A classic example of the failure of socialism

Racist how do you figure? I'm white i'm just telling it like I see it

 

I don't see much evidence of this. I don't call just being kicked out of office after a few years (assuming that even happens) as paying for bad decisions.

I don't see public servants pay personally for bad decisions that they deliberately make.

I don't see people on corporate boards paying for the bad decisions they make (that is usually left to the fictitious company, which is in reality all the workers who don't get as much because the "company" has to pay for the sins of past board members).

And I don't see that many people taking personal responsibility for themselves when they can just pick one of the many vast laws out there to get something from the system.

Australia as a whole is anything but responsible and the government and it's laws are the mechanism which they use to abrogate responsibility and "protect" themselves from the free market. Personally, I call that socialism.

 

Really?

I call it "irresponsible" or just "bad government".

If we're going to use words outside of their definition then you could just as easily say "Australia is soooo Kyle Sandilands".

 

OK, so I went against my own rule. I realised straight after I wrote that someone was going to call me on it but decided not to edit.

I don't think you can get good government. If we can get good govt, then why haven't we done it?

 

Why do we spend our time analysing the faults of the world when in reality it is a personal problem?

By definition, 50% of the population is below average. It just takes one of the positives to buddy up with one of the negatives and help steer that person towards prosperity. If enough people do this, we would not need to set our sights on 35 million South Africans, just one or two people. It's a lot easier. As my signature states, "Public servitude is the price we pay for the good life."

 

That has nothing to do with economic or political systems. Big.AD said it perfectly, its just bad or irresponsible people abusing their power, something which could happen in any system =D.

And I can see perfectly good examples right now on television with Bo Xilai being arrested almost immediately after accusations arose under a communist system in China and Craig Thompson managing to evade police investigations for well over a decade under a capitalist/democratic system in Australia. Nobody would claim that that means communism is definitely a fairer and more just system than capitalism and democracy right?

Also as a final comment, there's a problem I've noticed with economists who constantly flaunt the free market as a perfect solution to corruption and what not. But if we really do believe in a free market, then certainly corruption and bribery would be legalized and be allowed to flourish because if it allows for a "better" product to be delivered ("better" meaning that consumers decide to purchase the product willingly knowing that their product was the result of bribery). In a free market, what's there to stop politicians from trying to abrogate responsibility and protect themselves from criminal prosecution, they should be allowed to because its just an economic transaction between two parties which is beneficial to both.

 

I advocate the true free market, or Anarcho-Capitalism, so that answers the question about politicians.

I will never claim that a free market would be perfect because perfection is denied us.

The free market that is usually talked about is where services are provided not by the govt, but by competitive private enterprise, so the govt is put of the equation.

Your example is like saying why don't mobile phones which are produced by corruption and bribery are sold the most? Answer, because politicians aren't involved there is no facility for corruption and bribery.

EDIT: link not working

 

So if you need a car for business, it would be okay for me (as a competitor) to pay your mechanic to keep it in the workshop for a month while I go out and and start supplying all your customers? (Obviously you're welcome to outbid me to get your car back sooner.)

 

Just because its now no longer against the law doesn't make it any better, it makes it worse. By removing any laws, you would allow monopolies to run wild. And no, I don't believe the argument that a free market would destroy monopolies, if anything it would allow billionaires to just shake hands and make pacts (especially true with natural resources).

 

Greed. Stupidity. Naive optimism. Anyone of a number of reasons.

 

Ooh, goodie, challenges.

There are so many cars available for businesses I really can't imagine this being in any way cost-effective. If you were to do that I imagine you would be losing money pretty fast.

If you re talking about big corporates, don't forget that they currently get govts to create rules and structures that favour big corporations. In a free market, all the "corporation is legally a person" stuff would not exist. I don't deny monopolies wouldn't exist. But they don't last forever. Eventually people notice gaps in the market and rush to try to fill them. Big companies over time become bureaucratic and unable to innovate. Witness all these big internet companies now patent trolling to get money because they've run out of ideas.

My point exactly.

 

I mean your particular car at your particular mechanic. I'd only need to pay people to keep you out of action long enough for you to go broke.

 

1) While its definitely true that corporations force governments to create rules and structures to favor themselves, that's not the fault of socialism. Its the fault of the free market that lets them set a price on creating these laws. Remember in your sense of socialism (which I gather to be based on a Marxist or Maoist ideology), the government is always more powerful than the corporations. I think its important to note that we HAVE had a free market and pre-anarchist society decades and centuries ago (post-revolution America, 1800s and 1700s in Europe) with the East Indian Company and Standard Oil. But governments were forced to step in to break them up exactly because they were allowed to run rampant simply because they had so much resources that they could just buy out everyone and it was incredibly difficult for small businesses to compete. Case in point, Woolies has been able to crush local gorcers for decades simply by constantly lowering their prices to beat the grocers, they didn't need to care about taking losses because their market cap is so large. However, the family run grocer doesn't have the same market capital and hence will eventually have to throw up their hands and walk away.

