If you'd like a more specific answer, then ask a more specific question. I'm not about to write out a fucking Marxist treatise for someone whose specific criticisms of Marxist thought has so far amounted to "Communism only works for elves" you retard.
I had a huge reply for gay, but I don't know if I can be arsed to finish it, instead I'm going to say this.
If GAY or Tom or whoever wants to define that real marxism never really existed, and none of the things that happened in Soviet union et cetera were not because of marxism (although lots of economists would disagree with you starting with textbook econ), then fine, I think such view is ridiculous but I won't take it away from you.
However, the marxist society, understood by most of the people, as it was in all the real-world communist countries, was horrible. Soviet Union was a human tragedy and killed probably more than Nazis ever did. Practically all communist states were dictatorships and for the majority of the people there was not much difference between them and Nazi germany; they were horrible societies. This was the original point of this discussion.
Yeah, how about asking a real historian, who documented the atrocities of in his book The Black Book of Communism, Harvard University Press. Not only those atrocities surpass those of any ideology or society before that, he also makes the qualitative comparison of both being pretty close to each other, just of very different flavour.
You can't blame marxism for the problems in the soviet union because:
1. It wasn't real Marxism.
2. It was a dictatorship which completely goes against anything communism stands for.
3. The 'Marxist' events that happened during the soviet union were amongst other things, to say a definite cause is plain retarded. It's like saying 'Alright guys we're gonna rush MC' but some cock drops one SC in the marine start and you get rocked because your fades die... and then blaming the MC rush tactic. It's retarded logic, blame the fucking SC.. you know, the thing that happened, not the proposed strat...
4. You're not an economist, stop acting like you are or that you can use the standpoint of 'an economist knows best about this' because you haven't deconstructed any other profession's benefits of their viewpoint regarding marxism, you're just jumping on the bias train.
5. Mp is a Russian and has too much money.
6. Russia is full of Chinese people.
I was going to ignore this tread because there was so much misinformation. I didn’t have patience to read all posts, because around second pages arguments already went circles.
First people please stop using phrase like:
“Noam Chomsky is not an economist, and non-economists know about social sciences as much as public players know about NS mechanics. They fill the public forums like plague, and talk a lot but few people know how clueless they really are.” Jiriki
I hope I don’t have to point out that “argument” is fallacy, you are attacking Chomsky as person not his arguments. Also I’m pretty confident that Chomsky has read about 1000x more books about subject than you. Should I say, because I study social sciences that all I say is absolute truth about subject, and all you guys are wrong because you don’t study this subject?
Secondly have anyone of you actually read Karl Marx, Adam Smith or George Simmel in which this “debate” are based on? Reason why this isn’t a debate is lack of knowledge about subject. Not that you couldn’t debate about subject if you haven’t read Capital, but because knowledge of those who debate different too much about subject. Your arguments never really reach each others. First you should define the concepts you are using and then go forward to debate, I’m pretty sure that we all understand differently “Marxism”.
I will give you some points which can help your quest for debate:
Most classical fallacy is to make confrontation between Marxism and market economy. Capital was analysis of market economy, and for example Marx had great respect for Smith: father of market economy. In fact Marx hated most of so called “communist”, who ignored some certain laws of economy, and I’m pretty sure that Marx would have hated Lenin as well.
It should go without saying but market economy isn’t only possible economy out there. Especially Jiriki you see communism from market economy point of view. I’m not communist myself, but this is the very reason why I think everybody should know at least basic of Marxism (not the propaganda we hear in high school). Knowing Marxism gives us alternatives for free market and makes us more critical for our own economy system. After all, our world is all but perfect, and would be very naïve to think market economy wouldn’t have it flaws.
What about my own idea about Soviet Russian? It has nothing to with Marxism, and this is the maxim that pretty much every neutral historian agree on. I don’t recommend reading about American or Russian study about subject, there was that war with nukes which also affected their arguments about subject.
Well maybe you should start reading books on economics outside of your Uni's reading list then. They weren't Marxist, and when you say things like this:
You're simply wrong. They "understood" themselves as being socialist societies en route to eventual Communist ones.
I don't really have a problem with you suggesting that concentrated power is a risk. The problem is when you suggest there's somekind of genocidal fatalism associated with giving people a fairer share of the surplus they create. As I was suggesting before, if Britain democratically elected a Socialist government tommorow, exactly what part of them nationalising industry do you think would result in gulags?
No the original point of this discussion was to point out to aA that Nazi Germany was in fact not a Communist state. You then decided to take up the mantle of advocate for the notoriously biased and quite frankly corrupt academic establishment in suggesting that Communism = Nazism and that he was essentially justified in conflating the two.
