that he may have had earlier. Of course he was a GI--not sure if Boomers will age the same way ).
"Understanding is a three-edged sword." --Kosh Naranek
"...Your side, my side, and the truth." --John Sheridan

"No more half-measures." --Mike Ehrmantraut

"rationalizing...is never clear thinking." --SM Kovalinsky







Post#56 at 09-19-2013 02:59 PM by Kepi [at Northern, VA joined Nov 2012 #posts 3,664]
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Swype kills, kiddies.







Post#57 at 09-19-2013 03:38 PM by Time Mage X [at joined Jul 2004 #posts 694]
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I believe a good model for a society may be in what I call a "Baseline Economy". Such a society ensures that everyone has access to the bare basic-generic necessities of modern life (healthcare*, food, education, shelter, clothing, etc), but if you want to a better life you than have access* to work harder for it. This combines the security of socialism with the drive of capitalism. In a lot of ways America has achieved this state despite both the right and left's best attempt to strangle and bloat it.

This is an important element- as ensuring the ability to improve your life keeps this society from forming a permanent slave class.

* See my previous post in the "It's time for Healthcare" thread
Here comes the sun~Unfinished







Post#58 at 09-19-2013 04:22 PM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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Quote Originally Posted by Eric the Green View Post
No chance of that. My hope is for more coops and small business, and the worker-owned industry you spoke of. Failing that, I suspect we'll muddle along with our current corporatism for quite some time, maybe with some government reform. But it is not government management that corrupts socialism; that is necessary as long as free enterprise exists. What we have is a socialism that never occurred, except for that government management and regulation, and government safety nets. That's all the socialism that ever existed in the USA. The corruption is that capitalism has been allowed to pursue its course, mostly, with its wealth and power allowing it to extort favors from the government. So what we have is rampant corporate control, dominating the market and the economy, inadequately regulated and managed.
We will get there. How we get there is the real question. Do we get economic equity through legislation or do we get it enforced by this saeculum's equivalent of General Douglas MacArthur or General Lucius Clay? Note well the roles that MacArthur had in Japan and Clay had in Germany; those were generals in charge of occupation of Japan and Germany, respectively.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#59 at 09-19-2013 04:29 PM by XYMOX_4AD_84 [at joined Nov 2012 #posts 3,073]
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Quote Originally Posted by Ghost Echo View Post
I believe a good model for a society may be in what I call a "Baseline Economy". Such a society ensures that everyone has access to the bare basic-generic necessities of modern life (healthcare*, food, education, shelter, clothing, etc), but if you want to a better life you than have access* to work harder for it. This combines the security of socialism with the drive of capitalism. In a lot of ways America has achieved this state despite both the right and left's best attempt to strangle and bloat it.

This is an important element- as ensuring the ability to improve your life keeps this society from forming a permanent slave class.

* See my previous post in the "It's time for Healthcare" thread
Yep back in Econ 101 we often discussed how the US was perhaps the pre eminent example of a Mixed Economy. Mind you, this was during the thick of RWR's 1st term. Still, there were certain things considered sacred (and this is still the case).







Post#60 at 09-19-2013 04:31 PM by XYMOX_4AD_84 [at joined Nov 2012 #posts 3,073]
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Quote Originally Posted by pbrower2a View Post
We will get there. How we get there is the real question. Do we get economic equity through legislation or do we get it enforced by this saeculum's equivalent of General Douglas MacArthur or General Lucius Clay? Note well the roles that MacArthur had in Japan and Clay had in Germany; those were generals in charge of occupation of Japan and Germany, respectively.
Maybe an internally derived Arch-General ... or a King / Queen!







Post#61 at 09-19-2013 04:35 PM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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Quote Originally Posted by The Grey Badger View Post
I should hope not! A free society has room for a lot of different micro-arrangements that, if done by a monolithic entity, would have different names and be an economic disaster.

One notorious example is the Company Town (which was not a good place to live, from all I hear, though) - which, writ large, becomes the Soviet Union. (Think about it.)
Arnold Toynbee warned us of the danger of the Universal State, the political entity that takes over an entire civilization, establishes a repressive order, squelches innovation and creativity, and usually disintegrates, taking the civilization down with it. The Roman Empire was the prime example. The Soviet Union is a more recent example for establishing a satellite order that encompassed practically the entirety of Eastern Orthodox civilization. The Third Reich (Western Christendom) and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (the hybrid religious tradition of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism) were infamous attempts.

