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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted May 14, 2012 02:21 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 15:35, 14 May 2012.
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Quote:
Be more specific. What "issue" are you talking about? And what "instabilities"?
Issue is X gets 1 while Y gets 1+n of resources which are globally and locally limited and they both need. Instabilities - clashes of interests, revolts, wars, etc. Something unclear again?
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- Reduce the welfare state. This will reconnect people with the consequences of their actions. If you refuse to take a job because of "pride", you will go hungry unless you already have money (or someone willing to help you).
- Improve education. This means more than just teaching people history and such more effectively - it means teaching them about how life works. If you have two kids before you're 20, you'll be miserable, so don't have kids that young. If you get an education in a reasonably good field, you'll have a good chance at a decently-paying job. If you drop out of high school, you'll probably be flipping burgers.
- If your own attitude is wrong, change it. Sometimes I see people making excuses for others, saying something like, "He's poor and didn't have good opportunities." It doesn't matter how poor you are, beating your girlfriend is never a good idea. Don't make excuses - they should've known better. Poverty is no excuse for crime.
All of this is poetry. Like I said, your point is "people think and behave incorrectly according to the theory so people need to change their thinking and behaviour and all will fit in." It just doesn't work like that. Engels thought that the revolution and the common movement of all non-capitalist classes in the society towards the goal of communism will temper the character of the masses and the consciousness will gradually evolve to a state where all individuals are socially-aware and act for the benefit of the entire society, not only for their individual asses - in reality nothing like that happened. You are suggesting something very similar, except that according to you people should feel comfortable with whatever **** life (and particularly other people) pours on their heads. Good luck trying to convince them.
MOD EDIT: Language.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted May 14, 2012 02:24 PM |
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Quote:
Good luck trying to convince them.
I'm pretty sure someone (not necessarily mvass) will answer you the typical "then work harder" stuff 
I think socialism sucks, and that corporatism sucks. Capitalism leads in a straight line to corporatism, so it's not good. Damn, not a single good system out there. And we're still too stupid to create a benevolent dictator AI.
By the way: the discussion has gone totally off topic..
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We reached to the stars and everything is now ours
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Baklava
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Mostly harmless
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posted May 14, 2012 03:01 PM |
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Edited by Baklava at 15:05, 14 May 2012.
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Right. So. We all know that basic market principles are applicable in pretty much any relation between those who produce and those who buy. We're also kind of aware that work is also a product, with its producers (workers) and buyers (employers). But you can also look at it from the other side, the employers being the producers of money and the employees buying it with their work. And when you make a crappy product and charge too much for it, you're usually not going to make too much of a profit, since not everyone can be the late Steve Jobs.
Now, let's say you're a poor guy that has a little money and you're off to get some bread. There's a public kitchen where there's some relatively low quality bread for free, and there's a bakery where the bread is the same or worse, but costs money.
Replace the poor guy with an able-bodied lower class fellow, his money with his work power, the public kitchen with the welfare system, and the bakery selling stale bread with an employer that offers a low wage, requires demeaning submissiveness to a bullying boss and/or has other similar problems.
Some folks blame the little guy for going to the public kitchen, or rather, challenge the public kitchen's right to exist in the first place. But there's little to no mention of the bakery doing a crappy job.
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"Let me tell you what the blues
is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted May 14, 2012 03:18 PM |
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Edited by Zenofex at 15:21, 14 May 2012.
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I think the point is that if there's no public kitchen, the worker will have to perform free exchange with the crappy baker or die (bluntly put) - it's a free choice though  - and that eventually the crappy baker and all other crappy bakers in the economy will reduce the unemployment and globally improve the overall performance, which in turn might lead to not-so-crappy bakers. Reality check - XVIII and XIX century employment, working conditions (and salaries) prior to the government regulations.
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 14, 2012 04:43 PM |
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Isn't the best choice a mix between socialism and capitalism?
Like pretty much all European countries have more or less?
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Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted May 14, 2012 04:54 PM |
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I'm not sure I'd put Europe's economic model on any kind of pedestal. Germany is pretty much single-handledly supporting everyone else.
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 14, 2012 05:31 PM |
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Edited by xerox at 17:33, 14 May 2012.
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Well, the problem is mainly the southern countries that skipped economy class in school. The nordic countries don't really rely on Germany. I'm pretty sure most european countries don't do that.
