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[This message has been edited by Steelgate (edited 07-09-2001).]
"I'd rather have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it."
This is why people protested in Genoa:
1. 800 million people in the world are severely malnourished or starving.
2. 10% of the children in the poor countries of the world die before their fifth birthday.
40,000 children in poor countries die every day through preventable diseases - the equivalent of dropping a bomb similar to the one dropped on Hiroshima on the poor children of the world every three days.
3. About 11 million people are homeless in the world. One person in three in poor countries is homeless or in severely sub-standard housing.
A third of the population in most third world countries are squatters.
4. 37 million people have been driven from their homes by violence or armed conflict, 80% of them women and children. The international arms trade has a lot to do with this.
5. 400 million people live under military dictatorships propped up by multinationals that earn huge profits from the cheap labour these regimes provide
6. 10% of the Earth's species could be lost within a few years.
7. If present rates of destruction continue, tropical forests have at most a decade of life.
8. World military spending is $778 billion per year.
[This message has been edited by Steelgate (edited 07-09-2001).]
"I'd rather have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it."
"I'd rather have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it."
well, if nike dreduced it's gigantic margins then it could probably quite easily pay a decent wage and still keep it's prices unmoved. Fact is they won't becuase they don't care about anyone or anything other than their balance sheet/shareholders. Some people find that despicable, and others don't. Some people want to turn the system on its head, others don't. Some people are good people, others are selfish scum, and so the world turns. Until human selfishness causes fuck up.
So learn to make your own. Move to Cambodia and learn to grow rice. Raise chickens. Harvest bananas. Raise water buffalo and make your own clothes.
Do you think computers would exist without those multinationals? Or food produced and distributed as well as it is? Or medicine advanced to the point it is?
The great advances of agriculture (sarcasm intended) in China, Vietnam and Cuba illustrate only too well the effectiveness of non-capitilist systems.
Food distributed as well as it is? Well tell that to the staving 3rd world while we sit on surplus mountains of produce because our farms are geared to profit not need
Also Cuba is doing quite well when it comes to farming. While they still suffer from sporadic shortages of various food items, that is not the fault of Cuban farmers, who today produce more food with far less pesticides than they did in the 1980s. Rather, those shortages, when they occur, are more a result of the economic isolation of the island nation enforced by its northern neighbour, the United States.
Turing, not Turin. Turin is a city. Alan Turning was a Cambridge mathematics don who worked at Bletchley Park and developed such concepts as the Turing Machine and Turing Test for artificial intelligence.
Could today's advanced scientific theories have been formulated without capitalist precursors? We can not be sure, but I suspect not. Reason? Division and specialisation of labour allows deep scientific research. If we all had to grow our own food, build our own homes &c. we'd never have time for philosophy, science &c.
[This message has been edited by Steelgate (edited 07-09-2001).]
And if building homes and growing food would keep us so busy – how can you explain the invention of the wheel? It came about in a time long before capitalism but our ancestors still found time to come up with that useful little idea
Posted by Steelgate:
"gi_janearng, I am talkng about workers who work in factories in the Third World owned by multinational companies like Gap and Nike and workers on coffee plantations where firms like Starbucks buy their coffee from these workers are exploited. The multi-nationals are exploiting the Third World for profit. "
Who isn't exploited in their jobs at their workplace? Not that I am condoning sweatshops and childlabor, but give me a break. I might as well start crying foul about my job here in the military. My supervisor finds out how well I work and exploits me to his benefit. FOUL!!!
"Avauncez! To Defend and Serve!"
Again, more hypocrisy. On one topic these fools tell us to stay out of other countries affairs when it comes to military action. Yet when it come to the touchy feely politically correct crap, they don't mind butting in.
Thank god we decided to break away from your backwards little country.
"I'd rather have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it."
Bollocks. First, a comparison to the 50s would be much more valid than a comparison to the 80s. Cuba was once able to export agricultural products, and to feed their own population with no great difficulty. Poverty in Cuba wasn't measured by starvation but by income. In the 80s, it was measured by starvation. The fact that they have improved on the disaster that Castro and Communism brought to them is no great achievement.
"I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon-if I can. I seek opportunity-not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia. I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud, and unafraid; to think and act for myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations, and to face the world boldly and say, this I have done. All this is what it means to be an American."
-Dean Alfange, creed. -Who’s who in America, 1984-85, Vol. 1, page 42
Maybe it should have been "this is what it means to be a capitilist".
Shell, this bunch of corporate bastards won over the competition with an impressive three pronged attack, nominated for their funding of the climate-negotiation-wrecking Global Climate Coalition, their activities in Nigeria (human rights meets the Shell-funded army...) and polluting beyond the cause of duty, and BP Amoco with their continued sponsorship of death squads in Colombia. And Esso (ExxonMobil in the US) gave more dollars than any other company to get the Kyoto treaty-bustin' halfwit George Bush in the White House. As soon as he got it into office, whoosh goes the international agreement on global warming. But there's more: an international human rights group has filed a lawsuit against the ExxonMobil oil, accusing them of actively abetting human rights abuses in Indonesia. Find out more at www.stopesso.com
Sean_K, socialism is not about having the state look after you, it is about the means of production being democratically controlled by the workers, as it is the workers who produce all the wealth under capitalism.
