What would a Socialist (Socialist Party, USA) America be like? [Archive]

BrainGlutton

01-08-2007, 07:02 PM

I've already started threads on:

What would a Libertarian America be like? (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=400517)

What would a Green America be like? (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=400598)

What would an America First America be like? (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=400790) (Pat Buchanan's paleoconservative America First Party)

What would a Constitution Party (religious-right) America be like? (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=401079)

As you will see, I'm trying to box the whole compass of American third-party politics.

Next: Socialism. Some background is necessary here. The United States is unique in being the only modern industrialized state where no socialist, social-democratic or labor-based party has ever emerged as a major player in national politics. The reasons why are analyzed in It Didn't Happen Here, (http://www.amazon.com/Didnt-Happen-Here-Socialism-Failed/dp/0393322548/sr=8-1/qid=1168302406/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-4540189-9745708?ie=UTF8&s=books) by Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks (discussed here. (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=5659017&postcount=67)) The result being, Americans in general are much less sophisticated than other industrial nations' peoples about socialist politics. What's more, our history of socialist politics is rather different than any other country's anyway.

Thumbnail summary: The Socialist Party of America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Socialist_Party) was founded in 1901 by a merger of the Social Democratic Party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_%28United_States%29) with the Socialist Labor Party of America. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Labor_Party_of_America) When the Bolsheviks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolsheviks) came to power in Russia in 1917, there was an internal split in the Socialist Party of America. The pro-Bolsheviks were expelled and formed, eventually, the Communist Party, USA. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party%2C_USA) The remaining Socialist Party of America remained anti-Soviet throughout its existence, holding the Bolsheviks had perverted socialism by taking power by force and by abandoning electoral democracy. (The Trotskyists, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotskyists) who had their own grudges against the Soviet Union, later formed a different party in the U.S. -- several, actually.) Finally, in 1972, the Socialist Party of America broke up over the issue of whether to oppose or support the U.S. in the Vietnam War (i.e., necessary element of the fight against the Soviet Union, or just another instance of capitalist imperialism?). The pro-war faction went on to form the Social Democrats, USA. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democrats%2C_USA) The much larger antiwar faction, led by Michael Harrington, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Harrington) formed the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Socialist_Organizing_Committee) which later became the Democratic Socialists of America; (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Socialists_of_America)* and the Socialist Party, USA. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Party_USA)* The principal differences between the DSA and the SPUSA are (1) the DSA has a much larger number of active members; (2) the SPUSA actually runs candidates for office, while the DSA eschews this and functions purely as an "educational" organization; (3) the Socialist International (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_international) includes both the DSA and the Social Democrats, USA, as full member parties.

With that introduction I pose the question: What would America be like if the Socialist Party, USA, were to win the presidency, a majority in both houses of Congress and of all state legislatures, etc? (IOW, I'm not proposing to debate here what America would be like under any particular ideal conception of socialism or communism, but only what it would be like under the leadership of that particular political party.)

Here are the party's principles (http://sp-usa.org/principles.html) and platform. (http://sp-usa.org/platform/) As you will see, what they envision for America is something more radical than what you'll find anywhere in Europe, but OTOH bears little resemblance to anything you'll find in Cuba or North Korea.

*I'm a member of both the DSA and the SPUSA. At least we're not a bunch of fucking splitters!

Plan B

01-08-2007, 10:09 PM

Well those principles sure do sound like nice things and I'm sure no good-hearted person would ever disagree with them. However, if we do get a Socialist USA, I'm afraid that, all good intentions aside, it would devolve into something very similar to Cuba or North Korea.

Of course, it's a matter of degree and time. If the Socialists wanted to be moderate about it, it might not be that awful or go downhill that quickly. And there would be regional diffferences anyway.

But we could surely say goodby to the economic engine that has produced millions of jobs and done an amazing job of reducing poverty, not only in the US but also worldwide.

For info on recent stats on US economic growth and how it helps the poor click below:
http://futurist.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/11/new_un_human_de_1.html

BTW, I recent your snippy comment about how us Americans are not as sophisticated as Europeans. I know plenty about Socialists. I used to be one. I live in a sea of them. The main difference between me and them is that for them history started in 1965 and learning ended in 1970.

And this unsophisticated American is smart enough to cut back on production at my business if there's nothing in it for me to produce more. The less people work, the less there is to dish out. And that hurts everyone, but it hurts poor people most of all.

BrainGlutton

01-08-2007, 10:17 PM

BTW, I recent your snippy comment about how us Americans are not as sophisticated as Europeans.

Only about socialist politics, and it wasn't meant to be snippy, merely an important and relevant historical fact. I don't think most Americans, nor even most Dopers, are already familiar with the basic story outlined in the OP.

Sam Stone

01-08-2007, 11:07 PM

This one doesn't have to be quite as speculative as the others, because socialist governments have come to power in other places and we can gauge their performance.

Basically, the way I see it is that you'd see a stock market crash almost immediately, and a ton of capital flight out of the control. Industries would be nationalized, new government agencies started, and things would slowly start going to hell. Taxes would be increased dramatically, further slowing growth. Unions would gain more power, and eventually begin striking for better pay and working conditions. People would clamor for more restrictions on business, and for more benefits for workers.

The result might look something like Germany or France, except on a much bigger scale. 10%+ unemployment, economic stagnation, more government corruption, lower productivity as people demand shorter work weeks and more vacations, etc. The economic would be less dynamic, with less choice for consumers. There would eventually be shortages and gluts of product in whatever industries the government tried to micro-manage.

The real disaster would be worse than if a smaller country like Germany went socialist, because the U.S. economy has been there to prop up the smaller ones by providing markets and cash. The U.S. drug industry still does lots of research when drug industries in more regulated countries have collapsed. But if the U.S. goes down economically, it'll take the world with it, and we'll be in a worldwide recession.

Socialism doesn't work. The degree to which the economy would take a serious hit depends on how much socialism you really try to implement. The more control the government takes, the worse the effects will be.

The country will become more authoritarian, as well. Because black markets will spring up and have to be policed. Regulations will have to be enforced. More inspections required. More government paperwork. Etc.

Bryan Ekers

01-08-2007, 11:16 PM

Your best outcome is you end up like us civilized Canadians, with socialized health care and whatnot.

Sam Stone

01-08-2007, 11:57 PM

Your best outcome is you end up like us civilized Canadians, with socialized health care and whatnot.

Canada is nowhere near to being a socialist country. Most of our social programs, tax structure, and regulation of business is very, very similar to the U.S. Public health care being the major exception.

Blalron

01-09-2007, 12:17 AM

The real disaster would be worse than if a smaller country like Germany went socialist, because the U.S. economy has been there to prop up the smaller ones by providing markets and cash. The U.S. drug industry still does lots of research when drug industries in more regulated countries have collapsed. But if the U.S. goes down economically, it'll take the world with it, and we'll be in a worldwide recession.

Couldn't the government subsidize drug research? I don't think innovation is neccesarily going to stagnate under socialism.

treis

01-09-2007, 12:20 AM

Why do I feel like I am reading a wiki at wikipedia when I read the OP?

JohnT

01-09-2007, 12:23 AM

I think the other countries would first mock us, then invade for the sheer ease and novelty of it. "Hey! I just took over the USA after they shut down their military and confiscated all civilian weapons! And it was easy. You wanna go at it?"

Bryan Ekers

01-09-2007, 12:40 AM

Canada is nowhere near to being a socialist country.

Exactly. It's the best result the Americans (or anyone on Earth, really) could hope for. :D

Sam Stone

01-09-2007, 01:00 AM

Couldn't the government subsidize drug research? I don't think innovation is neccesarily going to stagnate under socialism.

It's not just about money. It's about competition forcing innovation. You can set up the biggest state bureau you want, and it won't be as innovative as a market full of companies working hard to claw away market share from each other.

Lemur866

01-09-2007, 07:47 AM

It's interesting how people complain about the greedy for-profit drug companies, they only produce drugs to make a profit, not to help people. And yet just about every European country has universal health care. If public funding of drug research was such a good idea, why don't European countries routinely come out with more effective drugs?

Innovation always stagnates under socialism. It's not that any individual state-owned factory or state owned industry must be less effective than a private factory. Almost everyone who has worked for private companies has seen staggering incompetance and waste, just like in government work. It's just that state owned industries aren't allowed to fail. Really poorly run companies eventually fail, effectively run companies prevail.

Publicly owned industries are often immune from criticism, because they can always shift their arguments for why they should exist. They don't have to make a profit, because they aren't supposed to make a profit. But since government-owned facilities don't exist to make a profit, there's usually no method of determining whether they are doing a good job or not. Are they supposed to provide jobs? Provide goods/services at a low or subsidized price? Guarantee that some good or service is always available, not under the control of foreigners or profiteers, no matter what it costs the public? Provide a source of patronage that can be handed out by the party? Create a system for siphoning public money into bank accounts in the Cayman Islands? Provide bread and circuses to the masses to prevent riots?

Slithy Tove

01-09-2007, 08:07 AM

Could we have "Sewer Socialism?' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewer_Socialism) That's what Milwaukee had for most of the first half of the 20th C. Probably the best era in the city's history.

ralph124c

01-09-2007, 08:27 AM

I consider the USA to be socialist-but less so than Sweden. In my visits to sweden, it seems that Sweden has entrepreneurs and millionaires-in spite of high taxes and stifling regulations. The USA, despite high taxes and very visible regulation, still has massive poverty. My guess is; if the USA stopped being policeman to the world, we could have most of what Sweden has now-clean streets, less poverty, and lower taxation. I would LOVE to see some of the $500 billion (that we blow annually in Iraq), get spent here-we might find that modern streets and clean paks are worthwhile.

Spectre of Pithecanthropus

01-09-2007, 12:36 PM

*I'm a member of both the DSA and the SPUSA. At least we're not a bunch of fucking splitters!

Do you always vote one or the other of these parties, or do you ever vote Democratic as a stand against the even more rightist party?

Bryan Ekers

01-09-2007, 12:39 PM

BrainGlutton

01-09-2007, 12:47 PM

I consider the USA to be socialist- . . .

:confused: Could you please name a country that isn't, by your standards? AFAIK, this is the most capitalistic, free-market, economic-libertarian industrialized country on Earth (except maybe for post-Invasion Iraq following Paul Bremer's neocon shock therapy (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=381910)).

BrainGlutton

01-09-2007, 12:55 PM

Do you always vote one or the other of these parties, or do you ever vote Democratic as a stand against the even more rightist party?

I always vote Democrat, even on the rare occasions where there's a Socialist on the ballot. For obvious reasons. Don't want to waste my vote. We need electoral laws more favorable to a multiparty system, (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=269169) but you've got to vote based on how things are now. (By the way, you can't "vote for" the DSA, which is not a "party" and does not run candidates; the SPUSA does.)

BrainGlutton

01-09-2007, 01:17 PM

This one doesn't have to be quite as speculative as the others, because socialist governments have come to power in other places and we can gauge their performance.

Only on the Stalinist model. The viability of any form democratic socialism has yet to be field-tested. (Watch for forthcoming developments in Latin (http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2962/) America (http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2971/), where elected socialist or social-democratic parties are on the rise.)

The result might look something like Germany or France, except on a much bigger scale.

What's wrong with that? (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=286068)

BrainGlutton

01-09-2007, 01:20 PM

BrainGlutton

01-09-2007, 01:23 PM

It's not just about money. It's about competition forcing innovation. You can set up the biggest state bureau you want, and it won't be as innovative as a market full of companies working hard to claw away market share from each other.

Show me the part of the SPUSA principles (http://sp-usa.org/principles.html) or platform (http://sp-usa.org/platform/) that calls for a "big state bureau."

Worker & Community Control

Democracy in daily life is the core of our socialism. Public ownership becomes a fraud if decisions are made by distant bureaucrats or authoritarian managers. In socialist society power resides in worker-managed and cooperative enterprises. Community-based cooperatives help provide the flexibility and innovation required in a dynamic socialist economy. Workers have the right to form unions freely, and to strike and engage in other forms of job actions. Worker and community control make it possible to combine life at work, home and in the community into a meaningful whole for adults and children. Girls and boys are encouraged to grow up able to choose freely the shape of their lives and work without gender and racial stereotyping. Children are provided with the care, goods and services, and support that they need, and are protected from abuse.

BrainGlutton

01-09-2007, 01:29 PM

Could we have "Sewer Socialism?' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewer_Socialism) That's what Milwaukee had for most of the first half of the 20th C. Probably the best era in the city's history.

We've still got it, in many places. I.e., public ownership of public utilities. Though there's been a lot of rollback. (Dennis Kucinich, as mayor of Cleveland, ran into a lot of trouble (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Kucinich#Canceling_the_sale_of_Municipal_Light) resisting the proposed privatization of the Municipal Light company.)

Third parties in America have been described as "like the bee that stings and, in stinging, dies." The Socialist Party of America is no exception. Many of its policies and ideas were selectively adopted by municipal reformers, or by FDR and the Democrats during the New Deal.

BrainGlutton

01-09-2007, 01:32 PM

Why do I feel like I am reading a wiki at wikipedia when I read the OP?

What, you want something more passionate? . . . Let's see . . . Ermm, slow horrible death to the fascist insects who suck the blood of the people! Revolution is come! [OFF THE PIGS!] Time to take up the gun! [OFF THE PIGS!] Venceremos!

Muffin

01-09-2007, 02:38 PM

When a political party is so marginalized for so long, if it were to come into power, penis would ensue, simply because the party does not have the experience to know what is practicable.

I am a lefty Canadian, who usually votes for the NDP http://www.ndp.ca/page/4049 , which is a member of the Socialist International, but when I read through the economic platform of the SP USA http://sp-usa.org/platform/economics.html , I cringe. I think that Sam Stone is being very restrained in his predictions. As a person who runs my own business (I’m a lawyer), I have to say that I would emigrate if such a regime came into power in my country, for I would not want to hang around for the inevitable economic crash.

The Canadian NDP has had significant experience in federal Parliament as an opposition party, and has had some experience as the party in power in some provincial Parliaments. Out of this background, they have put together a platform that attempts to advance their core issues without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Where they have held power provincially, things have gone well (in my opinion as a lefty), and in any event, have not run is unto ruin.

In comparison, the SP USA has not had any significant political experience as a party routinely elected and occasionally holding majority power. Its economic platform sounds like something made up by university kids at a coffee house, who have very limited knowledge of how the world works.

Take for example, “our goal of creating a socialist society totally separate from the global capitalist economy.” That’s just plain dumb. Withdrawing from trade from other nations will not lead to anything good.

Or consider, “worker and community ownership and control of corporations within the framework of a decentralized and democratically determined economic[stet].” Again, just plain dumb. The formation and movement of large amounts of capital is necessary for much of our economy. Worker and community control is nice for farmers’ markets, but when it comes to raising capital for major projects, co-ops with limits on share number simply do not work most of the time. Also keep in mind that there is very little difference between having control tremendously diluted and having no control at all (e.g. how much control does a citizen really have over a PUC?).

