What is better: Communism or Capitalism?

I'm not buying that they're really dichotomous. We seem to have capitalist communism going right now, and while it has its good points, it also sucks.

 

1. Financial capital is capital. I assumed you knew that I was speaking of financial capital when I said investment, investment capital ie the resources needed to build a business. Of course any capital you own is generally wealth.

2. That is a not true. In fact my example clearly disproved your theory before you cited it. The leather factory has no financial incentive to protect the farmer's land. The argument has been made and makes no sense. For example, if a business deforests a large area of land they will plant trees to preserve their land, right? Wrong. Because the business has no financial incentive to plant more trees that will take hundreds of years to grow.

 

Capital is a vague term but in in economics, capital refers to production and goods.

Your example has no basis on how this operates in the real world. Private Property Rights keeps other people from trashing another property, not regulation. Private property owners have an incentive to keep their property clean. If they trash it, that hurts the bottom line. If they go can trash someone else's private property, they'll face law suits.

Who owns the forest which the business is cutting the trees down? The business would have to get permission from whoever owns the forest and lease out a square unit in which the business can actually cut. The owner and care takers of the forest have an incentive to protect the forest and replant the trees to replace the trees logged.

 

Well, I agree with most of your ideas, because I support ending the military industrial complex, ending the war on drugs, and decentralizing the bankers and lobbyists. I will encompass all of the war points into an example to make it simpler. The US used military actions to clear Native Americans from their land and redistribute the land through cheap/free farm contracts to Europeans, the homestead act. In turn, they were able to tax the trains that shipped the vegetables and use the land to stabilize food stock and provide "bread baskets" for the nation.

There is nothing you can say to me that will convince me that the US government would engage in a war without a series of financial motives aligned with the interest of American elitists and American dominance over resources and other political systems. It is simply illogical. Besides, I never understood the conservative idea that government is inherently evil, yet the military is this shining bastion of altruism.

 

Wars typically have motivations behind them. Aside from that banal point, of course you don't understand such a badly misconstrued idea as "government is inherently evil, yet the military is this shining bastion of altruism." Perhaps if you were intellectually honest enough to approach the argument of limited government, it would be a little easier to understand. Of course, that would be asking to much of a leftist ideologue.

 

1. Here is another quote:
"Capital comprises the physical and non-physical assets (such as education and skills) used in making goods and services. Money is primarily a means of exchanging one good for another. Capital is measured in monetary terms, and since money (cash) buys physical assets (for example, buys a factory), capital is often thought of as money."

As I said, capital is capital. When someone says "I need capital to start my business" they are referring to the overall necessities needed to open a business. If I open a restaurant, that could mean cooking utensils, a storefront, workers (ie labor/intellectual capital), refrigerators, stoves, etc. But all of these things require financial capital. There is no capital without money. The argument is semantical. The original point is valid, without money you cant afford the basic necessities needed to start a business. This is why businesses become conglomerates then monopolies and then governments. The larger businesses have the resources to crush the smaller businesses. It is an inherent flaw in capitalism and the free market system.

2. Property rights rarely protect against such things, which is why we have environmental regulations. Another example is air pollution. Look at countries like China who have very little regulations. The rivers are polluted, there is smog from smoke stacks, etc. The most successful businesses will always hold the bottom line (profit) above consumer safety or the property of others. This is part of the reason companies outsource labor, so they can do business in a country where they needn't worry about the safety of the general public or their own workers.

3. As I said, it takes hundreds of years for forests to grow. Regardless of the owner of the land, which is generally leased from governments, the forests serve a public good and therefore must be protected. The basis of regulation on businesses is at the behest of public safety and the common welfare of the employees. Therefore, such regulations are merely an extension of the law.

Take for example drug cartels. They operate outside of the law and outside of government regulation. And how often do they protect their own workers, which one would assume is in their best interest to protect? They kill them to protect their bottom line.

 

It is difficult to understand because it is contradictory to call for a "limited government" but support a defense budget of 700 billion or more and military bases stationed around the world.

