The tipping point is just a few years out

wturber said:
Agreed. But frequently they are not the best solution and they over-reach in their influence and effect. But that will be the ongoing debate in a probably necessary mixed system. People will tend to disagree on what the best mix is based on their own personal biases.
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Definitely. And I'd go further and say that any pure -ism, whether it is capitalism, socialism, communism, libertarianism etc is a bad idea. The strength of the US system is that it uses bits and pieces of each ideology/governmental system/philosophy rather than follow one ideologically pure plan for better or worse.

For example, we say we are a democracy. But not many of our laws are decided via a purely democratic vote; our government is much closer to a republic, and the will of the people cannot override our Constitution as it could in a pure democracy (at least, not without a very large amount of effort and time, and close to 100% consensus.) And that's a good thing.

People talk about how we have a capitalist society here, but it's closer to a Keynesian economy where the government plays an active role in regulating the economy. In addition, we have significant segments of the economy that are purely socialist, like the public road system, the airspace system, the military and the like. We even have communism; our national parks are considered to be owned by everyone and merely administered by the government (communal ownership.)

All these compromises, IMO, tend to blunt the worst parts of each philosophy. We take the best parts of democracy and blunt the worst parts (mob rule, loss of rights for minorities.) We take the best parts of capitalism while trying to avoid the worst parts (poor regulation of economic output in a free market, anti-competitive practices by large companies.) And that, overall, is a good thing.

To circle back around to the original topic, the success of the electric car so far has had a lot to do with government intervention (funding of research, purchase incentives, driving incentives.) But as subsidies run out and HOV lanes get crowded those interventions die out, and the industry must stand on its own as a profitable endeavor - and that is starting to happen as well. That seems like a good compromise.
 
Joe Rogan on his pod cast was stating how his new Tesla P100D is better then his previous love, his Porsche. Wish I could test drive it like any ole car at the stealership, would be lots of fun!
 
markz said:
Joe Rogan on his pod cast was stating how his new Tesla P100D is better then his previous love, his Porsche. Wish I could test drive it like any ole car at the stealership, would be lots of fun!
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The first time I drove a Tesla was in 2010 in Denver. We stopped by the dealership and we talked to the dealer for 20 minutes. After that he said "so you want to test drive it?" I wasn't aware you could even do that. So I said "sure!"

I was with my wife, and all they had at that point was the Tesla Roadster (a 2 seater) so he had me drive around the block with him once, then got out so my wife could get in and said "bring it back in an hour."

We had a lot of fun.
 
Hillhater said:
Bill, All your examples are the result of a Capitalist system
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You're confusing him. He's trying to prove that government is the way. Like NASA, nevermind it's all done by private contractors. So when I was learning to fly not only was the school NOT government, but even the checkride was no government official involved. So much for the FAA proving that government provides the best services. I'm still waiting to hear something about communism ever actually succeeding. There was public land referred to as "The Commons" so many centuries before there was communist thought.

An "Ism" that is built from the beginning on the principle that violence is part of it is NOT toxic? As Mr. Spock would say, "Fascinating." I guess actually reading the original source material with their calls to violence that started it all with these movements would be boring in comparison to such flights of fancy.

Don't know what to think of arsenic as "Essential." It can kill you in as little as 2 hours. Napoleon Bonaparte and others died from living in rooms where the wallpaper was emitting a very slight arsenic vapor. The reason it is classified as a carcinogen is that even though it passes out of your system in less than a day continued exposure to it causes various types of cancer. Amounts of arsenic from your private well water or from eating rice everyday can be dangerous.

But I'll just say, if GOVERNMENT tries to force this tipping point, as they keep attempting to do, that'll really screw up everything. When government screws things up, it's really hard to fix it. Kind of like how all the kings horses and all the kings men let Humpty Dumpty down in his time of need.
 
Dauntless said:
Hillhater said:
Bill, All your examples are the result of a Capitalist system
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You're confusing him. He's trying to prove that government is the way. Like NASA, nevermind it's all done by private contractors.
Click to expand...

