The Great Hippy Think Tank

Plenty of people leave America for better opportunity. True it is not North Kora but your statement seems to ignore the facts that captilsim creates poverty as well. Right now in Europe we have the Muslim immigrants and we know how you feel about them. They are running to socialism to escape poverty.

 

It isn’t capitalism that is the problem, it is greed. And unfortunately, greed even exists in socialism, the money and power just shifts from private investors to the government.

 

Greed is the most American value. This is why I don't see why some of us don't see the potential for in Socialism. If you want to be rich you can be. If you want to go beyond "rich" you can be in Socialist Europe. But they are happier thinking that everyone is required to be poor.It is long term social conditioning. No American is poor or middle class. They are just one paycheck away from being a millionaire. And when that day comes they will not pay taxes. In Europe there is a much longer history of kings and queens. So they bother to understand Socialism.

America did too in the early 20th century. But than the USSR came and we had the depression in America. It was a perfect time for the poor to demand better. The elite launched a very successful campaign mixing a dictatorship with a politcal ideal. Stalin killed some of his more liberal peace loving Communists. He was neither truly Communist or Socialist. But to this day many Americans still believe that Russia is the only way. The important part of their history our textbooks is they had a king, then they were communist. My personal schooling said nothing of the war continuing once the Czar was gone. Why does it need to? There is no need for 12 year olds to know there are different ideas on this subject. Communist and Socialist were used interchangeably and nothing was said of the humane goals of it. You can discuss if those goals are possible another day but you need to be honest about what the phiolpshy is.

North Kora is known as the Democratic People's Republic of North Kora. Kin Jon "wins" his democratic elections too. They say in China that Trump is proof Democracy does not work because people are too weak to make their own choices but big business can own you. They joke about how an election can be bought because a fool and his money are easily parted. The ones who are the stupidest and deny science for no reason but money also love Trump. To them Trump is what breadlines and Stalin are to the American right. The entire system does not work because you get men like that.

 

I agree however I think that capitalism is a direct result of greed & therefore as long as we maintain a capitalist structure in society we'll never be able to grow as a species

 

Yea, in a way, capitalism reminds me of a ''survival of the fittest'' kind of philosophy. Survival of the fittest though, if you believe we've evolved from apes, is a nature-driven philosophy. Maybe we are innately greedy?

 

We certainly are innately greedy. I believe that to progress as a species we need to check our innate desires & rise above them

 

Hmmmm. not so much

 

This thread is just a bunch of first worlders blaming everyone and everything else besides themselves for being greedy

 

If you say so. I for one have spent most of my life striving to control the greedy impulses I feel but I by no means deny that they sometimes get the best of me. Those not in the "first world" tend toward greediness just as much, perhaps even more so. As such I fail too see the relevance of your comment. Unless you're attempting to say that each person needs to worry about controlling our own greed than worrying about others. If the case then I certainly agree.

 

Where is "Socialist Europe"? Europe is socialist in relative terms--relative to the U.S.--but has basically a mixed economy. The dictionary definition of socialism includes state-run industries, but in Europe the industries are primarily owned by individuals and companies, in a free market system with stocks traded on large exchanges. Resources are allocated to their respective uses by the market, not government or community planning. But they are welfare states, with high levels of government regulation, universal health care, strong emphasis on collective bargaining, steep redistributive tax systems, and a strong safety net, including state supported eldercare, support for housing, unemployment, health, child care, and education. This, of course varies from one country to another, with the Scandanavian countries being closest to this model, with the Netherlands, Belgium, France and the U.K. not far behind. We had a mixed economy to a lesser extent in the United States under the New Deal and Fair Deal, but have been getting away from it since the "Reagan Revolution" and so-called "supply side" economics. The safety net is fraying, de-regulation is in vogue, and unbridled capitalism is treated as the Grail.

I talking about the relative merits and demerits of socialism, I think there are three values to consider: efficiency, equity, and liberty. Efficiency is the value most frequently touted by free-market capitalists. A system is economically efficient if every resource is optimally allocated to provide the greatest benefit to the greatest number of consumers while minimizing waste and inefficiency. However, this can and usually is accompanied by gross inequalities. U.S. income inequality is now the highest since 1928 (and you know what happened right after that!) Starting in the mid- to- late 1970s, the income share of the top 1% in the U.S. began rising dramatically, so that by 2012 the 1% was receiving nearly 22.5% of pre-tax income, while the bottom 90%'s share fell to less than 50% for the first time ever. French economist Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-first Century documents a trend toward growing inequality in all the countries of Western Europe and the United States, although it is most pronounced in the United States. I would argue that greed is a human value, but it is more honored by free market economists and libertarian ideologues in the United States than in other countries. The inequality is rationalized as a natural consequence of a system that is more efficient in producing more overall abundance for all. But the inequality problem can't be solved without some limitations on individual liberty: more regulation, higher taxes, etc. An optimum solution calls for balance among efficiency, equity and liberty; to a large extent the optimum balance is a matter of taste. I think we're more unbalanced on the inequality side than we've been in decades and will pay a big price for it unless we start remedial action soon. Western Europeans enjoy a high degree of intellectual freedom and welfare state benefits along with being among the wealthiest countries in the world. I think we should pay more attention to them. We might learn something.