Do You Prefer Capitalism or Socialism?

I am talking about what you have said in OUR conversation. I cannot help that you consistently respond several days later, at which point you have no idea of the totality of our conversation.

Personally I find you to be a colossal waste of time and I have no interest in pursuing this conversation, but it seems like once per week or so you pop up with yet another mindless quip. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

One thing few Americans, much less American conservatives acknowledge: The USA already has a lot of socialism to it.

The police, fire department, and military, yes your dear dear military, are all socialist state run institutions.

 

What "license" did they use to steal from you and please be specific. How much did they steal and how? I have a lot of wealth compared to the average American, I did not steal it with some license.

 

No that is not socialism.

 

If you can get a license to steal in the states can I get one in the UK?

 

How come?

 

Those are common endeavors for public safety and security, government functions, not economic endeavors, just because the state runs it does not mean it is socialism. Capitalism had no such "ban" on proper government functions.

 

Does capitalism have a ban on education? If memory serves it was the rich who first financed education for the masses.
I can tell you how this goes. I will list one by one the things capitalism paid for unprompted until we reach the point where your bag of capitalism is empty of everything but slogans.

 

Why are you trying to change the subject to me personally? That is against forum rules. It also seems to be the only "argument" disingenuous apologists for greed, privilege and injustice seem capable of conceiving. You are effectively claiming that only slaves can credibly be abolitionists. Do you think it would be responsive to an abolitionist who was never a slave to say, "What slave deed did slave owners ever use to steal from you, and please be specific"?

It is impossible to calculate, but at a minimum it would be pretty much all the taxes I ever paid, most of the rent I have ever paid, and a large chunk of all the money I ever spent on food, clothing, books, computers, and other consumer goods.

Sure you did. If you have owned a land title, a bank license, an IP monopoly, oil or mineral rights, a broadcast spectrum allocation, or if you have owned shares of any company that owned such privileges, then you have been stealing using a license to steal.

 

Absolutely. Every private title of land ownership is a license to steal.

 

It is your claim they have some license to steal from you, you are one of the people aren't you. Well what is this license and how have they stolen from you?

How did these evil people get your tax dollars and what license did they use. And the rent you paid was your agreed upon payment for a service they provide to you with their property. The money you pay for food is for the product they supply to you, you don't have to buy it. Why do you believe you should get everything for free someone else having to pay the cost of providing it to you>

Well I own my home for which I paid with my labor to do so, yes I have owned LOTS of companies which use my capital and pay me a return to do so, you know those people who provide you with those products you believe you should get for free. You are free to apply and own all those things, this is a free country with a free market, it doesn't exist so you have to do nothing to get what you want in life.

 

I have the title to my land and home in my file cabinet and I just looked it doesn't say "license" let alone "license to steal". Why don't I find some pot of gold at my front door everyday from my "license"?

 

No in fact capitalism encourages education and a private educational system. And education was all private during the time when the country was founded and there is ample evidence to show that if we injected more capitalism and free market into the system we would see better results. But again that is NOT socialism, there is no government order that there will be no private education that all schools must be government owned schools.

 

Yes. Well said.

Health Care is a good example too. So is public housing. Necessities of life easily as vital as mail delivery (the post office) or fire protection (the fire department), or schools or garbage collection.

What is declared to be an "economic function" instead of a "proper government function" is debatable, and even the likes of Bernie Sanders aren't asking that factories (the means of production) be nationalized. That would be communism, not socialism.

 

Excellent, how much do they cost?

 

So education isn't socialism either? How about doctors and medicine?

 

You'll have to ask the owners.

 

Outside of facilities for orphans, the profoundly disabled, bonafide refugees, and the very elderly - housing should never be provided by Govt as a matter of course. Housing is the responsibility of the private individual, not Govt.

 

But that's what it is. I already proved that to you with the story of the bandit.

You do. How much has the community increased the value of your land for you just in the last year, hmmmmm? All that money is stolen. By you.