Well actually:
"All in all, the Germans deliberately killed about 11 million noncombatants, a figure that rises to more than 12 million if foreseeable deaths from deportation, hunger, and sentences in concentration camps are included. For the Soviets during the Stalin period, the analogous figures are approximately six million and nine million." - http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/jan/27/hitler-vs-stalin-who-was-worse/
And would you like to address some of the criticism of the book you just linked to contained within the wiki article? Notably:
soviet union did not end with stalin's death, also i did mention already that communist system is an evolution of marks socialism.
in marxism/communistic system you have few basic things:
- care system(in which citezen is being treated like a whole but needs country's help and needs to be part of whole[any indyviduality is not welcomed], there are british caricatures from the stalin's ruling time, eastern europes' societies need strong hand etc.)
- economic monopoly
- very advanced and big administration system
- parlament/ even a constitution
- interventionism
- protectionism
- very developed social help system
- ateism
- controling devices
you even have parlament elections in communistic/socialist systems ; >
"it doesnt matter how you vote, what matters is who counts the votes" - J. Stalin
in real true capitalistic liberian system you have 2 things:
- free market
- market's mechanism
- democratic system
"the less adminitration the better, make it as minimum as possible"
so whoever says lenin was libertian cant be called an economist, socialism was an innovate system in 19 century i agree but it's never been libertian.
i'm sure smith and marks respected each other but their economical systems are totally diffrent.
now you can easly check which one of those models was truly realized in history
edit ftw ; d
didnt say that nazi germany was communist, it was national SOCIALISM.
also who do you think made a coalition in german parlament with the nazi?
USSR stands for Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics, you've got your magic word here, socialist ;P soviet union is just a shortcut. still like i said both were not true socialistic republics, they both were an evolution of what marks created, still very simmilar and almost the same.
i'm also sure that you could spend your time in more benefitial way than being picky on the internet forums...
You were the one "being picky" when you tried to make me look stupid by suggesting I'd used the wrong flag to represent a Nazi theme. Unfortunately, because you don't know anything, it turned out you were wrong. Me pointing out your "picky" point as being hilariously fucking stupid doesn't make me picky. It just makes me right.
Short answer. Would you like to comment on the shy of 100 million who died in communist? You don't accept them as examples of communism, then I'm not going to accept any country in the West as an example of capitalist system.
But I'll give you a long answer.
Most countries, after emerging from feudalism in the early 19th century, were cursed with famines and and undernourishment. How the hell did we escape that hell hole? It was economic growth and acceptance of market economy that made it possible (don't worry, I explain the mechanism later in this post) to have a massive increase in productivity, which means you need less resources and manpower just to survive, never mind to own computers and write on ENSL Forums. In the beginning of 19th century, I think it was about 19 of 20 people were working in the agriculture, but now thanks to increase in productivity, it takes 1 in 20 people to feed the whole United States.
In the 1950's Hong Kong was a smelly swamp and started with practically no natural resources, yet it has reached economic levels of the West in a process that took 200 years for US to do. The same thing happened in South Korea, known as the Miracle of the Han River. And with practically no foreign aid (although South Korea received some iirc.) but nothing to compared to the hundreds of billions distributed to Africa. In the start, they were both equally poor. Africa had civil wars and bad economic policies, but Asian countries reformed with more or less better policies.
Whether its the politically correct World Bank's index or Heritage foundations economic freedom index, Africa's countries are just at the bottom end of that list. Indeed, in countries where private property is not respected, people don't have the incentives to make productive innovations or run lots of companies like the West. Without increase in productivity, there won't be western living standards, and famine and nutrition will be a problem. This is excluding things like genetics.
For example, many other Asian countries have reached the living standards of the Western countries without having to exploit a single foreign country. The process is the same in the West, its in the increase in productivity that brings on higher standards of living and eradicates famines. Its only the left-wing delusion that somehow European/US imperialism (btw, ie. Finland didn't exploit a single foreign country and ended up with same level of living standards as most of the old Europe) in Africa was a major contributor to the economic growth. In fact stealing someone's else property can in fact increase one's wealth, but in the long run, that is not going to make your society any more productive. Feudalists stole the land owner's labour all the time, yet feudalists' society was horribly poor.
Historically the only, and the only way of getting rid of famines and horrible living standards has been with a market economy. But the bottom line is that Africa is like Europe in the 19th century, just with less economic growth. It'll take lots of time to reach productivity levels of the West. Depending on the policies they implement, it'll take longer or shorter.
Good luck nationalizing all the private property without a violent revolution. I mean c'mon, the government starts to regulate something innocent like the Internet and guess who doesn't like it, its the left-wing who hates that control. Do you really think that a lot of people will support the idea that government takes the control of their homes, companies, cars, computers and pretty all the capital they possess. If I want to sell say.. internet services to some person, what right do you think you have to prevent me from that voluntary transaction?
