I'll agree that Prop 13 was, in some ways, opposed to the conservative principle of local government rule to the greatest extent possible. That was biggest effect - schools didn't lose funding so much as they received it from the state instead of from communities. But Prop 13 was in line with the principle of an ownership society, and was needed to combat the side of effects of skyrocketing property values. The idea that you can buy a house, and then some day have to sell it because you can't afford the taxes on it is retarded, yet that would be the situation for many people absent 13. Sometimes principles conflict. You want people to own houses, you give up local control of the schools to an extent.
I'm a great believer that tying school funding to property taxes is insane, in and of itself. It pretty much guarantees that wealthy communities have good schools and poor communities have crappy schools.
The main thing the proposition system has done in California has made it impossible for legislators to craft good tax policy in any area of government, leading to pretty much every public institution becoming dysfunctional to some degree. California's government has been in a steady series of budgetary crises ever since, leading up to Gov. Terminator's current policy of getting around the prop system by borrowing huge amounts of money.
As I recall communism was first called socialism and communism was later developed as a spin off.
uh... who the hell told you that?
Fox News.
Socialism is the only realistic way to run a decent sized country. In fact the United States of America was founded as a Socialist country and remains so today. Anyone that tells you differently is reading the wrong textbooks. Probably the ones pushed by Chuck Norris.
Public education, public roads, a publically funded military, etc. These aren't capitalist tenets people, try to keep up.
Anything public will be successful, right? I mean, public education is a major success in the USA am I right??
USA!! USA!! USA!!
Public education works if it's handled correctly. Conservatives have spent years trying to gut it because of a misguided philosophy that thinks the state helping children is somehow bad. Other countries, you know the ones that invest in public eduction, don't have those problems.
Ah, yes. The power of the mighty IF is at play.
When public education truly works in the States then I'll be the first to endorse a social health care system. Till then...
When someone can point me to a privatized healthcare system that doesn't result in pricegouging and massive numbers of people going untreated, I'll think about privatizing the education system.
As I recall communism was first called socialism and communism was later developed as a spin off.
uh... who the hell told you that?
Fox News.
Socialism is the only realistic way to run a decent sized country. In fact the United States of America was founded as a Socialist country and remains so today. Anyone that tells you differently is reading the wrong textbooks. Probably the ones pushed by Chuck Norris.
Public education, public roads, a publically funded military, etc. These aren't capitalist tenets people, try to keep up.
Anything public will be successful, right? I mean, public education is a major success in the USA am I right??
USA!! USA!! USA!!
We should totally go back ot a 75% illiteracy rate right?
uuuh ahem prior to public schools we maintained a 98 percent literacy rate.
yeah, I'm gonna need a citation for that. I find it hard to believe that the local blacksmith apprentice was literate.
As I recall communism was first called socialism and communism was later developed as a spin off.
uh... who the hell told you that?
Fox News.
Socialism is the only realistic way to run a decent sized country. In fact the United States of America was founded as a Socialist country and remains so today. Anyone that tells you differently is reading the wrong textbooks. Probably the ones pushed by Chuck Norris.
Public education, public roads, a publically funded military, etc. These aren't capitalist tenets people, try to keep up.
Anything public will be successful, right? I mean, public education is a major success in the USA am I right??
USA!! USA!! USA!!
We should totally go back ot a 75% illiteracy rate right?
uuuh ahem prior to public schools we maintained a 98 percent literacy rate.
yeah, I'm gonna need a citation for that. I find it hard to believe that the local blacksmith apprentice was literate.
Or, you know, slaves.
Only counted as 3/5 of an illiterate person.
That is funny.
Also not really on-topic. This isn't just the education thread, guys.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
That conservatism is in crisis is widely acknowledged. Some say that the movement has forsaken its principles; others that it has been corrupted by power; still others call for ideological renovation. All share the conviction that the crisis calls for a high-minded conversation as to the meaning of conservatism. To the contrary, in my view, the answer to the crisis—if there is a crisis—lies in ending that conversation altogether.
Until recently, few thought of conservatism as a worthy subject of inquiry. Most simply accepted the lexical understanding of conservatism as resistance to change. Only with the founding of that set of bureaucracies and sources of funding that became known as “conservative†did the debate as to the meaning of conservatism begin. Since then, nearly every treatment of conservatism has aimed at convincing, galvanizing, or scandalizing a movement audience.
Apparent exceptions only prove the rule. Michael Oakeshott, for example, characterized conservatism as a mere disposition—a theory that negates the very possibility of a conservative “movement.†But Oakeshott wrote precisely in reaction to the more ideological understandings of conservatism like those the movement was beginning to develop in America. The conservative movement continues to pay lip service to Oakeshott, but his theory of conservatism, if accepted, would fatally undermine the rationale for having a movement in the first place. The practical, “cash value†of every other theory of conservatism is that the movement should pursue this or that set of goals and not others.
In short, conservatism is not a philosophy or approach to political affairs that inspires the set of institutions known as the conservative movement. Rather, the conservative movement is a set of institutions that inspires the ideology known as conservatism. In the absence of a movement, the felt need to develop a coherent understanding of conservatism would evaporate.
Of course, the movement is not going anywhere and debates as to the meaning of conservatism will continue. Suppose, however, one agrees with this or that position closely associated with the movement. Does it follow that one should engage in movement-building activities? No. Non-movement conservatives have arguably done more to advance conservative ideas and without the burden of fitting them into an ideological system or wondering how they may affect their standing within an ideological movement.
A non-movement conservative by definition has no meaningful affiliation with movement conservative institutions. He may not even care whether others call him a “conservative.†(Indeed, movement conservatives may be quick to denounce him.) But that needn’t limit his influence. On the contrary, consider the impact of these notable non-movement conservatives going back to the era of the movement’s founding.
Joseph Schumpeter. Austrian by birth, Schumpeter wrote his famous Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy while a professor at Harvard. It stands out as the greatest (if also the most elliptical) defense of capitalist, European civilization ever penned. Movement conservatives often take credit for the (partial) triumph of free-market ideas, but Schumpeter did more than anyone to persuade American leaders to preserve the capitalist system (to say nothing of the sort of semi-feudal, mixed constitution that he favored).
Jane Jacobs. When Jacobs wrote Death and Life of Great American Cities, urban planners, flush with federal dollars and enamored of modernist designs, were obliterating old neighborhoods in favor of thruways and high-rise apartment complexes. They never bothered to study how communities actually work. Jacobs did. The unplanned order of old buildings, mixed uses, and formal conventions, Jacobs argued, protects people from danger and makes decent lives for them possible. Urban renewal, by contrast, was immiserating its intended beneficiaries by depriving them of the organic features of real neighborhoods.
Tom Wolfe. Radical Chic, Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, the Me Decade, the Right Stuff: Wolfe invented the very vocabulary for interpreting the carnival of American culture. He has exposed the degeneration of the civil-rights movement into race hustling, the moral one-upsmanship of wealthy liberals, and the vaporous egotism of contemporary religiosity. For every ballyhooed reform, Wolfe has shown the hypocrisy and cruelty beneath.