So far the United States has been unusually tolerant and flexible as an empire. But put the Religious Right and the people who believe in nothing but their own gain and indulgence in power, and America goes down the sewer.

When I first saw the term, I almost saw a Freudian slip with "United States" for "Universal State". We have a fair warning in the event that the United States of America becomes in practice the "Union of Christian and Corporate States", a moniker that I want to be as scary as "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics".
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#62 at 09-20-2013 12:32 AM by Gianthogweed [at joined Apr 2012 #posts 590]
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Quote Originally Posted by Einzige View Post
I've never understood this assumption, shared by both more-educated conservatives and genuine leftists alike (only American-type liberals, ironically, picture capitalism as something enduring and which consequentially must be ameliorated).

Capitalism as the dominant mode of production in America has not even, well, dominated for fully two centuries. Whither the assumption that it's going anywhere anytime soon? The farthest back one can possibly date the final eclipse of the feudal order in America is 1865; I go back and forth whether one ought to take 1865 or 1896 as the 'start-date' for a fully-developed capitalist order completely independent of the social framework of feudalism/mercantilism.

If we look at the previous modes of production, we see each lasted in turn many thousands of years. It's impossible to say "this is when x replaced y" in sociological terms, but, ignoring the proto-feudalist latifundia in the late Roman Empire, we may very well date Feudalism Proper as having existed in some form or fashion from the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 to the abolition of serfdom in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth - and, occasionally, even the early twentieth(!) - century.

I share the basically Marxist view that capitalism will some day pass from the historical playing field. But I think it's far more likely we've only really just begun the capitalist era. Capitalism still has a vast amount of work to do: Christianity, that relic of Feudal Europe, has not disappeared. Man has not become completely atomized. "Tradition" still matters to the conservators of capitalism; it will cease to matter when the moorings of feudalism have been completely obliterated.

It may be that the vastly increased rapidity of technological and social change under the thrall of Das Kapital may speed up the process, but I strongly doubt we're in anything but Early Modern Capitalism as of yet. And those seeds which replace it will sprout naturally: we will see forms and functions of its replacement centuries before it is actually replaced, just as modern capitalism had precursors in, for instance, the Florentine Republic.

Hence my belief that the next epoch will be a Megaunraveling in Generational terms. Capitalism is just getting started; feudalism still exists within relatively recent memory; the old bonds must be fully broken - Christianity buried under, familial collectivism disintegrated, Westphalian nation-states replaced by transnational corporations and institutions completely - before anything new can occur.
The reason feudalism lasted so long was because there were thousands of years between the neolithic revolution that began roughly 10,000 years ago and the Industrial Revolution that began in the 18th Century. Technological advancement and our ability to harness the universe's energy is what drives economic change. Capitalism may change, but you'll never see an end to the market economy. That's been around since even before the neolithic revolution.
'79 Xer, INTP







Post#63 at 09-20-2013 01:45 PM by Marx & Lennon [at '47 cohort still lost in Falwelland joined Sep 2001 #posts 16,709]
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Quote Originally Posted by Gianthogweed View Post
The reason feudalism lasted so long was because there were thousands of years between the neolithic revolution that began roughly 10,000 years ago and the Industrial Revolution that began in the 18th Century. Technological advancement and our ability to harness the universe's energy is what drives economic change. Capitalism may change, but you'll never see an end to the market economy. That's been around since even before the neolithic revolution.
It doesn't have to end; it merely needs to become rational. So far, not so good.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.







Post#64 at 09-20-2013 02:25 PM by Mikebert [at Kalamazoo MI joined Jul 2001 #posts 4,501]
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Quote Originally Posted by Kepi View Post
They don't have the option of having smaller housing, and while older people have added care costs individually, collective health costs probably equate.


Not even close. Compare two parents (age 25-44) with two kids (age 0-14) to a retired couple over 65.

Young household: 0.52+0.55+1.03+1 = 3.1

Old household 5.65+3.08 = 8.73

The old household spends 8.73/3.1 = 2.8 times more.

As you point out the older couple will have smaller expenditures for food, clothing and housing. Assume such spending for the older household is half that of younger households. Thus say 2/3’s of this spending is by younger households and 1/3 is by older households.

The 2.8 times greater healthcare spending by older household suggests 26% of healthcare spending by young and 74% by old.