Either way, I love my wellfare and free education and I would move to Canada rather than the US any day of the week.
____________
Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted May 14, 2012 05:39 PM |
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"free education".
Haven't you ever heard the saying, "there's no such thing as a free lunch"? There's no such thing as free education, there's only education that you (meaning the taxpayer) pay for indirectly by higher taxes, and it's questionable whether that education is good or not, or even less expensive over all than education that people pay for by more direct means. Even all that aside, I'm not sure how education in Europe is any more "free" than in the US - for that matter, do you know anything about the education system in the US or are you, as usual, just regurgitating myth-based opinions masquerading in your head as facts?
And as for welfare, regardless of whether or not you think there SHOULD be welfare, I'm fairly certain it's not something to be proud of. Those kind of government-funded social programs, by the way, and general entitlement mentality, is pretty much to blame for many of the problems of southern europe that "skipped economy class" (whatever that means), so I wouldn't dismiss them so easily as irrelevant.
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del_diablo
Legendary Hero
Manifest
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posted May 14, 2012 05:47 PM |
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Quote:
I'm not sure I'd put Europe's economic model on any kind of pedestal. Germany is pretty much single-handledly supporting everyone else.
This is dishonesty at its worst. Why are you dishonest? Why do you not mention the keywords such as Inflation, Euro and Backroom Deals?
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 14, 2012 05:48 PM |
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I don't think you can say that european tax-funded education is good or bad, since there isn't one. Each country has a different kind of education system. For example, in Sweden we are jealous for Finland because they have a better education systtem than we do. (but finland is also a much less segregated society) >.>
Well, the facts don't lie. There are a lot more "poor" people in the US, you have high unemployment, lots of people have health issues and everybody doesn't get an equal chance to get a good education. Poor people have rights to have good healthcare and education.
I'm not really sure what the benefits for european countries to adopt the US system would be.
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Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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Minion
Legendary Hero
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posted May 14, 2012 06:08 PM |
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Providing education is one of those things I gladly pay taxes about, and luckily here so does mostly everyone else. That is one criteria why a country is called a developed country in the first place...
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"These friends probably started using condoms after having produced the most optimum amount of offsprings. Kudos to them for showing at least some restraint" - Tsar-ivor
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted May 14, 2012 06:52 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 18:54, 14 May 2012.
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Xerox:
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Well, the facts don't lie.
Then let's start using facts rather than suppositions, shall we?
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There are a lot more "poor" people in the US,
The use of stock quotes is a bad start if we're going to use facts. What do you mean by poor? The World Bank's definition of "poverty line" is earning less than US $1.25 a day. Unfortunately WB doesn't list data for either the US or Sweden (or most European countries for that matter), probably because in both cases the percentage is very low. You can see lots of poverty indicators at WB's website, here.
Using a National poverty line as a metric (the standard of living determined in each country to qualify as "poor"), the US has 15% poverty rate. The EU doesn't have an averaged value in the CIA Factbook, and the various countries of Europe haven't been all assessed in the same year, but the average of Germany (15.5), UK (14), Greece (20%), Switzerland (6.9%), Denmark (13.4), Russia (13.1), Belgium (15.2), Austria (6%), Hungary (13.9), Croatia (18%), Romania (20%), France (6.2), Spain (19.8), Netherlands (10.5), Portugal (18) give an average for Europe of about 13.8%. That's hardly scientific and a lot of those numbers are pretty old, but I think it gives a rough clue that poverty in the US and Europe are at least rather similar. Though, each country here gets to determine what the standard of poverty is, so it's hard to state it as a nice, neat tidy "fact" as you are trying to do.
Beyond that, even if you could somehow, using an objective metric, say that the US has higher poverty than Europe, or even Sweden, it's quite a leap in logic to say that this is solely due to the economic system in place. Poverty is very complicated and has lots of underlying causes. Poverty is also not homogeneous across a vast, heterogeneous nation like the US, or across Europe for that matter, so direct comparisons between Sweden (a much smaller, less population and more demographically homogeneous country) and the US in any case are very silly.
Facts may not lie, but I see no fact about poverty in what you wrote.
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you have high unemployment
First, again, comparing the US and Sweden is dumb for the same reason explained above. Unemployment rate also fluctuates a lot faster than poverty rate, and is influenced by international economy health as much as any kind of national system, so I don't know what you think it's going to show.
