Lexicus
Deity
Just keep reading Hayek kid. Don't make your head hurt by actually thinking about anything.
Conservative politics and assumption
- Thread starter Askthepizzaguy
- Start date
christos200
Never tell me the odds
I certainly prefer Hayek. You somehow believe that government over-regulation of the economy, high taxation and excessive public spending are compatible with the free markets and that socialism has worked when the richest countries and the countries with highest rate of economic growth are capitalist with high degree of economic liberty (except if you believe that all states except US are socialist and Chile is liberal, which is nonsense).
The difference between our ideas is that mine have worked wherever they had been tried while yours have led either to dictatorship, poverty or (in the social democratic countries) slow or minimal economic growth.
The difference between our ideas is that mine have worked wherever they had been tried while yours have led either to dictatorship, poverty or (in the social democratic countries) slow or minimal economic growth.
Lexicus
Deity
christos200 said:
All you have are tropes rather than facts. "The free market" is a trope, not an accurate description of reality. So is "government regulation" and "excessive public spending."
Government regulations can do all kinds of things. But fundamentally yes, regulations like labor standards and anti-trust laws are not only 'consistent with' a free market, they are essential to it.
I don't care at all about rates of economic growth for their own sake. What matters is how people actually live (which is also why I don't care much about your notions of 'economic freedom' - to you a slave society would have a high degree of economic freedom as long as there weren't regulations prohibiting owners from treating their slaves however they wanted).
By the standard of how people actually live, it's clear that the social democracies - most people would call them 'mixed' economies - are the most well-off. In fact, the Nordics consistently rate among the highest in the world for happiness and so on, and these countries are generally considered to be more 'socialist' than others because of the strong welfare policies, trade unions, and the like.
christos900 said:
To give them their due, your ideas worked fairly well in the 18th and 19th centuries. Unfortunately, just as Marx predicted, in the advanced countries historical development has rendered these notions obsolete even as useful analytical frames (concepts like 'the free market' never had much relation to reality- as Polanyi succinctly put it, "laissez-faire was planned").
Ironically, on a certain level the USSR collapsed and China is faltering because the people running those countries have as poor a grasp of this stuff as you do. WIM's quote about supply-side nightmares was quite apt. You are attempting to solve the economic problems of 18th century Britain or the USSR in the 1920s, not the USA or Europe in the 21st century.
Lexicus
Deity
west india man said:
At this point I want to grab you by the shoulders and shout PUT DOWN THE MANIFESTO AND READ CAPITAL VOLUME III
Socialist free market?
Every successful economy is a mixed economy. You can debate where to draw the line. But you can't do just one or the other. The problem with the Hayakean heirs is that they want 'liberty' only for businesses, explicitly at the expense of the elimination of the liberty of labor, consumers, and people otherwise outside of the transactions. Which is to say that they kill most liberty to give their cronies liberty. And that never produces a strong economy. It's not an accident that California is kicking Kansas's butt. The 'supply side free market' theology simply does not result in business investment.
Last time I checked, Marx was not Bernstein
Lexicus
Deity
Actually now I think on it you should probably reread the Manifesto, specifically the part where it instructs Communists to support liberal parties and participate in parliamentary democracy. I guess that was before edgy sectarianism became cool though.
christos200
Never tell me the odds
I was right when I said that those who utterly reject the market, reject democracy. See above post.
Lexicus
Deity
Never read the Manifesto? Interesting. You should, it's not long. Hopefully you know that the "spectre haunting" joke you made in my Socialism thread is from the Manifesto: the first line, in fact: "A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism..."
At any rate, as a proletarian who lives and participates in a parliamentary democracy I have to say I think it's pretty kewl.
At any rate, as a proletarian who lives and participates in a parliamentary democracy I have to say I think it's pretty kewl.
Lexicus
Deity
west india man said:
Well, I'm glad to hear it. By now I'd guess there's more than a few people who only know it as a meme or whatever.
west india man said:
We weren't talking about self-rule, though, were we? (is it even possible for man, "an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society", to be 'self-ruling' in any real sense?)
We were talking about the consequences of participating in parliamentary democracy. I think those consequences are sometimes good, sometimes less than good, but basically always preferable to the alternatives.
Lexicus
Deity
That's edgy and a good way to identify yourself as outside the political mainstream, but it just isn't reflective of reality.
Lexicus
Deity
Curious, what war crimes has Hillary committed?
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Noting, mind, that in Marx's today, liberalism was so radical as to be actively repressed in most of Europe. The equivalent to the liberals of 1848 today would be something like Die Linke today, radical constitutional reformists, not the Democratic Party or even the SPD.
Timsup2nothin
Deity
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2013
- Messages
- 46,737
I get the impression that you define any action you personally don't like as "war crime" and then equate your opinion with a ruling from an appropriate court.
