Comments

1

Most Americans don't seem to know how much Socialism is fundamental to keeping this shitsociety on its proverbial feet . . . . since Day One.

2

Capitalism can be as benevolent, creative and profitable as we can dream it to be.
The super-wealthy want you to believe it should be massively stressful with poverty constantly at the door, the weak dropping like flies... but you good ones are strong enough to survive the America experience! And don't you HATE those ungrateful black NFL players!?? OBAMA!

3

@1 If I hear the Socialist mantra that the Police, Fire, Libraries, Social Security, and Public schools are "socialism" again I'm gonna scream. They are governmental services. So what? So is the military and it's been around since before recorded time. Socialism is a term coined by KARL MARX and refers to the government owning the means of production as a stopping point on the way to communism. Taking over the entire healthcare industry is socialism. Forcing utilities to stop using fossil fuels because because is socialism. Making every property owner in America retrofit their property in the next ten years is socialism. Need I go on?

5

@3,

Not sure I get your point. Public schools are a government service, but not socialism. But public health insurance IS socialism? Both are government services. Both are "government owning the means of production." Both have private options still available alongside the public option.

Why would it make you scream to imagine that public schools are socialist in nature but not public health insurance?

6

What capitalism? The US has been technically fascist (the merger of govt with central banking corporations) since 1913. Per Senator Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., the famous aviator and member of the 1912 Pujo Committee that investigated the money trusts: “This [Federal Reserve Act] establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President (Woodrow Wilson) signs this bill, the invisible government of the monetary power will be legalized....the worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency bill.”

"The financial system [...] has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That board administers the finance system by authority of [...] a purely profiteering group. The system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money."

7

@3 Surely if the government owns a particular means of production, then the goods produced by government become a "governmental service," right? There's no reason, really, that the Postal Service couldn't be abolished and leave all the delivering to FedEx and UPS, save that we've made the political decision to keep the Post Office subsidized and in business because that way it ensures postal service to every last farmhouse out on County Road XX at a reasonable rate where under a free market postal service to places like that would be either prohibitively expensive or nonexistent.

That is, in fact, a form of what progressives are arguing for. When it comes to postal service, people in cities end up paying a little more than they might in a free market. Taxpayers also chip in. But it's to everyone's benefit having a system that reaches every last village in Alaska, even if that means having to charter a flight to deliver mail to just 200 people.

The difference between those on the left (in this country) and those on the right is that most people on the left see things like socialism or free markets as a TOOL. Each is appropriate in some contexts, the same way sometimes you need a hammer and sometimes you need a screwdriver. Communists and Republicans see these things as an IDEOLOGY, the one true way to set up an economy, with all other ways being false and blasphemous. Only a blind ideologue would find cries of "SOCIALISM!!!!!!!" to be frightening.

Moreover, it's a mistake to confuse regulation with socialism. The two are unrelated. All societies use regulation, even the most primitive. The fact that you are obliged to drive on the right side of the road does not diminish your ownership of your car. There has, in fact, never been a time when you had absolute discretion to use your own property in any way you pleased.

8

And guess who has been pushing for socialism, which is the historical precursor to communism? The central banking families. Greater control may seal their power for the next 1,000 years or more.

9

The global transition from communism to free markets over the past 25 years has cut extreme poverty by nearly 75% worldwide. People now have enough to eat in huge countries like China, India and Russian. There's far less poverty in Africa because of free markets. General standards of living have risen dramatically in places like these, something that's true for most of us. The reality is that Marxism and communism have had disastrous consequences for the countries that have tried it, and all of them are far better off under free market systems, particularly the workers themselves, who are free to sell their labor as they see fit, which fosters innovation and higher wages. Some people are better at it than others and get rich. So what? Tax them at a higher rate and give to people who don't have as much money.

But Charles, and as he would say, his ilk, would have us believe that leaders like Pol Pot or Stalin or Mao, who killed a hundred people last century, weren't real Marxists, and that he, Charles, would be a wise and benevolent Marxist and leader, and create a utopian society like the world has never seen. What a ludicrous, pretentious and preposterous conceit.

10

Mr. Mudede, with all due respect, I think you have misunderstood Andrew Yang's guiding philosophy. Throughout his book, "The War on Normal People," and in every interview I've seen with him, he talks at length about the point you make at the end of your article: "Technological advancement is a consequence of the pressure to keep growing the magic stuff of capitalism, capital, and often that means cutting the costs of production." This is the very crux of Yang's argument. Jobs are disappearing left and right due to our rapid technological progress, yet he does not want to interfere with that progress. Instead, he wants to empower people to navigate our economy more freely and to encourage further innovation and entrepreneurship by providing every adult citizen with a "freedom dividend," which is his term for universal basic income.

