Whatever you do, please don't watch Zeitgeist.
+1.....
Unbeliavable crap......
There is no perfect solution... Just some better ones 
Comunism doesn't reward merit, that's true!
But it's neither the case of the actual Capitalism system...
(I'm not sure if Bill Gates really worked 2'000'000'000 more than a normal worker.)
Comunism doesn't reward merit, that's true!
But it's neither the case of the actual Capitalism system...
(I'm not sure if Bill Gates really worked 2'000'000'000 more than a normal worker.)
Your confusing labour Vs value. It's that value that has been rewarded, and considering his gigantic worldwide success anyone that says he isn't worth might need to consider what operating system they use on their computer.
Labour is low skill. Everyone can pick up a brick and move it to Point B. not everyone can create a computer operating system, and other components that dominate the world market. Only a tiny percentage of the population can do this. Also consider how many jobs he and his business have created all over the world. I am sure a bog standard labourer doesn't have anywhere near this effect.
If I had a bottle of water in stranded desert it would be worth millions
Simple supply and demand my friend ! Is Gates worth that much? Yes.... of course.Also I'd like to add we do not live in a true capitalistic society.... far from it. Otherwise we probably wouldn't trade in a fiat currency
Sure labour is not everything... There are alot of things to take into account!
But do you think it is normal that he wins 10'000 times more than a normal worker while there are alot of people working very hard for very little?
I don't...
We don't live in a 100% capitalist society, and that's why I won't die if I'm sick and have no money
It certainly is normal, whether or not you agree with it is up to you. Homosexuality is not "normal" but I see no problem with it. Normality is simply conforming to society. Not being normal isn't an inherently good or bad thing.
Yes it is normal and perfectly acceptable. He, and his wealth have made the lifes of the poor far superior around the world than they would've been had he not been able to obtain such wealth. No doubt his operating systems and software have helped develop computing at a tremendous rate. Also he uses his vast wealth for charitable purposes as well.
Of course we could remove his wealth destroying his business making millions of people around the world poorer as well. Be that losing jobs, or slowing the advancement of affordable computing and potentially destroying future opportunities especially in Africa.
That's why it is normal and fine!
The man who works hard for very little can still access WONDERFUL technology BECAUSE of Bill Gates not DESPITE him and that's why he is truly worth billions
Sometimes this forum is like being in an A Level Sociology class lol
(Sir moi 407)
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by Sir moi 407
@ OP:
I had the same thoughts quite a few years back, when i was young PoS, so i questioned few people with this, collected their thoughts and been thinking about it for a while.
I'm no wiseman, so my resume is very simple, but i think without money, it would be bigger chaos than it is now. Money are motivation for people to do their work. No money = very few people willing to work for nothing, kiss, good feeling or dunnowat. Imagine all the money would disappear NOW. Noone would like to go working in the morning and they would stay at home. Now, with all people sitting at home, walking around the cities and doing nothing, everyone would try to get as much for themselves, as possible, criminality would rise epicly and we would be slowly, but surely heading to another stone age.
Human population would decrease to millions and then.. new beginning maybe? It's like magic circle imho, it will end when the world ends.
Sure, there are many flaws in my theory (god, that sounds cool
), but i think this is, how it would be.
I had the same thoughts quite a few years back, when i was young PoS, so i questioned few people with this, collected their thoughts and been thinking about it for a while.
I'm no wiseman, so my resume is very simple, but i think without money, it would be bigger chaos than it is now. Money are motivation for people to do their work. No money = very few people willing to work for nothing, kiss, good feeling or dunnowat. Imagine all the money would disappear NOW. Noone would like to go working in the morning and they would stay at home. Now, with all people sitting at home, walking around the cities and doing nothing, everyone would try to get as much for themselves, as possible, criminality would rise epicly and we would be slowly, but surely heading to another stone age.
Human population would decrease to millions and then.. new beginning maybe? It's like magic circle imho, it will end when the world ends.
Sure, there are many flaws in my theory (god, that sounds cool
), but i think this is, how it would be. Just remember the hospitals you're in are JAM packed full of stuff providing by private industry. You should also remember without capitalism you most likely wouldn't see ANYWHERE near the quality of equipment and medicine! We'd be still stuck in the stone age hoping witch doctors could cure us.
It's a shame the NHS is overblown with administrators but that's nationalised industry for you.