Collectively, spending for food, clothing and housing amount to 21.2% of GDP (data at economagic.com). Health care spending amounts to 17.9% of GDP.

So the young have 2/3 of the 21.2% in the food, clothing & housing category plus 26% of the 17.9% in the healthcare category for a total of 18.8%.

And the old have 1/3 of the 21.2% in the food, clothing & housing category plus 74% of the 17.9% in the healthcare category for a total of 20.3%.

The expenses of the old work out to be slightly larger than those for the young, despite the larger size of the latter’s households. It is a myth that you can get by on less as you age. This fact is masked by Medicare, which pays a large fraction of the healthcare costs for the elderly and makes the out-of-pocket expense less.

…but when we're talking socialism, he's the guy who wrote the book. He sets the definitions.
No. He wrote the book on his particular kind of socialism. There are other kinds.

In market socialism the means of production are either publicly owned or socially owned as cooperatives and operated in a market economy. Social ownership usually refers to various types of employee-ownership, cooperatives or public ownership.

What I proposed was a minimum set of changes that would transform our current largely capitalistic economy to one that is largely socialist by my definition. The scheme I came up with is market socialism with social ownership of most, but not all of the means of production, with the particular kind of social ownership being employee ownership. Therefore I assert that my scheme corresponds to one of the kinds of socialism although it is not Marxist by any stretch.
Last edited by Mikebert; 09-20-2013 at 04:01 PM.







Post#65 at 09-20-2013 02:37 PM by Mikebert [at Kalamazoo MI joined Jul 2001 #posts 4,501]
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Quote Originally Posted by Gianthogweed View Post
...but you'll never see an end to the market economy. That's been around since even before the neolithic revolution.
Not everywhere. The Inca civilization did not have a market economy.







Post#66 at 09-20-2013 05:06 PM by Bad Dog [at joined Dec 2012 #posts 2,156]
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I once vacuumed every bit of cash out of circulation in a eurogame I was playing, out of sheer spite (there was no way to catch up on the victory point track). No one could buy anything. I got applause, and the method got posted on boardgamegeek.com. The game's designers *very* rapidly came on to say that players could trade in items other then cash...







Post#67 at 09-20-2013 05:11 PM by Bad Dog [at joined Dec 2012 #posts 2,156]
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Another way to put it is that whatever economic system is implemented, there will be Murphys' Law, and crazy/malicious/stupid participants that will trash the market.

A society founded by ADD compulsive gamblers (also suffering from Tourette's) won't have much truck with sharing.







Post#68 at 09-21-2013 09:15 AM by Mikebert [at Kalamazoo MI joined Jul 2001 #posts 4,501]
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Quote Originally Posted by pbrower2a View Post
…wages can be driven back to subsistence levels despite extreme productivity that plutocrats enforce with brutality.
How are they going to do that?

Of course, privileged elites can panic and turn to horrific repression of working people as under fascist and Nazi regimes.
And how did that work out for Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Ferdinand Marcos, or Hosni Mubarak? How’s it working out for Assad?

Marcos and Mubarak are very instructive. They what happens when an elite order loses legitimacy, causing their supporters in the Army to defect to the other side. The old order collapse abruptly. Assad and Saddam Hussein show what happens when an elite order loses legitimacy but there is nobody to whom their supporters can defect. They hang on and a long bloody conflict with no resolution emerges.

The economic elite in this country requires a liberal world supportive of free trade and political rights for individual. Such a world necessarily requires that places will always exist for defectors. In that case elites can only rule as long as the bulk of the ruled confer legitimacy on them. I hardly think that Americans will have to experience “wages driven back to subsistence levels” before they will withdraw legitimacy from their rulers.







Post#69 at 09-21-2013 03:52 PM by Kepi [at Northern, VA joined Nov 2012 #posts 3,664]
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Quote Originally Posted by Mikebert View Post

Not even close. Compare two parents (age 25-44) with two kids (age 0-14) to a retired couple over 65.

Young household: 0.52+0.55+1.03+1 = 3.1

Old household 5.65+3.08 = 8.73

The old household spends 8.73/3.1 = 2.8 times more.

As you point out the older couple will have smaller expenditures for food, clothing and housing. Assume such spending for the older household is half that of younger households. Thus say 2/3’s of this spending is by younger households and 1/3 is by older households.

The 2.8 times greater healthcare spending by older household suggests 26% of healthcare spending by young and 74% by old.