But in any case, how much the holder of a license to steal steals depends on how active he is in exercising his privilege of legal stealing. Duh. A slave owner won't necessarily whip or mistreat his slaves, and many treated their slaves better than landowners treat their tenants: after all, a slave is a valuable asset, whereas tenants can be murdered by the millions with no financial loss to the landowner. That some slave owners do not choose to wring every dollar from their properties doesn't mean a slave deed is not a license to steal.

GET IT???

 

The same applies to everyone. You are intent on trying to make me, personally, the topic of the thread.

The licenses take many forms, and I have listed the main ones for you. They steal by forcibly depriving everyone of their liberty rights to do what they would otherwise have been at liberty to do and making them pay for permission to do so, much like a protection racketeer.

By taking and pocketing the value of the desirable public services and infrastructure my tax dollars went to pay for (Google "Henry George Theorem" and start reading (you won't)).

See above. That one was mainly land titles.

They didn't provide any service as landowners, because the land was already there, and would have been perfectly available if they had never existed. If the land was already there, ready to use, with no help from them or any previous owner -- and it indisputably was -- how can they possibly be providing it, hmmmmm? You could with equal "logic" claim they are providing the service of keeping zombies away.

Think fast.

The fact that I don't have to buy it is completely irrelevant. I have a liberty right to deal with my fellows by voluntary mutual consent, and those holding licenses to steal forcibly impose an additional cost on such dealings. That is stealing.

Why do you feel you have to make $#!+ up and falsely attribute it to me? Why do you feel you have to somehow make me personally the subject of the thread?

See? You always have to just make $#!+ up. There is no cost of providing land to me, as it was already there, ready to use, at no cost to anyone. They just want to forcibly remove my liberty right to use it, without making just compensation for what they are taking from me.

Just as slave owners paid for slave deeds with their labor.

Any "argument" that was used to justify slavery is known in advance to be fallacious, disingenuous and evil, with no further argumentation needed.

But how do they get that return? There's the rub.

Land is not a product.

That one indisputable fact utterly demolishes you and everything you have said.

"You are free to buy and own slaves."

As your "argument" was used to justify slavery, it is known in advance to be fallacious, disingenuous and evil, with no further argumentation needed.

A market in which others' rights to liberty are bought and sold is not a free market. It is a slave market. And I will thank you to remember it.

See? You have no choice but to just make $#!+ up and falsely attribute it to me.

 

More accurately, housing is a product of labor, and thus rightly the property of its producers. There is therefore never a right to housing: unlike life, liberty, and property in the fruits of one's labor, it is not something one would otherwise have. But if people have a right to liberty, they can easily provide themselves with housing. It's when their rights to liberty have been forcibly stripped from them and made into the private property of landowners that the weakest economic competitors are driven into homelessness.

 

Ok I'm going to try one more time so let's focus like a laser here. What same applies to everyone you are making claims about things and I'm trying to figure out what they are. You say they apply to everyone will then that includes you so tell me how these things did something to you>

You haven't listed any licenses at all. What rights of yours have been deprived and by whom and how did they do it. What have you not had the liberty to do that you want to do and who is depriving you of it?

Now please be specific and not vague statements about vague principles and unnamed effects of people.

 

I did.
Its a scam. The licences cost the same amount as the land you get.

 

And there is the rub.
Each person draws a ring round the things they want covered and calls everything outside that ring socialism and not the job of govt.

So why is it the job of govt to provide protection from attack, but not protection from the elements.

 

Providing free housing would be the opposite of socialism, though. It's a fairly extreme level of privilege/largess, and can only come from a robustly capitalist economy and politic. I don't dislike free housing for any of the reasons you perhaps suppose, for that reason. My perspective is that it isn't socialist enough. Socialism requires that any material benefit (housing, food, etc) is earned, not gifted.

For the very reason given above. An individual cannot defend a nation against attack, but they can certainly earn the basic materials of their own survival (housing, food, etc). After all, the poorest people on earth mostly still manage to find ways to provide themselves and their families with shelter.