 

You should probably look it up in an economic text. But until then, lets just use an actual business dictionary.

http://economics.about.com/cs/economicsglossary/g/capital.htm

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economic-capital.asp#axzz1bqOuaV4V

Private Property rights always protect those things. No one ever trashes the property of another because there is a protection of Private Property Rights. If forests were public property merely anyone can cut tress down without worrying about the ramification. If no one owns anything, no one has the incentive to keep it clean.

Thanks for proving my point. Everything in China is publicly owned. Private property owners have an incentive to keep their own property clean. No such incentive exist with publicly own property.

Businesses outsource because an area is not business friendly. No one has an incentive to keep publicly own property clean and everything in China is publicly owned. That's why there is pollution there.

It's not the regulations that is keeping them from cutting the forest down. It's the protection of Private Property. What is keeping businesses from polluting? Private Property Rights. If lakes were public domain merely anyone can pollute as they wish. It's why no one gets fined or in trouble for throwing cigarettes on the street or littering. It's "public domain."

Stupid example ares stupid. The point of a black market is not to obey the law. They have no concern for private property rights. The ones who do hold a concern for private property rights are the ones who are actually concerned when they violate the rights of others.

 

Your definition of capital was exactly what I had previously stated it to be...

People don't have an incentive to keep public property clean? What about national parks?

The China argument is a cop-out. The land is distributed by the government and banks, the same as in America, but the businesses are not regulated. Hence, pollution.

The argument that a business will keep their land pristine is historically wrong. Look at cancer statistics for Flint, Michigan, a direct result of non-regulated manufacturing. Without an environmental agency, the business would deny even polluting the environment and there would be no agency to conduct scientific tests to prove who is telling the truth. Further, since most conservatives deny the facts concerning scientifically proven phenomenon such as climate change, I would prefer an agency of scientists to administer environmental regulation than businessmen.

The black market is the free market - a completely unregulated business model. Pure capitalism.

 

If you use it in a vague sense it can mean anything.

National parks have plenty of pollution. That's why most coal power plants are located in those places.

You really think China doesn't care about it's pollution? It signed the Kyoto Protocol. No it's not the same as America. Land in China is state owned. Private ownership exist but China controls all the property. They decides who gets it and who doesn't, and can take it without due process or recourse. Private Property Rights does not exist in China.

Climate Change has no basis on anything. Environmental Regulation keeps businesses from operating from where they normally would. It doesn't stop them from polluting all together. There is no environmental rule or regulation which prevents a business from dumping in your front yard. Private Property Rights prevent that. If your home was an empty lot businesses would dump there because it's not owned by anyone.

No it's not. Capitalism requires a protection of Private Property Rights and The Rule of Law. The Black Market becomes the black market when there is regulation and price controls, which are things which doesn't exist in a Free Market. The Free Market regulates itself.

 

1. I didn't use it in a vague sense, I said you need capital to go into business. Which is true. Whether you want to specify it as financial capital or monetary worth, it all comes down to money, property and liquid assets. All indispensable in creating a business.

2. Such things as coal mining in parks rarely occur without a huge fight from local residents and environmental advocates, but in the end, money wins and the business is allowed to pollute. You honestly believe that nobody cares about our national park system because it is public?

3. In China land is state owned and distributed through a banking system. Which is essentially the same as the United States. Powerful institutions control the property and have the power to throw you off of your property, often unethically, in the case of illegal foreclosures or eminent domain in the US.

4. Climate change has a lot of basis. Since pollution is a global issue, the issue of environmental regulation can only become wider-reaching in the future. If China cared about pollution, they wouldn't be so polluted. The purpose of environmental regulation is to keep in perspective the health of the community and the environment. Germany has a much stronger manufacturing sector than the US and has more environmental regulation than the US. Their country has a positive trade surplus, ours has a trade deficit. How do you explain that?

