What do you do?

And it may be that Arab cultures and Chinese succeed over western civilisation because of oil and cheap labour (and a degree of greed in wanting to beat other cultures). If it wasnt for oil the arab states which were so culturally and militarily dominant before the renaissance might have ended up like central africa.

In Dubai the entire system is set up to make wealth off foreigners. You have to have a local shareholder, you have to employ a quota of locals and pay them the highest pay rate for their band + 40% on top. When the oil runs out they will have a huge amount of wealth from which to do whatever they want.

Im no expert on China but utilising huge labour reserves and investing that money in the countries it trades with means it will likely be a huge player in the world to come... and both Dubai and China are getting there through capitalism.... not even democracy.

self-deluding? lol

they can take their labour where they want or start their own business - it's called private enterprise

profits are there as incentives to grow their business which will grow only if they meet the demands of the market

protecting the bottom line seems to me to be the main driver in private enterprise else losses will follow

no such incentives exist in the public service which traditionally has been hugely wasteful and unaccountable, full of time servers

ideally it's an honest system but will be abused by the unscrupulous (rational), keen to avoid the pitfalls of the free market (just witness SCF)

not to mention the profesional student class that evolved post Adenauer economic miracle

The Netherlands and France too were/are like this but the chickens are coming home to roost there too

so, for example, australia would be objectively better than NZ because they have more mineral resources?

Yes. Why is that hard to believe?

i find it very hard to believe that Australia's system of government and societal organization is objectively better because they have more mineral resources. In fact, i find the suggestion bizarre

Except there's places which have lots of resources and didn't have capitalism/ a 'modern' system of govt that didn't do so well till they did.

Nobody said that. NZ's government and society might be better than Aus. However their mineral wealth outweighs that.
I may be smarter and understand cricket a lot more than someone else. However, he has the physical skills to bowl at 150k whereas I can only bowl at 100, and he is thus the better cricketer.

That's exactly what is being said. Read the thread in it's entirety

"if something else was objectively better why didnt it win? "

"So, capitalism is here today because it beat socialism etc"

what's being said is that if a capitalist country beat a socialist country then capitalism is objectively better than socialism even if the capitalist country only won because of environmental factors e.g., have more natural resources.

Capitalism like the mammals are objectively better than the dinosaur socialists because they're better suited to the environment by locating themselves over large piles of natural resources.

it's better to compare command economy with free market economy rather than capitalism socialism

which is more reactive to market conditions?

States control markets, or markets control the state.

That is one of the fundamental oscillations of the capitalist world economy, from 1300 to now there have been four such cycles, the most recent of which (where states control markets) has been in crisis since 1970. In this current crisis states cannot control markets, so states are undermined and are loosing power.


Your question fails totally to understand the historical nature of capitalism, so it is a completely confused question

You're confusing a lot of things here.
In this case, capitalism was better adapted to the environment - human self interest being key - and thus capitalism was BETTER than socialism because morality wasn't a key environmental selector.

And to borrow my analogy, being a horrible person (capitalism) doesn't stop you being a great sportsman (Tiger Woods).
Is Tiger Woods a better person than say Phil Mickelson? no. But he's a better golfer. And thus capitalism's success is explained

Q Vadz: If the USSR has been capitalist, and the USA communist, who would have won the Cold War?

Well i'll give you the answer right now: the USA. With most of the worlds gold and industrial capacity at the end of WWII, America was always going to be invincible, no matter what its' economic system

I'm not confusing anything. I'm just putting together the already confused statements made by you and bob....

so what do you think accounted for its gold and industrial capacity at the end of ww2?

The sizeable discount on protection rent afforded by its isolation from two world wars in europe

Russian has massive resources too.

The difference is that the USA had already been capitalist and had the structures in place.

There is no boundary between 'things' and 'environment'. It is all 'environment'.

it doesn't actually matter whether the USSR had massive resources or not

All that matters it that it's conceivable that the USSR could have beaten the USA due to superior resources. Therefore, you implying that the superior system survived because being a superior system means surviving (tautology much) is obviously false because survival or failure may have nothing to do with the inherent properties of the system.

you may be right bob, but stating tautologies and begging the question is not a way to show it.

Jesus christ.
Neil, nobody is implying that capitalism is better than socialism. Anywhere. What they are saying is that over time, capitalism has been better suited to the environment than socialism. That environment is made up of human nature and desires.
During wars, countries shift towards a command, socialist economy, because that's better suited to the wartime environment.

So when bob said "our current capitalist system is the product of evolution", he was being entirely accurate. If capitalism wasn't the best suited to the current human environment, it wouldn't exist.

