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How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

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Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#141

Post by TimTheTinker »

tooltalk wrote: post #89
TimTheTinker wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is what socialism does. No, this is what a power-hungry dictator does. But socialism/communism creates an environment where such leaders can easily take power and thrive. That's why democracy can be so powerful - it often successfully removes the power vacuum that creates dictatorships.

There is no study which supports your belief that democracy or dictatorship is good/bad for economic growth (or political stability).

There have been evil, totalitarian nations with economic growth and political stability. While those are nice to have, some of the more important measures of a country's well-being (in more philosophical terms) are justice, freedom, truth, and moral uprightness (as opposed to corruption). By those measures, we all have a very long way to go :)

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#142

Post by throwaway37585 »

jstewartmobile wrote: post #117
throwaway37585 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain your comment?

I don't have a dog in this fight, but when I bring up some pathology of "capitalism" (like planned obsolescence for example) with one of my libertarian friends, they come back with " oh, but we're not working under -true- capitalism ", and I'm like " gee, that sounds so familiar "

Isn't the difference that, empirically, the more socialist a country becomes, the more its living standards deteriorate, while the more liberal a country becomes, the more its living standards improve?

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#143

Post by dragonwriter »

throwaway37585 wrote: post #142
jstewartmobile wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a dog in this fight, but when I bring up some pathology of "capitalism" (like planned obsolescence for example) with one of my libertarian friends, they come back with " oh, but we're not working under -true- capitalism ", and I'm like " gee, that sounds so familiar "

Isn't the difference that, empirically, the more socialist a country becomes, the more its living standards deteriorate , while the more liberal a country becomes, the more its living standards improve ?

Neither “socialist” nor “liberal” are qualities that exist on a simple total ordering such that that claim is even coherent, much less accurate, and standard of living measurements tend to be optimized for particular economic structures and not comparable across significantly different economic systems without problems.

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#144

Post by dragonwriter »

peterlk wrote: post #36
WrathOfJay wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually found this to be worth the time. I haven't paid much attention to the situation down there, and seeing it was enlightening. Onto the content... I wonder, can someone tell me why there are so many obese people in these video clips, if food is so hard to come by? Why does there seem to be so many people sitting around? Surely with so much manpower available, there are way to make them productive on a large s…

> Why does there seem to be so many people sitting around? The fundamental problem with corruption, and the reason that corrupt dictatorships do not work in practice is that people need to be able to keep the things they produce. If, say, you are hungry, you might start a community garden to feed yourself and your neighbors. However, you can only feed yourself if men with guns don't decide that the garden is actually…

> The fundamental problem with corruption, and the reason that corrupt dictatorships do not work in practice

Corrupt dictatorships do work in practice.

They don't work for the common people, but then that's kind of not the point of a corrupt dictatorship.

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#145

Post by jstewartmobile »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #120
jstewartmobile wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a dog in this fight, but when I bring up some pathology of "capitalism" (like planned obsolescence for example) with one of my libertarian friends, they come back with " oh, but we're not working under -true- capitalism ", and I'm like " gee, that sounds so familiar "

My reaction to stuff like that is "regulate it". Big businesses have to be regulated to prevent abuse... nothing wrong with that. Raise up the lowly (by giving them as much freedom as possible and leveling the field between them and the powerful), bring down the lofty (by regulating them to the extent that their power takes freedom away from the lowly)... that's the ideal economic policy as I see it :)

Sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism#Overview

Tried to post earlier, but got rate-limited for pissing off dang a while back.

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#146

Post by jstewartmobile »

throwaway37585 wrote: post #142
jstewartmobile wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a dog in this fight, but when I bring up some pathology of "capitalism" (like planned obsolescence for example) with one of my libertarian friends, they come back with " oh, but we're not working under -true- capitalism ", and I'm like " gee, that sounds so familiar "

Isn't the difference that, empirically, the more socialist a country becomes, the more its living standards deteriorate , while the more liberal a country becomes, the more its living standards improve ?

Western Europe and most of the Anglosphere are very socialistic, and do fairly well by almost every objective measure of a society. Countries like Venezuela and Argentina have been a mess under dictatorship, democracy, "economic liberalism", and "socialism".

Empirically speaking, perhaps it's not what you do, but how you do it?

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#147

Post by fallingfrog »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #66
jstewartmobile wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

libertarian edition of "we've never achieved true communism"

True communism is impossible without perfect (i.e. morally incorruptible) people. People who hate on "capitalism" are often (I think) troubled by the behavior of rich/powerful people. I am too. But the solution isn't to remove property rights.

I would have to disagree with that, because it's too broad. I would say it is true that you can't have a society with no feedbacks- in other words, consequences. Carrots and sticks. In capitalism, the most important feedback is profit. But profit as the main feedback path has obvious problems- it ignores human suffering and environmental damage and so forth. That's why pure capitalism can only exist as an abstraction. You have to put it within a very carefully designed legal system. Communism is the same way. A society where every product of industry is free, and nobody has to work, is obviously silly. However a communist society with appropriate consequences in place is completely plausible.

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#148

Post by TimTheTinker »

fallingfrog wrote: post #95
TimTheTinker wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump != capitalism Capitalism is: - freedom to own property - freedom to use or trade property you own - freedom to trade services for property or other services Of course that's not enough to create a viable society. Whatever else you add to the sauce is not capitalism, it's something else.

This is a popular misconception. All societies including feudal ones and modern socialist societies have private property. What capitalism means is that the people who own the places where people work, and the people who do the work, are not the same people. An alternative might be a society in which all the businesses were worker owned; it would still be a free market society, but since the businesses were all owned…

> All societies including feudal ones and modern socialist societies

Who says those weren’t/aren’t capitalist? By my definition they are, to the extent that they meet the criteria.

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#149

Post by TimTheTinker »

jstewartmobile wrote: post #145
TimTheTinker wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My reaction to stuff like that is "regulate it". Big businesses have to be regulated to prevent abuse... nothing wrong with that. Raise up the lowly (by giving them as much freedom as possible and leveling the field between them and the powerful), bring down the lofty (by regulating them to the extent that their power takes freedom away from the lowly)... that's the ideal economic policy as I see it :)

Sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism#Overview Tried to post earlier, but got rate-limited for pissing off dang a while back.

Wow, never heard of this before. This is pretty close to where I stand.

Guess I was wrong about the definition of “capitalism”.

Re: How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

#150

Post by maerF0x0 »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #137
jefe_ wrote: post #51

For more of a guide to surviving collapses, this essay about the 2001 Argentine Financial crisis is pure gold. I have printed several copies and read it about once a year: http://ferfal.blogspot.com/2008/10/thoughts-on-urban-surviva...

The post talks about the difference between urban vs rural survival . It talks about the kinds of brutality that can happen when help is far away and unlikely to be called. It reminds me of some of the stories found in this documentary: https://youtu.be/a_bDc7FfItk?t=21m09s . There are some brutal descriptions of attacks that happened on farmers. Note: I haven't finished watching the video and I dont want to endorse…

NB: I finished the movie and ultimately left a thumbsdown. It is informative of how horrible people can be to eachother, but IMO overall a biased documentary that isnt worth anyone's time.
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