The Communism Thread

[Scarlet spidey]

Or, you know...you could just read the original story. It's a very short story.

Well, to be honest, I didn't know about the story until two days ago.
I like the movie, it has Samwise/Mikey in it.

 

[Scarlet spidey]

look at public transportation. I doubt the city busses are profitable actually. but they help people get to work. these said people then go out and spend money at other businsses.

It's not a black hole with dissappearing dollars. It's still a good investment.

If the government would allow competition in the public transport business I can almost assure you a way would be found to make it profitable.

 

[StorminNorman]

The problem with our trains today is that they're obsolete. Why take a train to go short distances when you have a car? Why take a train to go long distances when you can take a plane which is much faster?

You aren't going to do anything about the short distances but for long distances you can offer a method of transportation that can go over 300 MPH and is far less costly than a plane. It would be a massive success in the Northeastern Corridor and provide an environmentally safe and speedy competitive alternative to planes.

All of that is a great reason for a high speed rail line. It is NOT a good reason for a GOVERNMENT FUNDED high speed rail line.

Some progressives still believe in the free market though.

Simply impossible. The two are completely incompatible.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Public transportation is a mixed bag IMO. It can work with the proper investment that no one is willing to put in. And the areas that do have them are currently under tough financial times and public transportation is one of the first areas to get hit under budget & service cuts and fee raises, pissing off regular consumers.

 

[StorminNorman]

Public transportation is a mixed bag IMO. It can work with the proper investment that no one is willing to put in. And the areas that do have them are currently under tough financial times and public transportation is one of the first areas to get hit under budget & service cuts and fee raises, pissing off regular consumers.

Again, if the transportation was economically viable, it would be done in the private sector. A public transportation almost always becomes a money pit.

 

[hippie_hunter]

All of that is a great reason for a high speed rail line. It is NOT a good reason for a GOVERNMENT FUNDED high speed rail line.

I would be all for a privately funded one. However, no private company is going to want to put in the billions of dollars and deal with the massive government oversight with the project. Not every company is Google.

Maybe someday we'll see private companies step up. Obama is having the private sector step up for NASA after the government started rocket/satelite production. Or how we now see PMCs now being a $100 billion dollar industry. Or now we're even seeing private fire fighters. There has to be something to step up to entice these private companies to get in.

Simply impossible. The two are completely incompatible.

Take a look at A&W, he still believes in the free market even though he claims to be a socialist. Or Mr. Barack Obama who is having the private sector fill in for NASA after he pretty much crippled it. Or Bill Clinton who had a business venture in Whitewater. And various other progressive politicians who take part or invest in the private market.

They don't believe in it like you and I do, they often treat it as the bad guy, but they still believe in it to a certain extent.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Again, if the transportation was economically viable, it would be done in the private sector. A public transportation almost always becomes a money pit.

That's because of inefficient management, which unfortunately plagues most government programs.

 

[StorminNorman]

I would be all for a privately funded one. However, no private company is going to want to put in the billions of dollars and deal with the massive government oversight with the project. Not every company is Google.

Maybe someday we'll see private companies step up. Obama is having the private sector step up for NASA after the government started rocket/satelite production. Or how we now see PMCs now being a $100 billion dollar industry. Or now we're even seeing private fire fighters. There has to be something to step up to entice these private companies to get in.

Exactly. Eliminate the government oversight. Make it easy to build a railroad. And, if people want it, they will. Do the same for the space industry.

Take a look at A&W, he still believes in the free market even though he claims to be a socialist. Or Mr. Barack Obama who is having the private sector fill in for NASA after he pretty much crippled it. Or Bill Clinton who had a business venture in Whitewater. And various other progressive politicians who take part or invest in the private market.

They don't believe in it like you and I do, they often treat it as the bad guy, but they still believe in it to a certain extent.

I was mistaken, I read " capitalism" - not free market. While their "belief" in the free market is obviously hypocritical, it is true that some progressives utilizing the free market in certain situations.

That's because of inefficient management, which unfortunately plagues most government programs.

It's a consequence of government programs.

