Perhaps you shouldn’t compare apples to oranges, and instead focus on India’s relative growth and economic expansion in terms of their own yardstick? Naw…why do that when you can simply look at a billion people and their relative (to other countries) low wages and then make blanket statements, right?
-XT
I feel all the people that are arguing capitalism=good and socialism=bad (and the reverse) are missing the big point. Capitalism and socialism are just economic systems; they have no inherent morality. They can be used for good or bad depending on what their user wants to do with them. It’s like arguing over whether chemistry is more moral than biology.
Both systems work and both systems have their flaws. Smart people will try to use both and pick whichever one works better in a given situation while minimizing the flaws as much as possible.
Right so, let’s look at Cuba. Every year, about 2000 people try to escape the nation. Of these, 2/3rds die. If Cuba had the same population as the US, this would be equivalent to 36,000 people dying trying to escape the country. And note that millions of dollars are sent back to Cuba every year. There isn’t a lack of communication. When people get on those boats, they know they have a 2/3rds chance of dying and yet they do so. This has been something that’s continued yearly for the last four, five, or more decades.
I’m sorry to say but if you honestly think that we have a ruined economy, your world view and ideas on what it means when you compare the success and failure of economic systems is based on the Carebears.
Here’s some images of ruined economies:
http://www.thechefscookbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Starving_child_carried.jpg
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1102508/Stalin-voted-greatest-Russian-TV-poll-modelled-BBC-contest.html
The current recession is equivalent to a bunch of city folk complaining that they can’t get the newest iPhone. Get some perspective.
So what was your point in using India as an example? I lived and worked there and saw nothing but abject poverty. All that economic growth is making a few people loaded (like the guy that owns Kingfisher beer). But without labour laws (or the ability to enforce them) you have people working for pennies a day, and spending their nights under a tarp on the side of the road.
Take ANY mining community in the world, and you get the same thing over and over. A couple of people at the top own the mine and get all the benefits. Below them are thousands of workers making nothing. The corporation owns the town, the houses, the stores, the banks. All the money coming out of the mines goes into a few people’s pockets while the rest starve.
Track the development of gold mining in the US, it starts with individual miners working and making money. A nice example of capitalism.
But it doesn’t take long before a corporation can dominate and drive out individual miners (and other corporations). Now gold is mined by a couple of companies.
Mexico is sitting on a wealth of oil (and drugs) being the largest supplier of both to the US, but the people live in poverty.
Meanwhile, most of the problems in Afghanistan persist because the warlords payoff the locals using drug money–socialism at work! You want a solution in Afghanistan, nationalize the opium production and distribute the wealth.
[QUOTE=emacknight]
I lived and worked there and saw nothing but abject poverty.
[/QUOTE]
Then you either stayed in the countryside the entire time, or you were using your own measurements as a yardstick to try and do an apples to oranges comparison (or you never actually went there…I did, several times, and I certainly saw more than ‘abject poverty’). India has BEEN a country of abject poverty. For a LONG time. They also still have a huge agricultural (largely non-mechanized in many cases) industry. In addition, if you had done your history, India has only relatively recently moved away from socialist type central planning, command economies and nationalized industries to a more market oriented economy (they still have a long way to go).
Looked at using their own yardstick, as opposed to trying to compare them to countries who’s entire population is less than the WORKFORCE in India, would show you that they have made exceptional strides in bootstrapping a viable economy from essentially nothing. Moving from a primarily agrarian or cottage manufacturing economy to a more dynamic and economically expansive one.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
I feel all the people that are arguing capitalism=good and socialism=bad (and the reverse) are missing the big point.
[/QUOTE]
The in these thread, Nemo, is that many of the folks who are discussing this stuff really don’t actually know what capitalism IS (just as many don’t know what socialism is either). In addition, when I said pretty much what you are saying here it was totally glossed over, in favor of strawmanning my position and more rants about the evils of capitalism, blah blah blah (to be fair, in these threads there are usually the same kinds of mindless attacks against everything socialist as well, so it’s probably a wash).
-XT
Sure, except right next door people are trying to excape from Mexico, which is a capitalist’s utopia. No public health care, minimal public education, and shit all for social services.
And what was the example xtisme used, China? Thousands each year load into shippping container to get to the US. Which would you rather? Homemade boat or shipping container?
[QUOTE=emacknight]
Sure, except right next door people are trying to excape from Mexico, which is a capitalist’s utopia. No public health care, minimal public education, and shit all for social services.
[/QUOTE]
Why should anyone engage you in debate, let alone take you seriously, when you say stuff like the above? Clearly you don’t have any idea of what capitalism is, and I rather doubt you have a grasp of even what socialism is or isn’t as well.
-XT
Seems to be working for you.
Regardless of the piddly infighting, any kind of “right-wing” government - including militaristic dictatorships - have tended to settle down into mostly centrist democracies over time. Left-wing ones either “settle down” into miserable, poor societies of scarcity, reppresion, and want, or they hjave some kind of revolution and turn into right-wing dictatorships. Of course, left-wingers always hate the former no matter what and laud the latter no matter what. But that’s history.
