On 03/26/2015 03:07 AM, jason_green2@... <mailto:jason_green2@...>
[FairfieldLife] wrote:
'State Communism' was tried and it failed miserably for a
number of reasons.
--- <noozguru@...> wrote :
Where? Kerala has a "communist" government and yet it was the
cleanest and most organized of the places I visited in India. And
private business was even thriving.
More than 2 million people from kerala work in the
middle-east, and they send remittances home. That keeps
kerala going right now.
Besides, it was the cooperative entities that facilitated
housing development, finance and agriculture. Private
business have lot of difficulties in Kerala. Many
entrepreneurs moved out citing difficult environment.
These 'communists' are every bit corrupt as any other party.
It was too simplistic and childish. No balance between the
individual and the collective. First of all, a distinction
should be made between 'essential goods' and 'non-essential
goods'.
--- <noozguru@...> wrote :
That outlook is simplistic and childish. And apparently the
viewpoint of an "armchair capitalist." ;-)
I asked if you owned any stocks and instead I got a bunch of
quotes, mostly PR from people who concerned about their public
image. If you don't trade in stocks how can you really experience
what capitalism is about? Maybe you should read Marx as
capitalists say if you want to understand capitalism you need to
read his works.
I was involved in taking a private company public. There's the
old saw "private companies work for dollars and public companies
work for quarters." Nothing could be more true. As a private
company we were focused on making products people wanted to buy.
Once public we were focused on meeting the expectations of Wall
Street. Even as a public company we should have kept the focus on
good products rather than release dates but try to convince
investment bankers of that.
There's a six part BBC documentary on the Spanish Civil War on
YouTube. When the monarchy rescinded their rule the country was
thrown open to the public deciding what form of government they
wanted. The most popular was anarchy. No body owns anything and
scripts are used for trade. The rich property owners didn't want
that so they were trying to overthrow it and succeeded in the
horrific fascist government of Franco. Is that what you want?
The US is headed that way.
There is nothing to prevent the local community from using
scrip stamps for trade.
Secondly, the success of cooperative entities like Mondragon
cooperative in Spain and Amul cooperative in india proves
that 'non-state socialism' is as effective as 'non-state
capitalism'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amul
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Co-operative_Group
The fact that these 'cooperative entities' are able to
compete with 'corporate entities', and exist with them side
by side, even do business with each other, proves that there
is space for both approaches.
Non-state socialism can exist along with non-state
capitalism.
--- <noozguru@...> wrote :
We have employee run companies here in the SF Bay Area. Rainbow
Bread is one of them. They also make a good product. Coops were
very popular in the 1960s and 1970s. My sister was the
comptroller for one of the Bay Area ones. Seattle has a grocery
co-op I was a member of. It was a good place to get natural and
organic food. Beat the hell out of "Whole Foods".
Thing is laissez-faire capitalism has run amok, created too much
inequality and as such I think could be a pendulum swing the other
direction to extreme socialism which is not a good solution
either. But none the less the punishment for those who abused the
privilege of a capitalist economy.
Once you sort out the political funding issue, you can start
dealing with this issue. Parties need funds to function and
it's better if the State gives them. The idea of business
capital funding parties, goes against the spirit of
democracy.
Corporate entities don't vote. They should not be allowed to
donate more than 5% of their profits to parties.
--- <noozguru@...> <mailto:noozguru@...> wrote :
"Communism is an interesting idea that has never been tried."
"What some people think are communist countries are family
businesses. North Korea as an example."
On 03/25/2015 04:45 AM, jason_green2@... <mailto:jason_green2@...>
[FairfieldLife] wrote:
Maintain a distinction between 'generating wealth' and
'making money'. Pro-market capitalism generates wealth.
Pro-business capitalism only makes money for a few.
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of
ignorance, and gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the
equal sharing of misery" ~ Winston Churchill
"Under communism, there is no incentive to supply people
with anything they need or want, including safety."
