01-29-2009, 08:34 AM
Quote:Now you have me scratching my head...
You do know that democracy and socialism can actually go together? Democracy is a system of decision making and socialism is a system of distribution of the goods and services.
I am extremely curious now as to just what the journey was that seems to make most Americans think that capitalism and democracy must go hand in hand.
Oh, and if you really only wanted to consult kandrathe, there is always that handy little private message function here. ;)
I agree here. I don't want to start a europe vs USA brawl here, but in my opinions many americans are so 'scared' of socialism that they don't stop and ask themselves if they really know what it is (I don't mean you kandrathe, i know you know what it is).
Like Shadow says, socialism is not an oposite of democracy. Sweden, where I am living now, is a kind of conservative socialist country, but at the same time very capitalistic. It is one of the richest countries in the world, there are smaller differences between rich and poor, and the standard of living is very high. Well that is a price you pay for excellent almost free child and healthcare I guess.
Anyway, pure capitalism leads to overproduction and leads to overvalueing. Take the banking crisis. It was the banks full right to try and profit from the fact that people think that buying a house would make them rich so had no problem taking out a big loan which wass difficult to pay of. (this is what you also call a pyramid scheme) If no bailouts were done the (western) world economy could have gone down the draines.
Yes this might sound strange from one of the more leftish lurkers, but the goverments helping out the banks wass a good thing, I think.
If however the fundamentals of capitalism will not change (I mean how it is implemented) this will happen again. Exactly because overproduction is inherent to capitalism; it doesn't matter if you produce something useful, it matters if you produce something that you can sell.
This has seemed to work for so many years looking from the perspective of somebody that lives in a rich country, that it is hard to figure out that pure capitalism will have to be abandoned. In a world with more people getting a higher standard of living (China, India) and more people in general we simply cannot maintain our lifestyle.
And before skipping directly to communism I think socialism is a good middle road. And no I don't mean like china, I mean like Sweden for example. I don't have to share my car with my neighbour, I have property, I have a TV with many channels, I can choose between 100 different kinds of softdrinks and we have McDonalds. Another great idea would be not to call it socialism......in order not to scare people of.:)
Also I think (I hope) that the crisis can turn out ot be a good thing. We hopefully can start building a more sustainable industry......and so this crisis hasn't come one day too late.