5. Just because you ascribe a certain definition to capitalism, doesn't mean others have to. There have been economists who advocated a capitalist system without oversight toward property. Any system of exchange based on supply and demand is capitalistic, which is exactly what drug dealing is.

 

Somebody has to. But no one has an incentive to keep it clean because it's publicly owned.

No it's not the same tin the United States. In China, the state owns the land and decides who to give it to. In the United States, private institutions or individuals owns the land and sells them on the market place. That is different from what China does.

Eminent domain requires force and the force can only come from government intervention.

China has no guarentee or protection of private property rights.

Environmental regulation has nothing to do with trade. Germany has a basic protection of private property rights.

http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/es/esi/ESI2005.pdf

http://www.internationalpropertyrightsindex.org/atr_Final1.pdf

There is an Environmental Stability and Property Rights index. Then check out page 26 on the Property Rights Index (Physical Property Rights). Then compare the following counties: United States, Denmark, Germany. And then look at China, Italy, Poland. You'll notice that the places with the highest Environmental Stability has the greatest protection of Physical Private Property Rights. The places I've named with the least amount of environmental stability have the worse protection of physical private property rights.

Others don't have to but that is the basic fundamental of Capitalism. Capitalism was founded on the fundamentals of Private Property Rights and Rule of Law. Without both of these things, a Capitalist country cannot be capitalist.

No that is merely trade. Trade does not require supply and demand. The rule of law does not allow for the black market.

 

http://www.modelgovernment.org/en/which-of-the-ideologies-and-government-really-serves-for-people.html

 

NetworkCitizen,
I am grateful to you for an appreciation of my work. Thanks!
Unfortunately, people give vent to the emotions and don't offer anything constructive. It is normal but is additional argument against direct democracy. Only professionals should do a policy.
How to force them to work FOR people? http://www.modelgovernment.org/en/the-self-balancing-model-of-government.html

 

This is just a bunch of propertarian hogwash. There have been no landowners in Hong Kong for over 160 years, yet Hong Kong is as clean or cleaner than capitalist cities of comparable population density. The land of Singapore is over 2/3 publicly owned, and Singapore is very clean and well maintained. Furthermore, these two countries top the economic freedom index…go figure.

"The appropriation of land as private property requires force and the force can only come from government intervention".

Furthermore, without eminent domain, there would be no roads or right-of-ways. How would your customers come to your place of business without these publicly owned right-of-ways?

But not all property is the same, the trick is to distinguish between rightful property in the products of labor, and wrongful property in government issued privileges. I support full ownership (non-taxed) property in the products of labor. The only way to fully secure earned property in the products of labor is to place all taxation on unearned property in government-issued privileges.

"Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economising. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and not the individual who might hold title." — John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873), English philosopher and social reformer, and one of the major intellectual figures of the 19th century

 

What you're describing is what screwed up Capitalism: and what did requires Communist trappings. Big Government is what has screwed up Capitalism. Big Government is an inherently Communist mechanation.

How is this too hard for you to understand?

 

^ completely contrary to human nature. whenever two people gather, one will emerge as the leader. how they lead is what makes the difference.

 

Communism is a failed ideology. It correctly identified the historical clash of interests between the over-class and the under-class (capitalists and workers being the current dialetic, in Communist jargon) but came up with a ludicrous conclusion and solution. First they decided that this historical phenomena would somehow come to a close just because they had identified it, and then they tried to micro-manage the market while assuming a large number of incorruptible revolutionaries would be capable of seeing the Communist process through to a worker's paradise.

The truth is that you ignore supply and demand and the choices of the aggregate of consumers from all classes at your peril: all interference in the market brings potential side effects (some mild and some very bad indeed). You are also not going to get rid of the over-class or the under-class: the best you can do (the socialist approach) is to reduce the gap and make the playing field of class conflict more level.

Capitalism has the great advantage of monetary liquidity and embracing of supply and demand (in the free market form, at any rate), but it does have numerous drawbacks. The first is the tendency toward corporatism and crony-capitalism, where government is used to benefit certain capitalist interests at the expense of the free market (sort of socialism for the rich). Subidies, tax breaks, government guarantees and grants and even the right set of regulations can benefit a capitalist.

