Democracy can only work when peoples incomes are somewhat equal.
When the richest are worth as much as a small country, and the poorest don’t have a pot to piss in, the rich can just buy the politicians and the courts, and that’s exactly what they’ve done.
Democracy doesn’t work without equality.
Of course we’re not all equal and we shouldn’t make the exact same amount of money, but the gap between rich and poor has never been higher in the history of the world as it is now.
The gap between the richest and poorest class in say Ancient Athens pales in comparison to the chasm we have now. It seems the more wealth humanity has…the more concentrated it gets.
The game is rigged.
The minimum wage should be increased to 30 dollars, and after that adjusted for inflation annually.
Either that or government should takeover some or all of the food and housing industries, so we can have cheap, affordable rents and food.
If healthcare and education are universal, and they are in Canada, and most of the developed world, food and housing should be universal too, as they’re far more essential.
The argument you’re making just is not realistic.
The living standard keeps going up in the Western world, mostly due to technological advancement. It’s not getting lower. The shrinking of the middle class isn’t necessarily a bad thing when put into the context of inflation. A century ago, making $50,000 per year meant you were rich. Today it means middle class. And it also depends on where you live, in a city or rural. As such, your broad claims don’t mean much without specific examples and contexts.
Everybody is ‘richer’ today.
Coming from the kettle, that sure is a rich suggestion.
If we’re to have absolute ‘freedom’, in the capitalist or ‘libertarian’ sense, since children and the mentally retarded can’t consent to anything, or take care of themselves, shouldn’t they be the property of their parents or caretakers?
While seniors and cripples may be able to consent, unless they’re rich, they can’t take care of themselves, so shouldn’t they be property of their children or caretakers?
And what about animals, if they can’t consent to anything they can’t have rights.
Perhaps criminals who’re going to be executed or locked up for life anyway should be sold into slavery, and captives of war.
Perhaps debtors who can’t possibly pay their debts in their lifetime should be sold into slavery as well.
Shouldn’t you be able to sell your children into slavery?
You should be able to sell yourself into slavery, shouldn’t you?
And of course the offspring of your property would be your property.
There are some prominent libertarians who’ve advocated for some or all of the above, such as Robert Nozick.
All of these practices are arguably the logical extention of libertarianism, we can see how following libertarian premises/principles to their logical conclusion would eventually lead to a kind of industrial or postindustrial feudalism.
If I own myself, then I have the right to sell myself into slavery, or sign a contract whereby a or the condition of breaking the contract, is that I become a slave.
It looked great. It would look great today too, if imposed.
Bullshit, the 21st Century is a different environment. If the US was stripped of government, taxes lowered, then society would actually progress. People would have several magnitudes more buying power. Everybody could afford healthcare, because of that same buying power. (Many would choose not to buy it though.) Deflation would occur too. People would increase their wealth as companies would be pressured into hiring workers. People would want to work, need to work, and companies would want, and need, to hire. Increased competition is good for those willing to work, the ones who matter.
Competition benefits the hard-working, risk-takers, men in general. As it stands now, socialism is weak, apathetic, whiny, more focused on avoiding work, voting yourselves money instead of making, creating, earning money. Socialistic compulsions are more likened to the decay of (feudalistic) society than anything else. Rather than people knowing that they must solve their own problems, in socialism they turn to authorities to fix problems for them, hence depending on monarchical representatives or theocratic, priestly authority. Turn to God to fix your problems. Pray harder.
All of that is inferior to capitalism. If you want something then the onus is upon you to get it. No voting for it. No praying for it. Only working for it.
Why should winners be curtailed? Somebody bets $10,000 in roulette. Who are you to say winning $10,000,000 is “too much”? That’s the loser mentality I’m talking about. Hands off his winnings. It’s not yours. You seem salty that another guy risked his $10,000 and won. While you risked $10,000 and lost? So now you have nothing and he has everything. That’s the result of gambling, winners and losers. But the losers, having nothing, now want to gang up and steal from the winner.
Exaggeration, humanity literally cannot go back to the third world with all the technology we now have at our disposal. Smart phones make it impossible to go back.
Civility implies that those who are closest to the disabled, children, vexed, are responsible for them. It’s like a mother or father abandoning their child on a doorstep. Rather than blame the deadbeat parent, you blame the person opening the door, for being inconsiderate and ‘hateful’. It’s not the person’s responsibility on the doorstep. And by ignoring the deadbeat parents, you are being immoral, by blaming the wrong people for the causes.
So it is with Capitalism too, economics and society. As long as you keep blaming the wrong people (the ones opening the door to the abandoned child), the more you are perpetuating the types of ills you denounce.
