[Senter]

OK, so if I live in a socialist nation I could become a billionaire if I work hard? Is that correct? Could I still practice capitalism in a socialist nation?

I said "it's also silly to think you would be required to share your wealth under socialism." I didn't say anything about BUILDING wealth under socialism. And of course, if socialism has been fully established in a nation as a finished, functioning system, then by definition you most likely would not be allowed to start a business that included employees and produced a privately-owned profit. Laws would specify, in all likelihood, that business profits must be distributed according to Articles of Incorporation that provided for the business to be a worker-owned, worker controlled cooperative enterprise under the laws of the state.

Bill Gates reveals the 2 reasons he's giving away his $90 billion fortune

Irrelevant. He doesn't live under socialism.

Calories in>calories out = obesity. No point in denying this.

I will. It's not that simple. Do you know the effect hydrogenated oil (Crisco for example) has on health? As a former chemist who worked in a lab where we hydrogenated oils, I know what it's about and the effect of cis-trans isomers have. Also, do you know the effects HFCS has on the body? (More to follow.)

High-income countries have greater rates of obesity than middle- and low-income countries (1). Countries that develop wealth also develop obesity; for instance, with economic growth in China and India, obesity rates have increased by several-fold (1). The international trend is that greater obesity tracks with greater wealth (2,3).
Poverty and Obesity in the US

"Obesity is a complex health issue to address. Obesity results from a combination of causes and contributing factors, including individual factors such as behavior and genetics. Behaviors can include dietary patterns, physical activity, inactivity, medication use, and other exposures. Additional contributing factors in our society include the food and physical activity environment, education and skills, and food marketing and promotion."
https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/adult/causes.html

Certainly calorie intake is a big factor, and calorie intake increases when the diet is confined to low-cost, low-quality foods and "junk foods". Hence, in the US we find higher rates of obesity among the poorer sections of society, although it is a complex subject with influences of ethnicity, race, and family history.

"Overall, men and women with college degrees had lower obesity prevalence compared with those with less education."
"Among women, obesity prevalence was lower in the highest income group than in the middle and lowest income groups. This pattern was observed among non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic Asian, and Hispanic women." - https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

But this is getting off-topic.

[Senter]

Here we go again: This is a favorite fallacy of lefties. Of course, the most famous one is that we never had real socialism.

There are zillions of definitions of socialism and this gives the left the opportunity to make false and illogical statements. It is fertile ground for those that seek to dupe people with nice words and does not take into account human nature.

Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production and workers' self-management,[10] as well as the political theories and movements associated with them.[11] Social ownership can be public, collective or cooperative ownership, or citizen ownership of equity.[12] There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them,[13] with social ownership being the common element shared by its various forms. WIKI

Compañero POD: Could you care to describe what was the initial "means of production" Steve Jobs and Bill gates had when they develop their ideas? It was their brains. Are we going to nationalize the brains of creative people.

What is the "means of production" of UBER or LYFT?

You didn't identify the source of that "definition" but I recognize it a a capitalist one. How about quoting the source of modern and historical socialists' ideas, .... Karl Marx?

To him, socialism constitutes a complete rejection of worker exploitation by "masters" which are usually unaccountable business owners. His characterizations include "cast off the chains of wage slavery" and "workers' freedom from exploitation" and "the end of expropriation of labor power for private profit". As such it's about elimination of business owners lording it over workers who have no say in their own work.

For those who can understand simple language, socialism is an economic system in which the workers own and control the MoP. It is a system in which private ownership of business for private profit is banned.

Socialism is a departure from the work relationships in which workers are directed, managed, and organized by an owning and managing class.

As such, "collective ownership" that consists of government ownership, control, and management of the work force and the MoP DOES NOT REPRESENT A CHANGE IN THE RELATIONSHIP OF WORKER TO MANAGING CLASS.
Rather, the workers' relationship to management remains unchanged, and is therefore NOT SOCIALISM, except in the definitions promulgated by capitalists.

[Senter]

.... Yes, it is not formally called socialism. But, the family unit pretty much behaves like a socialist state. I share everything with my wife and kids.

Do you really think you can call it actual "socialism" if workers are not liberated from exploitative relationships?

[Tainari88]

Do you really think you can call it actual "socialism" if workers are not liberated from exploitative relationships?

Senter, Julian is going to continue to insist on shit that is not what the real definitions are about.

You already said it. He believes propaganda. Not some reputable sources for his information.

He insists on stuff that has nothing to do with his subject. He doesn't know his subject and as you found out on your own he makes stuff up as he goes along.

In another thread he admitted to me he doesn't read what others post. The answer was in your information to one of his questions. But he doesn't read it.

