Quote from: taltamir on December 23, 2013, 11:47:09 PM

Well, yes. The biggest problem is all this communism that is being introduced into falsely labeled capitalistic societies.

The labels are not the biggest problem.

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But that doesn't mean I don't believe that truly free market capitalism might be prone to big wealth disparity with all the problems that lead to. I'm arguing that those wealth disparities are a problem in themselves.

You are using the terms of the enemy. Wealth disparity is the rallying cry of communists as they dismantle capitalism. A society with no middle class and masses with nothing has a disparity of freedom and of qaulity of life.

Wealth disparity is when people say "the top 1% has 70% of all money/property in terms of dollars". But in a communist society with no middle class there is no 1%, the people at the top are so very few, and relatively if you compare the ratio of wealth its not that big because society is so backwards that the only way for the wealthy not to live like animals themselves is to import it from non communist nations

"The terms of the enemy"? Come on, this is typical 1950s McCarthyist rhetoric. There are examples of so-called democracies with a high living standard on average and high median living standard as well as low poverty, and there are examples of the same with big income disparities, high average living standards, lower median living standards and high poverty. Both type of societies have high taxes and lots of bureaucratic rules, but the ones with lower income disparities are less stressful to live in because one doesn't have to face poverty, there is less crime and in general less tension.

There are examples of so-called social democracies where there is a lot bureaucracy like everywhere, but where the common man is well off middle class (as in absolute middle class on a western scale) and where markets do have a say and it is still possible to make one's own life according to pretty free rules in comparison to other countries that call themselves "capitalistic". I don't champion this kind of society at all, but pretending like all state intervention makes only complete ugliness for everyone at all times ever simply isn't true. Some of the best countries to live in for average Joe at the moment are rich social democracies in Europe - and that is a fact (these countries are also safe, have low prison populations and low recidivisy rates). Another fact is that we haven't really had any pure capitalist society in modern post-ww2 times.

I think your logic is completely binary, where everything is either communism or capitalism. If you want to use terms in this black-and-white manner you have to define what you mean by them. Both of these terms are loaded and need to be handled with care.

Just because the state uses force to accomplish it's goals doesn't mean it is always only evil and never has accomplished anything worthwhile. I think that mostly it is inefficient and often evil, but not completely anything. Apple Inc., on the other hand, is pure evil - a malignant cancer on mankind.