You have not reconciled the differences between personal liberty versus the socialistic compulsions. Obviously an individual cannot be ‘free’ when society (socialists) impose all matters of restrictions, beginning with taxation, and then proceeding to a mountain of laws and legal binding. If the government and third-party intervention already takes 22% of your lifetime earning and value, then isn’t that enough? For Gloominary, apparently not.
If socialists were rebuked, and people retained their earnings, then consumer buying power would go up. Socialistic and welfare programs would not be “needed”, except by those who can’t work, or refuse to work. But this still doesn’t the matter of responsibility by which people can’t work, or won’t work. If average people had more buying power then it would be possible for families to take care of their own disabled, the ones who cannot work. Thus it would not be the burden of the rest of society (who had no part in spawning or causing the disability).
Children are already the property of their parents, by law, or the property of a “guardian” who supplants the parent.
From my perspective, a parent has absolute authority over his/her own child, as an extension of his/her own self. Yes the parent can do what s/he wishes.
It’s socialists like yourself who believe “The Government” or “God” is a higher authority, and has the “Right” to stick its nose in, to interject between Parent and child.
So who is the real slave, if you cannot own yourself, if you cannot own your child?
Animals don’t have rights.
You’re not free unless you can sell yourself into slavery, if you choose to of course.
Mostly correct, I’d say the parent-child relationship is more immediate than the grandparent-grandchild relation.
If you were truly free then what would stop you from entering into any contract?
Did you guess it? “The Government”, “God”, “The State”, “Society” these are all restrictions to freedom.
Freedom means, hypothetically, that you could do anything you want (within your power and responsibility to do so). Freedom also means paying the price of consequences, winners and losers. Freedom does not mean rigging the game.
Why even use the word responsibility? That word does not align with freedom. True freedom has no constraints, especially not self-imposed ones.
You can’t know the difference between what is free, and what is not, without responsibility.
A free person wouldn’t give your existence, let alone your understanding of freedom, responsibility, or anything a second thought, not until you got in their way limiting them would they counteract your existence. Even then, they wouldn’t care one iota what you thought. Primal survival of the fittest would be true freedom now.
You’re talking out your ass.
So what, if anything, gave serfs the right to rebel against their feudal lords?
What gave Afro-American slaves the right to rebel against their white masters?
It was never a matter of rights. It was a matter of force, power, and violence.
Anybody who has ever became free knows that it is through ferocity. Freedom is won, and earned. “Freedom isn’t free”.
And we’re back to square one, the law of the jungle, might makes right, amoralism.
And sometimes, or at least occasionally, the poor slaves, serfs and wage slaves are more powerful, and can outwit the rich few.
And just as they made the world a better place to live in yesterday, at least for themselves, they can make the world a better place to live in today.
If it was ‘right’, or at least made sense to partly emancipate themselves yesterday, it may and arguably is right/makes sense to more fully emancipate themselves today.
Maybe. 
Just following your lead.
There is no freedom in civility and you’re describing freedom from that of a civilized and constrained man. There is no deep thought, imaginings, fantasies in being free. Freedom is more doing, less thinking. Contemplation restricts doing, thus restricts freedom.
There’s degrees of hierarchy, master/slave is the starkest one, serf/lord is a little less stark.
Wage slave/capitalist is a form of hierarchy too, a little less stark than serf/lord.
Hierarchies are often bad, at least for the ones on the bottom, but they’re not always bad, like the hierarchy that exists between parent/child, or between wise, just leader/follower.
But just because you or your ancestors consented to a hierarchy, or a hierarchy was imposed upon you or them, doesn’t mean you can’t or it wouldn’t be in your best interests to rebel, doesn’t mean it would be necessarily ‘immoral’ or ‘irresponsible’ to rebel.
If we didn’t rebel in the feudal age, well, we’d still be in the feudal age, and that wouldn’t be very good.
Not all capitalism and capitalists are bad, not all socialism or workers are good.
But to the degree capitlaism has been found to be bad and can be oppoosed, it ought to be, just because some of this was consented to by our ancestors, or is being consented to now, doesn’t mean it’s in our best interests.
Fundamentally we never consented to any of this, this system, we were all born into it, I wasn’t asked if I’d like to be a citizen of Canada, you weren’t asked if you’d like to be a citizen of the US or the UK.
African Americans didn’t ‘earn’ their freedom so much as it was given to them by the unionists from the confederates, so I guess they don’t ‘deserve’ it, by your standard, and they should still be slaves.
How did people become serfs?
