Quote from: Anon136 on August 06, 2013, 03:20:52 AM

Quote from: Mike Christ on August 05, 2013, 10:54:23 PM

Quote from: Anon136 on August 05, 2013, 10:50:24 PM

thats cool that you want that, i say more power to you. capitalism is about recognizing that some people do want to buy a bunch of crap the make their neighbors jealous and respecting their right to do that so long as are working to earn those things and not stealing them. its about freedom, the freedom to live a minimalist life OR not.

I'm still trying to figure out the diff between capitalism and socialism. The basic premise (I think; someone correct me on this) of capitalism is to take profit, invest it in some business (your own or someone else's), and then make more profit and repeat. Is this not allowed in socialism, or is it setup so that it cannot be done as easily or at all?

Well there is a huge range of disagreement on exactly what these terms mean. They mean so many different things to so many different people so as to render them almost meaningless. what i can do is explain what they mean to me.

Capitalism is the physical manifestation of the generally held belief within a society that the individual (individuals) who creates (create) a thing is (are) the one (ones) who has (have) the right to determine whether or how that thing is used. Socialism on the other hand is the physical manifestation of the generally held belief within a society that the members of that society share the right to determine whether or how that thing is used.

Without delving too deeply into the economic arguments in favor of the former, which are myriad and some of which quite complex and nuanced, there is one simple intuitive explanation that is, in my opinion, in and of its self sufficient to make the case.

Say you have 365 people living on an imaginary island in an imaginary society. Every day all 365 go to the river to catch fish with their hands. They eek out a meager living this way with each person catching 1 fish each day. One day someone gets the idea of creating a net. he thinks that if he makes this net he may be able to catch twice as many fish per day. In order to create the net he would have to go a day with out fish, a very large cost indeed for a person who is already on the brink of starvation. Under socialism he would get to use his net 1 day per year. it is very unlikely that he would decide to go a full day with out eating in order to have a net for 1 day per year. In fact everyone who ever thought of the idea would come to the same conclusion and no nets would ever be made and the society would net (no pun intended) 365 fish per day. Under capitalism anyone who made a net would get to use it every day, and so everyone would decide it was worth it, everyone would make a net and the society as a whole would net 720 fish per day. This simple change of allowing the person to keep the products of his labor for himself has made the society as a whole twice as wealthy.

obviously i oversimplified and took a lot of things for granted. for example its unlikely that EVERYONE would make a net even under capitalism but it ought to be sufficient to communicate the general idea of dispersed benefits and concentrated costs (its weird saying that because im used to talking about the problem of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs).

Thank you for the 19th century view on society and the environment. We live in the 21st century now, and we have a good understanding of the dynamics and interplay between our actions and the reactions of the environment. As I've told you many many times, your views demonstrate your ignorance of a lot of things, and that renders you unqualified to speculate like you do in your own vacuum of knowledge.

Have fun throwing out your little ideas. But they're kind of worthless absent any further knowledge. Must I point you once again to this long post I made a long time ago? It seems I need to.

The post in question: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=97243.msg1073879#msg1073879