[Yonnipun]

https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2017/10/29/capitalism-a-smashing-success-the-world-over

That part about five vacant houses for every homeless person is particularly striking. Furthermore, this strikes me as a profound inefficiency, something the capitalists are always accusing socialism of.

And the fact that we grow enough food to feed the whole world, yet 1 billion go hungry and 18 million die of poverty every year also strikes me as profound inefficiency.

I would add that those homes are indeed occupied – they are occupied by the dead hand of Capital.

“Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.”

– Karl Marx

Kind of hard to argue with Marx. That cold, head hand of Capital, that zombie plague that sucks out everything vital that makes our lives worth living, is one of the things that capitalist fanboys swoon about the most. It makes you wonder what sort of person is a capitalist fanboy? A sociopath?

Obviously the system is working. Working for someone, that is. The 1%. The question is, is it working for you?

One wonders how aliens would react if they landed here and we gleefully told them about how wonderful our system was. I mean, the greediest, cruelest, most sociopathic of all succeed and end up ruling society while almost everyone else fails relatively speaking?

In what sane universe could that possibly be a logical system? What’s so rational about it? It’s about as rational as a Goddamned wild jungle. With all of our vast intellect and knowledge, we cannot even improve on the brutality of the raw, cruel world of Nature – dirt, weeds, bugs, birds, minnows, and critters? We can’t even beyond that bullshit? Pathetic

[Yonnipun]

Venezuela ring a bell? LOL

https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2017/06/17/venezuela-the-lies-never-stop/

The poster’s problem is that he gets all his Venezuela news from the Western media. You will not read one true thing about that country in the Western media. It is an all out propaganda war from Day One. If you want to read the truth about Venezuela, go to Venezuelanalysis. It’s all straight up 100% facts there, no spin. And many articles are quite critical of the government.

Yes, it is a civil war because the Right is running through the streets rioting, killing people, burning down buildings, buses and police cars. Let me ask you something. Suppose when Obama was in, Republicans went on a rampage all over the US, rioting, burning stuff down, killing people, firing guns, setting up snipers, setting off bombs, throwing grenades, killing lots of cops. Would you blame Obama for that? Because that is exactly what the commenter is doing.

T

his is part of the Right’s project down there. They lost the election, so they are trying to overthrow the government by force. What exactly is the state supposedly do about what is in effect a rightwing insurgency?

What they are trying to do is to create so much chaos that the military steps in and does a rightwing coup. Barring that, they are creating so much chaos and disorder that the US steps in with the military, invades and overthrows the Chavistas in the name of humanitarian intervention. It’s the exact same scheme we pulled in Syria when we turned ISIS and Al Qaeda loose on secular regime.

There are no poor results of Chavismo. Things were booming along for many years. The rightwing has been sabotaging and boycotting the economy since Day One.

Norway is far more socialist than Venezuela. China is orders of magnitude more socialist than Venezuela. There’s nothing socialist at all about Venezuela. The economy is 100% capitalist controlled.

All Chavismo did was take a lot of that oil revenue and spend it on the people. If you think that’s a failed model, I do not know what to say to you.

After the oil price crashed, the government could no longer cover up for the business sector’s sabotage of the economy.

There are shortages? How can there be shortages in a 100% capitalist controlled economy? Answer me that. There cannot be. If there are shortages, why don’t they import some food? Why don’t they make some stuff that is in shortage?

The business sector is refusing to import products, and they are refusing to make products in short supply.

You need to go study how Kissinger and Nixon blew up the Chilean economy. They did the exact same thing, down to the letter. This is the Chilean Model down to the letter.

Every week they seize huge warehouses full of products that are being hoarded by the capitalists in order to create artificial shortages. You heard of a shortage of syringes? A warehouse full of 21 million syringes was recently seized. If you read the Venezuelan papers, these seizures happen all the time, maybe every other day.

Why is there inflation? The capitalists have caused artificial shortages by hoarding stuff, refusing to produce stuff and refusing to import stuff. These artificial shortages of course caused inflation.

This economic sabotage has been going on from Day One, but when the oil prices were high, the government could cover up for the Economic War by importing their own products and selling them to people for cheap. Hence the state covered up all the artificial shortages caused by the refusal to import and manufacture products. When the oil price crashed, the state no longer had the money to import goods to cover up for the shortages, and furthermore, the Economic War went into high gear.

Furthermore, since Maduro has come in, he has made a hard turn to the Right from Chavez. His administration of full of rightwingers and representatives of the business sector. He caves to opposition demands over and over. They are always demanding hikes in the controlled prices, and he keeps raising them. No matter how much they raise the prices, the capitalists do not produce one more item. It’s all a scam.

