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Democracy.
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Has been defeated by capitalism. Fact. End of.
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Unfortunately it is the impure ones who make the rules.
No, the two go hand in hand. Democracy is a tool used by the capitalists to let us think we have any control, and power, over what happens.
Revolution is the tool to use against it, but it must be kept in check by the people, or else you end up with a Stalin in power.
The fat bankers will soon own everything lock stock and barrell. Every house ...ship ...bridge ...plantation ...that has some kind of mortgage attatched to it ...will be theirs. It's value will be low ...for a while. The plan then ...or usualy ...is they sell it back to you again when the upturn comes ...when they have tinkered with the means of production and distribution and consum ...you get the idea.
Ten pound a bag?
12£ and I'll thrown in some ads.
we will only have pure democracy when ALL member of goverment have no private interents full stop if an MP owns a company or is involved in one guess what kind of laws he will approve of ? or rather what logical laws he knows shoulkd be passed but will not breath a word about.
Which is ironic considering that it's normally the other way round...
Sweden? Not totally socialist certainly but the closest there has been.
Nope - it's capitalist* (including companies like Securitas and IKEA) and interestingly had to move more so in the early to mid 90's as they were finding it unsustainable to have so much social care and generating so little wealth to support it
* at least by the defenition most people use as capitalist - which is actually mixed economy.
It is true it is a capitalist society but it is also a social democracy with welfare at its heart. Tax high, and use the money to provide the best public services, infrastructure and care there is.
So while it might be part capitalist it is also part socialist, and as far removed from a free market, low tax pure capitalist society as one can be within a democratic framework.
Granted, though they are pretty much as far left as any country has ever been without turning into a dictatorship.
Any examples of that ?
All resulting in shit living conditions and public services for a significant proportion of the population.
To advocates of such system, the Swedish model is a nightmare only marginally less evil than actual communism.
So not too far at all... I think that kind of supports my argument
It could have been worse - we could have been back in the 70's with public services collapsing at even faster rate, with high taxation and industrial militancy added. The economy needed to be restructured - Sweden did the same in the 90s and has a higher proportion of non-nationlised industries than many European states
But at the end it would still be the high-tax, high-spend system that the more enthusiastic capitalism cheerleaders despise.
And the free-market economy that the left despises...
In fact you can see Sweden as one of the most succesful capitalist economies - a strong free market has produced the economic strength to provide the high spending.
Private industry owned by shareholders rather than the state, with limited regulation - it sounds free market to me*. It differs from the UK economy in degree, but not in kind.
* with my normal caveat is that in reality like all economies described as capitalist/free market it is in fact a mixed economy.
A full and complete free market economy would do away with such horrible concepts as public services, public healthcare etc, leaving "the market" to take care of such things. While even the US as a limited public healthcare system, it is certainly a lot closer to being a free market economy than Sweden. In fact the Swedes wouldn't rank too highly in the free market league, if there was such thing.
The point being that (IMO at least) the one overriding factor that best describes countries like Sweden is that it is a social democracy with welfare at its heart, rather than being a capitalist society. Of course it is actually both, but the former outweighs the latter.
Democracy existed well before capitalism did. It owes nothing to it.
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/chapters/pdf/index2008_execsum.pdf
Not in many countries it didn't (and don't claim ancient Greece was a democracy - it wasn't if you were a slave, a woman or a serf). The rise of democracy has been intertwined with the rise of capitalism. Currently there is not one democracy that couldn't be described as capitalist (though there are some capitalist economies which aren't democratic).
The evidence seems to show that democracy and capitalism thrive better together than any of the alternatives.
However it is my belief that for all its faults democracy is a commendable and laudable rule system that should be praised, while capitalism has simply worked out to be the least bad monetary system we know in practice, but it is still a deeply unpleasant and ugly one that promotes greed and selfishness above everything else. Not something one might be naturally inclined to sing the praises of...
At the risk of being argumentative for the sake of it you could argue that democracy promotes mob-rule, lowest common demoninator politics and people voting for their own selfish interests.
However all political and economic systems are flawed, by the fact they have to deal with human beings. Capitalism, like democracy, just happens to be the most workable and pleasant yet discovered.