[edit] You can quote users with [$quote user=“NAME”$] without the $ signs.
This is empty fear mongering. It flies of evidence and theory. The iron law of wages has been disproven for so long its ridiculous.
If you actually look at the statistics, real wages double from 1819 to 1850, and the working week falls across the board continously even before government intervention into the economy. Despite what is commonly assumed, coal miners worked around 40hrs/week. This confirms that there IS competition between greedy capitalists for laborers. You have to offer workers better working conditions than what they already have, so we should expect a systematic increase in the standard of living for everyone.
Regardless, even if labor conditions never improved, it was not a controlled experiment. We had millions of immigrants flooding the market with cheap labor. No modern nanny-states open their borders to millions fleeing poverty and war. Capitalism clothed and fed this many refugees, more than any government has ever done. The socialist countries idealized by leftists have closed borders and ethnically homogenous populations. They are de facto racist good old boy clubs. See here for more analysis.
No it arose because people don’t understand economics or political philosophy. Its also a response to MERCANTILISM, not true capitalism, which is characterized by self ownership and homesteading rights.
Moreover, there is no direct conflict between socialism and capitalism. You can form organizations and co ops voluntarily with your socialist buddies. You just can’t go and attack everyone else because you think you own their means of production. Socialism is a very sorry system indeed if it cannot persist peacefully.
Democracy is a spectacular failure. This is simply more pandering the proletariat masses who, in a democracy, do not bear the costs of having bad political opinions.
And you conveinently ignore all the other ways in which workers are exploited BY laws. Basically every major industry in the United States is in partnership with the government to keep competition out so they can have government granted monopolies in their industries. Tobacco, medicine, defense services, education, insurance, steel, agriculture. If you can find a good industry, like technology, it is good because there is international competition inhibiting the effectiveness of a partnership between corporation and state.
Empty statement. Provide statistics showing that there were no “human rights” and that this condition would persist. You are guilty of pessimistic anti market bias in assuming that things can’t get better over time. Above I cited evidence that things DID in fact get better over time…
Just a question to probe your knowledge of US economic history, how did health insurance come to be a service provided by employers?
Capitalist exploiters do not vote at the polls :P. If they did it would be pointless because they do not have the numbers to advance their class interest by voting. Instead they simply bribe democratic governments to make rules in their favor.
Democracy is especially susceptible to special interest groups. If there’s a policy that will cost every american $1 but put $10,000,000 in the pockets of a few executives, who is going to fight it? If the average voter spends one hour trying to organize and fight the policy, he is working for $1/hr. The execs are going to work much much harder to try and get the bill passed. It is a collective action problem that repeatedly fails to be solved because it is so easy to co opt democratic governments.
I can’t even tell you where to start on political theory though… government has got to be about the worst way to oragnize society because you are making whichever group has political power (majority, king, etc) judge in its own case. There can never be any check against government power. A bill of rights or constitution is unenforcable because the government will not rule against itself systematically.
If your ideal system, maybe it is democratic socialism, cannot persist peacefully on a free market, it is pretty pathetic. People have a choice between forming democratic co ops and working for the capitalist “exploiters”, and still choose the latter. If you have to use aggression to get what your system, its probably not what people want…