Were their ancestors defeated in battle by stronger, smarter or luckier adversaries?
Did their ancestors lose their freedom in a relatively ‘free’ agraian, predinustrial market through sheer incompetence or bad luck?
Perhaps all of the above.
Whatever the case may be, they were serfs because of ‘decisions’ they or their ancestors made, so I guess they had no right to rebel, and the responsibility to submit.
It’s not that government is my God, to the degree government is oppressive and can be resisted, it should be resisted.
However, a democratic government is less likely to be oppressive than a megacorporation owned by just a handful of individuals.
The more participatory the government, or the corporation, the more I’m inclined to trust it.
Our democracy isn’t very participatory, because it’s representative and manipulated by corporations, and so isn’t very trustworthy.
If more people voted for a broader range of parties and better parties, I’d be more inclined to trust it. Instead, essentially what we have is a two party dictatorship.
Both parties are demonstrably beholden to the corporations, with only slight and stylistic differences between them.
What does it mean for the middle class to be shrinking?
It means the prices of things in general, or essential goods and services like food and housing are rising more than their wages, so they can buy less and less stuff in general, or stuff they need, and that’s exactly what’s occurring.
I’ve already used a couple of statistics to prove this point.
If the standard of living for the middle and working classes was visibly growing, then I probably wouldn’t be complaining, but it’s not, even tho the economy as a whole visibly is, and that’s what tends to happen under a capitalism with little-no safety net.
A few exceptions to the rule like computers and cell phones cheapening doesn’t disprove the rule.
Are you serious? It sounds like you are, in which case I guess you “deserve” such a society, but I will do everything in my power to stop things for me regressing back to some illiterate Trump-like fantasy about how everything used to be better when it objectively wasn’t (but don’t worry, I have very little power with which to fight this fight). I wish there was a way for you to forge your own 3rd world disaster just so you could realise how misguided your rose-tinted nostalgic prayers are - I’m sure you wish the same thing with an entirely different expectation.
You can keep saying if there was no government then things would progress and it still wouldn’t be true. You need to stop praying.
The fantasy that people would have more buying power without taxation shows complete economic ignorance. Let me explain how this actually works under your dream scenario:
- Company tax expenses decrease to zero
- Revenues are initially the same, profits increase proportionally to the decrease in tax expense
- The company now has the option to increase wage expenses back up (hire more staff and/or pay the current ones more) so that their profits remain unchanged (though there’s less reason to keep profits down than if tax was applied to them before), or to enjoy the extra drawings and spend it on themselves, or to invest in growth of the business.
- Employees have the option to ask for the aforementioned payrise, and are more likely to get it if they cannot be easily replaced by someone who will do the same job for less if the role is a highly skilled one. Unskilled employees are less likely to get it, but still might depending on the philosophy of the employer - they already have more income if they used to incur direct taxes and things are cheaper if there used to be indirect taxes on them. Initial higher spending power.
~this is where you stop thinking~
- What happens when spending power increases? Supply temporarily dwindles because it can’t adjust to an immediate change quickly enough, demand for the same products increases because people now have the money to buy them.
- What happens when supply dwindles and demand increases? Prices are increased to mitigate stock shortages and to take advantage of higher demand: inflation!
What did you think would happen when more money was introduced into the private sector? Why would this be ANY different to governments increasing money supply through quantitative easing, which you guys all love to hate on?! I thought you said you understood economics and were even masterful at it?
You can have any amount of total money supply, and it will still be allocated to all the goods and services that we currently have the infrastructure to offer, in the proportions that we currently see that merely reflect the current power imbalance and what resources are physically accessible. More money supply = all goods and services scale up in price in the same proportion and likewise they proportionally decrease with less money supply. Any disruptions always eventually resolve back to the same imbalance, regardless of their nature and extent.
But who says any of the above would happen at all when we have all these government services that were in demand but have now disappeared?
Either they are immediately bought up by private buyers, new businesses are formed to cater to the same demand for which the government formerly provided the supply, or you are going on incur the aforementioned inflation because the money supply was increased in the private sector. If the business is not picked up or replaced, GDP decreases, and with that the country’s borrowing power may also decrease because they now have less wealth to back the credit arrangements with other countries that all countries heavily rely on. If it is picked up, then there’s no extra money like you imagined.
Either way, no extra spending power. None of your fantasy comes true.
Taxation doesn’t actually affect the wealth proportions that naturally emerge due to the private sector, all it does is act as just another market force in just the same way as a major supplier on whom your business relies or a highly paid indispensable employee. If anything, taking away taxation only increases the speed at which these proportions spiral inequality in favour of an increasingly small minority. But that’s going to be quick anyway once technology significantly starts replacing the need for humans to do work that a machine can do better.
