Clashman said:
Once again, feudalism was the "best alternative" before capitalism took hold.
Or rather, capitalism hadn't really been tried yet.
I would favor something along the lines of directly electing representatives to serve as a board of directors, as well as having occasional referrendums on important issues. Just like political democracy, only in the workplace. You would have to qualify to vote, and that would usually require maintaining employment at the place for a significant amount of time. I would say that if you had worked at a place for a year or more, you have significantly invested your life in the future of the company, so that you were entitled to voting priviledges.
If the owners of the company think this is a good model, and I'm not saying that it neccesarily isn't, then go ahead. But this shouldn't be made into a law, because the company still is private property of the owners.
First off, since when is South Africa a military regime, or a dictatorship? They were the ones sued by 38 major pharmecutical companies for threatening to produce AIDS drugs that their people could actually afford. Furthermore, how do poor countries become rich enough to pay 30,000 a year on AIDS drugs when AIDS crushes them economically? Something HAS to be done about it now, because it's just going to get worse without it. I'm all for economic self sufficiency, which is precisely why situations in Sudan and Ethiopia are tragic. It's been shown that both were largely economically able to provide for their needs before they were pushed into the global export market by the World Bank and the IMF. If they wouldn't have been pushed to convert to an export economy, where much of the food they produced had to be sold for next to nothing to compete with highly industrialized farm sectors of other countries.
South Africa? Who ever said anything about South africa? You mentioned Sudan and Ethiopia, who both have been afflicted with war, and Sudan is a military regime.
This is a whole different issue. They are in more acute need of catastrophy help than in the political structures, but in the long term, political structures need to change for them to be able to build up their country. Also, IMF & world bank != capitalism. Noone's defending them. They have done many mistakes. Capitalism doesn't force anyone to anything. If they don't want to export their goods, they don't have to. It's that simple. Demanding that they do is against the idea of capitalism.
So that you could have people in another country creating just as much in terms of production, but leaving you with a larger share of the profits? That seems to be what's been happening globally over the past 25 years. In countries where there is an excess of labor, you don't have to treat them well, or even enough to survive, in order to keep people streaming in. When it comes to sweatshop work, most people will do it to avoid starving, even if it means starving all the same, just at a slower rate.
Nobody treated us well in the west either 100 years ago. Children working was the norm. But with economic growth, the problem grew away. The third world now goes through what we went through 100 years ago. We are doing these countries a horrible disservice when we try to stop companies from moving into the third world. You shouldn't compare to standards at home, but to these people's previous standard. These companies offers salaries that are 4-5 times as high as a job would give you locally. It's an enormous opportunity to these people.
That's also subjective, and depends on who you mean by "us". India achieved pretty significant economic gains in the decade or two after independence using a somewhat "socialized" system. Likewise, Nicaragua experienced very significant economic gains before it was dragged down by a decade of U.S. funded terrorism.
I'm not saying pure capitalism is always better. In fact, I believe that education should open to everyone regardless of economic status, and I think many social programs are motivated. Many of them probably increases the economic growth. But the base foundation should be capitalism, and then on top of that you can address remaining concerns. Actively working against capitalism and trying to remove it all together like some far left parties try to do will just drive the whole country into poverty.
How about decisions on whether or not to give our CEO a 10 million dollar bonus for putting 15,000 people out of work? I'm sure plenty of employees would have loved to have a hand in that decision-making process.
That's a decision that's up to those who pay the 10 million. If the owners, the stockholders, decide he's worth it, then good for them, it's their money. Not mine.
People losing jobs isn't neccesarily bad either. It depends on the reason behind it. For the individuals it's of course bad, but that doesn't mean it's bad in the great scheme of things. Maybe the market has just moved along, nobody wants to have 15,000 people producing homephones when people requests cellphones.
I'm not talking about the UN. I'm talking about capitalism as a hierarchical and undemocratic system.
The main principle in democracy is people's freedom. Capitalism is an expression of people's freedom. It may create hierachical systems, but so does all other systems, but in capitalism everyone have the ability to climb. The most important thing is that in a capitalistic system, the main deciding factor of where you end up is your skills, and it's a factor you can affect, unlike all other factors such as look, race, sex etc.
And I suppose in this case capitalists are supposed to be the sheep, and the rest of us wolves?
It was just an example without any deeper meaning, but if you like, you could interpret it that way.
That's a hell of alot better than what you have in the U.S. Large swaths of people recieve zero representation, because of the winner-take-all style of American Politics. If you want to win an election, you have to throw your support to whatever democrat or republican misrepresents you the least. Money is used by an incredibly small portion of the population to influence elections, (I believe it's 1/10th of 1% of the U.S. population makes 83% of campaign contributions). If you look at the "who would you vote for" thread, you'll notice that most people who will probably vote for Kerry are actually more aligned politically with Kucinich. Says something about how much more representative your system is than ours, (and frankly, how much better both of them are than what we have right now in terms of economic representation).
Well, so it's worse at your place. Don't make our system a gold standard. There are always problems, but defining a set of universal rights helps getting around some of the problems.
I've always said the left/right political scale doesn't make sense. The two extremes are more like each other than the center. Both are authoritarian and strives to control humans in two different ways, while liberalisms strives towards freedom.