quote:

ORIGINAL: mnottertail

No, none of those countries are really socialist.

I would think the demand would be nordic country socialism, instead of the country wrecking nutsuckerism we are suffering under.

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ORIGINAL: WhoreMods

quote:

ORIGINAL: mnottertail

No, none of those countries are really socialist.

I would think the demand would be nordic country socialism, instead of the country wrecking nutsuckerism we are suffering under.

It's quite telling that the only communists states that the trumptooners, teabaggers, Milo groupies, Murdoch drones and other elements of the neocon right are willing to discuss are those that were already bankrupt or in a terminal economic depression and unravelling socially when the evil communist regimes took them over. Norway, Finaland, Iceland and other left leaning social democracies that work and have healthy economies and a mostly employed population are only worth mentioning to decry the high cost of living caused by making the big earners pay their taxes or to bleat about how their lack of American-style paranoid government control freakery makes them an easy mark for terrorists. Great, innit?

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The ease of doing business index is an index created by the World Bank Group.[1] Higher rankings (a low numerical value) indicate better, usually simpler, regulations for businesses and stronger protections of property rights. Empirical research funded by the World Bank to justify their work show that the economic growth impact of improving these regulations is strong.

quote:

Worsening shortages of food, medicines, and other consumer goods, combined with triple-digit inflation that has eroded monetary stability, have drastically undermined Venezuela’s already fragile economy. Years of interventionist and market-distorting policies, including nationalizations and restrictions on imports, have resulted in dire economic conditions. There is a substantial risk that civil unrest may spiral out of control.

Venezuela’s economy has been stifled by blatant disregard for both the rule of law and the principle of limited government. The private sector has been severely marginalized by institutional impediments related to government encroachment into the marketplace.The judicial system has become more vulnerable to political interference, and corruption is prevalent.

A founding member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves and is highly dependent on oil revenues, which account for almost all exports and half of state revenues. Production has fallen due to government mismanagement of state-owned oil company PDVSA....

Bureaucratic interference has severely undercut regulatory efficiency and productivity growth. The labor market remains rigidly controlled and severely impedes dynamic employment creation.

The financial system remains hobbled by state interference and uncertainty about the direction of economic policies.

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ORIGINAL: bounty44

to the right---the average mom and pop trying to make a living, raising a family and wanting to keep more of their own money under a constitutionally limited government---tea party.

to the left---the average mom and pop trying to make a living, raising a family and wanting to keep more of their own money under a constitutionally limited government---a gay slur.

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

to the right---the average mom and pop trying to make a living, raising a family and wanting to keep more of their own money under a constitutionally limited government---tea party.

to the left---the average mom and pop trying to make a living, raising a family and wanting to keep more of their own money under a constitutionally limited government---a gay slur.

quote:

ORIGINAL: mnottertail

No, none of those countries are really socialist.

I would think the demand would be nordic country socialism, instead of the country wrecking nutsuckerism we are suffering under.

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

to the right---the average mom and pop trying to make a living, raising a family and wanting to keep more of their own money under a constitutionally limited government---tea party.

to the left---the average mom and pop trying to make a living, raising a family and wanting to keep more of their own money under a constitutionally limited government---a gay slur.

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ORIGINAL: Nnanji

quote:

ORIGINAL: mnottertail

No, none of those countries are really socialist.

I would think the demand would be nordic country socialism, instead of the country wrecking nutsuckerism we are suffering under.

Demonstrate how the Nordic countries:


1) regulate means of production.
2) regulate means of distribution.
3) regulate means of exchange.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Nnanji

quote:

ORIGINAL: mnottertail

No, none of those countries are really socialist.

I would think the demand would be nordic country socialism, instead of the country wrecking nutsuckerism we are suffering under.

Demonstrate how the Nordic countries:


1) regulate means of production.
2) regulate means of distribution.
3) regulate means of exchange.

quote:

Supporters of the President of Ecuador Rafael Correa are seeking a constitutional reform that would allow him to be elected to a third term. In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, who’s been in power since 2007, has expelled the opposition from Congress. Bolivian President Evo Morales keeps pushing for indefinite reelection; he’s been in power since 2006.

Let’s not even talk about Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro, the anointed successor of Hugo Chávez, who rose to power in 1998.

The worst of them all is the Cuban regime, where the Castro brothers, Fidel and Raúl, have governed with an iron fist since 1959.

In all these cases except Cuba, parties or current presidents came to power through an initial election that was clean, and which seduced voters with attractive promises.

