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Capitalism vs. Communism: Which do you prefer?
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| Capitalism | 68% | 702 votes | Total: 1040 votes | |
| Communism | 32% | 338 votes |
Capitalism
by American Citizen
Created on: March 17, 2009
We are fortunate to live in a country that theoretically allows free and flowing debate. Few subjects are forbidden by the government. The very idea is anathema to many Americans for legal authorities to deny us the right to read or believe anything in which we have informed opinion. Unfortunately this is changing [1], [2], [3]. American citizens and visitors can read Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto." It would behoove everyone to do so in order to decide whether or not they agree [4]. I do not agree with the philosophy of force or that a person has no right to keep the fruits of his/her own labor, talent, merit or inheritance. Neither is Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kampf" prohibited reading material in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
My Country, 'tis of Thee. You are allowed to read and think and agree or disagree with whatever political philosophy you choose. No one, however, is allowed to alter the US system of Republican Government under the US Constitution. We are guaranteed a Republican form of government [5]. Socialist (Social Security and Medicare) and/or communist (Federal Reserve System, IRS, taxed personal wages, compulsory public education, regulated agriculture) implementations are CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGEROUS VIOLATIONS of our Supreme Law of the land.
Free market economics have taken on a poor understanding within the minds of Americans who find that they cannot get ahead. Free market economics, I can assure you, are based upon liberty and Enlightenment Thought. What has held us back is the regulatory environment that favors some, disregards others, and then changes with a new White House Administration. [6]
So why does Capitalism unnerve and scare so many? Well, who does it really scare? As an individual, if I justly earn, buy, win or inherit something valuable, in free market Capitalism, I get to keep it. All of it. I can trade it, sell it, spend it, invest it. It is MINE. Who is threatened by such a system? The government and banks. Readings of our founding fathers' letters, journals, books and declarations will shed bright light on why they endeavored to LIMIT THE GOVERNMENT. I find it's no accident that Thomas Jefferson didn't sign the US Constitution. He was in France at the time of the Continental Congresses. Given how much sovereignty had been retained by the States under the Articles of Confederation, I think he'd have been utterly revolted at an executive branch with so much power [7]. The Articles of Confederation did not create a national executive. Each State's Governor is the State executive.
I choose Capitalism over Communism because I understand what the differences are. I also wish that the USA would wake up and RETURN to Capitalism.
So to guard against systemic deformation to our way of life, we should know what's what.
CAPITALISM IN A LIBERTY-BASED FREE MARKET ECONOMY
In a nutshell, capitalism allows the savvy and self-interested to trade products and services for valuable consideration with a market of buyers. Buyers are responsible to vet the seller, his products and services. The assumption is that the buyer earned his wages and should exercise caution before parting with his money. This is what Consumer's Reports is for. If the seller, his product or service is found wanting or fraudulent, he'll go out of business if he continues to do business the same old way. And good riddance. At the end of each fiscal year, if the business is thriving, it will have money left over after paying all expenses. A healthy margin of net income is a paultry 10%. That's HEALTHY.
Now enter a republican form of government. All classic liberty thought is predicated on the Golden Rule. I am free to go about my rightful business as I see fit, so long as I do NOT IMPEDE YOUR ABILITY TO GO ABOUT YOUR RIGHTFUL BUSINESS [8]. This precludes force, fraud and coercion. Persuasion and fair dealing are permissible. Misrepresentation and fraud are not. The government is reasonably decentralized, limited and non-interventionist. The courts uphold the laws, which are fair, commonly understood and unbiased.
COMMUNISM
The government is highly centralized. It is the only landowner and only employer. All commodities are rationed. Prices are fixed by bureacrats, not by the people who part with their money in exchange for the products. Thought, speech, education, products, services, banking, are determined by bureaucrats, who are often armed [9], [10]. Those with desirable skills (doctors, scientists, lawyers, academics, etc.) have their wages taxed severely in order to subsidize those with less demanding skills. In communism, a doctor with a wife and no children may be providing SUBSTANTIAL support to a sweeper who has a wife and 10 children. The merit, education and skill don't matter. The need is supplied. People own nothing. Their earnings are determined by a government's formula. Children go to school to learn, not what gives them most satisfaction, but what the government demands. Maintaining this level of control over people's individual choices requires tremendous force, secrecy and spying. It also requires the cooperation of your neighbors to spy on you and report you to the government, so Big Brother can be everywhere. Think of the training simulation scene in The Matrix (they're all part of the system; their minds are so inert and dependent on that system that they would die to maintain it).
