Which one would you prefer?
I haven’t come across one I completely like.
The best test is gaining a working knowledge of all theories and realizing which one you agree most with.
Yes to clarify I was asking you in what situations would you be ok with having socialism. Not for the particular details of our current systems but we can cover both. I have split this up into sections. Each section has a question I’d respect if you answered. Please answer in as few words as possible to avoid a bloated discussion. Thanks Bloom!
*Why does healthcare, you believe, definitely not work where as education you are unsure about? What about healthcare makes it fail?
Lets ignore the industrial military complex for now than since you consider yourself not an expert and lets just focus specifically on national defense programs like the army, and domestic defense like the police force.
*Would you agree to central ownership of the means of production for policing and national defense?
*What specifically do you not like a bout it?
*You have taken an authoritarian roll of defining key terms which will make this discussion far more difficult. Can you define the following key terms for me so I know I am talking to you, apples to apples. Try to keep your definitions inline with at least one school of thought. Making up definitions is going to degrade the discussion.
*Fascism
*Socialism
*Corporativism and commonism
*Can you explain to me the difference between commonism/corporativism and fascism?
*Would you be ok with commoniization of the healthcare industry?
*Would you be ok with commonization of education?
*Would you be ok with commonization the majority of the market?
*Do you beleive commonization to net a higher product output than free market capitalism?
I don’t agree with one in particular, I like a lot of ideas from a lot of different people and schools. I’m still learning more about an-cap.
My introduction to politics was Machiavelli’s Prince, I still consider myself principally a student of Machiavelli. I think he understood human nature. I think The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, more than anything, shape my philosophical foundations. But I also liked Sartre and existentialism in high school. Being the summation of my decisions has always appealed to me. I make myself. I got into conservatism in college when I found out I had a trust fund. I didn’t want and still don’t want anyone to steal my money. I got into libertarianism through Milton Friedman. Capitalism and Freedom is one of my favorite books. I’m also a big fan of Thomas Sowell. Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson is an important book to me as well.
To be honest, I don’t think any one school has gotten it right. I don’t know that there is one right way. I try to be as neutral as possible and not pick sides. I call things as I see them. I’m often wrong.
Fil,
I’ll give your questions some serious thought and I’ll get back to you when I think I can answer them well. I’ll try to be as timely as possible.
Please take your time. Bloom. Thanks bud.
The Warsaw pact socialists lasted what, 50 years? The EU socialist trade network has the euro on the ropes. The American system is only carried on because it can print money out of thin air, and people around the world accept it. When interest rates rise, it is game over. The US has what, maybe 20 years left before it will have a dramatic economic restructuring?
Canada and Australia get by on their natural resources and populations which accept a lower standard of living through higher taxation but that won’t always be so. Both have an enormous burden when it comes to global competitiveness (Australia has a big advantage being in the Pacific Rim) and aging boomer populations which will place enormous stress on the pension and medical systems.
I think we’re at the end of an era. It is likely that in my lifetime socialism will be repudiated as a desirable form of social organization. Democracy and the myth of the state will take a lot more work, but I might see those repudiated as well.
The substantive difference between right and left, in my opinion, has nothing to do with policy advocacy or religion - it has to do with egalitarianism. I am an egalitarian, ergo I am left-wing; despite my advocacy of a market society of customary law and contract (which puts me in some measures alongside Burke, who was most definitely, definitely not an egalitarian).
People from both the left and right have made valuable contributions to philosophy, history, economic and political theory, etc. The question mainly revolves around: do the substantive rights of individuals and society evolve around concepts of equality or authority?
Well in a sense capitalism concerns egalitarianism specifically the belief that all are equally unable to demand/achieve government subsidy. I’m still in favor of Rothbard’s distinction of left and right in his first article in his journal: Left and Right.
What I believe account for differences among States:
1)Imperialism: Germany, Japan and Italy where imperialistic because everyone was just increasing tariffs as crazy back than, and Germany could not feed its population out of its own resources. Meanwhile countries like the UK, France, (with their empires) and USSR and the US (extensive size) could easily feed and clothe their population out of their own means. So, for the Germans, Japanese and Italians it was either a war a conquest or starvation. Of course every state longs for expansion, and indeed if for a long time a state doesn’t expand it goes bankrupt. But in a world like that of the ’30, even if Germany had been anarchistic, countless Germans would have still flooded the east in a war of conquest, much like the Vikings did in their own time. The only difference would have been this: they would have won big time.
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Level of repression: I believe the stock of capital plays an important role here. Poor countries always experience far harsher regimes because a scant capital stock means that human lives are less valuable, economically speaking. In richer countries people can yield higher surpluses, and the State looses much by just killing every dissident. So, the USSR was more brutal than Germany, but far less than Mao’s China, while the US and UE are today far, far less so. Yet, in due time, as statist measures gnaw away the available capital stock, regimes will become increasingly brutal in nature.
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Rethoric: not really important, but that is what goes down in history. The name that a regime takes is, by and large, the product of the Man that creates it. Provided that the needs set by the two previous conditions are met, one can come to power in his country, and provided that he’s a good orator, he’ll steer his regime in whichever direction he chooses. Thus we call 30’s Germany Nazi and Italy fascist because of such where the word use d by Hitler and Mussolini, the USSR was communist because Stalin said so, and the US a democracy because Roosevelt chose that particular iconography. Yet, such iconography is meaningless for history: what a regime is, is almost always determined by the first two needs as above: structure of production (finished goods vs. raw materials and food) sets the speed at which the State seeks to expand, and the capital stock sets the level of internal brutality.