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Typical.Republicans spew populist rhetoric,vagaries like"moral values”,yet when it comes to actually helping the workers they claim to support,they’re nowhere to be found.I’m sorry,they are somewhere to be found:in the pocket of big businesses cheating their workers.
Posted by wwoods on Jun 8, 2005 at 9:04 AM
Get off it, Stan ! The dumbass workers cause
most of their own injuries.
If anything the corporations are too benevolent
with these goons.
Posted by Rotten Robbie on Jun 8, 2005 at 2:37 PM
Right on, wwoods! What could be more “family values” than assuring a safe work environment with decent pay and benifits? If only the voters could wake up and see that the Republicans (and many Dems) don’t give a crap about their welfare or the welfare of the American family. Sigh….
Posted by ChestRockwell on Jun 8, 2005 at 5:59 PM
G.O.P. ==> Government of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation.
BTW, do you know what G.O.P. really stands for? Gang of Pimps.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 8, 2005 at 6:27 PM
How is a union any different from a business? They both have the same goal of maximizing their participation in the contract. With less investors in a company than there are employees, the increase in cost of the company’s products will be more affordable to the investors and less so to the workers when each acts as a consumer and buys their own product.
The rest of us are forced to deal with their prices - which sucks.
If Patemt Law dropped away, these investors and workers could make products at lower costs any time they wanted - then we’d see true market forces working to hone just what this species is going to produce.
As long as we’re ignorant TV people, we’ll never see it coming.
Posted by SHubert on Jun 8, 2005 at 7:20 PM
SHubert,
True,a union does have a goal of maximizing profits for its workers.However,you have to bear in mind that money will be used for the consumption of other goods and services.Management can still charge the same pricve for non-union goods as it does for union goods.As a matter of fact,many companies do.The difference is the amount of material benefit to the worker as opposed to the benefit to C.E.O.
Consider this:Where is more production generated,in a C.E.O spending a million dollars to buy a vintage Bugatti,or five hundred workers
buying five hundred Fords or Chevrolets?Funny enough,but not only do the Ford workers benfeit,so does the Ford C.E.O.
Republicans and the big-business cohorts are playing an economic game which could be called conservative.Others would call it stingy or greedy.
Thinking about the Republicans hatred of the French.They don’t really hate them,they fear them.The French did something about arrogant rich people who treated the poor like a commodity.Republicans are afraid the same idea might take root here,and deservedly so.Hence, French-bashing,put forth by very rich guys at Fox News and the EIB network.
Posted by wwoods on Jun 9, 2005 at 6:17 AM
If it wasn’t for those millionaires there would
be no jobs for workers. The personal consumption
of the rich counts for very little in the overall
economy but even their spending creates jobs.
Of course, 500 CEO’s generate a great deal more employment than 500 workers but that’s not the point either. Without the investment there would
be no employment and that investment must come from the rich, i.e., the people who have money.
Union goods are priced higher because of the greater labor costs. Economics 101.
Capitalism by George Reisman, Human Action by
Ludwig Von Mises, Man, Economy and State by
Murray N. Rothbard and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
are very worthwhile to get a different viewpoint
on capitalism.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 9, 2005 at 8:22 AM
Rhetoric aside, Rotten Robbie, have you even worked on a factory floor? I have been both a union worker and management and I tell you one thing, worker safety ALWAYS takes a back seat to productivity and profit! When a safety guard on a machine is removed in order to speed up the process how is the worker to blame? Get your head out of your ass.
Posted by Proud Vet. on Jun 9, 2005 at 8:59 AM
Rotten Robbie,
Would you mind telling me how a mine worker causes the mine to collapse when he follows,exactly the rules set forth by management.Quite often the standards,which are as malleable as silly putty by the unscrupulous.Why are they made malleable?Profit.Management,more and more,views labor as an expense and not as crucial part of business.
Jack,
How do you think millionaires get their money.A few may get it from the powerballs,but most get it from others working from them.Do you honestly think Bill Gates could have made 50 billion dollars by assembling 50 million computers himself?What about Henry Ford?Capital and management must have labor in order to make money.Also Economics 101.While union items do cost more,those workers are also able to buy more goods and services which benefits other workers.
This is the same ridiculous argument beginning that I had with J Craig last month,if you aren’t him as well.
Posted by wwoods on Jun 9, 2005 at 9:02 AM
Jack,
Two other points:
1)Ayn Rand’s philosophy is a cult of selfishness,the perceived strong justifying stepping on others.great unless you’re being stepped on.Cult?Ask some of her former associates.
You can read Ayn Rand for a different view on capitalism just like you can read The Turner Diaries for a different view on political dissent.
2)Don’t you think it’s a bit perverse to blog on using the name of a noted labor leader,then bashing the very ideas that man stood for?
Your blogging names are also showing a pattern.
Again,why not just use Louis Friend?Maybe you’ll use Lin Biao?
Posted by wwoods on Jun 9, 2005 at 9:14 AM
Hey Jack, instead of filling your head with books written by people with a vested intrest in capitalism try watching the documentary The Corporation. Might give you a better idea about the system in which we live. I also believe that capitalism can work, but capitalism without restriction leaves the door open for criminal behavior, think Enron, Worldcom, GE ...
Posted by Proud Vet. on Jun 9, 2005 at 9:16 AM
We seemed to have returned to the early years of the progressive era when the lives and limbs of workers have a very low value in dollars and cents to big capitalists whose only concern is profits! Maybe more regulations and social concern would stem the greed of the much maligned ambulence chasing trial lawyers. In US Labors’ golden age of defined benefit health care and pensions, OSHA, good pay, and assiduous regulation of industry (which industry largely supported!) those menacing lawyers were rarely heard from! Today, they have LITERALLY become a substitute for the role of government in guaranteeing the public and workering people’s well being through costly lawsuits instead of efficient, preventitive, common sense, regulatory legislation. I say the old way was far preferable!
Posted by steve on Jun 9, 2005 at 9:26 AM
Proud vet (what are you proud of ?) you are proving my point, instead of taking your own
advice and looking at the other side, you simply
use the old ad hominem methods of attacking the
opposing viewpoint as bought off rather than
having a different point of view.
And yes, the workers are real fvckoffs in many
cases as I’ve observed from a variety of work
situations in over 42 years of working.
It is precisely the mixed economy capitalism
WITH restriction that has failed and Enron is
a great example of what Ayn Rand called the
pull peddlers, people using governmental
connections to get what they couldn’t in a
real capitalistic society. We have had 150
years of your state interventions at all levels
of government and they do not work in addition
to being morally wrong.
Wwoods, unlike you I use only my name. Never
heard of any labor leader with the same name.
Oh, the labor theory of value was discredited
well over a century ago. The workers do not
create wealth, physical labor as such never
does in an industrial society. It is the entrepreneurs who create the wealth by financing
and managing the transformation of raw materials
into products that satisfy human needs, that people are willing to pay for, for details
see Atlas Shrugged or the Reisman tome.
The same Nader mentality that created the
government agencies also created the lawsuit
pandemic, both are attempts to steal from the
owners of wealth to give unearned benefits
to workers and ambulance chasers.
A legitmate lawsuit is worth more than all those
agencies combined. Bush is right (for a change)
in wanting to curb lawsuits.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 9, 2005 at 10:28 AM
Jack, I am proud that I have volunteered to serve my country, and to defend the Constitution. What work have you been involved with that qualifies your statements? How many times can you use “ad hominem” in order to try and derail another person’s arguments. You don’t seem to really have a grasp as to what an ad honinem is. In every thread you are involved in you either say someone is using ad hominem or taking drugs. You are a hateful old bastard.
Posted by Proud Vet. on Jun 9, 2005 at 11:05 AM
Jack,
What I am saying is that well designed regulatory legislation that prevents problems will avoid expensive lawsuits thus avoiding needless pain and suffering and leaving more wealth to circulate in the general society for productive purposes. We sometimes must be forced to act in our own self-interest. That is the purpose of good government. It coordinates collective action in the interest of all which otherwise would not emerge from individual calculations and rationality which often avoids seeing the bigger picture and hopes to selfishly externalize the costs of individual gains!
Posted by steve on Jun 9, 2005 at 11:37 AM
Isn’t Any Rand a novelist?
Posted by Proud Vet. on Jun 9, 2005 at 11:39 AM
Proud Vet
Ann Rand is the name of a Russian-Jewish writer who emigrated to the US and did much writing in the post-WWII period. She was apparently horrified by Stalinist collectivism and its brutality and went mindlessly counterphoebic as sometimes occurs. Her many novels extoll individualism and selfishness as the core values of a free society. She concurs with people like Margaret Thatcher who claimed “there really is no such thing as society, only individuals or families.” For such people only individual or small group rationality exists. They disregard the obvious significance of power inequality, rigid class boundaries, patterns of history and their role in conditioning society, and the total lack of choice most people face in determining the course of their lives. Seeing things from the bottom up gives perspective.
Posted by steve on Jun 9, 2005 at 11:52 AM
Thank you steve, but my point is that people who base their philosophy on fictional writings lend no credence to their philosophy. Might as well follow Steven King, John Grisham, or the Bible for that matter.
Posted by Proud Vet. on Jun 9, 2005 at 12:00 PM
Dear Jack,
while we are bragging with our knowledge of the subtleties of advanced capitalism, it would be wise to problematize some of the assumptions you make about one of the basic premises of the production/consumption cycle, namely your ideologically quite suspect (but obviously telling) representation of the commodity fulfilling “human needs.” This rhetoric suggests, as I am sure you are perfectly aware of, that the producer creates a commodity to satisfy a pre-existent need within the consumer. You thus try to argue here that the need precedes the commodity, which, as we all know from any study of consumer capitalism and marketing strategies that further determine new product development, is precisely not the case. Consumer capitalism rests in large upon the manufacturing and disseminating of needs within the consumer that are then assigned a commodity and niche. Your rhetoric which is oh so popular (or populist) these days tries desperately to rescue the last bit of democracy appearance neoliberal ideology tries to cling to in order to hide its increasingly hegemonic system of production and exploitation. It is precisely this form of unsubstantial surface democracy of neoliberal politics that the author the original article attempts to point toward. The closest we get to your representation of consumer capitalism is the strategy of pattern recognition, but even that is still miles away from your neoliberal demagogy.
If you attempt to criticize the labor theory of value you do, however, need to situate your critique in the correct socio-economic conjuncture, which will force you to abandon the desperate attempts to cling to the democratic rhetoric that in times of neoliberalism is simply too easy to see through as to present a valuable opposition to progressive critiques of capitalism. I am sure you are aware that post-Fordist production has become increasingly immaterial, extending to the psyche of the worker/consumer and involving the worker/consumer more deeply than ever in the process of surplus production, which then, and only then, creates the disposable capital that allows the CEO etc. to engage in financial transactions. Your representation of these new forms of surplus production as democratic in nature, relying upon outdated representations of the production cycle are simply too easy to be persuasive to a truly informed audience. Post-Fordist production relies more upon the worker/consumer and involved them more deeply in the production of disposable capital then ever before and this in a totalitarian way that erases the logic of your imagined liberalism at the very point of its climax.
Suggested reading that takes this historical moment seriously: Giulielmo Carchedi.
Posted by poum2377 on Jun 9, 2005 at 12:11 PM
Proud vet, you can’t even spell ad hominem.
It is to attack the person in lieu of dealing
with his arguments. You can call someone a
rotter but if you use namecalling as a substitute
for dealing with their views you are committing
the logical fallacy of ad hominem.
And you do it in every posting but you are not
alone.
Ayn Rand wrote three novels, at least seven nonfiction books, a novelette and two plays.
Leonard Peikoff’s Objectivism:The Philosophy
of Ayn Rand is a good place to see the whole
picture of her philosophy. She was as much a
philosopher as a novelist.
But if you disdain fiction, then check all the
other books I recommended above which are nonfiction.
Poum, if the need wasn’t there in some form,
no one would buy the product. Fortunately, I
do not have to refute the labor theory of value,
it’s already been done, see Human Action by Mises.
Being forced to act in our own self-interest is a
contradiction in terms, Steve. Force and mind are
opposites, force paralyzes the mind and the thinking process and is an anti-creative element.
No one owns our individual lives but ourselves
and there can no equalization of costs because
the people who do not commit fraud or cause injury
should not be required to subsidize those who do.
Goverment agencies take away the whole of individual responsibility much as the disastrous
no-fault divorce have done in the realm of marriage and thus intruded the state ever further
into was previously a private affair.
I do not favor administrative law which regulates
conduct in advance. I do favor objective law
wherein a perpetrator of a real crime faces
punishment after the crime. The state has no role
to play in prevention other than the knowledge
that committing a crime leads to consequences.
So I am opposed to administrative or preventive
or regulatory law but favor the common law and
torts where legitimate.
I do not believe that the collective acquires any rights whatsoever apart from the right of its
individual members and as Rand stated (Thatcher
merely echoed her) there is no such thing as
society, it is only a term of convenience for
people living in a common geographical area.
Proud vet, you never served your country because
your country was never under attack, even Pearl
Harbor was only the result of FDR’s goading the
Japanese into war. And it was a colony thousands
of miles from the USA. The last defensive war
the US fought was 1812.
So I always vote against every Veteran Bond issue.
They did not defend me or the Constitution and many are war criminals who should be in jail.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 9, 2005 at 12:54 PM
There a few typos in the above but I think
the gist of it is clear.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 9, 2005 at 12:57 PM
Jack, just re-read one of your earlier posts that states, 500 CEO’s generate a great deal more employment than 500 workers and I couldn’t agree with you more. The problem with this situation is those 500 CEO’s create the employment where it benefits the corporation and, ultimately, themselves. I know you are as old as dirt and don’t need to find work anymore (how’s that Social Security check working for you?) but the generation comming up today needs jobs also. I have been forced to change careers three times in the past ten years as a result of jobs going to the lowest bidder (usually overseas). I’m not talking about the blue collar work that is now being done by children in Chinese factories (you know, where Nike’s CEO outsourced to). I have a college degree and worked in the corporate world of aerospace and medical device manufacturing. My retraining has come at the expense of myself and my family because neither the corporation nor the government gives a damn. The corporation feels it owes nothing to the people (flesh and blood) who make the corporation a viable commodity but what happens when the conspicuous consumers (created by marketing firms owned by the corporations) have no money left to consume the corporation’s cheaper products? It won’t matter to you Jack, because you will be rotting in your grave, but what about my nine-year-old, what about her, Jack?
Posted by Proud Vet. on Jun 9, 2005 at 1:11 PM
I’m still working and have not seen my first
SS check, I’ll be happy if I can get back
what I’ve paid into it.
The corporation is not a welfare board.
IT IS in BUSINESS TO MAKE MONEY AND THAT IS A
GOOD THING. HIRING YOU IS STRICTLY INCIDENTAL
TO MAKING MONEY AND THEY DO NOT OWE YOU A JOB.
Of course people make any business a viable
entity and so what ? How could it be any other
way ?
If you can’t feed them, don’t breed them !
How am I supposed to feel guilty because YOU
have failed to provide for your daughter ?
Between you goddamned overpriced union thugs
and government regulations it is amazing that
we have ANY businesses left.
Go see your pal Clinton about NAFTA and all
the military technology he let the Chinese
Communists steal from us.
Your concerned about youth unemployment ?
Repeal the minimum wage laws and people will
get jobs.
Sorry about your degree but they are now a
dime a dozen and were always overrated.
Your quarrel seems to be with objective
reality. Which capitalism as the most
natural system merely reflects.
But, no, you’d rather sit around and whine
and read Excuse # 1054 from the Democratic
Party’s Manual for Failures.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 9, 2005 at 1:31 PM
I see your ad hominem and raise you one gravitas. Why don’t you answer the question of your work experience? I’m actually a disabled vet from the oil war back in ‘91. Service is to comply with demands or commands so by the very definition of the word I SERVED my country. I have a sneaking suspision that you never have but you write like you have the right. That’s right, you do have rights defended by the men and women who volunteer to SERVE and DEFEND. Not my fault that the Commander-in-Chief’s reasons to go to conflict are often suspect. Your accusation of my use of ad hominem is unfounded. Your questioning of my intelligence is infantile especially considering the ammount of typographical errors in a majority of your posts. With all the writing you do, have you ever thought of buying a dictionary?
Posted by Proud Vet. on Jun 9, 2005 at 1:44 PM
I provide for my daughter, again not my point. I am talking about the country’s future. I never supported Clinton and am not a Democrat. I am far from a failure an am happy that I am young enough and determined enough to make a life for myself and my family. I do all of this and still find the time to volunteer my time as an active member of my daughter’s school PTO and school council. I choose to be part of the solution.
Posted by Proud Vet. on Jun 9, 2005 at 1:56 PM
You joined the stinking socialist military to
get benefits and because you couldn’t cut it in
a free market. You never defended me because I
was never under attack nor was the USA. Even 9-11
would not have happened if not for our Israel First foreign policy. I proudly did not serve.
There are very few typos on the whole in my posts
and most of the time I am the one to point them out. Often it is not a typo but a missed word.
So big fvcking deal.
Anyone who reads you’re posts can see the ad hominem fallacy in every one.
Who are you trying to kid ?
Why am I supposed to tell you about my work experience ? All you need to know is that I have
been working since my late teens.
Why did you bring up your daughter in the context
of a personal attack one me ?
Why do I need to know of your rough age status ?
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 9, 2005 at 2:22 PM
You’re right Jack. I love you!
Posted by Proud Vet. on Jun 9, 2005 at 3:02 PM
Jack said:
“. . . The corporation is not a welfare board.
IT IS in BUSINESS TO MAKE MONEY AND THAT IS A
GOOD THING. HIRING YOU IS STRICTLY INCIDENTAL
TO MAKING MONEY AND THEY DO NOT OWE YOU A JOB. . . .”
And what does the employee owe the corporation Jack? Based on your model, the absolute minimum productivity they can get away with, which as a practical matter, is to be the slacker you previously complained of. And that is precicely the kind of employee that your model corporation deserves.
Why is a corporation any more noble or righteous that a union? Why should the employees give any more of a damn about the corporation than the corporation cares about its employees? Why shouldn’t workers band together to exact as much benefit out of a corporation for themselves as they possibly can?
BTW Jack, in the “Free Market” there is no such thing as a corporation.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 9, 2005 at 7:43 PM
The minute I see that some dope has put President Bush in a headline and made the issue his fault I get aggravated. The writer obviously must be another one of those people who wants more government because they don’t think that We The People can possibly be responsible for our own actions.
My way of being responsible for my own actions is to grow my own food, meat and all, so that we can stay out of the system. The system is corrupt, has been corrupt for a long time, longer than when Bush came into office.
Wake up and do something about it rather than complaining. If you don’t like the way it is, then get off your computer and go make a damn difference.
Posted by HenWhisperer on Jun 10, 2005 at 7:24 AM
“Being forced to act in our own self-interest is a contradiction in terms, Steve. Force and mind are opposites, force paralyzes the mind and the thinking process and is an anti-creative element.”
Again, this is an utterly uncritical way of thinking about this issue and in itself indicative of a certain ideological interpellation that shapes the way we think about subjectivity in a post-Fordist economy. More important than that, however: it is dangerous, since it is precesiely this rhetoric of democratic participation by the consumer in the market, of individuality and freedom that form the ideological basis (and strategies of manufacturing consent) of the present war mongering you seem to be opposed to as well.
What needs to be complicated is the source of the desires you seem to characterize as natural, as an expression of self-interest. How, then, do you personally form the definition of self-interest? Why are the things you describe as vital to you, your desires, so important to you that you describe them as constitutive of your individual subjectivity (a cult that in itself has all too often throughout history been at the source of totalitarian regimes that were very appealing to people—see Nazi Germany: it was not law and total order that drew a whole country into madness, it was individual gratification elevated to the primary virtue shrouded in the rhetorical appeal of collectivity and nationalism [sound familiar?] and the subsequent denial of the superego!).
Are you seriously willing to argue that the formation and development of your needs has not been a dialectical process depending on, let’s put it carefully at first, social feedback that shaped the way you situated yourself within society? But more importantly, are you seriously willing to argue that there are no needs that are manufactured by our culture industry and then imposed upon the consumer, who, granted, MUST experience these needs as natural in order to keep alive the illusion of freedom and democratic participation in the system of commodity development and exchange? Force and mind are not opposites. Precisely the opposite of that statement is true, or, to put it more accurately, it is not an opposition but a productive contradiction. In times of immaterial labor the mind is (via a forceful inclusion into the production apparatus) a PRODUCTIVE entity—the opposition between mind and force that your rhetoric is so desperately trying to hide is, as you correctly say, on a very basic level a limitation of freedom. Hence it is this concept that needs to be preserved by neoliberal ideology in order to hide the productive aspect that results out of this paradoxical relationship between mind and force. Only a mind that considers itself free will be able to generate the desired marketable libidinal surplus and perpetuate ideological cohesion—what you have identified and what forms one of the ailments of our present situation (which is also apparent in your anti-social responses to proudvet) is a psychological condition necessary for neoliberal systems exploitation. you are the prime example of this—the subject marked by happiness in unfreedom.
Posted by poum2377 on Jun 10, 2005 at 7:25 AM
Hen,
No one said that Bush invented corporate pimping. He’s just elevated the practice to a level that, never in their wildest dreams, conservative politicians, ever thought possible. (Jeb is even worse. He can barely contain his glee when making policy statements in public). Bush supporters and constituents are crooks and idiots (respectively) of the highest order, and the Bush’s are taking full advantage.
That’s the point, Hen.
BTW, congratulations on your 19th century lifestyle. I’m sure it suits the conservatives just fine.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 10, 2005 at 8:39 AM
The worker owes the corporation performance to
the absolute best of their ability. Their pay,
advancement and job status depend on it.
Thanks for warning potential employers that you
are untrustworthy.
Corporation is legitimate in and of itself.
If you want to abolish bankruptcy as a special
privilege then we agree because that is an intervention by the government on behalf of
one party to absolve the debts owed to another.
Murray Rothbard deals with this in Man, Economy
and State, I think Volume 2, and in Power & Market.
Otherwise, the lefty criticisms of the concept
of a corporation have absolutely no merit.
Poum, I can’t make head or tails of what you
are trying to say. Perhaps english is not your
native tongue or perhaps you are into pomo post
deconstructionism.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 10, 2005 at 8:53 AM
Jack,
Entrepeneurs do create wealth through finance and management.Question:Who actually manufactures the goods?
Etymology lesson:
MANU:Latin base word meaning"hand”
FACT:Latin base word meaning"to make”
Thus,items which are manufactured are items made by hands which belong almost exclusively to human beings,unless one desires products made by monkeys.Those human beings are laborers,who have needs which must be met in order to function properly.
Management and labor have a symbiotic relationship.If workers are treated well,the company’s productivity will increase.
Unfortunately,Republicans lack the ability to understand this.The cruel irony of Republicans is in the nineteenth century a Republican freed the slaves;while in the twenty-first century,Republicans are trying to bring slavery back.
I’ll see if I can’t simplify this:Workers make things for management to sell.If you don’t treat workers well,they won’t work well and make management lots of money.
It’s understandable that right-wingers hate Nader.
Heavens to Betsy!He actually made corporations take responsibilty for their negligence!We can’t have that!That interferes with profits!Who cares if the car explodes on impact?In time of war,it could be a land torpedo!
Ayn Rand,by the way,was a mediocre novelist at best.Thick book does not equal good book.Her works are generally endorsed by simple people who want a simple philosophy and think that interaction of entities is a mechanistic process.Try reading some real books.I know,that will involve leaving the terminal,putting more clothes than just your underwear,and actually leaving the basement.Regardless,you may find it worthwhile.
Again,I only post under wwoods.You’re not entirely stupid.Why should I have to repeat that?Is it one of the tricks out of the Cato/Hoover/American Enterprise institute playbook to make that accusation?
One last thing.Your writing has improved.Apparently you’re using your copy of Fowler’s Modern English Usage.Good for you!
Posted by wwoods on Jun 10, 2005 at 9:41 AM
Mr. Woods,
Indulging in what the late Edward Said referred
to as the lowest form of humor, sarcasm, doesn’t
become you.
Your comments on Ayn Rand are rubbish. She is
an outstanding novelist as well as philosopher.
Her works, fiction and nonfiction, continue to
sell in the millions worldwide every year.
She is now the most widely read author on the planet (earth)outside of the the folks who crabbed together the unholy bible.
Oh, by the way, I’ve read the Great Books, The
Encyclopedia of Philosophy and all the classic
novelists & dramatists.Plus extensive readings
in history, political science, economics,
philosophy of science, art, psychology and
current events.
If the investors had not created the factory
and the inventors the product, the workers would
have nothing to produce. Physical labor is not
the source of wealth. I suggest you start with
Reisman’s Capitalism for the full arguments.
The etymological antecedents predate the industrial revolution as does you’re stone age
thinking. The labor theory of value was totally
demolished by Eugene Bahm-Bawerck over 130
years ago. I might be slightly off on the spelling
of the last syllable. Don’t have time to look it
up now but I can if you want the reference.
Excuse me, but when I accept you as the authority
on the english language ?
Honestly, I have no idea of how many aliases that
you post under. That practice is not limited to
one side of the spectrum as you well know.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 10, 2005 at 10:03 AM
Jack,
As I suspected, you cannot argue substantively because you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. And, you don’t know what a “free” market is.
First, in a free market, a worker owes ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to her/his employer - assuming that the employee is paid after the labor is provided. And any worker who gives any more than the absolute minimum, to an employer who pays no more than the absolute minimum needed to induce an employee to accept the employment, is a fool. If the employer doesn’t like it, he can either lump it, find a fool for an employee, or pay more.
Second, a corporation is a statutory fiction. Without statues creating corporations, they don’t exist. You remember statutes right, Jack, they’re laws that tell people what they can and cannot do, just like regulations which are mandatory laws.
In the “free market,” Jack, there are no corporations, there is no need for bankruptcy because there are no courts to enforce contracts of debt. In the truly “free market” THERE IS NO LAW. If you make a bargain with someone and decide you just don’t want to perform your end of the bargain anymore, you just don’t have to. If the other guy doesn’t like it, he can just F—- off. Or challenge you to a duel, or just kill you. Or perhaps he could be honest and hold you up for the bargained for perfomance. In a free market, free from government regulation, he is free to do whatever the hell he wants.
In reality, Jack, a free market can only exist for a very short period of time because, in very short order, all wealth and power will inure to those most able to take it. Then, there will be very little freedom for anyone but the few very wealthy and powerful. There will be virtually no market, no competition and no commerce because NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE WILL HAVE ENOUGH WEALTH TO CREATE COMPETITION.
The closest thing to a free market that can ever exist is an “orderly market” which BALANCES the requirement of regulations that are absolutely essential to maintain competition, with the freedom to do whatever the hell you want in order to make as much as you can for yourself - the personal motivation to compete to the best of your ability.
In reality, Jack, libertarianism is no less a failed theory than communism.
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, that to speak out loud and be thought remove all doubt.” - Abraham Lincoln.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 10, 2005 at 11:59 AM
You want freedom? A more free marketplace, Jack? How about cutting the 150 billion dollars of yours and my money given to corporations so they can F us over again by getting rid of us. Let’s see your response.
Posted by tw on Jun 10, 2005 at 12:03 PM
Typo:
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, that to speak out loud and remove all doubt.” - Abraham Lincoln.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 10, 2005 at 12:03 PM
Aw, screw it.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 10, 2005 at 12:35 PM
Lefty, I made the preliminary necessary arguments
and gave the sources for a full substantiation
of my remarks. That’s all I need to do in an
honest debate. Your assertions are meaningless.
In order to get and keep one’s job one is obligated to do their best possible work.
That’s a prerequisite of getting a paycheck.
If you are such a lazy, dishonest bum as to disagree with that basic premise, then we are
not having a conversation about political economy.
You may be in need of moral training or psychiatric attention but that is beyond my
obligation here.
Well, you could say that anything put on paper
and created by human beings is artificial but
that really proves too much. Actually much of
the commercial law code was developed privately
over the centuries, see Rothbard’s For A New Liberty for details. All the legislature did
WAS RECOGNIZE THE RIGHT TO FORM CORPORATIONS,
NOT GIVE THE RIGHT.
Your assertion that there is no need for law
in a free market is totally false.
See Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty or Isabel
Paterson’s The God Of The Machine.
Ayn Rand wrote an essay distinguishing between
laissez-faire capitalism, limited government
and anarchism, see The Nature of Government in
The Virtue of Selfishness.
Your comments about total monopolization in a
free market are historically false as is your
other assertion about their time length.
See Rand’s Capitalism:The Unknown Ideal and
Louis Hacker’s history of American capitalism.
Libertarianism has always been a resounding
success TO THE EXTENT THAT IT HAS BEEN TRIED.
Liberalism, welfare statism, mixed economyism,
socialism, fascism, communism, national socialism
and statist conservatism have all been resounding
failures. We agree.
We agree that the Lincoln quote applies to you.
TW, are you talking about government subsidies ?
If so, we agree. If not, it’s loony.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 10, 2005 at 12:43 PM
Jack,
I have discredited you’re argument and your philosophy and all you can do is repeat your tired false premises, and resort to personal attacks. You have no idea what you are talking about. You don’t know what a corporation is. You don’t know what a regulation is. You don’t know what a law is. You don’t understand basic economics. You are unable to think for yourself. You can only parrot what others have spoon fed you.
Thank you for removing all doubt, Jack, for all to see. You have, once again, confirmed that there are only 2 kinds of conservatives: idiots and crooks.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 10, 2005 at 1:37 PM
To my recollection, I have never heard a conservative argue without the aid of a false premise. I am now resolved that it cannot be done.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 10, 2005 at 2:03 PM
BTW, Jack, Ayn Rand was a psychopath whose “objectivist” philosophy - moral selfishness, is irreconcilable with itself. Morality makes no such requirement, nor could it.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 10, 2005 at 2:16 PM
Your assertions do not an argument make.
Argumentem ad hominem is a classic logical
fallacy.
The only discrediting you have done is of
yourself. All you are reduced to is calling
names and empty generalizations.
“Resort to personal attacks” ?
Try reading your own post.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 10, 2005 at 2:26 PM
For the serious readers on this board
check out Objectivism:The Philosophy
of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff.
I feel very sorry for lefty, he represents
the end time of the intellectual degeneration
of the Left.
Reduced to nonprovable assertions and juvenile
namecalling.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 10, 2005 at 2:30 PM
I just whipped lefty’s bare butt.
Apologize to all here for my delinquent
child.
Posted by lefty's mama on Jun 10, 2005 at 2:32 PM
I Love You, Jack but your ad hominem is showing. Your over use of the return key gives you away everytime!
Posted by Proud Vet. on Jun 10, 2005 at 3:44 PM
Hey Jack,
Come over here. Let me show you something. Try on this pretty white coat. Yeah, I know the sleeves are a little long and they have these funny straps at the end, but, just try it on. There you go. Left hand, right hand . . . bang, smash, bash, oooff, crunch, errrrrrrrghhaaah. Got it.
OK boys, you can take him away now. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . . (the sound of the wagon taking Jack back to the booby hatch).
Posted by Jack's Daddy on Jun 10, 2005 at 4:05 PM
It seems that Jack’s idea of an ideal society was the guilded age, the closest thing to libertarianism in U.S. history.
You know, the age of trusts (because interstate corporations were not invented yet), where the richest men in America had more assets than the gross national product - the economic aristocracy consisting of a few dozen families who owned more than the rest of all Americans combined (The Mellons, Carnegies, Rockefellers, Morgans, Vanderbilts), where there was no public education and children worked 12 hours a day, where the average American lived in poverty earning under $500 per year and worked in sweatshops, where the 2 leading causes of death in America were infection and starvation.
This is the libertarian vision for America “The Gospel of Wealth.”
“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice (1916-39).
Jack is one of those fools who fail to learn from history and, if he had his way, would insist on repeating it.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 10, 2005 at 5:07 PM
“I can’t make head or tails of what you are trying to say.”
Hey look, Craig, Lin Bio, Barnes finally said something I can agree with. Wow a troll who knows he can’t understand what real people are saying. Break out the champagne!
Now here is an unfair question for all you good folks who are arguing with this troll. Why are you doing it?
You all know what he is and what he stands for. You know he is simply baiting us. If you want real discussion, ignore trolls and discuss the issues amongst yourselves. The only thing that stops a troll is simply ignoring it. Trumpeting its views to an empty theatre is a hollow victory.
Posted by Merlin on Jun 11, 2005 at 12:39 AM
Jack:
Wake up and smell the reality.
1) Ayn Rand is obsolete. Has been for 50 years. All of her writings are based on 19th century ideas of business operations - Robber Baron ideas.
2) Corporations are a fiction. They are the result of thieves lying to get the laws changed. Originally, the Founding Fathers counseled that corporations be disbanded after 20 years and that they NEVER be granted any rights of any kind. Instead, we get lawyers willing to lie to get the fiction of “corporate personhood” enshrined in law. Something that has screwed up this nation for the past 150 years.
3) Employers OWE their workers decent working conditions. That is the reason behind the rise of Unions at the end of the 19th century. If it had not been for the terrible working conditions, there would not have ever been a need for unions to form. Workers are the source of all wealth. Without workers, there is NO wealth of any kind. Your rich capitalist will be dirt poor without the workers. Capitalists have ALWAYS exploited the worker to try to squeeze every penny out. Witness GM autos - they want out from under their pension plan, so they are going to fire 25,000 US workers and open more factories in China. The intent is to remove a large expense - the pay and pensions of 25,000 workers, as well as the 1.5 million others who benefit from GM’s retirement package. GM has no intention of cutting the price of their vehicles (as well as no intention of truly addressing the fuel mileage problem), but intends to continue business as usual.
4) Government exists to protect the weak from the strong (among other duties). Government is the source of benefits far beyond the obvious ones. Those of us who served in the military (myself USAF ‘69-‘73) know that sometimes that government is loaded with idiots and fools. But still we try to make things better for ALL, not just the fat-cat wealthy bastards that have never lifted a finger in labor in their entire lives. The majority of millionaires are like Paris Hilton - vapid, mentally challenged do-nothings who are suited for one thing - filling holes in church pews and clipping coupons. They are a drag on the economy since they are not spending their tax refunds but are putting the money into off-shore accounts to hide it from taxes (over 7 billion in overseas accounts). The wealthy are nothing but fancy thieves.
You have probably never done a single altruistic act in your tiny miserable life. I have been active in my community for decades, helping people, instead of kicking them off the life raft. You are the epitome of neo-conservative (fascist theocrat) thought and have no need to face reality. You are part of the problem.