Quite simply, “call[ing] for compensation to communities-- and compensation, re-training, and other support service for workers-- affected by plant . . . closings . . . until we reach our goal of creating a socialist society totally separate from the global capitalist economy” begs the question as to why one would want such closings in the first place. Where will the “compensation” come from when the businesses are closed and the people unemployed?

A sound social safety net requires an equally sound economy, which in turn will be strengthened by the sound social safety net (healthier, better educated, richer workforce etc.). Take the sound economy out of the equation, as the SP USA does, and there can be no sound social safety net. The baby gets thrown out with the bathwater.

It’s a pity that socialism in the USA has been so marginalized for so many years, for if it had not, I expect that we would not see such utter silliness as the SP USA’s economic platform, and instead might see something more practicable.

More importatly, until something more practicable is promoted, socialists in the USA will continue to be marginalized as political-intellectual social diseases rather than respected as effective social activists.

davidm

01-09-2007, 03:41 PM

When a political party is so marginalized for so long, if it were to come into power, penis would ensue, simply because the party does not have the experience to know what is practicable..."penis would ensue"? :confused:

I'm trying to imagine what that's a typo for but I can't figure it out. The word "chaos" seems likely but I can't imagine how you could mistype that as "penis". :D

BrainGlutton

01-09-2007, 03:46 PM

"penis would ensue"? :confused:

I'm trying to imagine what that's a typo for but I can't figure it out. The word "chaos" seems likely but I can't imagine how you could mistype that as "penis". :D

New to this Board, are you?

davidm

01-09-2007, 03:54 PM

New to this Board, are you?Not at all. Although I haven't been frequenting it as much as I used to.

Muffin

01-09-2007, 04:10 PM

Not at all. Although I haven't been frequenting it as much as I used to.Posts # 2 and 3: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=294892

Muffin

01-09-2007, 04:22 PM

Tommy Douglas http://www.cbc.ca/greatest/top_ten/nominee/douglas-tommy.html

Very far from the SP USA.

Dunderman

01-09-2007, 04:34 PM

In my visits to sweden, it seems that Sweden has entrepreneursYeah, we do. But they complain a lot.My guess is; if the USA stopped being policeman to the world, we could have most of what Sweden has now-clean streets, less poverty, and lower taxation.I'm with you on the middle one. As for the first one, I don't know enough about the state of American streets to say, and as for the third one, you don't actually believe that Sweden has lower taxes than the US, right?

Baron Greenback

01-09-2007, 04:39 PM

. The U.S. drug industry still does lots of research when drug industries in more regulated countries have collapsed.

Do GlaxoSmithKline (or whatever they are called this week) and BayerSchering (ditto) not exist in your world?

BrainGlutton

01-09-2007, 05:36 PM

Sam Stone

01-09-2007, 06:55 PM

Only on the Stalinist model. The viability of any form democratic socialism has yet to be field-tested. (Watch for forthcoming developments in Latin (http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2962/) America (http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2971/), where elected socialist or social-democratic parties are on the rise.)

Right. Remember how just yesterday I predicted capital flight, a drop in the dollar, and other horrible things?

This just in...

Chavez's Nationalization Plans Rock Venezuela Markets (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=a7MZ9Beeugpw&refer=news)
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's plans to nationalize the country's largest phone company and utilities, gain greater control over the oil industry and seek authority to make laws by executive order are sending investors racing for the exits.

U.S.-traded shares of CA Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela plunged 14 percent yesterday and the currency fell 17 percent after Chavez unveiled his plans for the company, and the nation, in a televised speech.
...
Venezuela's currency, pegged to the U.S. dollar at a rate of 2,150, posted its biggest plunge yesterday in unregulated trading since at least 2004, falling to 4,062 bolivars to the dollar, its lowest ever. [/b]The currency has shed 54 percent in the past six months. [/b]

There's your capital flight. Oh, I also mentioned increasing authoritarianism:

In his speech, Chavez said he will seek to strip the central bank of independence from the government as part of a plan to overhaul the constitution. ``The central bank shouldn't be autonomous,'' Chavez said.
...

Chavez's move to assert state control over the economy mirrors his efforts to cement his political control; with Cuba's President Fidel Castro ailing, the speech amounted to a claim of leadership of the Latin American left.

Chavez said yesterday he will ask congress for permission to rule by decree, a power he enjoyed for a year in 2000-2001. Last month, the 52-year-old president said he would seek to change the constitution to end presidential term limits.
...
Chavez, who last year raised royalties on oil companies and forced some into joint ventures with the government, has stepped up his calls to regulate corporate profits and speed up the seizure of ``underutilized'' farms and factories since his re- election.

How would you like to be one of the people whose farm the state decides is 'under-utilized'?

You've said nice things about Chavez in the past. Are you willing to concede that he's trying socialism in a way in which you approve? Too many times in the past I've given examples of the failures of socialism, only to be told that those countries weren't 'really' socialist. So would you agree beforehand that Chavez is implementing 'real' socialism? That this particular experiment in governing will give us a good measure of what socialism can do for a country?

BrainGlutton

01-09-2007, 07:27 PM

You've said nice things about Chavez in the past. Are you willing to concede that he's trying socialism in a way in which you approve?

Too soon to tell. I like his "sow the oil" policy, generally, and his efforts to foster some autonomous grass-roots economic associations instead of one big state bureaucracy, and his public works (how come we're not building new railroads in the U.S.?!). There's too much corruption in the government, but that's to be expected in any country after the longstanding ("longstanding" on a scale of centuries, in this case) Outs are suddenly In (because, having always before been on the outside looking in, they never had a chance to build up a resistance to the temptations of power); and it's a problem his party clearly recognizes and has pledged to work on following the latest election. Chavez is really too authoritarian for my taste but I guess you have to make allowances for the circumstances there -- if he weren't like that the entrenched elite might have blocked him from accomplishing anything at all; or ousted him successfully. (OTOH, his cultural antipathy to things like American music and Halloween is just plain silly.) Bear in mind Chavez has only recently started to apply the word "socialism" to his "Bolivarian Revolution." From "Chavez Consolidates Power," (http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2971/) by Steve Ellner, In These Times, 12/28/06:

Events since Chávez was first elected president in 1998 also presage important changes for 2007. Every time Chávez has emerged victorious, he has consolidated political control and taken new, bold measures. His triumphs have included the ratification of a new constitution in a national referendum in 1999, the return to power after a two-day coup in April 2002, the defeat of a two-month general strike beginning later that year and his victory in the presidential recall election in 2004. In early 2005, Chávez pushed the limits again by calling for the construction of a new “socialist” model for Venezuela, although he failed to enter into specifics.

[snip]

But much more dramatic and far-reaching than public works are the outlines of a new model for the economy that have emerged over the past two years in Venezuela under Chávez’s leadership.

While the government guarantees the rights of private property, it also demands that capitalists fulfill certain obligations. Since early 2005, the government has expropriated various companies that had closed down, turning over management to the workers. At the same time, the National Lands Institute has broken up underutilized agricultural land in accordance with a law passed in 2001. The government is currently negotiating an agreement with scores of owners of failed companies that provides economic relief from the state in return for worker input in decision making.

Another novelty for Venezuela and for much of Latin America is the stringent collection of taxes. Income tax in Venezuela dates back to the early ’40s, but has never been seriously enforced. Over the last two years, the tax agency SENIAT has closed down scores of companies for 24 and 48 hours, including General Motors, McDonalds, and Eastman Kodak to penalize them for failing to keep accurate records.

Equally important is the new model’s exclusion of representatives of powerful economic groups from key government posts in charge of economic decisions. Under past governments, the position of president of the Central Bank, Treasury Minister, Development Minister and Planning Minister usually went to representatives of big capital.

Given the economic expansion generated by high oil prices, investors may be more congenial to the new rules of the game than under normal circumstances. In the oil industry, dozens of foreign companies have accepted the state’s insistence that it assume the controlling influence in all local oil operations. Only ExxonMobil announced intentions to pull out, while Chevron-Texaco maintains exceptionally friendly relations with the Chávez government. Since the defeat of the general strike in 2003, some Venezuelan capitalists have moderated their stance. Gustavo Cisneros, the Rockefeller of Venezuela, has apparently made his peace with Chávez, as shown by the more even-handed reporting of his TV station Venevisión, in contrast with its earlier hostility toward the government.

Exactly how the Chávez movement defines socialism, whether large capital is to play a positive role, and whether new property relations such as cooperatives will prosper are all questions that remain unanswered. Chávez says the new “socialist” model will largely be determined on the basis of trial-and-error. He has also announced that an “ideological congress” will be held for his movement in 2007 in order to open space for the first time for discussion of ideology.

(I shall be watching for news of that "ideological congress.")

Whatever you call all of this, it's plain and clear by now most of the people of Venezuela really, really want it. And if you're right about the fundamental nonviability of socialism . . . well, then they'll change their minds eventually. But I doubt they will.

In the same article you can read about Chavez' efforts to put together an EU-modelled Latin American trade bloc which "should exclude the United States until Latin America is able to meet it on equal terms." That's all about protectionism (a venerable American economic policy), not socialism; but from a Latin American perspective it seems to make clear and obvious sense.

Plan B

01-09-2007, 10:16 PM

Sam Stone

01-09-2007, 11:00 PM

Too soon to tell. I like his "sow the oil" policy his 'sow the oil' project is essentially plundering an industry for short-term gain. He's going to find it impossible to attract investment to fund upgrading and maintaining his oil infrastructure. He's going to wind up like other countries that have done this - with a rickety infrastructure over the years, declining production, and cuts to his social programs.

(how come we're not building new railroads in the U.S.?!)

My guess - because there's no demand for them.

'Public Works' projects are an awful way to spend the government's money. You wind up with drab concrete buildings and second-rate infrastructure. But most importantly, the government is not as good at determining where the real need for infrastructure is than is the market. You'll build stuff you don't need, and not build stuff you do.

Imagine if our communications networks were built as 'public works' projects? Had the internet not evolved out of the forces of the market, but been driven by the state computer communications bureau. Just where do you think we'd be today? Would we have even 1/100 of the quality, performance, and innovation that we've undergone in the past 15 years? Would we have anywhere near the choice and variety of communications services we have today?

Would Fed Ex have been created by a government bureau?
[/quote]

There's too much corruption in the government, but that's to be expected in any country after the longstanding ("longstanding" on a scale of centuries, in this case) Outs are suddenly In

Would you accept a casual dismissal like that from me regarding business? If I just casually tossed off, "there's too much corruption in America's large corporations, but that's to be expected", and then continued on like it wasn't a problem?

(because, having always before been on the outside looking in, they never had a chance to build up a resistance to the temptations of power);
That's not the way it works. It's the guys on the outside who are supposed to be the idealists, and the ones already in power who have been corrupted by it. I think you're just making excuses. Frankly, I think his government is corrupt because that kind of power tends to attract corrupt people. And people who think they are smarter and more capable of running a country than anyone else tend to be people who don't mind throwing that power around.

and it's a problem his party clearly recognizes and has pledged to work on following the latest election. Chavez is really too authoritarian for my taste but I guess you have to make allowances for the circumstances there -- if he weren't like that the entrenched elite might have blocked him from accomplishing anything at all; or ousted him successfully.

Gotta break some eggs to make an omelette, huh? I think I've heard that before.

Whatever you call all of this, it's plain and clear by now most of the people of Venezuela really, really want it. And if you're right about the fundamental nonviability of socialism . . . well, then they'll change their minds eventually. But I doubt they will.

No, they'll be told that their problems are everyone else's fault - especially Americas. And the brainwashing has already started - Chavez has pulled the license on an unfriendly radio station, and wants the schools to start indoctrinating the kids in the correctness of socialism - shades of the old Soviet Union. And he's gradually consolidating power, so by the time the people start to get stirred up about it, there's nothing they'll be able to do.

And Venezuela will become yet another shabbly little authoritarian country with a crappy standard of living but big damned parades. There will be a brain drain, and that will give Chavez ammo to complain that the evil U.S. is stealing its best and brightest. He'll build up his military and start meddling all over the place. That will get sanctions slapped on him, which he can also blame for his economic woes. And after that state fails, those will also be the ready excuses socialists around the world will use to claim that Venezuela doesn't count as a failure of socialism - it was just the mean capitalist states that kept it down.

In the same article you can read about Chavez' efforts to put together an EU-modelled Latin American trade bloc which "should exclude the United States until Latin America is able to meet it on equal terms." That's all about protectionism (a venerable American economic policy), not socialism; but from a Latin American perspective it seems to make clear and obvious sense.

It makes no sense whatsoever. Intentionally cutting your country off from the biggest source of products and capital in the world is simply idiotic. It'll make a bad situation worse.

Muffin

01-10-2007, 10:15 AM

Bloomberg.com http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=a7MZ9Beeugpw&refer=news
Chavez said yesterday he will ask congress for permission to rule by decree, a power he enjoyed for a year in 2000-2001. Last month, the 52-year-old president said he would seek to change the constitution to end presidential term limits. Looks like we should scratch out the "Democratic" part of Democratic Socialism in Venezuela.

Whatever you call all of this, it's plain and clear by now most of the people of Venezuela really, really want it. And if you're right about the fundamental nonviability of socialism . . . well, then they'll change their minds eventually. But I doubt they will.
The will not have the opportunity if Chavez makes himself dictator for life.

ralph124c

01-10-2007, 01:01 PM

Lemur866

01-10-2007, 01:43 PM

Chavez is really too authoritarian for my taste but I guess you have to make allowances for the circumstances there -- if he weren't like that the entrenched elite might have blocked him from accomplishing anything at all; or ousted him successfully.

And now the mask comes off. This is what they said about Stalin, this is what they said about Mao, this is what they said about Castro. And yeah, others said it about certain right-wing dictators too, but that's just a tu quoque.

And then he wonders why the American people despise socialists. Because socialists are invariably willing to sacrifice their bourgeois attachment to democracy and human rights in order to achieve the more important goal of building socialism. You have to make allowances. Yeah, once we achieve socialism the dictators and butchers who worked so selflessly towards this goal will surely retire to quiet houses in the country.

Socialism is an inherently authoritarian economic system, and no amount of smearing lipstick on the pig will change things.

Captain Amazing

01-10-2007, 02:16 PM

And then he wonders why the American people despise socialists. Because socialists are invariably willing to sacrifice their bourgeois attachment to democracy and human rights in order to achieve the more important goal of building socialism.

