[Excelsior]

(08-09-2011 03:58 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

The state is as ignorant as you are when it comes to spending money efficiently.

I would contend that the state is in a better position to judge what is better for the nation's financial future as a whole than ordinary citizens are, given the amount of information available to them.

The only thing that could prevent that is corruption, which is the main source of state mismanagement(pork-barrel spending, rampant deregulation, faulty contracts, etc).

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If money is spent wisely by the state, it's effects are multiplied and the citizens prosper greatly.
If the money is wasted, the negative effects are multiplied.

Which means that if we concentrate on mitigating corruption (the principal source of waste), we have a system closer to the ideal. Correct?

Instead of trying to create a free-for-all and minimize the state, why not attempt to make the state better? You admit here that this would create prosperity.

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Compare that to a capitalist economy, where individual citizens are in control of their money. Citizen A wastes his cash, no one else is hurt. Citizen B profits greatly, and at least a few others will also share in his success.

Or Citizen B gets together with citizens C and D and hoards most of the wealth, leaving nothing for citizens E through Z. He lives in a capitalist society with little regulation, so there is not much preventing him from doing this by any means necessary, and nobody else is able to accumulate enough wealth or power to stop him.

Trickle down economics have not proven to work for anyone but a few at the top, as the current state of the US shows. These people, like most, are self-interested. When you make them richer, they enrich themselves first and foremost. They have no reason to care about anyone else.

I do not understand why people would expect the outcome to be any different in a capitalist system, whereby the inherent goal is to encourage self-advancement and capitalization. They have very little incentive to really spread the wealth to others and promote general social welfare, but all of the incentive to exploit others (ex. financial deregulation, sub-prime loans) and get richer.

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And, historically, state-manipulated countries always manage to fuck it up. It's so easy to make one little mistake, and bam! the economy explodes 2008 style. Wiemar Germany, USSR, Chile 1970, China 1958, (there are hundreds of other examples).

There are hundreds of examples of the free market causing the same kind of implosion, not the least of which is our own 2008 crisis.

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Issue #2: The main reason why Nordic countries like Sweeden prosper as socialist countries is because they do not have to pay for a military.

This is just not true. In terms of per-capita military expenditures, Nordic nations rank quite highly. Norway is seventh in the world, Denmark is 15th, and Sweden is 18th. They all spend more per-capita than China and Russia, and plenty of other "socialist" countries top the list (France and England in the top 10).

These states are paying for militaries, and they are paying quite dearly.

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Right now America is going bankrupt because they are trying to do both a military and welfare state.

The size of the welfare state in the US is not at all comparable to that of the USSR or to those in Western Europe.

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Issue #3: Socialist economies turn women into horrible creatures. Roosh's experience in Denmark is also common to most countries with a welfare state.

I don't buy it. Denmark is not the only socialist state in the world. Its perceived lack of attractive women in the eyes of one PUA cannot be used as an indictment upon an entire system of governance.

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Issue #4: Capitalist economies are defined by low taxation and few regulations. No country in the world meets this criteria. America has one of the highest tax rates in the world.

Not in the developed world.

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Hong Kong is an example of a capitalist city, however, and it is one of the most powerful cities on the planet.

Hong Kong is part of a communist country.

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Finally, a factual aside: America has not been less regulated since the 1970's, it has gotten 2x as bad. Ask any small business owner who's been around more than twenty years and you'll probably learn how bad our government has become.

Factual? This is entirely untrue. Their is far less in the way of financial regulation today than there was in the 1970's, and taxes are far lower as well.

Our government has less control now than it has at almost any other time in the last 100 years due to aggressive deregulation. There is no debating this.