Jacques Barzun. The centegenarian polymath is probably the most civilized man alive. You can infer his politics from his magnum opus, From Dawn to Decadence. He admires Montaigne, Montesquieu, Walter Bagehot, William James—each a fox as opposed to a hedgehog and, broadly, a skeptic. No one better embodies the proposition that civilization—the “best that has been thought and said by manâ€â€”is worth defending.
Noam Chomsky, E.O. Wilson, Steven Pinker. These men have doomed to oblivion what Pinker calls the “Standard Social Science Model†whereby something called “society†shapes a fictile human nature however it pleases. On the contrary, while human nature may express itself in an infinite variety of cultural forms, the underlying machinery can achieve only a finite set of ends. The Standard Social Science Model has inspired failed policies from the Gulag to No Child Left Behind, at incalculable human cost. Thanks to these scientists, civilization has a hope of finding a way out.
I admit that many will find this list absurd. Chomsky’s anti-American pamphleteering often overshadows his pioneering work in linguistics. Jacobs was arrested protesting the Vietnam War and expatriated to Canada. Wilson is a New Deal liberal, Barzun apolitical, Schumpeter too aloof to be categorized. I have, one might say, composed a roster of worthies and arbitrarily called them conservative.
Great non-movement conservatives have in common only that they have advanced particular conservative positions. None has contributed anything to conservatism as an ideological system. To movement conservatives, this is unsatisfactory. In their minds, conservative positions are only as strong as the underlying principles from which they allegedly derive. But the opposite view is also possible: namely, that conservative principles are only as strong as the underlying positions that they purport to tie together. Hate Noam Chomsky as much as you please. It remains the case that Chomsky’s theory of a universal grammar not only revived the study of human nature but provided a model of how complex features of human society could be explained more generally. It instantly discredited behaviorism and has become part of the bedrock of the critique of social engineering. (Indeed, Chomsky describes his politics as an attack on social engineering as he perceives it.) Without Chomsky’s watershed discovery, conservatives’ belief in human nature would be only a postulate.
Admittedly, the movement may still have helped to advance conservative ideas even if has not produced very many. Yet even this boast rings hollow. Movement institutions have little to gain from winning new recruits. On the contrary, the largest payoff goes to the man who most effectively stimulates the passions of loyalists. When movement conservatives do seek a wider audience, their affiliations discredit their message. The imperturbable Charles Murray may enjoy the equivalent of a tenured position at the American Enterprise Institute, but his ideas have less impact as a result. Alan Wolfe derided him as “little more than a mean-spirited soul spouting quasi-academic language.†However nasty, the charge sticks because Murray is a known conservative. Tom Wolfe in recent years has offered casual support for the movement. Critics now see him less as a chronicler of American culture than as a man of peculiar obsessions.
Only the non-movement conservatives have managed to upset the intellectual consensus, for they speak to the intellectual establishment rather than at it. Consider the major traumas of establishment liberalism: Jane Jacobs’s Death and Life, Daniel Moynihan’s 1965 Report on the Negro Family, E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard commencement speech, Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind. At the time, not one of these authors was known as a movement conservative.
That leaves but one rationale for the movement: to preserve conservative ideas in an inhospitable world. No sentiment is more widely shared by movement conservatives than that they are an embattled minority fighting a hateful enemy. Yet none of the elements of movement conservative ideology by itself poses any career hazard. Mickey Kaus opposes open borders; Nicholas Wade of the New York Times and New Republic contributor Steven Pinker believe in the reality of race; Al Gore is a critic of modernity; Jewish atheist Nat Hentoff is pro-life; Bill Cosby excoriates black culture; Camille Paglia lambastes feminists; Gregg Easterbrook is a skeptic of environmentalism. Some movement conservative views, such as support for the free market, are firmly a part of mainstream discourse. Others, such as a fondness for tradition, can be found all over the political spectrum. On close examination, it is difficult to find a movement conservative idea to which mainstream organs of scholarship and opinion are actually closed.
Take a hypothetical young talent with contrarian inclinations. Movement conservatives would counsel him to make his way up their ranks. But suppose he ignores their advice and joins the New York Times—or the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. There, even if he never classifies himself as conservative, he pursues stories that expose the perverse incentives of well-intentioned policies, the human costs of mass immigration, or the reality that, as Steve Sailer puts it, “families matter.†Not only are his eccentric interests not a liability, they may even prove to be an asset. His ability to see the world differently gives him a monopoly on stories that his colleagues cannot or will not spot themselves.
If the climate of opinion ever shifts, it will not be thanks to non-movement conservatives working within mainstream establishment institutions. My advice to young conservatives: avoid the movement, eschew its enticements. Above all, ignore debates as to the true meaning of conservatism. Heed instead the words of Ezra Pound: Make it new! After 60 years, the movement has succumbed to bureaucratic inertia and regression toward the mean. Conservative ideas will flourish only after conservatism is forgotten.
Also not really on-topic. This isn't just the education thread, guys.
I'll try to save it.
Faith in an economic system that at its root requires egotism in bringing about increased societal well-being, requires a dogmatic approval of one's own ideology or complete faith in the far-sightedness and altruism of each individual in that system. An economic system that calls for each man to act as if they were an island will result in great economic equalities, and often inequalities in liberty. The greatest example of this is slavery.
Conversely, activities that are at its base intended to bring about the common good are rarely served by putting them in the hands of those whose intent is only tangentially associated with those goals. The goal of a private company is not to serve its customers or make a fine product but to make a profit. For instance, education. As the evaluation of the quality and nature of what is taught is rarely quantifiable in any comprehensive way and those metrics that most closely approximate such a measure can be specifically prepared for and gamed, there is an insufficient means of measuring the true quality of an educational institution. That's before you get to self-selection, and other sample corruption. Therefore, private organizations would then be paid to do something critical to the public good with no means of determining whether or not those goals are being achieved. Given that there is at least some relationship to money spent (in terms of textbooks, salaries and facilities) and quality of education offered, the worst schools would make the best private assets.
It is this blind spot that acts as the fatal flaw in unadulterated opposition to privatization (which, near as I can tell is the topic of the thread now). Lincoln said the legitimate goal of government is to do what must be done but can't be done or can't be done as well by people or private groups (paraphrased). This is the measure of whether an institution should be privatized ultimately, not economic ideology.
Canada has public education and is at a 99% literacy rate. Our health care is full public, private health care is still illegal despite court rulings in Quebec about private insurance and while there's a lot of complaints about the system, it still works for the most part.
Faith in an economic system that at its root requires egotism in bringing about increased societal well-being, requires a dogmatic approval of one's own ideology or complete faith in the far-sightedness and altruism of each individual in that system. An economic system that calls for each man to act as if they were an island will result in great economic equalities, and often inequalities in liberty. The greatest example of this is slavery.
See, here's the thing. Conservatives, by and large, don't see capitalism as an economic system, or even an -ism, any more than we see walking as a transportation system. It just sort of is. Capitalism is just a fancy word for barter, the notion that if I have something you want and you have something I want, then hey, maybe we should trade.
