Blow Up the Tax Code and Start Over

[ERICOPOLY]

Why is "pure capitalism" an acceptable thing to say...

 

I've seen several times on this board people refer to comments like "in pure capitalism"...  blah blah blah...

 

That's obviously a reference to the idea that capitalism lies on a spectrum from very pure to hardly exists.

 

Yet you guys all believe that communism is only 100% or bust?  I'm not getting the disconnect here.  Explain.  It's clearly not 100% or bust.  It's also a spectrum.

 

This is weird twilight zone stuff -- you really think it's a 100% thing?

 

Is somebody a 100% Democrat?  Is somebody a 100% Republican?  Have you ever met somebody like me who takes some from one party, and some from another, and yet takes other things from other parties and forms a conglomeration of viewpoints?  Take the best of each one and yet identify with none of them 100%?  Well, you've just met your first -- me.

 

 

I think you guys are hung up on the word "communist" because you grew up watching Red Dawn and listening to Ronal Reagan.

 

Does it read better if you replace every reference to "relatively more communism" with "relatively less capitalism"?  Does that eliminate the "bias" for you?  Ironically, who is showing bias here??

 

I indeed think that the concept of 100% free market is exactly the same nonsense as Communism. They are both fictitious non realistic ideas.

 

That's why they have to be spectrums in order to be useful in the lexicon.

 

Nothing can be labeled "communist" because there is no pure communism observable everywhere.

 

Hence the reason why I put it on a spectrum...

 

But beware... don't dare point this out or people will jump all over you like RB did for me.

 

Relative communism isn't inherently bad -- you are taking parts that you like (sharing of fruits of labor) but still providing incentives (letting people retain a portion of their income, which amounts to a lot of money if they have a large income).

 

So why the pissing match over the term?  It's just the same coin as relative capitalism, but nobody gets pissed about that term even though it implies something that isn't true capitalism (and the parts that aren't capitalism are the communist parts... but shhhh... nobody is allowed to talk about that).

[rb]

Is there anybody who's a linguist with a flare for value investing around here? I think he or she may be able to help.

[ERICOPOLY]

Here is an article for you that dares to call China "not very" communist.  Hmm... sounds like they believe it's on a spectrum.

 

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/07/how_communist_is_china.html

 

[wachtwoord]

Wow Eric, you have lot of patience. Eric's not even defending any ideology here, he's just stating hard cold (undeniable) facts and he gets this much resistance?

[ERICOPOLY]

Since people are so certain of what communism is...

 

go tell Plato that he needs a linguist to tell him to stop talking about communism of wives.

 

http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/political-science/platos-theory-of-communism-including-2-forms-of-communism/40134/

 

Plato!  That's not communism!

 

I'll reiterate that what you think of as communism is the implementations that you've been exposed to.

 

Read the section on "communism of property":

 

Plato’s communism of property is in no way related to the modern communism or socialism because there was no mention of socialization of the means of production. Plato’s approach was mainly concerned with one factor of produc­tion, that is, property that has to be socialized.

 

This should be eye opening -- that communism can be applied in some areas and not others.  So a thing like an estate tax can be a form of communism of property (a mild form) but that can exist without being alongside every facet of communism as you know it.  In that sense, it can be a relatively less communist society as compared to a fully communist society.

 

Even in Plato's idea the artisans were allowed to have a controlled range of varying amounts of property, whereas the rulers had to surrender theirs.  In our own United States, the incomes of the politicians are relatively small (the President of the US for example might earn less than a typical CEO despite his great important role as one of the "rulers").  Limiting the incomes of the rulers is borrowing a bit from Plato's ideals of communism.  And controlling the incomes of the artisans is a bit like progressive taxation.

[Liberty]

Well, if we're talking about "somewhats" and "spectrums", the US is also somewhat utopian, somewhat anarchic, and somewhat libertarian.

[rkbabang]

Well, if we're talking about "somewhats" and "spectrums", the US is also somewhat utopian, somewhat anarchic, and somewhat libertarian.

 

 

Yes it is.  If it isn't 100% authoritarian how could it not be?

 

I have a Chinese neighbor in his 70's who is fascinating to talk to.  He's lived in China, Tawain, South Korea, England (got his PH.D. there), spent decades in Canada where he met his wife and got married, and has lived in the U.S. for the last 25 years.  He says it cracks him up when conservatives in the U.S. call China "communist", he says that he tells them that the U.S. is more communist than China.  He tells them, if the U.S. isn't communist how come I pay for your kids schooling?  Go try to tell your boss in China that you are sick and can't come in to work today and see what that gets you, or that you've worked more than 40 hours and want overtime, or that you'd like to take a vacation, or that you are not happy with your working conditions!    He tells them that in the U.S. if you are poor your government gives you food and shelter, go be a poor person in China and see what your government gives you.  He goes on and on like this almost forever.  Everything is a spectrum, you can't talk absolutes.