And as for price fixing, folks, if you don't realize that pharmaceuticals are expensive in America because we're SUBSIDIZING Cuba and Europe, then you don't know the basics of economics. If a pharmaceutical manufacturer isn't making a reasonable profit in Cuba selling asthmatic nebulizers for a nickel, and it can't charge more in Castro's Cuba, then it will make up the difference in a free market. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Capitalism is not a foe. It is a great distributor of wealth rightly earned, wealth rightly distributed.
We have been hearing incessant talk of making the rich pay their fair share. I'm not rich myself, so at first it sounded like a just message. But then I got to reading and thinking about how I wanted to be treated by the IRS when I did make my first millions. I didn't want my money to go to ne'er-do-wells or lazy people, or to elders who hadn't saved for their own retirements, for that matter. If I was going to support someone elderly, it would be my mother.
I want to paint an illustration of just how UNJUST inheritance and income taxes are. Imagine you're Harry Potter facing the final challenge of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. You are somewhat prepared. You have a team (lawyers, accountants, international contract lawyers, estate planners, etc.) The maze is the Internal Revenue Code. It is fraught with dangers and traps. You help people along the way with acts of charity or philanthropy. At last, the Cup is before you! It's your ironclad last Will and Testament. You are going to leave your chosen heirs with the fruits of your labor because you love them. But, you touch the Cup and instead of being free and clear, you're transported to Lord Voldemort. The tax man. Your estate is taxed up the wazoo! You have to pay your fair share! The government hasn't finished wasting every nickel on entitlement programs, highways to nowhere, bridges to nowhere, cow flatulence, carbon dioxide, drug trafficking (Oliver North sound familiar?), imprisoning doctors, lawyers, teachers, academics, Mexicans, blacks, Puerto Ricans, dissidents, tax avoiders, etc. It wants MORE! It wants BLOOD! Now, how exactly do you feel about being shut out of your own earnings? But that is communism.
(c) 2009 all rights reserved, without prejudice. Expression of free speech and Constitutionally protected accordingly.
[1] http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/09/missouris_obama_truth_squads_2.html
[2] http://conservativeally.today.com/2008/09/30/obamas-freedom-of-speech-censorship-signs/
[3] http://www.infowars.com/tell-the-truth-about-obama-in-missouri-go-to-jail/
[4] http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
[5] US Constitution Article IX Section 4 http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.overview.html
[6] http://www.betterworldbooks.com/Economics-in-One-Lesson-id-1433272466.aspx, http://www.betterworldbooks.com/THE-CREATURE-FROM-JEKYLL-ISLAND-A-Second-Look-at-the-Federal-Reserve-id-B00181HBR0.aspx, http://www.betterworldbooks.com/The-worlds-money-id-0671446827.aspx, http://www.betterworldbooks.com/The-Price-of-Loyalty-id-0743255461.aspx
[7] refer back to footnote [5] and see if you can find which Article amends, mentions or replaces the Articles of Confederation. If you're a lawyer familiar with how proposed legislation amends existing legislation, this will enlighten you.
[8] http://www.betterworldbooks.com/list.aspx?SearchTerm=on+liberty+john+stuart+mill, http://www.betterworldbooks.com/list.aspx?SearchTerm=thomas+jefferson+notes+on+virginia, http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Walden-and-Civil-Disobedience/Henry-David-Thoreau/e/9781593082086/?itm=1, http://www.mises.org/, www.aynrand.org, www.cato.org, www.fff.org, www.givemeliberty.org, www.lp.org, www.jbs.org
[9] http://ninecommentaries.com/, http://freedocumentaries.org/index.php?ct=37, http://www.amazon.com/Biography-Joseph-Stalin-Terror-Archives/dp/B0002V7KV4
[10] George Orwell's "1984", Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451", Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged"
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Communism
by Perry McCarney
Created on: August 10, 2009 Last Updated: July 26, 2010
The perception of most in the Western world considers capitalism to be intrinsically linked to democracy and freedom, and communism to be represented by the totalitarianism of the previous USSR and the supposedly communist Red China. The perfectly legitimate anti-Soviet attitudes of the US government in the 1950s were promulgated and evidenced as an anti-communist rhetoric that was in itself totally illegitimate. Communism not having existed as a reality in the USSR since Stalin took control prior to World War II, if it managed to continue anywhere near that long after the October revolution of 1917.