 

[Scarlet spidey]

Alright, Mr. Root Beer. I'm going to propose a challenge to you.
I want you to show me how Communism could work.
Pretend that you were elected president today, along with a communist senate majority, as well as house majority.
What sort of things would you, Mr. A&W Root Beer: Communist President of USA do to fix our problems, such as unemployment, healthcare, taxation, war, terrorism, the economy, and so on.
If elected president would you even allow there to be a Congress? Or would you take over those positions?

Also, would you allow states to secede, if they chose to?
Thank you for your time,
-Bryan
(I'm assuming you're male. Forgive me if I am incorrect.)

 

[Scarlet spidey]

I have destroyed this thread.

 

[A&W]

Alright, Mr. Root Beer. I'm going to propose a challenge to you.

I want you to show me how Communism could work.
Pretend that you were elected president today, along with a communist senate majority, as well as house majority.
What sort of things would you, Mr. A&W Root Beer: Communist President of USA do to fix our problems, such as unemployment, healthcare, taxation, war, terrorism, the economy, and so on.
If elected president would you even allow there to be a Congress? Or would you take over those positions?

Also, would you allow states to secede, if they chose to?
Thank you for your time,
-Bryan
(I'm assuming you're male. Forgive me if I am incorrect.)

What's up Bryan? Yeah I’m a dude. Based on the way you worded your post, I’m going to assume that I don’t have to worry about whether or not something is politically feasible. Hell just getting elected after coming out and calling yourself a communist is questionably feasible for the time being. From how you worded your post I’m just going to assume that congress passes everything I ask them to. Okay here it goes.

First I’m going to talk about drilling for oil. Any and all expansions of drilling will be done by the government. Or to be more exact the government hires private companies to drill for us. We get the oil. We sell the oil and use the revenue to pay down our debt for us. That oil was there for a very long time before BP's stockbrokers were tingles in their father's pants. Why should the oil belong to them? It should belong to the American people.

We legalize marijuana. Instead of allowing private corporations to sell it, who will undoubtedly promote their product, the federal government sells it. Think about it. No billboards next to schools, no magazine ads, no fancy expensive display kits at the store which increase the cost of producing the good. No promotion at all.

Without competitors the government would not need expensive fancy packaging. They could produce a few joints or a few grams in a boring little baggy for pennies and sell them for dollars. The government wouldn't just collect a few pennies in taxes, they would collect all of the revenue. That means when you buy $5 worth of pot at the store, whatever the local retailer didn’t get to keep, the government did. You could knock off a trillion dollars in debt within 10 years.

Right there for the sake of argument I was pointing out why it would be better to let the government sell it, instead of a private corporation. I wasn’t really getting into the pros and cons of legalization verses prohibition.

I’ll have to finish this post in a few hours, but I’ll quickly add the President doesn’t have the authority to do away with Congress, and no self respecting communist would want to either. As far as allowing states to secede, I would prefer that not be allowed. If the people of the state overwhelmingly wanted to secede, and the majority of the country wanted to let them, I’d say good riddance. However I believe the constitution forbids it.

I’ll be back in a bit to finish my post.

 

[Backdrifter]

Always liked this quote:

For more than fifty years, the West’s liberal intellectuals have proclaimed their love for mankind, while being bored by the rivers of blood pouring out of the Soviet Union. Professing their compassion for human suffering, they have none for the victims in Russia. Unable or unwilling to give up their faith in collectivism, they evade the existence of Soviet atrocities, of terror, secret police and concentration camps—and publish glowing tributes to Soviet technology, production and art. Posturing as humanitarians, they man the barricades to fight the “injustice,” “exploitation,” “repression,” and “persecution” they claim to find in America; as to the full reality of such things in Russia, they keep silent. - Ayn Rand

 

[StorminNorman]

While I don't agree with Rand on everything, I do quite enjoy her intellectual asskicking of 60's hippies, many of which shape the policy of the Obama administration.

 

[hippie_hunter]

What's up Bryan? Yeah I’m a dude. Based on the way you worded your post, I’m going to assume that I don’t have to worry about whether or not something is politically feasible. Hell just getting elected after coming out and calling yourself a communist is questionably feasible for the time being. From how you worded your post I’m just going to assume that congress passes everything I ask them to. Okay here it goes.