Currently unemployment rate in the US (as of April) is about 8.1%. The unemployment rate in Europe in February was 10.2% (source) - quite a bit higher than the UR in the US, actually. In Sweden at the same time, by the way, the unemployment rate was 7.5%. So even if you want to do an absurd comparison between the US and Sweden, it's not that big a difference (about 0.5%).
Another of your "facts" debunked.
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lots of people have health issues
Huh? Really, this is what passes for a "fact" with you? What metric are you using, and how, in any case, does "health issues" relate to economic system in your mind? Lots of people have "health issues" (whatever those are) everywhere.
The obvious choice for a metric here I guess would be life expectancy, but that's a tricky thing and doesn't necessarily reflect today's economic conditions. Sweden does have a higher LE than the US (80.1 vs 78.2) - not really that big a difference, but ok, I'll give it to you, for whatever it's worth. (And again, we're making an absurd comparison between two vastly different kinds of countries.) That said, Spain, one of those "southern european countries" that "skipped their economy classes" has an even higher life expectancy than Sweden, so so much for your argument. Maybe it has something to do with diet?
You could also use mortality rate, for which the US has a value of 8.4 and the EU has a ranking of 9.6 deaths per 1000 (Sweden's is even higher: 10.21 deaths per 1000). (US wins again!)
A better metric might be morbidity rate, but that's something that's usually measured for specific diseases or conditions. I couldn't find any overall morbidity rates for US and Europe, which just goes to show that you aren't really using "facts", are you?
Even so, I'm not sure how any of that is supposed to be related to an allegedly better economic system in Europe or Sweden.
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and everybody doesn't get an equal chance to get a good education.
This isn't a fact either. What do you mean by "chance" to get a good education, and, for that matter, what is your metric for "good". FYI, everyone here in the US has "free" public school education, whether they pay property taxes or not, and state colleges are heavily subsidized.
By the way, speaking of education, yeah the education system here in the US is pretty messed up. It's got a problems, not the least of which is the way it's paid for. In fact, a lot of federal government meddling in primary education here has made it a lot worse than a lot better, not to mention wasting a lot of money in the process.
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I'm not really sure what the benefits for european countries to adopt the US system would be.
Neither do I, since I'm not sure how the type of system influences many of the issues you've highlighted. And in any case, Europe and US are fairly similar in many metrics, suggesting that the things you think (erroneously) are so much worse in the US have no relationship to the economic system in place at all.
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del_diablo
Legendary Hero
Manifest
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posted May 14, 2012 06:56 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 20:03, 14 May 2012.
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MOD EDIT: Next post like that, diablo, and you get a silence and lose a star. You've been warned.
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted May 14, 2012 07:08 PM |
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Edited by Zenofex at 19:11, 14 May 2012.
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And as for welfare, regardless of whether or not you think there SHOULD be welfare, I'm fairly certain it's not something to be proud of. Those kind of government-funded social programs, by the way, and general entitlement mentality, is pretty much to blame for many of the problems of southern europe that "skipped economy class" (whatever that means), so I wouldn't dismiss them so easily as irrelevant.
What do you mean by Southern Europe? Which countries exactly and what evidences can you provide for the relation between their welfare programs and their current economical condition? Skip Greece, their system was ridiculous indeed.
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 14, 2012 07:13 PM |
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Edited by xerox at 19:14, 14 May 2012.
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I wasn't comparing to Sweden and it's funny that you ignored the part with healthcare.
With good health I was mainly refering to obesity etc. Your government doesn't seem to do a lot to stop it.
Anyway, my point is that your capitalist system isn't reducing unemployment, poverty or making education better etc. The statistics show that the US capitalist system is in no way better than the standard european system. At the same time, your system doesn't give everybody healthcare and free education beyond primary school (where some things still costs, like food and I've read that some schools have an annual fee).
____________
Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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del_diablo
Legendary Hero
Manifest
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posted May 14, 2012 07:21 PM |
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Econimics 101:
Welfare is cheap
Large public sector preverts a spesific form of economic problems
Army is expensive, and corruption with external R&D is extremely expensive
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted May 14, 2012 08:13 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 20:30, 14 May 2012.
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At the same time, your system doesn't give everybody healthcare and free education beyond primary school (where some things still costs, like food and I've read that some schools have an annual fee).