Who said I didn't ask any questions? By asking questions I ended up reading an economics book in the first place. I've debated with libertarians, left-wing, right-wing, socialists, and all flavours of common people. Its only by asking questions how I ended up reading books and making my opinions, and developing my fine-tuned bullshit detector.
And who said anything about mathematical models? Economics didn't start with mathematical models, and it didn't start with Adam Smith either. For example, the principles of comparative advantage (the shortest and easiest to comprehend raison d'être for free trade) can be understood (and I suppose was written too) without any math models. Its only the post mid-20th century, that mathematical models have become common. In fact, there was strong debate, called Methodenstreit, in the late 19th century between empirical positivists with their math models and classical economists. In fact, I would position myself sceptical to math models, not in all cases, but mathematical logic can easily give one wrong conclusions (for example, Leonid Kantrovich tried to fix Soviets' inefficient plywood industry with linear programming because he didn't understand the importance of prices) in social sciences. This is much, much more complex issue than I can explain in detail. Math is not some weird magic, its just a way to express verbal logic in a short manner. It depends on the case.
Of course practically everything that is in modern economics has been debated. However there is no way to conduct a controlled experiment in a human society, especially with highly aggregated data. In macroeconomic models, this has been known as the Robert Lucas critique. This is part of the reason why economics is still very ideologically split and shattered, although marxists economics have been discarded for a long time (it was actually part of them mainstream debate in early 20th century).
Some modern economists would probably try to give you some growth model, but for a political discussion this is not really relevant. First of all, when private companies make innovations, they decrease the marginal cost of their production, and gain extra profits. The extra profits gives them incentives to make these innovations. If you take away the profits, you remove the incentives to do these innovations. Then the increased profit margins create incentives for competition (supply). The economy then comes to balance as the supply curve shifts and pushes the price to the marginal cost. This is simple mechanism which enables economic growth and decreases the resources needed to produce stuff. This would also show up in nominal prices, but thanks to some growth models we're supposed to have inflation to keep economy growing, but this a seperate issue and not really important for the argument.
You know the problem with this argument, is that historically most marxists didn't want to any of these things to happen (gulags, famines, closed borders etc.). Its just when you start nationalizing all private property (which is the dictionary term for marxism), things just get worse from there. I think it was Stalin, maybe Lenin who thought marxist society is so great nobody would ever want to leave it, but finally they realized people were leaving it en masse, and had to close borders and shoot the leavers.
Stop blaming America for everything. Lots of communists states existed and were destroyed long before US was involved.
In fact I do not honestly think gulags will happen in UK if you vote socialists in to power. Because socialism is so unproductive (tragedy of the commons) most people will move away or vote them off the power (assuming they still have those rights). You don't have to go as extreme privatizing whole means of production. Since the government does not possess information that the markets do not, without special privileges or explicit monopolies (like postal office), the government has evidently been so inefficient as any other company. If governments really thought they could produce produce stuff cheaper (less resources) and better than private companies, they would. But they are not, instead they are very good at consuming stuff thus they tax and spend it as they please.
And who were? I know a lot of economists who were not, in fact almost all of who I listen to, were not. In fact, some (Austrians) even predicted it!
Or you can just take an answer from another economist representing a completely different view, responding to Queen of England when asked about the crisis.
Several people did beat the market by forecasting the recent financial crisis but obviously they were in very small minority. It is a hypothesis, and there are several versions of it thouh (weak, semi-strong and strong).
There will always be some levels of debt in a society, its inevitable. Its not even practical that everyone should have the necessary capital upfront when they buy a car or house. Or you can try to get legislation through that bans lending and borrwing, good luck.
Good job coming up with some random argument because of their nationality. It just shows you are not interested in the truth but rather than just winning the debate. In fact, Courtois was a French historian and there're several European (mostly left-wing actually because they wanted the honour before the right-wing did) historians with him making the book.
Feel free to point out, if it is in my posts.
If someone says procedure XYZ is good for medical condition ABC, and I ask if they are doctor (not that it is a reliable way to check it but thats besides the point), and if they are not, I'm just going to ignore them. I'm not going to bother with his "arguments".
Think about how many competitive players "attack" public players because they don't know this game yet they recommend horrible ideas for this game. And competitive players are right. But they are in the 5% minority of NS gamers, and to rest 95% of the players, clanners look like a arrogant idiots.
If you ask Nada why strategy XYZ is a bad one, you find there's no way to prove that with infallible logic; you just have to trust his judgement because in stochastic systems like Starcraft, there're too many variables to count for each one. The skilled players know which premises are more true than others, and which conclusions follow from these premises.