11

@3 Oh. No. Scary! Karl Marx! SOOOO SCARY!

That had to be one of the dumbest screeds on SLOG in quite some time. And that is saying something.

Marx and Engels may have "coined" a term "scientific socialism", but they did so based on existing observations. "Socialism" already existed. They didn't "invent" socialism. Saying they did is like saying that Darwin "invented" evolution.

Scream all you want. But police, fire departments, sanitation, military defense ARE socialism. Marx just gave those things a name.

12

@6- you're thinking of Lindbergh Sr, who was the father of the aviator (who wasn't born until 1902 and flew across the atlantic in 1927). He was also an extreme isolationist, and maybe not anyone we need to take seriously.

13

I'm not so sure you really understand capitalism, just it's downsides. Hitherto, it's been the most successful economic philosophy the world has ever known. It's not perfect, but it's better than anything else that has been attempted.

15

@8 Who are these "central banking families" that are pushing for socialism? Please do name names.

Let me guess: your source would be The Protocols of the Elders of Somewhere or Other...right?

16

Andrew who?

17

@7 Holy crap, a nuanced comment on Slog! Brb, looking outside for the flying pigs.

18

@12 Thanks for fact checking -- much appreciated! Lindergh was part of the Pujo Commission that was dedicated to investigating the money trusts at the time. These money trusts then formed the private corporate central bank of the US, aka the Fed. He was obviously not working alone, since the entire commission came up with the same results, and not just Lindbergh. If you examine the documents, it is very clear that they found hard evidence of market manipulation going on. Today this has been more formalized via the PPT, the FSB at the BIS and the various working groups around the world that are specific to the crypto markets.

19

@15: If we give him the secret handshake & password, and show him a dollar bill with the correct serial number, then there’s no doubt but that he’ll illuminate us! :-P

20

@15 Research the history of the Black Venetian Noble families. Webster Tarpley is perhaps the top expert on this. These rich merchant families (Lombard, Medici, Genoa, etc) from ancient Rome made much of their money from providing the supply lines for both sides of the Crusades. They created the first central bank, called the Fondo, in Venice. Today, they are the monarchs and royalty of Europe, and they control the global central bank system via the BIS.

21

@19 Yes, the accompanying mockery. Do you believe your ignorance of history makes you privileged in this way?

22

@ 9 & 13: Well-said.

23

@9 Dig deeper. Before communism there was Gnosticism, which turned the story of Genesis on its head, making the serpent good and God evil. Gnosticism evolved into Luciferianism, which was adopted by the Freemasons who believe God has two parts -- Adonai (Jesus, evil) and Lucifer (good). Luciferianism needed a tool by which to socialize itself globally, and thereby created communism. This is the actual history as laid down by countless books from the last 1,000 years and also documented at the Vatican. There are at least 15 encyclicals on this topic alone, from the last 200 years.

24

"So is the military and it's been around since before recorded time. "

Um, mercenary companies have been around since recorded time. An all-government run military has been one option since recorded time. The other option, since recorded time, has been a fully privatized military.

Fully privatized schools, libraries, social security, and definitely fire brigades, have been 100% privatized since recorded time. Fully government run versions of these things have only appeared recently, and they appeared when someone said, and meant it, "Let's put the common good above individual profit". Since, in other words, the invention of socialism.

The threat of socialism isn't that it forbids markets. Markets can exist in socialism. The threat is freedom from the primitive belief that markets are an end in themselves. What makes capitalists, free marketers, so dangerous, so terroristic in their behavior, is their religious dogma based on the unfounded mumbo jumbo belief that markets are an inherent good, and that market prices are inherently holy, divine, the word of God himself.

Socialism is the idea that markets give you a price, not the price. Markets are a tool, not a fetish to be worshiped. That's all.

25

@21: Fairy tales are not history. History is a lot more capricious than your fairy tales allow. (E.g. how the Rothschilds got their fortune.)

Do your precious documents from the Vatican tell how much money was spent on keeping former altar boys silent?

26

General Electric Got a $140 Billion Bailout, farmers got a $12 Billion bailout, the socialist China has never had such a big government intervention.
if you ask me, taxes and social welfare are essentially socialist.
if you ask people in China, everyone says Canada is more socialist than China.

