Quote from: giletto on January 21, 2014, 04:48:50 AM

So you got it? Not the systems fault, just human being. Another race could handle that perfect (as you can found in wildlife), the greedy mankind can't. That is the simple point, why so less people with power can control the earth on such easy way.

Sure, Bees and ants do it fine... but we aren't talking about bees or ants, or aliens. Socialism will NEVER work with humans. Guess what? We are humans. For humans Free Market Capitalism works, and is by far the most efficient system ever devised by man, but it requires that people are allowed to be free. Some people can't stand that others may make what they perceive as mistakes and want to force people to do it their way. I don't think they have the right to tell me how to live my life, so long as I don't interfere with anyone else's living their life the way they want to. I don't care what could work for some alien race, I care about what happens to humans.

Theories are fine and have their place, it's when people try to put them into action, when they will never work with real people involved that I have a problem. People aren't bees or ants and would be miserable if forced to live like them. Which is what happens if socialism is enforced on humans. And I do mean enforced. It can't be done with people being free. Maybe you want to be told what to do, where to live, how many kids you can have, what to eat, etc. but the majority of humans don't want that. Personally I can't understand why anyone would want that, but if some people do they are free to form their own groups to do that if they want to, but they shouldn't force it on people, and if they create their little commune people should be free to leave if they decide it isn't for them. Freedom and socialism are mutually exclusive, they can't exist together. You might be able to have the illusion of freedom for a while, but it is only an illusion. I would prefer real freedom, but even in America we don't have that anymore. While America is still one of the freest places on earth, it's no where near what it used to be because the government has continued to take power they were never intended to have under our system. And unfortunately, the people keep letting them because they are promised so many goodies in exchange for losing just a little freedom. But all those little freedom losses add up over time. It's like the old story of cooking a frog by slowly turning up the temperature on the pot of water until finally it's too late for the frog to escape.

I don't know where you live, or what your experience is. But I do know it is very difficult to fully understand something that is foreign to your experience. People are taught the wonders of socialism mostly by the socialists in power, trying to maintain their power. It is a form of indoctrination, or brain washing. If you are taught something over and over, especially from a young age it becomes very difficult to think outside of that box. Our language defines our thinking. If you don't have a word for something it's very difficult to think about it and understand it. The socialists in power know this and that's why they love public education. It gives them the power over all those young minds to mold them into the next generation of socialists. another great read is George Orwell's 1984. He got the date wrong, but he was right and that's where we are heading. Look at political correctness for example, they are making many words unacceptable and changing the definition of others. In 1984 they banned the word freedom so people couldn't even communicate the thought. Today we are just changing the definition. We aren't there yet, but that's the general direction of things, unless we wake up and change directions.

For capitalism you have to believe in the power of individuals, not collectives. Individual people making decisions to improve their own lives (you may call it greed, I call it enlightened self interest) makes the most efficient system. Sure some will make mistakes, but humans learn from their mistakes, thus improving the system over time. It allows for ultra fast reactions to new technology, unlike slow ponderous governments that have to change mountains of laws to accommodate new technology. Frequently trying to limit them so they can protect their own interests in older systems, like using tax money to subsidize buggy whip manufactures because the new auto industry is hurting their business model. This kind of garbage happens in government all the time, that's the crony capitalism I was talking about. It's hugely wasteful.

Capitalism is like evolution, survival of the fittest. If you run your business poorly or a new competitor comes along you must adapt to survive, making you better in the process. If you don't adapt, your business will fail and go extinct. But if that happens you still have the opportunity to come back if you can come up with a better way to do things. But in the end the customers all win because you keep getting better products at lower prices. Yes, old business that fail to improve will fail, and really, that's a good thing. And even for the people that were involved with the failed business, there is always another opportunity just around the corner. That's why it works best for everyone, with the exception of the power freaks that want to control your life. They hate it because they don't have control of everyone. But everyone controls their own life. The only ones that lose in capitalism are the ones that want others to pay for their lives. They will have to work for a living. Then there are people like me that are unable to work a normal job due to some medical issue. But many of them can still find some niche that they can make a living at. I continue to try to find things I can do. sometimes I'm more successful than others, and there are times when I'm so incapacitated I can't really do much of anything. But I have a wife that is very good at what she does and makes enough for both of us to survive on, and occasionally thrive on. Our income goes up and down, we save in the good years and scrimp in the down years and we get by just fine. Things aren't great for us at the moment. My headaches have been bad for going on 12 years now without a remission, sometimes they are worse than others and things seem to be tapering off so I hope I'll be able to do more soon. The economy has been pretty bad and my wife was without a job for 5 months last year so that wiped out all of our savings and put us in debt again, but she has a new contract job that hopefully will go permanent soon so hopefully we'll be able to pull out of it again. Overall we do better than many people, and much better than people that seem to be happy depending on the government to take care of them.

Government is a monopoly. They don't have to be good at what they do, they can, and do, waste money by the truckload. They don't have to have good customer service because they are the only game in town. They don't have a competitor to force them to do better. You don't have a choice to take your business elsewhere to get better treatment. This is why the Soviet Union, North Korea, etc. close their borders and will not allow citizens to leave the country. One of the brilliant things about the way the US was set up was that the individual states were set up as competitors too, just like businesses had competitors. If a state mismanages it's people and over taxes, the people can pick up and move to anther state that is doing better. This is why so many people and businesses are moving out of California and New York and moving to places like Texas and Florida. The big problem is that the Federal Government has taken far more power than was ever intended. The federal government was never meant to be much more than a defensive alliance between the states. There was more to it than that of course, but it was never meant to have much power. But governments always crave more power, and over time, they get it.

This is also the big draw of bitcoin! Whether you realize it or not, a big part of what you love about bitcoin is the freedom it represents.

I'm starting to think maybe I should write a book... The problem is the people that need to read it wouldn't.

Korxax

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