Nor is capitalism an intrinsic component of democracy, it is essentially a system of economics rather than one of politics. We have the concept of comparing apples and pears when discussing two disparate items, but comparing capitalism to communism is more like comparing apples to broccoli. Both are ideologies linked to human social perception, but they are not in the same arena. While capitalism permeates all democratic societies currently extant on Earth, the fact that it is flourishing to the degree it is in modern day Red China, a totalitarian state, shows how independent from democracy it truly is. An unblinkered analysis actually shows that the political systems it is most linked to are anarchy and totalitarianism.
The concept of the Free Market is a fundamental aspect of capitalism, a desire for a completely unregulated economic market. "No rules" is a basic tenet of an anarchic political system. Yet the free market is not about individual human freedom, it is about the freedom of corporate entities from any constraint by society and any political forms chosen by the people of that society. These corporate entities are structured in an hierarchical form that for the most part suppresses decency and responsibility as components of that form, unless they are deliberately included in the founding documents of said entities. Their structure is totalitarian. The bottom line is the driving motivation, and all such corporations while pushing for unregulated trade are really seeking uncontested control of the market, ultimately desiring monopolies and therefore domination and unrestrained power. The methods of the large retail chains to undercut and eliminate independent businesses when they move into a new location is a prime and public example of this ambition.
Communism is predicated on the basis of people earning social reward and recognition on the basis of what they supply to their community and society. That every child should be given the opportunity to learn to the best of their ability in the areas they are most capable at, to the best benefit of their community. It is not meant to be dominated by a dictator, and certainly not one who then passes it on to his brother, such as has occurred in Cuba. That every attempt so far to form a human political entity based on communism has quickly failed is not due to human nature. It is due to the animal nature of those "people" who strive to dominate in any society, no matter what its supposed political structure might be. The same type of people dominate our societies world-wide, except where indigenous people still retain primary control over their own communities. This is the greatest downfall and crime of what we arrogantly call "civilization".
Capitalism professes to allow any person within its society to be able to better themselves and advance. That it is the ultimate freedom. But how real is this? Quality education continues to be the providence of the wealthy. Advancement within businesses requires a ruthlessness that disregards the ethics of decency and kindness, or accepted connections to the "old boys" network. The beneficent professions, such as nursing and teaching, receive financial recompense well below that of non-productive professions such as finance, marketing and selling. Those who actually create the goods our capitalist societies depend on earn little and are considered inferior, where such productions haven't already been moved to third world nations to be done by virtually slave labor! Not only are the world's resources wasted producing extreme amounts of packaging, the goods themselves are deliberately manufactured to fail soon after their warranty period expires, so that replacements will have to be purchased. Not only is this wasteful, it is a major contributor to the poverty billions of people have no choice but to live in, because production is focused on resupplying the reasonably well off rather than meeting everyone's needs.
Pretending that the design and manufacture of goods are controlled by consumer demand is exactly that. A pretense. Personally, I would love to be able to buy a pair of shoes with soles that would last several years, just as I could when I was a young man. After several pairs of $30 dollar shoes failing to meet that bill, I bought a pair for $300. They lasted just over twice as long before their soles cracked completely across.
Capitalism encourages greed and selfishness, and requires that a sizable percentage of the population is unemployed and impoverished to constrain the expectations of the producers or workers. Communism endeavors to provide all with what they need and continually improve on that. It is based on community rather than individual well-being, something that has become anathema in the capitalist world. But to who?
Our world today is dominated by the rich and powerful in every country. Except for the entertainers, the movie stars, etc., few of these people actually create anything at all. They inherit wealth or manipulate others to amass their fortunes.
The problem with communism is not its concepts, but the ability to maintain them in the face of those that would corrupt them for their own advantage. Those like Stalin, that would take over a decent system through a reign of terror.
Capitalist economics has demonstrated time and again that it fails; with cyclic depressions and recessions, again and again. The whole concept of economic growth is based on an evil fallacy. Started during the period of European colonialism, growth being based on conquering less developed nations and stealing their resources. It is blatantly obvious that a finite world cannot achieve economic growth indefinitely.
Our world is in the appalling state it is because of the virtually unconstrained deprivations of capitalism and the totalitarianism that masquerades as communism; believing the problems can be resolved through market forces is farther fetched than believing that fairies push up daisies! Capitalism is supposedly based on competition, but why should we believe that that is the best approach? Whenever there is a natural disaster, our political masters (servants?) ask us to work cooperatively to recover from it. If this is the case when things are bad, why should it not be even more so when things are not?
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