Capitalism vs Socialism

Did you see this chart I posted at the beginning of the thread?

I don’t know about freedom, but public spending was pretty low in communist china in the 60s and 70s. The Chinese are arguably more free now. There isn’t much data on Russia.

Here is a better chart of the freedom ranking vs private consumption % of GDP:

I realized that China was a crap shoot. But My guess is Russia was necessarily very high on public spending. There was no other real possible source. The military was huge compared to GDP.

I guess I’m seeing Phyllo, whose come from a socialist or perhaps ‘socialist’ country that was abusive and not free and I think had pretty high public spending. We are in an new kind of era. You have Scandanavian countries who are highly aligned with the US and have relatively low military budgets. and they are right now degenerating into ‘free market’ capitalisms. Slwoly, thatcher and reagan seeping in slowly.

But perhaps it might help to address his concerns that socialism may lead again to the types of experiences one had behind the Iron Curtain, where public spending was high, since there wasn’t so much else there to spend, and freedom was low. and worse.

Russia also has a lot of oil, so they could have functioned like Saudia Arabia: social spending, but no democracy.

I added a bit above.

Oh, oops, lol.

I wonder which country. Anyway, yeah, there’s government spending and extent of control of the people over its government and maybe a few other ways to quantify socialism. Government spending doesn’t define it wholly, but is one aspect of it.

But if the people were in charge of their own government, would they vote for more or less government spending? Probably more. So although the people aren’t in charge, they’re still getting more or less what they want. But in places like Egypt, they get nothing: no control nor welfare.

And they do it under the banner of socialism. Or we have those like Hillary who are economic conservatives and social liberals: giving people tampons in the mensroom and corporations keep their power. Those are the worst if you ask me.

That Kamala Harris terrifies me. I’ll vote for Trump over her.

Not as long as the people have voting power. Get rid of electoral college and all that delegate crap. And as Bernie says, “If you’re a citizen and you turn 18, you’re registered to vote. Simple as that!” We could even make voting mandatory (like switzerland, I think).

There’s no way a tyrant could take over under those conditions, especially if the people are decently educated.

It says something about me for sure.

There is a Democracy Index.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy … untry_2018

You consider it socialism.

What? Your “consumption as % gdp” number doesn’t take into account where the gov money came from.

I don’t live in your fine republic.

Sigh

We (my parents and I) lived in Czechoslovakia until 1968 when the attempt to get “Socialism with a Human Face” ended with a Russian invasion and a kick in the face.

Then we were in Sweden for a while but eventually moved to Canada.

:laughing:

And the US is ranked #25 and considered a “flawed democracy” lol

At first glance, it appears to correlate tightly with government spending. I’ll work on it later.

If not socialism, then what is it?

Yes, I know. How do I quantify where the money came from?

Still in your best interest to support him lest the US decide one day to send some “US aid” your way :wink:

Dy1w4l2UUAAtcug.jpg

Germany had a democracy and a highly educated population. They ended up with Hitler.

So what does that prove? That Russia didn’t want you to have prosperity?

Well hell, you have more socialism and freedom than I do. Heck, you can even daytrade stocks without needing $25k minimum. If not for the cold, I’d move to canada and partake in all the freedom.

I’m dubious that the germans were highly educated. The smart ones were jews.

I’m not sure about the democracy claim either.

And Hitler was more a result of the treaty of versailles and the reparations imposed on the germans.

quora.com/In-1930s-Germany- … racy-ratio

:-k Interesting reaction.

I have difficultly imagining any large body of people could possibly be educated in the 1800s. Sure there were pockets on intelligentsia, but nothing like today where almost everyone can read. But even literacy isn’t enough since Trump supporters can read, but are otherwise dumb as rocks.

And still my point about the jews being the most educated were first to be ostracized, which is common to totalitarian regimes to first persecute the intellectuals:

Totalitarian governments manipulate and apply anti-intellectualism to repress political dissent.[2] During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and the following fascist dictatorship (1939–1975) of General Francisco Franco, the reactionary repression of the White Terror (1936–1945) was notably anti-intellectual, with most of the 200,000 civilians killed being the Spanish intelligentsia, the politically active teachers and academics, artists and writers of the deposed Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939).[3] In the communist state of Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979), the Khmer Rouge régime of Pol Pot condemned all of the non-communist intelligentsia to death in the Killing Fields.[4]

Lots of examples here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism

Nazi book burners historyplace.com/worldwar2/t … okburn.htm

Now, if everyone were intelligent, then how could one separate the smart from the stupid in order to kill one and enslave the other? The fact that it happened is proof that the people weren’t that smart.

If everyone knew what Chomsky knows, then the only way to kill intellectuals would be to kill 100% of people.

If the germans were as smart as german intelligentsia, there’s no way Hitler could have happened. The fact that he happened proves they were stupid.