5) There is no government that truly does a perfect job, but ours was the best. I say was because, sadly, the neo-cons are destroying it day-by-day. Every day, I see new examples of tiny souled slime taking away another piece of the Bill of Rights. The so-called Patriot Act comes to mind, as does the lack of media response to the crimes of the Bush Admin.
The public is going to awaken soon. It is not going to be pretty, either.
Posted by Richard A Knighton on Jun 11, 2005 at 5:29 AM
Addendum to Jack:
1) See: www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/10/opinion/edkrug.php for support to my arguments. This is from an honest newspaper - the International Hearld Tribune. You might try reading it someday.
2) I am secure and honest enough to put down my REAL name. I do have pseudonyms, but for such as you, they re not necessary. I used to agrumentativly “eat alive” people such as you in my college business law classes, where they tried to espouse Ayn Rand’s stupid economic theories. A small amount of simple logic shows the fallacy of Ayn Rand and how berift her thoughts truly were.
3) Bush and company seem to believe that they can roll the clock back to 1895 and gain from that. They forget the brutal and bloody workers rights riots that took place and how that changed America. Since 1973 the top 1% has had their annual income doubled, since 1973 the top .1% (top tenth) has seen their annual income tripled! That’s obscene. The number of multi-millionaires has increased drastically, mostly on the backs of the shareholders who have been robbed blind. Additionally, the wealthy (top 2%) pay less in taxes (by percentage) than the entire combined other 98%. That is thievery on a huge scale. Prior to 1973, the middle class was earning well - incoem betweed 1945 and 1973 had doubled for the middle class. Since then, income has gone down for the midle class. Most families are one paycheck away from poverty.
Think of that while you are preparing your specious arguments.
Posted by Richard A Knighton on Jun 11, 2005 at 5:46 AM
Richard,
You seem to observed the transition from “Fordist” or Keynsean welfare state economic policy which is reliant on broad consumer spending and some redistribution in the form of transfer payments in order to sustain the economy to what David Harvey calls globalized “flexible accumulation.” The first was the “golden-age” for the working and middle classes which grew along with rapid industrial growth, economic expansion (4.5-5% annual average GNP growth rates between 1945-73), and high average rates of profit in the general economy (about 8% in the 1950s down to 3-5% in the early 1970s). The early post-WWII period could be considered a fourth long-wave of capitalist expansion (a roughly 50 year long wave of economic expansion followed by contraction over the now 225 year course of modern capitalism’s existence) brought on by the exogenous factors of post-war reconstruction, US political hegemony, military-industrial complex, the new world order based on the US Dollar as key reserve currency, pent-up consumer demand both in the US and abroad for US consumer goods, and, in conjunction with this, expanding export markets stimulated also by neo-liberal removal of tariffs and currency conversion controls. The growth that resulted created middle-classes all over the world including the third world. It stimulated global investment and competition between North America, Europe, and Japan for the production of consumer durables (especially autos) which the post WWII economic expansion was based on. An overaccumulation of investment and excess global industrial capacity was created by an overproduction of these goods relative to effective demand and the cut back in capacity and investment produced a global recession long before oil price hikes and inflation entered in to make things more intractable. A consequent fall in the average rate of profit lead to slackening investment and chronic stagnation. A restructuring of capital along global neo-liberal lines, hyper-financialization, and the hyper-mobility of capital has led to increased profits through the growth of new industries such as Info-Tech and Telecommunications yet such has not led to a fifth long wave of expansion of global capitalism although labor productivity was certainly increased for a time in the 1990s. The “new economy” seemed to go bust and now recession and stagnation seem once again to be a chronic issue for the US and the world. The result of the restructuring is an upward concentration of income on a global scale which has created demand in niche markets for luxuries, expensive real estate, the stock market, and high-risk financial derivatives. None of this will restore a general “prosperity” that we saw in the “golden-age” of Keynsean capitalism. A new global division of labor has made manufacturing a low value industry based on cheap third world labor and relagated dead end services and retail to US. Few get rich and the middle class disappears. National boundaries disappear and capital concentrates and centralizes with new global production and supply chains. Income disparities widen globally. Such is the new epoch!
Posted by steve on Jun 11, 2005 at 6:34 AM
Jack, Rotten, etc.
Unions are NOT like corporations under the law. Corporations are treated like people and have a right to free speech, etc. Unions are limited by many laws that favor the bigger and richer corporations.
By law, a worker CANNOT hire a lawyer to file a claim for working conditions that pose a danger to himself, another worker or the community. Workplace violations are subject to the arbitrage of the government. Workers can only sue for damages AFTER an incident has occured. BTW, the government departments that handle worker complaints are very small and getting smaller, AND they are run by people in industry. In other words, government departments that are supposed to protect workers are more often than not a firewall that protects industry from workers.
I hope you understand that the American way of life is in danger not because of “stupid workers” or even immigrants. We are in a battle of rich vs. poor, and, guess what, the rich are winning big time.
Yes, corporations do create jobs. You are right. That is not their goal, however. A corporation’s goal is ONLY to MAKE MONEY. Therefore, job creation takes place whenever and wherever necessary—NOW and IN ANOTHER COUNTRY.
You talk about personal responsibility, you talk about freedom to choose, or at least you imply that they are central to your arguments. The current global nature of business is exactly the opposite of what is advertised. “The world at your doorstep…new markets and new choices…consumer freedom…” In fact, globalization is not about you paying the lowest price; it is about the corporation PAYING YOU or somebody else the lowest wage. Globalization opens up markets for the corporations in search of raw materials AND LABOR, this is why they want it.
Have you noticed how bad the service is in, say, Macy’s these days? If you listen to the TV, you will hear “they are not competitive,” “competition from Walmart and Target is too strong.” That is true, but only partially so. what they don’t say is that corporations are in a race to the bottom—in terms of service and price. It is not about how much service companies can give you, it is about how much they can take away before they lose you as a customer. Think about this as you wait on the phone 30 minutes to ask a question to your “Verizon representative”.
Walmart, Target etc. have essentially created a giant portal through which foreign goods can enter the U.S. without hindrance. They are produced in societies that do not sustain the “American Way of Life.” The question is, how long can we sustain it?
Posted by Andyw on Jun 11, 2005 at 8:07 AM
Merlin said:
“Now here is an unfair question for all you good folks who are arguing with this troll. Why are you doing it?
You all know what he is and what he stands for. You know he is simply baiting us. If you want real discussion, ignore trolls and discuss the issues amongst yourselves. The only thing that stops a troll is simply ignoring it. Trumpeting its views to an empty theatre is a hollow victory.”
Because the lies and subterfuge need to be exposed and defined for what they are, in case anyone is inclined to adopt them, that’s why.
If nothing else, I’ve exposed Jack Barnes for the fraud that he is. He has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. He read a book by a psychopath named Ayn Rand and she is now his lord and savior. Jack Barnes is woefully uninformed and unable to think critically or argue without the aid of false premises.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 11, 2005 at 8:16 AM
Andyw said:
“Workplace violations are subject to the arbitrage of the government.”
Did you mean arbitration? Arbitrage is when an investor takes advantage of inefficiencies in different stock markets buying the same stock in one market at a lower price and selling it in another at a higher price.
BTW, a corporations legal duty is to maximize profit for its shareholders. However, that is rarely the corporation’s GOAL which is generally to maximize the salaries of the CEO and Directors - the ones who decide what the goals will be.
The exception would be a closely held corporation in which the shares are owned in large part by the CEO and Directors. Otherwise, what do the CEO and his pimps (Directors) care about troublesome shareholders constantly trying to butt in on corporate affairs. In the eyes of corporate officers and directors they are nothing more than P.T. Barnum style suckers who have gambled their money like craps players in Las Vagas and deserve to loose it. They share the status of union employees in the eyes of the officers and directors.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 11, 2005 at 8:29 AM
Globalization is more about Foreign direct investment than about trade. That is why it doesn’t make sense to talk about trade and currency policies of different countries any longer because capital is so hyper-mobile that it basically establishes its own rules and can structure the world economy any way it wants merely by shifting about the globe establishing global product and supply chains to evade costs, laws, taxes, etc. and sell in markets directly rather than rely on long-distance trade which HAS grown 6-fold in the last couple of decades but not as much as foreign direct investment or the value of cross-border mergers & Acquisistions which have increased manyfold. In the Early 1980s, annual average global inflows and outflows of FDI was in the tens of billions but by 1999 total global FDI outflow was about $1.6 Trillion with inflows valued at about $1.4 Trillion. This seems to suggest that the world’s most significant and determinant economic activity is the consolidation of global productive assets or Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFCF) and thus, the concentration of the world economy. This does not necessarily amount to a per capita long-term economic expansion and growth cycle as there is still the ongoing stagnation. The reason that the working classes of the various capitalist powers are so politically weak is that thier purchasing power is no longer key to the expansion of industrial capitalism and profits as in the old “golden-age” of 1945-1973. Now profits tend to depend on constant financial restructuring and an intensification of concentration of manufacturing assembly outside the first world and a concentration of retail and services in the first world. From here it becomes a question of monopolies and cross-border mergers and acquisistions in the various industries were they are located around the globe just as there was a concentration of intermediate industries by industrial “robber barrons” in the Progressive Era one hundred years ago in steel, iron, coal and oil, railroads, banking, cattle, and grain-the so called “trusts” that led to the first consolidation of the economy under early monopoly capitalist conditions after 1890. Post 1980s globalization is seeing a global rather than a national consolidation of this system of investment and production. Only a great mega-crisis of collapse will see a new fifth long-wave of per capita long-term economic expansion and sustained increase in labor productivity the likes of which we saw begin over fifty years ago. The real danger is that the exogenous factors that ultimately lead to such a change in productive relations and radical economic retrenchment are also likely to be highly destructive and violent.
Posted by steve on Jun 11, 2005 at 9:25 AM
Very well put Steve.
And now for something completely different, back to the topic at hand.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 11, 2005 at 10:41 AM
I am almost certain he meant arbitration. That makes far more sense as a reference on the topic of labor relations than arbitrage!
Posted by steve on Jun 11, 2005 at 10:46 AM
Which was: worker safety.
INMHO, corporations don’t give a fig for the safety of the fungible components - workers. Alive, a worker is a source of money. Dead, just a door stop. In other words, in the way. Corporations destroy people, spit them out and plug in another one.
Our schools are designed for the pleasure of the corporation - to turn out good little workers who just plug into the job slot and start working. If the worker is hurt and can’t work any more, out they go, despite the ads for AFLAC. Insurance is only of limited use - eventually it runs out and then you are on your tail - with nothing.
How to change this? Start by limiting corporations again - no political contributions, no ‘free speech,’ no corporate immunities, no corporate charter (the soul of the corporation, it gives corporations existance.) It is time to reduce a corporation to the level they deserve - menial duty.
There are no, repeat no rights for corporations, that is a false fiction - a fallacy of the legal profession. At no point did Congress assembled pass any Amendment to the Constitution to legalize ‘corporate rights.’
It is the corporation that is responsible for the legalized bribery that comprises our election process. They have been pushing large sums of money into the process, allowing the politicians to whore after it. The election process should be shortened - to 90 days. Each side gets $20 million from the Gov’t (NO contributions from anyone within 90 days of election day). Ballots are paper, only. No voting machines of any kind, type, or sort allowed. Too many elections in America have been tainted by the machines already - going back 150 years.
Reduce the size of the military, bring our boys home from most everywhere. Evaluate our role in world politics. Let the UN do its job! Cut the Military budget by 66%. It is bloated - they now get 68% of every dollar earned by the Govt. They can do a fine job on $175-200 million/year.
Radical? Dern tootin’! It’s about time to take radical action to rein in the so-called neo-cons (financial idiots is what they are (by-the-way - Bush has been a failure in every job he has held. From Arbusto (ar-busto) to Harken Energy (sold out on insider info, avoided prosecution), as Gov of Texas (killed 152 on 15 minutes briefing or less, by Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General of the US), got 2750+ people killed on 9/11/2001 by ignoring every bit of advice from his terrorist people, got 1675+ US soldiers killed for a trumped-up war that can never end (War on Terror - don’t make me retch.) It is impossible to win this war (I leave explaining that as a excersize for the student)).
The longer Chimpy stays in office, the worse it will get. I anticipate a 2nd American Revolution within the next 2 years, assuming Chimpy gets his way with the courts. Remember, we are one Supreme Court seat away from a Fascist Theocracy.
Sorry, I seem to have ranted a bit. It just galls me that these crooks and liars can get away with pulling the wool over America’s eyes for so long. The budget can be balanced by cutting military spending, restoring the tax cuts to the wealthy (God, was that a bad idea) and raising the limits on Social Security earnings (earmarked for Social Security only, with a new lockbox that takes a 3/4 majority to overturn).
We need to vote in new people that will truly listen to the people and not the corporations.
I guess that should evoke some comment!
Posted by Richard A Knighton on Jun 11, 2005 at 2:14 PM
I agree with Lefty on Jack. Boy how do I agree!
Posted by Liz on Jun 11, 2005 at 3:30 PM
Hi Lefty,
You answered:
“Because the lies and subterfuge need to be exposed and defined for what they are, in case anyone is inclined to adopt them, that’s why.”
Thanks for your answer, Lefty. I heartily agree with the above. However, doing so with trolls is a fools errand. This can be done better by doing it directly in discussion with people who are of good intent and truly want to learn through debate And ignoring the troll. This troll’s purpose is to create havoc and to upset people. Its posts are not at all real for that reason. Arguing (not discussing, as that is not possible with it) has no meaning. Such arguing is only about whether “I’m better ‘n you.”
And:
“If nothing else, I’ve exposed Jack Barnes for the fraud that he is.”
You certainly have and I have enjoyed your pithy comments.
Continuing directly you said:
“He has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.”
And in my view that is what this troll would like you to think!
The info it spouts is to deceive, upset and confuse the unwary. Anything that is goading is used. Whether it believes the things it spouts or not, it knows exactly what it is doing. I agree with a previous poster who congratulated our resident troll as being one of the best trolls anywhere. Personally I don’t believe this troll, in its actual (note I did not say “real”) life lives anything but a fantasy.
And you concluded:
“He read a book by a psychopath named Ayn Rand and she is now his lord and savior. Jack Barnes is woefully uninformed and unable to think critically or argue without the aid of false premises.”
I completely agree here. And it is all the more reason to ignore this troll. It might be a more productive exercise to talk to a resident of psychiatric ward. At least they often know there is something wrong with their ability to recognize life as it really is and act in a real way.
Posted by Merlin on Jun 11, 2005 at 4:14 PM
Yeah, Lefty, I agree with you.
Ayn Rand and her “followers” can eat dirt!
Jack Barnes CERTAINLY doesn’t know what he’s talking about, when he talks about “freedom”, “liberty”, obligation of employee to employer and so on. He certainly doesn’t appreciate how things WORK IN THE REAL WORLD - ie, what is “objectively” true, IN PRACTICE, not in somebody’s silly ego-driven fantasy… and if EGO is what Rand’s “OBJECTIVISM” is about, then Barnes is right! If it is supposed to be, on the other hand, based on what is “objectively” true, then I dunno…
Libertarians are full of sh*t, anyway! Fancy believing in all the evils of American capitalism and yet decrying the military as “a socialist organisation”! Yes, it probably could be defined as such, Jack, in that all soldiers in it are regarded as “brothers” and “comrades” - well, in the mythology of the organisation, anyway - and not merely as “colleagues” or “co-workers”. Well, it’s a pretty authoritarian model of a socialist society, with father-dictator superior officers leading the “brothers in arms”... But then all such organisations, including the Church, have always been organised thus hierarchically.
Hey, no WONDER the military still has quite an appeal to many people, and no wonder it inspires such loyalty in many of its recruits even after they have left it - because they nostalgically remember their time as part of a group, a brotherhood, a SOCIETY no less, that accepted them as part of it, from the day they passed basic training, to the day they were demobbed. I would imagine that that kind of notion of community would be many people’s goal; and that they are prepared to put up even with military discipline in order to achieve it.
(There, there’s a little paean to the armed services, coming from a non-militarist, anarcho-socialist!!)
Anyway, Jack Barnes, you are full of sh*T, because your vaunted capitalistic society would not FUNCTION if it did not have a military arm, an arm of force, which granted it access to other countries, to their resources and markets. Just try to run a “libertarian” capitalist society without a military! It’s never been done; it never will be done, it never can be done! All trading was linked with military power, from the days of the Roman Empire at least onwards. Ayn Rand my ass! I suppose she never listened to Eisenhower and his “military-industrial complex”!
International socialism and pacifism are logically linked, not libertarian capitalism and pacifism.
Oh, and as regards the obligations of employee to employer, and vice versa: If, as you state, “a business is not a charity”, and it has NO social or human obligations (that would seem to fit Rand’s thinking, only of course she thought that businesses and the “creative talent” in them were the “fountainhead” - did she not - of all human splendour and achievement… hmmmm.)... Well, if your businessman has no OBJECTIVE obligations to his employee, beyond that of squeezing the maximum amount of work out of him/her for the minimum PAY… then it logically FOLLOWS, under such an OBJECTIVE system, where human emotions and subjectivity are not allowed to come IN to it, that the employee has NO obligations other than the converse of that: to squeeze the maximum amount of pay from the employer for the minimum of work.
Posted by Liz on Jun 11, 2005 at 4:34 PM
All this talk of “well you must be lazy”, as f you were threatening to inform on people - and how, pray? Well, Jack, that just exposes the true, AUTHORITARIAN nature of your thinking, and belies your supposed “libertarianism”. In a Randian society, you shouldn’t give a rat’s ass -unless, of course, you are a paid employer’s snitch.
“In order to get and keep a job one is obligated to do their best possible work”... oh yeah, Puritan work ethic, another of the (pretty loathsome) things that have been invented to imprison human souls for centuries…
Yeah, but WHY would they do that - if it ISN’T for the best possible REWARD?? Nobody in a TRULY libertarian society would be interested in the idea of “slaving so as to make an impression on the boss so that he MIGHT pick me, pick me!”... They wouldn’t be brought up by their parents to think like that. The above is only possible in a servile, feudal or post-feudal “Upstairs Downstairs” kind of society.
If you’re talking about workplace spies, snitches, or the threat of high unemployment or wage freezes/cabals by employers, “you’ll never work in this town again” etc - again you’re talking about authoritarian coercion! NOT ANY form of liberty!! But THOSE, are, of course, the tricks used by employers over the centuries!
As for the notion of PROMOTION in the job - that only comes into it where there is a TRUE hope of such - and in many modern dead-end, low-wage jobs, that possibility is not there… Anyway, people are often promoted, not for hard work IN the job, but for attending management courses, for reasons of nepotism, for race reasons… usual reasons!
People’s local prejudices come into how they are prepared to do their jobs. For example, I read a reliable article about how there is at least one resort area in the US, where the chambermaids/housemaids - who are white - won’t regularly clean the visitor’s rooms, because they have been brought up to think cleaning beneath them and a “black” job… However, for the moment, because there aren’t enough blacks or immigrants in that area, which is underpopulated anyway, the stuck-up white women who won’t do their job properly (I would find THAT annoying, I can tell you!) don’t get the sack, probably again, because they got the job through nepotism - and the people who have to suffer are the tourists!
But usually menial employees of any race don’t have it that good!! They are forced to give their maximum, all right, in waitressing and Walmart jobs, as far as their employers can extort it; but what happens in practice, of course, is that the employees “go slow” as soon as the manager’s back is turned; that is actual workplace culture, it is enforced by the employees collectively to avoid burnout… very sensible of them. After all, there ARE no rewards, beyond minimum wage and a few tips, in the restaurant industry, that they get for working BEYOND the normal call of duty, or the “average” pace of everybody… Tell you what the waitresses REALLY do, for their tips, and again they know it’s in their self-interest: they give EXTRA helpings, extra dressing or more croutons than the penny-pinching manager says they are “allowed” to give - because they KNOW this will gain them more tips!
I am not from the USA but I know all this because I read “Nickeled and Dimed”, a study of menial jobs in the US in 2000, by Barabara Ehrenreich! I greatly recommend it to all, especially head-in-the-clouds gits like Jack!
Well, all that comes of treating people as if they were THINGS, which I am reliably informed is the pastime of psychopaths.
People are not THINGS or commodities. That would be the thought for the day!
Posted by Liz on Jun 11, 2005 at 4:35 PM
Liz,
Think of it this way, in the ultimate libertarian society where, according to Ayn Rand, selfishness is pure, perfect morality, then Mother Theresa would be the ultimate looser and crook, no?
Posted by Lefty on Jun 11, 2005 at 5:34 PM
Both Liz and Lefty have good points. I have been in many ‘jobs’ that had zero potential for ‘bettering’ myself. If Jack had the tiniest inkling of understanding about reality (he must have been management) he would know that in most jobs, there is no hope of advancement beyond what the employer wants to give to the employee. When you job is such that there is no hope of advancement, no hope of tranferring out (lateral move to different division) and no hope of moving to another type of work, you begin to simply ‘mark time.’ You see it in the military with soldiers that are near discharge (or at least one used to see it) when that person puts up what is known as a “short-timers calendar” to count down to discharge.
Jack believes in the idealized world of Ayn Rand, a novelist who did not know (in the business sense) her ass from a hand towel. She was not an employer, nor was she ever an executive in any corporation. She was just a writer, and a 1930’s style hack at that - the same as that idiot L Ron Hubbard.
Currently our government is being run by idiots that believe the nonsense expoused by ultra-right-wing nuts from the 1950’s who thought that they knew the right way to run the nation. Their policies have left the nation in deeper debt than ever before (the majority of the National Debt is courtesy of Reagan, Bush 1, and Bush 2. It is easy to prove that Republican conservatism is a lie and a sham. Just look at the debt - 7 TRILLION and growing like a rocket. Bush 2 believes that debts don’t matter. Of course not, he’s wealthy, so he has never known of any debt he could not pay easily. Bush wanted to look more ‘folksy’ so he bought his hobby ranch in Texas, where he grows - brush and weeds. There are no cattle, no horses (except the one he supposedlly masturbated (according to Laura)), nothing to qualify this as a ‘ranch’ except Bush calling it that. I grew up in So Calif, where we knew the difference between a hobby ranch and a real ranch. Despite all the urban sprawl in Calif, San Diego County has real working horse and cattle ranches. Real ranchers work on the ranch, not in Washington spreading lies and stealing the future from our children.
Posted by Richard A Knighton on Jun 12, 2005 at 4:54 AM
Part 2
Jack - you are a classic idiot and fool for believing the nonsense spewed by Ayn Rand. I read her crap in ENGLISH class, nobody beleived a word of it. The local colleges (including San Diego State and UCSD) did not teach Ayn Rand in economics classes since they recognized that her theories were berift of rationality and were unworkable in reality. Indeed, most economists have their heads up their collective asses since they have no idea of what they are talking about. Lots of pretty rhetoric about teh market doing this and the market doing that, but when it comes to the final crunch, they have no idea what they are doing. Best witness to that is the dot-com crash. None of the economists or stock market analysts had any idea the crash was going to happen. Now, it hsa emerged that the analysts lied about how good an investment in the stock market could be, touting how great it was going to perform. Just like whores, they were selling the product as hard as they could. The stock market is a scam to steal from the middle class by making it appear that one can make money by investing in stocks. The average person can not make any signifigant money, since the “traders” (stockbrokers) are siphoning off the earnings by charging fees. All neat and legal.
Remember, the world does not operate by Ayn Rands methods but by real commerce - value for value. And value is created on the backs of the workers, not by the managment or the CEO. In many cases (especially in the biggest corporations) the CEO is a liar and crook. Witness Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Rite-Aid, more. Each of these companies and more failed no because of bad investments or poor employee performance, but because of a corporate culture that fostered criminal activity - supported and sponsored by the executives, accepted by the workers as the price of being employed there. The lowest level employees at Enron got screwed, where Ken Lay (the main thief) is still not in jail and has been selling off his ill-gotten goods (his wife’s boutique selling ‘excess’ property (furniture, art works, etc.).
Until we, the people, insist in higher standards in business and make it work (demand that thieves be punished as thieves, cheats be forced out and true honesty and transparency forced into business) we will continue to be taken advantage of by the corporations. As long as they see us as being cash cows to be slaughtered at their whim, we will never be able to really enter the upper classes. The wealthy do not want a lot of upstarts joining them at their country clubs (rich white men only, please. No Mexicans, Blacks, Asians allowed.). They want to continue to dominate the world. Keep in mind, of the Republican Party’s upper leadership and all Republican elected officials nationwide less than one (1) percent is non-white. The Republican Party is the party of rich white MEN. There are no national Republican women in leadership positions. Jack is one of those short-sighted bigoted white men.
Posted by Richard A Knighton on Jun 12, 2005 at 4:55 AM
At no time in history has there been so many examples of why the Founding Fathers wanted to separate the parts of government nd install checks and balances to prevent one party dominating the other party(s). The Republican leadership believes (being short-sighted and bigoted against any other political beliefs) that they have a ‘mandate’ to destroy the best (if sometimes frustrating) government on the planet. Their agenda is to put people like that bigoted religious freak, cat-killing liar, Bill Frist into major political offices nationwide, so they can force their religious fanaticism onto everybody. Only problem, their beliefs are antithical to the average American, being that they are of the extreme right-wing hate everybody type of religion (they want to use the Bible as the sole source for US law - welcome to the American Taliban - worse than the original.). If one really wants a book to base a reaction to, go read Robert A Heinlein’s “If This Goes On’. A better description of a theocratic America can not be found in fiction. It also describes the outcome when the people have had enough and rise up to sieze their country back.
Fiction being fiction, as an illustration Heinlein did a better job of outlining reality than many other writers, Ayn Rand included. He read her works, thought they were crap.
At present, it appears that the public will have to force the right-wingnuts out and put in more moderate people. But, until that is done, there will be no improvement to the nation, but it will continue to be dragged through the mud of our own creation. Wake up and recognize that this discussion is useless unless YOU are willing to get out into the community and do some rabble-rousing. Get off your lazy ass and start organizing a community protest group. The first thing on the agenda should be getting our troops out of Iraq. No wind-down, just get out NOW! That will save US taxpayers $80 billion per year and will stop the Bushistas agenda cold. Next is to impeach Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell (criminal prosecution), Gonzales, etc. for TREASON. ONce one looks at all that they have done, one realizes that these bastards have greatly weakened our nation. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that Bush wants the US attacked again. There is nothing being done about border security, cargo entering the US is not inspected (only 1% is inspected), the radiation detectors that are supposed to find smuggled in a-bombs are unable to detect a test source held against the detector - utterly useless. Yet Chimpy claims that the nation is safe. Our leader is an idiot and he has morons advising him. They are so caught up in their agenda of dismantling every Democratic social program ever enacted, that they are not seeing the peril they are creating.
I seem to have goten a bit off track, no matter. I hope the rest of you will not waste your time further on that moron Jack. He is a little man and is of no importance
I leave your with the following:
“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower
November 8, 1954
Now, there was a Reublican I could respect.
Posted by Richard A Knighton on Jun 12, 2005 at 4:57 AM
Re: “lazy”
The American worker works more hours per week than any workers anywhere in the world - including Japan.
The American worker takes less holiday time than any worker anywhere in the world. European workers get 30 days paid vacation leave per year. The US averages 2 weeks, if lucky enough to get that.
I should think that ‘lazy’ would nt be the proper word for the American worker. Overworked and underpaid is more like it. It is the policy of Wal-Mart (Largest non-governmental US business - 15. million workers) locks their employees in the building overnight, stiffs workers on overtime, refuses to allow any unionization, forces workers to work off the clock, overcharges on health insureance and has the largest number of emplyees using welfare and Medicare for health care and extra food.
If Jack had the tiniest inkling he would understand that his position is untenable. But like all Reaganites, he understands nothing except tax cuts for the wealthy and the back of the hand to the poor and middle classes. Jack is a throwback to the “Mauve Decades” when lazziz-faire economics were the way and caveat emptor was the watch word of the business world.(I think I spelled those correctly).
Sorry, but ‘let the buyer beware’ is not a good honest way to run a business. And “All’s fair in business” is not a good business strategy.
P.T. Barnum was right, there is a sucker born every minute. Jack is one of P.T’s ‘egress’ people, thinking something exotic must be beyond the “Egress This Way” sign.
Myself, I am a rational person. I don’t believe in economic fairy tales that promise a fortune at the end of the economic rainbow. I believe in TANSTAAFL - “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch” (R.A. Heinlein). If something sounds too good to be true, it absolutly is too good to be true.
Any other viewpoint is inconsistant with reality. So. all the rhetoric, especially from Steve, with his overly complicated maunderings on economic theory, is essentially silly and a time-waster. The real job is to put honest practices inot place and eliminate the ‘dog-eat-dog’ mentality from business. Business is there to provide goods and services, not to enrich itself on the backs of the workers. There is no guarentee that a business will make money. Most never do and go out of business within the first 5 years. Those that survive, go out when the owner dies or retires. This is good and proper. For a business to survive for 50-100 years is an aberation and goes against history. Business should have limits and be put out of business from time-to-time to keep them honest.
We need limits on what businesses can do and what they can’t do. We need most of these limits to be what a business can’t do. What they can do can be limited to simply marketing their wares (goods or service). No business should be exempt from this ‘rule:’ No business shall be permitted to exist beyond 50 years. No argument, no alteration.
Nowhere in law does it specify that a business can exist forever. The Founding Fathers wanted corporation severly limited and for the first 100 years they were. Crooks and lawyers managed to get that changed. But the laws were not changed until relativly recently.
To Hell with corporations!
Posted by Richard A Knighton on Jun 12, 2005 at 5:20 AM
Richard,
I really didn’t think what I pointed out was silly or a waste of time. It is perfectly consistent with your and many other critiques in this and other threads of US corporate based capitalism and its harmful effects on the working classes both here and abroad. The idea that theories don’t count or matter IS silly! I think that a theory that incorporates three essential points that I have discovered in my Meanderings (I think this is what you meant) and melds them together in a unified understanding of where we are is essential politically! First, we have passed from a Fordist to a post-Fordist society whereby the rising national incomes which created the growth based on a national mass consumer based society (especially in consumer durables like autos and residential housing stock) is no longer valued as essential by capitalists who seek to globalize the economy mostly through foreign direct investment and restructure a new division of labor which is highly specialized through production and supply chains and which concentrates and centralizes wealth and productive assets in global economy that increasingly operates above national boundaries. Secondly, the Keynesian/Fordist epoch that has collapsed and led to the current global one constituted a major (4th) long-wave of capitalist economic expansion that turned downward in 1973 due to an overaccumulation and overproduction crisis and whose restructuring has not lead to more permanent growth but constant stagnation and lurching toward recession. Finally, the new restructuring is a form of globalization which is NOT international but TRANSNATIONAL and based purely on Foreign Direct Investment not on overseas trade. Competition now takes place exclusively between Transnational Corporations (TNCs) through investment strategies, not nation-states through trade or trade policy. The era of the nation-state is being replaced by the global era! This understanding is crucial! It is silly and futile to continually argue, as have some, that we are undermined by trade with China and India and need new “get tough” trade and currency policies—eg “China should revalue its currency; the US should have higher tariffs to protect its remaining manufacturing base”, etc. Governance is increasingly at the behest of a Transnationalized capitalist class (TCC) which expresses its interest through globalizing investment and merging production with other parts of the TCC. They are impervious to old nation-state governance strategies which are themselves being eclipsed by fragments of the old nation-state accepting the new epochal shift as they merge with and facilitate the emergence of a new Transnational State (TNS) which many recognize and the WTO, the IMF, The World Bank, and agreements like NAFTA. The TCC is in the process of recasting the old world and old nation-state centric forms of resistance will not bring justice. For this counter-hegemonic movements which span boundaries like the World Social Forum and other sectors of the Global Justice Movement which transnationalize the concerns of those harmed by globalization and its concommittant upward redistribution of wealth and political control and merges issues in a way that creates effective global political agenda for change. In the end, I think all of us who find fault with transnational capitalism are pretty much on the same page!
Posted by steve on Jun 12, 2005 at 6:08 AM
This is a good thread, but the best was when Richard A Knighton made the following decree: “Myself, I am a rational person.”
That was a screamer. Richard A Knighton, if you are not a professor in an institution of higher learning, you’ve missed your calling. That you live in California is understandable and a good place for you because all your protests won’t interfere with my quality of life.
I wish we could get your opinions out in a larger forum. For the moment we have Howard Dean but I believe you could give him a run for his money.
Posted by U Scare Me on Jun 12, 2005 at 10:34 AM
Save your breath on Jack-he’s way to far down the rabbit hole to bring back. I listen to that libertarian crap all the time; to quote Homer Simpson, they’re “living in a world of make believe”. Lordy.
Posted by Hank Snow on Jun 12, 2005 at 7:22 PM
It’s great to read some people making sense and having real discussions on this thread. You all are absolutely correct, Jack Barnes (Lin Biao, J. Craig, etc.) is totally off his rocker.
I think Richard has raised some terrific points. U Scare Me, as usual, has the same old tired, worn-out rhetoric of the Right, delivered in sound-bite chunks. Obviously, the intellectual discussion above was too much for him to read, digest and deliver a rational response. What really cracks me up is that Dean is actually doing a very good job of fundraising. He has raised three times more for this quarter than did the DNC in the prior non-election year quarter. While he may speak out of turn at times, he more often hits the nail on the head by telling the truth—something that the GOP knows nothing about. DeLay, Noe, Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, etc. spew nothing but lies.
Today the polls showed that support for the war is down to 34%. Boy, that’s a mandate!
Merlin is right on the money. We should simply ignore the trolls and talk among ourselves.
Posted by Margaret on Jun 12, 2005 at 8:53 PM
Hi Margaret,
You noted:
“It’s great to read some people making sense and having real discussions on this thread.”
I definitely agree! And thanks to you folks for stimulating my thoughts and teaching me as well. Lots of good stuff on this and a couple of other threads! Let’s all keep up the good work!
Posted by Merlin on Jun 12, 2005 at 10:57 PM
Margaret,
***Obviously, the intellectual discussion above was too much for him to read, digest and deliver a rational response.***
I believe you are a pot calling the kettle black. Mostly what I see are progressives, you in particular, ignoring counter points because you lack the diligence, intelligence or integrity to respond to respond to them. I do give you an A+ in name calling however.
Lets try one: Richard A Knighton stated the following, “No business shall be permitted to exist beyond 50 years. No argument, no alteration.”
