ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, I brought it up because it's a telling test for where a person's politics are. Do you think that corporate 'rights' are often favored at the expense of people's *civil* rights?
People's rights are far more important than rights of corporations. Corporations aren't people, they are business entities and should be treated as such.
What do you think of the International Criminal Court?
I like it, even if it's hard to enforce. There should be an international punishment mechanism for government officials who commit war crimes and other crimes against humanity.
Well then why didn't this action plan work in 2008-2009? We're back at the same crisis all over again now, in 2020 -- that's why I suggested that the nationalization of banking, and the bailout of *consumers* -- particularly for life-critical needs -- be done *centrally*, by government, *instead* of tending to piecemeal bank balance sheets for the same.
It did work. It stabilized the banks and the economy and then the economy recovered and GDP and markets went on to reach fantastic new record highs and continually climbed for the next 12 years on a remarkable bull market run (only interrupted by a virus), with the lowest unemployment rates of the last 40 years or so.
We're back to another economic contraction because of a virus that is temporarily reducing commerce. It has absolutely nothing to do with capitalism, and concerts, sports leagues, stores, restaurants etc would be temporarily shutting down just the same if everything was nationalized and socialism in place.
No, I can't agree -- there are too many jobs losses and the statistical disinclusion of 'non-job-seekers' in the unemployment statistic for your statement to be true.
What job losses do you refer? I don't understand any of this statement, explain.
Government can create jobs, directed at providing for social needs, in a way that the private sector simply *cannot*, because of the bribe / premium it charges, known as 'profit'. A good example would be Venezuela:
Central planning sucks at allocating resources and jobs on a wide scale. It's terrible. They screw up all the time. They are also prone to corruption. This has been proven over and over. It's led to mass inefficiencies, and when they screw up millions have starved to death. You want bureaucrats to do what private citizens have been doing by themselves. You want to transfer massive power from private citizens to government, which is frightening and damn foolsih, and they don't even do nearly as good a job and historically exploit and cause suffering far, FAR more than corporations have.
If they as government did as good a job as businesses in economics, countries would already be doing it. If they did, China wouldn't have needed to enact all those capitalist market reforms and blossomed as a result, and the USSR wouldn't have imploded under its own misallocation of resources and corruption.
You use Venezuela as an example, which is a joke. Have you been seeing what's been happening there the last few years? Competition creates efficiencies, because if you aren't efficient you can't compete, and if you can't compete then you go out of business. This is beautiful. Adapt or GTFO. If you're too corrupt, too inefficient, create products people don't want, and/or you waste money on a large scale you go out of business. It's wonderful.
As a follow-up, what do you think can be done, and by whom, to prevent this continued plutocratic rule by the rich?
You suggestions: do not let businesses able to make political donations. You limit political donations to an amount per year any average citizen could contribute, like say $500. You tightly regulate and restrict political lobbying, you keep it all on the books and transparent, ie: all lobbying must be registered, and maybe everything said should be put on public record.
You also put tight controls on conflict of interests. ie: politicians recently out of office can't become lobbyists or work for corporations in an industry that would unfairly benefit from their political access or knowledge etc.
You've *said* previously that you're in favor of 'some kind of redistribution', but you haven't followed-up with any proposals or *details* for this. You're being *vague* -- how exactly should it be accomplished?
Mainly what many western countries have done (besides the USA). Although I'd probably tax the very wealthy more. You could reduce taxes on the non-wealthy and/or implement social programs.
This includes implementing universal healthcare operated mostly by the private sector, well regulated, but medical claims paid for my the state. You could introduce universal dental and pharmacare too if there was enough tax money from the wealthy. Also have universal grade-school education and highly subsidized post-secondary education to keep costs low like in Canada. Most education organizations would also either be mandated to be non-profit orgs and/or regulated to keep tuition costs reasonable in comparison to operating costs. Healthcare and post-secondary schools would have low user fees, dispensing costs, and tuition fees in order to make them extremely affordable but not quite free in order to distinctive abuse.
The well-known professor Richard Wolff has the politics that you describe, basically calling for a *nationalization* of factories / workplaces, for workers to then run, but he doesn't go far enough because he doesn't challenge the status-quo of capitalism *politically*. Any workplaces that are worker-run will *still* be subject to the same economic dynamics of competition in the marketplace, which is a *bad* thing now that society has sufficient productive capacity to just directly supply *everyone* with a decent standard of living. Market competition, and capitalism itself, are outmoded and need to be overthrown by the working class, worldwide.
They've been saying that for almost 200 years since Marx. Market competition ensures efficiency and keeps costs low, naturally eliminates production of goods/services not wanted by people and naturally gives great incentive to produce and invent goods/services people want and to continually improve those goods/services. Competition, as you seem to agree, is a good and necessary thing. Nature is predicated on a "survival of the fittest" model, and economics benefits from following suit. Charity and being "nice" only goes as far as people willing to be charitable and nice, and many times they are but many times they aren't and human nature can't and won't be changed. Humans are often self-interested. Even priests molest altar boys and get drunk on church wine.
I'd be ok with worker-run and worker-owned companies. But you need to test it and you need evidence it works. Co-ops are perfectly legal to run and if there are any practical examples out there on a large or medium scale i'd like to see them, where they can be as productive and efficient as private companies.
You are a self-described revolutionary. The problem with revolutionaries is that they have good intentions but have the arrogance to think they can solve all of societies ills with nothing but their naive untested ideas, and it often leads to much suffering when the plans don't quite work out. You are very dangerous because you have all these theories, untested on a large-scale, and you're willing to transform our economy without knowing how it will work out. It could easily turn out poorly, and if it turns out to be less effective than the current market economy you're talking about destroying jobs, businesses, careers, life-savings, livelihoods etc, as has been the case with communism so many times. So if you're going to implement "revolutionary change" that will have revolutionary consequences, good or bad, you better be DAMN SURE you know what you're doing, you better have rock-solid real-world evidence that the system you propose will work as intended, and it should be tested and retested on a smaller scale until the kinks are worked out. This is one of the many mistakes socialists/communists have made throughout history, and its cost millions of lives.
Communists just don't understand human nature and free will. Humans are often self-interested. People usually want to make the most money possible for them and their family. When communist revolutions have happened, people with high ability to make much more than the average salary often naturally want to leave the communist country to a capitalist country so they can make more money. In order to prevent continual "brain-drain", communists then have to restrict freedom and free will and ban people from leaving and/or or moving away from the country. Now you have an authoritarian state. People also tend to want freedom, including freedom to vote on government policy. Now you have a dictatorship to control that.
The great thing about democracy is that dangerous ideas that change the system on a large scale like yours can't be implemented without widespread approval of elected officials.
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