Neeum Zawan schrieb:
>> No, just the vocal ones who oppose it.  And maybe not communism, but
>> socialism.
> 
>     How many of Americans who oppose it know the difference?
> 

Do /you/ know the difference?

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Neeum Zawan schrieb:
> On 08/13/09 17:48, Warp wrote:
>>    At its core, capitalism is about free commerce, and it's precisely 
>> free
>> commerce which keeps the cash flowing.
> 
>     In which direction?
> 
LOL!

Thinking about it, it seems like money is made of exotic matter these 
days...

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On 08/13/09 19:22, clipka wrote:
> Neeum Zawan schrieb:
>>> No, just the vocal ones who oppose it. And maybe not communism, but
>>> socialism.
>>
>> How many of Americans who oppose it know the difference?
>
> Do /you/ know the difference?

	Yup. One leads to prosperity, and the other doesn't. And neither is 
capitalism.

-- 
Doctor to patient: Although it's nothing serious, let's keep an eye on 
it to make sure it doesn't turn into a major lawsuit.

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On 08/13/09 19:23, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> 	Funny - I haven't heard any suggestions of alternatives from
> those who
>> keep opposing it. Are you sure they agree it is broken?
>
> The ones I've talked to agree that it's broken, but they are against "big
> government" and I understand the reasons why, even though I might not
> agree with them.

	Fair enough.

	And also fair enough that it need not be government run. Some countries 
do have very successful insurance driven health care - simply because of 
government regulations to prevent the companies from abusing it.

	Haven't looked at Obama's bill. General consensus, though, seems to be 
that it's different from virtually all models out there, so it's a toss 
up as to whether it's a good plan or not. I guess we'll know 40 years 
down the road.


-- 
Doctor to patient: Although it's nothing serious, let's keep an eye on 
it to make sure it doesn't turn into a major lawsuit.

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On Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:44:03 -0500, Neeum Zawan wrote:

> On 08/13/09 19:23, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> 	Funny - I haven't heard any suggestions of alternatives from
>> those who
>>> keep opposing it. Are you sure they agree it is broken?
>>
>> The ones I've talked to agree that it's broken, but they are against
>> "big government" and I understand the reasons why, even though I might
>> not agree with them.
> 
> 	Fair enough.
> 
> 	And also fair enough that it need not be government run. Some 
countries
> do have very successful insurance driven health care - simply because of
> government regulations to prevent the companies from abusing it.

True.  Well-regulated could work well for us.

> 	Haven't looked at Obama's bill. General consensus, though, seems 
to be
> that it's different from virtually all models out there, so it's a toss
> up as to whether it's a good plan or not. I guess we'll know 40 years
> down the road.

I haven't looked at it either, but as I get drawn into more debates about 
it, I probably will at least read the summary view of it, if only to be 
better prepared for discussions about it. :-)

We'll know 40 years down the road if it's approved. :-)

Jim

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Daniel Bastos wrote:
> What you mean (or what is meant) by self-regulation? Some effect of
> free trade?

Self-regulation is the notion that everybody's actions, whether through 
goodwill or pure greed (though probably assumed the latter in every 
case), balance each other out and so prevent any one particular greedy 
individual from taking unfair advantage of those who don't happen to be 
as greedy--all the greedy ones hobble each other in an attempt to keep 
everyone but themselves from getting all the money, but since there's 
more than one of them...you get a fair market.

The only problem is it doesn't turn out that way, and you do need a 
(supposedly) impartial watchdog.  That's the government.  Proponents of 
pure free trade insist that any intervention, period, breaks capitalism 
and allows things to become unbalanced, instead of recognising that the 
government just tries to reduce the disparity that'll be there anyways.

Then there's the (somewhat peculiar, imo) notion of individual liberty. 
  It was a novel thing to found an entire country holding that concept 
as sacred, the way the USA was, at the time.  It hadn't ever actually 
been tried--it was a grand experiment.  So you drill into your citizens 
that belief, and that 'the government' as an entity that since time 
immemorial had just taken freedom away from ordinary folk (along with 
nobility, but since that was explicitly left out of the USA, in theory 
doesn't affect the situation ['cept it does, 'cuz you get class 
striation, with the rich people becoming the de facto nobility]), was 
something bad.  So when you have government needing to grow and have 
bureaucracy, it bothers people.

Just my opinion.
</rant(?)>

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Warp schrieb:
> >> but I'm sure there are 
> >> people who even think capitalism is the answer to the economic crisis... >_<
> > 
> >   I'm not exactly sure why it wouldn't be.

> Maybe because it's exactly this liberal capitalism that got us to where 
> we're at right now??

  It's also what got us with free health care, hospitals, free education and
schools, public libraries, free roads for anyone to use, and all this while
maintaining basic human rights and freedom. Well, in most capitalist countries
at least.

  I find it rather amusing that you think that "capitalism caused the
economic crisis", when it was capitalism that caused the economic growth
in the first place. The "economic crisis" is only a recession in relation
to the previous economic growth, which was brought by capitalism. Without
capitalism there would be no "economic crisis" because we would be in a
constant economic recession, probably a much worse one than the current one.

> >   At its core, capitalism is about free commerce, and it's precisely free
> > commerce which keeps the cash flowing.

> At its core, capitalism is also about selfishness, and therefore needs 
> to be counterbalanced by some other regulatory mechanisms if it is to 
> work for good.

  Selfishness is a side-effect of free commerce, not the core of capitalism.
People are selfish bastards, but it's the people who are to blame about that,
not capitalism itself. People would be selfish regardless of capitalism, and
would abuse any other economic model equally badly.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
> On 08/13/09 17:48, Warp wrote:
> >    At its core, capitalism is about free commerce, and it's precisely free
> > commerce which keeps the cash flowing.

>         In which direction?

  It's impossible for cash to flow into one single direction. It has to
circulate for the flow to keep going.

  You may be thinking that cash tends to flow towards big companies. However,
people paying money to those companies have to *get* that money from somewhere
first. Where do you think they get it from?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:

>         They're not opposed to *national* health care (we already have that). 
> They're opposed to *universal* health care.

  I wonder why. Would it be unfair that *all* people could get health care
for free, that rich and poor people would be treated equally?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Neeum Zawan schrieb:
> On 08/13/09 19:22, clipka wrote:
>> Neeum Zawan schrieb:
>>>> No, just the vocal ones who oppose it. And maybe not communism, but
>>>> socialism.
>>>
>>> How many of Americans who oppose it know the difference?
>>
>> Do /you/ know the difference?
> 
>     Yup. One leads to prosperity, and the other doesn't. And neither is 
> capitalism.

So I guess that's the definition of these terms, is it? And which is which?

Last thing I heard of socialism was 1989 when the East German "real 
existing socialism" collapsed. It didn't appear to have been /too/ 
prosperous all the time.

And I guess we don't have to discuss how prosperous communist sovjet 
Russia was.

But then again, the German word "Sozialismus" may denote something else 
than the English "socialism".

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