Saying that the work was done by private contractors rather misses the point - which is that the financing was arranged and provided for by government. That's what makes NASA and its endeavors non-capitalistic. The private contractors do not control the projects. The group with the purse-strings controls them. Furthermore, the endeavors were motivated mostly by government goals, not private ones.

Dauntless said:
So when I was learning to fly not only was the school NOT government, but even the checkride was no government official involved. So much for the FAA proving that government provides the best services.
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That's quite the straw man of an argument. Who is it that suggests that the government provides the best services? I know of almost nobody who does. What their arguments generally are are that the government must intercede to ensure that some particular service or standard of service is delivered. They would not necessarily argue that the FAA is needed to provide the actual training. But they would argue that the FAA is necessary to establish rules for safe air travel that include defining airspace, qualifying aircraft for airworthiness, ensuring that pilots have received the appropriate level of training before allowing them to operate aircraft, etc.

Dauntless said:
I'm still waiting to hear something about communism ever actually succeeding. There was public land referred to as "The Commons" so many centuries before there was communist thought.
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As an overarching system, communism is doomed. It can't succeed in anything close to a pure form because its fundamental goal of a classless society is such a poor match for that nature of human beings.

Dauntless said:
An "Ism" that is built from the beginning on the principle that violence is part of it is NOT toxic? As Mr. Spock would say, "Fascinating." I guess actually reading the original source material with their calls to violence that started it all with these movements would be boring in comparison to such flights of fancy.
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Communism requires forceful coercion precisely because the idea is such a poor match for human nature. Even people who might claim to advocate it will find themselves working against it. It is in their nature to do so.

Dauntless said:
Don't know what to think of arsenic as "Essential." It can kill you in as little as 2 hours. Napoleon Bonaparte and others died from living in rooms where the wallpaper was emitting a very slight arsenic vapor. The reason it is classified as a carcinogen is that even though it passes out of your system in less than a day continued exposure to it causes various types of cancer. Amounts of arsenic from your private well water or from eating rice everyday can be dangerous.
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This should give you some insight on arsenic as possibly being essential.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2246629/

Dauntless said:
But I'll just say, if GOVERNMENT tries to force this tipping point, as they keep attempting to do, that'll really screw up everything. When government screws things up, it's really hard to fix it. Kind of like how all the kings horses and all the kings men let Humpty Dumpty down in his time of need.
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Anytime that you find yourself advocating the initiation of force against others in order achieve some goal, you should think twice. No - make that thrice ... or more. Maybe the goals can be accomplished differently - perhaps with a "social nudge." I've long thought it incredible that we draft young men and force them to fight for "freedom." And, of course, once we give the government the power of conscription, it is no surprise at how often the fights that we throw these young men into seem to have little to do with freedom and much more has something to do with some other political or private purpose.

All of the "isms" are imperfect. Though some are just horrendously horrible. Their advocates generally try to sell them as some kind of utopian solution. But I'm convinced that there is no utopian solution. There are only imperfect solutions than others. Though some are generally much better than others. One of the main advantages of capitalism is that is based on voluntary cooperation. That makes it a very good match for humans. But just because it is a good match, we shouldn't conclude that it is a perfect one. But I do consider it to be the best place to start.
 
wturber said:
One of the main advantages of capitalism is that is based on voluntary cooperation. That makes it a very good match for humans. But just because it is a good match, we shouldn't conclude that it is a perfect one. But I do consider it to be the best place to start.
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Humans are capable of improving themselves, but capitalism disincentivizes it.
 
Hillhater said:
Chalo said:
Humans are capable of improving themselves, but capitalism disincentivizes it.
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Can you explain that statement ?
I would say that Capitalism encourages humans to improve themselves.
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A working to improve yourself society only works when you can actually climb the tree if you try, when only 5% live at the top of the tree and the middle class is becoming smaller most think I'm at the bottom now so why try hard and end up back at the beginning I'll just rob a bank or sell drugs as morals these days are in short supply.
 
