Everyone understands that Socialism is not Communism, right?
- Thread starter Jarod
- Start date
Yakuda
Verified User
Describe the difference
Yakuda
Verified User
That last line is bullshit. Without capitalism there would be no money for socialists to fund their programs. Capitalism doesnt need socialism unless you can show how.
explain how capitalism depends on socialism to "survive"
I have invited you literally dozens of times in the past and do so again;
Capitalism, properly understood, rests on private property, voluntary exchange, price discovery, profit/loss discipline, and decentralized allocation of capital. Once the state controls money, manipulates interest rates through a central bank, guarantees banks, subsidizes industries, regulates entry, redistributes income, and socializes losses, you are no longer talking about capitalism in the clean sense. You are talking about a mixed, managed economy with capitalist features.
A central bank alone seriously undermines the premise, because interest rates are supposed to be market prices for time, risk, and capital. When a central authority sets or manipulates that price, capital allocation is no longer purely voluntary or market-discovered.
So yes, private businesses may still exist. People may still buy and sell things. But that does not make the system capitalism. It makes it a hybrid: private ownership operating inside a state-managed monetary and regulatory framework.
Calling that “capitalism” lets socialism and interventionism take credit for the productive parts while blaming “capitalism” for distortions created by the state.
A central bank alone seriously undermines the premise, because interest rates are supposed to be market prices for time, risk, and capital. When a central authority sets or manipulates that price, capital allocation is no longer purely voluntary or market-discovered.
So yes, private businesses may still exist. People may still buy and sell things. But that does not make the system capitalism. It makes it a hybrid: private ownership operating inside a state-managed monetary and regulatory framework.
Calling that “capitalism” lets socialism and interventionism take credit for the productive parts while blaming “capitalism” for distortions created by the state.
Only competition with socialism and pressure from the labor class forced capitalism to become more humane, and enabled the social progress of the 20th century.
That is a very selective reading of history.
The 20th century got more prosperous because productivity exploded: electricity, mechanization, automobiles, refrigeration, antibiotics, mass production, computers, logistics, energy, and global trade. That rising productivity is what made shorter workweeks, higher wages, safer workplaces, pensions, mass homeownership, and broader consumption possible.
You cannot redistribute prosperity that does not exist.
A poor agrarian society can pass all the labor laws it wants and still be poor. The reason workers became richer was not merely political pressure. It was capital accumulation, technology, entrepreneurship, and higher output per worker.
Also, “labor class forced capitalism to become humane” quietly admits capitalism was the system producing the wealth in the first place. The argument is basically: capitalism created the productive surplus, then politics fought over how to distribute it.
Fine. That is a debate. But it is not proof that socialism deserves credit for modern prosperity.
Your eight hour working day, 40 hour work week, paid vacation, pension and retirement benefits did not come from the goodness and kind heart of capitalism. Left unfettered to it's own devices, capitalism generally will pay only a subsistence wage with no generous benefits.
Improvements to the conditions of labor and the evolution of a humane form of capitalism came from competition and pressure from socialism and the industrial working class.
Those things became possible because capitalist economies became wealthy and productive enough to afford them. Productivity, machinery, capital investment, competition for skilled labor, legal reforms, unions, and changing social expectations all played a role.
If capitalism naturally only paid subsistence wages, then the richest capitalist countries would have the worst workers. They don’t. They have some of the highest wages and living standards in human history.
“Forced capitalism to be more humane” is a funny way of saying “we added coercion to a system of voluntary exchange and then still blamed the voluntary part.”
I have been ignoring you for a long time, I did not believe you were a serious poster because I only interacted with you here. I have seen you can make an argument. Forgive me for that, I will look at your suggested thread.I have invited you literally dozens of times in the past and do so again;
T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
Byrd's last, and dying, vote was to pass Obamacare...
countryboy
Verified User
Who cares?
Because they aren't allowed to know anything.
Hogwash, poppycock, and balderdash.
Using the word "trust" to describe force is utterly dishonest.
One is economics the other political
They did not. That is just one of the biggest lies the democrats try to tell. Anything to try and explain away their inherent racism. Not working.
Capitalists in the 19th century were fantastically wealthy. That did not translate to a humane form of capitalism. That's why we call them Robber Barons. They were so wealthy their names still pepper the pages of history books: Rockefeller, J P Morgan, Andrew Carnegie. These men had very little intention to boost wages, benefits, and substantially improve the conditions of labor.
The social progress in the economy and labor in the early 20th century came almost exclusively from pressure from socialism, labor unions, working class activists.
In 1910, it took about $7.50 per person to fund the federal government.
In 2026, it is about $21,000 per person.
And somehow the story is still “capitalism failed”?
No. Voluntary exchange did not create this monster. Political promises did. Debt did. Central banking did. Permanent emergency government did. Buying votes with future taxpayers’ money did.
At some point, “being humane” with money you do not have is not compassion.
you socialists are morons
In 2026, it is about $21,000 per person.
And somehow the story is still “capitalism failed”?
No. Voluntary exchange did not create this monster. Political promises did. Debt did. Central banking did. Permanent emergency government did. Buying votes with future taxpayers’ money did.
At some point, “being humane” with money you do not have is not compassion.
you socialists are morons
And your point is???
Surely not that Byrd was not a staunch American conservative during almost the entire of his life...right?
T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
Doesn't change that most, almost all, KKK members that have been elected to office were Democrats.
Literally. They took him out of the hospital and wheeled him into congress to do it.