Posted on 11/12/2009 9:32:51 PM PST by blam
What kind of defense of your argument is that? It's all in your imagination, not his. You are projecting on him what YOU think is in his innermost thoughts. You think he is merely a 'social democrat' or 'socialist', but his closest mentors certainly weren't -- Bill Ayers, Frank Marshall Davis, Jeremiah Wright. And you criticize me for 'misapplying labels'.
And no, I wouldn’t call China communist, because they’re not, except in name only. They are fascist.
'Fascist' isn't an adequate way to describe a form of government. It's too ambiguous. It is most often used to describe a measure of the degree of hard tyranny applied by a given government. It doesn't describe the economic system, though there are strong historical associations with autocracies/oligarchies/theocracies and socialism. It's pejorative. No government would describe itself as a fascist government, though many certainly could be described that way, used as an adjective.
You seem to think that it detracts from your ability to criticize Obama or the Democrats if you can’t call them Marxists or communists, as if “social democracy” or soft socialism wasn’t already discredited without needing to call it things that it isn’t.
You are like so many in the United States who are surprised that Obama is doing exactly what he promised, not what they projected he would do. And you're naive enough to think his agenda is only economic in nature. You're like the frog in the pan that never jumps out as the water temperature rises, right up to death. You ignore his past associations -- you think he didn't hear any of Wright's sermons, you don't know what liberation theology is, you think Ayers was just 'a guy in his neighborhood'; you didn't know Davis was a Communist (capital C); and that's just the basics. Most of what you know is what he wrote about himself (or his ghost writer wrote) that was regurgitated endlessly by the main stream media.
You're a moderate. You think the takeover of health care is only about providing better health care. You think the pendulum will swing the other way eventually, and we'll be back to where we were before Obama. You get your jollies by sitting around in your armchair pecking on a keyboard, insulting the real Paul Reveres of this country.
Do you own a gun? Do you think arming your household is important? Why do you think the founding fathers thought gun ownership was important? Have you ever taken an oath to defend the constitution?
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How do Obama's ideas compare to the Communist Manifesto?
A comparison of Obama’s Ideas to the 10 Planks of the Communist Manifesto
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. (Obama is for more public use of private land by confiscation. Liberals around the country are confiscating private land for new public use.)
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. (Obama plans to rescind tax cuts and to raise taxes, no matter what he says.).
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance. (Obama wants to significantly raise the inheritance tax.)
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. (Obama will soon classify you as a rebel, just like his compaign tried to silence a Chicago talk radio show. Why not just make it official, Obama?)
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. (Obama calling for strict regulations on banks.)
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. (Obama just loves the Chinese ports, trains, etc. That’s because he wants the government to take over this function.)
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. (Obama wants to penalize factories which want to move some operations offshore to participate in the global economy. What are his plans, confiscation)?
8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. (Obama is calling for a new “national commitment to service”. What Obama is not telling you is that it is compulsory.)
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country. (Obama wants several functions to be turned over to the government. For instance, Obama says he’s against the “fairness doctrine,” but he is for severly limiting ownership in the media as a way to control “conservative talk radio.)
10. Free education for all children in public schools. (Obama is for free education, but Obama is really for compulsory indoctrination of children in public schools by fighting school vouchers. You see, if you tax a family to death, then they can’t afford any school by a government school.)
According to the Communist Manifesto, all these were prior conditions for a transition from capitalism to communism.
A little levity never hurts — it’s not economics, it’s political science.
Political Science for Dummies
DEMOCRAT
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
You push for higher taxes so the government can provide cows for everyone.
REPUBLICAN
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?
SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.
COMMUNIST
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.
CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.
BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pours the milk down the drain.
AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.
FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.
JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.
GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.
ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows but you don’t know where they are.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.
RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.
TALIBAN CORPORATION
You have all the cows in Afghanistan , which are two.
You don’t milk them because you cannot touch any creature’s private parts.
You get a $40 million grant from the US government to find alternatives to milk production but use the money to buy weapons.
IRAQI CORPORATION
You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They send radio tapes of their mooing.
POLISH CORPORATION
You have two bulls.
Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.
BELGIAN CORPORATION
You have one cow.
The cow is schizophrenic.
Sometimes the cow thinks he’s French, other times he’s Flemish.
The Flemish cow won’t share with the French cow.
The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow’s milk.
The cow asks permission to be cut in half.
The cow dies happy.
FLORIDA CORPORATION
You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some of the people who actually like the brown one best accidentally vote for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can’t figure out how to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which one you think is the best-looking cow.
CALIFORNIA CORPORATION
You have millions of cows.
