Capitalism vs Socialism

Reducing “freedom” or “capitalism” or “socialism” to one number makes no sense.

Why not reduce “life” to one number?

Like the answer to life, the universe and everything … 42.

I already said. If you look at it, you have to wonder how Syria could be near the top of the capitalist heap. Or how could Saudi Arabia, a monarchy which makes money by selling oil, count as socialist.
It’s pretty strange. One would have to examine those countries to determine if they legitimately could be considered socialist. If they could be considered capitalist. And there lots of countries that look strange.

Capitalism exists in harmony with a variety of social programs. They are no polar opposites.

These things don’t have “opposites”.

There was always taxation, regulation, government spending, government ownership of property and enterprises. So that can’t be the definition of capitalism.

Sure. Then the benevolent dictator dies or goes crazy or turns things over to his idiot children, your socialist utopia disappears and you’re screwed.
You might want to call it benevolent despotism rather than socialism.

Your ‘fitted’ line goes up 15% over the range of 34 countries?
There is often a spread of 10% or more between adjoining countries on the list. It oscillates wildly.

Yeah, I don’t want to live in a police state.

I don’t know the full chain of events, but it seems to me the person asserting that private consumption as a percentage of gdp is the best or even a good measure of freedom bears a huge onus. Presumably they asserted this first and Phyllo reacted with skepticism. Sure, he bears an onus for that, but only after the other person backs up what I would tend to agree with Phyllo sounds pretty silly. It seems like a category error. There might be some kinds of correlation, but I would guess glaring counterexamples. And Sil’s question strikes me as almost funny. What would be a good measure if not that. Well, things like can the press criticize the government, is there a right to assemble that actually defends against police and court intervention, is there freedom of speech both legally and in practice. You could look into how women and minorities are treated in courts and by police and even social policing. ETc. IOW look at freedom directly. I am quite sure there are organizations that do this and rank countries. It’s not as easy to plop in a chart, but then, the ease of a measure where you just pop out a number doesn’t make it a good measure.

Like, well, look at the actual freedoms.

And frankly I find it kind of offensive that freedom to purchase is considered a good measure of freedom, and I find it offensive in the West especially where corporations are intentionally addicting people, for example, to distracting and often unhealthy media and gadgets so they end up, precisely expressing their freedom through buying Nike to feel cool and have an, laughing, individual look, rather than being engaged politically or even personally developmentally. Look, I am free I can buy one of hundreds of breakfast cereals.

If the very notion of what freedom is is undermined, well, then perhaps it is a good measure. But I find it really rather suspicious that we should shift the measure of something onto something else that might correlate sometimes. Why not skip the middleman and measure the thing itself. Sure, its trickier, in this case.

Not reduced, but indicated by one number. It makes no sense to you because it makes your beloved system look bad. Anything putting capitalism in a negative light makes no sense.

We do. It’s called the population statistic.

I explained that. Because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean I’m wrong.

Sure, I’ll concede that, but overall the extent to which a country engages in government spending is a decent measure of socialism and good enough to exhibit trends.

Says who? Capitalism cannot exist in harmony with spreading the wealth. Capitalism is the condensation of wealth whereas socialism is the dispersal of wealth. You cannot say welfare is a capitalist attribute.

Really?

Redistribution / lack of redistribution. Gov spending / lack of gov spending. Taxation / lack of taxation. Regulation / lack of regulation. Gov ownership / private ownership. Socialism / capitalism.

Show me a capitalist who wants more taxes, gov spending, regulation, and government ownership.

I know. That’s what I said. It can work great until it doesn’t.

Whatever the data says is what it says. Check it yourself; I posted the data.

The trend is obvious.

Better be down with socialism then. The police state is a republican thing.

I think you have it backwards. Private consumption is a measure of public consumption by subtraction from 100%. Private consumption is a measure of capitalism, plutocracy, etc or happens to correlate with less freedom. The countries with the lowest private consumption have the highest public consumption.

freedom.jpg

In general, governments that spend more money happen to have more freedom.

70% private consumption = 30% public consumption or government spending. As the chart goes up, government spending goes down. The free countries are to the left.