Capitalism is the default, the status quo. Socialism, communism - those are the -isms, and they represent a deviation from the norm. They represent a regulation of the natural right of people to own things they want and give up things they don't want. They are a violation of freedom in the negative sense, in pursuit of freedom in the positive sense. But they are the "systems". Capitalism isn't.
It's not a matter of the competing juggernauts of raw capitalism versus sweet, sweet socialism being locked in battle. There's a single system, a single tool - socialist regulation - and a question of how much we should apply it.
Think of it like tightening a screw. There's only one tool - a screwdriver. There's not a screwdriver and an unscrewdriver, fighting to see whether the screw should lay naked on top of the table or screwed to the point that it bursts through the other side of the plank. You have a screwdriver. There's a proper amount by which to turn that screw. You need to figure out what that amount is.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
It is this blind spot that acts as the fatal flaw in unadulterated opposition to privatization (which, near as I can tell is the topic of the thread now). Lincoln said the legitimate goal of government is to do what must be done but can't be done or can't be done as well by people or private groups (paraphrased). This is the measure of whether an institution should be privatized ultimately, not economic ideology.
One of the problems with privatization in general and schools in particular is that the decision is made based on the performance of private institutions that would in no way resemble the institutions that would arise after privatization. Our debate is based on the idea that the best private schools - or whatever institution you want to remove from government control - rock, therefor all private schools will rock.
Take the gold standard of private schools, the Phillips Exeter Academy. It's founders did not create it as a private, for-profit institution, but as a place to educate the children of the nation's elite. The main purpose of the high tuition wasn't to fund the school or make profits, but to serve as a barrier for entry. It's a school for the wealthy and powerful to prepare their children to be wealthy and powerful. The funding mechanism and for-profit motive has nothing to do with it.
The types of for-profit schools that would be created to fill in the vacuum would be for-profit enterprises aimed at poor and middle-income folks. They would be to Phillips Exeter as McDonalds is to a four-star restaurant.
Most religious schools also have a different goal from making a profit, but they also tend to suck across the board - Catholic school excepted. One clue to their motivation may come from the fact the explosion in private religious schools in the U.S. occurred after Brown v. Board. I'm pretty sure the average Southern Baptist school isn't a model we'd want to emulate.
When public education truly works in the States then I'll be the first to endorse a social health care system. Till then...
Until those apples taste better, I dont want any oranges.
The social health care system that you so dread has been tried and tested in many other countries. It is cheaper and more efficient than our awful system that devours the middle, gives a little to the poor, and provides for the wealthy.
Do a little research instead of just assuming your preconceived notions are facts.
The conservative philosophy of keeping privatized health care private and letting the free market™ solve our problems is a pretty solid failure by nearly any metric you want to use.
Darkchampion3d on
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence --Thomas Jefferson
I'd still love to hear why it's more dangerous -- necessarily, absolutely, axiomatically -- to vest power in government instead of the private sector. I mean, I and several dozen others here have asked that of every single 'libertarian' that's posted on the forum.
None of them ever had a satisfactory answer. How about you? :C
Aside from historical examples I have little reason to value one over the other. On one side you have the Oil Trusts, Walmart, Henry Ford and the worst of the Upton Sinclair novels. On the other side you have Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and George W. Bush.
One side makes children work, destroys the environment, and sells you goods at low prices. The other side puts Jewish people in ovens, invades countries that haven't attacked them and wiretaps your phone calls.
The conservative philosophy of keeping privatized health care private and letting the free marketâ„¢ solve our problems is a pretty solid failure by nearly any metric you want to use.
The "conservative" philosophy of never interfering with the free market at all for any reason is a failure. The conservative, non-scare-quotes philosophy of leaving the free market alone unless you have a really good reason to dick around with it is pretty sound.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
See, here's the thing. Conservatives, by and large, don't see capitalism as an economic system, or even an -ism, any more than we see walking as a transportation system. It just sort of is. Capitalism is just a fancy word for barter, the notion that if I have something you want and you have something I want, then hey, maybe we should trade.
Actually, wouldn't the default be clubbing you over the head with a large rock then taking your shiny thing back to my cave?
:P
See, here's the thing. Conservatives, by and large, don't see capitalism as an economic system, or even an -ism, any more than we see walking as a transportation system. It just sort of is. Capitalism is just a fancy word for barter, the notion that if I have something you want and you have something I want, then hey, maybe we should trade.
Actually, wouldn't the default be clubbing you over the head with a large rock then taking your shiny thing back to my cave?
:P
I was discounting Alabama for the purposes of this discussion.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
The conservative philosophy of keeping privatized health care private and letting the free marketâ„¢ solve our problems is a pretty solid failure by nearly any metric you want to use.
The "conservative" philosophy of never interfering with the free market at all for any reason is a failure. The conservative, non-scare-quotes philosophy of leaving the free market alone unless you have a really good reason to dick around with it is pretty sound.
I just hope those conservatives retake/remake their party before the dems go completely corrupt sometime during the next 20 years so I have an alternative to vote for. Cause when presented with "Neo-con fascist jesus freaks" vs "corrupt big govt dem weenies" I'm gonna go with the weenies every time.
Darkchampion3d on
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence --Thomas Jefferson
Faith in an economic system that at its root requires egotism in bringing about increased societal well-being, requires a dogmatic approval of one's own ideology or complete faith in the far-sightedness and altruism of each individual in that system. An economic system that calls for each man to act as if they were an island will result in great economic equalities, and often inequalities in liberty. The greatest example of this is slavery.
See, here's the thing. Conservatives, by and large, don't see capitalism as an economic system, or even an -ism, any more than we see walking as a transportation system. It just sort of is. Capitalism is just a fancy word for barter, the notion that if I have something you want and you have something I want, then hey, maybe we should trade.
Capitalism is the default, the status quo. Socialism, communism - those are the -isms, and they represent a deviation from the norm. They represent a regulation of the natural right of people to own things they want and give up things they don't want. They are a violation of freedom in the negative sense, in pursuit of freedom in the positive sense. But they are the "systems". Capitalism isn't.
It's not a matter of the competing juggernauts of raw capitalism versus sweet, sweet socialism being locked in battle. There's a single system, a single tool - socialist regulation - and a question of how much we should apply it.
Think of it like tightening a screw. There's only one tool - a screwdriver. There's not a screwdriver and an unscrewdriver, fighting to see whether the screw should lay naked on top of the table or screwed to the point that it bursts through the other side of the plank. You have a screwdriver. There's a proper amount by which to turn that screw. You need to figure out what that amount is.
But when all you have is a screwdriver, everyone is just someone to screw.
It's an assumption (that capitalism is the default). It wasn't in colonial days, when the mercantilism system ruled. It wasn't in Medieval times, when the feudal system was the natural way of things. It wasn't during Roman times, at least not unless you're very broad with your definition of capitalism.