But then they changed the rules to stay in power indefinitely.

What’s curious, aside from the obvious similarities between countries, is that each leader took a similar path, which Chavez called “21st century socialism” — attacks on private property, state intervention on the economy, that sometimes, like in Cuba, reach the extremes of communism.

Socialism, from an economic point of view, is about concentrating all power on the state: money is controlled, as is the exchange rate and most production. This is complemented by the harassment of political movements with opposing ideologies. It has been this way since Lenin and Stalin in the Soviet Union, since Mao Zedong in China, Ceaucescu in Romania and Pol Pot in Cambodia.

Leaders of Latin American are following a similar path, [what? say it isn't so mnottertroll!] only adding the socialist component: they want absolute power, for indefinite time, but they also want to control the economy and hate private enterprise.

They know that political power, when combined with economic power, is practically unstoppable.

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In any examination of historical precedence, it is easy to see that the sheer number of collectivist and tyrannical systems have far outweighed any experiments in individual liberty. I have explored the reasons for this in numerous articles, including recent pieces such as “How To Stamp Out Cultural Marxism In A Single Generation” and “The Tools Collectivists Use To Gain Power.” To summarize, there is a driving desire among weaker-minded people to seek control over other people in the name of arbitrary standards of safety as well as arbitrary standards of “civil” conformity. While such people proclaim publicly that they do what they do for the “greater good,” in reality they seek only to satiate a private lust for power.

In the darkest corners of their souls, many people have personal aspirations to attain godhood in their own little worlds. And if they cannot achieve such godhood outright on their own, then they will join a mob with similar aspirations so that they can at least feel omnipotent through vicarious tyranny.

This is why collectivism and individualism are mutually exclusive. A collectivist uses force or manipulation to compel the masses to accept a society that follows his personal ideology. An individualist adheres only to the tenets of natural law and the non-aggression principle. He believes force is justified only when the personal liberties of an individual are threatened by others. And he demands that if he participates in any society, it be voluntary. Collectivism is society through coercion. Individualism promotes society through voluntary cooperation. The two philosophies cannot coexist.

I'll say it again because there are some people out there with severe reading comprehension issues; the definition of collectivism requires the prioritization of the group over the rights of the individual. Collectivism by its very nature denies or destroys individualism and individual choice in this prioritization. Collectivism therefore requires the engineered organization of individuals predicated by COERCION, or force. Period. If a group organizes voluntarily, then it is NOT collectivist. If a group is organized through force and manipulation, then it IS collectivist. Period. Bananas are yellow. Oranges are orange. The sky is blue. Two plus two equals four. And, collectivism compels participation by force, while voluntary community does not.

There is no rational debate to be made against this clear dichotomy. It is truly amazing how some folks cannot seem to grasp the very obvious difference between collectivism and voluntary community; the same people that will likely still attempt to argue that collectivism and individualism are "not mutually exclusive" after reading this very article.

I certainly would never make the claim that most collectivists are intelligent...

The collectivist threat is not merely due to environmental factors alone. As the psychologist Carl Jung outlined in his collected papers titled “The Undiscovered Self,” at any given point in history at least 10% of the human population has inherent (but often latent) psychopathic tendencies. Less than 1% of these people will actually act out their full psychopathy under stable social conditions. However, in times of great distress or political and economic upheaval, the psychopathic 10% are given a kind of playground in which to let the devil out; Jung called this the “collective shadow.”

As I have explained in the past, these are the “useful idiots” within any society. They are the reason why there will never be a time now or in the future in which collectivist oppression will not be a potential threat, and why individualists will have to remain forever on guard. That said, they are only a part of the bigger problem. In almost every instance of mass tragedy or despotic government, an elitist minority pulls the strings of the useful idiots, aiming them like a shotgun at individualists in order to clear a path for total centralization. The elites are another horror altogether...

Elitists have their own pervasive ideology and their own rationalizations for seeking control of others.

They see themselves as “philosopher kings” as described in Plato’s 'Republic,' exemplary and “special” people who are born with the inherent genetic capacity to rule over the masses with the utmost clarity. They believe they know what is best not only for you, but for the human experiment in total. Their goal is to construct a sociopolitical apparatus that will allow them to have complete overreaching influence over every aspect of every individual life, up to and including the erasure of that life if they think it serves their ends...

They often entice the public with fantastical promises if collectivist systems are supported, including: equality of wealth and prosperity; reduction of labor and increases in leisure time; incredible technological advances; universal education; universal healthcare; the end of nationalism, resulting in the end of war, resulting in infinite global peace; etc.

