Why Free Markets, Contracts, and Private Property Are a Joke - Page 3 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15208202
I'm out here in Colombia and there's all these poor Venezuelans wandering around asking for money. I actually feel bad because they're really nice when you say no and I was like, wow, that's some real shit right there.
#15208235
ckaihatsu wrote:
Oh, okay, so what's it *based* on, then -- ?



Historians used to call it the Great Game, the struggle of empires.

In any case, it's not 'cold' enough, for my taste. Putin keeps threatening to make it hot, he could back his dumb ass into a major war doing that.
#15208246
late wrote:
Global problems demand global solutions. The idea of global communism will get a reaction, people running for the exit.


late wrote:
Historians used to call it the Great Game, the struggle of empires.

In any case, it's not 'cold' enough, for my taste. Putin keeps threatening to make it hot, he could back his dumb ass into a major war doing that.



Why aren't you *denouncing* this 'Great Game' of inter-imperialist tensions, then, since it's already produced *two* world wars -- I mention that capitalism has to be ended for any of kind of sufficient global solution to global warming, and *I'm* the bad-guy for that -- ?

Your opprobrium is woefully misplaced.
#15208270
late wrote:
Putin keeps threatening to make it hot, he could back his dumb ass into a major war doing that.




Stuart Estrine • 4 days ago

“This entire crisis has been manufactured by Mr. Putin .... It has nothing to do with expansion by NATO, whose founding treaty authorizes only defensive military action.” This lie uttered by the Washington Post says it all. The concept of the “ big lie “ has been around for a long time. What better way to justify an annual “ defense “ budget in excess of a trillion dollars. Having moved away from industrial production as a means of capital accumulation, a permanent war economy is the manner in which capitalists bleed the working class in the United States. Fear is the strongest emotion. By playing on fear and ignorance, popular culture devoid of reality, a corporate news media, capitulation by class collaborationist unions and vast racism, the ruling class has created a culture of death from which there may be no escape. Witness a political process which vomits up the likes of ( insert name here ), vast pestilence, deliberately underfunded education, an army of occupation masquerading as peace officers, ruinous rents and food prices, deification of the wealthy, demonization of the poor and growing vigilantism. Can the fascists be stopped ? Can the dream of participatory democracy be achieved ? Can the sleeping giant of the world wide working class be awakened and assert the promises of socialism ? Can the anachronistic capitalist order be relegated to the trash heap of history ? As long as we continue to ask these questions, the answer is yes.



http://disq.us/p/2m6many
#15208297
ckaihatsu wrote:
Why aren't you *denouncing* this 'Great Game' of inter-imperialist tensions, then, since it's already produced *two* world wars --

I mention that capitalism has to be ended for any of kind of sufficient global solution to global warming, and *I'm* the bad-guy for that -- ?




I do.

Hardly, just absurd.
#15208310
ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, then please point me to where you *have* denounced imperialism, just once.




Global problems demand global solutions.

We can get there democratically, or when Xi takes over the world.

But if we get there democratically, imperialism won't be allowed...
Last edited by late on 21 Jan 2022 16:23, edited 1 time in total.
#15208315
ckaihatsu wrote:
You sound *exactly* like a typical non-committal politician. Are you a professional?



I wish.

I feel I am good enough to be paid, but alas... btw, I would be proud, or I wouldn't do it. IOW, you'd know if I was.

You need to remember that politics is both the art of the possible, and the art of making something possible.

I really ought to be paid for this.
#15208324
late wrote:
I wish.

I feel I am good enough to be paid, but alas... btw, I would be proud, or I wouldn't do it. IOW, you'd know if I was.

You need to remember that politics is both the art of the possible, and the art of making something possible.

I really ought to be paid for this.



Well, you're long on verbiage and dissembling while being evasive around the issues -- *I'd* say that you're just as pointless as any politician.
#15208328
ckaihatsu wrote:
Well, you're long on verbiage

and dissembling

while being evasive around the issues --

*I'd* say that you're just as pointless as any politician.



have you EVER read your posts??

like most of the people I run across, you've never actually done politics...

I am one of the least evasive here. At least among those with experience, I can't compete with the consistency of fantasy.

Perhaps, but that brings a smile to my face. There are Carbon Taxes out in the wild. There are no futuristic communist governments because they are currently not possible.

Please note the lack of hostility, a long time ago I was much like you, if a little less Left wing.
#15208335
late wrote:
the Great Game, the struggle of empires




Summary: Chapter IX

After a ninety-hour workweek, Winston is exhausted. In the middle of Hate Week, Oceania has switched enemies and allies in the ongoing war, heaping upon Winston a tremendous amount of work to compensate for the change. At one rally, the speaker is forced to change his speech halfway through to point out that Oceania is not, and has never been, at war with Eurasia. Rather, the speaker says, Oceania is, and always has been, at war with Eastasia. The people become embarrassed about carrying the anti-Eurasia signs and blame Emmanuel Goldstein’s agents for sabotaging them. Nevertheless, they exhibit full-fledged hatred for Eastasia.



https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/section8/
#15208338
late wrote:
There are Carbon Taxes out in the wild.



So then empirically it's 'potential politics and/or policy', like anything else, including workers power.


late wrote:
There are no futuristic communist governments because they are currently not possible.

Please note the lack of hostility, a long time ago I was much like you, if a little less Left wing.



That's a cliched form of patronization. Playing the age card.

There are no futuristic communist governments because the workers of the world don't *need* (nation-state) governments. Also we don't *live* in the future, we live in the present. (I got a diagram for that.) (grin)

The reason for my creating the 'labor credits' / gift-communism model was mainly to address the valid concern that labor itself could become (logistically) *scarce* in a society where *no one* would have the slightest reason, compulsion, or social obligation to work even one hour in their entire life.



Returning to the main question / issue, we can validly rephrase it as 'Could there be a *scarcity* of (liberated) labor if no one was under any political rule or social obligation to actively *produce* for social consumption?' In other words, one of the parameters of a communist-type society is that there is no specialized ruling 'administration' because that would inherently be a class division of sorts, or at least would be a standing elitism that contradicts the premise of a material-egalitarian social status for all.



Any potential *scarcity* of liberated labor itself can be addressed with the labor credits system -- any available-and-willing liberated labor, once brought-on in accordance with a prior-established, detailed 'policy package', would benefit from receiving a certain rate of labor credits per hour for scheduled-and-completed work according to that policy package, and would in turn amass a pool of labor credits for themselves that they could use in future projects to likewise 'fund' self-chosen available-and-willing liberated-labor, going-forward, to the extent of that quantity of labor credits (or the pool could be split-up in any number of portions, towards any combination of labor-credits-funding-required work roles).



https://web.archive.org/web/20201211050 ... ?p=2889338
#15209189
XDU wrote:There's a lot of virtue signaling, but not much virtue.

And this is a big part of the humor that creates so many hilarious capitalist jokes.

As Machiavelli noted, all moral virtue should be faked and very public. This is a way of creating dupes, who you suck in, and make them trust you, even though your only real intent is criminal.

The punchline of capitalist exchange is profit. The more of it, the funnier the joke, and more gullible dupes tend to allow for more hilarious profits.

Wulfschilde wrote:I'm out here in Colombia and there's all these poor Venezuelans wandering around asking for money.


:lol: Good one, Wulfschilde. I believed the ruse right up to where you wrote "wandering".
#15210413
I think that this quote from "The Communist Manifesto" puts things more succinctly .
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007

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