This to me sounds like a stepping stone towards a Moa Tse-Tung Cultural Revolution. Maybe we should consider taking “Republicans that have never done an honest days work in their lives” and put them in work camps so we can reprogram their thinking.
I like you am pulling for Dean to stay right where he is. You believe he’ll help your party, I believe he’ll continue to kill it. One of us is right and the other is wrong, but we both want the same thing, keep him talking. I just wish Republicans would shut up about it. There is no sense in attacking a guy that is beating his own head with a hammer.
Posted by U Scare Me on Jun 13, 2005 at 4:42 AM
USM is a classic conservative isn’t he. When he has absolutely nothing substantive to argue, he resorts to hate - the conservative stock in trade.
Even his galant attempt at analyisis was short lived. He actually focused in on an idea proffered by Richard, raising false hope that he might do something constructive with it . . . but no, he just couldn’t do it. He doesn’t know how. Rather, he employs the only method for dealing with argument he’s capable of, he redirects it to something else that he hates - Mao Tse-Tung.
And of course there’s the classic conservative tactic of employing the aid of the false premise when real, honest analysis can only lead to that most hated of conservative predicaments - agreement. And a true conservative like USM could NEVER admit (to himself or others) that he agrees with a liberal. USM, I don’t recall reading where Richard wrote anything about work camps - work camps was your idea. A very hateful concept, work camps. I’m not surprised you brought it up.
Hate and subterfuge - the conservative method.
USM, thank you for once again confirming that the unfortunate reality that there really are only 2 kinds of conservatives: 1) idiots, and 2) crooks. And USM, you’re not smart enought to be a crook.
BTW, I, being a liberal, am pulling for Dean too. I just wish that he would stop holding back and would speak the whole truth.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 13, 2005 at 8:00 AM
I also think that Dean is right! I don’t know why the other Democrats are mad at him. If it’s acceptible for Republicans to malign innocent people for their military records (including Max Cleland who was horribly maimed in an act of heroism on behalf of his platoon in Vietnam), stir up a hate campaign against gays and lesbians in order to create an election year wedge issue, stir up religious animosity against Jews and Muslims through their right-wing bigotry (the first with the Mel Gibson movie and the second with the “war on terror”), commit or support acts of terror against legal abortion clinics, try to turn the US from a democracy into a theocracy, and in general lie every night to the public through repulsive stiff-haired pundits on Fox News, then why can’t Howard Dean tell the truth about the Republicans being a rich white, male party who never did an honest days work and don’t give a rats ass about anyone but their narrow elitist constituency?
Posted by steve on Jun 13, 2005 at 8:16 AM
What a pathetic collection of losers !
Not one of these rants have dealt with my
arguments or in way refuted the sources that
I was kind enough to give.
I often do not go near the computer during the
weekend but obviously I didn’t miss much.
There is no such thing as a lousy job, only lousy
people who can’t do the job.
Millions of people in America have started in so-called dead end jobs and unlike losers like lefty, Liz, Richard, ad nauseum, they have worked
their way up the ladder and become quite successful.
In a truly free noncontrolled society very few
people start at the top. In a laissez-faire
society it is often shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves
in three generations. One starts out poor, makes
a fortune by dint of using their brain, leaves
it to a worthless heir and the next generation
has to start all over again.
The interesting thing is the way the left ignores
totally the crucial role of intelligence in industrial production and worships the poor precisely because they are people who have not
achieved anything. You people are motivated by
envy and a profound hatred of human ability.
One reason the left apologizes so strenously for
black criminals is precisely because they are total scum.
Ike was a piece of crap Communist who conducted
Operation Keelhaul right after WW2 and shipped
back millions of escaped Russians to be murdered
by Joe Stalin. He was always an extreme leftist
ADA Democrat and those people were ready to draft him for the Dummycrat nomination in 1948. He pulled out the first day of the convention.
Truman wrote that he thought Ike was a Democrat
up to January, 1952.
Ayn Rand wrote many books, both fiction and nonfiction, not just “a book.”
You people with the noble exception of U Scare
Me are not engaged in a cross-ferilization of
ideas but a cross-sterilization.
Maybe you can win debates with your personal
selves but that’s the only debate you can win !
Lefty, thanks again for proving my point.
You are reduced to profanity, temper tantrums,
ad hominem logical fallacies and assertions
unbacked by argumentation.
Liz, I’m not sure which one of the failing West
European welfare police states that you reside
in, but you are a loser living in system of losers
and people over there now living will see the end
of your socialist nightmare.
I’m all for Dean staying in his position.
I say let him and the neocon statists in the GOP
have at each other. Virtually every Democratic
public official is forced to disavow him every
week. The GOP is still at least four times ahead
in the fundraising. Only Dems who owned government
favored businesses like Margaret can afford to
throw money down the DNC rathole.
Steve, your recitation of the discredited liar
Chomsky and his totally ignorant views on economics, makes you look silly. See The Anti-Chomsky Reader for another look at this fraud.
I know from 20 years of correspondence with Noam
that he is a fraud and liar to the nth degree.
Now that the rest of Margaret’s family has posted
here, I can only reiterate the obvious fact that
your offspring are nothing to be proud of.
Miss Bunny Hop is the best of a sad sack lot.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 13, 2005 at 8:19 AM
If lefty is a “liberal” then that
term now means what used to be signified
by socialist or communist.
The psychotic narcissism evident in lefty’s
tirades are no evidence of liberal superiority
in debate or eruditon. As Mr. Barnes noted,
you are reduced to profanity precisely you do
not have the wit to use a real word or make
a real argument.
That you two would be fans of Dean is entirely
predictable since Dean is a psychotic whose
candidacy was emphatically rejected the American
people.
People in management and owners of corporations
are the hardest working element of the population.
It’s a riot to read laments from the Steves and
Richards bemoaning the ability of their betters
to earn much money than they could ever conceive
of. Envy has corroded your hate-ridden interiors
and if you look too closely you find that there
is no there there.
Posted by Christine M Taylor on Jun 13, 2005 at 8:37 AM
Christine, Thanks.
Did you live in SF during the 70s and 80s ?
Best,
Jack
PS I’m in South Bend now.
Are you still in DC ?
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 13, 2005 at 8:40 AM
Right on, Jack and Christine !
It’s fun to come to a site and maul
these lefty losers. Sort of like shooting
cows in a field. You can’t miss and they
end up making your case for you.
Proud Vet, you’ve nothing to be proud of.
Go, Dean, go ! He’s the best fundraiser the
GOP ever had. Feinstein and Lieberman have
called for his resignation. But hopefully
he’ll stay.
Posted by Robber Baron on Jun 13, 2005 at 8:47 AM
Steve,
Yeah, isn’t it amazing how the GOP can praise Bush for his supposed “time” in the Texas Guard, but they rip a new one for John McCain when he ran for President in the 2000 primaries. My goodness, there is just no comparison there whatsoever, but to establish their “feelgood” line about GWB, they push a war hero and amazing patriot into the sewer.
You’re right, Max Clelland is yet another example of the GOP cannibalizing real American heroes. I don’t care if part of his injuries were incurred stateside. Apparently you have to lose all your limbs if you want to be a good political candidate, in the minds of the far Right.
I have lost just about all respect for John McCain, bending over for Bush in the last 2 years, especially. I am sad that he could withstand 5 years in the Hanoi Hilton, but not stand up to 5 years of Cheney, et al.
Posted by Margaret on Jun 13, 2005 at 8:48 AM
p.s.
Jack, we know all those posts are you under pseudonyms.
Posted by Margaret on Jun 13, 2005 at 8:49 AM
Lefty you’re funny. I guess when you go around belittling people with terms like dolts, idiots and fools you are not using hate speech. When did somebody put that “false premise” bug in your ear. You are beating it to death man/woman.
I love the fact that you think you and your party have a lock on all intelligence. There’s a false premise for you and your party’s arrogance about it is part and parcel to your loosing elections over the past 10 years. Sorry Kerry let you down with his grades. I bet we could turn that into some kind of false premise.
You said: ***And a true conservative like USM could NEVER admit (to himself or others) that he agrees with a liberal.*** And, *** BTW, I, being a liberal, am pulling for Dean too. I just wish that he would stop holding back and would speak the whole truth.***
I agree with you 100% about Howard, I want him to stop holding back as well and I’m agreeing with a liberal, something you said I was incapable of doing.
I ask again: Richard A Knighton stated the following, “No business shall be permitted to exist beyond 50 years. No argument, no alteration.”
Good idea or not. What do you think Lefty? Not being an idiot like me I’m sure you can answer the question.
Posted by U Scare Me on Jun 13, 2005 at 9:09 AM
Steve,
*** why can’t Howard Dean tell the truth about the Republicans being a rich white, male party who never did an honest days work and don’t give a rats ass about anyone but their narrow elitist constituency?***
The “narrow elitist constituency” you mention is what us idiots refer to as a majority of Americans.
Posted by U Scare Me on Jun 13, 2005 at 9:31 AM
Lefty
Think of it this way, in the ultimate
libertarian society where, according to Ayn
Rand, selfishness is pure, perfect morality,
then Mother Theresa would be the ultimate
looser and crook, no?
Yeah, I guess you’re right!
Christopher Hitchens didn’t much like Mother Theresa either…. Guess he must be a Randist! (Though I’m reliably told that he’s an ex-Trotskyist - I’m bound to echo the Christian fundie position on this one and say that in that case, “he must never have been truly saved at all”!)
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 9:37 AM
Margaret, this the umpteenth time that you have
made that false accusation.
It apparently galls you to realize that there
lots of folks out there that disagree with you
and agree with me.
Now, either put up or shut up !
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 13, 2005 at 9:57 AM
Jack,
Hello ! Long time, no see.
We used to be involved for a while.
I moved here in 1987 and work as an
attorney for the Federal Government.
Looks like you are keeping up your
political interests.
I’ll email you my private info.
Best,
Christine
Posted by Christine M. Taylor on Jun 13, 2005 at 10:02 AM
Richard A Knighton
(You’re Proud Vet, aren’t you? People have changed their aliases on here largely because of Jack’s… I don’t know what to call it, I won’t say trolling, because I have seen far worse - ie irrelevant, childish trolling, than his contrarianism… I hate to imagine who Jack’s Daddy might be - though I dug the post complete with sound effects where Jack is “drug off” to the “booby hatch”!
Love your posts, Richard, by the way.
ASK NOT AT WHOM THE CHIMP SMIRKS - HE SMIRKS AT YOU…..
http://smirkingchimp.com
You’ll like that site if you don’t already have it as a Favorite.
Bet Jack is in LURVE with Chimpy, though he opens his mouth all the time pro “Libertarianism”. Bet Jack isn’t a member of the Libertarian party. Bet Jack digs theocrats.
I’d LOVE to read Robert A. Heinlein’s “If This Goes On”, but I can’t find it at Amazon.com! It seems a pity that it’s out of print, because it sounds a much more sensible - and HOPEFUL - book than either Ayn Rand’s or Margaret Atwood’s, who as you probably know is a modern “dystopian” novelist who has written at least one novel about a theocratic future US, “The Handmaiden’s Tale”. But Heinlein wrote SO much, that much of his opus is bound to be out of print… MIGHT you be able to recommend me a good second-hand internet bookshop, one with a proper website, like Amazon only second-hand… You seem to have great second-hand bookstores in the USA, and I don’t have any near me! Only charity shops.
Right on Eisenhower! Didn’t know he was THAT bright, one leans something every day…
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 10:21 AM
Er - yes, Steve! Re your ideas about post-Fordism: I like your ideas but I think you could express yourself a little more…clearly? I think you must be an economist!
Yes, well, in a Global economy, we shall need Global, that means, of course, International, Socialism, shan’t we??
Don’t know if you’re a Marxist at all, but you could do a lot worse than to visit these American/international Trotskyists at: http://www.wsws.org
(It’s a top-notch news and current affairs analysis site, often listed on Google News…)
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 10:30 AM
Jack said:
“What a pathetic collection of losers !
Not one of these rants have dealt with my
arguments or in way refuted the sources that
I was kind enough to give.
I often do not go near the computer during the
weekend but obviously I didn’t miss much.
There is no such thing as a lousy job, only lousy people who can’t do the job.”
Blahahahahahahahahaha!!! Jack(ass), your kindness is exceeded only by your relentless conservative hatred and stupidity. Go back the the boody hatch where you belong.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 13, 2005 at 10:35 AM
OMG, I just noticed that Jack(ass) is having a conversation with himself under multiple pseudonyms. Jack’s obsessive worship of the dilusional psychopath, Ayn Rand, all makes perfect sense, now that we know that Jack is schizoid.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 13, 2005 at 10:43 AM
Well isn’t this interesting. We have the schizoid Jack(ass) having written conversations with himself under multiple pseudonyms, and we have Ryan, masquerading in different threads under different names, like USM in this thread.
So Ryan, IF THAT’S YOUR REAL NAME (he said accusatorily, LOL), how much does the GOP (Gang of Pimps) pay you to make a fool out of yourself trolling liberal message boards?
Now, as to your question:
“‘No business shall be permitted to exist beyond 50 years. No argument, no alteration.’” Good idea or not. [sic] What do you think Lefty? Not being an idiot like me I’m sure you can answer the question.”
Yes Ryan, I can answer the question. But, rather than spoon feeding the answer to you (based on the give a man a fish and you feed him once, teach him to fish and you feed him for life premise), I will, benevolently, direct your attention to what was, and still is, known in the common law as the “rule against perpetuities.” The rule against perpetuities is still the law in many jurisdictions in the U.S. although its application has been limited by various state statutes.
Do some research on this ancient and vererable law. Try to understand the underlying policy behind it. Formulate a response to your own question, and report back. I eagerly await your report.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 13, 2005 at 11:00 AM
Ryan said:
“The “narrow elitist constituency” you mention is what us idiots refer to as a majority of Americans.” Posted by U Scare Me on June 13, 2005 at 11:31 AM
Faulty analysis, Ryan, based on a false premise. Although not express, Steve was implying the premise that I have expressed, that there are only 2 kinds of conservatives: 1) idiots, and 2) crooks. The narrow elitist constituency referred to by Steve would be the crooks. The constituency that voted for them would be the idiots. Two different constituencies, Ryan. Just because an idiot votes for a crook doesn’t make the idiot part of the crooks constituency in the mind of the crook.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 13, 2005 at 11:07 AM
“lefty” is also richard, proud vet, steve, merlin
and margaret.he has more aliases than iq points.
he also has a rap sheet that is quite a bit longer
than his penis.
Posted by Susie on Jun 13, 2005 at 11:24 AM
Christine
“If Lefty is a ‘liberal’ then that term now means what used to be signified by socialist or communist.”
Well, you MAY be right - up to a point! I have noticed some quite lefty elements in the Democratic party, and on all its best boards and blogs, who I think would REALLY be more at home in a socialist party! Which at the moment doesn’t exist in any statistically significant number in the US.
BUT - that’s only because you killed all the socialists in America during the Fifties; or outlawed their parties by economically blacklisting people, which is the same thing.
IF enough of the left-leaning Democrats came out and ADMITTED they WERE socialists, albeit strictly democratic, populist socialists - then the US would have a viable third party!
And the working class and the ethnic underclass would at LAST have a party WORTH their votes!!!
Roll on the day!
“People in management and owners of corporations are the hardest working element of the population.” (At first I thought you wrote: “among the”, then I checked and realized, nope!)
Mm. That’s why they spend so much time on golf courses, then. That’s why they have 3-hour lunches. That’s why they have better health and greater longevity than the workers… Mmm. Because WORK is so HEALTHY for you, ain’t it?
Mm well, at least you’ve now got a fan in Jack, who obviously wants to invite you out to dinner… A proof that conservatives in America ARE in the minority!!
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 11:30 AM
That’s a shocker ! There are really two kinds
of liberals, the severely mentally ill and the
plain criminals.
What kind do you think lefty is ? Or rather
Margaret, I knew she was using multiple aliases.
Or is she a he ?
No wonder the ranks of the left are getting
thinner every day.
See Liz is into war criminals besides being
a Trot cultist. P A T H E T I C.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 13, 2005 at 11:30 AM
Apparently you haven’t looked at an election
result or a public opinion poll for forty years.
No leftist except a few hardcore ones can get
elected in the USA. To the extent that they are
leftwing, they have to tone it down to win
and usually the voters see right through the
“moderate” pose. Regularly 40% of those who do
label themselves pick the conservative moniker.
Liberals have decreased 30 to 14% since 1980.
Socialism in all of its aspects, Nazi, fascist,
welfare statist, Communist, syndicalist, etc.,
has been a proven failure wherever it’s been
tried and to the extent that it’s been tried.
The only people who take three hour lunches
are top government bureaucrats as I can verify
from almost twenty years of living in DC.
You’re remarks on corporations and capitalists
are laughable and are motivated by crude envy.
I used to date Jack in SF when we a minority
in that area ideologically speaking.
My, how times have changed !
Posted by Christine M. Taylor on Jun 13, 2005 at 11:42 AM
Lefty,
I’m probably getting paid the same amount as you. I’m not Ryan. I know you know everything, but you missed that one. I’m really Margaret with a happy face.
So you are inferring the “rule against perpetuities”, either in fact or principle, states it is a good idea that corporations should not be allowed to stay in business longer than 50 years? Is this what you really believe or is this another attempt to dodge? I really believe answering the previous question will allow everyone to see the true Progressive agenda. I believe we’ll learn what the phrase, ”Take America Back”, really means. I’ll try one more time.
Richard A Knighton stated the following, “No business shall be permitted to exist beyond 50 years. No argument, no alteration.”
Good idea or not?
I have a boat and catch my own fish all the time. You also don’t need to worry about feeding me, I do just fine but I appreciate your concern.
Posted by U Scare Me on Jun 13, 2005 at 11:42 AM
Jack Barnes…
(Are you the same as “Digger” Barnes on that old 80s capitalist cultist soap opera? Dallas? Did you borrow his character for your pseudonym… No, maybe J.R. truly WOULD suit you better! Least someone’d get to shoot you!)
What, please, is a “Trot cultist”???
Either you ARE a Trotskyist, or you’re not one. Or you’re an ex-would-be-one, like that Repug-apologist turncoat Christopher Hitchens.
One CAN, of course, be a Trotskyist sympathizer…
Yeah, I’m a sympathizer! I CAN’T be a Marxist, however, of any stamp: because there’s ONE thing, and only one, that disqualifies me: I’m actually quite religious, in my own way (no, I’m not a Christian, I gave that up, thanks!) and I’m not in any sense of the word, a “materialist”.
I’m a mystic! And a paranormalist. Therefore, I CAN’T be a Marxist! Because I’m honest. Simple, really…
And I could never get into Rand’s kind of “mysticism”, ie worship of money and power at the expense of other, more enduring, human qualities. Because I’m far too sensible and humane.
As for Rand, I daresay she found out what was REALLY what once she “crossed over”. Gaia only knows who or what she’s reincarnated as now.
Nope, I think that the ranks of the Left - including Democrats, I already said that I think a lot of them should form a populist socialist third party - are INCREASING every day! Look at all their lovely boards and blogs - like this one! Plus Altnernet. Democratic Underground. Truthout. Counterpunch…. They’re multiplying every day and attracting new followers, including conservatives who have nothing better to do than troll. What have YOU people got? FreeperRepublic? Don’t make me laugh!!
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 11:46 AM
I am Margaret and no one else. I even admitted that missbunni is my daughter, who had read some ramblings of the insane Libertarians, who are so outside the mainstream as to never have had anyone of significance elected in the US besides a dogcatcher, and decided to respond.
Really, Christine, what an insult to all women that you would ally yourself with such an obvious misogynist.
Back to the point of this thread, how can we get rid of the jackasses in office who are putting the working class into real danger, both physically and financially? If you’ve looked at the polls within the last, oh, I don’t know, Christine, the last 24 hours, you’ll see that Bush’s ratings are the lowest of any second termer in the first year of re-election. Only 36% of Americans now think Iraq was worth it, and 3/4 of Americans now want us out. But you know we can’t, because Bonzo stayed up past his bedtime trying to think of a plan and couldn’t come up with any at all.
It’s good to know that Libertarians will always be at the bottom of the cesspool where they belong.
Posted by Margaret on Jun 13, 2005 at 12:17 PM
Christine
Seeing as your last post seems to have been addressed to me:
As Jack Barnes, your ex-paramour (oh WHY am I so not surprised?!) has already observed, I have admitted to being a non-American. However, I know plenty about your country and its politics, recent political history etc, having had the opportunity to read a lot of books and do a lot of web browsing over the past five and more years…
And I mean a LOT…
Who are these “hardcore” lefts you are referring to, Christine? Clinton? Don’t make me laugh!
It would seem to me that the American public, their souls containing a basic egalitarian element, have been MISLED in recent years, to be brainwashed into voting for “folksy”-seeming individuals of BOTH parties - well there is SO little difference between the policies of their leaderships, anyway - they have all been bought and paid for by corporations!
Yes, so Americans have voted into office the following “folksy” types - presumably as an antidote to Richard Nixon!
Jimmy Carter, Democrat. Ronald Reagan, the “Great Communicator”, Republican. His successor, Bush I (bit of a blip). Bill Clinton, Democrat. George W. Bush, Repuglican.
All of the above from south of the Mason-Dixon line, and as Richard so well points out, who have the pronounced tendency to indulge in fake populist elements such as “down-home” speech (or is that speaking in tongues?) and operating fake ranches - so as to FOOL the Southern white populace that they are “one of them”!
It works very well in America; whereas one might require the opposite image to be electable in certain European countries, eg. Britain, France. NOBODY elects hayseeds there!
So, you count that liberals amount to only 14% in America?? Hmm, that’s funny, I wonder what the rest of the 50% are, then, that voted for Kerry… A lot must be those socialists in chrysalis form, then, that I SPEAK of!! (And of course there must be a lot MORE among the OTHER 50% of Americans - the ones that don’t vote at all! A lot of those “black criminals” as you and your boyfriend so kindly call them, are still waiting for their Dr King Mark II messiah, I think… He’ll be a socialist, when he comes along.)
The only socialisms that have been TRIED are the sort that aren’t really socialism at all.
Why would I want to envy capitalist psychopaths??
If I am supposed to honor thieves, I prefer Robin Hood, John Dillinger and Willie Sutton, thanks very much!
(You’re right, in that SOME lefties, like ME, DO indeed sympathize with criminals… It’s because we’re honest - try that for a paradox!
But in actual fact, being on the “anarcho” side myself, and, you know, WILLING to read the scribblings of libertarians, I have always WONDERED why none of THEM seem to adore criminals, Robin Hood types? After all, it is THEY who are following the most fundamental kind of “free enterprise” - “enterprise” as a CONCEPT indeed is so free, that I don’t see how any boundaries, of “thou shalt not steal, at least not without a white collar” should be put around it!!
I think Ayn Rand and supporters should have LOVED criminals! That would have been logical of them. But of course they were much too bourgeois, rendering that philosophy to them unpalatable.)
Anyway, it seems to me that both you AND Jack ESPOUSE Libertarianism - but REALLY, you’re Repuglicans - and those AIN’T the same things - though scratch one, you often find the other…
WHY do you use precisely the same formatting style as Jack Barnes, anyway, Christine? Are you his split-off schizoid feminine side, his “anima”, or something!
Sorry but really!
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 12:17 PM
Well, I better remember Cliff Barnes, Digger’s
son, who was a kind of lefty in Texas terms.
Just rewatched the first two seasons of Dallas
on DVD. Season three is due in August.
Lived in the SF Bay Area for 30 years and they have more Trot cults than you could shake a stick at.
Each one had maybe three members and they spent
all their energy fighting each other.
I go to lots of websites but rarely go on boards.
But they have many conservative websites, don’t
kid yourself. Not to mention total domination
of the AM talk radio, libs are limited to the
pathetic Air America.
I frankly don’t like 99% of the conservative
websites and 100% of the neocon talk show hosts.
The only boards I’ve been on are the ITT one here
and the conservative Chronicles website, which
is paleocon. They are quite anti-war and anti-Bush, frankly many on the Right do not like Bush.
It would be a grievous mistake to associate all
anti-Bush sentiment with pro-left sentiment.
You’re comments on Rand simply do not make sense.
We agree on that lush Hitchens.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 13, 2005 at 12:24 PM
Lefty
You must be a bit of a lawyer! I don’t know much about the “rule against perpetuities”... it’s interesting that our common-law-inventing ancestors (the Anglo-Saxons?) thought of such a thing!
I assume, however, that it would not APPLY to a business that is handed down from father to son/daughter, in particular a skilled/craft business??
“Such & Sons, Vintners”. “Smith and Daughter, Cabinet-Makers.”
Etc.
(I can’t see the Saxons having legislated against those, or against guilds, bastions of privilege though those might have been! Start of the middle class, after all!)
I seem to have found a loophole to one of your ideas which no doubt the twit LibertarRepugs on here will pounce upon - but doubtless you are equal to it?
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 12:27 PM
I thought that I was using the correct
formatting style. But I do recall that
Jack is also lefthanded.
Posted by Christine M. Taylor on Jun 13, 2005 at 12:30 PM
Christine,
It’s funny that you mention earning money as a motivation to jealosely turn against capitalism. Bill Gates, George Soros, and some other notables are THE richest people in the world and are all quite liberal if not social democrats because they are concerned about the viability of a system that cannibalizes the very society and world in which these billionaires make their money. Also it is the height of barbarian ignorance and cruelty not to mention backwardness to believe that people have to validate themselves to the world through the accretion of material wealth mostly created by the labor of others. Most people are rich because of the sacrifices of the many who earn way below the median income. The rich corporations that patent new technologies don’t do a thing but pay highly educated people a modest salary to do years of R&D for them! Much of the scientific research comes out of former government programs like NASA and the military’s R&D which were being down for years after WWII. The capitalist only makes money, mental and manual laborers do the rest—often for very little in return!
Posted by steve on Jun 13, 2005 at 12:40 PM
Jack, I do not get economic wisdom from Noam Chomsky. For this I consult the Monthly Review!
Posted by steve on Jun 13, 2005 at 12:46 PM
USM,
Those who you call the GOP majority are not the real constituents of the GOP. They’re just stupid fanatics who aren’t smart enough to know any better than to support Bush. Soon they’ll regret it!
Posted by steve on Jun 13, 2005 at 12:49 PM
So, Jack! You admit to not liking Bush!! You didn’t say that in any recognisable way shape or form anywhere on this blog before…
So WHY is it that you and your “pal”, Christine in particular, adulate the fact that “conservatism in this country is going up” and “there are hardly any liberals left”!?
(Untrue, I think!)
And if you’re not a Repug/neocon, why do you adulate the fact that most of talk radio - particularly in the hayseed Southern states - is run by the above people??
(I think that the liberals are soon going to catch up a bit there, though. That’s my prediction.)
I mean, I haven’t seen you recommend tons of Libertarian sites, I actually have been to the Libertarian party site… I don’t know if it’s still current.
Presumably the reason you’re not “on their side” as much as you ought to be, is that there are about as many of them as there are Trotskyists!! I mean, how many people have THEY got elected? Jessie Ventura, I think - if he’s a particularly good example or not I leave up to you!
And all your and Christine’s remarks about “lazy workers”, “hard-working corporate owners”, “black criminals” and so on - and some sexist and racist stuff from your past posts - seem to feed into my image of both of you as typical white backward conservatives masquerading as something more “trendy”, ie Randist or sth.
Why don’t my comments on Rand make sense? If she liked complete freedom of enterprise, why not idolize criminals and gangsters? They’re just boyz from the hood makin’ good! (From ANY ethnic minority which doesn’t have the same chances as the majority/elite, I mean!)
So, as I said - if you are one of the conservatives who DON’T like Bush - a “paeleo”, ie pre-neocon - well, wouldn’t that make you fall more in the Eisenhower camp, who however you say you hate? But under his rule, America was doing better economically than it ever did before!
And yet you SEEM to think it’s possible to have all these “conservative values”, (let’s call a spider a spider, and not “libertarian”) - in the modern day and age, yet without carrying “a big stick”??
(I think Eisenhowever invented that saying too, didn’t he??)
Well, the ruling class has been wielding the stick against the underclass in recent years, all right! (Namely: the phoney “War on Drugs”, for one, which you, as a libertarian anyway, should stand up against!)
And if it doesn’t invade other countries… What is to stop equally psychopathic elite-ridden foreign countries, ie Saudi Arabia, from invading here??
THAT is realpolitik!
THAT is why we need International Socialism!
As for the Trots being a few here, a few there… I agree. I plan on getting all these splinter groups talking to one another. First the Trots with all the other Trots. THEN, the Trots with the rest of the Communists/Marxists. THEN with the rest of the other assorted socialists. THEN with the left-Dems… THEN we’ll take over the world!! America goes first.
(If I ever move to America, I MUST go to San Francisco! I can see already I’d fit right in there!)
Glad we can at least agree on Hitchens. (!)
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 12:50 PM
Liz,
Really enjoying your blogs. Though I tend to be a little more center of left, I agree with your viewpoints quite often. Keep writing!
Steve,
Thank you for continuing to post sensible statements amidst the din of Libertarian masturbation on this thread. Please keep blogging.
Posted by Margaret on Jun 13, 2005 at 12:51 PM
Liz,
I tend toward marxism but no particular school of marxism. Thanks for the wbsite recommendation!
Posted by steve on Jun 13, 2005 at 12:54 PM
Susie,
We are all different people on the Left not one with many aliases. To bad for you the right may just be outnumbered!
Posted by steve on Jun 13, 2005 at 12:59 PM
Steve, you said:
***Those who you call the GOP majority are not the real constituents of the GOP. They’re just stupid fanatics who aren’t smart enough to know any better than to support Bush. Soon they’ll regret it!***
Just keep on thinking your opponents are stupid and say it to everyone you meet. Miscalculations have been costly to Democratic Party over the last 10 years and I believe will continue to be.
History will tell I reckon. Maybe we should consult Liz, she is likely to have a working crystal ball.
Posted by U Scare Me on Jun 13, 2005 at 1:01 PM
Liz,
***” And if it doesn’t invade other countries… What is to stop equally psychopathic elite-ridden foreign countries, ie Saudi Arabia, from invading here??”***
I don’t know where “here” is for you, but more than likely it will be the USA preventing you from being invaded. No need to thank us, it’s what Americans do.
Posted by U Scare Me on Jun 13, 2005 at 1:11 PM
Margaret and Steve, you’re welcome.
Steve, I’m glad you like the www.wsws.org recommendation. You won’t regret a browse there… apart from wishing that things were a bit more “rosy” than their reports!
Yes, I think there are a lot of us out there who are “no particular school of marxism”. I have at least one correspondent/(fellow)blogger, I believe he is from San Francisco, among my favorites - he is 23, and SO clever/erudite for one so young! But he, too, classes himself roughly as “libertarian democratic socialist”.
As for MYSELF, I think I am more of what I would call an “atavistic socialist”. Ie, I believe socialism to be ancient, a REdiscovery, not a new, 19th century rationalist discovery! (I have a big problem with rationalism anyway: I know too much, you see! About the paranormal.)
Think William Morris crossed with Wicca. That might give y’all an idea. (No, and I’m not a Goth, and I don’t wear a pointy hat… I can’t make things fly through the air like Harry Potter… That satisfy the curious?)
But why do you THINK socialists celebrate the day of the worker on May 1, May Day!!
AH!!!!
There’s someone on counterpunch.org who seems to have some knowledge about it. I’m going to pick his brains in an e-mail one day soon, but I have my own gut feelings… Ah yes!
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 1:11 PM
It is the height or should I say depth
of ignorance to believe in the labor
theory of value. The workers do not
create the wealth and never have.
Certainly not since the industrial
revolution. You might find it profitable
to consult the works of Dr. Edwin A. Locke (Professor Emeritus) of the University of Maryland for his specialized studies
on management and entrepreneurs.
They are the engine that pulls
the train. If it wasn’t for their
organization of raw materials into
goods for profit we would still be
living in medieval conditions.
I never said anyone had to validate
themselves through making money, only
that those who do so honestly without governmental favors have every right to
feel proud of their achievment.
They do not need to apologize to the
envious haters of the left or any
self-designated spokespersons for the poor.
Some of the people you list above are the
powerful kind of government connected pull
peddlers that Rand was strongest in condemning.
There’s an old joke that in America the poor
are Democrats, the middle class are Republicans
and the rich are Communists.
Depends on the particular type of rich.
Selfmade creators of wealth rarely are on
the left, many heirs are.
I can’t speak for Jack here but if you get
your economic education from Monthly Review
then it’s no wonder you are so ignorant of
the actual nature of capitalism.
Huberman and Sweezy had a record of being
wrong in almost every particular including
their never-ending predictions of the “crisis”
of capitalism.
If I can read the massive Beyond Capital work,
why can’t you read Reisman’s Capitalism ?
Posted by Christine M. Taylor on Jun 13, 2005 at 1:18 PM
USM,
I used to give the right a lot of credit for intellegence as well as the proverbial man in the street until years of personal growth and wisdom taught me otherwise! USM, as you can probably tell I don’t do put downs or name call people. I try to be respectful—something the far-right can learn something about! I think civilized discourse is best for society. These past couple of years have taught me a lot! There is a kind of psychosis in American society today that is very frightening and echoes a great deal the Germany of the 1930s. Intolerant clerico-fascism (Germany was more modernist and less religious so their thing was nationalism bolstered by images from folk-epic mythology), jingoism, paranoia, and war-mongering hatred orchestrated by the third rate dummies heading our government. USM you may not have noticed but the right is playing on the resentment and insecurities of angry uneducated masses who are mad that erudite, New York Times reading types look down their collective noses at them and call them rednecks. But this is only partly “what the matter with Kansas” is. The people in the country ARE NOT that smart and ARE quite easily led. Look how many think Clinton’s little white house affair meant more than Bush attacking a sovereign country on false premises and losing almost 2,000 US soldiers who were unprecedentedly place in harms way for oil, business opportunities, and the restoration of US hegemony. They don’t care that every year the national median income slips by nearly $1000.00 or that almost 50million people many of them “middle-class” lack health care. If you soberly interview and inform people about issues you suddenly see that they are quite confused and that their natural instincts are actually left or populist. I, myself, work with a Penticostal madman from the hills of eastern Kentucky who thinks the rapture is right around the corner but if you talk economic policy with him he’s sounds downright Keynesian! The reason is simple. He’s POOR! Like most of the country his standard of living is going down! People can be misled and manipulated to follow agenda that have nothing to do with their interests if you use clever ploys that play on fears, insecurities, hatred, prejudice, long-held belief systems, and all manner of chauvanism. Doubt it?! Look at European History!