When they are not able to sell the public on a particular aspect of collectivism, they will create artificial divisions and artificial crises in order to engineer chaos. As per the Hegelian dialectic, when we are thoroughly tenderized by fear and disaster, the elites return to the scene with a “solution” to their original crime, a solution that usually involves more collectivism...

[the rest of the article is the "how to" part referenced in the title]

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In the darkest corners of their souls, many people have personal aspirations to attain godhood in their own little worlds. And if they cannot achieve such godhood outright on their own, then they will join a mob with similar aspirations so that they can at least feel omnipotent through vicarious tyranny.

This is why collectivism and individualism are mutually exclusive.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

quote:

In the darkest corners of their souls, many people have personal aspirations to attain godhood in their own little worlds. And if they cannot achieve such godhood outright on their own, then they will join a mob with similar aspirations so that they can at least feel omnipotent through vicarious tyranny.

This is why collectivism and individualism are mutually exclusive.

And in the far more common lighter corners of their souls, most people form groups for mutual support and greater collective good, from community organizations to governments by election and representation.

That's why only a special cherry-picking idiot would claim collectivism and individualism are mutually exclusive. Reality is, greater individual aspirations are reached in communal structures.

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...The Nature of Government

On the basis of all known past human experience, therefore, are there any general conclusions with regard to societal organization which can be postulated with confidence? It seems to me that there certainly are.

1. First, government is necessary -- some degree of government -- in any civilized society. There are believers in the possibility and desirability of a governmentless anarchy as a practicable form of human association. But the number of these advocates is comparatively very small, there is no evidence within human historical experience to support their thesis, and there is considerable evidence indicating otherwise.

2. Second, while government is necessary, it is basically a nonproductive expense, an overhead cost supported by the productive economy. And like all overhead items, it always has a tendency to expand faster than the productive base which supports it.

3. Third, government is frequently evil. And we do not mean by this that they (governments) are merely dishonest. For all governments, with very rare exceptions indeed, are thoroughly dishonest. We made the statement in print, a few months ago, that there has never in the history of the world been a government (and this generalization includes our present one) that maintained honesty in the handling of a "managed" irredeemable currency. A few weeks later one of America's ablest and best known economists quoted that statement with full approval.

But what we are talking about here is something far worse than dishonesty. This past December Professor Sorokin of Harvard -- after quoting Lord Acton that great men, in the political arena, are almost always bad men -- went on to reveal the results of his own survey of the criminality of rulers. This survey of the monarchs of various countries and the heads of various republics and democracies, in a selection large enough to constitute a very fair sample, revealed that there was an average of one murderer to every four of these rulers. "In other words," says Professor Sorokin, "the rulers of the states are the most criminal group in a respective population. With a limitation of their power their criminality tends to decrease; but it still remains exceptionally high in all nations."...

4. Fourth, government is always and inevitably an enemy of individual freedom. It seems rather strange that it was Woodrow Wilson, who more than any other one man started this nation on its present road towards totalitarianism, who also said that the history of human liberty is a history of the limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it. But Wilson could have boasted, as did Charles II of England, that he said only wise things even though he did only foolish ones. It is self-evident that government, by its very nature, must be an enemy of freedom, edging always towards a restriction of the individual's rights and responsibilities.

5. Whatever must be done by governments will always cost more than if it could be done by individuals or smaller groups. And the larger the government, the more disproportionate will be the cost. Letting a government do anything, therefore, which such individuals or smaller groups could properly do, is serious economic wastefulness. It is also contrary to the philosophy of the proper function of government that is derived from the whole body of past experiments.

6. Government, by its size, its momentum, and its authority, will not only perpetuate errors of doctrine or of policy longer than they would otherwise retain acceptance, but it will multiply their effect on a geometric scale, as against the arithmetically cumulative effect of those errors if confined to individuals or smaller groups. The errors of tens of thousands of individuals, all thinking and probing in different directions and moved by different impulses, tend to cancel themselves out or to be softened by the attrition of doubt and disagreement. But let any one error become sanctified by government, and thus crystalized as truth, and little short of a revolution can discredit it or cause it to be discarded....