Hillhater said:
Chalo said:
Humans are capable of improving themselves, but capitalism disincentivizes it.
Click to expand...
Can you explain that statement ?
I would say that Capitalism encourages humans to improve themselves.
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Capitalism incentivizes people to enrich themselves, without regard for the effects that might have on others. Things like compassion, stewardship, sharing, conservation, the benefit of the whole, contentment, fulfillment, balance, sustainability, and true self-expression are all set aside under capitalism in favor of the principle of MORE.

If you don't see how that disincentivizes people improving themselves, I can't help you. But here's a hint-- winning is not the same as improving.
 
Hillhater said:
Can you explain that statement ?
I would say that Capitalism encourages humans to improve themselves.
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Capitalism encourages humans to acquire money.

If you are a medical researcher, and you cure lung cancer and give away the cure, you are a failure from a capitalist perspective. If you are a banker, and garner great wealth from evicting families for any minor breach of a mortgage agreement, you are successful from a capitalist perspective.

Likewise, if you dedicate your life to learning about genetics, oncology and biochemistry in pursuit of such cures, you will likely make less money than someone who dedicates their lives to becoming better at personal injury lawsuits.

Capitalism is a very poor standard to measure improvement in a human being. Indeed, often capitalist success indicates the opposite. Capitalism is merely an economic system that's not as bad as any of the other ones.
 
Chalo said:
Hillhater said:
Chalo said:
Humans are capable of improving themselves, but capitalism disincentivizes it.
Click to expand...
Can you explain that statement ?
I would say that Capitalism encourages humans to improve themselves.
Click to expand...

Capitalism incentivizes people to enrich themselves, without regard for the effects that might have on others. Things like compassion, stewardship, sharing, conservation, the benefit of the whole, contentment, fulfillment, balance, sustainability, and true self-expression are all set aside under capitalism in favor of the principle of MORE.

If you don't see how that disincentivizes people improving themselves, I can't help you. But here's a hint-- winning is not the same as improving.
Click to expand...

A socialist will simply expect more, because that's what more MEANS. But it disincentivises EVERYTHING. Read 'The Barefoot Attorney,' which included the account of the mob assault on the Chinese picker who was working too hard. They didn't want to be expected to work as hard as he was. This during the mass starvation of the Cultural Revolution, where so many of the pickers were being forced to work in foundries for the metal the government used to make weapons to send to Africa for the Africans to kill each other and whatever Europeans were around. If they tried to harvest instead they were shot. For the good of the whole. Was that compassion, or was it stewardship. I guess you could say the harvest was conserved, left out in the field like that. The deaths of over 100 million under Mao was certainly a sustained drive.

What is the incentive really in the Soviet Union cutting off food to the people the government decided they didn't need anymore? The crime of sneaking food into these areas, where is the self improvement. There is NO economic system that fits what you're saying. That's more like a religion. The closest to it is capitalism, where if you don't do your part, you're on your own.

Another hint. Whining is not the same as improving.

CE7Nz2eUMAAIqvS.jpg
 
Why is it a person who would refuse to be called a Fascist (I wouldn't want that either) will conflate socialism with despotic communism?
 
Grantmac said:
Why is it a person who would refuse to be called a Fascist (I wouldn't want that either) will conflate socialism with despotic communism?
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It is a common Internet approach to "winning" a difficult argument - conflate the opponent's view with something really bad, then argue against that instead of the opponent's view. "What? You like Nazi supporters like Trump? I can't believe you support Nazis!"
 