They make real California cheese.
Only five speak English.
Most are illegal.
Arnold likes the ones with the big udders.
I'll check it out.
Bart.
And you don't see that happening right now? GMC comes to mind.
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"....In the late 1930s, the noted economist Friedrich Von Hayek wrote his landmark pamphlet "Road to Serfdom," laying bare the diseased skeleton of socialist/utopian thought that had permeated academia and the salons of his day. With an economy of words that showcased the significance of his conclusion, he pointed out the Achilles heel of collectivist dogma: for a planned economy to succeed, there must be central planners, who by necessity will insist on universal commitment to their plan.
How do you attain total commitment to a goal from a free people? Well, you don't. Some percentage will always disagree, even if only for the sake of being contrary or out of a desire to be left alone. When considering a program as comprehensive as a government-planned economy, there are undoubtedly countless points of contention, such as how we will choose the planners, how we will order our priorities when assigning them importance within the plan, how we will allocate resources when competing interests have legitimate claims, who will make these decisions, and perhaps more pertinent to our discussion, how those decisions will be enforced. A rift forming on even one of these issues is enough to bring the gears of this progressive endeavor grinding to a halt. This fatal flaw in the collectivist design cannot be reengineered. It is an error so critical that the entire ideology must be scrapped.
Von Hayek accurately foretold the fate that would befall dissenters from the plan. They simply could not be allowed to get in the way. Opposition would soon be treated as subversion, with debate shriveling to non-existence under the glare of the state. Those who refused compliance would first be marginalized, then dehumanized, and finally (failing re-education) eliminated. Collectivism and individualism cannot long share the same bed. They are political oil and water, and neither can compromise its position without eventually succumbing to the other. The history of the twentieth century is littered with the remains of those who became "enemies of the state" for merely drawing attention to this flaw. As Von Hayek predicted, the socialist vision would not be achieved without bloodshed...."
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/whats_wrong_with_socialism.html
Well said.
I’ve read Road to Serfdom, though I doubt the person who wrote that has. Hayek’s main point about centrally planned economies was that central planners could not get around the knowledge problem—they did not have the information to be able to make proper decisions about the allocation of resources, and that to make up for this any centrally planned economy would have to tend towards totalitarianism. It’s a great book and everybody on the planet should read it.
But Hayek was not saying that any government which adopts any amount of socialism is necessarily a centrally planned economy or must necessary become one.
But we’re getting away from the main argument, which is that America is not a communist country, and neither is it an inevitability that it will become one. Hayek wouldn’t agree with you there, though he’d vociferously disagree with our current policies and he would warn of the *possibility* that we could wind up becoming totalitarian.
Hayek would also agree with me about terms. He would say we risk tending towards totalitarianism, but totalitarianism is not necessarily communism. Hayek would insist that we call things what they are so that we may see things as they are.
Nationalization of one company isn’t communism. It would be something communists would do, but it’s also something non-communist socialists and fascists would do.
You people seem to think that merely be pointing out that something isn’t communism, I’m defending it, or that unless you call something communism, there are no grounds for criticism. I don’t like being stabbed, but if I were stabbed, I wouldn’t say “help me, I’ve been shot!” just in case I thought “stabbed” might not win me any sympathy.
“What kind of defense of your argument is that? It’s all in your imagination, not his. You are projecting on him what YOU think is in his innermost thoughts. You think he is merely a ‘social democrat’ or ‘socialist’, but his closest mentors certainly weren’t — Bill Ayers, Frank Marshall Davis, Jeremiah Wright. And you criticize me for ‘misapplying labels’.”
I believe Obama has views, but I also believe he floats among whoever he believes will benefit him. Right now, his closest economic advisors are mainstream market economists, Goolsbee, Romer, and Summers. He hung out at Wright’s church and with Ayers because it would help him get elected with those constituents. Now they are history. Now he needs real economists to advise him, so he hired real, actual economists and not radical freaks. FWIW, the far left hates Summers with a passion.
“’Fascist’ isn’t an adequate way to describe a form of government. It’s too ambiguous. It is most often used to describe a measure of the degree of hard tyranny applied by a given government. It doesn’t describe the economic system, though there are strong historical associations with autocracies/oligarchies/theocracies and socialism. It’s pejorative. No government would describe itself as a fascist government, though many certainly could be described that way, used as an adjective.”
Plenty of governments have described themselves as fascist, but that was before the word lost meaning. But it still has a real meaning, including in an economic system (in any command economy system, political definitions are by definitions economic definitions). Fascism is when nominal private ownership of companies and private property are maintained, but the government directly influences companies—not with regulations but direct orders. That’s what the US economy is slowly starting to become.
