Mosher
Mushroom dad
Socialism does work. 
Read: Scandinavian countries, UK, Portugal, China. Must I go on?
Read: Scandinavian countries, UK, Portugal, China. Must I go on?
The Oil resource - civ4 and peak oil ?
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kochman
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Uh, yeah, because the UK and Portugal are doing so well???Socialism does work.
Read: Scandinavian countries, UK, Portugal, China. Must I go on?
Are you awake?
China is more capitalist than socialist, economically speaking, they are just run by a dictatorship with total control...
I would also argue that Sweden isn't exactly working well.
How many new companies are formed in Sweden? They have been economically stagnant, dependent on immigrant labor, etc. They are paying their bills, better than the USA, but they are pretty much stagnant.
Read up on their true situation here:
http://mises.org/daily/2259
That has links to several other examples.
uat2d
ಠ_ಠ
Life's not so bad, people no longer starve and most people have jobs so they still can have some money / dignity.
Yes, it's right you and me and most people are born "in debt" towards what you may call the system, but how else could it be?
I mean, I'm 17 years old (12th grade) and still haven't had a job, nor did most people my age that still attend school. If I get injured I can go to a public hospital and get patched up. People are still getting unemployment insurance and receiving their retirements. Someone has to pay for all of this.
The thing is that apparently taxpayers money isn't enough for all of this and, if that wasn't enough, like all systems that depended on the responsibility of the people, it got abused. It still happens here, people not looking for jobs because they're happy with their unemployment insurance, people hardly working because it's easier for the company to carry dead weight than to fire their employees. It's a shame but it's the truth.
If I was rotting-wealthy I'd also make sure I stayed that way, and if it involved loaning money to countries like Portugal, Greece or Ireland at 7.5% rates even though some people I'd never even get to know might lose their job or their social security systems, I really wouldn't have much problems with it. That's how it works, these people just want more money (if they didn't, they wouldn't have money to lend in the first place), they're not moral institutions.
We just have to make sure that both no money is wasted (therefore my "love" for Capitalism, it's the best way to make people productive, not wasteful) but rather applied properly (it's noble to protect and help the unemployed, but if they're like that not because they can't get a job but rather because they don't want to get a job, well, that's just too bad) and that we think twice before asking for a loan (nobody will just give us money, what goes around comes around with interest rates, and if our governments just keep on paying their debts by contracting even more loans, the bubble is eventually going to blow).
Sorry for the long post, but it's that I find it really obnoxious to see people on TV protesting against their salary cuts saying they disapprove of the "greed of the market" (as if people were going to give us money for free) or to see people online just claiming the awesomeness of pure communism or socialism when all it ensures is that all classes are the same because everybody is poor.
Yes, it's right you and me and most people are born "in debt" towards what you may call the system, but how else could it be?
I mean, I'm 17 years old (12th grade) and still haven't had a job, nor did most people my age that still attend school. If I get injured I can go to a public hospital and get patched up. People are still getting unemployment insurance and receiving their retirements. Someone has to pay for all of this.
The thing is that apparently taxpayers money isn't enough for all of this and, if that wasn't enough, like all systems that depended on the responsibility of the people, it got abused. It still happens here, people not looking for jobs because they're happy with their unemployment insurance, people hardly working because it's easier for the company to carry dead weight than to fire their employees. It's a shame but it's the truth.
If I was rotting-wealthy I'd also make sure I stayed that way, and if it involved loaning money to countries like Portugal, Greece or Ireland at 7.5% rates even though some people I'd never even get to know might lose their job or their social security systems, I really wouldn't have much problems with it. That's how it works, these people just want more money (if they didn't, they wouldn't have money to lend in the first place), they're not moral institutions.
We just have to make sure that both no money is wasted (therefore my "love" for Capitalism, it's the best way to make people productive, not wasteful) but rather applied properly (it's noble to protect and help the unemployed, but if they're like that not because they can't get a job but rather because they don't want to get a job, well, that's just too bad) and that we think twice before asking for a loan (nobody will just give us money, what goes around comes around with interest rates, and if our governments just keep on paying their debts by contracting even more loans, the bubble is eventually going to blow).