"See, you're back to designing people's lives around personal cars, rather than the other way around. Already, folks in real cities are choosing off-hours commutes to avoid being stuck in traffic for with self-defeating shnooks and their self-imposed problems. "

That's making the assumption that cities will continue to hold large percentages of the population, even for part of the day (in the face of many of them going underwater, terrorism(easy in high population density) pandemics)...Many jobs now don't even require you be present, telecommuting would work for about half the jobs in any city. That will probably shift even further as automation takes over skilled manufacturing. At city level population density, mass transit(or maybe bikes) is the only thing that makes sense, robot cars won't help anything but parking (and pollution if they are electric)

Move outside the city( even if you encourage "village" living and discourage widely spaced "Mall" type service centers) and a car in your drive is the only realistic transport solution. You can't get a taxi (even a robot one) to a suburban/rural home in less than 20 minutes, reliably. I'm halfway home (with the plumbing part I couldn't wait two days for) by that time.
 
billvon said:
... And I'd go further and say that any pure -ism, whether it is capitalism, socialism, communism, libertarianism etc is a bad idea. The strength of the US system is that it uses bits and pieces of each ideology/governmental system/philosophy rather than follow one ideologically pure plan for better or worse.
Click to expand...

Except we now have fundamentalists in charge who have every intention of thwarting those "checks and balances" you hold dear. To wit:

  • https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/2/25/1837456/-Trump-s-attorney-general-wants-god-s-moral-order-enforced-by-government

From the largest department to the smallest, we currently have a boatload of foxes within Government guarding the henhouse. This is bad people. Wake up.

M
 
Grantmac said:
Why is it a person who would refuse to be called a Fascist (I wouldn't want that either) will conflate socialism with despotic communism?
Click to expand...

Umm, a person would refuse be to called a fascist if he wasn't a fascist, so that's to be expected of any nonfascist. Meanwhile, communism IS a form of socialism, as is fascism. Since most of the intellectual thought on forcing socialism on people is despotic, there's a basic singularity there which throws combining, er "Conflating," out the window. In short, the answer to the question is because it's the right thing to do. Except you can't 'Conflate' what are already components.

So just a few years after the 'French Commune' where the socialists rose up and killed some 20,000 people in two weeks, the American socialists had a 10,000 man parade singing “La Marseillaise.” This was a celebration of railroad workers killing some hundreds and blowing up 2,000 buildings, engines, passenger and cargo cars in riots. Not a tipping point most wanted, but they only wanted their own way. Despots on the rise. . . .
 
MJSfoto1956 said:
Well you have your choice: Capitalist Despots or Unionist Despots. One has a proven history of being a boon for the middle class. The other, not so much.
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Yep. Take your choice of which kind of oppression you want - the oppression of rich capitalists squeezing every cent they can out of the poor and middle class, or the oppression of centralized planning. Our system of drawing from both seems to dull the extremes of either ideology.
 
Despotism isn't necessarily fascism and a fascist state isn't necessarily lead by a despot.
A communist cannot be a fascist state simply because they exist on the polar ends if the political spectrum.
To call anything on the left fascism is the definition of conflating two opposites. Capitalism in the form it's taken in the US is however extremely close to a fascist state, moderated only by the socialist safeguards which are being fought for by some of our elected officials.
 
Grantmac said:
Despotism isn't necessarily fascism and a fascist state isn't necessarily lead by a despot.
A communist cannot be a fascist state simply because they exist on the polar ends if the political spectrum.
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Dauntless isn't using the normal definition of fascism. He is using the Orwellian definition - "that which I believe is bad."
 
billvon said:
Our system of drawing from both seems to dull the extremes of either ideology.
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Except that our system is no longer "drawing from both" -- Reagan ushered in the wholesale slaughter of Unions and today only a tiny fraction of the American workforce is union. In my book, this "lack of competition" from the unions is what has caused the middle class to lose ground. While I'm wary of unions, I think we are so out of whack here in the USA that we could use a couple of generations of rebuilding the unions so as to keep the vulture capitalists honest.
 
MJSfoto1956 said:
Except that our system is no longer "drawing from both" -- Reagan ushered in the wholesale slaughter of Unions and today only a tiny fraction of the American workforce is union.
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Right. Part of the reason we have fewer unions are all the workplace protections we have now. Keep in mind that unions were formed because of the abuses of employers - the company store, brutal working hours, unsafe conditions, no medical care after injuries, no support after being fired etc. We had business owners nailing fire doors shut. We had Heck, we had actual, literal slavery here in the US for almost 100 years - and a system of segregation after that that kept blacks in low paid jobs.