~ George Reisman, (Capitalism : A Treatise on Economics
1996).
"The trouble is with socialism, which resembles a form of
mental illness more than it does a philosophy. Socialists
get bees in their bonnets. And because they chronically lack
any critical faculty to examine and evaluate their ideas,
and because they are pathologically unwilling to consider
the opinions of others, and most of all, because socialism
is a mindset that regards the individual -- and his rights
-- as insignificant, compared to whatever the socialist
believes the group needs, terrible, terrible things happen
when socialists acquire power."
~ L. Neil Smith, "Cambodian Road Trip", 15 March 2009)
"Communism has sometimes succeeded as a scavenger, but never
as a leader. It has never come to power in a country that
was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both."
~ John F. Kennedy, (Speech at NATO Headquarters, Naples
Italy, 2 July 1963)
"Socialism...must have a dictatorship, it will not work
without it."
~ Mao Zedong, (Dikötter, The Tragedy of Liberation: A
History of the Chinese Revolution, 1945–57)
"I think all the great religions of the world - Buddhism,
Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and Communism -- both untrue
and harmful."
~ Bertrand Russell, (My Religious Reminiscences, 1957)
"Communism is a doctrine bred of poverty, hatred and strife.
Its spread can only be arrested by diminishing the area of
poverty and hatred."
~ Bertrand Russell, (Portraits From Memory And Other Essays
1956)
"Capitalism and communism stand at opposite poles. Their
essential difference is this: The communist, seeing the rich
man and his fine home says, 'No man should have so much.'
The capitalist, seeing the same thing says, 'All men should
have as much.' "
– Phelps Adams
"Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don't
need it, and hell where they already have it."
~ Ronald Reagan
"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads
Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's
someone who understands Marx and Lenin."
~ Ronald Reagan
"Communism is like Prohibition, it's a good idea but it
won't work"
– Will Rogers
"For us in Russia communism is a dead dog. For many people
in the West, it is still a living lion."
– Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff."
– Frank Zappa
"Any man who is not a communist at the age of twenty is a
fool. Any man who is still a communist at the age of thirty
is an even bigger fool."
~ George Bernard Shaw
--- <noozguru@...> <mailto:noozguru@...> wrote :
Well I guess then you don't know the tech industry which I've
worked with for years and continue to work with. Yes it is about
money. Do you own stocks?
On 03/24/2015 12:26 PM, jason_green2@... <mailto:jason_green2@...>
[FairfieldLife] wrote:
No, it's not just about money. It's about our survival as a
species. It's also about competition, the Russians and the
Chinese are not going to stay static.
To calculate the folding structure of a single protein would
take one billion years, for all the super-computers on earth
combined, right now. A quantum computer would do that in a
few minutes time.
Communism has no moral compass either. It breeds sloth,
incompetency, inefficiency, kills merit, encourages
mediocrity, sloppiness etc etc. I am sure you wouldn't
like to live in those old commie countries.
It is inevitable that we eventualy go off this planet. It's
the only way that we can survive as a specie. Many cosmic
disasters have hit earth and will continue to do so. We
merging with AI is the next step in evolution.
--- <noozguru@...> <mailto:noozguru@...> wrote :
Blame capitalism. It's all about the money. All the tech
companies care about is making money because if they don't then
their stock will fall and the stockholders will complain. So
there is no moral compass asking what is the long term effects of
the project they are working on. We could probably just stop or
slow where we are with technology and be fine for the next several
hundred years.
On 03/24/2015 11:04 AM, jr_esq@... <mailto:jr_esq@...>
[FairfieldLife] wrote:
He agrees with Hawking and others that AI is not good for humans.
Steve Wozniak: The Future of AI Is 'Scary and Very Bad for People'
<https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/steve-wozniak-future-ai-scary-154700881.html>
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<https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/steve-wozniak-future-ai-scary-154700881.html>
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