Capitalism means more than simply bartering. In the USSR they had that. It means the private control of goods, labor and production utilized in order to obtain individual profit. Most would also require some form of investment and official recognition of individual property rights.
Everyone assumes their environment is default, even if its subconscious. As a white guy in a very white part of the US, if I'm describing a black guy, the fact that he's a black guy is always among my descriptions. The same can't be said for another white guy. If someone had a Southern accent, the same would apply.
If a peasant from 1300 was brought forward, they would not agree with your assessment of the default economic system.
Indeed, capitalism - or anything resembling a free market system - can only exist within an at least semi-ordered society. Ugg the Strong Caveman didn't trade you for your dinner, he took it. Ugg the Leader decided who got what share of the hunt. Ugg the King decided who could trade what to whom. Only in a system with individual property rights can anything truly resembling capitalism exist.
Just to be clear, universal socialism doesn't work either
You make some fair points, with which I partly agree and partly disagree, but that's not really OT. The OT portion is that, agree or disagree, my POV as outlined above is a large part of the conservative outlook - that property rights are both a natural right and the natural order.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
It is this blind spot that acts as the fatal flaw in unadulterated opposition to privatization (which, near as I can tell is the topic of the thread now). Lincoln said the legitimate goal of government is to do what must be done but can't be done or can't be done as well by people or private groups (paraphrased). This is the measure of whether an institution should be privatized ultimately, not economic ideology.
One of the problems with privatization in general and schools in particular is that the decision is made based on the performance of private institutions that would in no way resemble the institutions that would arise after privatization. Our debate is based on the idea that the best private schools - or whatever institution you want to remove from government control - rock, therefor all private schools will rock.
Take the gold standard of private schools, the Phillips Exeter Academy. It's founders did not create it as a private, for-profit institution, but as a place to educate the children of the nation's elite. The main purpose of the high tuition wasn't to fund the school or make profits, but to serve as a barrier for entry. It's a school for the wealthy and powerful to prepare their children to be wealthy and powerful. The funding mechanism and for-profit motive has nothing to do with it.
The types of for-profit schools that would be created to fill in the vacuum would be for-profit enterprises aimed at poor and middle-income folks. They would be to Phillips Exeter as McDonalds is to a four-star restaurant.
Most religious schools also have a different goal from making a profit, but they also tend to suck across the board - Catholic school excepted. One clue to their motivation may come from the fact the explosion in private religious schools in the U.S. occurred after Brown v. Board. I'm pretty sure the average Southern Baptist school isn't a model we'd want to emulate.
Jewish day schools seem to be pretty good, but that's because there's good reason to suspect the parents would try to kill any teacher not doing his/her job.
Yeah, it really entertaining seeing Bush's Secretary of Education squirm during that pro-voucher press conference that happened to fall on the same day all the news organizations reported the huge study showing private schools to be significantly worse.
You make some fair points, with which I partly agree and partly disagree, but that's not really OT. The OT portion is that, agree or disagree, my POV as outlined above is a large part of the conservative outlook - that property rights are both a natural right and the natural order.
You're right in that some conservatives believe that. However, capitalism is one of many possible models, which anyone with any historical or economic awareness will realize. What we, as a capitalist people, believe is that capitalism is the most effective one. Certainly, capitalism is "better" in some way than feudalism or mercantalism or monarchy, and other such systems of property.
Where you're right, really, is that socialism is not opposed to capitalism. They are separate ism categories. Capitalism, as a model of property and even individual rights, could be opposed to something like communism, which has an entirely different system of rights and property.
All of these models require management to be successful. Socialism is the name we have given to governmental management of the capitalist model; more directly, socialism is the name we have given to an increased amount of government management. Capitalism, without management, fucks people just as bad as any other system (or almost; feudalism is pretty fucking terrible no matter how you slice it). As you say, the question is how much management? Too much management also fucks people.
As you said, the problem with this particular aspect of the conservative mindset is that capitalism is seen to exist, by itself, as an ideal system. Socialism is associated with communism and opposed to capitalism. Government intervention in any way becomes opposed to this ideal system. Capitalism becomes an ideology instead of a system, a model, a method of being efficient.
See, here's the thing. Conservatives, by and large, don't see capitalism as an economic system, or even an -ism, any more than we see walking as a transportation system. It just sort of is. Capitalism is just a fancy word for barter, the notion that if I have something you want and you have something I want, then hey, maybe we should trade.
Actually, wouldn't the default be clubbing you over the head with a large rock then taking your shiny thing back to my cave?
:P
Which is basically Capitalism boiled down into it's constituent parts.
All of these models require management to be successful. Socialism is the name we have given to governmental management of the capitalist model; more directly, socialism is the name we have given to an increased amount of government management. Capitalism, without management, fucks people just as bad as any other system (or almost; feudalism is pretty fucking terrible no matter how you slice it). As you say, the question is how much management? Too much management also fucks people.
As you said, the problem with this particular aspect of the conservative mindset is that capitalism is seen to exist, by itself, as an ideal system. Socialism is associated with communism and opposed to capitalism. Government intervention in any way becomes opposed to this ideal system. Capitalism becomes an ideology instead of a system, a model, a method of being efficient.
Liming is so passe, but all of the above is A++ Would Read Again material.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
See, here's the thing. Conservatives, by and large, don't see capitalism as an economic system, or even an -ism, any more than we see walking as a transportation system. It just sort of is. Capitalism is just a fancy word for barter, the notion that if I have something you want and you have something I want, then hey, maybe we should trade.
Actually, wouldn't the default be clubbing you over the head with a large rock then taking your shiny thing back to my cave?
:P
Which is basically Capitalism boiled down into it's constituent parts.
Nope, it's not at all. Capitalism is an exchange of items where both sides agree what they are getting have value, being hit on the head with a rock has no value, this example is just theft. Pure Capitalism would be if I threatened to hit you with a rock, and you agreed to give me a shiny thing if I didn't.
See, here's the thing. Conservatives, by and large, don't see capitalism as an economic system, or even an -ism, any more than we see walking as a transportation system. It just sort of is. Capitalism is just a fancy word for barter, the notion that if I have something you want and you have something I want, then hey, maybe we should trade.
Actually, wouldn't the default be clubbing you over the head with a large rock then taking your shiny thing back to my cave?
:P
Which is basically Capitalism boiled down into it's constituent parts.
Nope, it's not at all. Capitalism is an exchange of items where both sides agree what they are getting have value, being hit on the head with a rock has no value, this example is just theft. Pure Capitalism would be if I threatened to hit you with a rock, and you agreed to give me a shiny thing if I didn't.
See, here's the thing. Conservatives, by and large, don't see capitalism as an economic system, or even an -ism, any more than we see walking as a transportation system. It just sort of is. Capitalism is just a fancy word for barter, the notion that if I have something you want and you have something I want, then hey, maybe we should trade.
Actually, wouldn't the default be clubbing you over the head with a large rock then taking your shiny thing back to my cave?
:P
Which is basically Capitalism boiled down into it's constituent parts.
