Kyle Aaron

The bourgeoisie are the first to complain about taxes, but are also the first to complain if their property lacks services like sewage, or if the fire brigade or police are slow to respond or fail to appear. "Why doesn't somebody do something?!"

If nothing else, you must give up some of your property so that the authorities can provide services to your property and protect it from fire and theft, ie sewage, fire brigade, police, etc.

It's not socialism, it's just part of living in a community. Each of us must contribute to the common good. Of course what exactly is the "common good" is arguable, which is why we have democracy.

If you find this inconvenient, there do exist countries in the world where nobody contributes to the common good, and everyone just looks after themselves and their family with an AK-47. These countries have a remarkably low immigration rate, in fact their existing citizens are often quite keen to leave. So you know there'll be plenty of space for you.

Taxes are a pain in the bum, and lots of the money is spent in ways I disagree with. But you take the good with the bad, that's life, if you find it too painful well I have a bag a cement in the garage, I can let you have a cup of it for a dollar.

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dr00

there is no such thing as "the bourgeoisie," its a false dichotomy perpetuated by socialists.

this is never going to be anymore than a superficial discussion so its kinda pointless but most of the stuff the government does would be much better provided by the private sector. you have no argument from me that there must be a government to provide certain things and that must be paid for but that doesnt justify a personal income tax. i never suggested anarchy so im not sure where you got that from.

living in a community means living around and interacting with other people. it doesnt mean members of that community can use physical force to remove your property for the use of others in the community or for the "common good."

Kyle Aaron

There certainly is. There's a middle class who have pretensions to be upper-class. That's the petit-bourgeois, the small nobility.

Australian Protective Services, ran the women's prison here in Victoria, when they took over there was a big rise in sexual assaults by guards on inmates, drug use and suicide by inmates.

Connex ran the trains system here in Melbourne, with less passengers and less tracks than in 1957 when we had steam trains and manual signalling, they ran less services and had more of them late or cancelled.

Enron ran power services in California and created deliberate blackouts to boost prices.

Jemena and PowerCorp run the electricity distribution here in Victoria, they cut back on maintenance checks of power lines, one fell and caused one of the Black Saturday fires, that particular fire killed a couple of dozen people.

Neither government nor private corporations are inherently more efficient at running things. However, government is at least answerable to the people when they fck up. Thus, for essential services like mass transit, energy and water, education and health, it is better that these be publicly-owned and run, with private services running parallel, so that people with extra cash can get extra service if they want it.

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Recent clients' best results: BW +10kg/-27kg ... BF-11% ... ♀/♂1RM/kg SQ65/145 OHP30/65 DL75/170
"fitness and lifting is just an interest I have. Plain and simple. Some people like music, others like shopping, I like deadlifts." - a client[/SIZE]

dr00

i never suggested private businesses operate with perfect efficiency and never make mistakes, but are you suggesting all those examples happened in a free market? is there any point in me listing failures and inefficiencies of government? it would probably be easier to list the successes.

there is no point in entering into a long winded, deep political debate about socialism vs capitalism, especially trying to prove one or the other with a handful of examples with no context or associated information. its one of the epic arguments of the last century and i dont think we're going to solve it on a little bodybuilding forum.

i just wanted to give my opinion in the thread. i will always favour liberty over control and i will never accept that anyone else can tell me what to do so long as im not hurting anyone else. thats the basic foundation of capitalism.

Kyle Aaron

I don't expect perfect efficiency. I just expect "no deaths" and "not a complete breakdown of the system." That's why I didn't mention Telstra - undoubtedly they are inefficient, but they don't usually cause deaths and the system as a whole more or less works. That's good enough for me.

No, because I said there was nothing inherent in either government or a corporation which made one more or less efficient than the other. Only that a government is at least answerable to its people; a corporation is answerable only to its shareholders. For something which affects everyone, everyone should have a say; for something which affects a few, only a few should have a say.

Mass transit, energy, health and so on affect everyone, so everyone should have a say; when these are entirely privatised, everyone doesn't get a say, only the shareholders. So we get a mess.

You're confusing democracy with capitalism; it's possible to have one without the other. China is very capitalistic, but has not much liberty. Afghanistan has a lot of liberty (for men, anyway), but no capitalism to speak of (they try, but we keep destroying their poppy fields).

You say you won't accept that anyone can tell you what to do. What do you propose to do about it? Suppose someone wants to knock down your house to extend an airport runway, what will you do? Fight them in court? Suppose the court tells you, "tough"? What then? You won't accept it? Okay, what will you do?

It's easy to have big tough words about what you will and won't put up with, to shake your fist defiantly at the world. But what are you going to do? Because ultimately, if you do nothing, then in fact you do accept it. You don't like it, but you accept it.

So let's not jerk ourselves off too much about this. Both of us live in a basically free country, we contribute to the common good through our own earnings, and the common good contributes to our ability to earn by means of subsidised roads, healthcare, education and so on. We don't agree with every last bit of spending and taxing that's done, but in the end we accept it, because it's not that big a deal.

__________________
Recent clients' best results: BW +10kg/-27kg ... BF-11% ... ♀/♂1RM/kg SQ65/145 OHP30/65 DL75/170
"fitness and lifting is just an interest I have. Plain and simple. Some people like music, others like shopping, I like deadlifts." - a client[/SIZE]

dr00

you really like to type dont you... i really dont have the time or the energy to debate this stuff with someone i dont know and will never meet but you are being fairly disrespectful and a tad arrogant.

the inherent trait that makes private enterprise infinitely more efficient than government is the profit motive. i dont really know how to argue that point with you if you honestly believe government is as efficient. ive never known anyone naive enough to believe that... even the staunchest socialists dont argue for big government because of efficiency.

of course you can have democratic socialism, but it requires the violation of human rights. china is quite economically liberal but not socially, thats not capitalistic. i dont know enough about afghanistan to comment.

i dont really have anything to say about your last three paras, i have no idea what your point is or what you are trying to say. are you saying because i am not running for election that i must stop thinking?

kindred

You could always develop the model for a corporate republic. They way in which it would work would be by giving every citizen a certain amount of shares in the republic and hence voting rights. If you comit a crime or what not shares are taken away and if you do work that helps contribute to a more profitable(better) country then you get more shares. That way eventually only people that did stuff for the good of the people would have any real voting power and the ones that are gonna drag the rest of us down dont get any and are told what to do like the retards they obviously are. Im not calling anyone here a retard btw im just saying. Maybe I should develop this model myself and run for prime minister. Theres a few bugs but im sure ill work it out. And you never know australia may be the worlds first corporate republic.

im tired...

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