You are focusing too much on Bill Gates, he was just an example...
The problem is not with this people receiving so much money but with people not having enough money to have a decent life.
And do you think these people are poor because they are lazy, because they deserve it? In the extreme case of USA, the poor can even die because they haven't enough money...
Thing is, money for this poor people has to come from somewhere. And you have to take money where there is money. Yes: Big Industries, Big Banks, etc...
Or wait, maybe all this poor people just deserve to have shitty lifes because we all know that poor people are only "Lazy people" that don't get the capitalist concept of merit...
Well that said, I think this is going to lead us to nowhere so I'll try to stop this debate with you.
You have your opinions I have mines
My English is far from perfect as you can see so... I hope it's understable
To have a benefit system you need high taxes. High taxes are proven to de-motivate people from earning. Sometimes forcing them to move away and that means you get zero income from taxation.
So by taking all the money from the rich you force them out of the country. They take their money and their jobs to somewhere else. Suddenly your precious welfare system can't sustain itself.
It goes in cycles. We are now at a point where we can't sustain welfare payments in the UK. Either taxes go up and force business (and jobs) abroad, or you cut welfare. I know which is more sustainable.
What most people need to realise is we do not live in poverty in the UK. I spent much of my youth in hardcore council estates. There are MANY people on easy street The idea some can't help being poor is utter bullshit. Work hard, and focus and you can do anything.
While I find it hard to justify no welfare in some form it is good to quote good ol' Maggie: Socialism only works until you run out of other people's money
(UncleBenny)
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by UncleBenny
Totally agree with everything you said, I see the same problem over here. When you let people live off of welfare for their entire life, why would they even bother trying to work? I have no problem with people who are having a tough time getting help from the government, but there are so many people who just leech off the system its ridiculous, and all you're doing is rewarding their laziness. Handing out free money solves nothing in my opinion.
My roommate came from a pretty low income family. He got a scholarship to a good engineering school, got a great job after school, and is doing very good for himself. Like you said, don't tell me that people are stuck being poor, because I've seen people get out of that situation. The problem is, too many people would rather take the free ride than do a little work for a better life for themselves.
Slightly off topic, but an interesting thing one of my friends brought up during the last election over here when we were talking about socialism. We're pretty sure that if today you took all the money in this country and divided it up equally to every person, the same people would end up rich and the same people would end up poor down the road. I'm sure there are some exceptions to this, but for the most part rich people get rich because they know how to get money, and poor people are poor because they can't hold onto it.
Just for reference, Bill Gates has never personally written an operating system. His first OS sale to IBM was purchased under false pretences after acquiring the deal with IBM. He then edited the executeable to change the copyright string, and made a lot of money. Bill Gates was an opportunist who got very lucky who became a business man and had a late life realisation that his money was meaningless and began charity projects.
This is true, but you're dealing with extremes. Then again the medical industry is pretty extreme, did you know a pair of surgical scissors cost over £300 and when they get sent off to be sharpened it's a further £75 (every few uses).
Like the motor racing industry and the leaisure marine industry, anything medical gets a few extra 0's put onto the end of the bill by the capitalist suppliers. Most of their profits are enforced by the patent system in a dubious case of continualy reinventing the wheel.
As with all things, there needs to be a balance.
EDIT: Soviet Russia took the route of the phage for treating bacterial infections, we have much more expensive patent protected antibiotics. Phages are a naturally ocurring bacteria-specific virus that evolves at the same rate as bacteria, they are the natural enemies of bacteria. After the fall of the Societ Union our medical companies purchased the Ukranian phage research institute and burried their findings in order to sell more antibiotics... Capitalism may have created a society with more consumer goods and "higher" technology, but it isn't all roses.
First part true, second part is pointing the finger of blame in the wrong direction. The NHS started off as a nationalised industry and used to be far more efficient than it is now, but now we need to measure statistics for everything - even though most of the statistics are lost or cleverly disguised and meddled with, afterall, statistics can say whatever you want them too - it's just a matter of presentation, like histograms "The liers bar chart".
EDIT:
Let's not forget that the current mess we're all in was perpetrated by some very wealthy people who wanted to generate even more wealth for themselves. The reason we can't afford the current welfare payments is simply because so many ordinary people lost their livelihoods because of a failing in the capitalist system. I myself lost my job too, I was lucky and found another one pretty quickly - I know how lucky I am. Not everyone is a spunger, I took doll for 1 month and it's given me the meens to buy the petrol to get to this job and keep my roof over my head.
