[bhamlaxy]

They're two different things. Sure a capalitist country will have laws promoting capitalism and a communist country will have laws promoting communism, but neither works very well if you have a leader who's skimming money of the top and letting the infrastructure rot. This is what's going on in South America and Africa. It would be going on either way.

Form of government and economic system are inextricably linked. Capitalist governments do what they can to promote capitalism, whether it be through conquest of foreign countries to gain resources, the extreme link between the economy and the military, or just general laws regarding the economy.

I didn't say it was working, I said it was working better than communism. If you'll note, there are't exactly a lot of communist countries left, and those that remain are moving towards a free market. If communism works, why is this the case?

Communist countries are often mismanaged, or capitalist countries contribute to their demise. Cuba is located in a hotspot, right next to the most industrialized country in the world, yet they can't benefit at all because of a crippling embargo that continues to persist.

And they often don't work because it is impossible to compete with ruthless capitalist countries with no contempt for human rights, who subsidize goods making competition on the market nearly impossible.

Communism failed everywhere it was attempted. This is an undeniable fact. Unless you can show why all these regimes failed and how to avoid it in a future communist regime, you will have to accept that communism doesn't work.

First of all, capitalist forms of government WILL fail. We are fucked. Extreme environmental degradation for the sake of capital gains, destruction of human rights in lieu of making money, and a growing military industrial complex. Capitalism is only "working" for a minority of people, at the expense of the rest of the world. The way I see it, socialism is inevitable. The distribution of wealth will grow to an unsustainable level, and the degradation of the environment will crush the system. It's going to be a painful end, but hopefully what springs up will be much more thought out. Besides that, I haven't done much reading on socialism. I understand there are isolated places where socialism worked decently well, but besides that, most socialist systems have been hampered by opposing capitalist forces, or bad applications paired with bad systems of government.

The thing is, that's colonialism, not capitalism. Even if we were to attribute all of that to capitalism, there's nothing to suggest things wouldn't be worse under communism.

Capitalism stresses the commodification of goods and the endless drive for profit, no matter what it takes. Swoop into the low-tech country of your choice, invest as little resources into it, and extract the most amount of capital.

You can't just say capitalism is bad, therefore communism is better. Yes capitalism may be bad but communism has proven to be worse.

Some examples of communism have bad track records, but that doesn't mean you should throw it out the window. Correct application would be much better than capitalism. And I'm arguing that it is a try or die choice. Capitalism is at fault for a majority of the poverty in the world, massive amounts of death, extreme environmental degradation, and the sickening of our culture.

So because the economy collapsed due to an inability to adapt to changes, it's a bad example? Ok then how about East and West Germany? Once again we have a nation with a shared history until after world war 2. Once again we have the capitalist side doing better than the communist side. Of course East Germany was doing fine until it's economy collapsed too, wasn't it?

Not even a capitalist state could have dealt with the extreme flooding, then years of drought killing off the crops, plunging the country into disorder forcing military rule. Things were fine, they just got unlucky.

So communism would work, it's just that no one's been able to get it right? You have to accept that some things that look great on paper fail when actually applied. Communism requires too much central control. It invites abuse. Eventually you will get a Stalin or a Mao under such a system, it's just a matter of time.

Yep, no one has gotten it right, and external capitalist forces often force it into submission. Capitalism may look great on paper, but it has actually given an extreme minority a vast majority of the wealth, plunging a good half of the world into poverty.

True enough. However, it's not America's job to make sure kids in Africa have enough food. That's what they have governments for. If those governments fail to meet the needs of their people, there's nothing anyone else can do about it short of kicking them out and putting in someone who will. Even if the US were to annouce tomorrow that capitalism has failed and we're going communist it will do nothing to address those issues.

I'm arguing the unstable governments that rule these countries were caused by explicit imperialism focused on acquiring capital at the indigenous peoples expense. Unfortunately, sure, it may not be American's job to save them, but inevitably in capitalism, the drive for profit reigns supreme, and we have the US's global arm of capitalism, the world bank, which has only furthered poverty by inflicting massive amounts of debt.

Once again, that was colonialism, not capitalism. Let's not forget that the Soviets had a hand in shaping the current situation in Africa too. To attribute all the problems there to capitalism is either dishonest or ignorant.

Exactly which states did the Soviet Union come in, chop up, and drive into poverty while investing as little possible resources?

X is bad.
Y is not X.
Therefore Y is good.

I was simply stating that you seemed to admit yourself that capitalism will inevitably result in an extremely small and wealthy ruling elite, controlling a huge population stricken by poverty.

My argument is that X involves an unstoppable drive for capital, which results in imperialism, unsupportable use of resources, extreme focus on the military over other issues, and very uneven distribution of wealth, which will inevitably lead to economic collapse and destruction.

Y does not focus on imperialism, places value on the use of an item, rather than the profit it can make, thus decreasing the destruction of the environment, doesn't create a military industrial complex, and has even distribution of wealth. Even though there may be flaws, it's do or die, except for all those poor people, since many are already dead. Good job capitalism.

That's basicly your arguement. However, it's flawed. The problem is Y has been tried and has proven to be worse than x. No one is going to dispute that capitalism has serious problems. However, supporters of communism refuse to acknowledge that it too has serious problems, which tend to be worse than those under capitalism.

I already argued that North Korea failed because of extreme natural circumstances, leading to collapse and foreign rule.

Theres a few things that I'll argue about different aspects of success in the Soviet Union. First, after WWI industrial structure was in absolute shambles, there was nearly no modern infrastructure, and investments from abroad were extremely low due to fear of communist policies. Due to Stalin's policies (economic, not political), rapid industrialization happened. Life expectancy and standard of living shot up. Stalin did a damn good job when it came to the economy, it was only after his death that everything he stood for was put behind, the economy started swaying back to include some capitalist additions, not the communism of Stalin. This lead to the slow and steady destruction of the state. Things were fine until capitalism reared its ugly head. And listen, I know Stalin was a bit of a paranoid nut, and killed anyone who even thought about being a capitalist, but that is irrelevant to the state of the economy.

No one is argueing capitalism is good. People are argueing that capilatism is better than socialism. History shows this to be largely true. If no one's gotten socialism to work, isn't that a good indicator that it doesn't work? Trying the same thing over and over while expecting different results is quite frankly a sign of insanity.

We both agree that capitalism leads to increasingly more uneven distribution of wealth, ending with a poor majority and very small, very rich minority who leads. This is a recipe for death and disaster.

Colonalism is not a feature unique to capitalism.

Tell that to almost every country in Africa.

Television is misused, but to say it's garbage is missing the true potential of the medium. As an educational tool, it's potential can be rivaled only by the internet.

Television is misused because sex and violence sell. They make a profit, and whatever makes a profit is what goes in the world of capitalism. That's what the commodification of goods is all about- goods no longer matter because of what use they have, its only about if it can make money, regardless of morality.

What about books though? The same arguement could be applied there. Except for text books and a few classic novels, it's all worthless trash that sacrifices millions of trees just to appease the ignorant masses.

Hell no. Books can be used to focus on morality, philosophy, education, and entertainment. Disgusting acts of explicit sex, violence, and all that nasty shiz just go away. The only reason people crossed the line into immorality is because they want money.

Considering the alternative has proven to be worse, yes the world is better off. However, one should remember that being better off doesn't mean things don't still suck. It only means they suck a bit less then they would otherwise.

I don't understand how the alternative is worse. Capitalism works for the winners, and they are few and far between. The losers get a big "fuck you".