A lot of things can be said about society, but when someone is suggesting a complete system of a society, with economic system that is completely dismissed by modern economists, there's a reason to sceptical. You don't need to take this seriously. When I'm debating public players, I might lay down my arguments and add additional paragraph stating that competitive players know this game, respect their opinions especially when a lot of them agree on issues. For an outsider, it looks more lke an annoying rant.
So what? You respond to argumentum ad hominem with another one. Most economists think marxist economics is a dead end, matter how many books they have read.
Humanities is like the public scene of social science. So much talk but god they don't know anything and make horrible police recommendations because they don't understand economic consequences which are there whether they want it or not.
If we had sociologists in NS they would point out how the skill inequality between Tane and the Bob the public player has exploded, Tane's shotgun should do less damage to compensate for this, and Tane is to blame why noobs don't know this game. You have to be careful with that analogy though, because sports (apart from human capital), are in some sense zero-sum games whereas trade is not. Trade benefits everyone. That is one common mistake politicians do, is that they think if China is a growing economy faster than US it is somehow away from United States. So they think it is a race and there can only be one winner but that is not how economy works. Both countries can increase in productivity.
However this was not really a serious counter-argument, I just thought I would add it there as a clarification of the mentality of their approach.
Yet it doesn't make marxist economics any better. I'm sure Pierre-Simon Laplace had a respect for a lot of physicists but that doesn't make his belief in Ether any better.
Who would have not hated Lenin after what he did? It is easy to say that in hindsight.
Yep, modern medicine is not the only way to cure diseases either, there is for example homeopathy. It is dismissed by modern medicine though.
It is a peer-reviewed book, obviously hardcore socialists will dismiss it like nazis dismiss holocaust. Every single phrase you say requires like a page to prove wrong. It is rather annoying.
Conclusion
Bottom line is I am sick and tired of debating public players (or socialists). Every argument of one phrase I've to spend 4 paragraphs explaining what is wrong with it, then they come up with some smart-sounding counter-argument and I have to spend another year correcting their arguments. I can't be arsed with people like that.
In UWE forums it goes something like this, just illstrative not a real example:
me: Lerk needs bite, it was very important for the provide interesting, versatile combat
nsplayer1: But lerk bite was just stupid, the lerk should not be a flying skulk!
me: Lerk is different, it requires different kind of aerial control
me: The NS1 lerk flight model is highly appreciated by good lerks compared to NS2
nsplayer1: I have played this game 1000x on able NS, I know what I'm talking about too
nsplayer2: I want a spike lerk, you don't have any more right than I do
me: Removing skill elements is not a good idea
nsplayer: This game is already too hard, it shouldn't be any harder
me: That is not away from public lerks
nsplayer2: It is impossible to aim good lerks, it is just bug-abuse
me: You cannot have depth without skill elements
me: Also long-range spikes make for a boring lerk as it was in 1.04
nsplayer2: This is not NS1, you are just speculating
me: Spikes provide no incentives to go up close and maneuver bullets
nsplayer2: So what, the sniper lerk is fun, and there're no snipers in this game yet
me: Lerk is much more interesting with aerial combat than sniping
nsplayer2: You're stupid competitive player, go away, we don't want you
me: whatever
Tane, as a student of philosophy, see how many logical loopholes my argumenting leaves, such as ambiguity of word interesting and versatile, appeal to authority, subjective value issues, is-ought problem et cetera. Just go down the list. When we're dealing with complex stochastic systems there is no way to prove anything with synthetic truth value. One idea is to listen to experts. Another way is maybe prediction markets but the main point is that debate is overrated. Debate is not going convince public players of our ideas. And even if you convince one player, there will be like a hundred more who are not.
It took me like a week to do this post, think twice if I have the incentives to do another.
"In UWE forums it goes something like this, just illstrative not a real example:
me: Lerk needs bite, it was very important for the provide interesting, versatile combat
nsplayer1: But lerk bite was just stupid, the lerk should not be a flying skulk!
me: Lerk is different, it requires different kind of aerial control
me: The NS1 lerk flight model is highly appreciated by good lerks compared to NS2
nsplayer1: I have played this game 1000x on able NS, I know what I'm talking about too
nsplayer2: I want a spike lerk, you don't have any more right than I do
me: Removing skill elements is not a good idea
nsplayer: This game is already too hard, it shouldn't be any harder
me: That is not away from public lerks
nsplayer2: It is impossible to aim good lerks, it is just bug-abuse
me: You cannot have depth without skill elements
me: Also long-range spikes make for a boring lerk as it was in 1.04
nsplayer2: This is not NS1, you are just speculating
me: Spikes provide no incentives to go up close and maneuver bullets
nsplayer2: So what, the sniper lerk is fun, and there're no snipers in this game yet
me: Lerk is much more interesting with aerial combat than sniping
nsplayer2: You're stupid competitive player, go away, we don't want you
me: whatever"
aA is right cuz he is aA, end of discussion.
gay is wrong cuz his nick is wrong !
jiriki is an admin, so he's right.
and mp is Kazahstanian not russian, he just knows something !