The reason, I think, is fairly obvious. Even nationalistic leaders ultimately tend, at the bottom, to have their people in mind. They actually do care about their people. They may be racist, tyrannical bastards, but they are not motivated by ideology so much as greed (or sometimes, lust for power). Thus, even when they themselves are twisted, they want to lay the foundations of national power, pride, and success. That lies in effective institutions and economic strength. Effective institutions and economic strength tend, over time, to require and to produce more educated citizenry, who are not afraid to demand more democratic.
Left-wing tyrannies have leaders motivated by ideology and the absolute lust for power. This created a very different situation. The Left-wing leader will attempt to gather and concentrate all authority, both because they want it themselves and because that’s how they can alter society to fir the ideal. Only a small, isolated class can be educated as anything other than narrow specialists. Likewise, the ideology both weakens education, which must support the state security instead of economic success, and fears the educated (because they might get funny ideas). And the lack of economic success itself further keeps people down.
Further, I also predict that any left-wing dictatorship will be called a right-wing one simply by virtue of other Leftists deciding they don’t like it.
Capitalism is the exploitation of people by other people. Socialism is the opposite.
Nifty! So we may rely on economics experts, since they are all capitalists, except the crazy ones, who don’t count. Got it.
Glad we are on the same page then, 'luci.
-XT
Where in the world do you come up with such nonsense? You are demonstrating complete ignorance. There is public health care. Education is free through the university level and there are quite a number of social services.
Just because people migrate to the US does not mean that none of these things exist.
Not to mention that capitalism requires non-corrupt and efficient court system, which unfortunately is not present in Mexico.
I agree the OP might be a bit off target in his post but the title does pose an intersting question. If you had to choose between a socialist tyrant and a capitalist tyrant, which would be better for the country over the long term? I think there is an argument to be made that at least a capitalist tyrant would leave the country more capable of prospering after they throw off his tyranny (see Chile) while a communist tyrant would leave the country an economic basketcase. But that is simply a capitalism > communism argument which probably doesn’t have the makings of a great debate.
No, that’s right wing neofascism and strawmanning.
Nonsense. They look at their people as something to be exploited, more often than not. And “capitalist” is NOT the same thing as “nationalistic”; rather the opposite. A pure capitalist has no loyalty to anything but profit. A capitalist tyrant will loot his nation for everything he can and leave when it collapses.
Oh, please; plenty of right wing dictatorships are motivated by ideology.
Tyrannies tend to be economic disasters no matter the ideology. A “capitalist tyrant” is the sort who rules as a kleptocrat, who steals everything not nailed down; or who sells out his country to foreigners for personal profit. And even when he’s gone an economic system built for nothing but corruption and exploitation tends to be extremely hard to reform.
Its not that we don’t understand Capitalism, we simply don’t place the welfare of free markets above the welfare of human beings.
Most political systems have socialistic elements to them, it is the nature of governments.
You might not call Japan during most of the 20th century a command economy but it was at least a bit of a planned economy.
So I think we agree that there is a balance. We may disagree on where the balance lies but socilism per se is not bad, it is only bad in isolation, and the same can be said for capitalism.
I think that everyone acknowledges the benefits of capitalism, I don’t see everyone acknowledge teh beenfits of socialism.
I’ve worked there and there is a popular saying there these days: Capitalism has done more to help the poor in India than Mother Theresa.
Things in the alrge cities have gotten a lot better but things are still pretty bad in the rural areas, hopefully this will change over time. However, India isn’t a pure capitlist society either and India is having some growing pains as the benefits of capitalism starts to create some stark economc stratification.
Aside from the namecalling, have you any argument?
Capitalist? Interesting choice of words. Capitalists do not conquer: they invest. Capitalists cannot be tyrants (except, perhaps, if they are unpleasant to their employees) because they do not have legal power to control. If they do, then money would cease to be a capitalist. You do not invest money if you can simply take it. They might, perhaps, somehow be Right-Wing, yet history does not support that very well. The more Leftist the dictator, the worse the country will be and the less likely it will become peaceful, well-off, and free.
I have noticed you seem to use the word Capitalist to mean “very bad people I don’t like”, with no meaning to it whatsoever. An… inelegant… choice, to be sure.
And they are…
And yet, the ultimate kleptocrats have tended to be extreme left-wing. Mugabe in Zimbabwe, the Kims in North Korea, Nicolae Ceauşescu. You can perhaps point to the Marcos family in the Phillipines, yet even that was ultimately a drop in the bucket.
On the other side, we see many nationalistic regimes which, while unpleasant, created conditions favorable to democracy and economic growth. Pinochet, Park of South Korea, Frondizi of Argentina, Kemal Attaturk of Turkey (though now Islamist radicals are destroying what he built). Many men, most of which I doubt I’d like - yet they did create the basis for real freedom, even if they did not deal in it themselves. I may not like it in theory, but as a practical matter I’ll take what I can get.