*sigh*
Fact check again.
Everyone in the US, even illegals, get healthcare regardless of whether they are insured. People are not turned away from hospitals in the US if they don't have the means to pay for services. Few people pay for healthcare anyway - they pay for insurance, which isn't the same thing. Insurance companies pay for the overwhelming majority of the (highly inflated) healthcare costs in the US.
Everyone in the US gets to go to public school through college without paying for it directly. Public schools are paid for largely by local property taxes, so you are, effectively, getting free education if you don't own a home - although a more appropriate way to phrase it would be that some other tax payer is funding your child's education. In addition, property taxes do not depend on how many (if any) children you have in the school system - so a family with ten children pays as much for education as a family with one. (This is an injustice.) School budgets are also subsidized by state and federal money as well.
Some public schools have annual fees to help cover costs of food, textbooks or extracurricular activities. This is a recent thing because schools have large budget deficits (in large part because of the way the school systems are run, and here the answer is less government oversight and not more). Families without the means to pay these fees are usually exempt.
State universities offer significantly reduced tuition costs for students from that state, regardless of means. In addition, most universities offer need based scholarships, and money is also awarded to people of need to attend post-secondary education that they pay back after they are finished at low rates.
@Zenofex
You are right, I'm referring mostly to Greece, although I don't think it's fair to just "skip it" because it's convenient to do so. However, also consider Southern Italy - govt half-baked government welfare and infrastructure development programs devestated the area in the 1950s and it still hasn't recovered - and Spain, where the number of unemployed in 2009 would almost excede that in France and Italy combined (Source). The unemployment rate in Spain is a whopping 21.7% in 2011! Maybe that's not all due to welfare and entitlement programs, but it's still a crazy statistic in an economy that's otherwise pretty strong.
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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del_diablo
Legendary Hero
Manifest
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posted May 14, 2012 08:27 PM |
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Healthcare: Only for emergency. If you are dieing of something that will slowly kill you, meds can get too expensive. So is non life threating stuff, like getting a finger sewn back on. Its just that healthcare is so much more than emergency threatment. If its not killing you fast enough, you need insurance.
Schools: Still not free, still a lot of loopholes, and still too expensive. Its basically "get a schoolarship or get debt". If you can afford that in the first place. Basic education is free, but beyond that it really depends. And then the loopholes, and the filthy unwashed peasants, and creationists.
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 14, 2012 08:57 PM |
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But isn't a good health insurance to expensive for poor people?
I've read that millions of people in the US don't have one.
____________
Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 14, 2012 09:04 PM |
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In my opinion you people look at this from a completely wrong angle - the angle of people being a somewhat solid and safe part of a specific society with certain laws.
However, a society - in our modern, slaveless, freedom oriented times - is a VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION of people who agree to give up on their individual rights to live any way they want to based on the prerequisite that the laws and general conditions of said society are just and fair.
I'm rather sure, that the US constitution even encourages people to civil disobedience if it's obvious that isn't the case.
Question: If you are born in a slum, abysmal neighborhood, gang violence, not much schooling, poor, uneducated parents, drug crimes and addiction anywhere, and you see the other side of life and society, of rich do-nothings wasting their time and money away with basically the same things - sex, drugs and R&R - but in a completely different basic situation...
Dont you think that you just may decide that this sux massively and to hell with the law, and society and the whole bull about honesty and working and whatnot?
That it is actually A WAR out there - for a good life versus a hopeless one?
Think about it: if you have nothing to lose you can risk a lot.
Which is basically the reason - the MARKET reason - why there must be something like welfare: a society MUST take care for the lowlifes and bad-lucks and poor, because otherwise those people will simply not accept the rules, which in turn means you need more policing - which costs money as well.
So basically ALL capitalist societies currently suffer from the fact that the rich are way too rich and the poor are just too poor, while the whole middle class is basically well off, but pays a lot of taxes as well.
Thde funny thing especially with the US, but also with Europe, just not so massively, is that they create the illegal market for all the lowlifes themselves: Sex, Drugs, Gambling. Making it illegal AND having unemployed AND no welfare to speak of means, you have basically a SECOND market for the vices.
The bottom line is - your career chances are pretty different, depending on where and under what circumstances you are born and raised - and sadly VICE is pretty good, once you fall below a certain line.
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