"In UWE forums it goes something like this, just illstrative not a real example:
Dux: Lerk needs bite, it was very important for the provide interesting, versatile combat
Flayra: But lerk bite was just stupid, the lerk should not be a flying skulk!
Dux: Lerk is different, it requires different kind of aerial control
Dux: The NS1 lerk flight model is highly appreciated by good lerks compared to NS2
SaperioN: I have played this game 1000x on able NS, I know what I'm talking about too
Flayra: I want a spike lerk, you don't have any more right than I do
Dux: Removing skill elements is not a good idea
Flayra: This game is already too hard, it shouldn't be any harder
Dux: That is not away from public lerks
Flayra: It is impossible to aim good lerks, it is just bug-abuse
Dux: You cannot have depth without skill elements
Dux: Also long-range spikes make for a boring lerk as it was in 1.04
Flayra: This is not NS1, you are just speculating
Dux: Spikes provide no incentives to go up close and maneuver bullets
SaperioN: So what, the sniper lerk is fun, and there're no snipers in this game yet
Dux: Lerk is much more interesting with aerial combat than sniping
Flayra: You're stupid competitive player, go away, we don't want you
Dux: whatever"
"In UWE forums it goes something like this, just illstrative not a real example:
Dux: Lerk needs bite, it was very important for the provide interesting, versatile combat
Flayra: But lerk bite was just stupid, the lerk should not be a flying skulk!
Dux: Lerk is different, it requires different kind of aerial control
Dux: The NS1 lerk flight model is highly appreciated by good lerks compared to NS2
SaperioN: I have played this game 1000x on able NS, I know what I'm talking about too
Flayra: I want a spike lerk, you don't have any more right than I do
Dux: Removing skill elements is not a good idea
Flayra: This game is already too hard, it shouldn't be any harder
Dux: That is not away from public lerks
Flayra: It is impossible to aim good lerks, it is just bug-abuse
Dux: You cannot have depth without skill elements
Dux: Also long-range spikes make for a boring lerk as it was in 1.04
Flayra: This is not NS1, you are just speculating
Dux: Spikes provide no incentives to go up close and maneuver bullets
SaperioN: So what, the sniper lerk is fun, and there're no snipers in this game yet
Dux: Lerk is much more interesting with aerial combat than sniping
Flayra: You're stupid competitive player, go away, we don't want you
Dux: whatever
Marko: check out this link to have both !!! www.thiswillhijackyoursteamaccount.com"
Hey buddy, try quoting what I actually said before you talk out of your anal flaps! I didn't say it had nothing to do with Marxism, I said:
My argument wasn't anything to do with nationality... My argument, was about external influences, how is that random? Is it just too confusing for you?
Yes, I won the debate.
I smell projection. Seems like you're more interested in winning an argument than actually talking about the facts.
What are you talking about some french historian for? What's that got to do with anything I said? I asked you to deconstruct the arguments put forward by 'non-economists' whom you attacked earlier. Not put forward some arguments by 'non-economists' that you agree with. Again, you're concentrating on the background of the person rather than the debating. BOOOOO!
Please, address my arguments and I'll be happy to give a very polite and considered reply <3.
PS. You're big long post was very informative. Thanks for that, many interesting links posted there and some very well constructed ideas. I particularly like the bit where comparative advantage isn't related to maths... Oh wait! No but really, I liked reading the post.
PPS. You replied to my concerns, but to Tane instead.
WRT clan players vs public. I find that many comp players aren't prepared to go into the numbers but will force their views across. Same with public players! I also find that many 'comp' players will argue with another player assuming they are a 'pub' player when in-fact they are another 'comp' player. I've witnessed this happen on various forums (ns, jarhedz, thehaven, warservers) and on servers themselves. Once I remember two guys both fake-nicking on a server, they were in a heated debate about SCs or something... both clan players and both calling each other dumb pubbers to me on steam, this was a long time ago but the memory remains. ANYWAY, personal credentials often mean far less than people make out.
Sorry but the status quo is the manifest realisation of implementing a capitalist system in the real world. Remember that argument? It’s your one.