To be fair, I don't really know that that's true. It certainly can be true, of course, and I can't speak for Brainglutton or what he believes, but there are socialists and socialist parties commited to democracy. As mentioned in this thread, Canada's NDP is one of them. So, of course, is Britain's Labour Party, Germany's SPD, the PS in France, and so on. All of these are democratic parties that run members for election, are honest about what they want to achieve, and voluntarily give up power if their candidates are defeated.

BrainGlutton

01-10-2007, 03:31 PM

NY Times on Chavez (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/10/business/worldbusiness/10venezuela.html?hp&ex=1168405200&en=c7f0817e3a2a3cf0&ei=5094&partner=homepage)

Stock market down 19% in one day. Please explain how this will be good for the average Venezuelan.

And how many average Venezuelans have money in the stock market? If the government can run the electric and telephone companies better as public utilities and if the users have to pay less, that will be good for them. Or do you think the private sector always does it better? [*cough*]Enron[*cough*]

I like Tony Snow's comment, from the article.

Tony Snow, a White House spokesman, said on Tuesday, “Nationalization has a long and inglorious history of failure around the world. We support the Venezuelan people and think this is an unhappy day for them.”

:confused: What, that? There's nothing profound about it -- it's just the sort of asservation you or Sam might have made, minus the cites and arguments, and rendered into Press Secretarese.

Debaser

01-10-2007, 03:42 PM

:confused: What, that? There's nothing profound about it -- it's just the sort of asservation you or Sam might have made, minus the cites and arguments, and rendered into Press Secretarese.

It's an accurate and pithy description of events. If I lived in Venezuela I'd be buying a plane ticket right about now if I hadn't already.

BrainGlutton

01-10-2007, 04:51 PM

his 'sow the oil' project is essentially plundering an industry for short-term gain. He's going to find it impossible to attract investment to fund upgrading and maintaining his oil infrastructure. He's going to wind up like other countries that have done this - with a rickety infrastructure over the years, declining production, and cuts to his social programs.

Cite? How do you know he's "plundering" the oil industry by spending its revenue on infrastructure and social programs? And why would he need to "attract investment" in the nationalized oil industry? If it needs upgrading or maintenance, he can simply take less of its revenue for other projects and reinvest the remainder in the oil industry. And since they're now collecting the income tax seriously for the first time in Venezuelan history, he'll be able to afford it.

My guess - because there's no demand for them.

And you should take a lesson from that. Sometimes there's a very real need for something for which there is no market demand.

'Public Works' projects are an awful way to spend the government's money. You wind up with drab concrete buildings and second-rate infrastructure. But most importantly, the government is not as good at determining where the real need for infrastructure is than is the market. You'll build stuff you don't need, and not build stuff you do.

Ever driven on the American Interstate Highway System? Mostly well-designed, useful, and something that the private sector never would have built.

Imagine if our communications networks were built as 'public works' projects? Had the internet not evolved out of the forces of the market, but been driven by the state computer communications bureau.

It was, in case you've forgotten.

Would Fed Ex have been created by a government bureau?

Would the U.S. Postal Service ever have been created by the private sector? Each has its place.

Would you accept a casual dismissal like that from me regarding business? If I just casually tossed off, "there's too much corruption in America's large corporations, but that's to be expected", and then continued on like it wasn't a problem?

I expect business to be corrupt when the government isn't watching. When the government itself is corrupt, that's a much bigger problem. OTOH, the Venezuelan business community doesn't seem to mind. From "Hugo Chavez and Petro Populism," (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050411/parenti/6) by Christian Parenti, The Nation, 4/11/05:

There are some in the opposition whose critique focuses less on Chávez's supposed abuses of power and more on the government's alleged mismanagement and left-wing economic tomfoolery. Oscar Garcia Mendoza is president of Banco Venezolano de Credito, a very old and conservative bank. He's what Chávez would call an "oligarch," the official enemy: a capitalist financier. But when I meet him in his beautiful corner office on the ninth floor of a Modernist highrise, he is beaming. He wears a dark blue suit, his gray hair is cropped stylishly short and he has that healthy look that seems to come from being rich and relaxed.

Classical music filters out from speakers in the ceiling; on the table are fine Cuban cigars. We sit in bent plywood and leather Herman Miller chairs, and gaze out across the city through a glass wall lined with thick green plants.

"Business has never been better," says Garcia. "This government is totally incompetent. They have no idea what they are doing. The head of their land reform, Eliezer Otaiza, is a former male stripper. And did you see they just appointed Carlos Lanz, a former terrorist kidnapper, a communist, as head of Alcasa, our largest aluminum company?" Through it all, Garcia wears a slightly suppressed grin as if he thinks the whole thing is hilarious. "I mean, can you imagine that?"

In a way, Lanz's appointment is not so outrageous: Another former guerrilla, Ali Rodriguez Araque, once minister of mining and energy, then head of OPEC, is now foreign minister and widely respected as a level-headed negotiator.
Garcia also has some very concrete criticisms. He says that the current economic boom is a chimera based on oil prices. In 2004 government spending jumped 47 percent, much of which went to pay for healthcare and education--the missions. But despite the oil windfall, the government has had to borrow heavily. Instead of turning to international financiers, it has increased its internal debt to Venezuelan banks.

Garcia says that in the past four years this internal debt has gone from $2 billion to more than $27 billion. The Finance Ministry confirms these figures and says that 60 percent of this debt is held in government bonds.

"But what makes this really crazy," says Garcia, "is that the government is depositing all its oil revenue in the same banks at about 5 percent, then borrowing it back at 14 percent. It's a very easy way for bankers to make money. That's why I say this is a government for the rich."

Last year Venezuelan banks made $1.38 billion in profits, just a bit more than they did the year before. And most of that money came from lending to the Chávez government and trading in special government-approved, dollar-denominated bonds, a legal loophole in the new currency-control law. Garcia's bank actually does no business with the government, but the huge increase in oil revenues has doubled his loan portfolio. The economy is awash in money: Growth was 17.3 percent in 2004.

So if the economy is booming, why does Garcia dislike Chávez?

"These people are crooks," he says. "Look, Venezuela has always been corrupt, but these guys are the worst." When I point out that the government just fired 120 managers in Zulia state for corruption, Garcia waves it away as insufficient.

That said, I really hope the leaders of the MVR (Chavez' party, the Movement for a Fifth Republic) keep their enthusiastic post-election promises to crack down on corruption. At present, Transparency International (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781359.html) assigns Venezuela a "Corruption Perceptions Index" of 2.3, putting it at the 138th rank (along with Ecuador, Cameroon, and Niger). (For comparison, the U.S. is in the 20th rank with a CPI of 7.3; Canada is in the 14th rank with a PCI of 8.5.)

Gotta break some eggs to make an omelette, huh? I think I've heard that before.

:rolleyes: Oh, come on! By "too authoritarian for my taste," I meant stuff like suppressing opposition radio stations. That's bad, but it ain't Joe Stalin bad. There are no purges, show trials or gulags in Venezuela, and you won't live to see any. You probably won't even see private property expropriated without some kind of compensation. I don't like the tinkering with press freedom one little bit, but take him all around, Chavez is an apostle of civil liberties compared to, say, Alvaro Uribe, the right-wing president of Colombia: (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060612/parenti)

"I blame the professors for the political disorientation of these youth," said Uribe at one point, his anger just barely showing. It was a statement made all the more chilling by recent revelations that the leadership of Colombia's Administrative Department for Security, or DAS, has been infiltrated by rightist paramilitaries who are supportive of Uribe and have used government computers to draw up hit lists of trade unionists and, yes, professors. Uribe has brushed aside the scandal, attacked the press for reporting it and sent a key suspect to a cushy diplomatic post in Italy.

No, they'll be told that their problems are everyone else's fault - especially Americas.

That wouldn't be the whole truth, but it wouldn't be a lie, either. (Never forget that Chile's economic woes under Salvador Allende were at least partly, and probably largely, the fault of the U.S.)

He'll build up his military and start meddling all over the place.

:confused: Where?! Most of SA is on his side now. If he sticks his nose into Colombia's interminable civil war he'll probably get it bloodied; if he doesn't, so much the better. But he won't. He's trying to build unity in SA.

It makes no sense whatsoever. Intentionally cutting your country off from the biggest source of products and capital in the world is simply idiotic. It'll make a bad situation worse.

It made sense when the Europeans did it. And they didn't cut themselves off from American imports, markets or capital; they merely worked themselves into a position to trade with the U.S. on their terms. And Latin America needs some solid protectionism if it's going to nurture its own "infant industries" wihtout American competition for the domestic market. Exactly the same reason the U.S. needed tariff protection in the 19th Century (and stopped needing it when the infant industries had grown up). As Henry Clay or Abe Lincoln might have told you.

BrainGlutton

01-10-2007, 04:55 PM

BTW, Sam, what would an NDP-governed Canada be like? :)

BrainGlutton

01-10-2007, 04:58 PM

It's an accurate and pithy description of events. If I lived in Venezuela I'd be buying a plane ticket right about now if I hadn't already.

But it's not true. Sure, there have been "failures" of some nationalized industries. OTOH, lots of countries have done very well by nationalization -- especially, nationalization of natural resources like oil and natural gas. That's why Saudi Arabians pay no taxes, IIRC.

John Mace

01-10-2007, 05:04 PM

But it's not true. Sure, there have been "failures" of some nationalized industries. OTOH, lots of countries have done very well by nationalization -- especially, nationalization of natural resources like oil and natural gas. That's why Saudi Arabians pay no taxes, IIRC.
Are you seriously holding up S.A. as an example of a successful state? What would you say if Bush nationalized the US oil industry, eliminated income taxes, and kept 2/3 of the oil revenues for his consumption and that of his closest 1,000 relatives? Success?

BrainGlutton

01-10-2007, 05:19 PM

Are you seriously holding up S.A. as an example of a successful state? What would you say if Bush nationalized the US oil industry, eliminated income taxes, and kept 2/3 of the oil revenues for his consumption and that of his closest 1,000 relatives? Success?

I'd call it impossible. The U.S. domestic oil industry isn't nearly profitable enough to pay for the federal budget. As for the privileged status of the SA princes, that's another matter. Certainly I don't approve of the Saudi monarchy, but we're talking here about industry nationalization as such.

Captain Amazing

01-10-2007, 06:29 PM

BTW, Sam, what would an NDP-governed Canada be like? :)

They currently hold the Premierships of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

BrainGlutton

01-10-2007, 06:36 PM

They currently hold the Premierships of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

And have governed several provinces for periods in the past, I know. But they've never held the premiership of Canada, have they?

John Mace

01-10-2007, 06:42 PM

I'd call it impossible. The U.S. domestic oil industry isn't nearly profitable enough to pay for the federal budget.
Then just nationalize more industries, and only elimiate income tax on incomes of less than, say, $200k/year (or whatever works).

BrainGlutton

01-10-2007, 07:50 PM

Then just nationalize more industries, and only elimiate income tax on incomes of less than, say, $200k/year (or whatever works).

[shrug] I don't think you'll find anything like that on the SPUSA's platform . . . All I'm saying is, sometimes nationalization works out for the best, and Tony Snow is flatly and predictably wrong on that point.

Captain Amazing

01-11-2007, 09:35 AM

And have governed several provinces for periods in the past, I know. But they've never held the premiership of Canada, have they?

No, there's never been an NDP Prime Minister. They're not big enough for that. Their main role in Parliament has been as spoilers propping up minority governments.

Debaser

01-11-2007, 11:21 AM

Then just nationalize more industries, and only elimiate income tax on incomes of less than, say, $200k/year (or whatever works).

[shrug] I don't think you'll find anything like that on the SPUSA's platform

I think we can. From the SPUSA's principles (http://sp-usa.org/principles.html) page:

Production For Use, Not For Profit

In a socialist system the people own and control the means of production and distribution through democratically controlled public agencies, cooperatives, or other collective groups. The primary goal of economic activity is to provide the necessities of life, including food, shelter, health care, education, child care, cultural opportunities, and social services.
These social services include care for the chronically ill, persons with mental disabilities, the infirm and the aging. Planning takes place at the community, regional, and national levels, and is determined democratically with the input of workers, consumers, and the public to be served.

It sounds like they want to nationalize everything to me. As to taxes, it's hard to tell what they want. The principles page doesn't mention taxes at all except to complain about the current system.

Will there be taxes in a SPUSA state? What will they be? Do we even need them since we're all just working for eachother? Do we need money at all?

Whatever they mean by all the broad brushstrokes on the SPUSA page, I think it's fair to say that their version of government is drastically different than the current system.

John Mace

01-11-2007, 11:34 AM

[shrug] I don't think you'll find anything like that on the SPUSA's platform . . . All I'm saying is, sometimes nationalization works out for the best, and Tony Snow is flatly and predictably wrong on that point.
If the government (acting as proxy for "the people") don't control the means of production, how is that "Socialism"? As Debaser pointed out, it looks like all industry would be nationalized. From their "platform" page (click on "economics" link):

The Socialist Party stands for a fundamental transformation of the economy, focusing on production for need not profit. So-called fair trade is meaningless as long as the world economy is dominated by a few massive corporations. Only a global transformation from capitalism to democratic socialism will provide the conditions for international peace, justice, and economic cooperation based on the large-scale transfer of resources and technology from the developed to the developing countries.

1. We demand the immediate withdrawal of the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and oppose the creation of a widened Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

2. We call for worker and community ownership and control of corporations within the framework of a decentralized and democratically determined economic.
3. We call for a minimum wage of $15 per hour, indexed to the cost of living.

4. We call for a full employment policy. We support the provision of a livable guaranteed annual income.

5. We call for all financial and insurance institutions to be socially owned and operated by a democratically-controlled national banking authority, which should include credit unions, mutual insurance cooperatives, and cooperative state banks. In the meantime, we call for re-regulation of the banking and insurance industries.

6. We call for a steeply graduated income tax and a steeply graduated estate tax, and a maximum income of no more than ten times the minimum. We oppose regressive taxes such as payroll tax, sales tax, and property taxes.

<snipped out the rest>
What a recipe for disaster!!!

Debaser

01-11-2007, 11:34 AM

Nevermind. I've answered my own question. In another area of their page, they mention taxes in a description of the 2006-7 party platform. cite (http://sp-usa.org/platform/economics.html)

We call for a steeply graduated income tax and a steeply graduated estate tax, and a maximum income of no more than ten times the minimum. We oppose regressive taxes such as payroll tax, sales tax, and property taxes.

We call for the restoration of the capital gains tax and luxury tax on a progressive, graduated scale.

This isn't very specific, but I suspect that by eliminating "regressive" taxes and making other taxes steeply graduated, they mean that the poor will be paying very little taxes if any at all.

Here's some more fun stuff from the SPUSA page:

We call for a 30 hour work week at no loss of pay, with six weeks annual paid vacation.

We call for a minimum wage of $15 per hour, indexed to the cost of living.