Why? His answers are based on propaganda and not doing work.

It is almost impossible for him to understand what he is trying to convey because he has to insist on fantasy ideas of what he wants something to be.

Mondragon he doesn't get because the only model he understands is the propaganda against socialist models that he has been told by pro capitalists doing disinformation campaigns.

He is one of the posters with the worst study habits on a subject I have ever come across in my life.

[Rich]

First of all there has never yet been a country in which an established, functioning economic system has been based on workers actually owning and controlling the MoP (businesses). So it is a false statement that claims socialism has never worked. Neither has any attempt to put a human settlement on Mars.

Socialism has never worked well, as a peace time system. One could debate its merit as a war time system. All of the major participants made significant steps in the direction of Socialism. The factory committees were a signifiant part of the the Russian Revolution even if the Bolsheviks fairly quickly sought to emasculate them and centralise power. Your comparison with Martian settlement is absurd. There have been many attempts at socialism, whether you liked the methods they chose to achieve that or not. There have been no attempts to launch a manned mission to Mars.

[Tainari88]

Socialism has never worked well, as a peace time system. One could debate its merit as a war time system. All of the major participants made significant steps in the direction of Socialism. The factory committees were a signifiant part of the the Russian Revolution even if the Bolsheviks fairly quickly sought to emasculate them and centralise power. Your comparison with Martian settlement is absurd. There have been many attempts at socialism, whether you liked the methods they chose to achieve that or not. There have been no attempts to launch a manned mission to Mars.

Look Rich, if you deal with just the realities of what is wrong with capitalism? You find the answer to why socialism became a result of the instability inherent in capitalist models. You got a lot of obvious reasons.

Why did FDR introduce the New Deal in the USA? Because capitalism with the boom or bust stuff for ordinary wage earning workers? If you don't have a safety net and the capitalists don't want to use workers? Because of many reasons having to do with the volatility of capitalist markets, you have violent social unrest. People need to pay rent, eat, and live.

I live in a society where the wages are very very low. Many people here do informal jobs, odd jobs, and many other ways of staying afloat. It is a regular outcome for a capitalist model. Socialist safety net programs keeps poor people from rioting, getting violent and having social unrest and instability. It also allows people to consume both services and products that are normally not easy to consume. But how much should we get people to consume? Got to re-examine the reasons why people buy products in the first place.

There are many models that can work very well advancing socialism. But it breaks apart the way capitalism syphons off profits and distributes its wealth. And that is why they resist all the very well done socialist models from becoming the principal and central model. The excuses are that it doesn't work. Of course it works. It just won't follow what @Senter stated in a society that only allows a dominant form of wealth accumulation.

Monopolies are very consistent in capitalist models. The laws back capitalistic models not socialist ones.

Democracy? Popular votes are not even working in the USA. What kind of democracy works? The non majority kind? Lol. Beacon of democracy the USA is currently not. Non popular vote ones? It is ridiculous the amount of denial we are living in.

There are enough resources and enough human beings working for decades with responsibility to be able to give everyone who needs a basic standard of living a decent education, health care, and housing and training, and a very vested interest in being a part of their work place, and making it highly democratic and productive....but if the people who keep insisting that it can't be done? Keep with their chanting the lie that cooperative models for the economic future of the world is never
going to work forever? It will take a lot longer than necessary Rich. But the socialism is coming in full force. It has to....each system has to deal with conditions. Sitting on the potential of hundreds of millions of workers all over the world and denying huge groups basic living standards won't go without a fight for a thousand years...no, that stuff is going to go out the window within a certain time frame. What needs to happen is that tiny fractions of people can't dominate all resources or the majority of resources. It will create the polarization in interests we are currently seeing and answer is going to be some serious conflict.

Once it does? People will be saying...why were the capitalists so intransigent? This new system that is socializing the workplace for democracy and having worker owned cooperative models and socialist distributions is a much better solution to top down power structures.

It is obivous. It is obvious to those not married to old capitalist policies who are scared shitless of being realistic about where the wealth comes from. Not from one or two fat cats, but from the vast seas of working people being responsible and consuming, making, and being the source of all wealth for the entire system.

[Tainari88]

See this short five minute video:

They deal with it by keeping large groups with differing businesses and they all basically share a bunch of risk and a bunch of wealth. By not allowing it to be so top heavy they avoid job loss. More people should adopt it. The beginning of a socializing and democratizing the entire system.

With more expansion within a lot of cooperatives. But the stock market people don't like it. And the capitalistic traditional models hate it.