The example you’ve just given shows us that protectionist and state subsidised market economies were able to out produce feudal ones. This has nothing to say about Marxism and whether or not a socialist government could or could not have produced comparable results. It’s also pretty ironic that you’re using the ownership of a computer and use of the internet as emblematic of free market superiority, when they were produced by the public sector. Before, of course, allowing the publically funded research to be turned over to capitalists to make private profit out of it.
As nourishing as it is listening to someone justify children starving to death and dying from something as curable as diarrhea because the nation they happen to have been born in lacks a sufficiently high iq average to merit ethical consideration, it’s not actually a defence of the status quo. Or at least no more a defence than me claiming that the “Communist” States would’ve overcome their supply problems given enough time. And indeed they probably would have.
But just so you don’t piss any niggers off if you’re ever unfortunate enough to meet one in Rivendell:
2. Reasons against the PDPT
It is well to recall that existing peoples have arrived at their present levels of social, economic and cultural development through an historical process that was pervaded by enslavement, colonialism, even genocide. Though these monumental crimes are now in the past, they have left a legacy of great inequalities which would be unacceptable even if peoples were now masters of their own development. Even if the peoples of Africa had had, in recent decades, a real opportunity to achieve similar rates of economic growth as the developed countries, achieving such growth could not have helped them reduce their initial 30:1 disadvantage in per capita income. Even if, starting in 1960, African annual growth in per capita income had been a full percentage point above ours each and every year, the ratio would still be 20:1 today and would not be fully erased until early in the 24th century.13 It is unclear then whether we may simply take for granted the existing inequality as if it had come about through choices freely made within each people. By seeing the problem of poverty merely in terms of assistance, we overlook that our enormous economic advantage is deeply tainted by how it accumulated over the course of one historical process that has devastated the societies and cultures of four continents.
But let us leave aside the continuing legacies of historical injustice and focus on the empirical view that at least in the post-colonial era, which brought impressive growth in global per capita income, the causes of the persistence of severe poverty, and hence the key to its eradication, lie within the poor countries themselves. Many find this view compelling in light of the great variation in how the former colonies have evolved over the last forty years. Some of them have done quite well in economic growth and poverty reduction while others exhibit worsening poverty and declining per capita incomes. Isn’t it obvious that such strongly divergent national trajectories must be due to differing domestic causal factors in the countries concerned? And isn’t it clear, then, that the persistence of severe poverty has local causes?
This reasoning connects three thoughts: There are great international variations in the evolution of severe poverty. These variations must be caused by local (country-specific) factors. These factors, together, fully explain the overall evolution of severe poverty worldwide. To see the fallacy, consider this parallel: There are great variations in the performance of my students. These variations must be caused by local (student-specific) factors. These factors, together, fully explain the overall performance of my class.
Clearly, the parallel reasoning results in a falsehood: The overall performance of my class also crucially depends on the quality of my teaching and on various other “global” factors as well. This shows that the second step is invalid. To see this more precisely, one must appreciate that there are two distinct questions about the evolution of severe poverty. One question concerns observed variations in national trajectories. In the answer to this question, local factors must play a central role. Yet, however full and correct, this answer may not suffice to answer the second question, which concerns the overall evolution of poverty worldwide: Even if student-specific factors fully explain observed variations in the performance of my students, the quality of my teaching may still play a major role in explaining why they did not on the whole do much better or worse than they actually did. Likewise, even if country-specific factors fully explain the observed variations in the economic performance of the poor countries, global factors may still play a major role in explaining why they did not on the whole do much better or worse than they did in fact.