We call for increased and expanded welfare assistance and increased and expanded unemployment compensation at 100% of a worker's previous income or the minimum wage, whichever is higher, for the full period of unemployment or re-training, whichever is longer.

Uh-oh. Sounds like the economy is going to be in trouble.

In socialism, full employment is realized for everyone who wants to work.

Wow. That solves that. I thought we would be in trouble for a minute there with the small businesses going under by the thousand, nobody working because you get paid even if you don't and those few who do work spending half their time laying on a beach. But, nope. They've just decided that we won't have any unemployment. Brilliant!

;)

Evil Captor

01-11-2007, 11:52 AM

Production For Use, Not For Profit

In a socialist system the people own and control the means of production and distribution through democratically controlled public agencies, cooperatives, or other collective groups. The primary goal of economic activity is to provide the necessities of life, including food, shelter, health care, education, child care, cultural opportunities, and social services.
These social services include care for the chronically ill, persons with mental disabilities, the infirm and the aging. Planning takes place at the community, regional, and national levels, and is determined democratically with the input of workers, consumers, and the public to be served.

My whole problem with this is this sentence:

"The primary goal of economic activity is to provide the necessities of life, including food, shelter, health care, education, child care, cultural opportunities, and social services."

It seems to imply a belief that taking care of the necessities of life would take up all or most of the output of the American economy. Whereas my suspicion is that taking care of the necessities of life would only take up a fraction of the American economy, and that eventually this will be true of the world economy as well under a wide open capitalist regime.

My only real problem with capitalism -- and it's a REALLY HUGE problem -- is that capitalist societies tend to do a piss-poor job of taking care of the necessities of life for those at the bottom of the economic pile.

Now, you conservatives may hate the old Soviet Union all you like. But one thing they did, inefficient as their system was, was take care of the necessities of life for those who survive Stalin. Everybody had a job (maybe one they hated) a place to live (a crummy cement block apartment) and food to eat (let's not get into Russian food). And there wasn't a lot of crime. That's because, for all their other failings, and Og knows there were plenty of them, they had the will to take care of their people.

I'm not seeing that in the good 'ol US of A. I find that diminishes my respect for the people in charge. A lot.

If capitalists were to say, "Hey, it'll cost us money but it's important that everybody have enough food and stuff, so let's allocate a portion of our budget for this and get it done" I'd feel a lot better about them. But I don't.

John Mace

01-11-2007, 01:16 PM

Now, you conservatives may hate the old Soviet Union all you like. But one thing they did, inefficient as their system was, was take care of the necessities of life for those who survive Stalin. Everybody had a job (maybe one they hated) a place to live (a crummy cement block apartment) and food to eat (let's not get into Russian food). And there wasn't a lot of crime. That's because, for all their other failings, and Og knows there were plenty of them, they had the will to take care of their people.

I'm not seeing that in the good 'ol US of A. I find that diminishes my respect for the people in charge. A lot.

If capitalists were to say, "Hey, it'll cost us money but it's important that everybody have enough food and stuff, so let's allocate a portion of our budget for this and get it done" I'd feel a lot better about them. But I don't.
So, you're saying the bottom tier of the USSR society had it better than the bottom tier in the US wrt "the necessities of life"? Cite?

We could solve the housing problem (to the extent that there is one) by forcing people to share apartments, just like the Soviets did. Are you seriously proposing that as a policy?

And there wasn't a lot of crime because it was a freakin' police state, for crying out loud!!

Debaser

01-11-2007, 01:20 PM

My only real problem with capitalism -- and it's a REALLY HUGE problem -- is that capitalist societies tend to do a piss-poor job of taking care of the necessities of life for those at the bottom of the economic pile.

Yeah. It's the worst system, except for all the others.

Now, you conservatives may hate the old Soviet Union all you like. But one thing they did, inefficient as their system was, was take care of the necessities of life for those who survive Stalin. Everybody had a job (maybe one they hated) a place to live (a crummy cement block apartment) and food to eat (let's not get into Russian food). And there wasn't a lot of crime. That's because, for all their other failings, and Og knows there were plenty of them, they had the will to take care of their people.

I'm not seeing that in the good 'ol US of A. I find that diminishes my respect for the people in charge. A lot.

Yeah. The Soviet Union took great care of it's citizens, if we don't consider the millions that it butchered and starved to death.

I just don't know what you're talking about here. Maybe I read my history books backwards but I seem to recall millions of people starving to death under Soviet rule. In America, how many people starved to death in 2006? (In millions, please.)

mlees

01-11-2007, 01:35 PM

Evil Captor, the problem with the USSR was that it used the power of the goverment to feed these people, and it did so with gross thugishness and inefficiency.

In the US, there are plenty of non-governmental charities to feed and house the needy. If you feel that the needy aren't receiving enough help, start a media campaign, and raise public awareness of the issue.

The 9/11 charities, the Katrina charities, and the Tsunami charities all demonstrate (to me) that the average American is still a compassionate person, and is willing to help those in need.

Using the power of the government to "level the playing field" between the rich and the poor, to the extent described as Pres. Chavez is doing, has historically led to oppressive authoritarian regimes. And then, it's the poor that always suffer the most, not those in control of the system.

John Mace

01-11-2007, 02:18 PM

Evil Captor, the problem with the USSR was that it used the power of the goverment to feed these people, and it did so with gross thugishness and inefficiency.
I don't think you mean to be saying this, but by the way you worded your response you are implicitly acknowledging that the US doesn't feed its people. That is simply wrong. No one starves in the US. (And I'm sure we all know what I mean by "no one". I'm sure you can find the odd starvation in the US, but it's essetially nonexistent).

BrainGlutton

01-11-2007, 02:33 PM

It sounds like they want to nationalize everything to me.

I don't think so. Their vision is much more decentralized -- no Five-Year Plans or anything like that, no single state bureaucracy managing the national economy. Seems to be more like the original vision of "Soviet Power." You might remember that -- before the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, there were already a lot of factory soviets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_%28council%29) (the word simply means "councils") -- self-organized workers' committees, entirely independent of management, of government, and of any political party. The Bolsheviks began their revolution with the slogan "All power to the Soviets!" and ended in reducing the soviets to instruments of the party's rule. The SPUSA would want the soviets or some American equivalent to run factories, etc., for real.

Caveat/disclaimer/apologia: I'm a member of the SPUSA because I wanted some socialist party (an actual party, not a mere educational organization like the DSA) to belong to and the SPUSA seems to me closer than any of the other existing ones to the mainstream tradition of American anti-Soviet democratic socialism. (And because all the few members of it I've met so far really impress me as down-to-Earth, smart, and likeable; unlike some really disturbing weirdos I've met from Trotskyist or Stalinist parties.) (Hey, stop that snickering!) But that doesn't necessarily mean I endorse every element of the platform. My own vision for America would be something much more moderate and closer to what is now the mainstream of thought in Europe (or maybe just a little more radical than that). For reference, I once was active in the moderately left-progressive New Party. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Party_%28USA%29) And if the very ideologically similar Working Families Party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Families_Party) or the Vermont Progressive Party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Progressive_Party) were to go national, I would join up.

But, having begun this series of threads to debate how America would be if ruled by any of its actually existing national third parties, I didn't think it would be fair to frame the debate for this thread in different terms.

BrainGlutton

01-11-2007, 02:35 PM

If the government (acting as proxy for "the people") don't control the means of production, how is that "Socialism"?

See preceding post.

John Mace

01-11-2007, 02:41 PM

I don't think so. Their vision is much more decentralized -- no Five-Year Plans or anything like that, no single state bureaucracy managing the national economy. Seems to be more like the original vision of "Soviet Power." You might remember that -- before the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, there were already a lot of factory soviets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_%28council%29) (the word simply means "councils") -- self-organized workers' committees, entirely independent of management, of government, and of any political party. The Bolsheviks began their revolution with the slogan "All power to the Soviets!" and ended in reducing the soviets to instruments of the party's rule. The SPUSA would want the soviets or some American equivalent to run factories, etc., for real.
A distinction without much difference. Industries would be transfered from their current owners to some other owners and new, private industries would not be able to be formed.

BTW, since there is no reason cooperatives like that can't operate in our present system, why do you suppose that almost none do? Why do you suppose that all the innovations you are using to post on this message board were developed at private companies or public corporations and none at worker owned cooperatives? Frankly, after hearing your views on this subject I wonder how you can credibly charge someone like Bush with ignoring reality.

John Mace

01-11-2007, 02:54 PM

Sorry about that last comment, BG. I got a bit too carried away. You can say that Bush ignores reality. ;)

mlees

01-11-2007, 04:34 PM

I don't think you mean to be saying this, but by the way you worded your response you are implicitly acknowledging that the US doesn't feed its people. That is simply wrong. No one starves in the US. (And I'm sure we all know what I mean by "no one". I'm sure you can find the odd starvation in the US, but it's essetially nonexistent).

I am confused.. where in my post (directed towards Evil Captor) did I say that there are (or aren't) starving people in the US?

I believe, as you seem to indicate, that there are some, but compared to the overall number of poor folks, the numbers are rather low.

The US Government does feed some of the poor. So do private charitable organisations, as well.

My point was that, in the US, there are more than one way to get social improvements done. Grassroots charity and private buisnesses can achieve these things, too.

Mandating things through governmental legislation (especially to the point of nationalising industry and resources, or adopting communes a-la-Stalin) does not seem to me to be the best, quickest, or most efficient means of acheiving a social goal. (Such as stamping out poverty.)

In short, it seemed to me that Evil Captor's post said "Because there are poor (starving) in the US, Capitalism has proven to be a failure as a socio-economic model." That's what I was disagreeing with.

John Mace

01-11-2007, 04:41 PM

I am confused.. where in my post (directed towards Evil Captor) did I say that there are (or aren't) starving people in the US?
You didn't, That's why a said "implicitly". It's because you didn't counter his claim that the US doesn't feed it's poor, which I think is the major problem with his statment-- not whether or not the Soviets did. But no big deal. I just wanted you to clarify what you did mean.

Also, did the USSR not have any private charities? They may not have used the term "private", but surely there was a way for citizens to give money voluntarily to orgnazations that helped feed the poor, even if those organizations were government run, no?

BrainGlutton

01-11-2007, 04:41 PM

Sam Stone

01-11-2007, 04:56 PM

Cite? How do you know he's "plundering" the oil industry by spending its revenue on infrastructure and social programs? And why would he need to "attract investment" in the nationalized oil industry? If it needs upgrading or maintenance, he can simply take less of its revenue for other projects and reinvest the remainder in the oil industry. And since they're now collecting the income tax seriously for the first time in Venezuelan history, he'll be able to afford it.

Do you know how much money the evil - 'profit seeking' oil industry pours back in terms of investment in R&D, exploration, and infrastructure?

Have a look at table 2 in this PDF cite (http://www.usembassy.it/pdf/other/RL33021.pdf). From it, we learn that in 2004, the top 9 oil companies earned a cumulative income of 87 billion dollars, on total revenues of 1.2 trillion, or 7% of revenue. And that's the year when everyone was screaming about 'excess profits'. In 2002, the industry only made about 4.3% profit. Of that, most is re-invested in exploration, refining, upgrading, etc. The remainder is paid out in the form of dividends to stock holders.

If Chavez is diverting more than 4-10% of his oil revenue into his social programs, he is not reinvesting in his oil infrastructure at the same rate as private firms are. The history of nationalized oil infrastructure is that they generally get plundered in this way - just like politicians who run up huge debts, governments that own major cash cows cannot withstand the urge to spend the money now rather than re-investing in the future.

And you should take a lesson from that. Sometimes there's a very real need for something for which there is no market demand.

Really? If there's no demand for it, how do you determine that there's a 'need' for it? Because you're smarter than everyone else?

If you can show me that an honest-to-god market failure has occured here, and explain how, I might buy your story. In fact, I'm about to offer you one...

Ever driven on the American Interstate Highway System? Mostly well-designed, useful, and something that the private sector never would have built.

Weren't you just complaining that there aren't enough railroads? Has it occured to you that there might not be as much demand for rail because the government built this huge, free highway system? There's your market failure - you can kill a market for something by using government money to heavily subsidize the alternative. So what do you want to do, create another public works project to build more rails? How are you going to get people to use them? Heavy subsidizing? Taxes on roads? Fiat?

If the railroads aren't currently running at full capacity, then building more of them is lunacy.

Would the U.S. Postal Service ever have been created by the private sector? Each has its place.

Uh, yes? Why would you assume it wouldn't have been? There have been private mail carriers since the dawn of communications. They've just been held in check by government regulations to protect the government monopoly from competition. So companies like Fed Ex had to build their business models to skirt around prohibited forms of delivery.

I expect business to be corrupt when the government isn't watching. When the government itself is corrupt, that's a much bigger problem. OTOH, the Venezuelan business community doesn't seem to mind.

If they don't mind yet, it's either because they've been promised immunity from the confiscation, or they are in bed with the government and expect THEIR business to benefit from the plundering of others.

:rolleyes: Oh, come on! By "too authoritarian for my taste," I meant stuff like suppressing opposition radio stations. That's bad, but it ain't Joe Stalin bad. There are no purges, show trials or gulags in Venezuela, and you won't live to see any.

You seem awfully confident in that, especially since a few people opposed to Chavez have already died under mysterious circumstances. And it's interesting how you'll scream and kick about any perceived violations of liberty from Bush, but when Chavez tries to take complete power, eliminate term limits, and stifle the opposition by shutting down their communications, your response is a shrug and a, "hey, Stalin was worse".

You probably won't even see private property expropriated without some kind of compensation. I don't like the tinkering with press freedom one little bit, but take him all around, Chavez is an apostle of civil liberties compared to, say, Alvaro Uribe, the right-wing president of Colombia: (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060612/parenti)

Ah. So as long as you can find someone more despotic than Chavez, he's A-OK in your book. As for the compensation for expropriating private property, it sure must be nice to decide how much money you're going to give the with the gun to his head. If Chavez isn't buying these companies at market value, he's stealing them, no matter what HE thinks is 'fair compensation'.

It made sense when the Europeans did it.
No it didn't.

And Latin America needs some solid protectionism if it's going to nurture its own "infant industries" wihtout American competition for the domestic market.
Nonsense. The countries that have been quickest to improve their standards of living and working conditions have been the ones that have embraced free trade.

Exactly the same reason the U.S. needed tariff protection in the 19th Century (and stopped needing it when the infant industries had grown up). As Henry Clay or Abe Lincoln might have told you.

Oh, where id Abe Lincoln get his degree in economics from, again? If you want to go the old historical root, why not check out what the Smoot-Hawley tariff did to help the American people.

Sam Stone

01-11-2007, 05:08 PM

BTW, Sam, what would an NDP-governed Canada be like? :)

Probably like Ontario when the NDP ran it - into the ground. You think Bush's approval rating was low? At one point, the approval rating for the NDP government in Ontario sank to 6%.

