Should the US support Venezuelan Rebels?

[tolbiny]

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The great weakness of libertarianism (is that what you are?) is that it only distrusts government power, not business

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Of all the wrong things you said, this is the wrongist. By a lot. Plenty of libertarians distrust business, but if you find a crooked business youstop going. If you realize your government is crooked you have to move hundreds or thousands of miles away.

[Ron Paul]

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The GOP would avoid revolution via death camps.

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And you think democrats wouldn't? Lol.

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Not until the welfare payments stop working. ;-)

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explicit nationalization of the health care insurance industry...is de facto nationalization of the health care industry.

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That's playing loose with language. I could agree that it is seizing the commanding heights of the health care industry. Ideologues right or left tend to elide important differences.

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So "seizing the commanding heights of the health care industry" is not "playing loose with language"?

[img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

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Their rhetoric, goals, and methods are almost identical. You could play Al Gore/Unabomber word games with the text of Chavez's and Hillary Clinton's speeches.

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Well, this is definitional again. There is a resemblance between a Chavez world and a Hillary world because they both involve centralized, powerful bureaucracies. But power can be used for A, or B. But there is a huge difference between which constituencies they serve -- one uses power to serve A, another B. Chavez is a populist, and uses state power for going up against established interests. Hillary is the the established interests, and uses government to serve them.

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Both serve themselves.

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BTW, when you talk about cartelization, are you considering private monopolistic bureaucracy (corporations), the present US government, and a socialist state, all variations of the same evil? They are all centralized power? Or is only state power the target of AC dismantlement?

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Corporations cannot exist without government. The whole idea of creating a fictional person to shield real people from the liability incurred by their actions would never fly in the free market without government enforcing it.

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Yes, there are similarities between centralized cartels and centralized government. But over private power centers, we citizens have desperately little influence.

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We have the ultimate power. Shop elsewhere. That is of course, unless a government makes that impossible.

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Over the governmental power center, we have the vote.

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Who do you get to vote for? The choices annointed by the power elite? Brilliant! Who gets to write the election laws? Those already in power? Brilliant! Your vote has a near infinitesimally small chance of actually influencing any actual policy in the way you want it affected? Brilliant!

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One offers no chance of citizen input, the other offers at least a theoretical opportunity for democracy.

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You have it backwards. Government offers no chance of citizen input, whereas capitalism provides the ultimate democracy: I vote with my money for only those goods and services I actually want or need.

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Ginormous bureaucratic power centers are the rule, so lets put health care in the hands of the one we have a better chance of influencing.

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This is flat out insane. You want to take health care decisions out of the hands of individuals, out of the realm of market competition, the engine of innovation and prosperity, and put it into the hands of a gigantic violent, bureaucratic monopoly, all because you are afraid of . . . bureaucratic monopolies? Here is a mockup up the cartelization of the health care system that you want:



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News flash: there is going to be a state.

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News flash: There might always be cancer. That doesn't mean that it's a good thing, or that we should stop trying to cure it.

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You can either compete for control of it, or be controlled by it.

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Or you can try to enlighten people that institutionalized violence is in fact NOT necessary to prevent society from plunging into chaos.

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The great weakness of libertarianism (is that what you are?) is that it only distrusts government power, not business, even though both are forms of the centralized, bureaucratic power that is the bane of modern existence.

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Business can't do a damned thing to you except by the grace of its incestuous bedmate, the state. Without the state, the only way a business can increase revenues, profits, market share is to provide better and more varied goods, at lower cost, and have people voluntarily choose to patronize them.

[Kaj]

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By your description above and that of most right-wing leaners, many of the countries below are "socialist" -- so all these countries are colossal failures of history, right? God forbid we ever turn into a third world pit like Sweden.

World Top 10 - Countries with High Standard of Living

Norway
Sweden
Canada
Belgium
Australia
United States
Iceland
Netherlands
Japan
Finland

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Besides, socialism did not make these nations wealthy relative to the third world. Capitalism did. Deferred consumpion, increased savings, accumulation of capital leading to increased productivity, making it still easier to save and invest create the positive feedback loop that has lead to the high standard of living in the west. It has taken hundreds of years to accumulate the capital stock that supports the standards of living in these countries.

Socialism incentivizes consumption at the expense of savings. It disincentivizes investment. It targets blocks of accumulated capital for liquidation and plundering. Real wages, which can only increase with increased productivity, have foundered recently. We may already be in the epoch of capital consumption, the shrinking of the world's capital stock, and the associated loss of productivity, and lowered standards of living. Government will seize upon the effects of this to blame the problem on the cure (capitalism) and call the problem (government) the cure. The mounting interventions in the free market process will accelerate the collapse and society will undergo a period of decivilization.

Put that in your quatrain and smoke it.

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Wait... so because some of those countries have national health care, they will all become BUSTO, but the US can have a defense budget over 7x that of any other nation on earth, but it's still a mostly capitalist nation?

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Purple monkey dishwasher?

