Originally posted by Urchin
I hate argue like a conservative, but this word just jumped out at me.
I have found that the way one argues has nothing to do with being a liberal or a conservative, but one's willingness to be open minded.
Whats the purpose of competition? In a competition.. are there winners and .. dare I say.. losers? It works that way in sports (for now, God knows how long that'll last).
Yes, but it was the implication of your use of the word "strong" that I disagreed with. It invokes images of the big evil corporation destroying the poor small business just trying to get by. At least it did with me, perhaps that wasn't your intention. And sure enough it does happen. But there are a series of free choices that are made for such a thing to come about. In a socialist society those free choices are taken away. Big fan of freedom here. The small business doesn't have to sell, the supplier doesn't have to blacklist them. The smaller business can go after a different niche, or not go head to head with big business in trying to reduce price through economy of scale...or what have you.
Hehe, just because most strong companies haven't had the chance yet to crush, kill, oppress , or enslave people doesn't mean they wouldn't if our governments would just let go of their silly communistic notions and go with a pure capitalist system, for the good of humanity.
Just because monkeys haven't flown out my butt doesn't mean they won't. But speculating on what may or may not happen doesn't change the historical record of what has or hasn't happened.
Just look at the Industrial Revolution for an example of your eutopia by the way, or wait ~20-30 years, because that situation will be repeating itself throughout much of the world.
The situation
is repeating itself throughout much the world vis a vis globalisation of the market. And although the Industrial Revolution has it tragic points, I imagine we would agree that in the long term it was beneficial. And although many socialist would probably argue that it was socialist laws that ended things like child labour, I would disagree.
What ended child labour and the like was the increase of standard of living caused by capitalists investing thus leading to increased production.
Say you have a family of six, yet you can only afford to feed four. Well, two kids are going to die. If you had the option of sending one child to a coal mine and so feed everyone would you? A socialist would deny that option and cheerfully kill off the two kids blithley ignorant of reprocussion of their act.
Maybe the socialist is a little cleverer than that though. The socialist decides to tax the more wealthly and give the wealth to the family of six. What the socialist doens't realise is that by stealing that wealth to be spent on consumable goods that it can't be invested. And so the current low standard of living is maintained, and in the long term they are doing as least as much damage to the standard of living, but in all likelyhood more.
Hell, our "democratic" government (which I think is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism anyway)...
I agree.
...is influenced quite heavily, if not owned outright, by corporate interests. It is only a matter of time before the Western governments stop interfering with the capitalist's "right" to exploit workers, in order to 'save' the economy.
And a socialists solution to government interference and redistrubution of wealth to corporations is to give the government more power to do so? Mindboggling. I believe the way to stop government working in lock step with corporations is to make sure they don't have the power to do so in the first place.
But I don't there isn't an equivalence between evil corporations and evil governments in my books. In a capitalist society, I can exercise free choice not deal with companies I think are immoral. I can't do that with my govenment.
There was a company that purchased coaco beans that where harvest by slaves in western Africa. After I found out about this I decided that I didn't want to support such a company with my hard earned dollars, so I freely chose not to buy their products. Great.
Through Canada's Kyoto commitments my government takes by hard earned dollars through threat of coersion, and gives it to tyrannical governments in western Africa. No free choice for me there.
I expect to see company health benefits follow pension plans into the toilet,
If you want to pay for someone else's health care or pensions, feel free to do so with your money. It's immoral in my opinion to try and force another to do so.
followed eventually by minimum wage laws and overtime.
Ah minimum wage, where unions and politians fool people into supporting them by convincing them that increase in wage means an increase in the standard of living, instead of a decrease. Minmum wage just makes it harder for the companies under such laws to compete, increases cost of goods (decreasing actual purchasing power of that wage), and increases unemployment. What's more it takes away the freedom for a person to work at a lower wage. I imagine that's part of the reason why there are so many illegal aliens in the US.
Probably a few years after this, workplace safety regulations will be relaxed in order to allow Western companies to "compete more effectively in a global economy".
Perhaps, but people would be free to work there or not as they decided. If things got as bad as that (and it would have to be pretty bad for people to work in dangerous evironment for what I would assume to be little pay in North America), and you had to chose between working in a potentially hazardous environment or letting your family starve what would you do. A socialist wouldn't let you make that choice, they know what's best for you.
I'm definately not an expert, but I am aware of my country's history (at least marginally lol). The late 1800's was a time were lassiez faire capitalism was allowed to flourish. The result was an imbalance between rich and poor that went unrivaled until very recently in US history.
But is the "income gap" a meaningful statistic regarding standard of living. Let's imagine two countries whose per-capital wealth is measured in dollars.
Country A
90% of the popluation makes $4,000/yr
10% of the popluation makes $5,000/year
Country B
90% of the popluation makes $40,000/yr
10% of the popluation makes $100,000/year
Which coutries citizens have a higher standard of living? "B" obviously. But I imagine socialists there would still complain about how thier income gap was worse than "A's". Forfend that people in the lower strata could always make the free choice to limit consuming thier wages, invest it and become yet more wealthy.
The early 1900's was a backlash to this, and the Federal Government was involved in breaking many monopolies that formed earlier. Some examples from "wikipedia" (hey, its a quick and dirty search, sorry) are the Norther Securities Company, Standard Oil, and the American Tobacco Company.
Fair enough.
Examples of "government mandated" monopolies, or monopolies caused by government interfernce included some French salt monopoly in the late 1700's, but that was the only example I came across in my quick Wikipedia search.
My country was practically founded on government monopolies, Hudson's Bay Company owned half of it. Telephone service, aviation, healthcare, tons of it up here.
But I bet you know of quite a few more that perhaps you didn't realise were. Many States have monopolies on alcohol distribution, there are licencing monopolies at all levels of government. Many cities have monopolies on services such as tap water distribution, use of public land. Most countries have a monopoly on what currency you can use. As if it's governments business what me and someone else freely decide to use to exchange wealth.
And it's almost guaraunteed that anytime a government has or gives a monopoly over something, it's going to be done much more inefficiently than if it was done through capitalism.
I read the wikipedia article about Standard Oil, apparently there was one group of people that thought they were doing a fine job...their customers. Funny that.