Ontario was in recession, and Rae, like a good socialist, tried to spend his way out of it. The result was huge deficits. Eventually, he had to enact 'austerity' measures like forcing every public employee to take 10 days off per year without pay. So the unions hated him for that too.

The Progressive Conservatives were elected in a landslide in the next election.

[url=http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Goldstein_Lorrie/2006/10/22/2095975-sun.htmlHere's a fun recap of the NDP years in Ontario[/url], for those who have forgotten just how awful they were.

Rae, Btw, was just the kind of socialist this board would love. Rhodes scholar, mild-mannered, big plans to implement socialist policies better and smarter than the people before, modern thinking, lots of diversity in the cabinet, yada yada.

Spoons

01-11-2007, 07:37 PM

Ontario was in recession, and Rae, like a good socialist, tried to spend his way out of it. The result was huge deficits. Eventually, he had to enact 'austerity' measures like forcing every public employee to take 10 days off per year without pay. So the unions hated him for that too.Oh, Lordy. Bob Rae. Because I was laid off from work thanks to his policies, was living in Ontario at the time (barely existing might be a better way to put it), and wasn't a public sector employee, I ended up taking 365 "Rae Days" without pay in 1991. (In fairness, I was collecting unemployment insurance, but that is a federal program.) Nobody was hiring--they couldn't afford to.

Thanks for the socialism, Bob. It sucked. :(

Evil Captor

01-11-2007, 08:51 PM

So, you're saying the bottom tier of the USSR society had it better than the bottom tier in the US wrt "the necessities of life"? Cite?

Can't give you a cite for an assertion I never made. However, in the case of HOMELESSNESS and UNEMPLOYMENT I can cite you silly.

Here's a cite from Time Magazine (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,160070,00.html) about the rise of homelessness and unemployment in Soviet Russia after capitalism was attempted there. Here's a capitalist economist citing the old Soviet system as better for those at the bottom of the pile. (http://www.zmag.org/parecon/writings/albert_socagend.htm) Oh, wait, here's another one: which cites Soviet Russia's lack of homelessness. (http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:KpYji0nU5d4J:academic.kellogg.edu/severins/Chapter--Outlines/Instructor%27s%2520Manual/CH10.DOC+%22+old+Soviet+Union%22+homelessness&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=19)

That was easy. My point wasn't so much that the average joes in the Soviet Union were on the whole better off than the Soviets -- clearly the US middle class was better off than the Soviet middle class -- but that the people at the bottom were in respect to homelessness and joblessness. You got a job, a place to live and food to eat by virtue of being a citizen of the Soviet Union. Whereas US capitalists in the 1930s were content to let poor people starve, and modern capitalists are content to let them go homeless and jobless.

The Soviet economy was not nearly as efficient as the capitalist economy, but the people in charge had the WILL to make them go away, and make them go away they did, which is a hell of a lot more than you can say of the current US "leadership." We could probably solve all these problems without any great dislocation to our economy or our society, if we had the will. The problem is, we don't. Or, some of us don't.

We could solve the housing problem (to the extent that there is one) by forcing people to share apartments, just like the Soviets did. Are you seriously proposing that as a policy?

My family would be HAPPY to move in with yours, it'll be a great adventure for all of us! We'll share and learn something, perhaps have a group hug afterward, maybe even sing Kumbayah!

Seriously, I'm not about to defend a proposal I didn't make.

And there wasn't a lot of crime because it was a freakin' police state, for crying out loud!!

If you were politically neutral, as many regular folks are, basically, what was the problem? Only those loud-mouthed folks of the sort who post in political forums on message boards were in jeopardy. Granted, they were in pretty severe jeopardy... But regular criminals wet themselves at the thought of littering in the old Soviet Union.

Evil Captor

01-11-2007, 08:58 PM

Yeah. The Soviet Union took great care of it's citizens, if we don't consider the millions that it butchered and starved to death.

I just don't know what you're talking about here. Maybe I read my history books backwards but I seem to recall millions of people starving to death under Soviet rule. In America, how many people starved to death in 2006? (In millions, please.)

If you'll note the little caveat I put in my post about the ones "who survived Stalin" you'll see that I was talking about the post-Stalin Soviet Union, after Stalin's mass murders.

Bryan Ekers

01-11-2007, 09:21 PM

If you'll note the little caveat I put in my post about the ones "who survived Stalin" you'll see that I was talking about the post-Stalin Soviet Union, after Stalin's mass murders.

Oh, okay. Let's be fair then and give capitalist countries a similar 30 million free deaths.

Evil Captor

01-11-2007, 09:27 PM

Evil Captor, the problem with the USSR was that it used the power of the goverment to feed these people, and it did so with gross thugishness and inefficiency.

Gross inefficiency, I'm down with that. I'm not sure "thuggish" is the right way to describe helping people get food, clothing and shelter, even when it's done by an authoritarian government.

In the US, there are plenty of non-governmental charities to feed and house the needy. If you feel that the needy aren't receiving enough help, start a media campaign, and raise public awareness of the issue.

Historically, charity just hasn't done much to solve problems like poverty and homelessness. Putting a bandaid on a bump and kissing a patient's forehead may make a caregiver feel like they've done something good, but it rarely does much good when the patient has something like malaria.

The 9/11 charities, the Katrina charities, and the Tsunami charities all demonstrate (to me) that the average American is still a compassionate person, and is willing to help those in need.

Americans are compassionate, sometimes. No doubt about it. but historically, the evidence to support your assertion just isn't there. Perhaps you have a cite that says otherwise? (BTW, i'm not taking about one-offs like Katrina and the Indonesian Tsunami. I'm talking about persistent social problems like poverty and homelessness.)

Using the power of the government to "level the playing field" between the rich and the poor, to the extent described as Pres. Chavez is doing, has historically led to oppressive authoritarian regimes. And then, it's the poor that always suffer the most, not those in control of the system.

Not in the post-Stalin Soviet Union.

Sarahfeena

01-11-2007, 09:29 PM

You seem awfully confident in that, especially since a few people opposed to Chavez have already died under mysterious circumstances. And it's interesting how you'll scream and kick about any perceived violations of liberty from Bush, but when Chavez tries to take complete power, eliminate term limits, and stifle the opposition by shutting down their communications, your response is a shrug and a, "hey, Stalin was worse".
Ah. So as long as you can find someone more despotic than Chavez, he's A-OK in your book. As for the compensation for expropriating private property, it sure must be nice to decide how much money you're going to give the with the gun to his head. If Chavez isn't buying these companies at market value, he's stealing them, no matter what HE thinks is 'fair compensation'.

Oh, okay. Let's be fair then and give capitalist countries a similar 30 million free deaths.

Seriously, I think it is bizarre what some folks will wave off or excuse, as long as it's the "right" ideology. For those who advocate socialism, is it so superior to capitalism in your mind, that ANYTHING is worth enduring in order to establish or maintain it?

Evil Captor

01-11-2007, 09:30 PM

Oh, okay. Let's be fair then and give capitalist countries a similar 30 million free deaths.

Are you maintaining that the excesses of Stalin are somehow part of socialist economics? I'd say the starvation in the US during the Depression was a direct result of free-market capitalism run amok, so I can see how such an assertion might be made. But I'd like to know your reasoning here.

Evil Captor

01-11-2007, 09:32 PM

Seriously, I think it is bizarre what some folks will wave off or excuse, as long as it's the "right" ideology. For those who advocate socialism, is it so superior to capitalism in your mind, that ANYTHING is worth enduring in order to establish or maintain it?

I think it's even more bizarre the way some folks will make up other folks' arguments for them, just so they can refute them easily. I think there's a word for it, even.

Sarahfeena

01-11-2007, 09:34 PM

I think it's even more bizarre the way some folks will make up other folks' arguments for them, just so they can refute them easily. I think there's a word for it, even. Who did that?

Sam Stone

01-11-2007, 09:36 PM

The thing about the NDP's shenanigans in Ontario is that the outcome was so bleemin' predictable except to ideologues like Bob Rae and his cronies. Take rent control, for instance. How many times have some of us patiently explained that when you fix the price for rent, you get housing shortages? So just for fun, I looked up what happened to housing after Rae instituted his 2.9% rent increase cap. Of course, rental housing came into short supply. Construction virtually halted - for example, despite a vacancy rate of only 1%, in 1997 only 252 rental units were built in Toronto. Homelessness became a big problem. When rent controls were finally eased by the Harris government, 5,162 rental units and 884 townhomes were built in the next two years, and vacancy rates when up to 3.9%, a much more reasonable number.

cite (http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_07.29.04/city/tpa.php).

The Rae government tried the opposite tack in Sarnia - subsidies. Again, Econ 101 would tell you that if you subsidize something, you'll get more of it. And what happened?

Rae's government introduced 700 subsidized units to Sarnia, which has a total
of only 4,985 rental units. According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing
Corporation (CMHC) Sarnia has the fourth highest vacancy rate in Canada
today at about 12 percent. "Highrises have been devalued by 5%-7% per year
[25-35% in the past five years]," Mr. Falby added.

There is even a rumoured vacancy rate in subsidized units - of 8 percent, wrote
The Financial Post, adding that "this is another example of government
enterprise siphoning taxes of the private sector then competing against it by
providing goods or services that the private sector is providing."
cite (http://www.etext.org/Politics/FreedomFlyer/FREEDF29.006).

Of course, the NDP has their excuses. It's not their fault. It's the evil businessmen, or high interest rates, or the legacy of the last administration, or something. But the thing is, you only need to keep making excuses when you are continually wrong. I was tempted to write that the rent controls caused subsidies even before checking any cites, because I knew what the result had to have been. I wasn't surprised. I didn't have to parse out special reasons why my belief in how the markets would react this time were wrong, because it wasn't.

And of course, there are the unintended consequences. For example, the Harris government eased rent controls, but only after a tenant vacated. So what do you think happened? Two things, of course - landlords found excuses to get rid of tenants, and the eviction rates went up. And mobility went down. Hey, if you're in a rent controlled apartment, and if you leave your next one won't be rent controlled, are you going to leave? No. So the housing market becomes inefficent, people live where they do not because it's the best place for them, but because artificial meddling by the government incentivized them to live there. Landlords start evicting people on specious grounds, so you need stiff fines and more policing of landlords. Laws are enacted. Freedom is stifled just a little more.

This is, as Hayek famously described it, the road to serfdom. One law begets another. One intervention in the market requres two more to handle the fallout and unintended consequences. And those laws have their own. Before you know it, you've got shabby little bureaucracies all over the place and people need approval from the tissue czar before they can blow their noses.

BTW, what the NDP tried in Ontario was explicitly Keynesian. Rae said, "We can either fight the deficit, or we can fight the recession." Rather than attack the recession on the supply side by making it easier for businesses to invest, grow, and hire, he tried to stimulate the economy on the demand side, just like the Democrats on this board are always advocating. He raised taxes, and spent the money on social programs and subsidies to the poor and the middle class. The result was a fiscal disaster. And surprise surprise, it turns out that you don't build wealth by consuming things. You build wealth by getting better at making things. Rae's policy made it harder for businesses to invest, and easier for people to spend. And then they wondered why their stimulus and enlightened socialism didn't rocket the province into a new age of egalitarian prosperity...

I can only shudder at the thought of the NDP gaining control over all of Canada.

Bryan Ekers

01-11-2007, 09:51 PM

Are you maintaining that the excesses of Stalin are somehow part of socialist economics?

No, just the result of them run amok.

I'd say the starvation in the US during the Depression was a direct result of free-market capitalism run amok, so I can see how such an assertion might be made. But I'd like to know your reasoning here.

The dust bowl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dustbowl) had something to do with it, and how many starvation deaths are we talking about? 30 million? 20? 10?

Sam Stone

01-11-2007, 10:05 PM

Can't give you a cite for an assertion I never made. However, in the case of HOMELESSNESS and UNEMPLOYMENT I can cite you silly.

Here's a cite from Time Magazine (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,160070,00.html) about the rise of homelessness and unemployment in Soviet Russia after capitalism was attempted there. [url=http://www.zmag.org/parecon/writings/albert_socagend.htm]Here's a capitalist economist citing the old Soviet system as better for those at the bottom of the pile.

I'm sorry... You mean the 'Capitalist economist' who writes for "New Politics - A Journal of Socialist Thought"?

Wow. You found a socialist who thinks that socialism is good. Imagine that.

Your second cite is another apologia for the Soviet Union. Please don't be disingenuous and label these people "Capitalist" just so you can claim some sort of balance. Or maybe I should start citing the Heritage Foundation as a socialist organization so I can 'prove' that not even socialists are buying the theory any more.

That was easy. My point wasn't so much that the average joes in the Soviet Union were on the whole better off than the Soviets -- clearly the US middle class was better off than the Soviet middle class -- but that the people at the bottom were in respect to homelessness and joblessness. You got a job, a place to live and food to eat by virtue of being a citizen of the Soviet Union. Whereas US capitalists in the 1930s were content to let poor people starve, and modern capitalists are content to let them go homeless and jobless.

It's not hard to have full employment at the point of a gun. If the people have no choice about where to work, and are forced to work at gunpoint, then they'll go to work. And you can always find the means to pack such people like cordwood into shabby little 500 sq ft concrete apartments and give them 1200 calories of crappy food a day, so long as they wait in line several hours for it.

The Soviet economy was not nearly as efficient as the capitalist economy, but the people in charge had the WILL to make them go away, and make them go away they did

In fact, they had so much will to make them go away that they made them go as far as Siberia. It's pretty easy to have zero unemployment when you're willing to round up the unemployed and the troublemakers and ship them by the millions into forced labor camps.

, which is a hell of a lot more than you can say of the current US "leadership." We could probably solve all these problems without any great dislocation to our economy or our society, if we had the will. The problem is, we don't. Or, some of us don't.

Well, the will and a whole lot of leg irons, anyway. But hey, think of the jobs that would be created in the burgeoning leg-iron industry.

My family would be HAPPY to move in with yours, it'll be a great adventure for all of us! We'll share and learn something, perhaps have a group hug afterward, maybe even sing Kumbayah!

You seriously underestimate how miserable life was for the average Soviet citizen. I had a friend who's family got out of the Soviet Union. They were 'middle class' - dad was a chemist. This is what their life was like in the 1970's: First, 8 people lived in an apartment with one bedroom, and maybe 600-700 square feet. The kids all slept together in the living room with the grandparents. They were on a waiting list for a car, but never got one.

Every morning, her Mom would get up at about 5, and make the family breakfast - usually something crappy like hard rolls and butter with maybe some leftover fat or something for flavor. Then she would get the kids off to school, and Dad would go to work. Of course, they didn't have a car, so everyone walked a lot. They didn't have any sort of automated appliances, so mom had to hand-wash clothes and stuff. Early in the afternoon, she would head out for the daily ritual of standing in line for the staples the family needed. For hours. Standling in line was so ingrained in the Soviet Union that it had its own customs and unwritten rules of behaviour. People would see a line forming and join it, without even knowing what might be at the other end. Hey, if there's a line, it must be something valuable, right? If not, maybe you can trade whatever it is with someone else.