Sorry for the long post, but it's that I find it really obnoxious to see people on TV protesting against their salary cuts saying they disapprove of the "greed of the market" (as if people were going to give us money for free) or to see people online just claiming the awesomeness of pure communism or socialism when all it ensures is that all classes are the same because everybody is poor.
Higher Game
National Socialist
Socialism does work.
Read: Scandinavian countries, UK, Portugal, China. Must I go on?
UK and Portugal are close to bankrupt, China is insanely capitalistic, and Scandinavia is fueled by Norwegian oil money. Also, peak oil exists.
Trying to squeeze oil out of shale would have been absolutely laughable just 15 years ago, when oil was 20 bucks a barrel and technology wasn't *that* much worse. The fact that unconventional oil is taken very serious now shows how much depletion is happening. Look up Cantarell.
Brian Shanahan
Permanoob
Actually it is. Now while oil is an exhaustable resource, the peak oil hypothesis has been debunked by history. When first introduced to us by a Shell geologist in the '50's (and remember his exact name and too lazy right now to find out), total reserves in the whole world were estimated at 1.25tn barrels a figure which at the projections then used would completely run out in 2006. The fact that we're still going is proof that the figures were way out, and added to this is little things like the Alberta tar sands (@1.7tn barrels equivalent) hold more on their own than the world's estimated total at the time and you get the picture.
The simple fact of the matter is that we do not know how much oil we currently have available to us, without even going into the undoubted deposits we cannot get to with current technology. For example the country with the second largest known reserves of crude in the world, Iraq, has only about 2,000 wells drilled, compared to the 1million which have been drilled in Texas alone. Then we can look at countries like Canada and Venezuela with the aforementioned tar sand deposits, which at current prices are profitable to exploit and we have a huge amount known, with a significant (and probably even greater) amount as yet undiscovered, or unrecoverable.
Now you have to factor in the fact that high prices mean huge windfall profits for Big Oil and OPEC, so both would have a natural reason for a) restricting production (which OPEC does effectively by using Saudi Arabias huge reserves to kill off any country willing to break quota, coupled with periodic American invasions of Iraq) and b) claiming that we are about to run out any day now (is it not suprising to anyone that they keep pushing back the date of oil fail nearly every decade, just like a cult leader keeps pushing back the date of Armageddon). All this leads to people panicking about a non-existant threat.
This does not mean that I support a continued dependance on oil at current levels, global warming is proof enough that we need to change radically before it is too late for the species.
And finally to stay even remotely on-topic, modelling disappearing resources (properly, not the random way in 3) would make for a very interesting mod of the game.
Higher Game
National Socialist
Actually, Hubbert was within 3 years or so of predicting the US's oil peak. He couldn't predict the world's peak because of sketchy data, but that doesn't mean it's not going to happen.
The fundamental idea behind peak oil is that the consequences of depletion are felt long before it ever "runs out". It doesn't fall off a cliff at the end. It declines slowly. Curiously, this is a nicer, softer landing than people think, but peak oil is somehow seen as pessimistic. Human nature.
Modern wells hit many more fields than the old ones you see in Texas. Well count has been a misleading idea for decades. Technology, you know.
The date is "pushed back" because of highly expensive, dubious oil sources that are only profitable at very high prices. The good stuff, the light sweet crude, is well past its peak. How else do you explain a 5x price increase in just 15 years, despite a global financial panic and recession?
Nah. Half of the fossil fuel reserves have been burned already, and nothing disastrous has happened. Global warming would only be a problem if the second half results in a ton of positive feedbacks. If anything, it looks like there are more negative feedbacks, looking at the last few decades.
Mosher
Mushroom dad
Sweden has a better standard of living than the US.
