Timothy Birdnow

The Marxist dimwit I have been arguing with about Free Markets v. Socialism is a glutton for punishment. He spouts more leftie platitudes:

Marc Tek gives us quite a show:

You are literally suffering and experiencing the next stages of capitalism and you think it is something else.
As the next stage of capitalism renders most workers unnecessary by the implementation of robotics and future automations, according to you that’s good because it is just more gadgetry.

As for as as China is concerned. They are what they are, they use capitalism because they have to. But China shows it is still socialist in this simple fact. China has raised everyone of its citizens from poverty to a middle class status, its entire country. That isn’t capitalism. In capitalism the middle class shrinks. We are a capitalist nation and most people are not middle class. Therefore China isn’t following a capitalist model. They are simply using the greed of the capitalist to accelerate their own processes while avoiding direct conflict.

Cuba on the other hand is a tiny Island under constant harassment and economic restrictions and sabotage from the US, yet it has managed to provide health resources education to its entire nation while eliminating homelessness which was prevalent in Cuba before. The remarkable aspect of this is that all other nations in Latin America have been capitalist for many decades with the exception of Venezuela and Nicaragua yet Cuba life expectancy, education access and healthcare is superior to that of any of the capitalist nations in Latin America, this is the real reason for the anti Cuban sentiment and economic blocking of that nation. How can Mexico a capitalist economy provide a lesser life expectancy to its citizen than Cuba a tiny island?
This is only explained by the fact that when people work together and selfishness is not your greatest core value, you can do good by your people even if you are poor.

My response:

Marc Tek you are hopeless. You do not know what capitalism or socialism are, and you do not know what they entail.

Capitalism is private ownership and control of the means of production. You can start a business and profit from the fruits of your labor. Socialism (which includes Communism) is where the State owns or controls those means. You clearly do not understand that

Socialism was experimented with in the founding of the American colonies. At Plymouth the Pilgrims threw everything into a common store and doled it out based on need (as Marx would later reference in "from each according to his ability to each according to his need".) Starvation was the end result. They couldn't produce any crops because nobody wanted to work. Eventually they changed that, allowing each family a plot to work as they saw fit. Only then did the fields produce. In fact, it put an end to the starvation they had been enduring, leading to the first Thanksgiving. Something similar happened in Jamestown.

Socialism fails every time it's tried.

No, it is the rise of socialism that is the problem, not free markets (a term you refuse to use because you don't understand it.) This fascistic corporatism we now enjoy is socialist in nature. You may remember the term Nazi stands for National Socialist.

I have never once advocated gadgets. I pointed to food production, or basic vital services, to medicines, to heat in winter, to transportation. You have grossly mischaracterized everything I said.

Uh, the people of Cuba live on less than 15,000 calories a day. And how many of them don't want to go to a Cuban hospital lest they be on the list of unreliables? And do you know how many Cubans wind up working as slaves on sugar plantations when they do? Perhaps you remember Elion Gonzalez, who wanted to stay in the U.S. and wound up being expatriated? He ended up being "re-educated" on a sugar plantation where he was slave labor. But like Cuba is SO much better than the U.S.

And as for their vaunted heatlcare, so what? People have guaranteed access to healthcare, but they die young anyway. See, it's fine to theoretically insure everyone, it's another to actually treat everyone. That is the problem in any country with socialized medicine. Everyone is insured but there is a long line waiting to be treated. It's precisely why Canadians come to the U.S. every year for medical care.

I knew a Canadian who told me she had to see her neurologist - and it would take five years to get in to him. But like she has health care dude! https://academic.oup.com/heapol/article/33/6/760/5035053

As for everyone having a home and a job, oh joy! The homes are dilapidated filth piles https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-housing/cubans-risk-collapsing-homes-as-state-struggles-to-tackle-housing-woes-idUSKBN2742ROand the jobs pay no wages. In Cuba the government pays in a worthless script. The Cubans have a saying "if you are going to pretend to pay us we'll pretend to work" and they actually work in the underground market, stealing things earmarked by the government (like concrete or whatnot) and selling it to those who need it. Cuba functions DESPITE the socialist government, not because of it.

Most of Latin America capitalist? Ever heard of Peron? He was a fascist dictator in Argentina and his party dominates that country to this day. Oh, and Argentina was expected in the early 20th century to become an economic powerhouse, but their adoption of socialism ruined them.

South America has always had a largely statist system in place, and they have not had free markets in many of those countries. Venezuela was an economic success until the Marxists took over and quickly ran it into the ground. Mexic has been under the socialists since the revolution back in 1920. Brazil had a socialist in power (who recently retook power) and seen a subsequent decline in economic output.

I'm sorry but you just don't know what you are talking about.

If life in these social paradise countries is so wonderful why do they all keep trying to come to the U.S.? Cuba, your dream land, is emptying out faster than a bottle of scotch at a Kennedy family reunion. I thought it was such a great place to live! Most are coming to Florida, or trying to at any rate. Now why is that if America and Capitalism is so rotten? Even the leftist New York Times admits Cuba is folding like an accordian. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/10/world/americas/cuba-us-migration.html

Uh, middle class is the very definition of capitalism, and the cornerstone of a capitalist system. The term middle class meant those who acquired wealth via free markets. There was no middle class in the old Medieval system, and little in the Merchantilist system of the pre-Adam Smith era (where the Crown and Parliament determined how economic activity would function.) The rise of the Middle Class was a coefficient of the rise of free markets, and the current suppression of those markets in favor of a regulatory state is the reason we are seeing a rise in the uber-wealthy class and the loss of the middle class. We are doing exactly what our ancestors did and eventually quit doing and expecting different results.

You claim most people are not middle class in America. That's nonsense. The leftish Pew Research Center says 50% of Americans are Middle Class https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/trust/archive/fall-2022/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades, and that is really misleading as many of those they characterize as poor are middle class by older definitions. And our wealthy are often those who live a solidly Middle Class lifestyle but have invested for their retirement and their families.

And so what? You seem to think people having money is somehow evil. The fact is wealth is something created or destroyed, not a naturaly resource. It's a made thing. If some have more than others that is entirely right and proper; without the incentive of wealth there would be no real effort made to produce. That's why socialist/communist countries always wind up poor. It is the wealthy who make things and do stuff. And everyone benefits from that. Nobody ever got a job from a vagrant. The rich invest. The rich start businesses. The rich buy expensive stuff, stimulating the market. Everyone shares in that money, which moves through the system. Our poor live better than the rich in many other nations precisely because we have so much disposable income and plentiful employment.

But in the modern era we force companies out of our country by nickel and diming them until they go to places like China where it is cheaper to operate. That is what people such as yourself demand, then blame free markets after you wreck the economic system.

I have already pointed out to you that the U.S. is the most charitable country on Earth and it is one of the more capitalistic. You simply ignored that fact and claim "selfishness" is our core value. How so? The socialist countries are selfish. They demand the right to take from others what was not given, and they do not give themselves because it's someone else's job. Socialism is nothing BUT selfishness. Free markets encourage selflessness and community becuse you must please the public or go under, and you must promote the general welfare. Free markets are all about doing a better job for people, and it encourages efforts to end poverty because even the poor buy things. Under a socialist system everyone is guaranteed a lot of nothing. There is a small pie and you have to grab your slice of it or you will get none. In Capitalism we simply bake more pies.

I'm sorry Marc but you do not understand economics at all and you do not know of which you speak.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:25 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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