Personally I think capitalism is worse than socialism because capitalism takes advantage of an immoral environment (human greed.) It's - to use another sporting analogy - like comparing the Tigers fling-it-around style to say the more ground and pound of other teams. In fine weather, the Tigers are environmentally superior and more fitted. In the rain, they are less so.
In my view socialism is like the Tiger's style of play - it's founded on positive intent and good human nature. Whereas capitalism is cynical and focused on greed. Unfortunately, humans, who set the environment in which systems succeed, are like heavy rain.

What are the "inherent properties" of the system if not how it interacts with its environment?

?? The USSR didn't lose he Cold War. That fucking traitor Gorbachev surrendered and should have been shot for his crimes.

how a system interacts with its environment is a property of the system. but the environment itself is not a property of the system.

The USSR was financially stretched, when the USA upped the pace it could not compete

At the end of WWII the USSR had the most powerful army in the world, but was nonetheless shattered and traumatised. It's resorces of industry and gold were totally inferior to that accumulated by the USA. WWII was a god-send to the power of America becasue all its european competitors mutually strangled the life out of each other, while America made a huge profit supplying the carnage.

What I would like to know is why socialism had such a low standard of living (unless you were part of the party, which seems more like tribalism to me) and unhappy people? Is it because bureaucracy is so inherently risk adverse that they become inflexible and ultimately stifle change?

Was it just bad luck?

Was it a trade issue? The capitalist countries foster trade.

Is it because people know that whether they work hard or not they will still get the same (low) living conditions? Thereby decreasing productivity?

Was it the massive military that crippled russia?

Yeah well they manipulated the war to their gain quite effectively. Have a look for a book on the rise and fall of British power its a bit of a read but very thorough. America were basically mercenaries - however they still held a grudge against the UK over independence.

Remember the USSR went directly from feudalism to socialism, they did not pass through a capitalist stage in between, so that could have some impact. Second, post WWII their ideological opposition to the hegemonic state, the USA, would have severely compromised trade opportunities. The USSR suffered desperate shortages of many basic goods. Third the command economy, Soviet style, was notoriously inefficient due to poor organisation and the behavior of officials. And no doubt the work force was demoralised when they heard about how good things were in the west.

Maybe the answer is that capitalism is a great way to administer a resource rich economy and socialism is a good way to do it when its scarce.

Seems to make logical sense.

To me Socialism needs an outside fear/purpose to band people together for common interest. Hence the history of propaganda.

Complete bullshit. The USSR was even more financially stretched in 1946.

In other words, if the USSR was going to lose, they'd have lost in 46.

...and the debt is more important than the people it helps?

This is why I could never be a part of the right...

Um yeah, youre making the assumption that that money that Berlin got into debt with went to pay for people who needed help? They got into debt bringing the East Berlin side up to scratch except now they cant pay to upkeep the city and the debt is removing wealth from them in the form of interest payments.

Unemployment and helping the East germans is/was the job of the federal govt. They levied a significant temporary tax on all the west germans to help the east, 23 years later it is still in effect. Im not saying it wasnt a good thing to do but they have spent too much and now it is damaging the german economy.

Are you saying a left wing govt should accept a qualified who lives in a small town should just never work again because there was no employment for him nearby? And pay him a very comfortable benefit.

I made no assumptions? Everything I commented on is in your post right here? Or was I wrong in assuming you said this to make a point?


I guess maybe I did assume that you listed this example as an example of a fault in social democracy, being that the debt carried by doing good for its citizenry is more important than the act itself, which you yourself, quote unquote, "loosely agree with."

Um, yeah.


edit. fixed quotes.

No it was my point that Germans likes to do things properly even when they cant actually afford to do so. Whether that is paying people a comfortable benefit or rebuilding a city.

Someone has to pay for for a social democracy, something Germany now knows and Greece is yet to learn.

Borrowing to invest in something that provides a return = smart, borrowing to pay benefits - in the long term, not so smart.

therein lies the rub

just what is doing good for its citizenry that they cannot do just as well if not better for themselves?

how far does social welfare need to go?

when there wasn't a cold war yet and they had been propped up by America to fight the Germans

Well both Arrighi and Hobsbawm argue as much.

Expenditure on the Second Cold War amounted to about 7% of US GDP. For the USSR it may have been as high as one quarter of GDP. The USSR outproduced the USA in steel and tractors, the USA (and its allies Japan and Germany) outproduced the USSR in high technology. Allies of the USSR depended on it for aid, and were a constant financial drain. Japan was more than willing to finance America through the massive costs of the Second Cold War. In fact, US competition in global money markets in the late 80s triggered a sharp contraction in global purchasing power, swung trade terms strongly in favour of the capitalist west, and increased the income gap between it and the rest of the world.

And they sought US aid post war. To be fair though, while the US may have propped them up to some extent, the USSR did the great bulk of the dirty work of defeating Nazi Germany, but America was the one that grew rich as a consequence of that victory

which is fair enough and all thanks to Stalin's duplicity and near self-fatal homicidal tyranny, purging his officer corps right before hostilities started