27

@25 You can choose which history you want to follow. The modern fabricated one you and your parents were born into, written by the morally bankrupt winners of the spoils of history, or the real one. I prefer the real one. 2,000 years of documented history cannot be erased by 200 years of modern propaganda.

If you knew your real history, you would then know that Luciferianism intentionally and successfully infiltrated the Catholic Church in 1959, via Vatican II. This is what has led to the sex scandals in the Church -- the roots of which are from Luciferianianism and communism. Rather than direct your anger at them, you have been propagandandized to attack the Church, instead. This is the same Church that had two popes mass print the Alta Vendita, a strategy document from the Italian Carbonari sect of Illuminists (Luciferians). detailing plans to turn the Church into a tool of Luciferianism from the inside out -- as a warning to Catholics worldwide. This is the same Church and the only institution on the planet that has ever waged war on the the Black Venetian Nobility, during the War of the League of Cambrai in 1509 AD. This chased them out of Venice, scattering them across Europe. This is further detailed in Marie Carre's published set of memoirs as well as Bella Dodd's Congressional testimony detailing how the leader of the Communist Party in the US personally helped 1,300 communist infiltrate the Catholic Church.

How did you think we ended up with a self-described "communitarian" Pope, who aligns with the Luciferian United Nations and their global plans for communitarian society, via UN Agenda 2030?

Believe the fairytales (your words) you have been propagandized to believe. Don't expect the rest of us to respect your propagandized point of view which has no connection to real history whatsoever. It's fake and it will be called out as such without regard for feelings or the fake construct of propaganda. Perhaps you should become acquainted with the 100-year-old Tavistock Institute for Human Relations and the A.K. Rice Institute sometime, since you appear clueless about the institutions that have shaped your views.

28

Lmao what is this dude even talking about:

Capitalism just means an economic system based around private ownership.

And Yang has come out and said we should just leave the whole socialism vs capitalism debate altogehter so to come to a pragmatic solution towars a working society. He wants to preserve the market system with individual ownership but with state regulations (taxes, UBI, etc).

Problem with these armchair economists is everything is just theory. When someone uses a word incorrectly or against some past definitons they quickly get up and shout "you're wrong! like some grammar nazi.

They don't care about what's actually happening because definitions are more important to them. What's happening now is automation is going to take over 1/3rd of jobs int he USA by 2030. And the free market won't be kind to those who are left over. Job retraining programs have been histroically unsuccessful. And the truth of automation is there is just going to less available jobs altogether because machine efficiancy.

We are heading towards a social crisis and academics like this guy wants to sit and argue what is true capitalism or whatever.

29

@24 You are ignorant of the history of the US Constitution and why it was created. It was the first document of its kind in human history and other countries have been adopting variations on its theme since it was created, due to it obvious success. That success ended when Woodrow Wilson gave his buddies in the money trusts the legal right to control the finances of the US, via the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. Thus, we went from a Constitutional Republic to fascism in one legal move. The banksters then bought enough media to ensure the public was kept ignorant of what was to come, and here we are today, swimming in propaganda.

The US Constitution intentionally created a nation that was free of central banking families, the Black Venetian Nobility, and their corporate banking interests. If you read the Founding Fathers memoirs, you would know this. These banking families loaned King George the money to hire the Red Coats that fought us in the Revolutionary War.

The only reason socialism has become popularized and accepted in the US is due to propaganda. Socialism is the historical mechanism by which communism is introduced. This was the goal of "The Program" that was conceived at the 1928 COMINTERN in Moscow and which today carries the name UN Agenda 2030, or more recently, the Green New Deal. The Black Venetian Noble families of today (Windsors, Medici, Lombards, Genoa, etc) cannot stand that Americans cling to the patriotic ideals of a Constitutional Republic despite that they gutted our financial and legal system in 1913. For this reason, we have been inundated with socialism and communism in our education system, which they control via the legislation which they finance.

Note that two of the top KGB intelligence defectors to the US, Yuri Bezmenov and Anatoliy Golitsyn, both wrote extensively about communist activities for infiltrating the US and turning it into a communitarian state. Active measures is the means by which a society is demoralized by destroying its traditions, customs and heritage, for paving the way for communism. Sound familiar at all???