7. As any society becomes reasonably settled, and shakes down into a semi-permanent pattern of economic and political life, and as some degree of leisure on the part of its citizens becomes both possible and visible, the drive always begins to have government become the management of the social enterprise rather than merely its agent for certain clear purposes. Government is then increasingly allowed, invited, and even urged to do planning for, and exercise control over, the total economy of the nation. Next, it is pushed, and pushes itself, more and more into planning and control of the separate activities of the citizens and groups of citizens that make up the economic life of the nation. And in doing such planning and exercising such controls the government must assume more and more of the responsibility for the success of the economy and the welfare of its citizens.

Of course no government, short of being omniscient, can ever plan the specialized division of labor and the beneficial interchange of the various products of human effort, or can ever appraise the impact of changing circumstances and changing desires on the infinite ramifications of interrelated human activity, one half as well as the planning, appraisal, and resulting corrections will be accomplished by a completely free market if given the opportunity....

8. As a government increases in power, and as a means of increasing its power, it always has a tendency to squeeze out the middle class; to destroy or weaken the middle for the benefit of the top and the bottom. Even where there is no conscious alliance for this purpose, such as formed the basis for Bismarck's beginning of the socialization of Germany or Franklin Roosevelt's beginning of the socialization of America, the forces to that end are always at work -- as they have been in England for 50 years. In the nations that the gods would destroy, they first make the middle class helpless through insidious but irresistible government pressures.

9. The form of government is not nearly so important as its quality. Justice and a lack of arbitrariness, for instance, are two characteristics of a government that are most important to the welfare and happiness of a people. They are as likely to be found -- or more accurately, as little likely to be found -- under any one form of government as another. Rampant interference with personal lives is the most obnoxious characteristic of any government, and that is found just as readily under elected officials as under hereditary monarchs. In fact, as the Greeks pointed out, as has been well known to careful students of history ever since, and as the founding fathers of our own republic were well aware, when an elected government succeeds in attracting and maintaining an overwhelming majority behind it for any length of time, its mob instincts make it the most tyrannical of all forms of social organization.

10. Which brings us to the last, the most overlooked, and in my opinion the most important, of these basic generalizations concerning government. Thomas Jefferson expressed part of it in his famous dictum that that government is best which governs least. But Jefferson was thinking of the extent of a government's power more than of the extensiveness of the government itself. And our tenth point is that neither the form of government nor its quality is as important as its quantity. A thoroughly foul government, like that of Nero, which still did not reach its tentacles too far into the daily lives and doings of its subjects, was far better for the Roman Empire in the long run than the intentionally benevolent government of Diocletian or of Constantine, whose bureaucratic agents were everywhere. Let's dramatize this fact -- or opinion -- by bringing it closer to home. And your speaker would like to have it understood that he does not condone dishonesty in the slightest degree. Yet I had rather have for America, and I am convinced America would be better off with, a government of three hundred thousand officials and agents, every single one of them a thief, than a government of three million agents with every single one of them an honest, honorable, public servant. For the first group would only steal from the American economic and political system; the second group would be bound in time to destroy it. The increasing quantity of government, in all nations, has constituted the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century...

The greatest enemy of man is, and always has been, government. And the larger, the more extensive that government, the greater the enemy.

...

There are many stages of welfarism, socialism, and collectivism in general, but communism is the ultimate stage of them all, and they all lead inevitably in that direction. In this final stage, communism, you have a society in which class distinctions are greater than in any other, but where position in these classes is determined solely by demagogic political skill and ruthless cunning. You have a society in which all those traits which have helped to make man civilized, and which our multiple faiths have classified as virtues, are now discarded as vices -- while exactly their opposites are glorified. And you have a society in which every fault of government that we have discussed above is held to be a benefit and a desirable part of the framework of life...

So I am saying to you simply this. Find out for yourselves. You don't have to accept my beliefs, my interpretation of history, nor my ideas of what should be done to put the human race in the best position to use its wand of near-omnipotence. But for goodness' sake do not meekly or lazily accept the ideas, slants, and conclusions of the collectivist conformists either. And above all, do not ignore the experience accumulated by two hundred generations of your ancestors. Study the past, analyze the present, and dream the future for yourselves. By the time you discover that communism is just a new version of Spartan fascism, even to the cunning and cruelty by which it is maintained; that modem collectivist theory is just warmed-over Plato; that time after time men have abandoned all home ties and migrated to new lands just to escape the very tyranny of too much government that is now closing in on us again; and that man's progress, spiritual as well as material, has almost always been inversely proportional to t he amount of government control over his actions; by the time you find out these things for yourself -- as you surely will if you study history diligently and objectively enough -- I think you will join that rising force of americanists who are determined that americanism shall again become a beacon for mankind.