Posted by steve on Jun 13, 2005 at 1:25 PM
U Scare Me, you’re so right!! I AM rather into crystals and crystal balls!! (How did you know? Probably because you tend to stereotype! But as a “Gaian”, I could be one of the more scientific kind, the followers of Lovelock… I like his ideas, mind!)
Actually, I (would) prefer a black-mirror-like scrying glass. But my psi powers are VERY very weak, and about the only thing I can do is bust light bulbs with them - and that sporadically!!
I’m big on instinct though. And archetypes. They tell me a lot!
No, I’m not going to say precisely where I live/come from; not till Jack Barnes guesses. I’ll keep him guessing a while!
Ooooh, thank you, USM/US, from preventing all the “free world”, from being invaded!! Who by - Saddam Hussein? He seemed to have enough on his plate with his own country, until the US interfered, as they were bound to do… Couldn’t resist all that lovely thick black oil, could you, guys??!
What I am trying to SAY, USM, is that the elite of ALL rich countries - including that of non-western ones like Saudi Arabia - are ALL equally predatory; and all they are into is lust for neverending acquisition and conquest. This is a proven historical fact. There are very few exceptions. Steve’s Bill Gates and etc may be examples of such, but personally, I don’t think Gates is any kind of saint. I don’t know anything about Soros, really.
Anyway, the richest 5 or 10% AS A CLASS, are a menace! And the working class, allied with the most enlightened sectors of the middle class, which is, of course, still the biggest class these days (though the underclass is growing apace!). Well, all of us, will have to UNITE against the bloodsucking menaces. Of each and ANY country. We will have to form again a TRULY egalitarian society, with freedom and opportunity and a share in the wealth for ALL. Personally I don’t care if you adulate Marx or Jefferson… but I certainly wouldn’t bother for long with Ayn Rand!
Steve’s way, Lefty’s way, Margaret’s way, my way, Michael Moore’s way, the Trotskyists at wsws.org’s way - what’s the difference??
As long as it isn’t the way of the elitist predators and exploiters!
(And United States - or Arab - or anyone else - imperialists!)
Have I scared you enough with that??
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 1:28 PM
Steve, actually there are a number of
leftists here who do post under multiple
aliases, the only question is how many ?
I’m sure there are more leftists on this
site because of the nature of ITT.
Which proves zip about the general population.
Actually I have criticized Bush on this website
quite a bit. I tried to explain to Margaret
the differences between neocons and libertarians
but it went right over her head.
The lewrockwell.com and antiwar.com sites are
the hardest hitting anti-Bush and antiwar sites
on the web. Don’t take my word for it.
Check them out.
Referring to blacks who commit crimes way out
of proportion to their numbers is not racism
but objective reality. Putting one’s head in
the sand on this matter is a major reason for
the Dems decline into a minority party.
Hundreds of libertarians have been elected
to local and state offices in the US.
Ron Paul in Congress but I’m not in the
party.
Rand never rationalized either public or
private crime, so you’re views here make
no sense. Maybe you should read her directly
and stop relying on stereotypes that are
inventions of her enemies.
There are as many conservatives above the Mason-Dixon line as below it. I wasn’t saying I was
glad there were so many of them becuase frankly
they are a decidedly mixed bag.
But Christine’s figures are correct and borne
out repeatedly by both polls & elections.
As for a Commie majority, ok, you wanna share
some of that stuff you’re smoking ?
Galloway put down Hitchens right after he put
down Norm Coleman.
It was beautiful ! I was with the Left on that
one.
Maybe I’ll get back to Ike later.
Yeah, you’d fit in the Bay Area.
It’s an open ward.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 13, 2005 at 1:37 PM
Liz,
Please teach me how to bust light bulbs and I’ll agree with all that other stuff you just said.
Can you bust the long florescent type of just the little round ones?
Posted by U Scare Me on Jun 13, 2005 at 1:39 PM
Steve, I think the personal growth bit
has been more of a devolution in your
case.
The overwhelmning thing that is so apparent
about such apostles of leftist arrogance
like yourself is you’re total inability
to see that someone else could honestly
have a different view. They have to be
either bought out or stupid, etc.
Marxism is identical to Nazism, the nazi
will dismiss an opponent as Jewish, etc.
Genetically determined. The marxist will
dismiss an opponent as a stooge of big
business, class determined.
Both views culminate in a statist-collectivist
society with tons of victims.
The Commies were Hitler’s inspiration for
mass extermination, concentration camps,
political prisoners and government control
over all aspects of society.
Read the 1920 German Nationalist Socialist
Peoples Party Platform, it reads like you,
Loz, lefty, Margaret, Merlin, Richard and
the other lefties here. The Right in Europe
is traditionally statist but Hitler was still
more of a leftist than a rightist even in
European terms.
By the way, the national median income is not slipping every year, far from it.
That’s the kind of Maxist nonsense MR has been
spreading for 60 years.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 13, 2005 at 1:52 PM
Christine,
First of all the main fallacy that libertarians and other more mainstream views make is the artificial separation of the state from capital. NEVER in the history of capitalism anywhere in the world did it come into existance as the historic social system which it is with out the copious assistance of the state in violently ripping up the old order and supplanting it with a new one based the domination of one class by another! Many people think of capitalism as an abstract form of human rationality that gradually became released and caused the evolution of the system we now call capitalism. Capitalism could not exist without the state. It is ahistorical to imagine Laisse Fairre economics. THere was never any such thing. Capitalism was created suddenly by the state’s enclosure of common resources which deprived people of economic independence and forced reliance on the capitalist and his system of commodity production for work and for consumer goods. This begins with textile cottage industries in rural England not with trade in the cities. Read Ellen M. Wood’s The Origins of Capitalism. Also, the state continues to play a huge role in the development of capitalism and in technology, labor market conditions, security, and in enabling the capitalists to externalize the costs and problems of their system on the society through regressive taxation and other forms of assistance. Under capitalism profits are privatized while losses are socialized. Look at the bailouts. Capitalism needs the state precisely because it is an irrational form of domination which a true workers’ democracy would not be. US capitalism is highly inefficient and energy intensive due to the automobile, urban sprawl, and an unfair concentration of wealth upwards which dictates much of these investment decisions. The state controls labor by making the current structure of our inefficient capital-intensive highly profitable economy as labor saving as possible. An economy based on rational planning and efficient mass transit and other types of labor intensive enterprises raise employment to the point that it would impinge on profits. The secret to the system is chronic stagnation and unemployment to maintain a large reserve army of unemployed to discipline labor and reduce wages. Capitalism loses all control and power otherwise.
Posted by steve on Jun 13, 2005 at 1:54 PM
USM, I think Liz maybe eats those light bulbs.
Those Europeans are very strange folk but the
good news is that they dying out along with
their crappy welfare states.
We should have dismissed NATO 50 years ago and
let those socialist boobs sink.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 13, 2005 at 1:55 PM
Steven,
You’re history is dead wrong but rather
than continue in an unproductive you sez-
I sez mode here, let me recommend Professor
Thomas DiLorenzo’s (Loyola College, Maryland)
How Capitalism Saved America. Recently published.
Capitalism was never created by the state and
in fact the capitalists are the ones who fought
the rebellions that eventually brought down the
feudal order. It is Marxist myth that there
cannot be a free society. Total laissez-faire
never existed but the closer we came to it was
the exact measure of our prosperity and freedom.
That government conspired with the Big Three to
destroy what was 99% privately own rail companies
is not indictment of capitalism but you’re
beloved interventionism.
Appreciate the reading recommendation but it has
to be a two-way street.
Posted by Christine M. Taylor on Jun 13, 2005 at 2:03 PM
Christine….
Why can’t we have a society that values EQUALLY the contribution made by “hand and brain”?
Of COURSE you need thinkers and creative types and designers - and architects, Rand’s favorites - to come up with all the ideas for the artifacts that are to be built by the majority of the others - OR, indeed by ROBOTS, and machines, which in a decent society, everyone will have a stake in, ie a proper benefit from the labor of the machines… Ie, in a TRULY futuristic society, well, it HAS to be socialist, doesn’t it? I can’t see ANY other way of operating a HIGHLY technological society! (Even Star Trek Next Generation admits as much, albeit semi-tacitly.)
Because WHEN people are put out of work by machines - as they have been, so often, the modern auto industry being a prime example… Well, if they ALL own a “share” in those machines - and I mean one that stays with them their life long, not one that can be bought and sold….
Then in THAT case, while the machines manufactured the cars, or the future non-polluting vehicles, the ex-workers could be staying at home, PAID to study, to look after their families… And to have recreation!!
Or they could ALL go and be designers! And have a truly creative input into their own society. Impossible under present conditions…
Or to join StarFleet and go and explore friggin’ space for all I mind!!
(You conservatives always think too SMALL!!)
Anyway, it would be a very leisured, relaxed, wealthy society I project here - instead of a stressed-out, insecure crimefest ratrace, which we have today.
Let’s start with the concept of a national minimum income, paid to ALL - irrespective of ANYTHING!! Did you know that the US was GOING to have one, in the early Seventies? That it was something that was being SERIOUSLY discussed, in top circles, throughout the Sixties, when more of the upper class, were, in fact, true liberals?
(You could start, on a small scale, by allowing unemployed people to earn a very GENEROUS amount through casual work on top of their benefit, instead of having their benefit cut or taken away immediately. That’s a BIG problem in the country where I come from; and it’s one reason why it’s still not WORTH it for many unemployed or semi-invalids to start easing their way back into work…)
Edwin Locke, Reisman, Beyond Capital… Yes these are all interesting additions to anyone’s reading list, no doubt…
But WHY would one NEED all sorts of academics to tell one what was right and best for all of humanity, anyway?
Common sense will tell you, I think!! And a basic knowledge of history.
Robber baron capitalism led to disease and starvation in the streets.
If similar conditions are established nowadays - WHY would you expect a different result?
(And don’t anyone mention the Soviet Union to me! Facts: 1) They were better under the “Communists” than under the Tsar, who would have treated most of them far worse 2) Stalin was not a Socialist. He was an authoritarian, thuggish Georgian patriarch. (Rather like the louts from the Southern US states, come to think of it! Georgia = Georgia?? OK, I’m not saying you’re ALL louts!!) But at least the Russians were able to modernise a LITTLE under Lenin and then Stalin. At least their countryside provinces got friggin’ electricity. Their farms got tractors. Who was going to do that for them - the West? I don’t think so!)
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 2:06 PM
USM -
Just the round ones, any size, not fluorescent (they don’t have an element, dummy! It’s the element I was referring to not the glass - though that’s happened at least once too!)
It can’t be taught. It’s inborn. It’s a bit like that movie about the electric guy, what was it called, now??
Someone will know!
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 2:10 PM
Steve,
I appreciate your last post but you began it by saying the following:
***USM, as you can probably tell I don’t do put downs or name call people. I try to be respectful—something the far-right can learn something about!***
A couple of post ago you said: *** They’re just stupid fanatics (GOP) who aren’t smart enough to know any better than to support Bush***
I don’t know from what area you hail, but in my neck of the woods, when you paint an entire group as “stupid fanatics”, you just issued a put down. We will have to disagree on the war but I just can’t believe you have such a low opinion of the intelligence of American citizens. I feel when people of your belief can’t get a majority to go along it because they’re stupid. Maybe consider they are intelligent and don’t agree with you. I love vanilla ice cream and hate chocolate, but I don’t believe chocolate lovers are stupid.
I believe we should do all we can to pull our fellow citizens up. Progressive thought seems to be attack the wealthy and try and drag them down. Heck, I would love to be a wealthy rock star…but guess what?...I can’t sing. I don’t expect wealthy rock stars to not be wealthy rock stars because I can’t be one.
I appreciate your point of view, I just disagree with it.
Posted by U Scare Me on Jun 13, 2005 at 2:13 PM
Golly Gosh, Professor Thomas DiLorenzo…. From Maryland! All these (Southern) academics!
Got any that will write learned treatises on why slavery is/was necessary (I bet there were plenty before the Civil War!) or how to bring it back?!
They know how to bring it back. It’s called the prison-industrial complex. To go with the military-industrial complex. The latter which Jack Barnes mistakenly thinks it is possible to have capitalism without. REALLY capitalism has always depended on BOTH: both war and slavery.
OK, Christine, if you really want, I will try some of all that’s been recommended on here, but it will take a while. I don’t have a very good library near me; and Amazon has had enough money of mine to last them ten years. In my opinion. But as long as I can get a book in paperback… I’m always tempted! I only WISH I had a really good second-hand bookstore to hand…
Christine, you are ONLY right in that it was the bourgeois class who fought in the first revolutions against the upper class. (French, American.) That process of revolution was NEVER completed. It needs the class BELOW both of these to rise itself up, for society to FINALLY be whole and be as one. That is what dear prophet Marx predicted… (Wasn’t he inspired by prophet Isaiah, though? Unlike pure Marxists, I’m not shy about examining earlier and religious influences!)
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 2:20 PM
Liz,
Please excuse my ignorance. I thought when you said you “busted light bulbs” that meant you busted light bulbs. Sorry. Heck, I can bust light bulb filaments. It may take me a couple hundred hours but I can do it. Everyone I’ve ever replaced has had a busted filament. I must have been borne with those psi powers also.
Do you prefer to bust the clear ones or the white ones?
Posted by U Scare Me on Jun 13, 2005 at 2:27 PM
Jack Barnes -
NO, I DON’T “eat those light bulbs”!
Your comment really made me laugh, though! With its air of disbelieving disgust!!
I knew I’d liven up this blog somehow…
What makes you so sure I’m a European? Locations, though the form asks for them, don’t appear on this site.
I tried to post in reply to one of your earlier posts on this blog but I don’t think it made it on here: probably because it was a few characters too long. I’ll go back and try again. It was important.
In the meantime, YOU are PERFECTLY WELCOME to explain to me
1) the differences between conservatives, neoconservatives and libertarians as YOU see them! (I still think you’re a typical conservative who just happens to be anti-war. But you’re also anti-black and anti-poor. What do you think of Arabs/Muslims, by the way? What do you believe should be the US response to terrorism - by ANY group?)
2) How you think America would/could have progressed without NATO? I mean, HOW would it have maintained its “sphere of influence”?
Let’s hear it from Professor Barnes… The Objectivist! (Objectivism my ass!)
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 2:29 PM
Depends how FAST you get THROUGH them light bulbs, USM, my man!! Yes, we ALL know they have a finite life… the question is, just HOW finite??
There are ((electric) people who are always wearing out their computers, vacuum cleaners, wiping floppy disks, etc. It’s NOT such a great “talent” to have! Fortunately I don’t have it quite so bad… though I said I DID burst the glass (at least) once, didn’t I?
The real booger is that it’s not the conscious, but the unconscious mind that does it… I was costing myself too much in lightbulbs, so I had to “train” myself NOT to do it… I managed - not completely - by learning to control my emotions more and more… and not to suddenly get up when emotionally stirred up by something I read and press the light switch.
It doesn’t seem to work with pull cords… So it probably is just an extension of my body’s magnetic field travelling along the electrical wire. Overloading the filament, and so on.
My (late) mother used to BLAME me for it all the time! Only she said it was because I “pressed the light switch too quickly” or some such… she refused to recognise my latent psi power.
I, however, knew better!
Any MORE questions??
(I’d be even MORE interested if I could do MORE with it - for example, it would be REALLY cool, supposing I could, to log onto FreeRepublic.com and make their site go down… without so much as a hack!
Maybe when I join a coven!)
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 2:36 PM
Common sense will tell that you that
the earth is flat, Liz. We really do
need thinkers or people who live the
life of mind to give us the biggger picture.
Joe Six-Pack is not going to be able to do
this.
“Egalitarianism As A Revolt Against Nature”
by Professor Murray N. Rothbard , second edition,
Mises Institute, is excellent in challenging the
premise of equality which he shows to be a
dangerous myth.
Some of us are frankly better than others.
It’s just a fact of life.
The USSR was a total nightmare in which the population ended up far worse than under the
Tsars, as bad as the Czars were. Stalin and
company killed over 100 million people, a
grim record only exceeded by Mao in China.
Liz, it was precisely the western capitalists
who did build the factories in the former USSR,
see Werner Keller’s East Minus West Equals Zero
and Antony Sutton’s three volume work on Western
Technology and Soviet Economic Development,
published by Stanford.
Such initial progress as they achieved was
the product of western capitalism.
Posted by Christine M. Taylor on Jun 13, 2005 at 2:44 PM
Liz,
I don’t much like the Free Republic either but they do good work. Good place for the party faithful to go get energized. It is dangerous and exhausting work hanging around with people who can bust light bulb filaments.
I do have one last question since you asked. What is this Lovelock thing you like to follow. On the surface, that sounds like something I might like.
Posted by U Scare Me on Jun 13, 2005 at 2:51 PM
Yeah, Steve, my man!!
THIS is good stuff!! (Your comments to Christine.)
Libertarians (the right-wing kind) are always trying to envision capitalism without the broader context… Which never could be!
How about the enclosure of land in the sixteeth/seventeenth centuries? (In England.) That was what the Leveller’s revolt was all about, after all. Read www.counterpunch.org… if you have a good trawl, there’s several articles on there about that… I like the way that site covers history and all sorts of topics rather than just current affairs!
Where is Richard, by the way?
Richard??
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 2:53 PM
Libertarianism believes in the complete separation
of state and economics,they oppose social controls
on abortion, prostitution, gambling, drugs and
so on as much they oppose economic interventions
like rent control, gun control, minimum wage laws,
price or wage controls, etc.
Neocons are either ex-Trots or ex-liberal Democrats who came out of the Hubert Humphrey
so-called cold war liberalism. They accept the
New Deal and the pernicious civil rights laws
that infringe on property rights. Some of them
want to outlaw pornography, abortion, etc.
Libertarians also believe in nonintervention
abroad, neocons do not. They want to invade
everyplace on Israel’s hit list and some that
aren’t !
Paleocons tend to agree with libertarians on
nonintervention abroad, repeal of civil rights
laws, mostly they are against the New Deal-
Great Society but they are social conservatives
and want to outlaw abortion, homosexuality,
drugs, etc. Very bad statist positions they
share with SOME neocons and which are opposed
by ALL libertarians.
I’ve known lots of Palestinians from when I lived
in SF Bay Area for 30 years plus.
I mostly am sympathetic to their cause.
It’s no more anti-semitic to oppose Israel
(contrary to what Margaret has been claiming)
than it is anti-black to oppose the very large
criminal element in that group.
Both Steve and myself have had lengthy, ongoing
exchanges with Margaret about her anti-Arab
racism and simplistic bible based pro-Israel
views.
Maryland is a border state, grew up there.
Some southern characteristics but more
northern.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 13, 2005 at 2:59 PM
USM—
James Lovelock, celebrated British biologist/ecologist/scientific thinker. His original book, the one that caused the biggest stir, was “Gaia: A New Look At Life On Earth”, which has recently been reissued.
It started all the fuss there has been since, which has rocked the scientific world a bit, though they like to pretend that it hasn’t, and that it was just a metaphor, etc… That concerns the philosophy of looking at the Earth (Gaia), and all its (Her!) creatures and processes, AS IF IT (She!) were ONE SINGLE ORGANISM… With a kind of “consciousness”, as most organisms do have…
It works very WELL, ecologically speaking, which is WHY it has been accepted as a scientific theory.
Other books by him are: “The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth” and “Gaia: Medicine for an Ailing Planet”.
There you are! There are a few for your reading list - better than a lot of books by right-wing psychopaths, anyway…
And if you go on Amazon.com, you’ll find a lot of books ABOUT James Lovelock and his theories, as well… He’s still causing plenty of fuss today! Bet all the rationalists hate him! Bet even some Marxists hate him! (They seem to hate Rupert Sheldrake, another big fave of mine.)
(Because they can’t bear to serve Her!)
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 3:06 PM
Christine had a reasonable response to
Steve under the circumstances.
It’s often better to refer to sources
rather than reinvent the wheel every time.
US would have been better off without that
socialist boondoggle NATO. Just wasted trillions
of our dollars defending socialist bums in
Europe. Why we didn’t abandon NATO when Warsaw Pact collapsed is beyond me.
The repeal of the corn laws and other barriers
to free trade in the 19th century were the high
points of English civilization.
Steve, like the rest of the left, walks backward
into mythologizing the hellhole conditions of
the pre-capitalist world.
Rand had it right when she wrote we ought to go
kiss a dirty smokestack and give thanks for
capitalism and capitalists. I’d do it if I
could find any but the Comsymps who have run
the government since Wilson have destroyed
industry through regulations and taxes and
oh, lefties, any tax on industry is a tax on
you and me. These managed trade agreements
like WTO, NAFTA, ad nauseum, are not free trade
but part of a world government conspiracy to
have us ruled by cannibals in the UN and their
behind the scenes pull peddlers.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 13, 2005 at 3:12 PM
Since you haven’t named the alleged rightist
psychopaths, one assumes you can’t back up
that statement.
But the sources you recommended above are pure
Amazonian nut fantasy. One organism indeed !
Individualism is a biological fact.
See works of Roger J. Williams.
Also on early history, English & otherwise,
see The God of The Machine by Isabel Paterson.
So, Liz, what country do you live in ?
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 13, 2005 at 3:18 PM
USM said:
“So you are inferring [sic] the “rule against perpetuities”, either in fact or principle, states it is a good idea that corporations should not be allowed to stay in business longer than 50 years? Is this what you really believe or is this another attempt to dodge? I really believe answering the previous question will allow everyone to see the true Progressive agenda. I believe we’ll learn what the phrase, ”Take America Back”, really means. I’ll try one more time.”
Can it be that conservatives are genetically incapable of argument without the aid of false premises?
I’m not sure what you meant when you said that I was “inferring” something. An inference is drawn from the non-express implications of another. Further, I haven’t dodged anything, that’s a conservative tactic. Moreover, I don’t speak for progressives or their agenda.
As for the rule against perpetuities, don’t be lazy USM. I’m not going to spoon feed you. You’re going to have to work for it. Look it up, do some of your own investigation. Try to engage in some independent thinking. The common law arose from the wisdom of 800 years of trial and error. Certainly, you can apply the wisdom of the ages to a proposed contemporary problem and come to some kind of conclusion, no?
Posted by Lefty on Jun 13, 2005 at 3:48 PM
So, if Libertarianism doesn’t believe in any - functions, it seems to me! of the state - what DOES it believe the state should be/do??
Have an army? Your other conservative friends would be all for that!
Raise taxes? Have a White House? What would it need to do ANY of that for, if we were returned to a primitive caveman state of every-man-for-himself?? (Which never WAS, anyway, because the original state of humanity was tribal!)
Build roads? I suppose you DO believe that there should be a state and that it should do things like build and maintain roads?
Or SHOULD it? According to Libertarians? (I HAVE met libertarians on the net before; and they aren’t all Randians, and some of them seemed a bit less right-wing and more pro-social than you! I know of one lady who is a libertarian because of her VERY unfortunate experience with a psychopathic US-Govt-approved private organisation called Straight Inc… which used brainwashing techniques derived from China… She now associates her unpleasant anti-drug experience with Marxism - THERE’S an elite trick for you!!! More about this sometime maybe.)
Mind you, if the State shouldn’t DO anything, or CONTROL anything.. why have a state?
You might as well call yourselves anarchists! But I know you WON’T because you’re basically too bourgeois and believe in conservative, bourgeois social forms… Ie, you most certainly DO believe in the nation-state, DON’T you? Not in some form of internationalism, without borders?
So what are you GOING on about, that the state shouldn’t do this or do that? WHATEVER SUITS THE FINANCIAL/SOCIAL ELITE, IT WILL DO!
And that includes maintaining standing armies and fighting with other countries and attempting to take over their resources!
STEVE - help me out!!
Mm. I’ve heard that some Neocons are ex-Trots. I’ve ALSO heard that some are ex-Stalinists! (Note: not all self-proclaimed Trots are real Trots!)
What are these “pernicious civil rights laws” that “impinge on property”?? That you and the Paeleocons are going on about? (Paeleocons are people like the late Strom Thurmond, ain’t they, but?)
What is so “pernicious” about civil rights laws, that say it is illegal to discriminate against racial minorities or by gender, in terms of employment, and renting accommodation, etc?
Why is THAT “anti-property”?
Anyway - as I SAID, re all my previous remarks about CRIME - how are PROPERTY RIGHTS TO BE MAINTAINED, in an UNEQUAL SOCIETY, without an extensive network of police (or soldiers/guards in a society that pre-dates them!), magistrates, judges, courts, prisons!
(Penitentiaries must be the most Darwinistic environments I have ever read about. Cf. Jack Henry Abbott’s “In the Belly of the Beast”... and every web site I visit on the topic! APPALLING!! And you Americans in particular encourage rape in prisons; no WONDER your soldiers can’t wait to get up to it abroad, seeing as that is what they do and/or set up as prison guards in prisons… WELL KNOWN FACT!!!)
So - ha ha, I’ve worked it out now! Rather than armies, though you’re going to need them, REALLY, aren’t you, in Libertopia, the MAIN function of the state will be to run a police force - and prisons! Right! NOW I know!!
Only, see, it does that ALREADY - under the prison-industrial complex! It works so well, from the elite’s point of view - WHY would you expect THEM to tinker with THAT, for the benefit of a few Libertarians??
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 3:50 PM
OK, so say there’s a nuclear/environmental mini-holocaust or a small comet strikes the earth. SO you get a chance to set up Liberrandtopia.
So - first of all tell me what your state’s definitely NOT going to do? Standing army - yes/no?? What size??
But the ONE thing it will HAVE to do - seeing as your society is going to be based on Property rights - is maintain the police and prisons.
(Think we’re going to need a lot of those, in an America without social services? What do YOU think, eh??)
For, anyway - WHY should the lower classes, the economic underclass, have ANY regard for this property system, which would MOSTLY be concentrated in the hands of elite white males, as before… Which is the only reason you libertarians, Paeleocons etc are whining, already, because you’re such meanies as to resent the progress made by the other groups in the last fifty years!!
If they KNOW they can’t join it, or are more likely to die of overwork before they get anywhere - why should they listen? Or obey, YOUR ideas?
Prisons etc? Execution? But that’s COERCION - the surest way to a fascist dictatorship!
So REALLY what you’re proposing, in the event of a new society “after the comet”, is a fascist dictatorship. Right, I see.
(But don’t expect us blacks, women, commies etc to take it lying down!)
I tell you what Liberrandtopia really would be! It would be a HAVEN for
a) Criminals - plenty of them! From the lowliest/and/or most independent thief - some of them are sure to go all Randian on your ass as well…
To the biggest “Al Capone”!
b) Anarchists and small bands of left-wing activists and thoroughly pissed underclass who DON’T believe in your selfish property system and do EVERYTHING they can to smash it up
(You and Christine both seem to underestimate the power and role of RESENTMENT, in a society where most people feel exploited!)
c) Socialist networks who operate in a clandestine manner like the early Christians did
(We’d REALLY get a good recruiting pool from what YOU are proposing - it would be like the neofascists drowning the Koran in the toilet! The same effect that that has on the Muslims!)
d) Magicians and various weirdos - like me, really!!
(Another darling SF - well he did live there - net correspondent/blogger friend of mine has recommended me some fantasy novels by a fellow called China Mieville, which seem to entail all the above concepts!! Viva steampunk!)
Hmm. Try it Jack (and friends)! See just how far you get!!
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 3:51 PM
Liz said:
“I don’t know much about the “rule against perpetuities”... it’s interesting that our common-law-inventing ancestors (the Anglo-Saxons?) thought of such a thing!
I assume, however, that it would not APPLY to a business that is handed down from father to son/daughter, in particular a skilled/craft business??”
Liz,
To be clear, I didn’t say that the rule against perpetuities applies to a business. Steve’s question is, should the life of a business be limited to 50 years?
I “inferred” from it that, at the 50 year mark, the subject business would have to be dissolved and liquidated. I’m not saying that I agree with Steve and I don’t know if he intended to be taken literally. But, I also infer from USM’s comments that he thinks that the notion of limiting the life of a business is outrageous.
So, the question becomes, SHOULD the rule against perpetuities apply to a business? Corporations didn’t exist at the time the rule was developed and as far as I know, the rule has never been applied to a corporation, which life is, theoretically, in perpetuity.
But, before you can answer the question, you have to know what the undelying public policy of this court made rule is. What purpose does it serve? Do the benefits of that purpose outweigh the detriments?
Posted by Lefty on Jun 13, 2005 at 4:13 PM
Liz, most of your tirades are really wordsalads.
Here’s just a very brief response, any laws that tell you whom you can or can’t hire, serve, sell
to or associate with violate individual rights
and property rights. Period. They are the flip
side of slavery and Jim Crow laws.
You apparently can’t distinguish a very limited
government that only uses force from a criminal
gang, state or otherwise, that initiates force.
How did you get to such an intellectually degenerate state ?
Police, army (defensive purposes only) and law courts. That’s it.
We know about resentment, she has mentioned envy
several times in her postings.
USM, lefty is dodging you’re perfectly appropriate
question. Just ignore him. He’s your basic liberal
retard. His mama had an abortion——him.
Posted by Jack Barnes on Jun 13, 2005 at 4:16 PM
Liz,
I think you hit the nail on the head. In the ficticious libertarian utopia, the mafia takes over. How can the rugged individual hero of the libertarian fantasy survive much less compete against gangsters without the protection of the government and the enforcement of the rule of law?
Posted by Lefty on Jun 13, 2005 at 4:26 PM
Liz, Jack isn’t able to infer from your metaphor, the implied hypocracy of “southern intellectuals.” I’m not surprised.
Posted by Lefty on Jun 13, 2005 at 4:28 PM
I’ve been out apartment hunting with missbunni, so it’s been interesting to catch up upon arriving home.
One point of Jack’s absolutely needs correcting. Our current state of left-wing thought is so far removed from National Socialism that the very comparison is idiotic.
Hitler hated gays, being probably a latent homosexual himself. He encouraged the return of the arts from the esoteric and expressionist movements of the time, Georg Gros, Lionel Feininger, etc. to the classic “German” form. He encouraged book burnings of authors like Thomas Mann, Erique Maria Remarque, Franz Kafka and any Jewish authors.
The “Left” was perceived as the evil degrading beautiful classical German art and literature. Sie worden alle verboten. All was forbidden.
Today, we see the far Right once again trying to extinguish everything to the “Left” that doesn’t fit into the perceived beauty and balance of the extreme classical form, whether it be religion, lifestyle, economics or art.
In a word, the ill-stated statement of the site madman was “bass-ackwards”.
Posted by Margaret on Jun 13, 2005 at 5:07 PM
Christine,
I don’t know much about the history of the railways in the US. The libertarians always use that historic example as vindication of their social theories so I should investigate it. If you are telling me there was collusion between the state and the big three railways to consolidate the lines and create a monopoly I believe it. The state granted the land to the big railway interests anyhow. I also know if there is one thing about capitalism it is that the big fish eat the little fish, state or no state! I also know that the railroads and the farmers struggled over transportation costs and other issues and the railroad was no friend of the small farmer who asked for state intervention! I do not believe for a minuite that capitalism and freedom march in lockstep; Pinochet’s Chile etc. etc. The state is part of the general capitalist paradigm not separate. As for capitalists fighting for freedom, yes they opposed fuedalism but not slavery, apartheid, exploited prison labor, and hundreds of murderous dictatorships that supported capitalist exploitation. Capitalism is a system of domination, not a form of utilitarian rationality.
Posted by steve on Jun 13, 2005 at 5:08 PM
Liz, Its true some neo-cons were radicals in the 30s and the 60s.
Posted by steve on Jun 13, 2005 at 5:13 PM
Ooh! Steve, I’ve got to tell you something. (Thanks for your posts, by the way. I’m not sure though whether a business should be limited to 50 years - did you mean a CORPORATION? I mean, theoretically, you might get, say, an artisan sole trader, who starts working on his own account at 20 and lives to be a 100!)
But I’ve got a tidbit for you! I know LOTS of conservatives - all conservatives, Thatcherites as well, not just neocons, unless you count them ALL as neocons… Well I know that a lot (particularly I THINK Jewish ones for some reason (insecurity!) - though Hitchens is no Jew and he’s done the same! Well I know that they started as like, coffee-house left-wing intellectuals!)
How do I know… Ah… Because of family reasons! My stepsister’s uncle (therefore no-one related to me by blood) was once a Communist or something, and ended up as Thatcher’s speechwriter!! What was his name… I can’t for the life of me remember at present! But he was pretty well-known, and it’s a matter of family record.
(I think it was Alfred Sherman, actually!! Well, still IS… I looked him up on flaming Amazon, he’s on there with a new book in 2005… he must be ancient! Lord Tebbit’s given him a good write-up…)
What a shame I’m not a big fat hypocrite toadie, or else (maybe!) I could have capitalized on my “family” (not exactly!) connections! To make it as a journalist. Which I’m sure is what every good Libertarian would recommend. Hmm yes I’m sure that’s what Ann Coulter did.
Believe me?!
I agree with all of your above post addressed to Christine. “The state is part of the general capitalist paradigm not separate.”
Anyway, all this garbage about “freedom from welfare” all falls to pieces when one sees how (big) businesses actually OPERATE… All you have to do is read something like Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation” to learn about “corporate welfare”. It might have been the railways to start with, but in the 20th century a lot of it has been inordinate subsidies given to road-building and cars. (At the expense of rail and public transport.)
And to the defence industry. That’s why we have the Rocky Mountain Region so well-populated, and now a haven for the fundamentalist Right and “the new white flight”. Wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been a good strategic place to put missiles - and a nice place to create a haven for both neocons and white Christian fundamentalists! If the US elite hadn’t wanted it that way, it wouldn’t have planned it that way.
Once a business gets big enough, it starts pulling favors from the government. (Of course, most big businesses are owned by elite people anyway; the odd Bill Gates, Richard Branson etc are flukes… William F. Buckley and Richard Mellon Scaife and Steve Forbes are much more the norm!)
Rand might have called this “pull-peddling”, Jack, but the fact is, that IT IS WHAT HAPPENS - therefore, objective reality in a capitalist environment.
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 7:07 PM
Jack, “wordsalads”, hmm… Well, I don’t try and write laconic poems in prose, the way you do…
So, you DIDN’T LIKE my coinage of “Liberrandtopia”,then? I thought it quite novel!
“Intellectually degenerate state”... Hmm. That’s the right-wing stooping to unqualified, insinuating insult again, isn’t it? Like you did with poor Richard many posts before, “insinuating” that he was incapable of looking after his 9-year-old-daughter (as a child! He never said THAT!) and that he shouldn’t have had her… sigh!