Collectively, spending for food, clothing and housing amount to 21.2% of GDP (data at economagic.com). Health care spending amounts to 17.9% of GDP.

So the young have 2/3 of the 21.2% in the food, clothing & housing category plus 26% of the 17.9% in the healthcare category for a total of 18.8%.

And the old have 1/3 of the 21.2% in the food, clothing & housing category plus 74% of the 17.9% in the healthcare category for a total of 20.3%.

The expenses of the old work out to be slightly larger than those for the young, despite the larger size of the latter’s households. It is a myth that you can get by on less as you age. This fact is masked by Medicare, which pays a large fraction of the healthcare costs for the elderly and makes the out-of-pocket expense less.


No. He wrote the book on his particular kind of socialism. There are other kinds.

In market socialism the means of production are either publicly owned or socially owned as cooperatives and operated in a market economy. Social ownership usually refers to various types of employee-ownership, cooperatives or public ownership.

What I proposed was a minimum set of changes that would transform our current largely capitalistic economy to one that is largely socialist by my definition. The scheme I came up with is market socialism with social ownership of most, but not all of the means of production, with the particular kind of social ownership being employee ownership. Therefore I assert that my scheme corresponds to one of the kinds of socialism although it is not Marxist by any stretch.
So the numbers work out to be slightly less instread of significantly less, meanwhile our current system shows older workers making significantly more in median income than younger employees, and that's not counting stock value, etc. This won't change the general trend of the decline of the middle class, because the money and power is going to be disproportionately put in the hands of people just because they've older, and with that power, they can effectively increase that gap easily by redefining positions based on time served. So, for example a metal fabricator at a particular company would be tier 1, 2, or 3 based on years served. This sort of action would be very easy to implement because the majority of the shares, and therefore the votes are held by older employees.

And yes, Marx wrote about one form of socialism, but it set the definition as socialism being state controlled. Allowing corporations to retain their power and just gaming the systems to be internally run instead of being publicly purchasable doesn't make it not capitalism, it just makes it a different kind of capitalism.

Also, minimal changes are what got us into this mess. It's going to take a lot more than profit sharing to change the trends we've been seeing.
Last edited by Kepi; 09-21-2013 at 04:01 PM.







Post#70 at 09-21-2013 10:39 PM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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Quote Originally Posted by Mikebert View Post
How are they going to do that (cause …wages [to] be driven back to subsistence levels despite extreme productivity that plutocrats enforce with brutality)?
State terror, as in the Third Reich or in Imperialist Japan. Plutocrats might get what they want for a time, but eventually they would find a labor shortage. Many Americans might sneak across the borders into Canada and even Mexico. Many countries would probably get political refugees. Immigration would practically stop. Add to that, underfed workers are terribly unproductive, and small business would lose paying customers.

Of course it is up to us to vote against people who would bring such about. When some right-winger promises to solve unemployment, people need to ask the question "But will there be solid pay attached to those jobs?" Facile solutions to the economic distress of a 4T either do not work or solve themselves by creating even bigger problems.

And how did that work out for Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Ferdinand Marcos, or Hosni Mubarak? How’s it working out for Assad?
Badly, of course. For Assad it could still end with his neck snapping at the end of a rope.

Marcos and Mubarak are very instructive. They what happens when an elite order loses legitimacy, causing their supporters in the Army to defect to the other side. The old order collapse abruptly. Assad and Saddam Hussein show what happens when an elite order loses legitimacy but there is nobody to whom their supporters can defect. They hang on and a long bloody conflict with no resolution emerges.
The army -- and the police. You have an important point on the two Ba'ath regimes: there is only anarchy. But that presumes that the totalitarian order is already entrenched. In both cases one has regimes that have lasted fifty years and that few people know anything else.

The economic elite in this country requires a liberal world supportive of free trade and political rights for individual. Such a world necessarily requires that places will always exist for defectors. In that case elites can only rule as long as the bulk of the ruled confer legitimacy on them. I hardly think that Americans will have to experience “wages driven back to subsistence levels” before they will withdraw legitimacy from their rulers.
Indeed we would probably have many secession movements, this time by liberals. Although secession by states in the anticipation of legal changes has been shown unlawful, secession in the name of "republican governments" that states are required to have in accordance with the Constitution might be lawful. A huge difference exists between South Carolina in 1860 (the seceding state was no democracy) and Lithuania in 1990 (which showed unqualified signs of becoming a liberal democracy). Most states of the Union would have economic viability.