Anyway, she'd get home at 6-7 PM, make supper, everyone would do chores, and then it would be off to bed again.

What a life. I'd rather be poor in the west. Oh, wait - I WAS poor in the west. At the same time, I lived in a single parent family with my mother making minimum wage. My life was WAY better than my friend's.

This nostalgia you're displaying for the Soviet Union truly amazing.

If you were politically neutral, as many regular folks are, basically, what was the problem? Only those loud-mouthed folks of the sort who post in political forums on message boards were in jeopardy. Granted, they were in pretty severe jeopardy... But regular criminals wet themselves at the thought of littering in the old Soviet Union.

Wow, you make it sound so good!

John Mace

01-12-2007, 10:55 AM

So, you're saying the bottom tier of the USSR society had it better than the bottom tier in the US wrt "the necessities of life"? Cite?Can't give you a cite for an assertion I never made.
You most certainly did make that assertion (emphasis added):

Now, you conservatives may hate the old Soviet Union all you like. But one thing they did, inefficient as their system was, was take care of the necessities of life for those who survive Stalin. Everybody had a job (maybe one they hated) a place to live (a crummy cement block apartment) and food to eat (let's not get into Russian food). And there wasn't a lot of crime. That's because, for all their other failings, and Og knows there were plenty of them, they had the will to take care of their people.

I'm not seeing that in the good 'ol US of A.
And the rest of your post was pure bullshit, as others have already pointed out.

Bryan Ekers

01-12-2007, 02:19 PM

In Soviet Union, what doesn't kill you makes you live a bleak depressing life with only thoughts of escape and gallons of vodka to make it bearable.

Sam Stone

01-12-2007, 06:32 PM

Yeah, the Soviet Union was so wonderful they had to put up razor wire and machine gun nests to prevent the people from fleeing the glorious worker's paradise.

Lemur866

01-12-2007, 06:50 PM

But at least you had the comfort of knowing that if you ever starved to death it wouldn't be like in American where the poor starve to death on street corners and no one cares. You'd be warmed by the thought that you were starving to death because Comrade Stalin cared enough to WANT you to starve to death.

Evil Captor

01-12-2007, 07:04 PM

Who did that?

You did.

Evil Captor

01-12-2007, 07:08 PM

No, just the result of them run amok.

Um, yeah. Socialism naturally leads to the deliberate starvation of millions by mad dictators. Just like democracy leads naturally tno nuclear weapons. It's all very logical out there in some universe or other.

The dust bowl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dustbowl) had something to do with it, and how many starvation deaths are we talking about? 30 million? 20? 10?

You claiming we couldn't have fed and housed our poor during the Depression if we had had the will to? The problem with the Depression was ... no social safety net. That's what happens when you try to run capitalism without a net -- people die.

Lemur866

01-12-2007, 07:10 PM

So how many people starved to death in America during the Great Depression?

Sam Stone

01-12-2007, 07:26 PM

Um, yeah. Socialism naturally leads to the deliberate starvation of millions by mad dictators.

Not at all. Sometimes it isn't deliberate.

Evil Captor

01-12-2007, 07:34 PM

I'm sorry... You mean the 'Capitalist economist' who writes for "New Politics - A Journal of Socialist Thought"?

Wow. You found a socialist who thinks that socialism is good. Imagine that.

Your second cite is another apologia for the Soviet Union. Please don't be disingenuous and label these people "Capitalist" just so you can claim some sort of balance. Or maybe I should start citing the Heritage Foundation as a socialist organization so I can 'prove' that not even socialists are buying the theory any more.

You don't like my cites, but I note you're attacking the sources rather than trying to dispute my essential point, which is that the old Soviet Union housed, fed and employed its citizens. I got the cites. You got the handwaving. We're on the Dope.

Good luck with all that handwaving.

It's not hard to have full employment at the point of a gun. If the people have no choice about where to work, and are forced to work at gunpoint, then they'll go to work. And you can always find the means to pack such people like cordwood into shabby little 500 sq ft concrete apartments and give them 1200 calories of crappy food a day, so long as they wait in line several hours for it.

Yes, I agree, poor conditions were the norm in the Soviet Union for the middle class. But people in America who are homeless might trade those conditions for theirs. Is that so hard to understand?

I'm guessing it is.

In fact, they had so much will to make them go away that they made them go as far as Siberia. It's pretty easy to have zero unemployment when you're willing to round up the unemployed and the troublemakers and ship them by the millions into forced labor camps.

Yes, Gulag very bad. You know what else? In America, we spend a LOT of money on heating oil! Billions! That must prove something, right? It proves at least as much about capitalism as Gulags prove about socialism.

Look, people I'm not just talking to Sam here, you're ALL doing it). If you're going to be calling my arguments bullshit you're going to have to do a LOT better than this:

Me: "The Soviet Union has more land mass than most other nations."

You: "But what about the mass killings! The Gulags! How can the Soviet Union have land mass when there are all those things!"

Or

Me: "The Soviet Union has more woolly mammoths frozen in tundra than the United States."

You: But it can't! It's a police state! The secret police! How can there be so many woolly mammoths when people were being shot by the truckload in Lubyanka Prison!"

Well, the will and a whole lot of leg irons, anyway. But hey, think of the jobs that would be created in the burgeoning leg-iron industry.

Remind me again -- where does America rank in terms of people imprisoned per capita? Aren't we the leading consumer of leg irons in the world? Or at least in the top five?

You seriously underestimate how miserable life was for the average Soviet citizen. I had a friend who's family got out of the Soviet Union. They were 'middle class' - dad was a chemist. This is what their life was like in the 1970's: First, 8 people lived in an apartment with one bedroom, and maybe 600-700 square feet. The kids all slept together in the living room with the grandparents. They were on a waiting list for a car, but never got one.

But they were not literally living in the street, were they?

What a life. I'd rather be poor in the west. Oh, wait - I WAS poor in the west. At the same time, I lived in a single parent family with my mother making minimum wage. My life was WAY better than my friend's.

[quote]This nostalgia you're displaying for the Soviet Union truly amazing.

Wow, you make it sound so good!

I'm watching the lobsters crawling out of your ears again. It's not a pretty sight.

John Mace

01-12-2007, 07:39 PM

Um, yeah. Socialism naturally leads to the deliberate starvation of millions by mad dictators. Just like democracy leads naturally tno nuclear weapons. It's all very logical out there in some universe or other.

You claiming we couldn't have fed and housed our poor during the Depression if we had had the will to? The problem with the Depression was ... no social safety net. That's what happens when you try to run capitalism without a net -- people die.
Let's remember that you piped in about communism (the USSR), not socialism. The thing is, both communism and capitalism are economic systems, not governmental systems. But experience tells us that communism can only be sustained in a totalitarian governmental system while capitalism can be be sustained in pretty much any kind of governmental system.

Any ecomonic system without a social saftey net is going to have people "starving" (for lack of a better word). The social safety net is determined by the government, but here's the kicker: just how much of social safety net is needed is a function of your economic system. Capitalism has shown itselt to be the best way to create wealth and to eliminate the need for a safety net for the largest % of people in a country.

(I've never really understood the key difference between socialism and communism anyway, though. )

Evil Captor

01-12-2007, 08:36 PM

So how many people starved to death in America during the Great Depression?

Here's a cite. (http://www.safarix.com/0618391770/ch25)

Here's another. (https://weblamp.princeton.edu/chw/papers/haines_citypanel29.pdf) This one tracks birth rates and death rates during the great depression and is very scholarly. No one seems to be tracking starvation in particular.

Sarahfeena

01-12-2007, 08:46 PM

You did. No, I didn't make up your argument...you were the one who excused Chavez:

Chavez is really too authoritarian for my taste but I guess you have to make allowances for the circumstances there -- if he weren't like that the entrenched elite might have blocked him from accomplishing anything at all; or ousted him successfully. Would his level of "authoritarianism" be acceptable in the US, if the "entrenched elite" here tried to keep a leader from accomplishing things? I imagine Bush feels that a little authoritarianism helps him accomplish his goals, as well...so is that OK with you?

John Mace

01-12-2007, 09:01 PM

Here's a cite. (http://www.safarix.com/0618391770/ch25)
That lists one death. So, you're outraged by one death in the capitalist system, but millions of starvation deaths in a communist system is just hand waved away. Got it. :rolleyes:

Sarahfeena

01-12-2007, 09:34 PM

Yes, I agree, poor conditions were the norm in the Soviet Union for the middle class. But people in America who are homeless might trade those conditions for theirs. Is that so hard to understand? Is it your assertion that homeless people in the US have no access to welfare and public housing?

But they were not literally living in the street, were they? Do you have a cite that shows there were no homeless whatsoever in the USSR?

Bryan Ekers

01-12-2007, 09:35 PM

That lists one death. So, you're outraged by one death in the capitalist system, but millions of starvation deaths in a communist system is just hand waved away. Got it. :rolleyes:
Well, to be fair, the extract also says:
In November 1932, The Nation told its reads that one-sixth of the American population risked starvation over the coming winter.
Of course, other sites show the population actually rising during this period (albeit at the slowest rate in the 20th century, not counting the anomalous 1918 when a combination of war and influenza cause the population to slightly decrease), but hey, supposition and speculation are kinds of evidence, aren't they?

So, how many Soviets died over the winter of '32-33?

As has been pointed out in various ways, the safest way to ensure your society has a safety net is to not hamper productive citizens beyond taxing them a little so they can create the nation's wealth, some of which gets distributed to the poor. Alliteratively, if your system actively discourages productive citizens by not letting them benefit from their own labour, they'll do all they can to escape.

Capitalism with a safety net is far easier to establish and maintain than communism (or extreme socialism) with limited personal freedoms. Neither system at its extreme is pretty, but capitalism needs less make-up.

John Mace

01-13-2007, 01:05 PM

Well, to be fair, the extract also says:
So what? Since 1/6th of the population clearly didn't starve that prediction was wrong. Anti-capitalist posters on this board like to imply that people were literally starving to death in the streets by the thousands during the Depression in the US. The fact is, you have to go to socialists countries (or Europe during/between the two World Wars) to see anything like that happening in the 20th century.

Bryan Ekers

01-13-2007, 03:08 PM

So what?

So I'm on your side, yeesh. It's very easy for EC to use that as a site because he can use (or try to use) the mere speculation of mass starvation as evidence that there really was mass starvation.

My "to be fair" was ironic, a method of saying "sure one aspect of EC's cite doesn't prove anything, but here's another aspect of his site that.... still doesn't prove anything."

John Mace

01-13-2007, 03:25 PM

My "to be fair" was ironic...
OK, but it's unlcear to me why you'd think that was obvious.

BrainGlutton

01-13-2007, 04:18 PM

And then he wonders why the American people despise socialists.

A better question would be why the peoples of practically every other country don't despise socialists the way Americans do. Is everybody out of step but Sammy?

Sarahfeena

01-13-2007, 04:41 PM

I'm sorry, Evil Captor...I quoted the wrong person...it was Brain Glutton who said this, not you...

Chavez is really too authoritarian for my taste but I guess you have to make allowances for the circumstances there -- if he weren't like that the entrenched elite might have blocked him from accomplishing anything at all; or ousted him successfully. (But I still didn't make up other peoples' arguments...the arguments seem quite clear without any help from me.)

Sam Stone

01-13-2007, 05:03 PM

Brainglutton, before we get too far off track, what do you think of the NDP's performance in Ontario, and why do you think their programs went off the rails so badly? Hell, Bob Rae is the perfect modern socialist. Mild mannered, honestly wants what's best for the people, worked within a democratic framework, highly educated Rhodes Scholar, packed his cabinet with intellectuals who 'knew how not to repeat the mistakes of the past'.

How come in practice his policies wound up being so predictably wrong, following the pattern of other socialists who have tried to reshape the market to fit their ideas of social justice?

I don't suppose you'd even entertain the notion that rent controls don't work, that providing subsidized housing has unintended consequences, that putting onerous taxes on businesses restricts growth and causes capital flight, and that guaranteeing jobs leads to people who don't work very hard in their job and don't much care if their employer likes what they are doing?

The problem with Socialists is that they see cause and effect through an ideological filter that blinds them to reality. If there are rich and poor, it can't be because the rich people worked harder, saved more, or found ways to be more productive. It's got to be some malevolent force at play that an enlightened government can control. If they see workers making what they consider to be too low a wage, it can't be because they aren't productive enough to earn more - it's got to be seen through the filter of the dialectic - the eternal class struggle between the haves and the have nots, the weak and the powerful. Just the kind of problem that a strong leader with a heart of gold and an army can fix.

By refusing to see the economic reality of the status quo, the true reason why things are the way they are, they are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. When Hugo Chavez claims that he's going to take the banks back from the rich people because they are parasites who simply take from the system instead of adding value to it, he's making the same mistake the Bolsheviks made when they hung all the Kulaks and turned agriculture over to 'the people' - with disastrous consequences.

When they think that true socialism is compatible with human rights, they're projecting the world as they want it to be - not the world as it is. Markets are the way they are by and large because they represent the choices that people have freely made about how to work, spend, and invest their money and labor. When a third party with guns steps into the fray and starts ordering people around, it is intrinsically authoritarian. We don't all live in a big collective farm where everyone has the same goals and the same notions about what is fair or unfair. The market lets them sort this out peacefully and voluntarily. Take it away, and people will try to get around it. Then you'll need more laws, and more enforcement. Those laws in turn distort other things and cause further disruption, which requires yet more laws.

Let's look at the case of rent control in Ontario (or New York, or anywhere else you want to look). The government stepped in between landlords and tenants and issued a decree about how much landlords could charge for rent increases. The unintended consequence was that building rental units was less profitable, so fewer people built them. That made the rental situation even worse, driving the real value of current real estate up even higher, and making the difference between government-mandated rents and the true market value of the rents even greater. Landlords then stopped maintaining the buildings as well, because they weren't earning enough from rent to warrant constant upgrades. The result was less housing, and lower quality housing. Predictable as rain.

So then the government is forced to intervene even more in the market - either forcing builders by law to build rental units at a loss, or taxing other people so that they could give subsidies to builders to make up the difference. Now the government is pouring money into the building industry, giving checks to the very landlords they claimed were the greedy ones who originally caused the problem.

The result of the subsidy is that housing doesn't get built where there is the greatest need - no one cares about that. The housing gets built where the combination of building cost - subsidy means the most profit. So then the government has to intervene AGAIN, now controlling where buiders can build. The result was Sarnia, where the government subsidized massive public housing works - surprise, they didn't get the number of units right, creating a glut of housing that drove down the value of other existing real estate. Yet another unintended consequence.