Nope, it's not at all. Capitalism is an exchange of items where both sides agree what they are getting have value, being hit on the head with a rock has no value, this example is just theft. Pure Capitalism would be if I threatened to hit you with a rock, and you agreed to give me a shiny thing if I didn't.
What if Ogg was looking for an excuse to skip the mammoth hunt and Ugg provided him with a concussion to their mutual satisfaction?
Tofystedeth on
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
See, here's the thing. Conservatives, by and large, don't see capitalism as an economic system, or even an -ism, any more than we see walking as a transportation system. It just sort of is. Capitalism is just a fancy word for barter, the notion that if I have something you want and you have something I want, then hey, maybe we should trade.
Actually, wouldn't the default be clubbing you over the head with a large rock then taking your shiny thing back to my cave?
:P
Which is basically Capitalism boiled down into it's constituent parts.
Nope, it's not at all. Capitalism is an exchange of items where both sides agree what they are getting have value, being hit on the head with a rock has no value, this example is just theft. Pure Capitalism would be if I threatened to hit you with a rock, and you agreed to give me a shiny thing if I didn't.
I dunno. Does extortion really fit the capitalist mold? I always thought it was based on an exchange of goods and/or services. Does not hitting somebody constitute a service? I guess it might. :P
See, here's the thing. Conservatives, by and large, don't see capitalism as an economic system, or even an -ism, any more than we see walking as a transportation system. It just sort of is. Capitalism is just a fancy word for barter, the notion that if I have something you want and you have something I want, then hey, maybe we should trade.
Actually, wouldn't the default be clubbing you over the head with a large rock then taking your shiny thing back to my cave?
:P
Wich is why you need some neutral third party to step in and say: "if you don't play nice, we will fuck your shit up with the biggest rock you have ever seen". This role can really only be filled by goverment, a for-profit justice system would suck.
Kipling217 on
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
Nope, it's not at all. Capitalism is an exchange of items where both sides agree what they are getting have value, being hit on the head with a rock has no value, this example is just theft. Pure Capitalism would be if I threatened to hit you with a rock, and you agreed to give me a shiny thing if I didn't.
If you want to get really technical, neither of those is capitalism. Capitalism is a form of social organization where the government protects the mechanisms of trade. Two men selling their camels in ancient Rome weren't engaging in capitalism, because the emperor would not have interceded had one of the camels been a horse with a pillow tied to its back.
The main benefit of capitalism is that it allows huge economies of scale, because the government enforces contracts. Because of this, investors can make deals with businesses and individuals with whom they don't already have a personal connection and without resorting to hiring men with clubs to recoup their money when cheated.
A pure capitalist society would consist of a government that ran a court system to enforce contracts, an enforcement system to punish those who violated contracts and a military and navy to protect borders and trade. Everything else would be in the private sector.
Nope, it's not at all. Capitalism is an exchange of items where both sides agree what they are getting have value, being hit on the head with a rock has no value, this example is just theft. Pure Capitalism would be if I threatened to hit you with a rock, and you agreed to give me a shiny thing if I didn't.
I dunno. Does extortion really fit the capitalist mold? I always thought it was based on an exchange of goods and/or services. Does not hitting somebody constitute a service? I guess it might. :P
Of course it does, stuff like this is why capitalism has regulation in even the most free market, to prevent people from creating value through fear and extortion. Well, to prevent them doing so too obviously.
tbloxham on
"That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
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KageraImitating the worst people. Since 2004Registered Userregular
As I recall communism was first called socialism and communism was later developed as a spin off.
uh... who the hell told you that?
Fox News.
Socialism is the only realistic way to run a decent sized country. In fact the United States of America was founded as a Socialist country and remains so today. Anyone that tells you differently is reading the wrong textbooks. Probably the ones pushed by Chuck Norris.
Public education, public roads, a publically funded military, etc. These aren't capitalist tenets people, try to keep up.
Anything public will be successful, right? I mean, public education is a major success in the USA am I right??
USA!! USA!! USA!!
Public education works if it's handled correctly. Conservatives have spent years trying to gut it because of a misguided philosophy that thinks the state helping children is somehow bad. Other countries, you know the ones that invest in public eduction, don't have those problems.
Ah, yes. The power of the mighty IF is at play.
When public education truly works in the States then I'll be the first to endorse a social health care system. Till then...
Hey you, you still have a massively spurious statistic to backup. Get on it.
Nope, it's not at all. Capitalism is an exchange of items where both sides agree what they are getting have value, being hit on the head with a rock has no value, this example is just theft. Pure Capitalism would be if I threatened to hit you with a rock, and you agreed to give me a shiny thing if I didn't.
If you want to get really technical, neither of those is capitalism. Capitalism is a form of social organization where the government protects the mechanisms of trade. Two men selling their camels in ancient Rome weren't engaging in capitalism, because the emperor would not have interceded had one of the camels been a horse with a pillow tied to its back.
The main benefit of capitalism is that it allows huge economies of scale, because the government enforces contracts. Because of this, investors can make deals with businesses and individuals with whom they don't already have a personal connection and without resorting to hiring men with clubs to recoup their money when cheated.
A pure capitalist society would consist of a government that ran a court system to enforce contracts, an enforcement system to punish those who violated contracts and a military and navy to protect borders and trade. Everything else would be in the private sector.
Hmm, so enforcement of the fair value thing is implicit to capitalism eh? That's interesting, I had always viewed it as being one step down the tree from that. That enforcement of fair value was the first step of socialist control that all societies took.
Although, in your camels example Rome certainly did have a variety of fair trade and contract laws, without them there is no way to do business as an Empire spanning many nations. You could indeed as a Roman sign a contract, and expect delivery of goods in exchange for payment, and expect the government to intervene if the goods were not delivered according to the contract. Certainly in the first few centuries of Imperial Rome, and in Rome under the Senate this was the case, later the emperors became more like Kings and the system of Contract law was swept away by a tide of croneyism and so forth.
Although, in your camels example Rome certainly did have a variety of fair trade and contract laws, without them there is no way to do business as an Empire spanning many nations. You could indeed as a Roman sign a contract, and expect delivery of goods in exchange for payment, and expect the government to intervene if the goods were not delivered according to the contract. Certainly in the first few centuries of Imperial Rome, and in Rome under the Senate this was the case, later the emperors became more like Kings and the system of Contract law was swept away by a tide of croneyism and so forth.
I'm not up on my Roman law, but I expect that a lot of the enforcement was ad hoc. The classical world - Rome especially - shared a lot of features with modern society.
Capitalism, as a defined social structure, is usually defined as coming into existence in Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries. The big shift in societal terms was predicable enforcement of contracts, which made it possible for widespread investment between individuals and institutions. As these systems came into being, capitalist governments backed off and allowed more and more economic activity to occur in the private sector.
There are lots of minor milestones - many of which I don't know - but the big breakthrough was the ability of someone like you and I to invest in a business venture run by complete strangers with the relative security that we wouldn't get swindled and, if we did, the government would intervene. Shareholder-owned corporations are a major feature of capitalism, as they did not exist under earlier systems of government.
This is not the History of Capitalism thread, either.