I didn't know about UK and Portugal being bankrupt, because I'm an arrogant American.
Higher Game has differing opinions from me(I think), but he's the only one who has so far made sense.
I didn't know about UK and Portugal being bankrupt, because I'm an arrogant American.
Higher Game has differing opinions from me(I think), but he's the only one who has so far made sense.
There are so many regulations in the U.S. now I wouldn't even call it capitalist. Look at Warren G. Harding (ironically one of the worst leaders according to Firaxis), his recession lasted a year; now look at FDR, his lasted a decade. Harding let the market force take care of itself, FDR tried to control the market with his socialist policies.
Brian Shanahan
Permanoob
G-Max
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nfw has a point. MANY historians and economists will tell you that the New Deal only prolonged the Depression... which in turn was the result of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates too low. The recent housing/credit mess was similarly caused by over-regulation of the housing market.
Socialism is incapable of long-term planning.
Socialism is incapable of long-term planning.
FlyingSwan
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Lenin said it would take generations for the communist goal to be realised,Chairman Maos writings and consequtive 5 year plans and Fidel Castro and Che Guevaras ambition for Cuba look to me like long term planning,as do the actions of Chavezes regime in Venusuala.
The reason that these regimes have in some cases failed and in others been stifled is down to money and corporations not ideology pure and simple.The world we live in at the moment has 1% owning 40% of the worlds wealth,thats alot of "persuasion" that can be put on supposedly elected governments to goto war,have a secret coup deta,trade embargo with regimes that arnt good for buisness etc.
Anyway going back to peak oil,its not that weve run out,its just not profitable enough to tap difficult to reach resources-disaster in the gulf of Mexico is a perfect example.The resources are attainable,as is anything when humanity puts its mind to it,but the monetary system(fractional reserve)were in is preventing us from solving alot of the worlds problems,and has created huge ammounts of suffering for the majoraty of the worlds population through insumountable debt.
So back to civ@nichol bolas as far a mod is concerned Id have a look at the armageddon counter in FFH,I think that would work well with your apocolyptic vision of the future,maybe you could have the counter start going up at 1900AD.
Maybe this isnt the best place to discuss politics but what the hell.
G-Max
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As any true Marxist will tell you, those are all examples of "state capitalism", not socialism. When I said "socialism", I was referring to the bankrupt welfare states like Greece and Japan.
Yes, communism failed because of an evil capitalist conspiracy
Brian Shanahan
Permanoob
What many, the only "experts" that I have seen who have argued that New Deal have been the fantasists in the Austrian and Chicago schools of Economics, you know, the yahoos who gave us the economic policies that got us into the current mess. Yeah, I wouldn't trust that crowd as far as I could throw them either.
Well actually I'm slightly wrong, there is a strong criticism of FDR from proper experts, and that is that he turned off the New Deal tap too early. They maintain that if he had let the tap run through 1936 and 1937 the US economy would have recovered before the second world war. But then it is always a judgement call to say when the early signs of recovery are indicating an economy strong enough to stand on it's own two feet. FDR and his cabinet got it wrong and called too early.
Oh, and on that last sentence wake up to reality and stop parroting the propoganda sold to you by McCarthy and his vile ilk. What has been the period of the strongest growth in the world, where societies have become the most prosperous and equal both at the same time and when people have been most secure in their lives? Yes, it was the post war period up to the '70's where all the major western countries either adopted socialism or many of it's best practices, including many Republican administrations. If that does not show an ability to plan then I don't know what does.
You know, it's really annoying that I have to repeatedly explain their own history to Americans who believe that FDR was the devil here. Well thats what happens when you privatise every public service and good, you get horsehockey goods and services.
FlyingSwan
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Yes, communism failed because of an evil capitalist conspiracy
I never mentioned conspiracy,I only mentioned the fractional reserve monetary system.Thats not a conspiracy its fact,a privately owned bank lending money to a goverment.