Right-wingers make much of the banning of firearms -- but I can think of grounds for state secession. One is that the federal Government seeks to replace elected Governors with appointed governors. Another is the outlawry of opposition parties or the mandate that one of the two main parties become subordinate to the other. Others entail censorship of news media, banning of meetings of three or more people for political purposes, establishment of a state religion, replacement of jury trials with secret tribunals, ex post facto laws, bills of attainder...
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#71 at 09-21-2013 11:06 PM by JordanGoodspeed [at joined Mar 2013 #posts 3,587]
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Really, dude? Fascism/Civil War stuff again?







Post#72 at 09-21-2013 11:27 PM by Bad Dog [at joined Dec 2012 #posts 2,156]
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Gentlebeings:

The best we can hope for is post WW 2 Britain. We're headed for Banana Republic territory, now.







Post#73 at 09-22-2013 04:49 AM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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Quote Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed View Post
Really, dude? Fascism/Civil War stuff again?
We need a good scare. 4Ts include the most dangerous times in history, the times in which the sharpest contrast between good and bad consequences are possible. Just think of Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle as the definitive expression of how bad a Crisis Era could go in the past.

Fascism was the focus of danger in the last completed 4T, something possible only in depraved social orders and failed states. The American Civil War exemplifies one possible danger of a corrupt and cruel economic order. Again, much of what I discuss is possible but unlikely.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#74 at 09-22-2013 11:45 AM by herbal tee [at joined Dec 2005 #posts 7,115]
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Quote Originally Posted by Bad Dog View Post
Gentlebeings:

The best we can hope for is post WW 2 Britain. We're headed for Banana Republic territory, now.
**** DING **** We have a winner.







Post#75 at 09-22-2013 02:43 PM by Mikebert [at Kalamazoo MI joined Jul 2001 #posts 4,501]
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Quote Originally Posted by Kepi View Post
So, for example a metal fabricator at a particular company would be tier 1, 2, or 3 based on years served. This sort of action would be very easy to implement because the majority of the shares, and therefore the votes are held by older employees.
A scheme to granted above-market wages to workers simply because they are older would raise labor costs relative to firms that did not do this. These firms would gain market share and probably hire disgruntled younger workers away from the original firm. The original firm would eventually go bankrupt and serve as a object lesson for why gaming the system in this way is not a good idea.

And yes, Marx wrote about one form of socialism, but it set the definition as socialism being state controlled.
No it set the definition for his kind of socialism to be state-owned. As the Wiki article describes, other kinds of socialism did not call for state control.

Allowing corporations to retain their power
Corporations have no agency. They are tools and are inimical based on what their owners do with them. Corporate power has a dim reputation because they are a tool of capitalists. It is the capitalist agenda that is the problem, not the corporate vehicle. Corporations that are owned by the working population can be used to influence policy in directions approved by workers. Workers and their dependents constitute a majority of the electorate and so corporate power would just be another democratic vehicle, like the voting booth. It is only when corporate ownership is concentrated in the hands of a class of people whose economic interests are in opposition to the electorate that the result in undemocratic.

Also, minimal changes are what got us into this mess. It's going to take a lot more than profit sharing to change the trends we've been seeing.
Since you do not know how these trends got started, how can you say this? Because the period of lower levels of inequality seen in the three decades after WW II were created by a small set of changes, and were reversed by a small set of changes, there is no reason not to believe that a similarly small set of changes could achieve the sort of economy with which millennials could be reasonably content. The problem is the required changes are politically impossible at present. First, the politics must be changed, after that solving the economic problems is relatively easy.

And to do that the more enthusiastically pro-capitalist party (right now this is the Republicans) must be defeated at the polls over a sufficient number of elections that Reagan-Bush-Tea Party conservativism will become completed discredited like Hoover was during the last 4T, and the Plantation elite were in the 4T before that.

Application of the 40 year rule has the next “Ike” or Republican Clinton to be elected in 2032. Therefore between now and 2032 Democrats have to dominate politics for a sufficiently long time that that an Ike becomes possible. Seems to me that is a long time. During this time, should it occur, it will be possible to implement the necessary correctives by defeating politicians in Democratic-leaning regions (which will be a majority unlike today) who are insufficiently progressive, much as the New Right did with the GOP.
Last edited by Mikebert; 09-22-2013 at 02:54 PM.
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