The first reaction to all of the above was to form unions, so that employees would have more bargaining (and voting) power. They used the barganining power to force employers to treat them better, lest they lose most of their work force. They used their voting power to effect change in government.

Those changes have now taken place. We have minimum wage laws to protect against companies who might otherwise underpay employees. We have OSHA that "prohibits any workplace practice that represents a clear risk to workers" - and has a lot of laws on protective equipment, work hours, employee treatment etc. We have social security for retired workers. We have unemployment benefits for fired workers. We have COBRA laws to prevent sudden loss of health insurance. We have laws that protect whistleblowers. We have family leave laws. We have laws against discrimination against minorities.

All of this has reduced the need for unions, so many of them have disappeared. Note that most of today's union actions are no longer against unsafe conditions in mines, but over getting more pay and/or benefits.

In my book, this "lack of competition" from the unions is what has caused the middle class to lose ground. While I'm wary of unions, I think we are so out of whack here in the USA that we could use a couple of generations of rebuilding the unions so as to keep the vulture capitalists honest.
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At this point I don't see the need for unions.

When your company is forcing you to shimmy down a rope to get to work in a mine? Then you desperately need unions - because while one miner has no power to effect change, 10,000 of them have a lot of power.

When your company is paying you $20 an hour instead of the $30 you want? Then your best bet is to quit and get a job with a company that pays you $30. Then _you_ have the power (as long as your skills are such that they need you, that is.)
 
billvon said:
Those changes have now taken place. We have minimum wage laws to protect against companies who might otherwise underpay employees. We have OSHA that "prohibits any workplace practice that represents a clear risk to workers" - and has a lot of laws on protective equipment, work hours, employee treatment etc. We have social security for retired workers. We have unemployment benefits for fired workers. We have COBRA laws to prevent sudden loss of health insurance. We have laws that protect whistleblowers. We have family leave laws. We have laws against discrimination against minorities.
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All true. But another thing unions did was to keep management honest. With nothing in their way to stop them, today's management is free to do anything they want -- to the detriment of shareholders, employees, partners, suppliers, and the environment. Government regulations by themselves are simply not enough. The beauty of what the framers of our constitution conceived is "balance of power" -- there NEEDS to be friction in the system for it to work properly. So all the whining from management about how "hard it is" with all these regulations and unions just reveals how mediocre the management team is.
 
MJSfoto1956 said:
All true. But another thing unions did was to keep management honest. With nothing in there way to stop them, today's management is free to do anything they want -- to the detriment of shareholders, employees, partners, suppliers, and the environment. Government regulations by themselves are simply not enough.
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To maintain a fair workplace? I agree. You still need active cooperation from both employers and employees. In my opinion, in a relatively free market (which we have) the best way to do that is via individual action. Employment is largely monopsonistic, which means that the employer has most of the power - and hence most of the regulation applies to employers, not employees. That helps to "level the playing field" so to speak.

Unions have done a lot of good for the US. They've also caused problems via abuses of their power. I have nothing against them; they are just no longer needed as much as they once were.
The beauty of what the framers of our constitution conceived is "balance of power" -- there NEEDS to be friction in the system for it to work properly. So all the whining from management about how "hard it is" with all these regulations and unions just reveals how mediocre the management team is.
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And all the whining from employees - same thing. When both sides are equally unhappy you've achieved a reasonable balance.

But to get back to the topic at hand - any new technology (EV's, computers, solar energy) is going to be disruptive, and will often be opposed by the powers that be on both sides. Both oil companies AN coal miner unions are going to come out against solar, for example. Is that good or bad? If you are a coal miner you are going to see that as good. But a better solution might be to go to school to get an NABCEP certification while your salary from the mining company lasts.
 
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