“You are like so many in the United States who are surprised that Obama is doing exactly what he promised, not what they projected he would do. And you’re naive enough to think his agenda is only economic in nature. You’re like the frog in the pan that never jumps out as the water temperature rises, right up to death. You ignore his past associations — you think he didn’t hear any of Wright’s sermons, you don’t know what liberation theology is, you think Ayers was just ‘a guy in his neighborhood’; you didn’t know Davis was a Communist (capital C); and that’s just the basics. Most of what you know is what he wrote about himself (or his ghost writer wrote) that was regurgitated endlessly by the main stream media.”
I think you have a problem, because I honestly don’t know what gave you that impression about me. I’m a hardcore libertarian, I’ve been following everything Obama’s said, all his connections, all his rhetoric during the campaign and now in office. I left the GOP because Bush and other Republicans weren’t what I thought they were, I think it’s disgraceful that a man who was friends with a communist terrorist is now in the WH, I think Wright’s church is a heretical abomination, I don’t listen to Obama’s speeches or read what the mainstream media has to say about him. I’ve learned it all from Rush and the grassroots online conservative media. But I’m also an economics nerd, and I don’t like seeing conservatives (or anybody) throw the words “Marxist” and “communist” around the way people used to throw the word “fascist” around to the point where these words lose their meaning.
It’s important that words keep their meaning, that we see things as they are, and say what we mean. Obama is a non-communist socialist, and romantic notions of fighting some underground conservative resistance against the evil Obamunist aren’t going to change my mind about reality.
“You’re a moderate. You think the takeover of health care is only about providing better health care. You think the pendulum will swing the other way eventually, and we’ll be back to where we were before Obama. You get your jollies by sitting around in your armchair pecking on a keyboard, insulting the real Paul Reveres of this country.”
As I said, I’m a libertarian. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, these guys are my homeboys. The takeover of health care is about taking over peoples’ lives. I haven’t said a word about health care in this thread so it was silly of you to “imagine” what my stance was and put words in my mouth. I think the pendulum will swing the other way but I also believe it won’t matter, and that the real change we need to a true free market economy and the Rule of Law won’t happen until entitlement spending literally bankrupts the government and causes the worst economic crisis we’ve ever had. I don’t think something has to be called “communism” to be called “oppression.”
If that were so then one might rightly assume the problem could be 'fixed' with more information. Say, more information from the dawn of computers and the information age.
But Hayek didn't argue that socialist planners were merely deficient in the execution of their plans. He argued against their premise altogether.
Common action is limited to the fields where people agree on common ends, according to Hayek. So it's not a lack of agreement on information, it's a lack of agreement on values.
Hayek contends the fatal flaw with socialist planning is that it "presupposes a much more complete agreement on the relative importance of the different ends than actually exists, and that, in consequence, in order to be able to plan, the planning authority must impose upon the people that detailied code of values which is lacking". He followed with a much more detailed argment of why even democratic planning, if it were to be successful, eventually requires the authorities to use a variety of means, from propaganda to coercion, to implement the plan.
The AT analysis is much more accurate than your 'compensation' argument.
Um, you haven’t read The Road to Serfdom either, have you? Cuz while what you’re talking about is an important aspect of Hayek’s argument against centrally planned economies, it is an aspect. His main thrust, and what makes him perhaps the most important economist since Smith and part of the reason he won the Nobel, is that to make decisions about the allocation of resources, the proper information must be known in the first place, but as this information about economic problems is diffuse and spread throughout society in random pockets, it is *impossible* for a centrally planned economy to properly allocate resources. Hayek’s argument was that this is what the price system does. Floating prices, based on supply and demand, are an example of what he calls “spontaneous order.” These prices are a way of conveying information in society about economic problems. A high price for automobiles suggests that demand is high and supply is comparatively low, for example. If supply and demand force the price of a jar of pickles up, it means more pickles need to be supplied, and they will be, as a result of pickle suppliers following their own incentives and based on what information is conveyed to them through the price system. No central planner needed. This is how cities are fed—prices.
For a thorough outline in Hayekian economics I suggest you read Sowell’s Basic Economics.
As far as what Hayek was saying about different ends, he was rebutting the people who said that war planning during WW2 “proved” that centrally planned economies could work. The difference is that winning a war and annihilating the enemy is a single, common, and quantifiable goal. Raising society’s standard of living and growing the economy is *not*.
Semantics. Do you care what description is given to a despot? The end result is the same. And need I remind you they are trying to take over health care and God knows what else past that. Whistle past the graveyard if you want.
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