If it's not possible to have thread on conservatism in general that actually discusses conservatism, then we should probably lock this and create threads for its constituent subtangents.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
This is not the History of Capitalism thread, either.
If it's not possible to have thread on conservatism in general that actually discusses conservatism, then we should probably lock this and create threads for its constituent subtangents.
You have to discuss the features and manifestations of a topic to discuss the topic itself.
Sorry if it seems biased but I find it hard to see the ideal of a voucher private school system as anything but a thinly veiled way for our government to fund religious schools
Private schools aren't government funded.
If the public school system were abolished they would end up funding private schools indirectly anyway via vouchers.
It is a possibility. I'm just going to throw out, though, that we've had a voucher system in place here for decades. The greater cause of it is the amount of rural families, where a "traditional" school system can't work. However, even with people using the vouchers to go to private schools, the system has worked damn well.
This is not the History of Capitalism thread, either.
If it's not possible to have thread on conservatism in general that actually discusses conservatism, then we should probably lock this and create threads for its constituent subtangents.
I think one of the problems with modern conservatives is that they've forgotten a lot of very important history. The U.S. and England tried to completely back out and allow the market to regulate itself in the late 19th and early 20th century and it didn't work. Lots of swindlers, graft, sketchy financial instruments and theft ended up crashing the markets every couple of decades, to the point where a lot of serious people thought that capitalism's days were numbered.
The one thing I don't understand about modern U.S. conservatives is the idea that deregulation is an unvarnished good. We've seen, over and over again, that prudent regulation prevents economic crashes like the one we're going through now. Considering that a lot of conservatives tend to have money and play the market, why don't they whole-heartedly support the idea of making sure the government doesn't allow financial institutions to play fast and loose with their money?
The one thing I don't understand about modern U.S. conservatives is the idea that deregulation is an unvarnished good. We've seen, over and over again, that prudent regulation prevents economic crashes like the one we're going through now. Considering that a lot of conservatives tend to have money and play the market, why don't they whole-heartedly support the idea of making sure the government doesn't allow financial institutions to play fast and loose with their money?
It's the flip side of the idea that deregulation of certain markets is invariant evil. Energy markets, for example, can be largely deregulated without harm. It's happened in other nations, and it's happened in several US states. But it was done retardedly in California in a very high-profile manner, and suddenly energy deregulation is the devil.
One problem with regulation is that poor choice of regulation can be worse than either complete deregulation or complete nationalization. This was the case in California. Naive conservatives and liberals tend to look at this phenomenon and infer support for their respective ideals - either that any regulation is terrible, or that any deregulation is terrible.
Conservatives would be wise to switch gears on this issue. Instead of pushing against regulation in principle, harp on the issue of dumb regulation, with specific suggestions in mind. If an industry is excessively regulated, don't just say, "We need to deregulate!" Specify why the regulation is bad, and offer specific alternatives to regulation. Making themselves the enemy of poor regulation - and let's face it, just about any industry is going to have some poor regulation if you look hard enough - would force the other side to either play ball, or argue in favor of poor regulation.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
This is not the History of Capitalism thread, either.
If it's not possible to have thread on conservatism in general that actually discusses conservatism, then we should probably lock this and create threads for its constituent subtangents.
I think one of the problems with modern conservatives is that they've forgotten a lot of very important history. The U.S. and England tried to completely back out and allow the market to regulate itself in the late 19th and early 20th century and it didn't work. Lots of swindlers, graft, sketchy financial instruments and theft ended up crashing the markets every couple of decades, to the point where a lot of serious people thought that capitalism's days were numbered.
The one thing I don't understand about modern U.S. conservatives is the idea that deregulation is an unvarnished good. We've seen, over and over again, that prudent regulation prevents economic crashes like the one we're going through now. Considering that a lot of conservatives tend to have money and play the market, why don't they whole-heartedly support the idea of making sure the government doesn't allow financial institutions to play fast and loose with their money?
One of the key PR battles that the left lost over economic matters is the framing of everything as either an open/free market or a closed or regulated market. A market based economy truly free of any and/or all regulations is physically incapable of manifesting itself, as you need to have some sort of property rights and contract law to ensure that civilization functions; however that point is difficult to make when up against a guy saying that regulations stifle creativity and that market forces work best. Chiefly because you can't argue against it. Regulation does stifle creativity, and market forces do work well. What the debate needs to be framed as is promoting competition in the market versus monopolistic cartels, and stifling creativity to ensure the health of consumers. Competition is the market forces everyone likes, and it sometimes requires regulation to ensure that it exists. And how can you argue against promoting competition? That's like arguing against baseball and apple pie.
One problem with regulation is that poor choice of regulation can be worse than either complete deregulation or complete nationalization. This was the case in California. Naive conservatives and liberals tend to look at this phenomenon and infer support for their respective ideals - either that any regulation is terrible, or that any deregulation is terrible.
Conservatives would be wise to switch gears on this issue. Instead of pushing against regulation in principle, harp on the issue of dumb regulation, with specific suggestions in mind. If an industry is excessively regulated, don't just say, "We need to deregulate!" Specify why the regulation is bad, and offer specific alternatives to regulation. Making themselves the enemy of poor regulation - and let's face it, just about any industry is going to have some poor regulation if you look hard enough - would force the other side to either play ball, or argue in favor of poor regulation.
I think the way forward is a universal embrace of old-style pragmatism. If you are willing to forget maxims and argue the details, there's a lot of progress that can be made to satisfy both sides. The problem is that these sorts of details don't make for compelling campaign ads or talk radio.
Sometimes I wonder if the problem is that a lot of conservatives - and to a lesser extent liberals - get their information from entertainers. Rush Limbaugh and the like are in show business and frame issues in a way that makes their audiences tune in each day to get outraged. The business of good governance is actually really dull and detail oriented.
Conservatism should be about religion and family values. We all know Hitler, Stalin and Mao were atheists, and so are liberals. Liberal sheep drone on and on about the "massacre" of the Iraqi War, but the casualties we suffered since 2003 are nothing compared to the Holocaust provoked by that notorious atheist, Franklin Roosevelt.
When public education truly works in the States then I'll be the first to endorse a social health care system. Till then...
You may not like the particular quality of public education in the US right now, but you must have some pretty selective vision if you seriously think it "doesn't work".
Without public education you wouldn't have a middle class.
Proto on
and her knees up on the glove compartment
took out her barrettes and her hair spilled out like rootbeer
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I'm a great believer that tying school funding to property taxes is insane, in and of itself. It pretty much guarantees that wealthy communities have good schools and poor communities have crappy schools.
The main thing the proposition system has done in California has made it impossible for legislators to craft good tax policy in any area of government, leading to pretty much every public institution becoming dysfunctional to some degree. California's government has been in a steady series of budgetary crises ever since, leading up to Gov. Terminator's current policy of getting around the prop system by borrowing huge amounts of money.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
That is funny.
Also not really on-topic. This isn't just the education thread, guys.
The Right to Remain Silent
Conservatives don’t need a movement—and the best have no use for one.