I’ll redo the chart. I created it on my laptop last night, but I can improve it.

The methodology is here freedomhouse.org/report/methodo … world-2018

It takes into account journalistic freedom, internet freedom, and other civil liberties and political rights.

Norway had the best freedom of the press score in 2017. freedomhouse.org/report/table-c … -fotp-2017

Norway also has one of the highest government spending.

Coincidence? Maybe, but there is a lot of coincidence to swallow.

Estonia has the most internet freedom. freedomhouse.org/sites/default/ … 1_2018.pdf

Estonia also has robust government spending.

Coincidence?

It doesn’t make any system look good or bad because it’s all over the place. It makes one scratch his head and ask “what does it mean, if anything?”

If you call Saudi Arabia socialist, then you are tossing away a key concept of socialism which is that “the people” have the political power.

What you are really saying is that any government that spends a lot of money is socialist.

Apple / lack of apple.

Didn’t you post at least two examples of capitalists who want their taxes raised? (I forget which thread it was in.)
I think that KT spent several pages discussing gov spending and regulation with you. No need for me to repeat it.

That’s why the power has to be in the hands of “the people” instead of the despot. Socialists understand.

I did. I looked up the report. Fortunately you did not need to plot Saudi Arabia on the graph, (or China or Singapore). Freedom scores : Finland 100, Saudi Arabia 7.

That was my lame attempt to move the conversation on to something more productive … if we want freedom, what exactly do we want to be happening? What kind of compromises are acceptable or unacceptable? What are the biggest threats to freedom?

Ok, that might be better, but it seems to me you still should measure the actual freedoms. Harder to get a number, sure, but a vastly better measure. I think his ’ they are all over the place’ is a good argument against it. And to demonstrate that it’s true, you are going to have to figure out the level of freedom directly. I mean, the speed that crickets chirp in the evening in different countries might correlate with freedom somehow, but might as well measure freedom, as well as you can. And yes, I can see where gdp percentages might have more easily argued correlations, but then perhaps humans somehow affect cricket chirping or their spending does, lol. It seems like the kind of statistic that will be used to draw poor conclusions whereas measuring actual freedoms gets you down to the core more directly. Of course there will be controversy and one will have to weigh different freedoms against each other when ranking, but that’s a good debate. One worth having.
I wonder how the USSR and communist China in, say the 70s would have done on that scale. I am guessing that public spending was very high and freedoms rather low.

I think that says more about you than the research.

Good point! That’s true, but in this case socialism is a function of government spending and not the extent to which the people have control over the government. I can’t think of a way to quantify democracy. Can you? I’ll be more than happy to research it if you can.

Yes, government spending is an attribute of socialism. Just like democracy is an attribute of socialism. Saudi Arabia has a lot of government spending and large welfare, but the people have no control over government. So on one hand it seems socialistic, but on the other not. But at the end of the day, the money is being spread around to the people and that has to be considered socialism. In Egypt, the money is not spread to the people and the people have no control over their government, so Egypt is anti-socialistic.

Now you got it!

Buffett and Gates and the Patriotic Millionaires are crusading to raise their own taxes, and they have capitalized off a capitalist system, but Buffett said if he ran for president, his campaign would look a lot like Bernie’s. He advocates taking care of the population that made him rich. He thinks the burden of government spending should be on his shoulders and not those of the lower classes. Buffett supported Hillary for president (because he didn’t think Bernie had a chance of winning). Essentially, Buffett is crusading to reduce his capital and that of his peers for the purpose of taking care of society. And republicans hate Buffett almost as much as Paul Krugman.

Capitalists, such as Peter Schiff, want zero minimum wage, no taxes whatsoever, no welfare, no regulation, and no government ownership. They believe the invisible hand of the free market will usher in a utopia. Per Noam Chomsky, this is a distortion of the teaching of Adam Smith (I haven’t verified that).

He argued that the capitalist desires government regulation for their own benefit, and that includes government spending by the military on R&D for the corporations (socialization of costs/privatization of profits) and government spending on infrastructure that corporations use, but on the other hand, it depends where the government money is coming from. If the corps themselves are being taxed to fund the military research and fix the roads, then it’s not plutocratic/capitalistic, but socialistic because the military and the road crews are regular people receiving wages from the corporate tax. On the other hand, if government spending is coming from gas taxes and other taxes on the poor, then it’s not socialistic since the poor are funding their own welfare and government workers are supplying their own wages.