If only neocons and their ilk wouldn’t breed!
If only someone would compulsorily sterilize Ann Coulter!!
Well, I asked you, Jack, PRECISELY what the function of your hoped for state of the future, your Liberrandtopia (excuse me, but you so far have failed to name it!) would BE. I asked about armies, police, prisons, and roads. If you recall!
You seem to have given me an answer which ties in quite closely with the “solutions” favoured by very right-wing conservatives (but, as you pointed out, not necessarily neocons!)
Ie, that it should have a limited standing army, and raise taxes for certain other infrastructural functions.
However, most “small government” conservatives would go in for a bit MORE than what YOU are proposing… As Lefty said, I really DID hit the nail on the head, by predicting that your MAIN role for the state (and therefore the reason you cannot be an “anarchist” or “anarcho-capitalist” - I know Rand was against those, I’ve read Peikoff’s site) was that of POLICE FORCE. The main duty/value of a POLICE FORCE being to protect PROPERTY - against WHOM? Against those who have very little, or none - of course!!
(It interests me to ask what you would do with people who were simply too “feckless” - or underskilled perhaps - to get by in YOUR “perfectly just society”, without stealing - or else they would starve under your system. What would you DO with them, Jack? Put them in prison for - life? That would cost money/taxes!! Kill them? (Don’t be surprised when their families declare blood feud and come killing you and yours, then.)
Put them in the workhouse, like the 18th century Utilitarians? Put them in the galleys, like the ancient Romans?)
What are YOU, “President Jack”, going to do with all the people who don’t FIT? Your world?
What about the people who are too sick to work, and don’t have families to look after them, they being too poor or simply killed off because they couldn’t afford to go to a doctor under your system? What about a guy who is healthy enough - but in a wheelchair? But who is going to EMPLOY him - in a world full of ready wage slaves with two working legs, and no anti-discrimination legislation??
Yes. Your version of the state, then, does not mention infrastructural functions, such as roads, railways, airports… I was just checking, to see if it did!!
SO, Jack doesn’t believe in public road-building programs. What DOES he believe in then, infrastructure-wise? A return to the roads of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, perhaps, maintained by unfair “tolls” that locals and farmers are too poor to pay, full of pot-holes and such?
A monarch would have more sense than to let that situation last for long!
How about air traffic control?? Who would pay for those people, then?
Or, in Liberrandtopia, would we all be supposed to crash into each other, in our futuristic airplanes, flying cars and airships! (Thinking steampunk again! Can’t WAIT to read that China Mieville! I hear he’s a Trotskyist, yet his books are full of both science fiction and magic! Yum yum! Sounds just right for me!)
All things that have to be organised on a centralized basis, libertarians are no good at.
But of COURSE, Jack in his futuretopia needs plenty of POLICE, because he knows that “the nigras” will steal his property away from him, otherwise!!
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 7:44 PM
Why do you THINK that blacks commit disproportionately more crime than whites, Jack? Could it be, because most of them belong to the most impoverished social groups, and live in areas that are totally hopeless? They used to be able to move up North in search of industrial jobs. Not any more.
Have you ever watched Michael Moore’s Oscar-winning masterpiece, Jack, “Bowling for Columbine”? (Boy I bet you right-wingers HATE it when a lefty like Mike does well! In YOUR economic system! Well, I suppose it shows you can corner a corner of the market for populist leftism!)
Watch the cartoon interlude: “A Short History of America.” That about says it all as to the attitudes concerning race in America, and the realities behind them, I think.
“Police, army and law courts. That’s it.”
Sure about the roads, now? And air traffic controllers?? And how about the navy?
How about the White House? If there’s going to be a president, Jack, who you surely hope will be you - well, you’ll need a palace! The White House must be at least as expensive to run as Buckingham Palace or Canberra House…
Individual rights and property rights, my friend, are worth NOTHING without human rights - the most basic of those being the rights to EAT, to have medical treatment, shelter and to SURVIVE.
Anyway, I don’t know how you can say that laws restricting property rights are equivalent to slavery - because in 18th-century post-feudalist society, slavery was - well - the way of life!!
Steve agrees with me and he knows that you, Jack, are full of shit!
As for resentment - more on that in some other post!
Posted by Liz on Jun 13, 2005 at 7:45 PM
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Reader Comments
Typical.Republicans spew populist rhetoric,vagaries like"moral values”,yet when it comes to actually helping the workers they claim to support,they’re nowhere to be found.I’m sorry,they are somewhere to be found:in the pocket of big businesses cheating their workers.
Get off it, Stan ! The dumbass workers cause
most of their own injuries.
If anything the corporations are too benevolent
with these goons.
Right on, wwoods! What could be more “family values” than assuring a safe work environment with decent pay and benifits? If only the voters could wake up and see that the Republicans (and many Dems) don’t give a crap about their welfare or the welfare of the American family. Sigh….
G.O.P. ==> Government of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation.
BTW, do you know what G.O.P. really stands for? Gang of Pimps.
How is a union any different from a business? They both have the same goal of maximizing their participation in the contract. With less investors in a company than there are employees, the increase in cost of the company’s products will be more affordable to the investors and less so to the workers when each acts as a consumer and buys their own product.
The rest of us are forced to deal with their prices - which sucks.
If Patemt Law dropped away, these investors and workers could make products at lower costs any time they wanted - then we’d see true market forces working to hone just what this species is going to produce.
As long as we’re ignorant TV people, we’ll never see it coming.
SHubert,
True,a union does have a goal of maximizing profits for its workers.However,you have to bear in mind that money will be used for the consumption of other goods and services.Management can still charge the same pricve for non-union goods as it does for union goods.As a matter of fact,many companies do.The difference is the amount of material benefit to the worker as opposed to the benefit to C.E.O.
Consider this:Where is more production generated,in a C.E.O spending a million dollars to buy a vintage Bugatti,or five hundred workers
buying five hundred Fords or Chevrolets?Funny enough,but not only do the Ford workers benfeit,so does the Ford C.E.O.
Republicans and the big-business cohorts are playing an economic game which could be called conservative.Others would call it stingy or greedy.
Thinking about the Republicans hatred of the French.They don’t really hate them,they fear them.The French did something about arrogant rich people who treated the poor like a commodity.Republicans are afraid the same idea might take root here,and deservedly so.Hence, French-bashing,put forth by very rich guys at Fox News and the EIB network.
If it wasn’t for those millionaires there would
be no jobs for workers. The personal consumption
of the rich counts for very little in the overall
economy but even their spending creates jobs.
Of course, 500 CEO’s generate a great deal more employment than 500 workers but that’s not the point either. Without the investment there would
be no employment and that investment must come from the rich, i.e., the people who have money.
Union goods are priced higher because of the greater labor costs. Economics 101.
Capitalism by George Reisman, Human Action by
Ludwig Von Mises, Man, Economy and State by
Murray N. Rothbard and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
are very worthwhile to get a different viewpoint
on capitalism.
Rhetoric aside, Rotten Robbie, have you even worked on a factory floor? I have been both a union worker and management and I tell you one thing, worker safety ALWAYS takes a back seat to productivity and profit! When a safety guard on a machine is removed in order to speed up the process how is the worker to blame? Get your head out of your ass.
Rotten Robbie,
Would you mind telling me how a mine worker causes the mine to collapse when he follows,exactly the rules set forth by management.Quite often the standards,which are as malleable as silly putty by the unscrupulous.Why are they made malleable?Profit.Management,more and more,views labor as an expense and not as crucial part of business.
Jack,
How do you think millionaires get their money.A few may get it from the powerballs,but most get it from others working from them.Do you honestly think Bill Gates could have made 50 billion dollars by assembling 50 million computers himself?What about Henry Ford?Capital and management must have labor in order to make money.Also Economics 101.While union items do cost more,those workers are also able to buy more goods and services which benefits other workers.
This is the same ridiculous argument beginning that I had with J Craig last month,if you aren’t him as well.
Jack,
Two other points:
1)Ayn Rand’s philosophy is a cult of selfishness,the perceived strong justifying stepping on others.great unless you’re being stepped on.Cult?Ask some of her former associates.
You can read Ayn Rand for a different view on capitalism just like you can read The Turner Diaries for a different view on political dissent.
2)Don’t you think it’s a bit perverse to blog on using the name of a noted labor leader,then bashing the very ideas that man stood for?
Your blogging names are also showing a pattern.
Again,why not just use Louis Friend?Maybe you’ll use Lin Biao?
Hey Jack, instead of filling your head with books written by people with a vested intrest in capitalism try watching the documentary The Corporation. Might give you a better idea about the system in which we live. I also believe that capitalism can work, but capitalism without restriction leaves the door open for criminal behavior, think Enron, Worldcom, GE ...
We seemed to have returned to the early years of the progressive era when the lives and limbs of workers have a very low value in dollars and cents to big capitalists whose only concern is profits! Maybe more regulations and social concern would stem the greed of the much maligned ambulence chasing trial lawyers. In US Labors’ golden age of defined benefit health care and pensions, OSHA, good pay, and assiduous regulation of industry (which industry largely supported!) those menacing lawyers were rarely heard from! Today, they have LITERALLY become a substitute for the role of government in guaranteeing the public and workering people’s well being through costly lawsuits instead of efficient, preventitive, common sense, regulatory legislation. I say the old way was far preferable!
Proud vet (what are you proud of ?) you are proving my point, instead of taking your own
advice and looking at the other side, you simply
use the old ad hominem methods of attacking the
opposing viewpoint as bought off rather than
having a different point of view.
And yes, the workers are real fvckoffs in many
cases as I’ve observed from a variety of work
situations in over 42 years of working.
It is precisely the mixed economy capitalism
WITH restriction that has failed and Enron is
a great example of what Ayn Rand called the
pull peddlers, people using governmental
connections to get what they couldn’t in a
real capitalistic society. We have had 150
years of your state interventions at all levels
of government and they do not work in addition
to being morally wrong.
Wwoods, unlike you I use only my name. Never
heard of any labor leader with the same name.
Oh, the labor theory of value was discredited
well over a century ago. The workers do not
create wealth, physical labor as such never
does in an industrial society. It is the entrepreneurs who create the wealth by financing
and managing the transformation of raw materials
into products that satisfy human needs, that people are willing to pay for, for details
see Atlas Shrugged or the Reisman tome.
The same Nader mentality that created the
government agencies also created the lawsuit
pandemic, both are attempts to steal from the
owners of wealth to give unearned benefits
to workers and ambulance chasers.
A legitmate lawsuit is worth more than all those
agencies combined. Bush is right (for a change)
in wanting to curb lawsuits.
Jack, I am proud that I have volunteered to serve my country, and to defend the Constitution. What work have you been involved with that qualifies your statements? How many times can you use “ad hominem” in order to try and derail another person’s arguments. You don’t seem to really have a grasp as to what an ad honinem is. In every thread you are involved in you either say someone is using ad hominem or taking drugs. You are a hateful old bastard.
Jack,
What I am saying is that well designed regulatory legislation that prevents problems will avoid expensive lawsuits thus avoiding needless pain and suffering and leaving more wealth to circulate in the general society for productive purposes. We sometimes must be forced to act in our own self-interest. That is the purpose of good government. It coordinates collective action in the interest of all which otherwise would not emerge from individual calculations and rationality which often avoids seeing the bigger picture and hopes to selfishly externalize the costs of individual gains!
Isn’t Any Rand a novelist?
Proud Vet
Ann Rand is the name of a Russian-Jewish writer who emigrated to the US and did much writing in the post-WWII period. She was apparently horrified by Stalinist collectivism and its brutality and went mindlessly counterphoebic as sometimes occurs. Her many novels extoll individualism and selfishness as the core values of a free society. She concurs with people like Margaret Thatcher who claimed “there really is no such thing as society, only individuals or families.” For such people only individual or small group rationality exists. They disregard the obvious significance of power inequality, rigid class boundaries, patterns of history and their role in conditioning society, and the total lack of choice most people face in determining the course of their lives. Seeing things from the bottom up gives perspective.
Thank you steve, but my point is that people who base their philosophy on fictional writings lend no credence to their philosophy. Might as well follow Steven King, John Grisham, or the Bible for that matter.
Dear Jack,
while we are bragging with our knowledge of the subtleties of advanced capitalism, it would be wise to problematize some of the assumptions you make about one of the basic premises of the production/consumption cycle, namely your ideologically quite suspect (but obviously telling) representation of the commodity fulfilling “human needs.” This rhetoric suggests, as I am sure you are perfectly aware of, that the producer creates a commodity to satisfy a pre-existent need within the consumer. You thus try to argue here that the need precedes the commodity, which, as we all know from any study of consumer capitalism and marketing strategies that further determine new product development, is precisely not the case. Consumer capitalism rests in large upon the manufacturing and disseminating of needs within the consumer that are then assigned a commodity and niche. Your rhetoric which is oh so popular (or populist) these days tries desperately to rescue the last bit of democracy appearance neoliberal ideology tries to cling to in order to hide its increasingly hegemonic system of production and exploitation. It is precisely this form of unsubstantial surface democracy of neoliberal politics that the author the original article attempts to point toward. The closest we get to your representation of consumer capitalism is the strategy of pattern recognition, but even that is still miles away from your neoliberal demagogy.
If you attempt to criticize the labor theory of value you do, however, need to situate your critique in the correct socio-economic conjuncture, which will force you to abandon the desperate attempts to cling to the democratic rhetoric that in times of neoliberalism is simply too easy to see through as to present a valuable opposition to progressive critiques of capitalism. I am sure you are aware that post-Fordist production has become increasingly immaterial, extending to the psyche of the worker/consumer and involving the worker/consumer more deeply than ever in the process of surplus production, which then, and only then, creates the disposable capital that allows the CEO etc. to engage in financial transactions. Your representation of these new forms of surplus production as democratic in nature, relying upon outdated representations of the production cycle are simply too easy to be persuasive to a truly informed audience. Post-Fordist production relies more upon the worker/consumer and involved them more deeply in the production of disposable capital then ever before and this in a totalitarian way that erases the logic of your imagined liberalism at the very point of its climax.
Suggested reading that takes this historical moment seriously: Giulielmo Carchedi.
Proud vet, you can’t even spell ad hominem.
It is to attack the person in lieu of dealing
with his arguments. You can call someone a
rotter but if you use namecalling as a substitute
for dealing with their views you are committing
the logical fallacy of ad hominem.
And you do it in every posting but you are not
alone.
Ayn Rand wrote three novels, at least seven nonfiction books, a novelette and two plays.
Leonard Peikoff’s Objectivism:The Philosophy
of Ayn Rand is a good place to see the whole
picture of her philosophy. She was as much a
philosopher as a novelist.
But if you disdain fiction, then check all the
other books I recommended above which are nonfiction.
Poum, if the need wasn’t there in some form,
no one would buy the product. Fortunately, I
do not have to refute the labor theory of value,
it’s already been done, see Human Action by Mises.
Being forced to act in our own self-interest is a
contradiction in terms, Steve. Force and mind are
opposites, force paralyzes the mind and the thinking process and is an anti-creative element.
No one owns our individual lives but ourselves
and there can no equalization of costs because
the people who do not commit fraud or cause injury
should not be required to subsidize those who do.
Goverment agencies take away the whole of individual responsibility much as the disastrous
no-fault divorce have done in the realm of marriage and thus intruded the state ever further
into was previously a private affair.
I do not favor administrative law which regulates
conduct in advance. I do favor objective law
wherein a perpetrator of a real crime faces
punishment after the crime. The state has no role
to play in prevention other than the knowledge
that committing a crime leads to consequences.
So I am opposed to administrative or preventive
or regulatory law but favor the common law and
torts where legitimate.
I do not believe that the collective acquires any rights whatsoever apart from the right of its
individual members and as Rand stated (Thatcher
merely echoed her) there is no such thing as
society, it is only a term of convenience for
people living in a common geographical area.
Proud vet, you never served your country because
your country was never under attack, even Pearl
Harbor was only the result of FDR’s goading the
Japanese into war. And it was a colony thousands
of miles from the USA. The last defensive war
the US fought was 1812.
So I always vote against every Veteran Bond issue.
They did not defend me or the Constitution and many are war criminals who should be in jail.
There a few typos in the above but I think
the gist of it is clear.
Jack, just re-read one of your earlier posts that states, 500 CEO’s generate a great deal more employment than 500 workers and I couldn’t agree with you more. The problem with this situation is those 500 CEO’s create the employment where it benefits the corporation and, ultimately, themselves. I know you are as old as dirt and don’t need to find work anymore (how’s that Social Security check working for you?) but the generation comming up today needs jobs also. I have been forced to change careers three times in the past ten years as a result of jobs going to the lowest bidder (usually overseas). I’m not talking about the blue collar work that is now being done by children in Chinese factories (you know, where Nike’s CEO outsourced to). I have a college degree and worked in the corporate world of aerospace and medical device manufacturing. My retraining has come at the expense of myself and my family because neither the corporation nor the government gives a damn. The corporation feels it owes nothing to the people (flesh and blood) who make the corporation a viable commodity but what happens when the conspicuous consumers (created by marketing firms owned by the corporations) have no money left to consume the corporation’s cheaper products? It won’t matter to you Jack, because you will be rotting in your grave, but what about my nine-year-old, what about her, Jack?
I’m still working and have not seen my first
SS check, I’ll be happy if I can get back
what I’ve paid into it.
The corporation is not a welfare board.
IT IS in BUSINESS TO MAKE MONEY AND THAT IS A
GOOD THING. HIRING YOU IS STRICTLY INCIDENTAL
TO MAKING MONEY AND THEY DO NOT OWE YOU A JOB.
Of course people make any business a viable
entity and so what ? How could it be any other
way ?
If you can’t feed them, don’t breed them !
How am I supposed to feel guilty because YOU
have failed to provide for your daughter ?
Between you goddamned overpriced union thugs
and government regulations it is amazing that
we have ANY businesses left.
Go see your pal Clinton about NAFTA and all
the military technology he let the Chinese
Communists steal from us.
Your concerned about youth unemployment ?
Repeal the minimum wage laws and people will
get jobs.
Sorry about your degree but they are now a
dime a dozen and were always overrated.
Your quarrel seems to be with objective
reality. Which capitalism as the most
natural system merely reflects.
But, no, you’d rather sit around and whine
and read Excuse # 1054 from the Democratic
Party’s Manual for Failures.
I see your ad hominem and raise you one gravitas. Why don’t you answer the question of your work experience? I’m actually a disabled vet from the oil war back in ‘91. Service is to comply with demands or commands so by the very definition of the word I SERVED my country. I have a sneaking suspision that you never have but you write like you have the right. That’s right, you do have rights defended by the men and women who volunteer to SERVE and DEFEND. Not my fault that the Commander-in-Chief’s reasons to go to conflict are often suspect. Your accusation of my use of ad hominem is unfounded. Your questioning of my intelligence is infantile especially considering the ammount of typographical errors in a majority of your posts. With all the writing you do, have you ever thought of buying a dictionary?
I provide for my daughter, again not my point. I am talking about the country’s future. I never supported Clinton and am not a Democrat. I am far from a failure an am happy that I am young enough and determined enough to make a life for myself and my family. I do all of this and still find the time to volunteer my time as an active member of my daughter’s school PTO and school council. I choose to be part of the solution.
You joined the stinking socialist military to
get benefits and because you couldn’t cut it in
a free market. You never defended me because I
was never under attack nor was the USA. Even 9-11
would not have happened if not for our Israel First foreign policy. I proudly did not serve.
There are very few typos on the whole in my posts
and most of the time I am the one to point them out. Often it is not a typo but a missed word.
So big fvcking deal.
Anyone who reads you’re posts can see the ad hominem fallacy in every one.
Who are you trying to kid ?
Why am I supposed to tell you about my work experience ? All you need to know is that I have
been working since my late teens.
Why did you bring up your daughter in the context
of a personal attack one me ?
Why do I need to know of your rough age status ?
You’re right Jack. I love you!
Jack said:
“. . . The corporation is not a welfare board.
IT IS in BUSINESS TO MAKE MONEY AND THAT IS A
GOOD THING. HIRING YOU IS STRICTLY INCIDENTAL
TO MAKING MONEY AND THEY DO NOT OWE YOU A JOB. . . .”
And what does the employee owe the corporation Jack? Based on your model, the absolute minimum productivity they can get away with, which as a practical matter, is to be the slacker you previously complained of. And that is precicely the kind of employee that your model corporation deserves.
Why is a corporation any more noble or righteous that a union? Why should the employees give any more of a damn about the corporation than the corporation cares about its employees? Why shouldn’t workers band together to exact as much benefit out of a corporation for themselves as they possibly can?
BTW Jack, in the “Free Market” there is no such thing as a corporation.
The minute I see that some dope has put President Bush in a headline and made the issue his fault I get aggravated. The writer obviously must be another one of those people who wants more government because they don’t think that We The People can possibly be responsible for our own actions.
My way of being responsible for my own actions is to grow my own food, meat and all, so that we can stay out of the system. The system is corrupt, has been corrupt for a long time, longer than when Bush came into office.
Wake up and do something about it rather than complaining. If you don’t like the way it is, then get off your computer and go make a damn difference.
“Being forced to act in our own self-interest is a contradiction in terms, Steve. Force and mind are opposites, force paralyzes the mind and the thinking process and is an anti-creative element.”
Again, this is an utterly uncritical way of thinking about this issue and in itself indicative of a certain ideological interpellation that shapes the way we think about subjectivity in a post-Fordist economy. More important than that, however: it is dangerous, since it is precesiely this rhetoric of democratic participation by the consumer in the market, of individuality and freedom that form the ideological basis (and strategies of manufacturing consent) of the present war mongering you seem to be opposed to as well.
What needs to be complicated is the source of the desires you seem to characterize as natural, as an expression of self-interest. How, then, do you personally form the definition of self-interest? Why are the things you describe as vital to you, your desires, so important to you that you describe them as constitutive of your individual subjectivity (a cult that in itself has all too often throughout history been at the source of totalitarian regimes that were very appealing to people—see Nazi Germany: it was not law and total order that drew a whole country into madness, it was individual gratification elevated to the primary virtue shrouded in the rhetorical appeal of collectivity and nationalism [sound familiar?] and the subsequent denial of the superego!).
Are you seriously willing to argue that the formation and development of your needs has not been a dialectical process depending on, let’s put it carefully at first, social feedback that shaped the way you situated yourself within society? But more importantly, are you seriously willing to argue that there are no needs that are manufactured by our culture industry and then imposed upon the consumer, who, granted, MUST experience these needs as natural in order to keep alive the illusion of freedom and democratic participation in the system of commodity development and exchange? Force and mind are not opposites. Precisely the opposite of that statement is true, or, to put it more accurately, it is not an opposition but a productive contradiction. In times of immaterial labor the mind is (via a forceful inclusion into the production apparatus) a PRODUCTIVE entity—the opposition between mind and force that your rhetoric is so desperately trying to hide is, as you correctly say, on a very basic level a limitation of freedom. Hence it is this concept that needs to be preserved by neoliberal ideology in order to hide the productive aspect that results out of this paradoxical relationship between mind and force. Only a mind that considers itself free will be able to generate the desired marketable libidinal surplus and perpetuate ideological cohesion—what you have identified and what forms one of the ailments of our present situation (which is also apparent in your anti-social responses to proudvet) is a psychological condition necessary for neoliberal systems exploitation. you are the prime example of this—the subject marked by happiness in unfreedom.
Hen,
No one said that Bush invented corporate pimping. He’s just elevated the practice to a level that, never in their wildest dreams, conservative politicians, ever thought possible. (Jeb is even worse. He can barely contain his glee when making policy statements in public). Bush supporters and constituents are crooks and idiots (respectively) of the highest order, and the Bush’s are taking full advantage.
That’s the point, Hen.
BTW, congratulations on your 19th century lifestyle. I’m sure it suits the conservatives just fine.
The worker owes the corporation performance to
the absolute best of their ability. Their pay,
advancement and job status depend on it.
Thanks for warning potential employers that you
are untrustworthy.
Corporation is legitimate in and of itself.
If you want to abolish bankruptcy as a special
privilege then we agree because that is an intervention by the government on behalf of
one party to absolve the debts owed to another.
Murray Rothbard deals with this in Man, Economy
and State, I think Volume 2, and in Power & Market.
Otherwise, the lefty criticisms of the concept
of a corporation have absolutely no merit.
Poum, I can’t make head or tails of what you
are trying to say. Perhaps english is not your
native tongue or perhaps you are into pomo post
deconstructionism.
Jack,
Entrepeneurs do create wealth through finance and management.Question:Who actually manufactures the goods?
Etymology lesson:
MANU:Latin base word meaning"hand”
FACT:Latin base word meaning"to make”
Thus,items which are manufactured are items made by hands which belong almost exclusively to human beings,unless one desires products made by monkeys.Those human beings are laborers,who have needs which must be met in order to function properly.
Management and labor have a symbiotic relationship.If workers are treated well,the company’s productivity will increase.
Unfortunately,Republicans lack the ability to understand this.The cruel irony of Republicans is in the nineteenth century a Republican freed the slaves;while in the twenty-first century,Republicans are trying to bring slavery back.
I’ll see if I can’t simplify this:Workers make things for management to sell.If you don’t treat workers well,they won’t work well and make management lots of money.
It’s understandable that right-wingers hate Nader.
Heavens to Betsy!He actually made corporations take responsibilty for their negligence!We can’t have that!That interferes with profits!Who cares if the car explodes on impact?In time of war,it could be a land torpedo!
Ayn Rand,by the way,was a mediocre novelist at best.Thick book does not equal good book.Her works are generally endorsed by simple people who want a simple philosophy and think that interaction of entities is a mechanistic process.Try reading some real books.I know,that will involve leaving the terminal,putting more clothes than just your underwear,and actually leaving the basement.Regardless,you may find it worthwhile.
Again,I only post under wwoods.You’re not entirely stupid.Why should I have to repeat that?Is it one of the tricks out of the Cato/Hoover/American Enterprise institute playbook to make that accusation?
One last thing.Your writing has improved.Apparently you’re using your copy of Fowler’s Modern English Usage.Good for you!
Mr. Woods,
Indulging in what the late Edward Said referred
to as the lowest form of humor, sarcasm, doesn’t
become you.
Your comments on Ayn Rand are rubbish. She is
an outstanding novelist as well as philosopher.
Her works, fiction and nonfiction, continue to
sell in the millions worldwide every year.
She is now the most widely read author on the planet (earth)outside of the the folks who crabbed together the unholy bible.
Oh, by the way, I’ve read the Great Books, The
Encyclopedia of Philosophy and all the classic
novelists & dramatists.Plus extensive readings
in history, political science, economics,
philosophy of science, art, psychology and
current events.
If the investors had not created the factory
and the inventors the product, the workers would
have nothing to produce. Physical labor is not
the source of wealth. I suggest you start with
Reisman’s Capitalism for the full arguments.
The etymological antecedents predate the industrial revolution as does you’re stone age
thinking. The labor theory of value was totally
demolished by Eugene Bahm-Bawerck over 130
years ago. I might be slightly off on the spelling
of the last syllable. Don’t have time to look it
up now but I can if you want the reference.
Excuse me, but when I accept you as the authority
on the english language ?
Honestly, I have no idea of how many aliases that
you post under. That practice is not limited to
one side of the spectrum as you well know.
Jack,
As I suspected, you cannot argue substantively because you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. And, you don’t know what a “free” market is.
First, in a free market, a worker owes ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to her/his employer - assuming that the employee is paid after the labor is provided. And any worker who gives any more than the absolute minimum, to an employer who pays no more than the absolute minimum needed to induce an employee to accept the employment, is a fool. If the employer doesn’t like it, he can either lump it, find a fool for an employee, or pay more.
Second, a corporation is a statutory fiction. Without statues creating corporations, they don’t exist. You remember statutes right, Jack, they’re laws that tell people what they can and cannot do, just like regulations which are mandatory laws.
In the “free market,” Jack, there are no corporations, there is no need for bankruptcy because there are no courts to enforce contracts of debt. In the truly “free market” THERE IS NO LAW. If you make a bargain with someone and decide you just don’t want to perform your end of the bargain anymore, you just don’t have to. If the other guy doesn’t like it, he can just F—- off. Or challenge you to a duel, or just kill you. Or perhaps he could be honest and hold you up for the bargained for perfomance. In a free market, free from government regulation, he is free to do whatever the hell he wants.
In reality, Jack, a free market can only exist for a very short period of time because, in very short order, all wealth and power will inure to those most able to take it. Then, there will be very little freedom for anyone but the few very wealthy and powerful. There will be virtually no market, no competition and no commerce because NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE WILL HAVE ENOUGH WEALTH TO CREATE COMPETITION.
The closest thing to a free market that can ever exist is an “orderly market” which BALANCES the requirement of regulations that are absolutely essential to maintain competition, with the freedom to do whatever the hell you want in order to make as much as you can for yourself - the personal motivation to compete to the best of your ability.
In reality, Jack, libertarianism is no less a failed theory than communism.
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, that to speak out loud and be thought remove all doubt.” - Abraham Lincoln.
You want freedom? A more free marketplace, Jack? How about cutting the 150 billion dollars of yours and my money given to corporations so they can F us over again by getting rid of us. Let’s see your response.
Typo:
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, that to speak out loud and remove all doubt.” - Abraham Lincoln.
Aw, screw it.
Lefty, I made the preliminary necessary arguments
and gave the sources for a full substantiation
of my remarks. That’s all I need to do in an
honest debate. Your assertions are meaningless.
In order to get and keep one’s job one is obligated to do their best possible work.
That’s a prerequisite of getting a paycheck.
If you are such a lazy, dishonest bum as to disagree with that basic premise, then we are
not having a conversation about political economy.
You may be in need of moral training or psychiatric attention but that is beyond my
obligation here.
Well, you could say that anything put on paper
and created by human beings is artificial but
that really proves too much. Actually much of
the commercial law code was developed privately
over the centuries, see Rothbard’s For A New Liberty for details. All the legislature did
WAS RECOGNIZE THE RIGHT TO FORM CORPORATIONS,
NOT GIVE THE RIGHT.
Your assertion that there is no need for law
in a free market is totally false.
See Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty or Isabel
Paterson’s The God Of The Machine.
Ayn Rand wrote an essay distinguishing between
laissez-faire capitalism, limited government
and anarchism, see The Nature of Government in
The Virtue of Selfishness.
Your comments about total monopolization in a
free market are historically false as is your
other assertion about their time length.
See Rand’s Capitalism:The Unknown Ideal and
Louis Hacker’s history of American capitalism.
Libertarianism has always been a resounding
success TO THE EXTENT THAT IT HAS BEEN TRIED.
Liberalism, welfare statism, mixed economyism,
socialism, fascism, communism, national socialism
and statist conservatism have all been resounding
failures. We agree.
We agree that the Lincoln quote applies to you.
TW, are you talking about government subsidies ?
If so, we agree. If not, it’s loony.
Jack,
I have discredited you’re argument and your philosophy and all you can do is repeat your tired false premises, and resort to personal attacks. You have no idea what you are talking about. You don’t know what a corporation is. You don’t know what a regulation is. You don’t know what a law is. You don’t understand basic economics. You are unable to think for yourself. You can only parrot what others have spoon fed you.
Thank you for removing all doubt, Jack, for all to see. You have, once again, confirmed that there are only 2 kinds of conservatives: idiots and crooks.
To my recollection, I have never heard a conservative argue without the aid of a false premise. I am now resolved that it cannot be done.
BTW, Jack, Ayn Rand was a psychopath whose “objectivist” philosophy - moral selfishness, is irreconcilable with itself. Morality makes no such requirement, nor could it.
Your assertions do not an argument make.
Argumentem ad hominem is a classic logical
fallacy.
The only discrediting you have done is of
yourself. All you are reduced to is calling
names and empty generalizations.
“Resort to personal attacks” ?
Try reading your own post.
For the serious readers on this board
check out Objectivism:The Philosophy
of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff.
I feel very sorry for lefty, he represents
the end time of the intellectual degeneration
of the Left.
Reduced to nonprovable assertions and juvenile
namecalling.
I just whipped lefty’s bare butt.
Apologize to all here for my delinquent
child.
I Love You, Jack but your ad hominem is showing. Your over use of the return key gives you away everytime!
Hey Jack,
Come over here. Let me show you something. Try on this pretty white coat. Yeah, I know the sleeves are a little long and they have these funny straps at the end, but, just try it on. There you go. Left hand, right hand . . . bang, smash, bash, oooff, crunch, errrrrrrrghhaaah. Got it.
OK boys, you can take him away now. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . . (the sound of the wagon taking Jack back to the booby hatch).
It seems that Jack’s idea of an ideal society was the guilded age, the closest thing to libertarianism in U.S. history.
You know, the age of trusts (because interstate corporations were not invented yet), where the richest men in America had more assets than the gross national product - the economic aristocracy consisting of a few dozen families who owned more than the rest of all Americans combined (The Mellons, Carnegies, Rockefellers, Morgans, Vanderbilts), where there was no public education and children worked 12 hours a day, where the average American lived in poverty earning under $500 per year and worked in sweatshops, where the 2 leading causes of death in America were infection and starvation.
This is the libertarian vision for America “The Gospel of Wealth.”
“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice (1916-39).
Jack is one of those fools who fail to learn from history and, if he had his way, would insist on repeating it.
“I can’t make head or tails of what you are trying to say.”
Hey look, Craig, Lin Bio, Barnes finally said something I can agree with. Wow a troll who knows he can’t understand what real people are saying. Break out the champagne!
Now here is an unfair question for all you good folks who are arguing with this troll. Why are you doing it?
You all know what he is and what he stands for. You know he is simply baiting us. If you want real discussion, ignore trolls and discuss the issues amongst yourselves. The only thing that stops a troll is simply ignoring it. Trumpeting its views to an empty theatre is a hollow victory.
Jack:
Wake up and smell the reality.
1) Ayn Rand is obsolete. Has been for 50 years. All of her writings are based on 19th century ideas of business operations - Robber Baron ideas.
2) Corporations are a fiction. They are the result of thieves lying to get the laws changed. Originally, the Founding Fathers counseled that corporations be disbanded after 20 years and that they NEVER be granted any rights of any kind. Instead, we get lawyers willing to lie to get the fiction of “corporate personhood” enshrined in law. Something that has screwed up this nation for the past 150 years.