[This message has been edited by Steelgate (edited 08-09-2001).]
:: coughs :: Bullshit :: coughs ::
You really haven't grasped the basic principle of division and specialisation of labour. It increases productivity. Now, do the maths. If productivity increases faster than demand we get a production surplus. Surplusses are inefficient. So either
(a) The manufacturers make something else;
(b) The workers take time off so they don't produce as much;
(c) The surplus is sold.
So, on to your final point. Do we produce exactly what we ourselves need? No. We produce as much as we can sell, because demand almost always exceeds supply (for nails, computers, cars, widgets, whatever). We trade using money becuase it serves as a standardised medium of exchange. Getting it yet?
Corporatism, super-profits, these are the things you're railing against. Capitalism qua capitalism is no great evil - it is, in fact, the best method we've yet found for dealing with the demands of life.
Really, seriously, I think you should read Wealth of Nations. Just the first half-a-dozen chapters would do. It's not a hard book to get hold of, and quite easy to read. Even if you don't like "capitalism" you should enjoy reading about it. Please, humour me. Expose yourself to some new ideas - broaden your horizons. <IMG alt="image" SRC="http://www.thesite.org/ubb/smile.gif">
Capitalism is not the best system. Western economies crashed in 1929 when share prices fell on the New York stock exchange and in 1997 the economies of Indonesia and South Korea collapsed as well. That shows how bad capitalism is. The American economy is going into recession now see this.
Besides, are you really going to try and say that if we were in a pure communist economy that everything would be fine? There are too many lazy people out there and they don't want to work. So are you going to take their work load too? That is what would happen. Unless you believe in killing all those who are not efficient enough for you.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I say that although working 25 hours a day for tuppence if you're lucky may not be considered desirable, it cannot be called slavery without some grave risk of terminological inexactitiude.
My favourite question: Why?
Actually, the survival of capitalism proves that it is the best system yet to emerge.
Also, you are being horrifically naive if you think that no market must ever be allowed to drop. For crying out loud, the Great Depression was absolute peanuts compared to the economic growth over the past 2000 years. Looking at a graph of economic strength over any time period is like looking at one of those beautiful fractals like the Mandelbrot Set: you get ups and downs at all levels. It's utterly indisputable that the overall trend is up, though.
Capitalism is bad because it is the working class who produce all the wealth under capitalism but most of the profits of industry go to the bosses who own the means of production. Therefore I am in favour of a system where the workers democratically control the means of production not the bosses, and plan production for need not profit.
Why do they deserve the same wages? I earn about 20k a year and I am always short of cash. If some chinese guy working in a nike factory earned 20k a year he would be one of the richest people in the country.
The price of living in the 3rd world is a FRACTION of the cost of living here..Their wages should be at an appropriate level in relation to their living costs.
If 15p a week can buy the food and clothes a chinese guy needs then that is fine for him.
"An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue." --Henry James
BullSHIT! Labour unions were savagely opposed in the USA, UK and many other countries even so recently as the Nineteenth Century. There has been great bloodshed over "workers' rights" in the Western world. To say that "no one died fighting for these conditions" is an untruth of the first order.
You keep on harping on about "produce for need, not for profit." Okay, for one thing, a certain amount of profit is one of the four standard (and necessary) rewards for an activity according to most leading economic models. Once again, I contend that you oppose super-normal profits, not profit itself. Secondly, since the demand is greater than the supply ability at present, the distinction you attempt to draw is meaningless.
Steelgate, you are without doubt the funniest guy/gal I have ever come across. You are even more innocent and naive than my seven year old son!
I have a couple of questions for you, they need straight answers really, rather than the babble you give everyone else - remember this isn't a party political broadcast and you aren't going to convince anyone here to convert to communism (hence why your hypothesis would fail), so cut the crap and answer some queations for me:
1. In a communist state, WHO decides what is 'needed' and what gets made?
2. How is this decision made?
3. In the event of a 50:50 split decision, who has the casting 'vote'?
4. If 300,000 people marched on Genoa, why do you think that approx 4 BILLION didn't?
5. In the exchange of services, which you referred to earlier, is a heart transplant equivalent to a take-away from a kebab restaurant? If so, how come? If not, why not?
6. If 90% of work is wasted, come the revolution, what will 90% of the workforce do all day? Afterall by this reckoning 10% produce all that we need at the moment. In fact, in the west, we have a surplus which will feed the 3rd world.
7. If this life is utopia, why aren't you ACTUALLY living it? Why buy a computer and I bet you have a job, and buy clothes, food etc. Or is this an example of the 'do as I say, not as I do' mentality usually associated with socialists?
8. I work for the Govt and not a corporation and I, like most of my fellow workers feel that we are exploited? Am I working for profit then? If so, who gets these profits?
Can't you answer these questions then?