I'll try to save it.
Faith in an economic system that at its root requires egotism in bringing about increased societal well-being, requires a dogmatic approval of one's own ideology or complete faith in the far-sightedness and altruism of each individual in that system. An economic system that calls for each man to act as if they were an island will result in great economic equalities, and often inequalities in liberty. The greatest example of this is slavery.
Conversely, activities that are at its base intended to bring about the common good are rarely served by putting them in the hands of those whose intent is only tangentially associated with those goals. The goal of a private company is not to serve its customers or make a fine product but to make a profit. For instance, education. As the evaluation of the quality and nature of what is taught is rarely quantifiable in any comprehensive way and those metrics that most closely approximate such a measure can be specifically prepared for and gamed, there is an insufficient means of measuring the true quality of an educational institution. That's before you get to self-selection, and other sample corruption. Therefore, private organizations would then be paid to do something critical to the public good with no means of determining whether or not those goals are being achieved. Given that there is at least some relationship to money spent (in terms of textbooks, salaries and facilities) and quality of education offered, the worst schools would make the best private assets.
It is this blind spot that acts as the fatal flaw in unadulterated opposition to privatization (which, near as I can tell is the topic of the thread now). Lincoln said the legitimate goal of government is to do what must be done but can't be done or can't be done as well by people or private groups (paraphrased). This is the measure of whether an institution should be privatized ultimately, not economic ideology.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
What is it about the States that makes you think that socialized health care and education can't work?
I mean, it's already socialized, it's just set up to make people think that it's not:
Per capita health care expenditure:
(Source)
Canada has public education and is at a 99% literacy rate. Our health care is full public, private health care is still illegal despite court rulings in Quebec about private insurance and while there's a lot of complaints about the system, it still works for the most part.
See, here's the thing. Conservatives, by and large, don't see capitalism as an economic system, or even an -ism, any more than we see walking as a transportation system. It just sort of is. Capitalism is just a fancy word for barter, the notion that if I have something you want and you have something I want, then hey, maybe we should trade.
Capitalism is the default, the status quo. Socialism, communism - those are the -isms, and they represent a deviation from the norm. They represent a regulation of the natural right of people to own things they want and give up things they don't want. They are a violation of freedom in the negative sense, in pursuit of freedom in the positive sense. But they are the "systems". Capitalism isn't.
It's not a matter of the competing juggernauts of raw capitalism versus sweet, sweet socialism being locked in battle. There's a single system, a single tool - socialist regulation - and a question of how much we should apply it.
Think of it like tightening a screw. There's only one tool - a screwdriver. There's not a screwdriver and an unscrewdriver, fighting to see whether the screw should lay naked on top of the table or screwed to the point that it bursts through the other side of the plank. You have a screwdriver. There's a proper amount by which to turn that screw. You need to figure out what that amount is.
One of the problems with privatization in general and schools in particular is that the decision is made based on the performance of private institutions that would in no way resemble the institutions that would arise after privatization. Our debate is based on the idea that the best private schools - or whatever institution you want to remove from government control - rock, therefor all private schools will rock.
Take the gold standard of private schools, the Phillips Exeter Academy. It's founders did not create it as a private, for-profit institution, but as a place to educate the children of the nation's elite. The main purpose of the high tuition wasn't to fund the school or make profits, but to serve as a barrier for entry. It's a school for the wealthy and powerful to prepare their children to be wealthy and powerful. The funding mechanism and for-profit motive has nothing to do with it.
The types of for-profit schools that would be created to fill in the vacuum would be for-profit enterprises aimed at poor and middle-income folks. They would be to Phillips Exeter as McDonalds is to a four-star restaurant.
Most religious schools also have a different goal from making a profit, but they also tend to suck across the board - Catholic school excepted. One clue to their motivation may come from the fact the explosion in private religious schools in the U.S. occurred after Brown v. Board. I'm pretty sure the average Southern Baptist school isn't a model we'd want to emulate.
Until those apples taste better, I dont want any oranges.
The social health care system that you so dread has been tried and tested in many other countries. It is cheaper and more efficient than our awful system that devours the middle, gives a little to the poor, and provides for the wealthy.
Do a little research instead of just assuming your preconceived notions are facts.
The conservative philosophy of keeping privatized health care private and letting the free market™ solve our problems is a pretty solid failure by nearly any metric you want to use.
Aside from historical examples I have little reason to value one over the other. On one side you have the Oil Trusts, Walmart, Henry Ford and the worst of the Upton Sinclair novels. On the other side you have Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and George W. Bush.
One side makes children work, destroys the environment, and sells you goods at low prices. The other side puts Jewish people in ovens, invades countries that haven't attacked them and wiretaps your phone calls.
The "conservative" philosophy of never interfering with the free market at all for any reason is a failure. The conservative, non-scare-quotes philosophy of leaving the free market alone unless you have a really good reason to dick around with it is pretty sound.
Actually, wouldn't the default be clubbing you over the head with a large rock then taking your shiny thing back to my cave?
:P
I was discounting Alabama for the purposes of this discussion.
I just hope those conservatives retake/remake their party before the dems go completely corrupt sometime during the next 20 years so I have an alternative to vote for. Cause when presented with "Neo-con fascist jesus freaks" vs "corrupt big govt dem weenies" I'm gonna go with the weenies every time.
But when all you have is a screwdriver, everyone is just someone to screw.
It's an assumption (that capitalism is the default). It wasn't in colonial days, when the mercantilism system ruled. It wasn't in Medieval times, when the feudal system was the natural way of things. It wasn't during Roman times, at least not unless you're very broad with your definition of capitalism.
Capitalism means more than simply bartering. In the USSR they had that. It means the private control of goods, labor and production utilized in order to obtain individual profit. Most would also require some form of investment and official recognition of individual property rights.
Everyone assumes their environment is default, even if its subconscious. As a white guy in a very white part of the US, if I'm describing a black guy, the fact that he's a black guy is always among my descriptions. The same can't be said for another white guy. If someone had a Southern accent, the same would apply.
If a peasant from 1300 was brought forward, they would not agree with your assessment of the default economic system.
Indeed, capitalism - or anything resembling a free market system - can only exist within an at least semi-ordered society. Ugg the Strong Caveman didn't trade you for your dinner, he took it. Ugg the Leader decided who got what share of the hunt. Ugg the King decided who could trade what to whom. Only in a system with individual property rights can anything truly resembling capitalism exist.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Jewish day schools seem to be pretty good, but that's because there's good reason to suspect the parents would try to kill any teacher not doing his/her job.
Yeah, it really entertaining seeing Bush's Secretary of Education squirm during that pro-voucher press conference that happened to fall on the same day all the news organizations reported the huge study showing private schools to be significantly worse.
You're right in that some conservatives believe that. However, capitalism is one of many possible models, which anyone with any historical or economic awareness will realize. What we, as a capitalist people, believe is that capitalism is the most effective one. Certainly, capitalism is "better" in some way than feudalism or mercantalism or monarchy, and other such systems of property.