Read what I wrote again. Do that until you actually understand it.

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Why can't you just admit that those countries are evidence that a national health care plan is not synonymous with a Soviet gulag state,

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No; it's just synonymous with wait lists, poor teeth, and dying because your cancer metastasized while you waited for treatment.

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but countries with national health care plans can and do prosper quite well.

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People with a growing cancer can appear to prosper quite well, too.

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If given the choice, I'd prefer a govt that spent $200B on health care over one that spent $600B on national offense.. errr, defense.

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I'd rather one that spent $0 on both.

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You started this rabbit trail with reference to Clinton and the Dems in Congress, thus making this a Democrat issue... good luck spending $0 on both with the Repubs in power. Something about people in glass houses...

[Ron Paul]

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By your description above and that of most right-wing leaners, many of the countries below are "socialist" -- so all these countries are colossal failures of history, right? God forbid we ever turn into a third world pit like Sweden.

World Top 10 - Countries with High Standard of Living

Norway
Sweden
Canada
Belgium
Australia
United States
Iceland
Netherlands
Japan
Finland

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Besides, socialism did not make these nations wealthy relative to the third world. Capitalism did. Deferred consumpion, increased savings, accumulation of capital leading to increased productivity, making it still easier to save and invest create the positive feedback loop that has lead to the high standard of living in the west. It has taken hundreds of years to accumulate the capital stock that supports the standards of living in these countries.

Socialism incentivizes consumption at the expense of savings. It disincentivizes investment. It targets blocks of accumulated capital for liquidation and plundering. Real wages, which can only increase with increased productivity, have foundered recently. We may already be in the epoch of capital consumption, the shrinking of the world's capital stock, and the associated loss of productivity, and lowered standards of living. Government will seize upon the effects of this to blame the problem on the cure (capitalism) and call the problem (government) the cure. The mounting interventions in the free market process will accelerate the collapse and society will undergo a period of decivilization.

Put that in your quatrain and smoke it.

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Wait... so because some of those countries have national health care, they will all become BUSTO, but the US can have a defense budget over 7x that of any other nation on earth, but it's still a mostly capitalist nation?

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Purple monkey dishwasher?

Read what I wrote again. Do that until you actually understand it.

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Why can't you just admit that those countries are evidence that a national health care plan is not synonymous with a Soviet gulag state,

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No; it's just synonymous with wait lists, poor teeth, and dying because your cancer metastasized while you waited for treatment.

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but countries with national health care plans can and do prosper quite well.

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People with a growing cancer can appear to prosper quite well, too.

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If given the choice, I'd prefer a govt that spent $200B on health care over one that spent $600B on national offense.. errr, defense.

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I'd rather one that spent $0 on both.

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You started this rabbit trail with reference to Clinton and the Dems in Congress, thus making this a Democrat issue... good luck spending $0 on both with the Repubs in power. Something about people in glass houses...

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I'm an anarchist, not a Republican, brainiac. The Republicans spent like the proverbial drunken sailor from 1994 to 2006. The Democrats will outdo themselves in outdoing the Republicans once they have an increased majority and Democratic president.

[clowntable]

I don't know many anarchists that support constitutianlists. Actually, you might be the first one.

[Ron Paul]

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I don't know many anarchists that support constitutianlists. Actually, you might be the first one.

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I support him being highly visible in the media saying things that never get said in the media.

[Bill Haywood]

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capitalism provides the ultimate democracy: I vote with my money for only those goods and services I actually want or need.

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That works great if the only decisions you care about are Coke vs. Pepsi.

If I don't want the country to spend as much on defense as the rest of the world combined, which bullet manufacturer do I boycott? If I don't want my son to go to war, which gas station do I boycott? If I want affordable access to health care, which HMO do I boycott to end their hold on the state?

Using our market right to switch products does not address the problem of corporate political power. Trying to convert all political struggle into a market model is pie in the sky.

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News flash: There might always be cancer. That doesn't mean that it's a good thing, or that we should stop trying to cure it.

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Bad metaphor. Better: aging is a given. Should we try to ameliorate its affects, or kill ourselves so we never grow old?

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Business can't do a damned thing to you except by the grace of its incestuous bedmate, the state.

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There's a lot of truth to that. But a state is going to exist. Cancer or not, it is not going away. So do I compete for influence in the state, or be a purist and stay away? I mean, if my objective is to actually influence events, not remain sinless? You exhibit the same error as Marxist purists who refuse to advocate wage increases. They think that would lure them into negotiating for concessions, and distract from revolution. It leaves you completely isolated from the processes of actual change.

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So "seizing the commanding heights of the health care industry" is not "playing loose with language"?

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So you accept the point, you just want to share guilt?

[Kaj]

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I don't know many anarchists that support constitutianlists. Actually, you might be the first one.

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I support him being highly visible in the media saying things that never get said in the media.

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Like ... Dems are bad! Clinton is the Devil!

(And "brainiac", I'm not a liberal.)