3) Employers OWE their workers decent working conditions. That is the reason behind the rise of Unions at the end of the 19th century. If it had not been for the terrible working conditions, there would not have ever been a need for unions to form. Workers are the source of all wealth. Without workers, there is NO wealth of any kind. Your rich capitalist will be dirt poor without the workers. Capitalists have ALWAYS exploited the worker to try to squeeze every penny out. Witness GM autos - they want out from under their pension plan, so they are going to fire 25,000 US workers and open more factories in China. The intent is to remove a large expense - the pay and pensions of 25,000 workers, as well as the 1.5 million others who benefit from GM’s retirement package. GM has no intention of cutting the price of their vehicles (as well as no intention of truly addressing the fuel mileage problem), but intends to continue business as usual.
4) Government exists to protect the weak from the strong (among other duties). Government is the source of benefits far beyond the obvious ones. Those of us who served in the military (myself USAF ‘69-‘73) know that sometimes that government is loaded with idiots and fools. But still we try to make things better for ALL, not just the fat-cat wealthy bastards that have never lifted a finger in labor in their entire lives. The majority of millionaires are like Paris Hilton - vapid, mentally challenged do-nothings who are suited for one thing - filling holes in church pews and clipping coupons. They are a drag on the economy since they are not spending their tax refunds but are putting the money into off-shore accounts to hide it from taxes (over 7 billion in overseas accounts). The wealthy are nothing but fancy thieves.
You have probably never done a single altruistic act in your tiny miserable life. I have been active in my community for decades, helping people, instead of kicking them off the life raft. You are the epitome of neo-conservative (fascist theocrat) thought and have no need to face reality. You are part of the problem.
5) There is no government that truly does a perfect job, but ours was the best. I say was because, sadly, the neo-cons are destroying it day-by-day. Every day, I see new examples of tiny souled slime taking away another piece of the Bill of Rights. The so-called Patriot Act comes to mind, as does the lack of media response to the crimes of the Bush Admin.
The public is going to awaken soon. It is not going to be pretty, either.
Addendum to Jack:
1) See: www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/10/opinion/edkrug.php for support to my arguments. This is from an honest newspaper - the International Hearld Tribune. You might try reading it someday.
2) I am secure and honest enough to put down my REAL name. I do have pseudonyms, but for such as you, they re not necessary. I used to agrumentativly “eat alive” people such as you in my college business law classes, where they tried to espouse Ayn Rand’s stupid economic theories. A small amount of simple logic shows the fallacy of Ayn Rand and how berift her thoughts truly were.
3) Bush and company seem to believe that they can roll the clock back to 1895 and gain from that. They forget the brutal and bloody workers rights riots that took place and how that changed America. Since 1973 the top 1% has had their annual income doubled, since 1973 the top .1% (top tenth) has seen their annual income tripled! That’s obscene. The number of multi-millionaires has increased drastically, mostly on the backs of the shareholders who have been robbed blind. Additionally, the wealthy (top 2%) pay less in taxes (by percentage) than the entire combined other 98%. That is thievery on a huge scale. Prior to 1973, the middle class was earning well - incoem betweed 1945 and 1973 had doubled for the middle class. Since then, income has gone down for the midle class. Most families are one paycheck away from poverty.
Think of that while you are preparing your specious arguments.
Richard,
You seem to observed the transition from “Fordist” or Keynsean welfare state economic policy which is reliant on broad consumer spending and some redistribution in the form of transfer payments in order to sustain the economy to what David Harvey calls globalized “flexible accumulation.” The first was the “golden-age” for the working and middle classes which grew along with rapid industrial growth, economic expansion (4.5-5% annual average GNP growth rates between 1945-73), and high average rates of profit in the general economy (about 8% in the 1950s down to 3-5% in the early 1970s). The early post-WWII period could be considered a fourth long-wave of capitalist expansion (a roughly 50 year long wave of economic expansion followed by contraction over the now 225 year course of modern capitalism’s existence) brought on by the exogenous factors of post-war reconstruction, US political hegemony, military-industrial complex, the new world order based on the US Dollar as key reserve currency, pent-up consumer demand both in the US and abroad for US consumer goods, and, in conjunction with this, expanding export markets stimulated also by neo-liberal removal of tariffs and currency conversion controls. The growth that resulted created middle-classes all over the world including the third world. It stimulated global investment and competition between North America, Europe, and Japan for the production of consumer durables (especially autos) which the post WWII economic expansion was based on. An overaccumulation of investment and excess global industrial capacity was created by an overproduction of these goods relative to effective demand and the cut back in capacity and investment produced a global recession long before oil price hikes and inflation entered in to make things more intractable. A consequent fall in the average rate of profit lead to slackening investment and chronic stagnation. A restructuring of capital along global neo-liberal lines, hyper-financialization, and the hyper-mobility of capital has led to increased profits through the growth of new industries such as Info-Tech and Telecommunications yet such has not led to a fifth long wave of expansion of global capitalism although labor productivity was certainly increased for a time in the 1990s. The “new economy” seemed to go bust and now recession and stagnation seem once again to be a chronic issue for the US and the world. The result of the restructuring is an upward concentration of income on a global scale which has created demand in niche markets for luxuries, expensive real estate, the stock market, and high-risk financial derivatives. None of this will restore a general “prosperity” that we saw in the “golden-age” of Keynsean capitalism. A new global division of labor has made manufacturing a low value industry based on cheap third world labor and relagated dead end services and retail to US. Few get rich and the middle class disappears. National boundaries disappear and capital concentrates and centralizes with new global production and supply chains. Income disparities widen globally. Such is the new epoch!
Jack, Rotten, etc.
Unions are NOT like corporations under the law. Corporations are treated like people and have a right to free speech, etc. Unions are limited by many laws that favor the bigger and richer corporations.
By law, a worker CANNOT hire a lawyer to file a claim for working conditions that pose a danger to himself, another worker or the community. Workplace violations are subject to the arbitrage of the government. Workers can only sue for damages AFTER an incident has occured. BTW, the government departments that handle worker complaints are very small and getting smaller, AND they are run by people in industry. In other words, government departments that are supposed to protect workers are more often than not a firewall that protects industry from workers.
I hope you understand that the American way of life is in danger not because of “stupid workers” or even immigrants. We are in a battle of rich vs. poor, and, guess what, the rich are winning big time.
Yes, corporations do create jobs. You are right. That is not their goal, however. A corporation’s goal is ONLY to MAKE MONEY. Therefore, job creation takes place whenever and wherever necessary—NOW and IN ANOTHER COUNTRY.
You talk about personal responsibility, you talk about freedom to choose, or at least you imply that they are central to your arguments. The current global nature of business is exactly the opposite of what is advertised. “The world at your doorstep…new markets and new choices…consumer freedom…” In fact, globalization is not about you paying the lowest price; it is about the corporation PAYING YOU or somebody else the lowest wage. Globalization opens up markets for the corporations in search of raw materials AND LABOR, this is why they want it.
Have you noticed how bad the service is in, say, Macy’s these days? If you listen to the TV, you will hear “they are not competitive,” “competition from Walmart and Target is too strong.” That is true, but only partially so. what they don’t say is that corporations are in a race to the bottom—in terms of service and price. It is not about how much service companies can give you, it is about how much they can take away before they lose you as a customer. Think about this as you wait on the phone 30 minutes to ask a question to your “Verizon representative”.
Walmart, Target etc. have essentially created a giant portal through which foreign goods can enter the U.S. without hindrance. They are produced in societies that do not sustain the “American Way of Life.” The question is, how long can we sustain it?
Merlin said:
“Now here is an unfair question for all you good folks who are arguing with this troll. Why are you doing it?
You all know what he is and what he stands for. You know he is simply baiting us. If you want real discussion, ignore trolls and discuss the issues amongst yourselves. The only thing that stops a troll is simply ignoring it. Trumpeting its views to an empty theatre is a hollow victory.”
Because the lies and subterfuge need to be exposed and defined for what they are, in case anyone is inclined to adopt them, that’s why.
If nothing else, I’ve exposed Jack Barnes for the fraud that he is. He has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. He read a book by a psychopath named Ayn Rand and she is now his lord and savior. Jack Barnes is woefully uninformed and unable to think critically or argue without the aid of false premises.
Andyw said:
“Workplace violations are subject to the arbitrage of the government.”
Did you mean arbitration? Arbitrage is when an investor takes advantage of inefficiencies in different stock markets buying the same stock in one market at a lower price and selling it in another at a higher price.
BTW, a corporations legal duty is to maximize profit for its shareholders. However, that is rarely the corporation’s GOAL which is generally to maximize the salaries of the CEO and Directors - the ones who decide what the goals will be.
The exception would be a closely held corporation in which the shares are owned in large part by the CEO and Directors. Otherwise, what do the CEO and his pimps (Directors) care about troublesome shareholders constantly trying to butt in on corporate affairs. In the eyes of corporate officers and directors they are nothing more than P.T. Barnum style suckers who have gambled their money like craps players in Las Vagas and deserve to loose it. They share the status of union employees in the eyes of the officers and directors.
Globalization is more about Foreign direct investment than about trade. That is why it doesn’t make sense to talk about trade and currency policies of different countries any longer because capital is so hyper-mobile that it basically establishes its own rules and can structure the world economy any way it wants merely by shifting about the globe establishing global product and supply chains to evade costs, laws, taxes, etc. and sell in markets directly rather than rely on long-distance trade which HAS grown 6-fold in the last couple of decades but not as much as foreign direct investment or the value of cross-border mergers & Acquisistions which have increased manyfold. In the Early 1980s, annual average global inflows and outflows of FDI was in the tens of billions but by 1999 total global FDI outflow was about $1.6 Trillion with inflows valued at about $1.4 Trillion. This seems to suggest that the world’s most significant and determinant economic activity is the consolidation of global productive assets or Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFCF) and thus, the concentration of the world economy. This does not necessarily amount to a per capita long-term economic expansion and growth cycle as there is still the ongoing stagnation. The reason that the working classes of the various capitalist powers are so politically weak is that thier purchasing power is no longer key to the expansion of industrial capitalism and profits as in the old “golden-age” of 1945-1973. Now profits tend to depend on constant financial restructuring and an intensification of concentration of manufacturing assembly outside the first world and a concentration of retail and services in the first world. From here it becomes a question of monopolies and cross-border mergers and acquisistions in the various industries were they are located around the globe just as there was a concentration of intermediate industries by industrial “robber barrons” in the Progressive Era one hundred years ago in steel, iron, coal and oil, railroads, banking, cattle, and grain-the so called “trusts” that led to the first consolidation of the economy under early monopoly capitalist conditions after 1890. Post 1980s globalization is seeing a global rather than a national consolidation of this system of investment and production. Only a great mega-crisis of collapse will see a new fifth long-wave of per capita long-term economic expansion and sustained increase in labor productivity the likes of which we saw begin over fifty years ago. The real danger is that the exogenous factors that ultimately lead to such a change in productive relations and radical economic retrenchment are also likely to be highly destructive and violent.
Very well put Steve.
And now for something completely different, back to the topic at hand.
I am almost certain he meant arbitration. That makes far more sense as a reference on the topic of labor relations than arbitrage!
Which was: worker safety.
INMHO, corporations don’t give a fig for the safety of the fungible components - workers. Alive, a worker is a source of money. Dead, just a door stop. In other words, in the way. Corporations destroy people, spit them out and plug in another one.
Our schools are designed for the pleasure of the corporation - to turn out good little workers who just plug into the job slot and start working. If the worker is hurt and can’t work any more, out they go, despite the ads for AFLAC. Insurance is only of limited use - eventually it runs out and then you are on your tail - with nothing.
How to change this? Start by limiting corporations again - no political contributions, no ‘free speech,’ no corporate immunities, no corporate charter (the soul of the corporation, it gives corporations existance.) It is time to reduce a corporation to the level they deserve - menial duty.
There are no, repeat no rights for corporations, that is a false fiction - a fallacy of the legal profession. At no point did Congress assembled pass any Amendment to the Constitution to legalize ‘corporate rights.’
It is the corporation that is responsible for the legalized bribery that comprises our election process. They have been pushing large sums of money into the process, allowing the politicians to whore after it. The election process should be shortened - to 90 days. Each side gets $20 million from the Gov’t (NO contributions from anyone within 90 days of election day). Ballots are paper, only. No voting machines of any kind, type, or sort allowed. Too many elections in America have been tainted by the machines already - going back 150 years.
Reduce the size of the military, bring our boys home from most everywhere. Evaluate our role in world politics. Let the UN do its job! Cut the Military budget by 66%. It is bloated - they now get 68% of every dollar earned by the Govt. They can do a fine job on $175-200 million/year.
Radical? Dern tootin’! It’s about time to take radical action to rein in the so-called neo-cons (financial idiots is what they are (by-the-way - Bush has been a failure in every job he has held. From Arbusto (ar-busto) to Harken Energy (sold out on insider info, avoided prosecution), as Gov of Texas (killed 152 on 15 minutes briefing or less, by Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General of the US), got 2750+ people killed on 9/11/2001 by ignoring every bit of advice from his terrorist people, got 1675+ US soldiers killed for a trumped-up war that can never end (War on Terror - don’t make me retch.) It is impossible to win this war (I leave explaining that as a excersize for the student)).
The longer Chimpy stays in office, the worse it will get. I anticipate a 2nd American Revolution within the next 2 years, assuming Chimpy gets his way with the courts. Remember, we are one Supreme Court seat away from a Fascist Theocracy.
Sorry, I seem to have ranted a bit. It just galls me that these crooks and liars can get away with pulling the wool over America’s eyes for so long. The budget can be balanced by cutting military spending, restoring the tax cuts to the wealthy (God, was that a bad idea) and raising the limits on Social Security earnings (earmarked for Social Security only, with a new lockbox that takes a 3/4 majority to overturn).
We need to vote in new people that will truly listen to the people and not the corporations.
I guess that should evoke some comment!
I agree with Lefty on Jack. Boy how do I agree!
Hi Lefty,
You answered:
“Because the lies and subterfuge need to be exposed and defined for what they are, in case anyone is inclined to adopt them, that’s why.”
Thanks for your answer, Lefty. I heartily agree with the above. However, doing so with trolls is a fools errand. This can be done better by doing it directly in discussion with people who are of good intent and truly want to learn through debate And ignoring the troll. This troll’s purpose is to create havoc and to upset people. Its posts are not at all real for that reason. Arguing (not discussing, as that is not possible with it) has no meaning. Such arguing is only about whether “I’m better ‘n you.”
And:
“If nothing else, I’ve exposed Jack Barnes for the fraud that he is.”
You certainly have and I have enjoyed your pithy comments.
Continuing directly you said:
“He has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.”
And in my view that is what this troll would like you to think!
The info it spouts is to deceive, upset and confuse the unwary. Anything that is goading is used. Whether it believes the things it spouts or not, it knows exactly what it is doing. I agree with a previous poster who congratulated our resident troll as being one of the best trolls anywhere. Personally I don’t believe this troll, in its actual (note I did not say “real”) life lives anything but a fantasy.
And you concluded:
“He read a book by a psychopath named Ayn Rand and she is now his lord and savior. Jack Barnes is woefully uninformed and unable to think critically or argue without the aid of false premises.”
I completely agree here. And it is all the more reason to ignore this troll. It might be a more productive exercise to talk to a resident of psychiatric ward. At least they often know there is something wrong with their ability to recognize life as it really is and act in a real way.
Yeah, Lefty, I agree with you.
Ayn Rand and her “followers” can eat dirt!
Jack Barnes CERTAINLY doesn’t know what he’s talking about, when he talks about “freedom”, “liberty”, obligation of employee to employer and so on. He certainly doesn’t appreciate how things WORK IN THE REAL WORLD - ie, what is “objectively” true, IN PRACTICE, not in somebody’s silly ego-driven fantasy… and if EGO is what Rand’s “OBJECTIVISM” is about, then Barnes is right! If it is supposed to be, on the other hand, based on what is “objectively” true, then I dunno…
Libertarians are full of sh*t, anyway! Fancy believing in all the evils of American capitalism and yet decrying the military as “a socialist organisation”! Yes, it probably could be defined as such, Jack, in that all soldiers in it are regarded as “brothers” and “comrades” - well, in the mythology of the organisation, anyway - and not merely as “colleagues” or “co-workers”. Well, it’s a pretty authoritarian model of a socialist society, with father-dictator superior officers leading the “brothers in arms”... But then all such organisations, including the Church, have always been organised thus hierarchically.
Hey, no WONDER the military still has quite an appeal to many people, and no wonder it inspires such loyalty in many of its recruits even after they have left it - because they nostalgically remember their time as part of a group, a brotherhood, a SOCIETY no less, that accepted them as part of it, from the day they passed basic training, to the day they were demobbed. I would imagine that that kind of notion of community would be many people’s goal; and that they are prepared to put up even with military discipline in order to achieve it.
(There, there’s a little paean to the armed services, coming from a non-militarist, anarcho-socialist!!)
Anyway, Jack Barnes, you are full of sh*T, because your vaunted capitalistic society would not FUNCTION if it did not have a military arm, an arm of force, which granted it access to other countries, to their resources and markets. Just try to run a “libertarian” capitalist society without a military! It’s never been done; it never will be done, it never can be done! All trading was linked with military power, from the days of the Roman Empire at least onwards. Ayn Rand my ass! I suppose she never listened to Eisenhower and his “military-industrial complex”!
International socialism and pacifism are logically linked, not libertarian capitalism and pacifism.
Oh, and as regards the obligations of employee to employer, and vice versa: If, as you state, “a business is not a charity”, and it has NO social or human obligations (that would seem to fit Rand’s thinking, only of course she thought that businesses and the “creative talent” in them were the “fountainhead” - did she not - of all human splendour and achievement… hmmmm.)... Well, if your businessman has no OBJECTIVE obligations to his employee, beyond that of squeezing the maximum amount of work out of him/her for the minimum PAY… then it logically FOLLOWS, under such an OBJECTIVE system, where human emotions and subjectivity are not allowed to come IN to it, that the employee has NO obligations other than the converse of that: to squeeze the maximum amount of pay from the employer for the minimum of work.
All this talk of “well you must be lazy”, as f you were threatening to inform on people - and how, pray? Well, Jack, that just exposes the true, AUTHORITARIAN nature of your thinking, and belies your supposed “libertarianism”. In a Randian society, you shouldn’t give a rat’s ass -unless, of course, you are a paid employer’s snitch.
“In order to get and keep a job one is obligated to do their best possible work”... oh yeah, Puritan work ethic, another of the (pretty loathsome) things that have been invented to imprison human souls for centuries…
Yeah, but WHY would they do that - if it ISN’T for the best possible REWARD?? Nobody in a TRULY libertarian society would be interested in the idea of “slaving so as to make an impression on the boss so that he MIGHT pick me, pick me!”... They wouldn’t be brought up by their parents to think like that. The above is only possible in a servile, feudal or post-feudal “Upstairs Downstairs” kind of society.
If you’re talking about workplace spies, snitches, or the threat of high unemployment or wage freezes/cabals by employers, “you’ll never work in this town again” etc - again you’re talking about authoritarian coercion! NOT ANY form of liberty!! But THOSE, are, of course, the tricks used by employers over the centuries!
As for the notion of PROMOTION in the job - that only comes into it where there is a TRUE hope of such - and in many modern dead-end, low-wage jobs, that possibility is not there… Anyway, people are often promoted, not for hard work IN the job, but for attending management courses, for reasons of nepotism, for race reasons… usual reasons!
People’s local prejudices come into how they are prepared to do their jobs. For example, I read a reliable article about how there is at least one resort area in the US, where the chambermaids/housemaids - who are white - won’t regularly clean the visitor’s rooms, because they have been brought up to think cleaning beneath them and a “black” job… However, for the moment, because there aren’t enough blacks or immigrants in that area, which is underpopulated anyway, the stuck-up white women who won’t do their job properly (I would find THAT annoying, I can tell you!) don’t get the sack, probably again, because they got the job through nepotism - and the people who have to suffer are the tourists!
But usually menial employees of any race don’t have it that good!! They are forced to give their maximum, all right, in waitressing and Walmart jobs, as far as their employers can extort it; but what happens in practice, of course, is that the employees “go slow” as soon as the manager’s back is turned; that is actual workplace culture, it is enforced by the employees collectively to avoid burnout… very sensible of them. After all, there ARE no rewards, beyond minimum wage and a few tips, in the restaurant industry, that they get for working BEYOND the normal call of duty, or the “average” pace of everybody… Tell you what the waitresses REALLY do, for their tips, and again they know it’s in their self-interest: they give EXTRA helpings, extra dressing or more croutons than the penny-pinching manager says they are “allowed” to give - because they KNOW this will gain them more tips!
I am not from the USA but I know all this because I read “Nickeled and Dimed”, a study of menial jobs in the US in 2000, by Barabara Ehrenreich! I greatly recommend it to all, especially head-in-the-clouds gits like Jack!
Well, all that comes of treating people as if they were THINGS, which I am reliably informed is the pastime of psychopaths.
People are not THINGS or commodities. That would be the thought for the day!
Liz,
Think of it this way, in the ultimate libertarian society where, according to Ayn Rand, selfishness is pure, perfect morality, then Mother Theresa would be the ultimate looser and crook, no?
Both Liz and Lefty have good points. I have been in many ‘jobs’ that had zero potential for ‘bettering’ myself. If Jack had the tiniest inkling of understanding about reality (he must have been management) he would know that in most jobs, there is no hope of advancement beyond what the employer wants to give to the employee. When you job is such that there is no hope of advancement, no hope of tranferring out (lateral move to different division) and no hope of moving to another type of work, you begin to simply ‘mark time.’ You see it in the military with soldiers that are near discharge (or at least one used to see it) when that person puts up what is known as a “short-timers calendar” to count down to discharge.
Jack believes in the idealized world of Ayn Rand, a novelist who did not know (in the business sense) her ass from a hand towel. She was not an employer, nor was she ever an executive in any corporation. She was just a writer, and a 1930’s style hack at that - the same as that idiot L Ron Hubbard.
Currently our government is being run by idiots that believe the nonsense expoused by ultra-right-wing nuts from the 1950’s who thought that they knew the right way to run the nation. Their policies have left the nation in deeper debt than ever before (the majority of the National Debt is courtesy of Reagan, Bush 1, and Bush 2. It is easy to prove that Republican conservatism is a lie and a sham. Just look at the debt - 7 TRILLION and growing like a rocket. Bush 2 believes that debts don’t matter. Of course not, he’s wealthy, so he has never known of any debt he could not pay easily. Bush wanted to look more ‘folksy’ so he bought his hobby ranch in Texas, where he grows - brush and weeds. There are no cattle, no horses (except the one he supposedlly masturbated (according to Laura)), nothing to qualify this as a ‘ranch’ except Bush calling it that. I grew up in So Calif, where we knew the difference between a hobby ranch and a real ranch. Despite all the urban sprawl in Calif, San Diego County has real working horse and cattle ranches. Real ranchers work on the ranch, not in Washington spreading lies and stealing the future from our children.
Part 2
Jack - you are a classic idiot and fool for believing the nonsense spewed by Ayn Rand. I read her crap in ENGLISH class, nobody beleived a word of it. The local colleges (including San Diego State and UCSD) did not teach Ayn Rand in economics classes since they recognized that her theories were berift of rationality and were unworkable in reality. Indeed, most economists have their heads up their collective asses since they have no idea of what they are talking about. Lots of pretty rhetoric about teh market doing this and the market doing that, but when it comes to the final crunch, they have no idea what they are doing. Best witness to that is the dot-com crash. None of the economists or stock market analysts had any idea the crash was going to happen. Now, it hsa emerged that the analysts lied about how good an investment in the stock market could be, touting how great it was going to perform. Just like whores, they were selling the product as hard as they could. The stock market is a scam to steal from the middle class by making it appear that one can make money by investing in stocks. The average person can not make any signifigant money, since the “traders” (stockbrokers) are siphoning off the earnings by charging fees. All neat and legal.
Remember, the world does not operate by Ayn Rands methods but by real commerce - value for value. And value is created on the backs of the workers, not by the managment or the CEO. In many cases (especially in the biggest corporations) the CEO is a liar and crook. Witness Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Rite-Aid, more. Each of these companies and more failed no because of bad investments or poor employee performance, but because of a corporate culture that fostered criminal activity - supported and sponsored by the executives, accepted by the workers as the price of being employed there. The lowest level employees at Enron got screwed, where Ken Lay (the main thief) is still not in jail and has been selling off his ill-gotten goods (his wife’s boutique selling ‘excess’ property (furniture, art works, etc.).
Until we, the people, insist in higher standards in business and make it work (demand that thieves be punished as thieves, cheats be forced out and true honesty and transparency forced into business) we will continue to be taken advantage of by the corporations. As long as they see us as being cash cows to be slaughtered at their whim, we will never be able to really enter the upper classes. The wealthy do not want a lot of upstarts joining them at their country clubs (rich white men only, please. No Mexicans, Blacks, Asians allowed.). They want to continue to dominate the world. Keep in mind, of the Republican Party’s upper leadership and all Republican elected officials nationwide less than one (1) percent is non-white. The Republican Party is the party of rich white MEN. There are no national Republican women in leadership positions. Jack is one of those short-sighted bigoted white men.
At no time in history has there been so many examples of why the Founding Fathers wanted to separate the parts of government nd install checks and balances to prevent one party dominating the other party(s). The Republican leadership believes (being short-sighted and bigoted against any other political beliefs) that they have a ‘mandate’ to destroy the best (if sometimes frustrating) government on the planet. Their agenda is to put people like that bigoted religious freak, cat-killing liar, Bill Frist into major political offices nationwide, so they can force their religious fanaticism onto everybody. Only problem, their beliefs are antithical to the average American, being that they are of the extreme right-wing hate everybody type of religion (they want to use the Bible as the sole source for US law - welcome to the American Taliban - worse than the original.). If one really wants a book to base a reaction to, go read Robert A Heinlein’s “If This Goes On’. A better description of a theocratic America can not be found in fiction. It also describes the outcome when the people have had enough and rise up to sieze their country back.
Fiction being fiction, as an illustration Heinlein did a better job of outlining reality than many other writers, Ayn Rand included. He read her works, thought they were crap.
At present, it appears that the public will have to force the right-wingnuts out and put in more moderate people. But, until that is done, there will be no improvement to the nation, but it will continue to be dragged through the mud of our own creation. Wake up and recognize that this discussion is useless unless YOU are willing to get out into the community and do some rabble-rousing. Get off your lazy ass and start organizing a community protest group. The first thing on the agenda should be getting our troops out of Iraq. No wind-down, just get out NOW! That will save US taxpayers $80 billion per year and will stop the Bushistas agenda cold. Next is to impeach Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell (criminal prosecution), Gonzales, etc. for TREASON. ONce one looks at all that they have done, one realizes that these bastards have greatly weakened our nation. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that Bush wants the US attacked again. There is nothing being done about border security, cargo entering the US is not inspected (only 1% is inspected), the radiation detectors that are supposed to find smuggled in a-bombs are unable to detect a test source held against the detector - utterly useless. Yet Chimpy claims that the nation is safe. Our leader is an idiot and he has morons advising him. They are so caught up in their agenda of dismantling every Democratic social program ever enacted, that they are not seeing the peril they are creating.
I seem to have goten a bit off track, no matter. I hope the rest of you will not waste your time further on that moron Jack. He is a little man and is of no importance
I leave your with the following:
“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower
November 8, 1954
Now, there was a Reublican I could respect.
Re: “lazy”
The American worker works more hours per week than any workers anywhere in the world - including Japan.
The American worker takes less holiday time than any worker anywhere in the world. European workers get 30 days paid vacation leave per year. The US averages 2 weeks, if lucky enough to get that.
I should think that ‘lazy’ would nt be the proper word for the American worker. Overworked and underpaid is more like it. It is the policy of Wal-Mart (Largest non-governmental US business - 15. million workers) locks their employees in the building overnight, stiffs workers on overtime, refuses to allow any unionization, forces workers to work off the clock, overcharges on health insureance and has the largest number of emplyees using welfare and Medicare for health care and extra food.
If Jack had the tiniest inkling he would understand that his position is untenable. But like all Reaganites, he understands nothing except tax cuts for the wealthy and the back of the hand to the poor and middle classes. Jack is a throwback to the “Mauve Decades” when lazziz-faire economics were the way and caveat emptor was the watch word of the business world.(I think I spelled those correctly).
Sorry, but ‘let the buyer beware’ is not a good honest way to run a business. And “All’s fair in business” is not a good business strategy.
P.T. Barnum was right, there is a sucker born every minute. Jack is one of P.T’s ‘egress’ people, thinking something exotic must be beyond the “Egress This Way” sign.
Myself, I am a rational person. I don’t believe in economic fairy tales that promise a fortune at the end of the economic rainbow. I believe in TANSTAAFL - “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch” (R.A. Heinlein). If something sounds too good to be true, it absolutly is too good to be true.
Any other viewpoint is inconsistant with reality. So. all the rhetoric, especially from Steve, with his overly complicated maunderings on economic theory, is essentially silly and a time-waster. The real job is to put honest practices inot place and eliminate the ‘dog-eat-dog’ mentality from business. Business is there to provide goods and services, not to enrich itself on the backs of the workers. There is no guarentee that a business will make money. Most never do and go out of business within the first 5 years. Those that survive, go out when the owner dies or retires. This is good and proper. For a business to survive for 50-100 years is an aberation and goes against history. Business should have limits and be put out of business from time-to-time to keep them honest.
We need limits on what businesses can do and what they can’t do. We need most of these limits to be what a business can’t do. What they can do can be limited to simply marketing their wares (goods or service). No business should be exempt from this ‘rule:’ No business shall be permitted to exist beyond 50 years. No argument, no alteration.
Nowhere in law does it specify that a business can exist forever. The Founding Fathers wanted corporation severly limited and for the first 100 years they were. Crooks and lawyers managed to get that changed. But the laws were not changed until relativly recently.
To Hell with corporations!
Richard,
I really didn’t think what I pointed out was silly or a waste of time. It is perfectly consistent with your and many other critiques in this and other threads of US corporate based capitalism and its harmful effects on the working classes both here and abroad. The idea that theories don’t count or matter IS silly! I think that a theory that incorporates three essential points that I have discovered in my Meanderings (I think this is what you meant) and melds them together in a unified understanding of where we are is essential politically! First, we have passed from a Fordist to a post-Fordist society whereby the rising national incomes which created the growth based on a national mass consumer based society (especially in consumer durables like autos and residential housing stock) is no longer valued as essential by capitalists who seek to globalize the economy mostly through foreign direct investment and restructure a new division of labor which is highly specialized through production and supply chains and which concentrates and centralizes wealth and productive assets in global economy that increasingly operates above national boundaries. Secondly, the Keynesian/Fordist epoch that has collapsed and led to the current global one constituted a major (4th) long-wave of capitalist economic expansion that turned downward in 1973 due to an overaccumulation and overproduction crisis and whose restructuring has not lead to more permanent growth but constant stagnation and lurching toward recession. Finally, the new restructuring is a form of globalization which is NOT international but TRANSNATIONAL and based purely on Foreign Direct Investment not on overseas trade. Competition now takes place exclusively between Transnational Corporations (TNCs) through investment strategies, not nation-states through trade or trade policy. The era of the nation-state is being replaced by the global era! This understanding is crucial! It is silly and futile to continually argue, as have some, that we are undermined by trade with China and India and need new “get tough” trade and currency policies—eg “China should revalue its currency; the US should have higher tariffs to protect its remaining manufacturing base”, etc. Governance is increasingly at the behest of a Transnationalized capitalist class (TCC) which expresses its interest through globalizing investment and merging production with other parts of the TCC. They are impervious to old nation-state governance strategies which are themselves being eclipsed by fragments of the old nation-state accepting the new epochal shift as they merge with and facilitate the emergence of a new Transnational State (TNS) which many recognize and the WTO, the IMF, The World Bank, and agreements like NAFTA. The TCC is in the process of recasting the old world and old nation-state centric forms of resistance will not bring justice. For this counter-hegemonic movements which span boundaries like the World Social Forum and other sectors of the Global Justice Movement which transnationalize the concerns of those harmed by globalization and its concommittant upward redistribution of wealth and political control and merges issues in a way that creates effective global political agenda for change. In the end, I think all of us who find fault with transnational capitalism are pretty much on the same page!
This is a good thread, but the best was when Richard A Knighton made the following decree: “Myself, I am a rational person.”
That was a screamer. Richard A Knighton, if you are not a professor in an institution of higher learning, you’ve missed your calling. That you live in California is understandable and a good place for you because all your protests won’t interfere with my quality of life.
I wish we could get your opinions out in a larger forum. For the moment we have Howard Dean but I believe you could give him a run for his money.
Save your breath on Jack-he’s way to far down the rabbit hole to bring back. I listen to that libertarian crap all the time; to quote Homer Simpson, they’re “living in a world of make believe”. Lordy.
It’s great to read some people making sense and having real discussions on this thread. You all are absolutely correct, Jack Barnes (Lin Biao, J. Craig, etc.) is totally off his rocker.
I think Richard has raised some terrific points. U Scare Me, as usual, has the same old tired, worn-out rhetoric of the Right, delivered in sound-bite chunks. Obviously, the intellectual discussion above was too much for him to read, digest and deliver a rational response. What really cracks me up is that Dean is actually doing a very good job of fundraising. He has raised three times more for this quarter than did the DNC in the prior non-election year quarter. While he may speak out of turn at times, he more often hits the nail on the head by telling the truth—something that the GOP knows nothing about. DeLay, Noe, Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, etc. spew nothing but lies.
Today the polls showed that support for the war is down to 34%. Boy, that’s a mandate!
Merlin is right on the money. We should simply ignore the trolls and talk among ourselves.
Hi Margaret,
You noted:
“It’s great to read some people making sense and having real discussions on this thread.”
I definitely agree! And thanks to you folks for stimulating my thoughts and teaching me as well. Lots of good stuff on this and a couple of other threads! Let’s all keep up the good work!
Margaret,
***Obviously, the intellectual discussion above was too much for him to read, digest and deliver a rational response.***
I believe you are a pot calling the kettle black. Mostly what I see are progressives, you in particular, ignoring counter points because you lack the diligence, intelligence or integrity to respond to respond to them. I do give you an A+ in name calling however.
Lets try one: Richard A Knighton stated the following, “No business shall be permitted to exist beyond 50 years. No argument, no alteration.”
This to me sounds like a stepping stone towards a Moa Tse-Tung Cultural Revolution. Maybe we should consider taking “Republicans that have never done an honest days work in their lives” and put them in work camps so we can reprogram their thinking.