You got to start dealing with a change in mentality. Because the lay off and let people who want to work rot and never get a living that is secure is going to be a big big problem.

Some more in depth University of San Diego business school lecture on Mondragon:

[Julian658]

You didn't identify the source of that "definition" but I recognize it a a capitalist one. How about quoting the source of modern and historical socialists' ideas, .... Karl Marx?

Karl Marx described the flaws of capitalism in very elegant manner. He is correct! Working for another human is a form of slavery. In every generation millions fall in love with the ideas of Marx . However, the prescription to fix the problems have has not worked, The prescription has failed time after time.

To him, socialism constitutes a complete rejection of worker exploitation by "masters" which are usually unaccountable business owners. His characterizations include "cast off the chains of wage slavery" and "workers' freedom from exploitation" and "the end of expropriation of labor power for private profit". As such it's about elimination of business owners lording it over workers who have no say in their own work.

I agree 100%. However, the solutions to this problem have not worked.

For those who can understand simple language, socialism is an economic system in which the workers own and control the MoP. It is a system in which private ownership of business for private profit is banned.

Note the part in bold. That is why socialism is always an authoritarian oppressive system. There is NO FREEDOM.

Socialism is a departure from the work relationships in which workers are directed, managed, and organized by an owning and managing class.

Indians with no chief. Yeah, let's try that and see how it goes..

[Pants-of-dog]

That is why socialism is always an authoritarian oppressive system. There is NO FREEDOM.

I have already provided you with examples of when democratic socialism has been successful in the past.

Either you forgot and are now mistakenly making the same incorrect claim, or you are knowingly telling something untrue.

[Julian658]

I have already provided you with examples of when democratic socialism has been successful in the past.

Either you forgot and are now mistakenly making the same incorrect claim, or you are knowingly telling something untrue.

POD:

Socialism requires coercion. You already admitted this:

Sure, you can create whatever you want and have any ideas that you want. You cannot, however, exercise exclusive control over the means of production in order to enrich yourself with the labour of others.

[Senter]

Socialism has never worked well, as a peace time system.

You know, I'm getting really tired of saying this: You don't know how socialism works because you've never seen socialism nor has anyone else! There has never been a nation whose economic system was based on worker ownership and control of business, so there has never been socialism, ANYWHERE, EVER. What you are calling "socialism" are all cases in which various strategies were implemented to "get to socialism" but they NEVER GOT THERE.

There have been many attempts at socialism, whether you liked the methods they chose to achieve that or not.

THERE HAVE BEEN MANY ATTEMPTS TO CREATE A SOCIALIST SOCIETY AND NONE ACHIEVED IT!!

[Senter]

Karl Marx described the flaws of capitalism in very elegant manner. He is correct! Working for another human is a form of slavery. In every generation millions fall in love with the ideas of Marx . However, the prescription to fix the problems have has not worked, The prescription has failed time after time.

THEY DID? Where did you ever see an economic system in which the workers owned and controlled businesses, fail?

I agree 100%. However, the solutions to this problem have not worked.

Precisely what solution, and where?

Note the part in bold. That is why socialism is always an authoritarian oppressive system. There is NO FREEDOM.

LOL!!! To the capitalist, "freedom" always and only means freedom to exploit. Freedom to organize to confront the exploitation? Nah! Freedom to collectively run the business that the capitalist owns? Nah!

Indians with no chief. Yeah, let's try that and see how it goes..

You really think that has anything to do with socialism? You don't think a sales manager is a worker? You don't think a department manager is a worker? I used to discuss these things with my department manager and he was in full agreement.

You seem to be going in circles.

[Julian658]

THEY DID? Where did you ever see an economic system in which the workers owned and controlled businesses, fail?



Precisely what solution, and where?



LOL!!! To the capitalist, "freedom" always and only means freedom to exploit. Freedom to organize to confront the exploitation? Nah! Freedom to collectively run the business that the capitalist owns? Nah!



You really think that has anything to do with socialism? You don't think a sales manager is a worker? You don't think a department manager is a worker? I used to discuss these things with my department manager and he was in full agreement.

You seem to be going in circles.

You are preaching to the choir: Been there done that! I do not disagree with your words. Working for a living in a capitalist system is not easy. It means you have to move your legs and arms at all times to keep your head above water and not drown. Sure, that is no freedom! But, sadly socialism does not do any better. And I have said at nauseam you can start a Mondragon any time you want to. No one is stopping you!

The best you can do is to have a wealthy capitalist nation like Norway with a generous welfare state. And BTW, this system tends to work best in small homogeneous nations. They are still a tribe and related to each other (kinship) and hence some socialism is accepted with no issues.