I say let gamblers risk, win and lose their bets… but to an extent. $10,000? To some that’s nothing, maybe a holiday to others, probably not that life-changing even to someone who is poor - though enough perhaps to get somebody who has nothing back in the game. $10m? Wow, nice! Life-changing to most, a big lottery win that we often see, go nuts! $10trillion in winnings? Once sums get high enough they start to have significant effects on the economy, and their absence in certain areas becomes noticeable. Like I said, let there be inequality, reward people when it is beneficial to everyone to do so, but how much is enough reward? When it stops being beneficial to everyone and starts being more detrimental just for the sake of rewarding one person - that’s when we have a problem.
No exaggeration, you assume too much.
Smart phones aren’t “just here now” whatever happens. If the technology needed for them to operate cannot be bought, maintained and upgraded, they don’t work anymore, SORRY! If credit “crunches”, floors drop out from markets, nobody has confidence to lend anymore, since modern transactions are now utterly at the whim of lending and borrowing, things can’t keep working the way they do anymore. This even goes for all the things you clearly take for granted - even energy and food. It’s entirely possible for them to stop getting to everyone, even today, if nobody can afford to pay anybody to operate things anymore. This would be less so for renewable energy, but you just can’t profit quite as much from something of which you can’t control the supply! - hence why non-renewable energy just won’t go away. But thanks to entropy, even renewable energy sources break eventually.
Our only chance to maintain our current conditions after a big enough market crash, without government to bail out the most important services, would be if people who worked in those important services all agreed to work for free: becoming even more clearly the slaves we all always were to the market.
You have a messed up notion of civility. Civility is picking up the pieces of incivility, such as abandoning a baby on a doorstep - an absolutely immoral act no question, and any parents who do such a thing do not escape blame for their actions. But civility isn’t black and white, it isn’t EITHER one party’s fault OR another’s. To be civil would be to ensure the health and safety of that baby to whatever extent possible (not necessarily taking care of the baby yourself) - what any moral person would do regardless of the immorality of the action that required their morality. The household at which the baby is abandoned have a civil responsibility should such a thing happen to them, and they are also to blame if they do not fulfill this responsibility. They shouldn’t have to, but incivility happens and it only gets worse if it is responded to with incivility.
As such the primary blame is obviously with the parents. Obviously. Don’t stupidly assume I would just blame the wrong people. But those who don’t respond to incivility with civility can also be secondarily to blame for their immoral actions. You don’t seem to get how moral systems can be bigger than just one individual, I’m kinda concerned that you don’t appear to have a conscience from some of the things you say.
Nobody is ever free in society. Period.
As soon as you cooperate with another, compromise is required and you each mutually benefit from the distribution of labour amounting to a better outcome than if you both went it alone - or even worse if you competed with one another and you each actively tried to undercut the other. Maximum individual freedom is only possible to a hermit, but they cannot be free to enjoy the benefits of working with others, nor are they free to break physical laws, nor are they free from the natural dangers around them from which a society would protect them. To socialised individuals, working with others actually increases the overall feeling of freedom because it exceeds the freedom felt from going it alone.
All these restrictions that society “imposes” on poor Libertarians are there to result in the maximum freedom across all these types of freedom to and freedom from, for the most possible people. This has become skewed in favour of the rich, of course. But even they are never entirely free. You might as well blame the frontal lobes in your brain for restricting the freedom of your limbic system 
The whole brain, like an economy is a system, each part dependent on every other to achieve the overall result that you enjoy - debts are owed all around, whether you understand the connection or not.
Just because you aren’t aware of, don’t appreciate, or have unrealistic expectations about certain parts of society, doesn’t mean you have a revolutionary new understanding of it that if only everyone else could see, we’d all be better off. You just need to do a lot more thinking, and learn a lot more context.
It really gets me how all these people obsessed with maximising freedom actually have very little understanding of what it actually is and how it works. In many ways it doesn’t even exist. In the only way that it can really be said to exist, you lot all seem to think that just because restrictions to freedom are more cleverly hidden in certain ways of arranging economies, that they don’t exist and that those ways are better. So naive.
Some corporations are much more “progressive” than the government.
Just because a government is formed doesn’t mean it’s “necessarily good” as you are implying.
You’re ignoring the fact that, in spite of any middle class “shrinkage”, the whole economy is growing. Thus the middle class is actually stagnating from the widest view of economics. And that can be acceptable in many areas. The delusion that “we must always be getting richer” (without working) is ludicrous.