I like you am pulling for Dean to stay right where he is. You believe he’ll help your party, I believe he’ll continue to kill it. One of us is right and the other is wrong, but we both want the same thing, keep him talking. I just wish Republicans would shut up about it. There is no sense in attacking a guy that is beating his own head with a hammer.
USM is a classic conservative isn’t he. When he has absolutely nothing substantive to argue, he resorts to hate - the conservative stock in trade.
Even his galant attempt at analyisis was short lived. He actually focused in on an idea proffered by Richard, raising false hope that he might do something constructive with it . . . but no, he just couldn’t do it. He doesn’t know how. Rather, he employs the only method for dealing with argument he’s capable of, he redirects it to something else that he hates - Mao Tse-Tung.
And of course there’s the classic conservative tactic of employing the aid of the false premise when real, honest analysis can only lead to that most hated of conservative predicaments - agreement. And a true conservative like USM could NEVER admit (to himself or others) that he agrees with a liberal. USM, I don’t recall reading where Richard wrote anything about work camps - work camps was your idea. A very hateful concept, work camps. I’m not surprised you brought it up.
Hate and subterfuge - the conservative method.
USM, thank you for once again confirming that the unfortunate reality that there really are only 2 kinds of conservatives: 1) idiots, and 2) crooks. And USM, you’re not smart enought to be a crook.
BTW, I, being a liberal, am pulling for Dean too. I just wish that he would stop holding back and would speak the whole truth.
I also think that Dean is right! I don’t know why the other Democrats are mad at him. If it’s acceptible for Republicans to malign innocent people for their military records (including Max Cleland who was horribly maimed in an act of heroism on behalf of his platoon in Vietnam), stir up a hate campaign against gays and lesbians in order to create an election year wedge issue, stir up religious animosity against Jews and Muslims through their right-wing bigotry (the first with the Mel Gibson movie and the second with the “war on terror”), commit or support acts of terror against legal abortion clinics, try to turn the US from a democracy into a theocracy, and in general lie every night to the public through repulsive stiff-haired pundits on Fox News, then why can’t Howard Dean tell the truth about the Republicans being a rich white, male party who never did an honest days work and don’t give a rats ass about anyone but their narrow elitist constituency?
What a pathetic collection of losers !
Not one of these rants have dealt with my
arguments or in way refuted the sources that
I was kind enough to give.
I often do not go near the computer during the
weekend but obviously I didn’t miss much.
There is no such thing as a lousy job, only lousy
people who can’t do the job.
Millions of people in America have started in so-called dead end jobs and unlike losers like lefty, Liz, Richard, ad nauseum, they have worked
their way up the ladder and become quite successful.
In a truly free noncontrolled society very few
people start at the top. In a laissez-faire
society it is often shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves
in three generations. One starts out poor, makes
a fortune by dint of using their brain, leaves
it to a worthless heir and the next generation
has to start all over again.
The interesting thing is the way the left ignores
totally the crucial role of intelligence in industrial production and worships the poor precisely because they are people who have not
achieved anything. You people are motivated by
envy and a profound hatred of human ability.
One reason the left apologizes so strenously for
black criminals is precisely because they are total scum.
Ike was a piece of crap Communist who conducted
Operation Keelhaul right after WW2 and shipped
back millions of escaped Russians to be murdered
by Joe Stalin. He was always an extreme leftist
ADA Democrat and those people were ready to draft him for the Dummycrat nomination in 1948. He pulled out the first day of the convention.
Truman wrote that he thought Ike was a Democrat
up to January, 1952.
Ayn Rand wrote many books, both fiction and nonfiction, not just “a book.”
You people with the noble exception of U Scare
Me are not engaged in a cross-ferilization of
ideas but a cross-sterilization.
Maybe you can win debates with your personal
selves but that’s the only debate you can win !
Lefty, thanks again for proving my point.
You are reduced to profanity, temper tantrums,
ad hominem logical fallacies and assertions
unbacked by argumentation.
Liz, I’m not sure which one of the failing West
European welfare police states that you reside
in, but you are a loser living in system of losers
and people over there now living will see the end
of your socialist nightmare.
I’m all for Dean staying in his position.
I say let him and the neocon statists in the GOP
have at each other. Virtually every Democratic
public official is forced to disavow him every
week. The GOP is still at least four times ahead
in the fundraising. Only Dems who owned government
favored businesses like Margaret can afford to
throw money down the DNC rathole.
Steve, your recitation of the discredited liar
Chomsky and his totally ignorant views on economics, makes you look silly. See The Anti-Chomsky Reader for another look at this fraud.
I know from 20 years of correspondence with Noam
that he is a fraud and liar to the nth degree.
Now that the rest of Margaret’s family has posted
here, I can only reiterate the obvious fact that
your offspring are nothing to be proud of.
Miss Bunny Hop is the best of a sad sack lot.
If lefty is a “liberal” then that
term now means what used to be signified
by socialist or communist.
The psychotic narcissism evident in lefty’s
tirades are no evidence of liberal superiority
in debate or eruditon. As Mr. Barnes noted,
you are reduced to profanity precisely you do
not have the wit to use a real word or make
a real argument.
That you two would be fans of Dean is entirely
predictable since Dean is a psychotic whose
candidacy was emphatically rejected the American
people.
People in management and owners of corporations
are the hardest working element of the population.
It’s a riot to read laments from the Steves and
Richards bemoaning the ability of their betters
to earn much money than they could ever conceive
of. Envy has corroded your hate-ridden interiors
and if you look too closely you find that there
is no there there.
Christine, Thanks.
Did you live in SF during the 70s and 80s ?
Best,
Jack
PS I’m in South Bend now.
Are you still in DC ?
Right on, Jack and Christine !
It’s fun to come to a site and maul
these lefty losers. Sort of like shooting
cows in a field. You can’t miss and they
end up making your case for you.
Proud Vet, you’ve nothing to be proud of.
Go, Dean, go ! He’s the best fundraiser the
GOP ever had. Feinstein and Lieberman have
called for his resignation. But hopefully
he’ll stay.
Steve,
Yeah, isn’t it amazing how the GOP can praise Bush for his supposed “time” in the Texas Guard, but they rip a new one for John McCain when he ran for President in the 2000 primaries. My goodness, there is just no comparison there whatsoever, but to establish their “feelgood” line about GWB, they push a war hero and amazing patriot into the sewer.
You’re right, Max Clelland is yet another example of the GOP cannibalizing real American heroes. I don’t care if part of his injuries were incurred stateside. Apparently you have to lose all your limbs if you want to be a good political candidate, in the minds of the far Right.
I have lost just about all respect for John McCain, bending over for Bush in the last 2 years, especially. I am sad that he could withstand 5 years in the Hanoi Hilton, but not stand up to 5 years of Cheney, et al.
p.s.
Jack, we know all those posts are you under pseudonyms.
Lefty you’re funny. I guess when you go around belittling people with terms like dolts, idiots and fools you are not using hate speech. When did somebody put that “false premise” bug in your ear. You are beating it to death man/woman.
I love the fact that you think you and your party have a lock on all intelligence. There’s a false premise for you and your party’s arrogance about it is part and parcel to your loosing elections over the past 10 years. Sorry Kerry let you down with his grades. I bet we could turn that into some kind of false premise.
You said: ***And a true conservative like USM could NEVER admit (to himself or others) that he agrees with a liberal.*** And, *** BTW, I, being a liberal, am pulling for Dean too. I just wish that he would stop holding back and would speak the whole truth.***
I agree with you 100% about Howard, I want him to stop holding back as well and I’m agreeing with a liberal, something you said I was incapable of doing.
I ask again: Richard A Knighton stated the following, “No business shall be permitted to exist beyond 50 years. No argument, no alteration.”
Good idea or not. What do you think Lefty? Not being an idiot like me I’m sure you can answer the question.
Steve,
*** why can’t Howard Dean tell the truth about the Republicans being a rich white, male party who never did an honest days work and don’t give a rats ass about anyone but their narrow elitist constituency?***
The “narrow elitist constituency” you mention is what us idiots refer to as a majority of Americans.
Lefty
Think of it this way, in the ultimate
libertarian society where, according to Ayn
Rand, selfishness is pure, perfect morality,
then Mother Theresa would be the ultimate
looser and crook, no?
Yeah, I guess you’re right!
Christopher Hitchens didn’t much like Mother Theresa either…. Guess he must be a Randist! (Though I’m reliably told that he’s an ex-Trotskyist - I’m bound to echo the Christian fundie position on this one and say that in that case, “he must never have been truly saved at all”!)
Margaret, this the umpteenth time that you have
made that false accusation.
It apparently galls you to realize that there
lots of folks out there that disagree with you
and agree with me.
Now, either put up or shut up !
Jack,
Hello ! Long time, no see.
We used to be involved for a while.
I moved here in 1987 and work as an
attorney for the Federal Government.
Looks like you are keeping up your
political interests.
I’ll email you my private info.
Best,
Christine
Richard A Knighton
(You’re Proud Vet, aren’t you? People have changed their aliases on here largely because of Jack’s… I don’t know what to call it, I won’t say trolling, because I have seen far worse - ie irrelevant, childish trolling, than his contrarianism… I hate to imagine who Jack’s Daddy might be - though I dug the post complete with sound effects where Jack is “drug off” to the “booby hatch”!
Love your posts, Richard, by the way.
ASK NOT AT WHOM THE CHIMP SMIRKS - HE SMIRKS AT YOU…..
http://smirkingchimp.com
You’ll like that site if you don’t already have it as a Favorite.
Bet Jack is in LURVE with Chimpy, though he opens his mouth all the time pro “Libertarianism”. Bet Jack isn’t a member of the Libertarian party. Bet Jack digs theocrats.
I’d LOVE to read Robert A. Heinlein’s “If This Goes On”, but I can’t find it at Amazon.com! It seems a pity that it’s out of print, because it sounds a much more sensible - and HOPEFUL - book than either Ayn Rand’s or Margaret Atwood’s, who as you probably know is a modern “dystopian” novelist who has written at least one novel about a theocratic future US, “The Handmaiden’s Tale”. But Heinlein wrote SO much, that much of his opus is bound to be out of print… MIGHT you be able to recommend me a good second-hand internet bookshop, one with a proper website, like Amazon only second-hand… You seem to have great second-hand bookstores in the USA, and I don’t have any near me! Only charity shops.
Right on Eisenhower! Didn’t know he was THAT bright, one leans something every day…
Er - yes, Steve! Re your ideas about post-Fordism: I like your ideas but I think you could express yourself a little more…clearly? I think you must be an economist!
Yes, well, in a Global economy, we shall need Global, that means, of course, International, Socialism, shan’t we??
Don’t know if you’re a Marxist at all, but you could do a lot worse than to visit these American/international Trotskyists at: http://www.wsws.org
(It’s a top-notch news and current affairs analysis site, often listed on Google News…)
Jack said:
“What a pathetic collection of losers !
Not one of these rants have dealt with my
arguments or in way refuted the sources that
I was kind enough to give.
I often do not go near the computer during the
weekend but obviously I didn’t miss much.
There is no such thing as a lousy job, only lousy people who can’t do the job.”
Blahahahahahahahahaha!!! Jack(ass), your kindness is exceeded only by your relentless conservative hatred and stupidity. Go back the the boody hatch where you belong.
OMG, I just noticed that Jack(ass) is having a conversation with himself under multiple pseudonyms. Jack’s obsessive worship of the dilusional psychopath, Ayn Rand, all makes perfect sense, now that we know that Jack is schizoid.
Well isn’t this interesting. We have the schizoid Jack(ass) having written conversations with himself under multiple pseudonyms, and we have Ryan, masquerading in different threads under different names, like USM in this thread.
So Ryan, IF THAT’S YOUR REAL NAME (he said accusatorily, LOL), how much does the GOP (Gang of Pimps) pay you to make a fool out of yourself trolling liberal message boards?
Now, as to your question:
“‘No business shall be permitted to exist beyond 50 years. No argument, no alteration.’” Good idea or not. [sic] What do you think Lefty? Not being an idiot like me I’m sure you can answer the question.”
Yes Ryan, I can answer the question. But, rather than spoon feeding the answer to you (based on the give a man a fish and you feed him once, teach him to fish and you feed him for life premise), I will, benevolently, direct your attention to what was, and still is, known in the common law as the “rule against perpetuities.” The rule against perpetuities is still the law in many jurisdictions in the U.S. although its application has been limited by various state statutes.
Do some research on this ancient and vererable law. Try to understand the underlying policy behind it. Formulate a response to your own question, and report back. I eagerly await your report.
Ryan said:
“The “narrow elitist constituency” you mention is what us idiots refer to as a majority of Americans.” Posted by U Scare Me on June 13, 2005 at 11:31 AM
Faulty analysis, Ryan, based on a false premise. Although not express, Steve was implying the premise that I have expressed, that there are only 2 kinds of conservatives: 1) idiots, and 2) crooks. The narrow elitist constituency referred to by Steve would be the crooks. The constituency that voted for them would be the idiots. Two different constituencies, Ryan. Just because an idiot votes for a crook doesn’t make the idiot part of the crooks constituency in the mind of the crook.
“lefty” is also richard, proud vet, steve, merlin
and margaret.he has more aliases than iq points.
he also has a rap sheet that is quite a bit longer
than his penis.
Christine
“If Lefty is a ‘liberal’ then that term now means what used to be signified by socialist or communist.”
Well, you MAY be right - up to a point! I have noticed some quite lefty elements in the Democratic party, and on all its best boards and blogs, who I think would REALLY be more at home in a socialist party! Which at the moment doesn’t exist in any statistically significant number in the US.
BUT - that’s only because you killed all the socialists in America during the Fifties; or outlawed their parties by economically blacklisting people, which is the same thing.
IF enough of the left-leaning Democrats came out and ADMITTED they WERE socialists, albeit strictly democratic, populist socialists - then the US would have a viable third party!
And the working class and the ethnic underclass would at LAST have a party WORTH their votes!!!
Roll on the day!
“People in management and owners of corporations are the hardest working element of the population.” (At first I thought you wrote: “among the”, then I checked and realized, nope!)
Mm. That’s why they spend so much time on golf courses, then. That’s why they have 3-hour lunches. That’s why they have better health and greater longevity than the workers… Mmm. Because WORK is so HEALTHY for you, ain’t it?
Mm well, at least you’ve now got a fan in Jack, who obviously wants to invite you out to dinner… A proof that conservatives in America ARE in the minority!!
That’s a shocker ! There are really two kinds
of liberals, the severely mentally ill and the
plain criminals.
What kind do you think lefty is ? Or rather
Margaret, I knew she was using multiple aliases.
Or is she a he ?
No wonder the ranks of the left are getting
thinner every day.
See Liz is into war criminals besides being
a Trot cultist. P A T H E T I C.
Apparently you haven’t looked at an election
result or a public opinion poll for forty years.
No leftist except a few hardcore ones can get
elected in the USA. To the extent that they are
leftwing, they have to tone it down to win
and usually the voters see right through the
“moderate” pose. Regularly 40% of those who do
label themselves pick the conservative moniker.
Liberals have decreased 30 to 14% since 1980.
Socialism in all of its aspects, Nazi, fascist,
welfare statist, Communist, syndicalist, etc.,
has been a proven failure wherever it’s been
tried and to the extent that it’s been tried.
The only people who take three hour lunches
are top government bureaucrats as I can verify
from almost twenty years of living in DC.
You’re remarks on corporations and capitalists
are laughable and are motivated by crude envy.
I used to date Jack in SF when we a minority
in that area ideologically speaking.
My, how times have changed !
Lefty,
I’m probably getting paid the same amount as you. I’m not Ryan. I know you know everything, but you missed that one. I’m really Margaret with a happy face.
So you are inferring the “rule against perpetuities”, either in fact or principle, states it is a good idea that corporations should not be allowed to stay in business longer than 50 years? Is this what you really believe or is this another attempt to dodge? I really believe answering the previous question will allow everyone to see the true Progressive agenda. I believe we’ll learn what the phrase, ”Take America Back”, really means. I’ll try one more time.
Richard A Knighton stated the following, “No business shall be permitted to exist beyond 50 years. No argument, no alteration.”
Good idea or not?
I have a boat and catch my own fish all the time. You also don’t need to worry about feeding me, I do just fine but I appreciate your concern.
Jack Barnes…
(Are you the same as “Digger” Barnes on that old 80s capitalist cultist soap opera? Dallas? Did you borrow his character for your pseudonym… No, maybe J.R. truly WOULD suit you better! Least someone’d get to shoot you!)
What, please, is a “Trot cultist”???
Either you ARE a Trotskyist, or you’re not one. Or you’re an ex-would-be-one, like that Repug-apologist turncoat Christopher Hitchens.
One CAN, of course, be a Trotskyist sympathizer…
Yeah, I’m a sympathizer! I CAN’T be a Marxist, however, of any stamp: because there’s ONE thing, and only one, that disqualifies me: I’m actually quite religious, in my own way (no, I’m not a Christian, I gave that up, thanks!) and I’m not in any sense of the word, a “materialist”.
I’m a mystic! And a paranormalist. Therefore, I CAN’T be a Marxist! Because I’m honest. Simple, really…
And I could never get into Rand’s kind of “mysticism”, ie worship of money and power at the expense of other, more enduring, human qualities. Because I’m far too sensible and humane.
As for Rand, I daresay she found out what was REALLY what once she “crossed over”. Gaia only knows who or what she’s reincarnated as now.
Nope, I think that the ranks of the Left - including Democrats, I already said that I think a lot of them should form a populist socialist third party - are INCREASING every day! Look at all their lovely boards and blogs - like this one! Plus Altnernet. Democratic Underground. Truthout. Counterpunch…. They’re multiplying every day and attracting new followers, including conservatives who have nothing better to do than troll. What have YOU people got? FreeperRepublic? Don’t make me laugh!!
I am Margaret and no one else. I even admitted that missbunni is my daughter, who had read some ramblings of the insane Libertarians, who are so outside the mainstream as to never have had anyone of significance elected in the US besides a dogcatcher, and decided to respond.
Really, Christine, what an insult to all women that you would ally yourself with such an obvious misogynist.
Back to the point of this thread, how can we get rid of the jackasses in office who are putting the working class into real danger, both physically and financially? If you’ve looked at the polls within the last, oh, I don’t know, Christine, the last 24 hours, you’ll see that Bush’s ratings are the lowest of any second termer in the first year of re-election. Only 36% of Americans now think Iraq was worth it, and 3/4 of Americans now want us out. But you know we can’t, because Bonzo stayed up past his bedtime trying to think of a plan and couldn’t come up with any at all.
It’s good to know that Libertarians will always be at the bottom of the cesspool where they belong.
Christine
Seeing as your last post seems to have been addressed to me:
As Jack Barnes, your ex-paramour (oh WHY am I so not surprised?!) has already observed, I have admitted to being a non-American. However, I know plenty about your country and its politics, recent political history etc, having had the opportunity to read a lot of books and do a lot of web browsing over the past five and more years…
And I mean a LOT…
Who are these “hardcore” lefts you are referring to, Christine? Clinton? Don’t make me laugh!
It would seem to me that the American public, their souls containing a basic egalitarian element, have been MISLED in recent years, to be brainwashed into voting for “folksy”-seeming individuals of BOTH parties - well there is SO little difference between the policies of their leaderships, anyway - they have all been bought and paid for by corporations!
Yes, so Americans have voted into office the following “folksy” types - presumably as an antidote to Richard Nixon!
Jimmy Carter, Democrat. Ronald Reagan, the “Great Communicator”, Republican. His successor, Bush I (bit of a blip). Bill Clinton, Democrat. George W. Bush, Repuglican.
All of the above from south of the Mason-Dixon line, and as Richard so well points out, who have the pronounced tendency to indulge in fake populist elements such as “down-home” speech (or is that speaking in tongues?) and operating fake ranches - so as to FOOL the Southern white populace that they are “one of them”!
It works very well in America; whereas one might require the opposite image to be electable in certain European countries, eg. Britain, France. NOBODY elects hayseeds there!
So, you count that liberals amount to only 14% in America?? Hmm, that’s funny, I wonder what the rest of the 50% are, then, that voted for Kerry… A lot must be those socialists in chrysalis form, then, that I SPEAK of!! (And of course there must be a lot MORE among the OTHER 50% of Americans - the ones that don’t vote at all! A lot of those “black criminals” as you and your boyfriend so kindly call them, are still waiting for their Dr King Mark II messiah, I think… He’ll be a socialist, when he comes along.)
The only socialisms that have been TRIED are the sort that aren’t really socialism at all.
Why would I want to envy capitalist psychopaths??
If I am supposed to honor thieves, I prefer Robin Hood, John Dillinger and Willie Sutton, thanks very much!
(You’re right, in that SOME lefties, like ME, DO indeed sympathize with criminals… It’s because we’re honest - try that for a paradox!
But in actual fact, being on the “anarcho” side myself, and, you know, WILLING to read the scribblings of libertarians, I have always WONDERED why none of THEM seem to adore criminals, Robin Hood types? After all, it is THEY who are following the most fundamental kind of “free enterprise” - “enterprise” as a CONCEPT indeed is so free, that I don’t see how any boundaries, of “thou shalt not steal, at least not without a white collar” should be put around it!!
I think Ayn Rand and supporters should have LOVED criminals! That would have been logical of them. But of course they were much too bourgeois, rendering that philosophy to them unpalatable.)
Anyway, it seems to me that both you AND Jack ESPOUSE Libertarianism - but REALLY, you’re Repuglicans - and those AIN’T the same things - though scratch one, you often find the other…
WHY do you use precisely the same formatting style as Jack Barnes, anyway, Christine? Are you his split-off schizoid feminine side, his “anima”, or something!
Sorry but really!
Well, I better remember Cliff Barnes, Digger’s
son, who was a kind of lefty in Texas terms.
Just rewatched the first two seasons of Dallas
on DVD. Season three is due in August.
Lived in the SF Bay Area for 30 years and they have more Trot cults than you could shake a stick at.
Each one had maybe three members and they spent
all their energy fighting each other.
I go to lots of websites but rarely go on boards.
But they have many conservative websites, don’t
kid yourself. Not to mention total domination
of the AM talk radio, libs are limited to the
pathetic Air America.
I frankly don’t like 99% of the conservative
websites and 100% of the neocon talk show hosts.
The only boards I’ve been on are the ITT one here
and the conservative Chronicles website, which
is paleocon. They are quite anti-war and anti-Bush, frankly many on the Right do not like Bush.
It would be a grievous mistake to associate all
anti-Bush sentiment with pro-left sentiment.
You’re comments on Rand simply do not make sense.
We agree on that lush Hitchens.
Lefty
You must be a bit of a lawyer! I don’t know much about the “rule against perpetuities”... it’s interesting that our common-law-inventing ancestors (the Anglo-Saxons?) thought of such a thing!
I assume, however, that it would not APPLY to a business that is handed down from father to son/daughter, in particular a skilled/craft business??
“Such & Sons, Vintners”. “Smith and Daughter, Cabinet-Makers.”
Etc.
(I can’t see the Saxons having legislated against those, or against guilds, bastions of privilege though those might have been! Start of the middle class, after all!)
I seem to have found a loophole to one of your ideas which no doubt the twit LibertarRepugs on here will pounce upon - but doubtless you are equal to it?
I thought that I was using the correct
formatting style. But I do recall that
Jack is also lefthanded.
Christine,
It’s funny that you mention earning money as a motivation to jealosely turn against capitalism. Bill Gates, George Soros, and some other notables are THE richest people in the world and are all quite liberal if not social democrats because they are concerned about the viability of a system that cannibalizes the very society and world in which these billionaires make their money. Also it is the height of barbarian ignorance and cruelty not to mention backwardness to believe that people have to validate themselves to the world through the accretion of material wealth mostly created by the labor of others. Most people are rich because of the sacrifices of the many who earn way below the median income. The rich corporations that patent new technologies don’t do a thing but pay highly educated people a modest salary to do years of R&D for them! Much of the scientific research comes out of former government programs like NASA and the military’s R&D which were being down for years after WWII. The capitalist only makes money, mental and manual laborers do the rest—often for very little in return!
Jack, I do not get economic wisdom from Noam Chomsky. For this I consult the Monthly Review!
USM,
Those who you call the GOP majority are not the real constituents of the GOP. They’re just stupid fanatics who aren’t smart enough to know any better than to support Bush. Soon they’ll regret it!
So, Jack! You admit to not liking Bush!! You didn’t say that in any recognisable way shape or form anywhere on this blog before…
So WHY is it that you and your “pal”, Christine in particular, adulate the fact that “conservatism in this country is going up” and “there are hardly any liberals left”!?
(Untrue, I think!)
And if you’re not a Repug/neocon, why do you adulate the fact that most of talk radio - particularly in the hayseed Southern states - is run by the above people??
(I think that the liberals are soon going to catch up a bit there, though. That’s my prediction.)
I mean, I haven’t seen you recommend tons of Libertarian sites, I actually have been to the Libertarian party site… I don’t know if it’s still current.
Presumably the reason you’re not “on their side” as much as you ought to be, is that there are about as many of them as there are Trotskyists!! I mean, how many people have THEY got elected? Jessie Ventura, I think - if he’s a particularly good example or not I leave up to you!
And all your and Christine’s remarks about “lazy workers”, “hard-working corporate owners”, “black criminals” and so on - and some sexist and racist stuff from your past posts - seem to feed into my image of both of you as typical white backward conservatives masquerading as something more “trendy”, ie Randist or sth.
Why don’t my comments on Rand make sense? If she liked complete freedom of enterprise, why not idolize criminals and gangsters? They’re just boyz from the hood makin’ good! (From ANY ethnic minority which doesn’t have the same chances as the majority/elite, I mean!)
So, as I said - if you are one of the conservatives who DON’T like Bush - a “paeleo”, ie pre-neocon - well, wouldn’t that make you fall more in the Eisenhower camp, who however you say you hate? But under his rule, America was doing better economically than it ever did before!
And yet you SEEM to think it’s possible to have all these “conservative values”, (let’s call a spider a spider, and not “libertarian”) - in the modern day and age, yet without carrying “a big stick”??
(I think Eisenhowever invented that saying too, didn’t he??)
Well, the ruling class has been wielding the stick against the underclass in recent years, all right! (Namely: the phoney “War on Drugs”, for one, which you, as a libertarian anyway, should stand up against!)
And if it doesn’t invade other countries… What is to stop equally psychopathic elite-ridden foreign countries, ie Saudi Arabia, from invading here??
THAT is realpolitik!
THAT is why we need International Socialism!
As for the Trots being a few here, a few there… I agree. I plan on getting all these splinter groups talking to one another. First the Trots with all the other Trots. THEN, the Trots with the rest of the Communists/Marxists. THEN with the rest of the other assorted socialists. THEN with the left-Dems… THEN we’ll take over the world!! America goes first.
(If I ever move to America, I MUST go to San Francisco! I can see already I’d fit right in there!)
Glad we can at least agree on Hitchens. (!)
Liz,
Really enjoying your blogs. Though I tend to be a little more center of left, I agree with your viewpoints quite often. Keep writing!
Steve,
Thank you for continuing to post sensible statements amidst the din of Libertarian masturbation on this thread. Please keep blogging.
Liz,
I tend toward marxism but no particular school of marxism. Thanks for the wbsite recommendation!
Susie,
We are all different people on the Left not one with many aliases. To bad for you the right may just be outnumbered!
Steve, you said:
***Those who you call the GOP majority are not the real constituents of the GOP. They’re just stupid fanatics who aren’t smart enough to know any better than to support Bush. Soon they’ll regret it!***
Just keep on thinking your opponents are stupid and say it to everyone you meet. Miscalculations have been costly to Democratic Party over the last 10 years and I believe will continue to be.
History will tell I reckon. Maybe we should consult Liz, she is likely to have a working crystal ball.
Liz,
***” And if it doesn’t invade other countries… What is to stop equally psychopathic elite-ridden foreign countries, ie Saudi Arabia, from invading here??”***
I don’t know where “here” is for you, but more than likely it will be the USA preventing you from being invaded. No need to thank us, it’s what Americans do.
Margaret and Steve, you’re welcome.
Steve, I’m glad you like the www.wsws.org recommendation. You won’t regret a browse there… apart from wishing that things were a bit more “rosy” than their reports!
Yes, I think there are a lot of us out there who are “no particular school of marxism”. I have at least one correspondent/(fellow)blogger, I believe he is from San Francisco, among my favorites - he is 23, and SO clever/erudite for one so young! But he, too, classes himself roughly as “libertarian democratic socialist”.
As for MYSELF, I think I am more of what I would call an “atavistic socialist”. Ie, I believe socialism to be ancient, a REdiscovery, not a new, 19th century rationalist discovery! (I have a big problem with rationalism anyway: I know too much, you see! About the paranormal.)
Think William Morris crossed with Wicca. That might give y’all an idea. (No, and I’m not a Goth, and I don’t wear a pointy hat… I can’t make things fly through the air like Harry Potter… That satisfy the curious?)
But why do you THINK socialists celebrate the day of the worker on May 1, May Day!!
AH!!!!
There’s someone on counterpunch.org who seems to have some knowledge about it. I’m going to pick his brains in an e-mail one day soon, but I have my own gut feelings… Ah yes!
It is the height or should I say depth
of ignorance to believe in the labor
theory of value. The workers do not
create the wealth and never have.
Certainly not since the industrial
revolution. You might find it profitable
to consult the works of Dr. Edwin A. Locke (Professor Emeritus) of the University of Maryland for his specialized studies
on management and entrepreneurs.
They are the engine that pulls
the train. If it wasn’t for their
organization of raw materials into
goods for profit we would still be
living in medieval conditions.
I never said anyone had to validate
themselves through making money, only
that those who do so honestly without governmental favors have every right to
feel proud of their achievment.
They do not need to apologize to the
envious haters of the left or any
self-designated spokespersons for the poor.
Some of the people you list above are the
powerful kind of government connected pull
peddlers that Rand was strongest in condemning.
There’s an old joke that in America the poor
are Democrats, the middle class are Republicans
and the rich are Communists.
Depends on the particular type of rich.
Selfmade creators of wealth rarely are on
the left, many heirs are.
I can’t speak for Jack here but if you get
your economic education from Monthly Review
then it’s no wonder you are so ignorant of
the actual nature of capitalism.
Huberman and Sweezy had a record of being
wrong in almost every particular including
their never-ending predictions of the “crisis”
of capitalism.
If I can read the massive Beyond Capital work,
why can’t you read Reisman’s Capitalism ?
USM,
I used to give the right a lot of credit for intellegence as well as the proverbial man in the street until years of personal growth and wisdom taught me otherwise! USM, as you can probably tell I don’t do put downs or name call people. I try to be respectful—something the far-right can learn something about! I think civilized discourse is best for society. These past couple of years have taught me a lot! There is a kind of psychosis in American society today that is very frightening and echoes a great deal the Germany of the 1930s. Intolerant clerico-fascism (Germany was more modernist and less religious so their thing was nationalism bolstered by images from folk-epic mythology), jingoism, paranoia, and war-mongering hatred orchestrated by the third rate dummies heading our government. USM you may not have noticed but the right is playing on the resentment and insecurities of angry uneducated masses who are mad that erudite, New York Times reading types look down their collective noses at them and call them rednecks. But this is only partly “what the matter with Kansas” is. The people in the country ARE NOT that smart and ARE quite easily led. Look how many think Clinton’s little white house affair meant more than Bush attacking a sovereign country on false premises and losing almost 2,000 US soldiers who were unprecedentedly place in harms way for oil, business opportunities, and the restoration of US hegemony. They don’t care that every year the national median income slips by nearly $1000.00 or that almost 50million people many of them “middle-class” lack health care. If you soberly interview and inform people about issues you suddenly see that they are quite confused and that their natural instincts are actually left or populist. I, myself, work with a Penticostal madman from the hills of eastern Kentucky who thinks the rapture is right around the corner but if you talk economic policy with him he’s sounds downright Keynesian! The reason is simple. He’s POOR! Like most of the country his standard of living is going down! People can be misled and manipulated to follow agenda that have nothing to do with their interests if you use clever ploys that play on fears, insecurities, hatred, prejudice, long-held belief systems, and all manner of chauvanism. Doubt it?! Look at European History!
U Scare Me, you’re so right!! I AM rather into crystals and crystal balls!! (How did you know? Probably because you tend to stereotype! But as a “Gaian”, I could be one of the more scientific kind, the followers of Lovelock… I like his ideas, mind!)
Actually, I (would) prefer a black-mirror-like scrying glass. But my psi powers are VERY very weak, and about the only thing I can do is bust light bulbs with them - and that sporadically!!
I’m big on instinct though. And archetypes. They tell me a lot!
No, I’m not going to say precisely where I live/come from; not till Jack Barnes guesses. I’ll keep him guessing a while!
Ooooh, thank you, USM/US, from preventing all the “free world”, from being invaded!! Who by - Saddam Hussein? He seemed to have enough on his plate with his own country, until the US interfered, as they were bound to do… Couldn’t resist all that lovely thick black oil, could you, guys??!
What I am trying to SAY, USM, is that the elite of ALL rich countries - including that of non-western ones like Saudi Arabia - are ALL equally predatory; and all they are into is lust for neverending acquisition and conquest. This is a proven historical fact. There are very few exceptions. Steve’s Bill Gates and etc may be examples of such, but personally, I don’t think Gates is any kind of saint. I don’t know anything about Soros, really.
Anyway, the richest 5 or 10% AS A CLASS, are a menace! And the working class, allied with the most enlightened sectors of the middle class, which is, of course, still the biggest class these days (though the underclass is growing apace!). Well, all of us, will have to UNITE against the bloodsucking menaces. Of each and ANY country. We will have to form again a TRULY egalitarian society, with freedom and opportunity and a share in the wealth for ALL. Personally I don’t care if you adulate Marx or Jefferson… but I certainly wouldn’t bother for long with Ayn Rand!
Steve’s way, Lefty’s way, Margaret’s way, my way, Michael Moore’s way, the Trotskyists at wsws.org’s way - what’s the difference??
As long as it isn’t the way of the elitist predators and exploiters!
(And United States - or Arab - or anyone else - imperialists!)
Have I scared you enough with that??
Steve, actually there are a number of
leftists here who do post under multiple
aliases, the only question is how many ?
I’m sure there are more leftists on this
site because of the nature of ITT.
Which proves zip about the general population.
Actually I have criticized Bush on this website
quite a bit. I tried to explain to Margaret
the differences between neocons and libertarians
but it went right over her head.
The lewrockwell.com and antiwar.com sites are
the hardest hitting anti-Bush and antiwar sites
on the web. Don’t take my word for it.
Check them out.