“The people get what government it deserves.” - Forgot who said that.

This is going on today in the right wing:

“I realize you’re under a bit of a penalty because all our professors are stupid liberals, but that’s the best we can do.” rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015 … ain_folks/

So you’re going to hang on to that idea, even though the high level of education in Germany is confirmed by many sources.

Sometimes educated people make bad choices. Stupid people are not the only ones who mess things up.

Your ONE source is “John Gordon, Keen interest in History”. Heck, I have a keen interest in history, why am I not a source? :confusion-shrug:

Further, “high level of education” is relative to the education of the rest of the world, which as I said, is hard to imagine being on par with today.

Germany back then was much like America today: the Jews are smart and the uneducated Christians protested their immorality. Hitler appealed to the stupid Christians to persecute the immoral Jews. Same thing the Right Wing is doing today, only with less focus on the Jews in particular, but liberals, academia, and sometimes Jews too, depending how far Right they are.

It’s the smarties vs the stupids.

It’s the Dunning-Krugers vs the Freddy Kruegers :smiley:

So it’s better to be stupid than smart?

Just want to point out that “private consumption” isn’t the metric it’s being used as in this thread. Worldbank provides the following clarification:

A few things to note:

  1. This is looking at households, so presumably excludes expenditures by businesses and non-household non-profits. But if healthier societies have a more productive business sector, this will lead to false-negatives for what we’re calling ‘capitalist’ countries.
  2. The inclusion of “payments and fees to governments” complicates things substantially. A more ‘socialist’ country would be expected to have higher fees to government as a percentage of GDP, but as it’s being used those fees would be scored as making it more ‘capitalist’.
  3. Even taken at face value, this seems to elide an important distinction, i.e. countries with large GDPs and small governments and countries with small GDPs and no governments will look the same, even though there is a clear and important distinction between them. I don’t think anyone is claiming that a failed state is a capitalist utopia, so a measure that scores failed states as such is misleading.

I think the discussion here got too heated too fast. It does not seem that ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ have been well-enough defined for a proper disagreement to be found. See e.g. Norway, which is often claimed by both camps as a success story. Similarly, re: Singapore, Georgist libertarians absolutely support government ownership of land (or what is effectively the same thing, a land value tax that captures all rents from land ownership).

Without a clearer definition of terms, it’s all vitriol and no vs.

You wrote that you had "difficulty imagining " it. You didn’t write that you had actually researched it.

The statement was about Germany in the 1930s, not now.

Some sweeping generalities.

Sometimes.

thedailybeast.com/why-smart-people-are-dumb

You appealed to authority, not actual research. I am as authoritative as anyone else having a keen interest in history.

Right, and they were stupid, though less stupid than some other places, but still stupid.

But true nonetheless.

I’ve been writing about the pitfalls of intelligence for a couple years now, and really all you can fallback on is the intelligent person’s inability to jibe with society. And my retort to that is “Being well-adjusted to a sick society is no measure of health”. But falling for scams is actually an instance of stupidity, not intelligence.

That is baloney. I fall for tricks by my friends because I trust them, not because of my ego.

I cut some trees down except for stumps sticking up about 5 ft. A friend said he wanted to put peanut butter on top of one to make the deer stretch out. So I said, “Which one do you want me to save in case I decide to cut them down?” He said, “I’m just fucking with you man LOL!” Yeah, I get fooled easy because I take people at their words. But those guys are programmed not to trust:

Amygdala = fear

But I’ve learned. When discussing whether it was appropriate to taser an 87 yr old woman instead of simply walking up and taking the knife from her, he said “Look into my eyes… I’d shoot the hell outta her!” I said, “You’re full of shit! I don’t believe that for a second!”

Now I know he’s going to be fucking with me all the time and to be on the lookout. Before, I innocently trusted him. It has nothing to do with ego and actually, it’s that magician you quoted who is looking for a way to bolster himself by cutting smart people down: that’s the ego!

If there is one way in which dummies have advantages, it’s finding simple solutions since smart people generally first seek complex answers to complex problems, such as magic tricks; they over-complicate it.

Ego is associated with dummies. Arrogance and ignorance go hand in hand.

Smart people can learn. Dummies cannot because they already know everything (ego).

If you google it, then you get dozens of people writing the same stuff. He had a short post which covered the main points, so I used it.

You have some odd ideas about historical events, which are not confirmed by my research. Therefore, I don’t consider you to be an authority.

Given your binary ideas about smart and stupid, I’m not surprised by this at all.

Sure. You seem to be saying that as soon as an intelligent person makes a mistake, then he is no longer intelligent. That sets an impossible standard. Everybody makes mistakes.

You already had a similar discussion with KT and I don’t want to just repeat what he wrote.