This is not merely a theoretical possibility. There is considerable international economic interaction regulated by an elaborate system of treaties and conventions about trade, investments, loans, patents, copyrights, trademarks, double taxation, labor standards, environmental protection, use of seabed resources and much else. In many ways, such rules can be shaped to be more or less favorable to various affected parties such as, for instance, the poor or the rich societies. Had these rules been shaped to be more favorable to the poor societies, much of the great poverty in them today would have been avoided. Let me support this point with a quote from the Economist which — being strongly supportive of WTO globalization and having vilified, on its cover and in its editorial pages, the protesters of Seattle, Washington and Genoa as enemies of the poor14 — is surely not biased in my favor:
Rich countries cut their tariffs by less in the Uruguay Round than poor ones did. Since then, they have found new ways to close their markets, notably by imposing anti-dumping duties on imports they deem ‘unfairly cheap.’ Rich countries are particularly protectionist in many of the sectors where developing countries are best able to compete, such as agriculture, textiles, and clothing. As a result, according to a new study by Thomas Hertel, of Purdue University, and Will Martin, of the World Bank, rich countries’ average tariffs on manufacturing imports from poor countries are four times higher than those on imports from other rich countries. This imposes a big burden on poor countries. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimates that they could export $700 billion more a year by 2005 if rich countries did more to open their markets. Poor countries are also hobbled by a lack of know-how. Many had little understanding of what they signed up to in the Uruguay Round. That ignorance is now costing them dear. Michael Finger of the World Bank and Philip Schuler of the University of Maryland estimate that implementing commitments to improve trade procedures and establish technical and intellectual-property standards can cost more than a year’s development budget for the poorest countries. Moreover, in those areas where poor countries could benefit from world trade rules, they are often unable to do so. … Of the WTO’s 134 members, 29 do not even have missions at its headquarters in Geneva. Many more can barely afford to bring cases to the WTO.15
Such effects of the going WTO rules show that the causes of the persistence of severe poverty do not, pace Rawls, lie solely in the poor countries themselves. The global economic order also plays an important role. It is not surprising that this order is shaped to reflect the interests of the rich countries and their citizens and corporations. In the world as it is, the 15.6 percent of humankind living in the “high-income economies” have 81 percent of global income while the other 84.4 percent of humankind share the remaining 19 percent.16 It is of great importance for these other countries to be allowed access to the markets of the high-income economies, where per capita incomes are 23 times higher on average. This fact gives our governments greatly superior bargaining power. If our officials serve us well in intergovernmental negotiations about the ground rules of the world economy, they use this superior bargaining power, and their advantages in information and expertise, to shape each facet of the global order to our benefit, allowing us to capture the lion’s share of the gains from economic interaction. In this way, large inequalities, once accumulated, have a tendency to intensify17 — and this is happening, quite dramatically, on the global plane: “The income gap between the fifth of the world’s people living in the richest countries and the fifth in the poorest was 74 to 1 in 1997, up from 60 to 1 in 1990 and 30 to 1 in 1960.”18
If the global economic order plays a major role in the persistence of severe poverty worldwide and if our governments, acting in our name, are prominently involved in shaping and upholding this order, then the deprivation of the distant needy may well engage not merely positive duties to assist but also more stringent negative duties not to harm. Yet, this obvious thought is strangely absent from the debates about our relation to the distant needy. Even those who have most forcefully presented the eradication of severe poverty as an important moral task for us are content to portray us as mere bystanders. Thus, Peter Singer argues that we should donate most of our income to save lives in the poor countries. He makes his case by telling the story of a healthy young professor who, walking by a shallow pond, sees a small child in it about to drown. Surely, Singer says, the professor has a duty to save the child, even at the cost of dirtying his clothes. And similarly, he argues, we have a duty to send money to poverty relief organizations that can, for each few dollars they receive, save one more child from a painful hunger death.19 It is, in one way, a virtue of Singer’s argument that it reaches even those who subscribe to the Purely Domestic Poverty Thesis (PDPT), the view that the persistence of severe poverty is due solely to domestic causes. But by catering to this empirical view, Singer also reinforces the common moral judgment that the citizens and governments of the affluent societies, whom he is addressing, are as innocent in regard to the persistence of severe poverty abroad as the professor is in regard to the child’s predicament.20
(I can’t find the original URL for this pdf to link to. There’s a lot more to be said on this point but I’ll settle for a c&p for now)
This isn’t a response to my point, which was explaining why the totalitarian results of supposed Marxist revolutions of old shouldn’t be assumed likely to occur in a current Western Democracy.
To respond to what you’ve said though: How on earth do you get from people complaining about repressive internet censorship to violent revolutions against a form of government power that seeks to mitigate the excesses of private power? The left is actually able to distinguish these different types of “control” unlike you; People hating the idea of private power coercing the government into legislative measures against downloading copyrighted content is not a statement in favour of your view that “freedom” to private ownership is an unassailable ethical axiom…
As for the government appropriating all your property; who is going to have their car/home taken away by the government? The answer is people who have about 5 of each. Good luck to your counter revolution if that’s who composes your ranks.
What right do you have to appropriate land for private ownership? What right do you have to appropriate this planets’ resources for private usage?
What right does the state have to implement the myriad laws restricting liberty that we need in order for modern day capitalist systems to function? Could you either A: Justify the ethical bifurcation between these State backed impositions on our freedom and the one you’ve just offered, or B: Inform us that you are in fact an anarcho capitalist so that we can end the discussion with you safely labelled as insane.
You’ve responded to my question asking you to clarify your position with a video that doesn’t directly seem to address what we we’re discussing. Can you elaborate on what you think’s particularly relevant here please. (I watched from 15:00 onwards)
So I guess a more accurate statement for you originally to have made would have been something like: “Debate is a good way to learn, but now that I know everything, having to debate with people who disagree with me is overrated because they have a habit of not agreeing with me despite the fact that I know I’m right”
I’m talking about game theory and such being used as fundamental axioms from which deductive statements about economic reality can (allegedly) be derived.