Referring to blacks who commit crimes way out
of proportion to their numbers is not racism
but objective reality. Putting one’s head in
the sand on this matter is a major reason for
the Dems decline into a minority party.
Hundreds of libertarians have been elected
to local and state offices in the US.
Ron Paul in Congress but I’m not in the
party.
Rand never rationalized either public or
private crime, so you’re views here make
no sense. Maybe you should read her directly
and stop relying on stereotypes that are
inventions of her enemies.
There are as many conservatives above the Mason-Dixon line as below it. I wasn’t saying I was
glad there were so many of them becuase frankly
they are a decidedly mixed bag.
But Christine’s figures are correct and borne
out repeatedly by both polls & elections.
As for a Commie majority, ok, you wanna share
some of that stuff you’re smoking ?
Galloway put down Hitchens right after he put
down Norm Coleman.
It was beautiful ! I was with the Left on that
one.
Maybe I’ll get back to Ike later.
Yeah, you’d fit in the Bay Area.
It’s an open ward.
Liz,
Please teach me how to bust light bulbs and I’ll agree with all that other stuff you just said.
Can you bust the long florescent type of just the little round ones?
Steve, I think the personal growth bit
has been more of a devolution in your
case.
The overwhelmning thing that is so apparent
about such apostles of leftist arrogance
like yourself is you’re total inability
to see that someone else could honestly
have a different view. They have to be
either bought out or stupid, etc.
Marxism is identical to Nazism, the nazi
will dismiss an opponent as Jewish, etc.
Genetically determined. The marxist will
dismiss an opponent as a stooge of big
business, class determined.
Both views culminate in a statist-collectivist
society with tons of victims.
The Commies were Hitler’s inspiration for
mass extermination, concentration camps,
political prisoners and government control
over all aspects of society.
Read the 1920 German Nationalist Socialist
Peoples Party Platform, it reads like you,
Loz, lefty, Margaret, Merlin, Richard and
the other lefties here. The Right in Europe
is traditionally statist but Hitler was still
more of a leftist than a rightist even in
European terms.
By the way, the national median income is not slipping every year, far from it.
That’s the kind of Maxist nonsense MR has been
spreading for 60 years.
Christine,
First of all the main fallacy that libertarians and other more mainstream views make is the artificial separation of the state from capital. NEVER in the history of capitalism anywhere in the world did it come into existance as the historic social system which it is with out the copious assistance of the state in violently ripping up the old order and supplanting it with a new one based the domination of one class by another! Many people think of capitalism as an abstract form of human rationality that gradually became released and caused the evolution of the system we now call capitalism. Capitalism could not exist without the state. It is ahistorical to imagine Laisse Fairre economics. THere was never any such thing. Capitalism was created suddenly by the state’s enclosure of common resources which deprived people of economic independence and forced reliance on the capitalist and his system of commodity production for work and for consumer goods. This begins with textile cottage industries in rural England not with trade in the cities. Read Ellen M. Wood’s The Origins of Capitalism. Also, the state continues to play a huge role in the development of capitalism and in technology, labor market conditions, security, and in enabling the capitalists to externalize the costs and problems of their system on the society through regressive taxation and other forms of assistance. Under capitalism profits are privatized while losses are socialized. Look at the bailouts. Capitalism needs the state precisely because it is an irrational form of domination which a true workers’ democracy would not be. US capitalism is highly inefficient and energy intensive due to the automobile, urban sprawl, and an unfair concentration of wealth upwards which dictates much of these investment decisions. The state controls labor by making the current structure of our inefficient capital-intensive highly profitable economy as labor saving as possible. An economy based on rational planning and efficient mass transit and other types of labor intensive enterprises raise employment to the point that it would impinge on profits. The secret to the system is chronic stagnation and unemployment to maintain a large reserve army of unemployed to discipline labor and reduce wages. Capitalism loses all control and power otherwise.
USM, I think Liz maybe eats those light bulbs.
Those Europeans are very strange folk but the
good news is that they dying out along with
their crappy welfare states.
We should have dismissed NATO 50 years ago and
let those socialist boobs sink.
Steven,
You’re history is dead wrong but rather
than continue in an unproductive you sez-
I sez mode here, let me recommend Professor
Thomas DiLorenzo’s (Loyola College, Maryland)
How Capitalism Saved America. Recently published.
Capitalism was never created by the state and
in fact the capitalists are the ones who fought
the rebellions that eventually brought down the
feudal order. It is Marxist myth that there
cannot be a free society. Total laissez-faire
never existed but the closer we came to it was
the exact measure of our prosperity and freedom.
That government conspired with the Big Three to
destroy what was 99% privately own rail companies
is not indictment of capitalism but you’re
beloved interventionism.
Appreciate the reading recommendation but it has
to be a two-way street.
Christine….
Why can’t we have a society that values EQUALLY the contribution made by “hand and brain”?
Of COURSE you need thinkers and creative types and designers - and architects, Rand’s favorites - to come up with all the ideas for the artifacts that are to be built by the majority of the others - OR, indeed by ROBOTS, and machines, which in a decent society, everyone will have a stake in, ie a proper benefit from the labor of the machines… Ie, in a TRULY futuristic society, well, it HAS to be socialist, doesn’t it? I can’t see ANY other way of operating a HIGHLY technological society! (Even Star Trek Next Generation admits as much, albeit semi-tacitly.)
Because WHEN people are put out of work by machines - as they have been, so often, the modern auto industry being a prime example… Well, if they ALL own a “share” in those machines - and I mean one that stays with them their life long, not one that can be bought and sold….
Then in THAT case, while the machines manufactured the cars, or the future non-polluting vehicles, the ex-workers could be staying at home, PAID to study, to look after their families… And to have recreation!!
Or they could ALL go and be designers! And have a truly creative input into their own society. Impossible under present conditions…
Or to join StarFleet and go and explore friggin’ space for all I mind!!
(You conservatives always think too SMALL!!)
Anyway, it would be a very leisured, relaxed, wealthy society I project here - instead of a stressed-out, insecure crimefest ratrace, which we have today.
Let’s start with the concept of a national minimum income, paid to ALL - irrespective of ANYTHING!! Did you know that the US was GOING to have one, in the early Seventies? That it was something that was being SERIOUSLY discussed, in top circles, throughout the Sixties, when more of the upper class, were, in fact, true liberals?
(You could start, on a small scale, by allowing unemployed people to earn a very GENEROUS amount through casual work on top of their benefit, instead of having their benefit cut or taken away immediately. That’s a BIG problem in the country where I come from; and it’s one reason why it’s still not WORTH it for many unemployed or semi-invalids to start easing their way back into work…)
Edwin Locke, Reisman, Beyond Capital… Yes these are all interesting additions to anyone’s reading list, no doubt…
But WHY would one NEED all sorts of academics to tell one what was right and best for all of humanity, anyway?
Common sense will tell you, I think!! And a basic knowledge of history.
Robber baron capitalism led to disease and starvation in the streets.
If similar conditions are established nowadays - WHY would you expect a different result?
(And don’t anyone mention the Soviet Union to me! Facts: 1) They were better under the “Communists” than under the Tsar, who would have treated most of them far worse 2) Stalin was not a Socialist. He was an authoritarian, thuggish Georgian patriarch. (Rather like the louts from the Southern US states, come to think of it! Georgia = Georgia?? OK, I’m not saying you’re ALL louts!!) But at least the Russians were able to modernise a LITTLE under Lenin and then Stalin. At least their countryside provinces got friggin’ electricity. Their farms got tractors. Who was going to do that for them - the West? I don’t think so!)
USM -
Just the round ones, any size, not fluorescent (they don’t have an element, dummy! It’s the element I was referring to not the glass - though that’s happened at least once too!)
It can’t be taught. It’s inborn. It’s a bit like that movie about the electric guy, what was it called, now??
Someone will know!
Steve,
I appreciate your last post but you began it by saying the following:
***USM, as you can probably tell I don’t do put downs or name call people. I try to be respectful—something the far-right can learn something about!***
A couple of post ago you said: *** They’re just stupid fanatics (GOP) who aren’t smart enough to know any better than to support Bush***
I don’t know from what area you hail, but in my neck of the woods, when you paint an entire group as “stupid fanatics”, you just issued a put down. We will have to disagree on the war but I just can’t believe you have such a low opinion of the intelligence of American citizens. I feel when people of your belief can’t get a majority to go along it because they’re stupid. Maybe consider they are intelligent and don’t agree with you. I love vanilla ice cream and hate chocolate, but I don’t believe chocolate lovers are stupid.
I believe we should do all we can to pull our fellow citizens up. Progressive thought seems to be attack the wealthy and try and drag them down. Heck, I would love to be a wealthy rock star…but guess what?...I can’t sing. I don’t expect wealthy rock stars to not be wealthy rock stars because I can’t be one.
I appreciate your point of view, I just disagree with it.
Golly Gosh, Professor Thomas DiLorenzo…. From Maryland! All these (Southern) academics!
Got any that will write learned treatises on why slavery is/was necessary (I bet there were plenty before the Civil War!) or how to bring it back?!
They know how to bring it back. It’s called the prison-industrial complex. To go with the military-industrial complex. The latter which Jack Barnes mistakenly thinks it is possible to have capitalism without. REALLY capitalism has always depended on BOTH: both war and slavery.
OK, Christine, if you really want, I will try some of all that’s been recommended on here, but it will take a while. I don’t have a very good library near me; and Amazon has had enough money of mine to last them ten years. In my opinion. But as long as I can get a book in paperback… I’m always tempted! I only WISH I had a really good second-hand bookstore to hand…
Christine, you are ONLY right in that it was the bourgeois class who fought in the first revolutions against the upper class. (French, American.) That process of revolution was NEVER completed. It needs the class BELOW both of these to rise itself up, for society to FINALLY be whole and be as one. That is what dear prophet Marx predicted… (Wasn’t he inspired by prophet Isaiah, though? Unlike pure Marxists, I’m not shy about examining earlier and religious influences!)
Liz,
Please excuse my ignorance. I thought when you said you “busted light bulbs” that meant you busted light bulbs. Sorry. Heck, I can bust light bulb filaments. It may take me a couple hundred hours but I can do it. Everyone I’ve ever replaced has had a busted filament. I must have been borne with those psi powers also.
Do you prefer to bust the clear ones or the white ones?
Jack Barnes -
NO, I DON’T “eat those light bulbs”!
Your comment really made me laugh, though! With its air of disbelieving disgust!!
I knew I’d liven up this blog somehow…
What makes you so sure I’m a European? Locations, though the form asks for them, don’t appear on this site.
I tried to post in reply to one of your earlier posts on this blog but I don’t think it made it on here: probably because it was a few characters too long. I’ll go back and try again. It was important.
In the meantime, YOU are PERFECTLY WELCOME to explain to me
1) the differences between conservatives, neoconservatives and libertarians as YOU see them! (I still think you’re a typical conservative who just happens to be anti-war. But you’re also anti-black and anti-poor. What do you think of Arabs/Muslims, by the way? What do you believe should be the US response to terrorism - by ANY group?)
2) How you think America would/could have progressed without NATO? I mean, HOW would it have maintained its “sphere of influence”?
Let’s hear it from Professor Barnes… The Objectivist! (Objectivism my ass!)
Depends how FAST you get THROUGH them light bulbs, USM, my man!! Yes, we ALL know they have a finite life… the question is, just HOW finite??
There are ((electric) people who are always wearing out their computers, vacuum cleaners, wiping floppy disks, etc. It’s NOT such a great “talent” to have! Fortunately I don’t have it quite so bad… though I said I DID burst the glass (at least) once, didn’t I?
The real booger is that it’s not the conscious, but the unconscious mind that does it… I was costing myself too much in lightbulbs, so I had to “train” myself NOT to do it… I managed - not completely - by learning to control my emotions more and more… and not to suddenly get up when emotionally stirred up by something I read and press the light switch.
It doesn’t seem to work with pull cords… So it probably is just an extension of my body’s magnetic field travelling along the electrical wire. Overloading the filament, and so on.
My (late) mother used to BLAME me for it all the time! Only she said it was because I “pressed the light switch too quickly” or some such… she refused to recognise my latent psi power.
I, however, knew better!
Any MORE questions??
(I’d be even MORE interested if I could do MORE with it - for example, it would be REALLY cool, supposing I could, to log onto FreeRepublic.com and make their site go down… without so much as a hack!
Maybe when I join a coven!)
Common sense will tell that you that
the earth is flat, Liz. We really do
need thinkers or people who live the
life of mind to give us the biggger picture.
Joe Six-Pack is not going to be able to do
this.
“Egalitarianism As A Revolt Against Nature”
by Professor Murray N. Rothbard , second edition,
Mises Institute, is excellent in challenging the
premise of equality which he shows to be a
dangerous myth.
Some of us are frankly better than others.
It’s just a fact of life.
The USSR was a total nightmare in which the population ended up far worse than under the
Tsars, as bad as the Czars were. Stalin and
company killed over 100 million people, a
grim record only exceeded by Mao in China.
Liz, it was precisely the western capitalists
who did build the factories in the former USSR,
see Werner Keller’s East Minus West Equals Zero
and Antony Sutton’s three volume work on Western
Technology and Soviet Economic Development,
published by Stanford.
Such initial progress as they achieved was
the product of western capitalism.
Liz,
I don’t much like the Free Republic either but they do good work. Good place for the party faithful to go get energized. It is dangerous and exhausting work hanging around with people who can bust light bulb filaments.
I do have one last question since you asked. What is this Lovelock thing you like to follow. On the surface, that sounds like something I might like.
Yeah, Steve, my man!!
THIS is good stuff!! (Your comments to Christine.)
Libertarians (the right-wing kind) are always trying to envision capitalism without the broader context… Which never could be!
How about the enclosure of land in the sixteeth/seventeenth centuries? (In England.) That was what the Leveller’s revolt was all about, after all. Read www.counterpunch.org… if you have a good trawl, there’s several articles on there about that… I like the way that site covers history and all sorts of topics rather than just current affairs!
Where is Richard, by the way?
Richard??
Libertarianism believes in the complete separation
of state and economics,they oppose social controls
on abortion, prostitution, gambling, drugs and
so on as much they oppose economic interventions
like rent control, gun control, minimum wage laws,
price or wage controls, etc.
Neocons are either ex-Trots or ex-liberal Democrats who came out of the Hubert Humphrey
so-called cold war liberalism. They accept the
New Deal and the pernicious civil rights laws
that infringe on property rights. Some of them
want to outlaw pornography, abortion, etc.
Libertarians also believe in nonintervention
abroad, neocons do not. They want to invade
everyplace on Israel’s hit list and some that
aren’t !
Paleocons tend to agree with libertarians on
nonintervention abroad, repeal of civil rights
laws, mostly they are against the New Deal-
Great Society but they are social conservatives
and want to outlaw abortion, homosexuality,
drugs, etc. Very bad statist positions they
share with SOME neocons and which are opposed
by ALL libertarians.
I’ve known lots of Palestinians from when I lived
in SF Bay Area for 30 years plus.
I mostly am sympathetic to their cause.
It’s no more anti-semitic to oppose Israel
(contrary to what Margaret has been claiming)
than it is anti-black to oppose the very large
criminal element in that group.
Both Steve and myself have had lengthy, ongoing
exchanges with Margaret about her anti-Arab
racism and simplistic bible based pro-Israel
views.
Maryland is a border state, grew up there.
Some southern characteristics but more
northern.
USM—
James Lovelock, celebrated British biologist/ecologist/scientific thinker. His original book, the one that caused the biggest stir, was “Gaia: A New Look At Life On Earth”, which has recently been reissued.
It started all the fuss there has been since, which has rocked the scientific world a bit, though they like to pretend that it hasn’t, and that it was just a metaphor, etc… That concerns the philosophy of looking at the Earth (Gaia), and all its (Her!) creatures and processes, AS IF IT (She!) were ONE SINGLE ORGANISM… With a kind of “consciousness”, as most organisms do have…
It works very WELL, ecologically speaking, which is WHY it has been accepted as a scientific theory.
Other books by him are: “The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth” and “Gaia: Medicine for an Ailing Planet”.
There you are! There are a few for your reading list - better than a lot of books by right-wing psychopaths, anyway…
And if you go on Amazon.com, you’ll find a lot of books ABOUT James Lovelock and his theories, as well… He’s still causing plenty of fuss today! Bet all the rationalists hate him! Bet even some Marxists hate him! (They seem to hate Rupert Sheldrake, another big fave of mine.)
(Because they can’t bear to serve Her!)
Christine had a reasonable response to
Steve under the circumstances.
It’s often better to refer to sources
rather than reinvent the wheel every time.
US would have been better off without that
socialist boondoggle NATO. Just wasted trillions
of our dollars defending socialist bums in
Europe. Why we didn’t abandon NATO when Warsaw Pact collapsed is beyond me.
The repeal of the corn laws and other barriers
to free trade in the 19th century were the high
points of English civilization.
Steve, like the rest of the left, walks backward
into mythologizing the hellhole conditions of
the pre-capitalist world.
Rand had it right when she wrote we ought to go
kiss a dirty smokestack and give thanks for
capitalism and capitalists. I’d do it if I
could find any but the Comsymps who have run
the government since Wilson have destroyed
industry through regulations and taxes and
oh, lefties, any tax on industry is a tax on
you and me. These managed trade agreements
like WTO, NAFTA, ad nauseum, are not free trade
but part of a world government conspiracy to
have us ruled by cannibals in the UN and their
behind the scenes pull peddlers.
Since you haven’t named the alleged rightist
psychopaths, one assumes you can’t back up
that statement.
But the sources you recommended above are pure
Amazonian nut fantasy. One organism indeed !
Individualism is a biological fact.
See works of Roger J. Williams.
Also on early history, English & otherwise,
see The God of The Machine by Isabel Paterson.
So, Liz, what country do you live in ?
USM said:
“So you are inferring [sic] the “rule against perpetuities”, either in fact or principle, states it is a good idea that corporations should not be allowed to stay in business longer than 50 years? Is this what you really believe or is this another attempt to dodge? I really believe answering the previous question will allow everyone to see the true Progressive agenda. I believe we’ll learn what the phrase, ”Take America Back”, really means. I’ll try one more time.”
Can it be that conservatives are genetically incapable of argument without the aid of false premises?
I’m not sure what you meant when you said that I was “inferring” something. An inference is drawn from the non-express implications of another. Further, I haven’t dodged anything, that’s a conservative tactic. Moreover, I don’t speak for progressives or their agenda.
As for the rule against perpetuities, don’t be lazy USM. I’m not going to spoon feed you. You’re going to have to work for it. Look it up, do some of your own investigation. Try to engage in some independent thinking. The common law arose from the wisdom of 800 years of trial and error. Certainly, you can apply the wisdom of the ages to a proposed contemporary problem and come to some kind of conclusion, no?
So, if Libertarianism doesn’t believe in any - functions, it seems to me! of the state - what DOES it believe the state should be/do??
Have an army? Your other conservative friends would be all for that!
Raise taxes? Have a White House? What would it need to do ANY of that for, if we were returned to a primitive caveman state of every-man-for-himself?? (Which never WAS, anyway, because the original state of humanity was tribal!)
Build roads? I suppose you DO believe that there should be a state and that it should do things like build and maintain roads?
Or SHOULD it? According to Libertarians? (I HAVE met libertarians on the net before; and they aren’t all Randians, and some of them seemed a bit less right-wing and more pro-social than you! I know of one lady who is a libertarian because of her VERY unfortunate experience with a psychopathic US-Govt-approved private organisation called Straight Inc… which used brainwashing techniques derived from China… She now associates her unpleasant anti-drug experience with Marxism - THERE’S an elite trick for you!!! More about this sometime maybe.)
Mind you, if the State shouldn’t DO anything, or CONTROL anything.. why have a state?
You might as well call yourselves anarchists! But I know you WON’T because you’re basically too bourgeois and believe in conservative, bourgeois social forms… Ie, you most certainly DO believe in the nation-state, DON’T you? Not in some form of internationalism, without borders?
So what are you GOING on about, that the state shouldn’t do this or do that? WHATEVER SUITS THE FINANCIAL/SOCIAL ELITE, IT WILL DO!
And that includes maintaining standing armies and fighting with other countries and attempting to take over their resources!
STEVE - help me out!!
Mm. I’ve heard that some Neocons are ex-Trots. I’ve ALSO heard that some are ex-Stalinists! (Note: not all self-proclaimed Trots are real Trots!)
What are these “pernicious civil rights laws” that “impinge on property”?? That you and the Paeleocons are going on about? (Paeleocons are people like the late Strom Thurmond, ain’t they, but?)
What is so “pernicious” about civil rights laws, that say it is illegal to discriminate against racial minorities or by gender, in terms of employment, and renting accommodation, etc?
Why is THAT “anti-property”?
Anyway - as I SAID, re all my previous remarks about CRIME - how are PROPERTY RIGHTS TO BE MAINTAINED, in an UNEQUAL SOCIETY, without an extensive network of police (or soldiers/guards in a society that pre-dates them!), magistrates, judges, courts, prisons!
(Penitentiaries must be the most Darwinistic environments I have ever read about. Cf. Jack Henry Abbott’s “In the Belly of the Beast”... and every web site I visit on the topic! APPALLING!! And you Americans in particular encourage rape in prisons; no WONDER your soldiers can’t wait to get up to it abroad, seeing as that is what they do and/or set up as prison guards in prisons… WELL KNOWN FACT!!!)
So - ha ha, I’ve worked it out now! Rather than armies, though you’re going to need them, REALLY, aren’t you, in Libertopia, the MAIN function of the state will be to run a police force - and prisons! Right! NOW I know!!
Only, see, it does that ALREADY - under the prison-industrial complex! It works so well, from the elite’s point of view - WHY would you expect THEM to tinker with THAT, for the benefit of a few Libertarians??
OK, so say there’s a nuclear/environmental mini-holocaust or a small comet strikes the earth. SO you get a chance to set up Liberrandtopia.
So - first of all tell me what your state’s definitely NOT going to do? Standing army - yes/no?? What size??
But the ONE thing it will HAVE to do - seeing as your society is going to be based on Property rights - is maintain the police and prisons.
(Think we’re going to need a lot of those, in an America without social services? What do YOU think, eh??)
For, anyway - WHY should the lower classes, the economic underclass, have ANY regard for this property system, which would MOSTLY be concentrated in the hands of elite white males, as before… Which is the only reason you libertarians, Paeleocons etc are whining, already, because you’re such meanies as to resent the progress made by the other groups in the last fifty years!!
If they KNOW they can’t join it, or are more likely to die of overwork before they get anywhere - why should they listen? Or obey, YOUR ideas?
Prisons etc? Execution? But that’s COERCION - the surest way to a fascist dictatorship!
So REALLY what you’re proposing, in the event of a new society “after the comet”, is a fascist dictatorship. Right, I see.
(But don’t expect us blacks, women, commies etc to take it lying down!)
I tell you what Liberrandtopia really would be! It would be a HAVEN for
a) Criminals - plenty of them! From the lowliest/and/or most independent thief - some of them are sure to go all Randian on your ass as well…
To the biggest “Al Capone”!
b) Anarchists and small bands of left-wing activists and thoroughly pissed underclass who DON’T believe in your selfish property system and do EVERYTHING they can to smash it up
(You and Christine both seem to underestimate the power and role of RESENTMENT, in a society where most people feel exploited!)
c) Socialist networks who operate in a clandestine manner like the early Christians did
(We’d REALLY get a good recruiting pool from what YOU are proposing - it would be like the neofascists drowning the Koran in the toilet! The same effect that that has on the Muslims!)
d) Magicians and various weirdos - like me, really!!
(Another darling SF - well he did live there - net correspondent/blogger friend of mine has recommended me some fantasy novels by a fellow called China Mieville, which seem to entail all the above concepts!! Viva steampunk!)
Hmm. Try it Jack (and friends)! See just how far you get!!
Liz said:
“I don’t know much about the “rule against perpetuities”... it’s interesting that our common-law-inventing ancestors (the Anglo-Saxons?) thought of such a thing!
I assume, however, that it would not APPLY to a business that is handed down from father to son/daughter, in particular a skilled/craft business??”
Liz,
To be clear, I didn’t say that the rule against perpetuities applies to a business. Steve’s question is, should the life of a business be limited to 50 years?
I “inferred” from it that, at the 50 year mark, the subject business would have to be dissolved and liquidated. I’m not saying that I agree with Steve and I don’t know if he intended to be taken literally. But, I also infer from USM’s comments that he thinks that the notion of limiting the life of a business is outrageous.
So, the question becomes, SHOULD the rule against perpetuities apply to a business? Corporations didn’t exist at the time the rule was developed and as far as I know, the rule has never been applied to a corporation, which life is, theoretically, in perpetuity.
But, before you can answer the question, you have to know what the undelying public policy of this court made rule is. What purpose does it serve? Do the benefits of that purpose outweigh the detriments?
Liz, most of your tirades are really wordsalads.
Here’s just a very brief response, any laws that tell you whom you can or can’t hire, serve, sell
to or associate with violate individual rights
and property rights. Period. They are the flip
side of slavery and Jim Crow laws.
You apparently can’t distinguish a very limited
government that only uses force from a criminal
gang, state or otherwise, that initiates force.
How did you get to such an intellectually degenerate state ?
Police, army (defensive purposes only) and law courts. That’s it.
We know about resentment, she has mentioned envy
several times in her postings.
USM, lefty is dodging you’re perfectly appropriate
question. Just ignore him. He’s your basic liberal
retard. His mama had an abortion——him.
Liz,
I think you hit the nail on the head. In the ficticious libertarian utopia, the mafia takes over. How can the rugged individual hero of the libertarian fantasy survive much less compete against gangsters without the protection of the government and the enforcement of the rule of law?
Liz, Jack isn’t able to infer from your metaphor, the implied hypocracy of “southern intellectuals.” I’m not surprised.
I’ve been out apartment hunting with missbunni, so it’s been interesting to catch up upon arriving home.
One point of Jack’s absolutely needs correcting. Our current state of left-wing thought is so far removed from National Socialism that the very comparison is idiotic.
Hitler hated gays, being probably a latent homosexual himself. He encouraged the return of the arts from the esoteric and expressionist movements of the time, Georg Gros, Lionel Feininger, etc. to the classic “German” form. He encouraged book burnings of authors like Thomas Mann, Erique Maria Remarque, Franz Kafka and any Jewish authors.
The “Left” was perceived as the evil degrading beautiful classical German art and literature. Sie worden alle verboten. All was forbidden.
Today, we see the far Right once again trying to extinguish everything to the “Left” that doesn’t fit into the perceived beauty and balance of the extreme classical form, whether it be religion, lifestyle, economics or art.
In a word, the ill-stated statement of the site madman was “bass-ackwards”.
Christine,
I don’t know much about the history of the railways in the US. The libertarians always use that historic example as vindication of their social theories so I should investigate it. If you are telling me there was collusion between the state and the big three railways to consolidate the lines and create a monopoly I believe it. The state granted the land to the big railway interests anyhow. I also know if there is one thing about capitalism it is that the big fish eat the little fish, state or no state! I also know that the railroads and the farmers struggled over transportation costs and other issues and the railroad was no friend of the small farmer who asked for state intervention! I do not believe for a minuite that capitalism and freedom march in lockstep; Pinochet’s Chile etc. etc. The state is part of the general capitalist paradigm not separate. As for capitalists fighting for freedom, yes they opposed fuedalism but not slavery, apartheid, exploited prison labor, and hundreds of murderous dictatorships that supported capitalist exploitation. Capitalism is a system of domination, not a form of utilitarian rationality.
Liz, Its true some neo-cons were radicals in the 30s and the 60s.
Ooh! Steve, I’ve got to tell you something. (Thanks for your posts, by the way. I’m not sure though whether a business should be limited to 50 years - did you mean a CORPORATION? I mean, theoretically, you might get, say, an artisan sole trader, who starts working on his own account at 20 and lives to be a 100!)
But I’ve got a tidbit for you! I know LOTS of conservatives - all conservatives, Thatcherites as well, not just neocons, unless you count them ALL as neocons… Well I know that a lot (particularly I THINK Jewish ones for some reason (insecurity!) - though Hitchens is no Jew and he’s done the same! Well I know that they started as like, coffee-house left-wing intellectuals!)
How do I know… Ah… Because of family reasons! My stepsister’s uncle (therefore no-one related to me by blood) was once a Communist or something, and ended up as Thatcher’s speechwriter!! What was his name… I can’t for the life of me remember at present! But he was pretty well-known, and it’s a matter of family record.
(I think it was Alfred Sherman, actually!! Well, still IS… I looked him up on flaming Amazon, he’s on there with a new book in 2005… he must be ancient! Lord Tebbit’s given him a good write-up…)
What a shame I’m not a big fat hypocrite toadie, or else (maybe!) I could have capitalized on my “family” (not exactly!) connections! To make it as a journalist. Which I’m sure is what every good Libertarian would recommend. Hmm yes I’m sure that’s what Ann Coulter did.
Believe me?!
I agree with all of your above post addressed to Christine. “The state is part of the general capitalist paradigm not separate.”
Anyway, all this garbage about “freedom from welfare” all falls to pieces when one sees how (big) businesses actually OPERATE… All you have to do is read something like Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation” to learn about “corporate welfare”. It might have been the railways to start with, but in the 20th century a lot of it has been inordinate subsidies given to road-building and cars. (At the expense of rail and public transport.)
And to the defence industry. That’s why we have the Rocky Mountain Region so well-populated, and now a haven for the fundamentalist Right and “the new white flight”. Wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been a good strategic place to put missiles - and a nice place to create a haven for both neocons and white Christian fundamentalists! If the US elite hadn’t wanted it that way, it wouldn’t have planned it that way.
Once a business gets big enough, it starts pulling favors from the government. (Of course, most big businesses are owned by elite people anyway; the odd Bill Gates, Richard Branson etc are flukes… William F. Buckley and Richard Mellon Scaife and Steve Forbes are much more the norm!)
Rand might have called this “pull-peddling”, Jack, but the fact is, that IT IS WHAT HAPPENS - therefore, objective reality in a capitalist environment.
Jack, “wordsalads”, hmm… Well, I don’t try and write laconic poems in prose, the way you do…
So, you DIDN’T LIKE my coinage of “Liberrandtopia”,then? I thought it quite novel!
“Intellectually degenerate state”... Hmm. That’s the right-wing stooping to unqualified, insinuating insult again, isn’t it? Like you did with poor Richard many posts before, “insinuating” that he was incapable of looking after his 9-year-old-daughter (as a child! He never said THAT!) and that he shouldn’t have had her… sigh!
If only neocons and their ilk wouldn’t breed!
If only someone would compulsorily sterilize Ann Coulter!!
Well, I asked you, Jack, PRECISELY what the function of your hoped for state of the future, your Liberrandtopia (excuse me, but you so far have failed to name it!) would BE. I asked about armies, police, prisons, and roads. If you recall!
You seem to have given me an answer which ties in quite closely with the “solutions” favoured by very right-wing conservatives (but, as you pointed out, not necessarily neocons!)
Ie, that it should have a limited standing army, and raise taxes for certain other infrastructural functions.
However, most “small government” conservatives would go in for a bit MORE than what YOU are proposing… As Lefty said, I really DID hit the nail on the head, by predicting that your MAIN role for the state (and therefore the reason you cannot be an “anarchist” or “anarcho-capitalist” - I know Rand was against those, I’ve read Peikoff’s site) was that of POLICE FORCE. The main duty/value of a POLICE FORCE being to protect PROPERTY - against WHOM? Against those who have very little, or none - of course!!
(It interests me to ask what you would do with people who were simply too “feckless” - or underskilled perhaps - to get by in YOUR “perfectly just society”, without stealing - or else they would starve under your system. What would you DO with them, Jack? Put them in prison for - life? That would cost money/taxes!! Kill them? (Don’t be surprised when their families declare blood feud and come killing you and yours, then.)
Put them in the workhouse, like the 18th century Utilitarians? Put them in the galleys, like the ancient Romans?)
What are YOU, “President Jack”, going to do with all the people who don’t FIT? Your world?
What about the people who are too sick to work, and don’t have families to look after them, they being too poor or simply killed off because they couldn’t afford to go to a doctor under your system? What about a guy who is healthy enough - but in a wheelchair? But who is going to EMPLOY him - in a world full of ready wage slaves with two working legs, and no anti-discrimination legislation??
Yes. Your version of the state, then, does not mention infrastructural functions, such as roads, railways, airports… I was just checking, to see if it did!!
SO, Jack doesn’t believe in public road-building programs. What DOES he believe in then, infrastructure-wise? A return to the roads of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, perhaps, maintained by unfair “tolls” that locals and farmers are too poor to pay, full of pot-holes and such?
A monarch would have more sense than to let that situation last for long!
How about air traffic control?? Who would pay for those people, then?
Or, in Liberrandtopia, would we all be supposed to crash into each other, in our futuristic airplanes, flying cars and airships! (Thinking steampunk again! Can’t WAIT to read that China Mieville! I hear he’s a Trotskyist, yet his books are full of both science fiction and magic! Yum yum! Sounds just right for me!)
All things that have to be organised on a centralized basis, libertarians are no good at.
But of COURSE, Jack in his futuretopia needs plenty of POLICE, because he knows that “the nigras” will steal his property away from him, otherwise!!
Why do you THINK that blacks commit disproportionately more crime than whites, Jack? Could it be, because most of them belong to the most impoverished social groups, and live in areas that are totally hopeless? They used to be able to move up North in search of industrial jobs. Not any more.
Have you ever watched Michael Moore’s Oscar-winning masterpiece, Jack, “Bowling for Columbine”? (Boy I bet you right-wingers HATE it when a lefty like Mike does well! In YOUR economic system! Well, I suppose it shows you can corner a corner of the market for populist leftism!)
Watch the cartoon interlude: “A Short History of America.” That about says it all as to the attitudes concerning race in America, and the realities behind them, I think.
“Police, army and law courts. That’s it.”
Sure about the roads, now? And air traffic controllers?? And how about the navy?
How about the White House? If there’s going to be a president, Jack, who you surely hope will be you - well, you’ll need a palace! The White House must be at least as expensive to run as Buckingham Palace or Canberra House…
Individual rights and property rights, my friend, are worth NOTHING without human rights - the most basic of those being the rights to EAT, to have medical treatment, shelter and to SURVIVE.
Anyway, I don’t know how you can say that laws restricting property rights are equivalent to slavery - because in 18th-century post-feudalist society, slavery was - well - the way of life!!
Steve agrees with me and he knows that you, Jack, are full of shit!
As for resentment - more on that in some other post!
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