Keep in mind that the economic crash has occurred against the background of a hard right turn in the government under a government that is now about 50% rightwingers and people from the business community. They can’t get a handle on things either. Did you hear what I said?

The economy crashed as the government turned Right and filled the executive with people from the business sector. According to the poster’s logic, rightwing economics is responsible for the crash.

That’s not really true either. Neither Right nor Left economics is responsible for the crash. The ministers from the business community can’t control the problems either. No one can.

There is a problem with currency, but that was created by the capitalists too. Currency controls were put in because the capitalists were taking all their money out of the country. No country can put up with that for long. So currency controls were put in, but that causes a black market in currency.

Price controls were put in because the capitalists staged a lockout strike that caused horrible shortages and sent prices skyrocketing.

Incidentally, despite currency controls, the business community still takes $50 billion out of the country every year. Do you know how much more they would take out if the currency controls were taken off? The system would probably collapse.

I agree that the standard Communist model caused a lot of economic problems, but the lie is that Venezuela is a Communist country like Cuba or the USSR, and this is the cause of all the problems. It’s caused by “socialist failure.” Why isn’t socialism failing in Europe? Why isn’t it failing in China? Why isn’t it failing in most of the world that runs social democratic systems?

The Chavistas were simply trying to produce a European style social democracy in Venezuela. Even that’s too much for the Venezuelan elite

I agree that the Communist model leaves a lot to be desired, and the lie is that the problems of Cuba and the USSR are being replicated in Venezuela. It’s a lie because Venezuela never even made it to social democracy. Venezuela is a capitalist country through and through.

I will ban any posters who attack Venezuela as a failure of Left economics because it’s nothing of the sort. Now if you want to talk about problems with the Cuban model, go for it.

[KaiserJeep]

I've had enough of that BS. I don't care who Robert Lindsey is or what his IQ might be. He is an apologist for mass murderers and for genocide. He has no common sense, and has benefitted from Capitalism his whole life, even though he condemns it. He should in fact go live in Cuba or Venezuela or North Korea so that he might understand what he champions.

Yonnipun, you are welcome to contribute your own prose to our site. Further quotes fron RL are not welcome and we will refer those to the moderators.

[GHung]

I've had enough of that BS. I don't care who Robert Lindsey is or what his IQ might be. He is an apologist for mass murderers and for genocide. He has no common sense, and has benefitted from Capitalism his whole life, even though he condemns it. He should in fact go live in Cuba or Venezuela or North Korea so that he might understand what he champions.

Yonnipun, you are welcome to contribute your own prose to our site. Further quotes fron RL are not welcome and we will refer those to the moderators.

Sounds like old white guys so terrified of even discussing ideas they find objectionable that they resort to attempted censorship and intimidation.

Ask me again what's wrong with America these days.

[kublikhan]

Sounds like old white guys so terrified of even discussing ideas they find objectionable that they resort to attempted censorship and intimidation.

Ask me again what's wrong with America these days.

Are you kidding me? What "discussion" do you see from Yonnipun in this thread? He is doing nothing but copy and pasting blog posts. When someone replies to them, he ignores them. This is not a discussion.

[GHung]

Sounds like old white guys so terrified of even discussing ideas they find objectionable that they resort to attempted censorship and intimidation.

Ask me again what's wrong with America these days.

Are you kidding me? What "discussion" do you see from Yonnipun in this thread? He is doing nothing but copy and pasting articles. When someone replies to them, he ignores them. This is not a discussion.

I get some of that all the time from some of regulars on this board. Easy to ignore, especially with the "Ignore" feature. I have a couple of folks on my list.

[KaiserJeep]

I don't ignore you, although I sometimes (rarely) do not reply. Yonnipun I have replied to and he does not respond. I do not appreciate the quotes from RL and in fact find them offensive. Yonnipun is in clear violation of Forum rules and needs to straighten his act out. In fact I think he may BE that cowardly RL person.

[GHung]

I don't ignore you, although I sometimes (rarely) do not reply. Yonnipun I have replied to and he does not respond. I do not appreciate the quotes from RL and in fact find them offensive.

So go to your user control panel > Friends and Foes > add this person to your "Foes" list.....

..... unless you think you have some special status that lets you be the Big Daddy of this forum. I would enjoy hearing your case for that, as I enjoy most of your posts, whether or not I agree.

[kublikhan]

Sometimes people violate the forum's code of conduct without realizing it. I wanted to bring his infraction to his attention before getting the mods involved. However in the future I will simply flag any such posts I see.