Becky Becky Becky.... It was the real capitalists - the free market economists - that predicted this mess a long time ago. To blame capitalism for this mess is weak in my opinion. You just didn't hear their cries in the UK media... surprise surprise!
As just one well-known example Peter Schiff, an investor, has been made world famous by his accurate predictions as far back as 2001. No one listened, and in the UK we didn't even hear. Youtube him.
Money is meaningless but without his vast wealth he wouldn't be able to do anywhere near the amount of charity work. So the money has facilitated this meaningful work, and thus inherently it has meaning.
Perhaps because that's all Peter Schiff predicts and has predicted. Always - on a loop - he never stops saying "economic crisis", statistically speaking it was highly probable that he'd finally get his prediction.
If you look at newspaper articles from the 19th or even 18th century you'll see Schiffalikes all over saying "economic crisis". The western world has been in a permanent "economic crisis" whenever there's nothing else to deal with. Even Dostoyevski's characters make fun of that in his books.
While he isn't always 100% accurate (no one can be) he didn't just repeat himself. He acted upon his belief and through his company EuroPac invests heavily in the gold market (while not putting all his eggs in the one basket). Gold is now trading at above $1k and will no doubt reach $2k.
I suppose he could've done what we did in the UK. Ignore all the warnings, and sell our stock of gold at the lowest market value it had ever been at something like $300. Yh that would've been smart... oh we did! DOH!
Some people saw this coming and acted! While most other people took your attitude, and are now... royally screwed! For example the house price bubble for example was so obvious yet no one said a thing in the UK. I guess saying nothing is better though. Allow house prices to inflate like they did without anyone raising an eyebrow... yh look how THAT turned out! Great!
Well it's no suprise to me, i've not paid much attention to the news since the invasion of Iraq
. It's the same stories week in and week out, nothing changes except the names and places. You can easily invent your own news, just repeat the same stories you last saw with whatever todays current hot topic is (Twitter trending topics is a good way to find what people are talking about), and you've got 98% of what would have been on the news anyway. Then if you want the truth rather than just the news, simply take the same stories and apply the maximum amount of synacism it's humanly possible to achieve, and you've got to the crux of the matter.Back to the topic at hand though, and can you imagine the same circumstances ocurring in a communist system? I can't.
Now i'm not a communist, given the choice I would opt to live under a capitalist system. However I do believe in balance and as something of a socialist I inherrently distrust all capitalistic endeavours and regard them with absolute cynacism, it's not a dichotamy to be both capitalist and socialist, it's simply a matter of balance.
Well of course some people will see it coming or see opportunities arising and some won't - if everyone saw and acted upon the same things in the same way it wouldn't be the so-called "free market" and it wouldn't be capitalism because there wouldn't be need for such. A big part of the current system depends on someone getting screwed.
I still fail to see what's so special about that that's got you all excited...
We don't live within a free market capitalism like some try and naively suggest. We are no where near that kind of system. Schiff wasn't reacting to the market. Him, and people like him were warning the market was being interfered with. They reacted to the interference, not the market.
Hence why the large investment in gold. It's the last resort, the safe bet.
Unless a strictly regulated market is enforced then there can be no claim of "interference" - there is always someone interfering if there is no one controlling it because it's an inherent property of the system.
Once again: I still fail to see what's so special about that that's got you all excited...
Funny you mention the issue of human greed and then make an erroneous statement about Marxism and Communism when Marx's (at least) entire ideology was based around the issue of human greed.
Marx never made stated that all people are equal, a testament to which exists in one of his most often quoted statements "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need", which leads in to his ideology of the capitalism being, by its very nature, a method of exploitation.
As for communism. Well even the various commuist factions that exist around the world can't agree on what communism is, so making generalisations about it, (especially from a capitalist perspective), is rather pointless.
Agreed. The flaw is in believing that the accumulation of money and material "wealth" is the sole objective, (to the exclusion and even destruction of all other objectives), of our short time on this world.
If money did not exist wed stil have shells and things to trade with one another.
Or wed all end in suits and helmets like stig since wed have no understanding of money.
Or wed all end in suits and helmets like stig since wed have no understanding of money.
What if money did not exist?
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