- Capitalism and Alternatives -

And the eyes in his head/ See the world spinning 'round

Posted by: Samuel Day Fassbinder ( Citizens for Mustard Greens, USA ) on July 15, 1999 at 22:56:35:

In Reply to: scabbling for power posted by Gee on July 09, 1999 at 15:30:46:

: : notion of statism as essentially "different" from the transaction of capitalist business as usual.

: Because, I assume from your support of restrictive laws etc and th green party

SDF: Care to clarify the magically-assumed relationship of the Green Party with "restrictive laws" (including those especially evil ones restricting fraud, child abandonment etc.)? Since there are plenty of Green libertarians out there, I fail to see why accepting one means accepting the other.

, you agree with the principle of statism (that some people have the 'right' to controls others)

SDF: My attachment to statism is that, all things considered, I would prefer social democracy to anarcho-capitalist phony utopia. It doesn't really extend beyond that.

: and perceive capitalism in the same light - your argument against capitalism looks simply like an argument for whom 'should' to do the controlling.

SDF: My argument against capitalism is that the necessity of social production (since all production is social -- as RD has pointed out SO MANY TIMES, we don't produce unless there is a society which needs it) and distribution through a capitalist system (requiring tons of coercion, which would explain all the private and public "security forces" out there) requires participants to put short-term profit (thus short-term escape from bankruptcy or starvation) before any concern with the lessons of Easter Island, which might be a proper concern of society as a whole were it not tied down with capitalism.

: Whether it be the current behemoth institution of state,

SDF: Ignoring that many large corporations are larger, today, than most states, and that states are regularly putting their sovereign powers in the hands of the WTO and other "trade organizations" and are indeed nothing more than security forces for the property rights of these same corporate entities...

I believe I've answered the rest of Gee's fabrications elsewhere -- he seems to believe that corporate welfare is something governments force on corporations etc., that most people in the US pay rent and earn wages from the government (which of course does nothing for anyone except its representatives, which have ties to no corporations)...




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