Another drawback is that the free market is amoral and embracing it entirely is an amoral decision. To use a gross example, there is a demand and an (illegal) supply for child pornography, but that doesn't mean we should let the free market settle the natural supply level in response to the perceived demand. Most considerations are much less gross, but an important and obvious one is that environmental concerns fit poorly into supply and demand yet are very important over time as the world population advances by a billion every 12 or 13 years.

There is also an offset between defence spending and the free market. So much is spent on military spending because of a perceived need to carry a big stick by the modern decision-makers in the USA, but the military has traditionally been much smaller (except during wartime) in all the prior history of the United States of America up to the beginning of World War Two. In other words, when America was closer to a free market economy military spending was minimal.

Then there is the whole question of health-care, or how social concerns fit into Capitalism, or even to what extent the chasing of ever-larger profit margins inevitably causes market retrenchments (the boom and bust cycle of Capitalism). Capitalism is a bit like Democracy: it is the worst system in the world, except for all the other systems.

 

"The final goal of Adam Smith's uncontrolled capitalism is clear: concentration of capital leads to a caste of “chosen by God” loafers, with unlimited possibilities, who use all others only as WORK HORSES and INTERMEDIATE STAGE IN CAPITAL INCREASE. But the enormous quantity of what the rich, the people who run the mill, see as “unnecessary” people demands expensive social conditions, creates environmental problems, and even traffic jams.
But it is also socially highly explosive. So how do they get rid of humans whom they see as a waste, since machines have totally replaced them? Male sterilization? Step-by-step degeneration through unhealthy genetically modified food sold to the people via powerful advertising? Entrapment in local wars? Or Hitler-style death camps?"

"The Russians have a religious rite to close eyes of deceased by means of coins. The unlimited cult of money and greed will ‘close eyes’ of all civilization in the end."

"The common man will remain an abandoned and defenseless orphan under the uncontrollable domination of ANY caste of “god-like” rulers: whether they call themselves capitalists or communists. This will continue for as long as..."

Which of the Ideologies and Government really serves FOR People and consolidates society? http://www.modelgovernment.org/en/which-of-the-ideologies-and-government-really-serves-for-people.html

 

How can a mechanism which allows extremely hard working people to succeed - and allow those who participate with them in their endeavors to likewise succeed - lead to loafers?

It is anathema to the very core of their beings to be loafers in order to attain the position you claim would be a problem!

 

The hard working people who are occupied by a survival, cannot be the idler. The loafers are who parasitizes on results of another's work by means of the understated salary or the high prices. I not the communist. It is a sight from outside.

 

There are landowners in Hong Kong and Singagpore so that is incorrect. Government leases land. Once it changes from state to citizen it's private property.

Eminent domain entails taking property Government taking property from one private citizen and transferring it to another. It's not eminent domain if you take property of another private citizen and transfer it to the government.

It doesn't matter if all property is the same. Private Property Rights entails that the Government cannot take your property without due process.

 

Whats the difference between Communism and Capitalism?

i wish this country would go back to a Republic, like the constitution said we should be...

 

It's all about the money, who controls it, the individual or the state.

 

It is incorrect. Even in your communist Russia, the concept of retirement is recognized and protected. God help the "hard working people who are occupied by survival"...and actually succeed so conclusively as to create a mechanism which gains wealth for them to become noteworthy enough to be subject to your wrath, eh?

No better way to become qualified for your loafer status than to first be the quintessential example of your "hard working people", eh?



What is the difference between the concept of retirement - and a pension - and someone working hard their entire lives to create a mechanism that both supports them with an income in their retirement and provides a means of subsistence for those looking to earn a living and gain life experience so that they can eventually do likewise?

Your claims are false; your objections hollow.

There is no unjust loafing in a system which allows a man to create his own wealth generating machine. It's called prosperity, and you should question your kneejerk aversion to it.