Crises of Capitalism

[xoxoxoBruce]

[TheMercenary]

Fantastic!

[TheMercenary]

But is it truely evil as the speaker suggests? Are we willing to go another route and if so where? Many of us see us heading towards a socialistic society and we have seen from a number of examples that does not work in the end because power is still centralized in the hands of a few top dogs in government.

[Undertoad]

Remember how after 9/11, everybody with a strong pre-9/11 opinion tried to build a narrative about how it proves what they were saying all along?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

For instance, UT: like every single one of our major foreign-policy troubles, 9-11 came from an undemocratic place and an undemocratic society. And since when was there anything wrong in eliminating undemocratic societies, governments, and social orders? Hand these wankers the stark choice: you are either an electorate-powered democracy and/or federated republic, an electorate-powered constitutional monarchy -- or you're a target. And you're going to look like a well used target sleeve by the time we're done.

[Undertoad]

Precisely.

[HungLikeJesus]

I'm not following UG. Are you saying that if another country decides to form a government structure that we don't like we are compelled to force them to change?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

I am saying there is no worthy form of government except from an empowered electorate. A genuine democracy, in short, or its constitutional-monarchic equivalent, which is in most cases the prevailing modern monarchic model.

Democracies and republics behave much better than autocracies and oligarchies, who are easily moved to war and banditry.

Call me a fanatic if you want to, but consider for the sake of argument if no other: when the last dictator is hanged on the spilled tripes of the last national chief of secret police, how much misery will have fled the world?

I think a lot of the world's troubles would be gone. I'm not Pollyanna enough to think this would be just naturally permanent, but I think the novel experience of good government in places previously run by despotic oligarchies would make for healthier politics, instead of semiperiodic revolutions that swap one man-on-horseback for another, distinguishable only by hairstyle. Said novel experience would also cause the next wave of despotic evil to be feebler, as fewer people would put up with it.

Democracy accords with the population having a personal stake in how the state is run. Under autocracy, the safest option is to duck out of sight and stay as uninvolved and passive as possible. Doesn't seem optimal to me. Certainly isn't any "moral equivalent," which seems to be what you're hinting at, HLJ.

I've been out there. I've seen what despotism is like. It's left me, well, other than naïve. You?

[Undertoad]

That is not what this thread is about.

[toranokaze]

I see what the video maker is saying and the whole story of capitalism has been a tail of boom and bust. However, I have not seen Marx's theories actually work nor known anyone who has even on a small scale. Capitalism has problems,laze-on-fair economics more so; IMO it is the imbalace of the coprites power and the power of lablor compounded by globization. Before the globization success of the coperations begate the growing of wealth of the country (at lest that was the thoery) but now that the croparation interest are divorced from their nations they have no interest but their own and the people pay the price.

[TheMercenary]

And the money often moves from the counsumer right out the door of the nation to Corps who hold their wealth in countries other than the US and if not that at least not at the local level were it could be put back into the local economy. We are heading towards Renter Nation status when it comes to industry and big business.