Finally, the NDP got kicked out, and the Tories tried to undo some of the damage. But the market was already distorted heavily. Rent controlled prices were keeping families in locations they could never afford without the rent controls, so the government was forced to institute a policy whereby the rents could only be returned to market levels after the current tenants left. So what do you think happened? Landlords started finding all sorts of reasons to evict people. This required yet ANOTHER intervention by government, setting up review boards for evictions, heavy fines for false evictions, inspectors, yada yada.

In the meantime, builders who owned rent controlled buildings but who could not build new structures that weren't rent controlled would start diverting maintenance funds into new construction. Hey, why not? If the other buildings get run down, maybe the tenants will leave voluntarily, and they can re-rent them out. Or simply abandon them. So now you need MORE intervention to try and stop this.

And so it goes. Try to control a complex economy by issuing edicts based on your social concerns, and the result is a mess. And you always wind up with more and more government managing more and more aspects of our lives until everything is under the thumb of a shabby bureaucracy staffed by government employees. The public sector takes over, innovation is stifled, capital isn't free to move to where it does the most good, and we take another step down the road to serfdom.

It'll happen in Venezuela, too. Just watch.

BrainGlutton

01-13-2007, 07:43 PM

Brainglutton, before we get too far off track, what do you think of the NDP's performance in Ontario, and why do you think their programs went off the rails so badly?

Since I was not even aware the NDP had ever governed Ontario until you brought it to my attention (see this (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=373082) thread), I think I shall wait for some left-wing Canuck such as Muffin (see post #24) to defend the party's record then and there.

BrainGlutton

01-17-2007, 12:49 PM

Really? If there's no demand for it, how do you determine that there's a 'need' for it? Because you're smarter than everyone else?

:rolleyes: Because "market demand" exists only WRT goods and services for which end-use consumers are willing to pay, individually, and which they expect to get more or less immediately. Society as a whole needs a lot of goods that do not meet that standard. I would have thought that was too obvious a truism for even the most radical Libertarian to question.

Weren't you just complaining that there aren't enough railroads? Has it occured to you that there might not be as much demand for rail because the government built this huge, free highway system?

Yes, it has occurred to me. Seemed like a good idea back in the '50s when no one imagined the oil might run out -- and it still seems like a good idea, despite the downside. A highway system is a good thing to have, even if a day comes (and it will) when we can't afford to use it quite so often.

In any case, my point remains: The existence of the Interstate Highway System proves it is possible for a government to build something, and build it right, that the private sector never would have done.

So what do you want to do, create another public works project to build more rails? How are you going to get people to use them? Heavy subsidizing? Taxes on roads? Fiat?

If the railroads aren't currently running at full capacity, then building more of them is lunacy.

Oh, the "market demand" for rail service in the U.S. will exist -- once gasoline becomes a great deal more expensive at the pump, which it will. By which time our petroleum-dependent economy may be so depressed that it might be too late, in economic-resources terms, for us to build New Trains. (http://www.newtrains.org/pages/354049/index.htm)

As for Venezuela -- they're building railroads, presumably, because that's what most people can use; individual automobile ownership being nowhere near as widespread as in the U.S., and not likely to be either, and there's nothing wrong with that so long as people have some other way to get around. If they were to build a national freeway system too -- that might make economic sense, even if only truckers used it.

Uh, yes? Why would you assume it wouldn't have been? There have been private mail carriers since the dawn of communications.

Cite?

No it didn't.

And why not?

I think you'll find the Europeans see it very differently. They might have balked at the proposed EU Constitution, but only a small minority in any country wants their country to secede from the EU. It provides economic (and social) benefits the people value too much. Eastern European countries are clamoring to get in.

So what makes you think the EU doesn't make sense?

Nonsense. The countries that have been quickest to improve their standards of living and working conditions have been the ones that have embraced free trade.

Cite? Really, cite? Because I was not under the impression that any Third-World country had made a good bargain out of embracing the World Bank/IMF's economic-globalization and "economic shock therapy" policies. (I know Mexico, apart from the elite class, did not get much good out of NAFTA, (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=315669) nor did the U.S.; Canada, OTOH, did.) It's just saddled them with national debts they have no hope of paying off.

Oh, where id Abe Lincoln get his degree in economics from, again?

:rolleyes: Same place Adam Smith got his.

If you want to go the old historical root, why not check out what the Smoot-Hawley tariff did to help the American people.

I'm not, of course, arguing (nor would Clay or Lincoln have argued) that protectionism is always the best policy for a country's economy. The U.S. needed it while we were in the process of industrializing. After WWII, we were the world's leading industrial exporter and naturally preferred free trade. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot-Hawley) was probably a bad idea at the time, but that does not mean the economic thinking underlying it was entirely misconceived. N.B.: The Smoot-Hawley Tariff did not cause the Great Depression, as Jude Wanniski (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jude_Wanniski) fatuously insisted back in 1978.

BrainGlutton

01-17-2007, 12:54 PM

BTW, if you want the Straight Dope on on the on-the-ground social and economic effects of the European Union, check out The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy, (http://www.amazon.com/United-States-Europe-Superpower-Supremacy/dp/0143036084/sr=8-1/qid=1169059950/ref=sr_1_1/102-0669315-8938529?ie=UTF8&s=books) by T.R. Reid.

Captain Amazing

01-17-2007, 01:34 PM

Muffin

01-17-2007, 04:05 PM

Since I was not even aware the NDP had ever governed Ontario until you brought it to my attention (see this (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=373082) thread), I think I shall wait for some left-wing Canuck such as Muffin (see post #24) to defend the party's record then and there.Muffin admits he muffed it -- too many inexperienced people trying to runthe show. Then Harris & Co. came in from the opposite direction and made things worse.

Look to Manitoba, and to a lesser degree Sask., for better examples.

BrainGlutton

01-17-2007, 05:00 PM

The Rae government was a disaster, obviously (and one of the few smart things the Liberals did recently was not pick Bob Rae as party leader) . . .

:confused: What, Rae switched parties? Or tried to?

Captain Amazing

01-17-2007, 05:23 PM

:confused: What, Rae switched parties? Or tried to?
He did. He pretty much left electoral politics for a while after the NDP lost Ontario. He sat on a bunch of commissions, including the Security Intelligence Review Committee, and the one investigating the Air India bombing. Then, just recently, when Martin resigned, Rae joined the Liberals and announced he was seeking the leadership.

BrainGlutton

01-17-2007, 05:28 PM

He did. He pretty much left electoral politics for a while after the NDP lost Ontario. He sat on a bunch of commissions, including the Security Intelligence Review Committee, and the one investigating the Air India bombing. Then, just recently, when Martin resigned, Rae joined the Liberals and announced he was seeking the leadership.

Interesting story . . . I wonder why. Personal conversion? Personal career opportunism? Or classic political entryism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism)? ;)

Captain Amazing

01-17-2007, 06:59 PM

Interesting story . . . I wonder why. Personal conversion? Personal career opportunism? Or classic political entryism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism)? ;)

He wrote an article in the National Post in 2002 called "Parting Company with the NDP", in which he officially renounced the party, criticizing Svend Robinson and the federal NDP because Robinson had called Israel "a terrorist state", and had publically supported Arafat. From his article:

Israel's right to exist within defined and secure borders has been a foundation of both Canadian foreign policy and the democratic tradition for nearly 60 years. It is not just that Canada voted in favour of Israel's admission to the United Nations in 1948. It is the deep bond of friendship and family ties that have strengthened the labour and human rights communities in both our countries, that have changed the lives and hopes of thousands of young people, and that have built a growing economic relationship as well. Of course Canadian Jews have been at the heart of this relationship, but Canada's support for the idea of Israel and its affirmation of human values has found deep resonance across religious faiths and party lines.

Svend Robinson, the federal New Democrat spokesperson for foreign affairs, has gone to Ramallah to show solidarity with Yasser Arafat. In a recent interview, Mr. Robinson described Israel as a terrorist state and proudly declared that he had "taken sides."

Mr. Robinson's views are apparently now the official stand of the federal New Democratic Party.

They are not mine. . .

[here, Rae talks about how Arafat's refusal to make peace and decision to return to the intifada led to Sharon's election and the end of hopes for peace. He condemns the anti-Semitism in the Middle East, expresses "anguish and concern" for the violence, calls for a two-state solution, and for Palestinians to stop terrorism.]

If Svend Robinson's foray had been a solitary event, it might have been possible to brush it off as yet another escapade from a histrionic crank. But he is the foreign affairs critic of the New Democratic Party. The NDP criticizes the Third Way, opposes the World Trade Organization, sits on its hands when Tony Blair praises the advantages of markets, and denounces any military action against terrorism whether by the United States, Canada or Israel. This is not a vision of social democracy worthy of support.

BrainGlutton

01-17-2007, 07:09 PM

He wrote an article in the National Post in 2002 called "Parting Company with the NDP", in which he officially renounced the party, criticizing Svend Robinson and the federal NDP because Robinson had called Israel "a terrorist state", and had publically supported Arafat. From his article:

Based on that, Rae must have been on the right wing of the NDP.

But I'll wait for a Canadian to explain what, if anything, that signifies.

Sam Stone

01-17-2007, 07:11 PM

:rolleyes: Because "market demand" exists only WRT goods and services for which end-use consumers are willing to pay, individually, and which they expect to get more or less immediately. Society as a whole needs a lot of goods that do not meet that standard. I would have thought that was too obvious a truism for even the most radical Libertarian to question.

I'm on board with the conceptual idea that there are some common infrastructure pieces that government has a role in helping to build, for the reasons you mentioned. I just don't expect them to do it all that well, and the scope of what I would consider reasonable for government to be involved in is no doubt much lower than yours.

As far as trains go, it seems to me that if we were really in short supply of trains, you'd see full trains and escalating costs to ship items by train. In fact, the opposite occurs. Light Rail Transit, despite being heavily subsidized, is under-utilized almost everywhere it has been installed. Amtrak can't make a profit. Where exactly are all these trains supposed to go, and what need will they fill that doesn't exist now?

Yes, it has occurred to me. Seemed like a good idea back in the '50s when no one imagined the oil might run out -- and it still seems like a good idea, despite the downside. A highway system is a good thing to have, even if a day comes (and it will) when we can't afford to use it quite so often.

Actually, I tend to agree with you that the interstate highway system was a pretty good engineering project. However, like all other government projects it has had unintended consequences - one of them being that the existence of a huge nationwide grid of freeways paid for by tax dollars has tipped the scales heavily in favor of autos and away from mass transit.

In any case, my point remains: The existence of the Interstate Highway System proves it is possible for a government to build something, and build it right, that the private sector never would have done.

Engineering projects like this are significantly different than attempting to micro-manage a large, complex economy. Sure, government agencies can build some big, impressive things. The Apollo project, for example. I'm actually in favor of some of those things, even though such projects almost always carry the stigma of government - bureaucracy, bloated budgets, and inefficiency. Still, no one else is about to build a moon rocket, so if we want to go to the moon, the government's our only choice.

But when governments get involved in actually trying to manage the economy itself, it fails. Because an economy is hideously complex, and the information required to make good decisions is simply not available to the government. That's why government intervention in setting prices and tariffs is such a bad idea.

Oh, the "market demand" for rail service in the U.S. will exist -- once gasoline becomes a great deal more expensive at the pump, which it will. By which time our petroleum-dependent economy may be so depressed that it might be too late, in economic-resources terms, for us to build New Trains. (http://www.newtrains.org/pages/354049/index.htm)

Or maybe it will never get that expensive. Gas is back below $50/barrel again. Oh, I have no doubt that one day gasoline will be too expensive to put in our cars - but by the time it is, we may already have better solutions that don't involve trains. In fact, you've put your finger on one of the biggest problems of government - the only tools it has are those that are available today. So if you want to replace cars, well, you've got trains. So you build lots of trains. In the meantime, the market, had it been left to itself, would have adapted. Maybe the adaptation would have involved trains, or maybe it would have involved hybrid cars or even some new technology we can't even foresee today. The market innovates - the government takes what exists and re-directs resources around it. And that tends to displace innovation.

As for Venezuela -- they're building railroads, presumably, because that's what most people can use; individual automobile ownership being nowhere near as widespread as in the U.S., and not likely to be either, and there's nothing wrong with that so long as people have some other way to get around. If they were to build a national freeway system too -- that might make economic sense, even if only truckers used it.

No, they're building railroads because that's what a central planning bureau thinks Venezuela needs. The history of such bureaus actually getting it right is pretty dismal.

Actually, before I say that I should ask if the railroads being built are actually being built by the government, or whether there is still a pocket of free enterprise involved.

I think you'll find the Europeans see it very differently. They might have balked at the proposed EU Constitution, but only a small minority in any country wants their country to secede from the EU. It provides economic (and social) benefits the people value too much. Eastern European countries are clamoring to get in.

So what makes you think the EU doesn't make sense?

Did I actually say the EU doesn't make sense? I was responding to what I thought was the claim that the Europeans instituted trade tariffs. The EU makes sense because it's the opposite of that - a free trade zone within Europe. That's the best part of the EU - opening borders, allowing the free flow of goods, labor, and capital between countries.

Where the EU is failing is in the areas where central planners want to start taking over and dictating how the countries will be run. Unified work regulations, unified currency, one-size-fits-all regulations on how government must spend its money and what kind of debts they can have, etc.

Cite? Really, cite? Because I was not under the impression that any Third-World country had made a good bargain out of embracing the World Bank/IMF's economic-globalization and "economic shock therapy" policies.

Hong Kong. It was once a poor developing nation. It had absolutely no trade barriers. It was a 'sweatshop' country, and 'made in Hong Kong' was usually seen as a sign of cheap, inferior goods. The British government had a 'Laissez-faire' policy in Hong Kong, allowing the free market to work and avoiding government intervention as much as possible.

Hong Kong was crowded, and had virtually no natural resources of its own. The people came from the same cohort as the Chinese nationals across the water, starting out with similar backgrounds, education, etc. China had abundant land and resources which Hong Kong lacked. Along the way, Hong Kong picked up boat people from Vietnam, and people fleeing starvation in China. They had an open-door policy towards these immigrants - not cherry-picking the best and brightest, but accepting them all.

In 1945, Hong Kong was a poor area filled with shacks and hard labor. Today, Hong Kong's per-capita GDP is $37,100, one of the highest in the world. It never protected its industry - in fact, it's considered the freest economy in the world. Not only are there no trade barriers, there are also very few internal barriers to setting up a business. Go rent a place, fill out a single form, and open up. The result has been an explosion of innovation, capital investment, and ultimately a huge gain in the standard of living for the people.