It’s definitely more complex than just one statistic, but all I’m doing is showing the general trend as it relates to government spending. As Chomsky said, I think we can draw some conclusions from that.

Yes, I agree.

So your point is that both Finland and Saudi Arabia spend government money, but one has freedom and the other not? This was covered above, I think.

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Republicans.

Noam Chomsky: Republican Party is the most dangerous organisation in human history

Lack of education. Educated people make better political decisions.

Did you see this chart I posted at the beginning of the thread?

I don’t know about freedom, but public spending was pretty low in communist china in the 60s and 70s. The Chinese are arguably more free now. There isn’t much data on Russia.

Here is a better chart of the freedom ranking vs private consumption % of GDP:

I realized that China was a crap shoot. But My guess is Russia was necessarily very high on public spending. There was no other real possible source. The military was huge compared to GDP.

I guess I’m seeing Phyllo, whose come from a socialist or perhaps ‘socialist’ country that was abusive and not free and I think had pretty high public spending. We are in an new kind of era. You have Scandanavian countries who are highly aligned with the US and have relatively low military budgets. and they are right now degenerating into ‘free market’ capitalisms. Slwoly, thatcher and reagan seeping in slowly.

But perhaps it might help to address his concerns that socialism may lead again to the types of experiences one had behind the Iron Curtain, where public spending was high, since there wasn’t so much else there to spend, and freedom was low. and worse.

Russia also has a lot of oil, so they could have functioned like Saudia Arabia: social spending, but no democracy.

I added a bit above.

Oh, oops, lol.

I wonder which country. Anyway, yeah, there’s government spending and extent of control of the people over its government and maybe a few other ways to quantify socialism. Government spending doesn’t define it wholly, but is one aspect of it.

But if the people were in charge of their own government, would they vote for more or less government spending? Probably more. So although the people aren’t in charge, they’re still getting more or less what they want. But in places like Egypt, they get nothing: no control nor welfare.

And they do it under the banner of socialism. Or we have those like Hillary who are economic conservatives and social liberals: giving people tampons in the mensroom and corporations keep their power. Those are the worst if you ask me.

That Kamala Harris terrifies me. I’ll vote for Trump over her.

Not as long as the people have voting power. Get rid of electoral college and all that delegate crap. And as Bernie says, “If you’re a citizen and you turn 18, you’re registered to vote. Simple as that!” We could even make voting mandatory (like switzerland, I think).

There’s no way a tyrant could take over under those conditions, especially if the people are decently educated.

It says something about me for sure.

There is a Democracy Index.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy … untry_2018

You consider it socialism.

What? Your “consumption as % gdp” number doesn’t take into account where the gov money came from.

I don’t live in your fine republic.

Sigh

We (my parents and I) lived in Czechoslovakia until 1968 when the attempt to get “Socialism with a Human Face” ended with a Russian invasion and a kick in the face.

Then we were in Sweden for a while but eventually moved to Canada.

:laughing:

And the US is ranked #25 and considered a “flawed democracy” lol

At first glance, it appears to correlate tightly with government spending. I’ll work on it later.

If not socialism, then what is it?

Yes, I know. How do I quantify where the money came from?

Still in your best interest to support him lest the US decide one day to send some “US aid” your way :wink:

Dy1w4l2UUAAtcug.jpg

Germany had a democracy and a highly educated population. They ended up with Hitler.

So what does that prove? That Russia didn’t want you to have prosperity?

Well hell, you have more socialism and freedom than I do. Heck, you can even daytrade stocks without needing $25k minimum. If not for the cold, I’d move to canada and partake in all the freedom.

I’m dubious that the germans were highly educated. The smart ones were jews.

I’m not sure about the democracy claim either.

And Hitler was more a result of the treaty of versailles and the reparations imposed on the germans.

quora.com/In-1930s-Germany- … racy-ratio

:-k Interesting reaction.