And I wouldn't say these patent companies are patent trolling because they have run out of ideas. I would say they are doing it because they can do both and why not patent troll for another source of income. The money for R&D doesn't need to come from a single source.

 

Good point, but the answer to that would be that when Hawkeye gave the car to the mechanic, a contract was created between them.
Therefore, by the mechanic keeping his car due to your bribe, the mechanic would leave himself open to a damages claim.
Whether the damages claim is enough to compensate Hawkeye, whether he could get his customers back or whether it would still be rational for the mechanic to accept the bribe and wear the damage claim is another story.

That's the thing - it is impossible to have an unfettered market - even the most hardcore adherents of the free market have a place for government within it.
That is, the protection of private property and contracts.

But I think it would be quite tiring to live in such a rat race society day in and day out.

 

Right, sorry. Misread it.

There will still be law, private law and still be such a thing as reputation.

Any mechanic that got a reputation for this kind of stuff would probably not be in business for very long.

If the mechanic was constantly holding off on you, you could say you had enough and arrange to take it to another mechanic. If the mechanic refused you could go to your security agency and arrange for them to get your property back for you.

 

America had a mostly, but not entirely free market in the 19th-early 20th century. Remember there was still such a thing as slavery for much of that time and the govt was around, albeit much smaller.

Pre-anarchist? I don't even know what that means...

East Indian Company had a govt charter if I remember correctly. Standard Oil was indeed a monopoly but isn't it true that they drove down the price of oil to ridiculous lows? What's so terrible about that? Who knows what the long run would have brought? If they tried abusing their customers then alternatives would arise. I think that had more to do with the competitors not being able to compete.

Govt's prefer and favour large companies. They prefer cartels over monopolies because everyone knows monopolies are bad. You can see this in all the bailout mentality. There are various reasons behind it, more jobs in bigger companies which govt has to protect so companies know the bigger they get the more they can expect from govt. The fact that politicians can get cushy jobs with big corporates when they leave, etc..

 

1) Yes, the East Indian Company was hit by that government charter after the government realized that they were running a monopoly.

2) Yes, the oil prices did go down. But that's exactly the same example as the Woolies one I brought up except Rockerfeller was bribing the railroad companies instead. If Standard Oil had not been broken up, they could set the price of oil to whatever they wanted and nobody could have done anything about it. We can see that would have easily been the result in the long run because:
a) OPEC now controls the price of oil and sets it to whatever the want
b) Its been well over two decade since people started noticing their abuse and there are no viable alternatives to oil in sight

3) Governments don't favour anything, they simply only care about themselves. I don't believe the whole, "governments are bad and can't run anything well, everything should be left to the individual etc etc" as if a government is some sort of alien organization. They are people just like us and at the end of the day, a government is nothing more than a group of individuals making decisions much like any other company. Both of those reasons are just them caring about themselves, they don't really give a damn about the thousands of jobs that would be made redundant if the finance companies failed. They simply thought that at the time, they would lose their elections if they didn't bail out those finance companies.

Unfettered free markets would ruin the world because it acts under the assumption that alternatives are infinite and that there would always be someone smarter than the next guy, the world's resources are finite. But likewise, if you have a government that regulates the free market, it is inevitable that somebody somewhere is going to find a way to bribe the government for their own benefits and we'll have another situation like this again.

 

That's why I believe the only possible defence to the corruption of any social or economic system is the education of the people.

 

1) I'm not an expert on this so I'll leave this one.
2) Well, OPEC is a cartel of govts. I believe Woolies is probably favoured by the govt though don't know for sure and if evidence is presented to the contrary I would be willing to look at it.
3) Agree entirely with first paragraph.
Don't agree that free markets would ruin the world. I believe that is mostly govt propaganda.

 

Why would it be a rat race society?

Decades ago, when there was less government, people could survive quite well on one income.
Now we have the biggest most expensive govts in the world and people need 2 incomes to get by and many decide not to have children because they can't afford it.

Hmmm, I wonder if they are related....

I think if we didn't have a huge parasite class feeding off us, life might be easier for many of us, if not for the parasite class itself obviously (who btw pump out all the propaganda about how we need them).