No you don’t remove THE incentives to produce these innovations, you remove THAT incentive to produce the innovation. I know you obviously disagree with this, but I think bureaucrats are motivated pretty well when given the freedom to improve the world (in as far as their department affects it) to the best of their ability. But assuming that isn’t the case, and that we need to motivate innovation solely through self interest, then introduce something akin to the Free Market Drug Act bill in America, with government corporations set up in competition with each other; failing corporations being folded and new ones set up in their place. You can use internal market forces without having to create billionaires.
And thus the golden road to progress begins. Except that in the real world it doesn’t. In the real world we have cartels, marketing budgets (in itself a horrendous waste of resources, but also having the undesirable effect of meeting its goal, which is to get us to waste money on useless fucking shit), repeated research by competing companies, and short term profit seeking resulting in all manner of negative consequences. And then when it comes to the important stuff, the stuff that needs a more dedicated investor with principles beyond making a quick return on their profit…. Well… We have the state sector for that don’t we.
Markets have all the information that governments have in the same sense that the universe has all the information that the government has. The problem is that the market isn’t an agency that regulates in any meaningful sense. IF individuals were rational (they aren’t, not even in a nominal sense), and IF they were solely motivated by self interest (they aren’t), and IF they were omniscient (they aren’t), then the notion of the markets creating a truer democracy than elected politicians could ever achieve might become something other than a very, very depressing fetish of rich elites and useful idiots.
(Like the trains, like pfi’s in the NHS, like the banks) Here’s a fun example I was reading last week
And just to be clear here, the onus on you isn’t to show that government can be AS inefficient as xyz company, it is to show that it is more so to such a degree that allowing such wealth to be distributed into the hands of those who don’t need it is of such a net benefit to society, that it outweighs any wealth lost through alleged government inefficiency.
There are obvious reasons why this doesn’t actually happen, whether it be overt corruption through campaign funding for politicians by the financial sector, or less overt corruption such as acquiescing to the business press agenda (Or specific interests i.e. Murdoch). But much more importantly is the simple fact that the political elite are ideologically beholden to whatever the academic consensus is. As you already stated, Marxism isn’t a part of the academic world anymore. And as such it isn’t a part of the political world. This isn’t a validation of the academic consensus, as you just suggested, but merely a reflection of it.
Like just about every prominent pro free market economist in the Anglosphere. And would you like to tell us what the Austrian solution to the issue of the whole CDO fraud thing is? Perhaps a dose of deregula…. Wait a second!
I’m saying mainstream economists thought that the economy was fine, despite the fact that it was riding on a bubble created by people lending money they didn’t have, to people who couldn’t pay it back. You saying “There will always be some levels of debt in a society, its inevitable.” is not a meaningful response.
So I’m the one asking unreasonable explanations from you? You started off by offering as a justification for your conflation, AN ENTIRE BOOK. I then asked you to respond to one, specific criticism, to which you’re now suggesting is a ridiculously unreasonable thing to do and that a sensible response is to suggest that I should respond to every criticism ever made about the topics of Marxism, Communism, and Socialism.
Suggesting that only HARDCORE SOCIALISTS can dare deny the unrelenting truth that Soviet socialism and Nazi fascism were infact the same things makes you sound like a clown. And when, after having it pointed out to you that the logic used by the author to attribute deaths to Communism, can be used to attribute far more deaths to Capitalism, you decide to throw your toys out of the pram, you look even worse. Sorry.
You might find your “takes a whole page” response requirements might abate somewhat if you manage to get over analogising every fucking thing in the world with the pains of justifying bhop to people with a social life. But seeing as you can’t stop making the analogy I might as well respond to it:
“ see how many logical loopholes my argumenting leaves, such as ambiguity of word interesting and versatile, appeal to authority, subjective value issues, is-ought problem et cetera. Just go down the list. When we're dealing with complex stochastic systems there is no way to prove anything with synthetic truth value. One idea is to listen to experts. Another way is maybe prediction markets but the main point is that debate is overrated. Debate is not going convince public players of our ideas. And even if you convince one player, there will be like a hundred more who are not.”
No, it’s not overrated, it’s the only way you actually convince people of things. The fact that a worthwhile argument may contain subjective values and/or varying degrees of non logically deductive truths, and may not convince everyone, doesn’t suddenly mean that a convincing argument has the same value as an unconvincing one. The reason you aren’t going to win every argument concerning pub/pro play, is because pub players have a really good argument, which is that allowing high skill benefits can completely break pub games and make the game hugely unenjoyable for those who aren’t willing to dedicate hundreds of hours of game time to a computer game.