[onlooker]

If you think Yonnipun is violating the CC of this site, anyone is free to report said post (s). I do not see the record being set straight with regard to the Killings and Genocide related to Communism vs. Capitalism. When you look at Capitalism you have to look at the impetus of profit/power. When you do that , you see then the imperial conquests and wars all for the sake of more profit and power. Starting with Rome who practiced a form of Capitalism ie. personal property, trade, markets, lending, money etc. Their march to become the Great Empire of Rome was tainted with much blood. And so on through history, The British Empire and extending colonization and conquest all over the planet. How many died there? Then all the suffering imposed by the scourge of Slavery. Then the genocide of the American Indians. Then WWI and WWII, mostly for the sake of profit and economic power. All this is fomented by the competition and by the imperial mindset contained within Capitalism. And since WWII, the ethnic cleansings are product of the arbritary manner in which Great Britain, other European powers and the US divided areas into countries. Look at the Middle East, Iraq. Putting Sunnis with Shia etc. In Yugoslavia, mixing races, religions and ethniticities together. Then the meddling of the US in the internal affairs of countries sparking mass killings and civil wars. I can go on. So don't tell me about the evils of Communism as Capitalism is complicit in so much killings and sufferings to make your head spin.

http://eng.anarchopedia.org/Mass_killin ... st_regimes

 https://eand.co/if-communism-killed-millions-how-many-did-capitalism-kill-2b24ab1c0df7

[KaiserJeep]

Such BS is beyond belief. Capitalism is in use in Democracies, mostly representative democracies, most of which have laws and procedures for declaring wars and most of which are signatories to those International agreements about warfare commonly called "The Geneva Accords".

Most so-called Socialist states are in fact Capitalist economies with a thin veneer of state-sponsored welfare and social programs and very high taxation. These are also Democracies.

The current practitioners of Marxist-Leninism are China, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, and North Korea. China is and was the greatest infractor of human rights in History and Mao was the biggest mass murderer in History. Nor are any of the other Communist states free of war or genocide, to say nothing of the 40-odd failed and reformed former Communist states.

You have no basis for your beliefs. "Anarchopedia", indeed.

[onlooker]

Okay, Kaiser, I do not wish to ruin your day by pursuing this topic ad nauseum. However, just look up School of the Americas. And over time, if so inclined research the US covert operations and meddling in the affairs of countries throughout the world to try to destablize govts. to set up ones more favorable to the Capitalist system. You would find a plethora of info. See the book "Confessions of an Economic hitman". Also, Noam Chomsky has articulated a great deal about the imperial tactics and strategies of the US. Anyway, I am tired also. So no hard feelings hopefully Kaiser. Have a nice night.

[Cog]

Having been a military officer at Fort Benning, I'm very familiar with the previous mission of the school of the americas. To train south American soldiers and leaders to kill communists. I can't think of anything more valuable than that.

[Outcast_Searcher]

The 1970's recession.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/24/why-did-global-economic-performance-deteriorate-in-the-1970s/

Just tell me what this means. I graduated from college during that time and couldn't understand the basis of that recession

as it just seems gratuitous to me. My daughter graduated during the 2007/8 crash. She went to work abroad because of that

and is now a happy expatriate.

You might look at the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 for cause and effect. In '73 oil went from $3 to $12 a barrel when the minimum wage was $1.60.

You beat me to it. Those two oil crises played havoc with the economy. That may well not have been all of it, of course, but it was a major hit.

[Cog]

Lest we forget, high interest rates and Jimmy Carter. Neither of which inspired consumer confidence.

[GHung]

Lest we forget, high interest rates and Jimmy Carter. Neither of which inspired consumer confidence.

Meh,, Carter inherited a mess. See the "Nixon Shock", and the "great inflation" experiment of the early '70s. With countries devaluing their currencies all over the globe, the dollar no longer convertible to gold, and the Fed keeping checks on the money supply, blaming Carter is as simplistic and silly as most of Cog's posts. Throw in the Saudi response and higher oil prices (along with Fed pushing overall inflation trying to boost incomes), Carter was boxed in, economically. He picked a really bad time to run for President.

[Cog]

Yeah and Carter was such an inspiration he was reelected. No wait....

[GHung]

Yeah and Carter was such an inspiration he was reelected. No wait....

I'm not defending Carter. Just pointing out again how useless your one-liner comments are. I don't need to be inspired. I just want a system that works and people to do their jobs. You are a great example of Americans' absurd expectations when it comes to leadership....

....and when it comes to good character, Carter is a giant when compared to Trump. I would posit that that matters. But maybe you would rather be lied to.

[Cog]

I'd prefer a president who puts América first rather than one who goes on apology tours condemning it. But to each his own.

Sorry your girl lost.

[GHung]

I'd prefer a president who puts América first....

He could start by attending his national security briefings. If it's over his head, they have people to help with that.

Your girl lost...

You just can't stand the fact that I don't play your stupid party politics. My girl is sitting next to me eating dinner. She's a winner.