You can also look at Singapore. In 1965 when Singapore became independent, it was a very poor country. The government responded by adopting pro-business, pro-trade policies with generally low tariffs and lots of economic freedom (Singapore is ranked #2 in economic freedom, behind Hong Kong). The result was 40 years of growth that averaged 8% per year. From this chart (http://www.singstat.gov.sg/keystats/hist/gdp.html) you can see the amazing results: in 1965, Singapore had a per-capita GDP of US$427 - about half of what the average for the third world is today. By 2005, that had grown to $26,892 - roughly on par with the large European economies. Starting from third-world status. Singapore is currently negiating for full no-tariff free trade zones throughout Asia.

More after supper...

Sam Stone

01-17-2007, 10:32 PM

(I know Mexico, apart from the elite class, did not get much good out of NAFTA, (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=315669) nor did the U.S.; Canada, OTOH, did.) It's just saddled them with national debts they have no hope of paying off.

NAFTA is not to blame. NAFTA actually had very little to do with what's happened in Mexico in the last decade. This Congressional Budget Office Report (http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=4247&sequence=0&from=0#anchor) does a pretty good job of explaining this. Regression studies that have controlled for other factors have found that NAFTA had a positive impact on U.S. exports to Mexico AND U.S. imports from Mexico, and a positive impact on U.S. GDP. But the amounts were very slight, and huge changes in the economy of Mexico swamp any small changes NAFTA may have had.

You really need to be careful when reading analysis of free trade from left-wing journals, as this is one area where they tend to be highly biased. Mainly because big labor is strongly against free trade, prefering protectionism to prop up salaries. So a lot of studies get commissioned by big labor or other left-wing groups that tend to grossly exaggerate negative effects of free trade while glossing over the positive.

If you wouldn't accept at face value a study on gun control put out by the NRA, you should be equally skeptical of an anti-free trade report issued by the AFL-CIO, or rhetoric about free trade coming from a left-wing supporter of trade unionism.

Free trade IS a threat to unionized jobs - unions derive their power from being able to control the labor market and increase scarcity in labor, thereby driving up its cost. But at the same time, free trade is a huge boon to the people who buy the goods and services that would otherwise come from those jobs. And it's a huge boon to workers in competitive industries who see their markets expanding, and therefore new jobs being created, from the lowering of barriers for their products.

:rolleyes: Same place Adam Smith got his.

Absent any other economic rationale, the mere fact that Lincoln instituted trade protection means nothing. So did George W. Bush. I note you didn't use his steel tariffs as one of your examples.

I'm not, of course, arguing (nor would Clay or Lincoln have argued) that protectionism is always the best policy for a country's economy. The U.S. needed it while we were in the process of industrializing.

Cites for the 'need' for protectionism in the U.S. in the 1800's?

Here's the thing - when governments invoke trade protection, it's almost always done at the behest of powerful industries who are trying to protect their own little slice of the pie from competition. And in this case, business and labor in those industries agree, and together bring significant lobbying power to the government. In other countries, it's outright corruption - bribery or other influence over government by business that gets governments to pass laws restricting trade.

We do a lot of talking on this board about market failure. Here is a perfect example of 'government failure' - when a policy benefits a small, highly powerful group, but damages everyone else (but not enough to cause them to take political action), the decision making gets heavily skewed in favor of the powerful against the masses, even if the aggregate result is bad for the country. Government 'job creation' is another example of this - the government takes in, say, a billion dollars in tax revenue, and spends the billion propping up an industry or building new infrastructure. The results of the spending are visible and concrete - you point to a new factory, put up a nice powerpoint showing how many new jobs were created building your new freeway or what have you.

But there are no free lunches. The tax money raised to pay for those jobs came out of the economy. $3 per person for a year. That effect can be hard to see, but it's real. It's one less dinner out for a family, making a restaraunt earn a little less. It's a CD that didn't get purchased, or a movie ticket not purchased. The effect is still real - jobs are still lost on the margins. Money is pulled from where people wanted it to go, and diverted to a powerful special interest with friends in Washington. But the person who lost $3 is not going to make a big fuss. They're not about to lobby Washington for their three bucks back. So the damage is hidden, the benefits exaggerated by the benefitciaries justifying their pork.

Don't buy into it. You don't trust big business any other time - don't trust them now because their rhetoric happens to fit into your worldview, or because this once their interests happen to align with labor's. They're still screwing over the little guy.

After WWII, we were the world's leading industrial exporter and naturally preferred free trade. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot-Hawley) was probably a bad idea at the time, but that does not mean the economic thinking underlying it was entirely misconceived. N.B.: The Smoot-Hawley Tariff did not cause the Great Depression, as Jude Wanniski (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jude_Wanniski) fatuously insisted back in 1978.

You don't have to be a net exporter to benefit from free trade. BOTH sides benefit. It's also a benefit to lower barriers to bringing better, cheaper goods into your country. Note that under NAFTA U.S. exports to Mexico AND Mexican exports to the U.S. went up. The jobs lost in industries that couldn't compete with imported goods are made up by jobs created in industries that see their export markets grow. This is good for the economy because the jobs created are ones in an industry that has shown itself to have a comparative advantage over its American counterparts, and the jobs lost are in industries that can't compete in the world market. Therefore, the overall productivity of the country grows as it focuses its labor and capital on what it does best.

Sam Stone

01-17-2007, 10:59 PM

Muffin admits he muffed it -- too many inexperienced people trying to runthe show. Then Harris & Co. came in from the opposite direction and made things worse.

Look to Manitoba, and to a lesser degree Sask., for better examples.

Saskatchewan, despite being resource rich, is declining in population and has an economy dwarfed by its neighbor. Saskatchewan's population is now smaller than greater Edmonton by itself, smaller than it was in 1985, and about the same size as it was in 1931. People are not choosing to live in Saskatchewan. The NDP's high tax, high spending, business unfriendly economic climate has a lot to do with it. Saskatchewan is the world's largest producer of Potash, the largest producer of Uranium, and has substantial oil and gas resources. It has large areas of great farmland. It has a lot of natural advantages. And yet, its population is leaving and is now under 1 million people.

High energy prices are turning that around somewhat right now - Saskatchewan's GDP is growing. So there's hope there. Although I see the NDP government is planning to spend the money on more social programs and 'investment'. They should try cutting taxes instead.

And while Manitoba has an NDP government, it seems to be cut from a different mold as other big-spending NDP governments. The 2006 budget has tax cuts, a government surplus, and the second lowest provincial spending in Canada.

I must say, that having read over the Manitoba budget, these guys may be the best NDP government I've seen, and they may be indicative of the rise of a 'new left' - a left that realizes that without wealth, you can't afford social programs. They believe in the market, but seek to use government to take what's needed to address social issues while having as light a footprint on the economy as they can, lest they break it.

To me, this is the smart evolution of the left. Give up on the notion of controlling industry and taking it over for 'the people'. Forget about mandating equality in outcome and capping the income of the rich. It won't work, and attempts to manage the economy like that are doomed to bring misery to the people you are trying to help. Instead, embrace the capitalist framework, and work within it for your social goals. If you think a collective is a good way to run a business, start one. Out-compete the other guys. If businesses pollute too much, create incentives for them to invest in new technology. If people aren't earning enough at the bottom levels, give them tax breaks rather than putting mandates on business. That sort of thing.

Muffin

01-17-2007, 11:25 PM

Based on that, Rae must have been on the right wing of the NDP.

But I'll wait for a Canadian to explain what, if anything, that signifies.Yup. He was. That was part of the problem when he was Premier of Ontario. He talked a nice reasonable line to get elected, but once in power, had to deal with his own NDP Members of Provincial Parliament who were of a more ideological and less practical bent, and who really didn't know how to run a government.

Sam Stone

01-17-2007, 11:51 PM

But the government didn't act in a rightwing way. It essentially followed the NDP platform of Keynesian economic policy, heavy social spending, higher taxes on business and the rich, and more regulations.

The result was an economic melt down.

Muffin

01-18-2007, 12:14 AM

I must say, that having read over the Manitoba budget, these guys may be the best NDP government I've seen, and they may be indicative of the rise of a 'new left' - a left that realizes that without wealth, you can't afford social programs. They believe in the market, but seek to use government to take what's needed to address social issues while having as light a footprint on the economy as they can, lest they break it.

To me, this is the smart evolution of the left. Give up on the notion of controlling industry and taking it over for 'the people'. Forget about mandating equality in outcome and capping the income of the rich. It won't work, and attempts to manage the economy like that are doomed to bring misery to the people you are trying to help. Instead, embrace the capitalist framework, and work within it for your social goals. If you think a collective is a good way to run a business, start one. Out-compete the other guys. If businesses pollute too much, create incentives for them to invest in new technology. If people aren't earning enough at the bottom levels, give them tax breaks rather than putting mandates on business. That sort of thing.Sam, you are sounding like a subversive. ;)

And I hope that it is the path that the NDP takes.

Coincidentally, I was at an NDP table at a community dinner last Sunday. It was an interesting mix of people, including the expected big union guy, university prof, high school teacher, and politician, but there were others there that were indicative of a different direction, including myself (a sole practitioner lawyer), a brass tacks municipal politician, and a property investor.

At the other end of town this difference in direction can also be seen. The NDP politician is a small businessman, and a couple of lawyers (one of whom was a classmate and friend of Rae, and thinks he is one of the smartest people he has ever met) help him with his campaigns.

These folks are not people who are insulated in an ivory tower, or insulated by a union, or just plain out in left field picking daisies. They are small business persons who compete and succeed based on the bottom line, but who also want a nation that is good for all Canadians, not just the lucky ones.

In Canada, the NDP grew up through unionism, particularly in the mining and textile industries. The working conditions in those industries in the first part of the last century were often horrid. As unions grew in power, working conditions and remuneration were addressed. The flip side of the coin, however, was that businesses with union shops lost flexibility.

One thing Rae had to face was the need to move the economy forward, with big unions resisting being shaken up. That knocked his legs out from under him -- particularly since some of the most powerful unions were composed of government employees and teachers (who are ultimately funded by the government).

Since that time, some of the unions in the resource and manufacturing industries have learned that they must be competitive -- if not, the mill closes, the plant moves, and everyone is out of a job. Unfortunately, some unions have not yet realized this, so the NDP still does not have a secure power base, and still does not have a clear direction.

How can the NDP drive the economy forward but at the same time give citizens stability and protection? How can unions help make their industries more competitive, while at the same time improve the working conditions and wages of their members? I believe that it is vital to not kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

Sam Stone

01-18-2007, 03:08 AM

Sam, you are sounding like a subversive. ;)

Just a pragmatist. As a believer in free markets, I don't have to just advocate Libertarianism to try to move the world in what I think is a better direction - I can also point out ways in which the market can also help people with different goals.

And in some cases, our interests are perfectly aligned. For example, I believe that a lot of the pollution we get today is because of a market failure - the externality cost of pollution is not part of the transaction between energy producer and consumer, and this distorts prices and creates inefficiencies.

So, I would advocate a carbon tax to correct that externality. Done right, a carbon tax could actually make the energy market more efficient by correctly monetizing all of the costs of the various options. That may push people into more efficient living, or it may drive Co2 neutral energy sources or carbon sequestering. I don't really care which. If the cost of CO2 is accounted for in the transaction, the market will deal with the problem efficiently.

The 'old' way for environmentalists to handle this run the gamut from anti-business slogans and attempts to curtail production by fiat, to government-mandated carbon quotas to forcing industries to all adopt the same standards for carbon emission, rather than letting companies choose the most efficient path for themselves once they have to pay for the CO2 they release.

The tax would have to be revenue-neutral to avoid it becoming an escalating cash grab, and would have to be based on sound economic analysis of the true costs - or the best estimate we can come up with.

As for economic justice, remember that a rising tide lifts all boats. This is a cliche, and many on the left dismiss it in knee-jerk fashion by claiming that all the wealth just goes to the rich, but it's clearly not true. The 'poverty line' in the U.S. is almost twice the average world per-capita income, meaning you can be 'poor' in the U.S. and still live better than half the people in the world. And the poverty line in the U.S. isn't much below the average incomes of some European countries, and only about $12,000 below the median incomes in rich European countries like France. And in fact it's TWENTY times greater than the average 3rd world income. Clearly the wealth generated by America's capitalist system has helped everyone. Incomes rose on average 4% last year in the U.S., btw.

Or look at it this way - if you are looking for a way to provide for, say, the unemployed, wouldn't you rather have 4.5% unemployment and a $38,000 per-capita GDP (the U.S.) than an 11% unemployment rate and a $27,000 per-capita income (France)? A strong economy means fewer unemployed or really destitute people in the first place, and more money to help them with in the second. If both countries spend the same amount of money as a percentage of GDP on the poor, the poor in America would receive much better benefits.

If I were in the NDP or the Green party, I'd first advocate environmental measures that seek to correct true externalities in the market that distort production towards more polluting industries. If I wanted to improve the efficiency of autos, I wouldn't use something as crude as a CAFE standard - I'd simply implement a carbon tax at the pump, and let people decide how much they want to pay for better mileage. Let the SUV drivers bear the actual burden of those SUVs, and you'll push more of them into smaller vehicles while actually making the market fairer and more efficient.

After that, I'd push policies that incentivise people to act in more socially responsible ways, or that use the market's strengths towards my goals. Instead of setting arbitrary pollution thresholds for factories, implement a market in pollution credits, and let the companies figure out what the true costs are by negotiating with each other. If you want to encourage conservation, advocate tax breaks for people houses that meet higher insulation standards, or provide tax credits for capital improvements like roof-mounted solar cells or hybrid vehicles.

These things also distort the market, but they still let prices move freely. They just push the equilibrium point in a certain direction because of the subsidization of one choice. But you'd be surprised how effective that can be. It pushes all the people on the margin to the side you want.

I wouldn't necessarily advocate all of these things myself, because I'm more of a purist. But I think if you advocated them it would go along way towards pulling your ideas into the mainstream and giving you a shot at actually getting something done.

Bill Clinton understood this. That's why his admistration was as successful domestically as it was.

There's even an argument for improving health care that's based on market principles. The argument is that the health insurance market doesn't work because of a market failure due to asymmettric information. Insurers don't know what you know about your health. So they have to err on the side of caution. In the meantime, people with hidden health conditions have more incentive to get health insurance than people without. So the insurance market tends to correct itself for this and price insurance in a way that's skewed towards the biggest risks, driving up costs.

One solution to this has been HMOs and group insurance - covering risk by averaging it out over the population. There may be roles here for the government in being a clearing house for information, or an insurer of last resort, or even an entity that covers catastrophic claims. There are a lot of market-based reforms that could be made to health care that would work much better than trying to simply nationalize the industry and having the government run health care.

As for improving working conditions and wages, wages go up when productivity increases. Advocate policies that improve the productivity of the workers. Advocate policies that improve worker productivity, and their wages will go up naturally.