30

What crap editors the Stanger has... Mudede whom wrote this article is some wacked out film critic whom doesn't remember his own birth according to the stranger... Yang is a multimillionaire entrepreneur... for someone that doesn't know capitalism Yang seems to be wining it

31

If we are relying on infinite growth to keep your “version” of capitalism running, then we need to start building spaceships a whole lot faster than we are. But we aren’t, because most economists are stuck in a neoliberal fairy tale that says that simply moving money around and providing ‘services’ to one another will be sufficient. It simply is not. All you have to do is look at the automation of financial trading. Technology is allowing people to exploit market flaws in a kind of information arbitrage that adds nothing of intrinsic value, and they can do it with money borrowed at historically low interest rates, thus driving up share prices for everyone else. In the meantime, labor force participation rates are dropping and wages have stagnated in real terms.

At the end of the day, the only definition of capitalism that matters is the one where resources are used to build actual things and services provide actual value or savings. Historically, what makes that kind of capitalism work is the same thing that makes our constitution work.

It is subject to revision.

Capitalism was still capitalism after we decided that labor can’t and shouldn’t belong to anyone other than the laborer themselves. (Ending slavery and child exploitation)

Capitalism was still capitalism after we decided that the government sometimes needs to step in to prevent anti-competitive behaviors (busting trusts and breaking up monopolies).

Capitalism was still capitalism after we decided that rules and oversight were needed to ensure the stability of capital markets (requiring banks to keep reserves and restricting which kinds of financial instruments could be traded and how and when).

Capitalism was still capitalism after we realized that government managed social safety nets and monetary policy can reduce shocks and speed up recovery from boom/bust cycles (social security, WPA, Medicare and Medicaid, unemployment insurance).

But something shifted starting in the 70s (as an intellectual under current at first), but taken for granted on both sides of the aisle by the early 90s. Economic liberalism and a wishful thinking view of the power of a free market composed solely of individuals acting independently was the only right kind of Capitalism.

Laissez-faire, can’t exist in the real world because any successes naturally lead to capital accumulation and that tendency toward accumulation inevitably tips the scales away from equal opportunity and success based on merit and toward privilege, cronyism, and consolidation.

The rise of populism whether it’s the pseudo-nationalism of the far right or the new wave socialism of the far left, are both natural reactions to the increasingly obvious failures of economic liberalism. Both options (in their most extreme manifestations) are extremely dangerous and (based on history) ultimately unproductive solutions.

Andrew Yang is the only candidate that seems to recognize and effectively articulate that the only way out of this crisis and the best way forward is to acknowledge that Capitalism is due for another revision.

We need to address technology, automation, information abundance, equal access to that information, and build back in the regulatory feedback loops that keep the market open to competition, fully recognizes the value of ALL human labor, and addresses climate change in a way that won’t deny our children and grandchildren a future.

UBI is an idea. Medicare for all is an idea. But the BIG idea, the one that has me in the Yang Gang right now, is the vision of Human Centered Capitalism.

If you love freedom, and want other people to have it. If you love opportunity, and want other people to have it. If you love the overall wealth and prosperity and stability and integrity of America, and want more of it for more people, then it’s time for another revision to capitalism.

It’s time for someone like Andrew Yang.

32

@27: “You can choose which history you want to follow.”

You’re certainly demonstrating that quite nicely.

“This is what has led to the sex scandals in the Church -- the roots of which are from Luciferianianism and communism.”

Or perhaps from the requirement of priestly celibacy, which has no basis in Scripture, but was instituted in the Middle Ages to prevent priestly families from existing.

I was merely noting that an organization which has been a spectacularly unreliable source of information about the actions of its own employees is probably not a reliable source of information on anything else, either.

(And, crying that the Church or Vatican or Papacy has been given over to demon-worship is not exactly a new criticism, either, although you’ve dressed it in modern vestments here.)

33

This logic in this article is a little misguided. GDP is an obsolete metric for a country's economic well being. And it will continue to be irrelevant as we get closer to more automation. Once truck driving, call centers, and retail are replaced with AI, GDP will continue to grow but it won't take into account all the workers who are displaced. Unemployment won't be a strong factor or GDP as it once was.

This is where human capitalism comes in. Read a f** book.

34

To be fair neither does Charles Muede..

35

Sure, capitalism has cut poverty and is "the most successful" economic system invented ... for the benefit of humans. It has been an absolute disaster for this planet and the other life forms living here, and I don't see how that will change any time soon barring a huge extinction event among homo sapiens.

36

I'm going to listen to the millionaire entrepreneur on economics before I'll concern myself with the opinions of a film critic. #yang2020

37

The US Constitution was "the first document of its kind in human history"

LOL. Stopped reading right there. Sad little troll.

38

Inconsistent trash article lacking any kind of critical substance. I'm sure you can write better than this.


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