 

There are three types of systems that for lack of better words could be described as "communism", "fascism", and "capitalism".

 

Communism is where the government owns and runs something, such as the public schools in the U.S. or the post office.

 

Fascism (not Nazism, it has nothing to do with jews or ovens) is the system where property and businesses are privately owned, but heavily taxed, regulated, licensed, and controlled by the central authority (i.e. government).

 

Capitalism, is where the central authority (if it exists at all) allows free and open unregulated trade.

 

Each country (or even each city in each country) could be given a percentage for each of the three categories that add up to 100%. 

 

For the U.S.:

 

The communist aspects are public transportation( subways, city buses, Amtrak, commuter rail, etc), the US post office, welfare, food stamps, public housing, the national defense (and too often offense), the justice/tort system, policing, fire protection (in most places, some places still have private fire companies), public schooling, etc....  So maybe 10%

 

The fascist aspects. Just about everything else.  There is no completely unregulated, unlicensed, untaxed, free trade in the US except in the black & gray markets.  So maybe close to 90%.

 

Capitalist, this used to be much higher but I'd put it at almost 0% now.

 

 

EDIT:  Upon re-reading my scales aren't perfect, I am not taking into account the harshness of the regulations, the enthusiasm of the enforcement, nor the brutality of the punishments.  Two countries both with 90% fascism on my scale, could be very different places.

 

I guess in addition to the type of system scales you need a corruption scale and a police-state scale to get a full picture.

 

 

[APG12]

Is there anybody who's a linguist with a flare for value investing around here? I think he or she may be able to help.

 

Yes, there is!  ;D

 

Short answer: Ericopoly is right.

 

Long answer:

 

This is a philosophical question from the branch of epistemology.

 

Communism is not a continuum but a single state where all of the productive assets in the economy are publicly owned.

 

Thing is, social democracy  is something that actually exists and with relative success while "communism" is a fictitious idea, a made-up name for something that has never existed other than perhaps a fantasy world in a book. Not even in Russia where it was Leninism or whatever, and for sure not in China, at any point.

 

The same thing could be said about the concept 'triangle', or any concept for that matter. If you were to zoom in on any triangle you would find that it either has another side, or a slight bend on one side, or some imperfection that would render it a non-triangle according to the definition: "a plane figure with three straight sides and three angles". Heck, even a 'straight side' doesn't exist anywhere in reality. Thus, you could say, 'triangle' is a fictitious idea, a made-up name for something that has never existed. Plato's answer to this paradox (called the problem of universals) was to arbitrarily posit the existence of another dimension in which these perfect forms reside. Thankfully, we've advanced past that!

 

All concepts are formed by recognizing that (at least) three existents share a conceptual common denominator, or a characteristic by which the existents are commensurable but differ quantitatively. So for example, imagine two different sized triangles and a square drawn on a piece of paper. All three share the conceptual common denominator

of 'shape' but differ quantitatively across the spectrum of number of sides. To form the concept triangle, a person would need to notice the similarity of the two triangles. This would be impossible if the person only had two triangles to look at. However, the square acts as a foil. Recognition of similarity is recognition of relatively small difference. The two triangles stand out against the square in that they both lie close together on the spectrum of shape in contrast to the square which is far away from both.

 

That's not to say that the two triangles are exactly the same. They may be different sizes, one may be scalene and the other obtuse, etc. These differences are abstracted away by dropping the precise measurements of each triangle's non-essential characteristics and recognizing the existence of a range on the spectrum of shape to which triangles belong. The extent of the range is determined contextually.

 

For systems of government, one conceptual common denominator is the government's power to coerce its citizens. Communism and fascism, while far away on the spectrum of another conceptual common denominator (explicit government ownership of means of production), lie on the same side of the coercion spectrum- opposite capitalism. They are relatively less different from each other than they are from capitalism. Thus, you can abstract away the other differences by dropping the quantitative aspects of their non-essential characteristics and form the concept 'statism': a system of government whereby the state wields absolute power over the lives of its citizens.

 

The idea that Maoist China and The Soviet Union were not communist because the government did not own everything everywhere is akin to the idea that a triangle I draw isn't a triangle because one of the sides is a bit squigley. 'Triangle' and 'communism' are abstractions that cover a range of concrete instances in reality. Calling the Soviet Union Leninism and Maoist china Maoism instead of communism in a discussion of the merits of systems of government can result in a subversion of man's most powerful characteristic. The conceptual faculty allows us to draw universal conclusions about an unlimited number of concretes, which differ in every single specific attribute, by grouping them based on essential similarities.

 

[wachtwoord]

Not in line with the latest direction of the threat (semantics) but I'm going to leave this here:

 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-27/when-work-punished-tragedy-americas-welfare-state