Where you're right, really, is that socialism is not opposed to capitalism. They are separate ism categories. Capitalism, as a model of property and even individual rights, could be opposed to something like communism, which has an entirely different system of rights and property.
All of these models require management to be successful. Socialism is the name we have given to governmental management of the capitalist model; more directly, socialism is the name we have given to an increased amount of government management. Capitalism, without management, fucks people just as bad as any other system (or almost; feudalism is pretty fucking terrible no matter how you slice it). As you say, the question is how much management? Too much management also fucks people.
As you said, the problem with this particular aspect of the conservative mindset is that capitalism is seen to exist, by itself, as an ideal system. Socialism is associated with communism and opposed to capitalism. Government intervention in any way becomes opposed to this ideal system. Capitalism becomes an ideology instead of a system, a model, a method of being efficient.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Liming is so passe, but all of the above is A++ Would Read Again material.
Nope, it's not at all. Capitalism is an exchange of items where both sides agree what they are getting have value, being hit on the head with a rock has no value, this example is just theft. Pure Capitalism would be if I threatened to hit you with a rock, and you agreed to give me a shiny thing if I didn't.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I dunno. Does extortion really fit the capitalist mold? I always thought it was based on an exchange of goods and/or services. Does not hitting somebody constitute a service? I guess it might. :P
If you want to get really technical, neither of those is capitalism. Capitalism is a form of social organization where the government protects the mechanisms of trade. Two men selling their camels in ancient Rome weren't engaging in capitalism, because the emperor would not have interceded had one of the camels been a horse with a pillow tied to its back.
The main benefit of capitalism is that it allows huge economies of scale, because the government enforces contracts. Because of this, investors can make deals with businesses and individuals with whom they don't already have a personal connection and without resorting to hiring men with clubs to recoup their money when cheated.
A pure capitalist society would consist of a government that ran a court system to enforce contracts, an enforcement system to punish those who violated contracts and a military and navy to protect borders and trade. Everything else would be in the private sector.
Of course it does, stuff like this is why capitalism has regulation in even the most free market, to prevent people from creating value through fear and extortion. Well, to prevent them doing so too obviously.
Hey you, you still have a massively spurious statistic to backup. Get on it.
Hmm, so enforcement of the fair value thing is implicit to capitalism eh? That's interesting, I had always viewed it as being one step down the tree from that. That enforcement of fair value was the first step of socialist control that all societies took.
Although, in your camels example Rome certainly did have a variety of fair trade and contract laws, without them there is no way to do business as an Empire spanning many nations. You could indeed as a Roman sign a contract, and expect delivery of goods in exchange for payment, and expect the government to intervene if the goods were not delivered according to the contract. Certainly in the first few centuries of Imperial Rome, and in Rome under the Senate this was the case, later the emperors became more like Kings and the system of Contract law was swept away by a tide of croneyism and so forth.
I'm not up on my Roman law, but I expect that a lot of the enforcement was ad hoc. The classical world - Rome especially - shared a lot of features with modern society.
Capitalism, as a defined social structure, is usually defined as coming into existence in Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries. The big shift in societal terms was predicable enforcement of contracts, which made it possible for widespread investment between individuals and institutions. As these systems came into being, capitalist governments backed off and allowed more and more economic activity to occur in the private sector.
There are lots of minor milestones - many of which I don't know - but the big breakthrough was the ability of someone like you and I to invest in a business venture run by complete strangers with the relative security that we wouldn't get swindled and, if we did, the government would intervene. Shareholder-owned corporations are a major feature of capitalism, as they did not exist under earlier systems of government.
If it's not possible to have thread on conservatism in general that actually discusses conservatism, then we should probably lock this and create threads for its constituent subtangents.
You have to discuss the features and manifestations of a topic to discuss the topic itself.
It is a possibility. I'm just going to throw out, though, that we've had a voucher system in place here for decades. The greater cause of it is the amount of rural families, where a "traditional" school system can't work. However, even with people using the vouchers to go to private schools, the system has worked damn well.
I think one of the problems with modern conservatives is that they've forgotten a lot of very important history. The U.S. and England tried to completely back out and allow the market to regulate itself in the late 19th and early 20th century and it didn't work. Lots of swindlers, graft, sketchy financial instruments and theft ended up crashing the markets every couple of decades, to the point where a lot of serious people thought that capitalism's days were numbered.
The one thing I don't understand about modern U.S. conservatives is the idea that deregulation is an unvarnished good. We've seen, over and over again, that prudent regulation prevents economic crashes like the one we're going through now. Considering that a lot of conservatives tend to have money and play the market, why don't they whole-heartedly support the idea of making sure the government doesn't allow financial institutions to play fast and loose with their money?
It's the flip side of the idea that deregulation of certain markets is invariant evil. Energy markets, for example, can be largely deregulated without harm. It's happened in other nations, and it's happened in several US states. But it was done retardedly in California in a very high-profile manner, and suddenly energy deregulation is the devil.
One problem with regulation is that poor choice of regulation can be worse than either complete deregulation or complete nationalization. This was the case in California. Naive conservatives and liberals tend to look at this phenomenon and infer support for their respective ideals - either that any regulation is terrible, or that any deregulation is terrible.
Conservatives would be wise to switch gears on this issue. Instead of pushing against regulation in principle, harp on the issue of dumb regulation, with specific suggestions in mind. If an industry is excessively regulated, don't just say, "We need to deregulate!" Specify why the regulation is bad, and offer specific alternatives to regulation. Making themselves the enemy of poor regulation - and let's face it, just about any industry is going to have some poor regulation if you look hard enough - would force the other side to either play ball, or argue in favor of poor regulation.
One of the key PR battles that the left lost over economic matters is the framing of everything as either an open/free market or a closed or regulated market. A market based economy truly free of any and/or all regulations is physically incapable of manifesting itself, as you need to have some sort of property rights and contract law to ensure that civilization functions; however that point is difficult to make when up against a guy saying that regulations stifle creativity and that market forces work best. Chiefly because you can't argue against it. Regulation does stifle creativity, and market forces do work well. What the debate needs to be framed as is promoting competition in the market versus monopolistic cartels, and stifling creativity to ensure the health of consumers. Competition is the market forces everyone likes, and it sometimes requires regulation to ensure that it exists. And how can you argue against promoting competition? That's like arguing against baseball and apple pie.
I think the way forward is a universal embrace of old-style pragmatism. If you are willing to forget maxims and argue the details, there's a lot of progress that can be made to satisfy both sides. The problem is that these sorts of details don't make for compelling campaign ads or talk radio.
Sometimes I wonder if the problem is that a lot of conservatives - and to a lesser extent liberals - get their information from entertainers. Rush Limbaugh and the like are in show business and frame issues in a way that makes their audiences tune in each day to get outraged. The business of good governance is actually really dull and detail oriented.
You may not like the particular quality of public education in the US right now, but you must have some pretty selective vision if you seriously think it "doesn't work".
Without public education you wouldn't have a middle class.
took out her barrettes and her hair spilled out like rootbeer