But if you would like to look into true conspiracys concerning "EVIL CAPITALISTS" then look no further than the 2002? coup all captured real time.Google"the revolution will not be televised"If you think that "capitalist conspiracys"are not to blame after seeing that-well id fear for your sanity
G-Max
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Dude, I've spent over half of my life debating this stuff. I'm not someone that you want to drag into a discussion about history, economics, politics, or religion unless you want to go on for 50 pages before ultimately being proven wrong anyway.
Wait, you mean guys like Peter Schiff, who OPPOSED the economic policies that got us into the current mess, and who predicted the housing collapse? Yeah, those guys are obviously nuts
Cite your sources, please. Last time I checked, the "tap" was never "turned off" because our economy didn't actually recover until we started gearing up for war in 1942. Once the war had ended the depression for us, a few ND programs were terminated. Also, a hell of a lot of people have criticized the New Deal for a lot of reasons.
Joe Mccarthy died almost 27 years before I was born. Try again.
That would be the Gilded Age. Quoth the Wiki: "During the 1870s and 1880s, the U.S. economy grew at the fastest rate in its history, with real wages, wealth, GDP, and capital formation all increasing rapidly."
That would be the Stone Age. Societies have only become more unequal since then.
That cannot be quantified or even really defined.
The adoption of socialism in the industrialized world, and the illusion of economic prosperity that followed, was fueled by atrocious deficit spending. Japan's national debt is now twice its GDP, and Europe is in a financial quagmire too.
You know nothing. Absolutely nothing.
A package that is send by U.S. Postal Service will cost twice as much and take twice as long to get to its destination compared to UPS or FedEx. Private schools cost 3-5 times as much money per student per year as private schools, yet private schools offer consistently better education. Surgical wait times have recently reached all-time highs in Canada while remaining almost nonexistent in the U.S.
horsehockey goods and services are the domain of the government.
Wait, you mean guys like Peter Schiff, who OPPOSED the economic policies that got us into the current mess, and who predicted the housing collapse? Yeah, those guys are obviously nuts
Cite your sources, please. Last time I checked, the "tap" was never "turned off" because our economy didn't actually recover until we started gearing up for war in 1942. Once the war had ended the depression for us, a few ND programs were terminated. Also, a hell of a lot of people have criticized the New Deal for a lot of reasons.
Joe Mccarthy died almost 27 years before I was born. Try again.
That would be the Gilded Age. Quoth the Wiki: "During the 1870s and 1880s, the U.S. economy grew at the fastest rate in its history, with real wages, wealth, GDP, and capital formation all increasing rapidly."
That would be the Stone Age. Societies have only become more unequal since then.
That cannot be quantified or even really defined.
The adoption of socialism in the industrialized world, and the illusion of economic prosperity that followed, was fueled by atrocious deficit spending. Japan's national debt is now twice its GDP, and Europe is in a financial quagmire too.
You know nothing. Absolutely nothing.
A package that is send by U.S. Postal Service will cost twice as much and take twice as long to get to its destination compared to UPS or FedEx. Private schools cost 3-5 times as much money per student per year as private schools, yet private schools offer consistently better education. Surgical wait times have recently reached all-time highs in Canada while remaining almost nonexistent in the U.S.
horsehockey goods and services are the domain of the government.
G-Max
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I don't know the relevant facts for Europe, but the Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913, after the end of the most rapid economic expansion in U.S. history.
Meanwhile, nothing was ever stopping the USSR from establishing its own central banking system. Oh wait.
Ummm... it's the name of a song from 1970/71, and of a 2003 documentary about Hugo Chavez. I see nothing in the description of either to indicate that a secret capitalist conspiracy was responsible for the failure of communism.
FlyingSwan
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I like being proved wrong,and if you spent over half your life debating this stuff maybe il learn something.
edit-not notice the snipers,goverment ready to take over?-watch the Documentary
edit.I wasnt saying that a capitalist "conspiracy" exists,im saying that is the way capitalism works,the net result is the destruction of any collective socieys.
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