First I’m going to talk about drilling for oil. Any and all expansions of drilling will be done by the government. Or to be more exact the government hires private companies to drill for us. We get the oil. We sell the oil and use the revenue to pay down our debt for us. That oil was there for a very long time before BP's stockbrokers were tingles in their father's pants. Why should the oil belong to them? It should belong to the American people.

We legalize marijuana. Instead of allowing private corporations to sell it, who will undoubtedly promote their product, the federal government sells it. Think about it. No billboards next to schools, no magazine ads, no fancy expensive display kits at the store which increase the cost of producing the good. No promotion at all.

Without competitors the government would not need expensive fancy packaging. They could produce a few joints or a few grams in a boring little baggy for pennies and sell them for dollars. The government wouldn't just collect a few pennies in taxes, they would collect all of the revenue. That means when you buy $5 worth of pot at the store, whatever the local retailer didn’t get to keep, the government did. You could knock off a trillion dollars in debt within 10 years.

Right there for the sake of argument I was pointing out why it would be better to let the government sell it, instead of a private corporation. I wasn’t really getting into the pros and cons of legalization verses prohibition.

I’ll have to finish this post in a few hours, but I’ll quickly add the President doesn’t have the authority to do away with Congress, and no self respecting communist would want to either. As far as allowing states to secede, I would prefer that not be allowed. If the people of the state overwhelmingly wanted to secede, and the majority of the country wanted to let them, I’d say good riddance. However I believe the constitution forbids it.

I’ll be back in a bit to finish my post.

Just so you know government owned oil companies such as Venezuela's PDVSA and Russia's Gazprom are utterly and horribly inefficient.

 

[A&W]

Just so you know government owned oil companies such as Venezuela's PDVSA and Russia's Gazprom are utterly and horribly inefficient.

Well what we should do then is hire the most brilliant economists and minds in the industry to lay out a blueprint that is efficent. Somtimes politicians come up with horrible ideas that are horribly planned out and then horribly executed, and sometimes they do the opposite. Remember government run schools in the United States are less than adequate, while government run schools in China are some of the best in the world.

When the plan is laid out then we can listen to what the nation's economists have to say about it before we should decide to move forward. It is not unreasonable to worry that the people in power might not run it properly. If a plan was put in front of us, and econmists didn't like it, then we should scrap it and go back to the drawing board, before we do anything else.

I do believe that when you add up the number of tax payers who would benefit from socialized oil, and compare it to the number of millionaries created by private drilling, a larger number of people would benefit from socialized oil then private drilling. In the end we still get to keep the money after all. We'd be buying the gas from ourselves.

 

[A&W]

Again, if the transportation was economically viable, it would be done in the private sector. A public transportation almost always becomes a money pit.

You have to consider something else. What is economically viable to the country is not always the same thing that is economically viable to one private corporation.

Public transportation isn't about making profit off of the bus or the train. It's about helping Americans get back and forth to work. Something like that is very valuable to the nation as a whole. Getting people to work and increasing their job options makes for a competitive job market. It decreases our dependancy on foreign oil, and even the cost of oil. It gets people off of unemployment and back on the pay roll. It gets people paying taxes, which in itself pays for part of the costs of running public transportation.

All you have considered so far is whether or not the revenue from the number of tickets sold adds up to more than it costs to run the train. There is a lot more money than that to take into consideration.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Well what we should do then is hire the most brilliant economists and minds in the industry to lay out a blueprint that is efficent. Somtimes politicians come up with horrible ideas that are horribly planned out and then horribly executed, and sometimes they do the opposite. Remember government run schools in the United States are less than adequate, while government run schools in China are some of the best in the world.

When the plan is laid out then we can listen to what the nation's economists have to say about it before we should decide to move forward. It is not unreasonable to worry that the people in power might not run it properly. If a plan was put in front of us, and econmists didn't like it, then we should scrap it and go back to the drawing board, before we do anything else.

I do believe that when you add up the number of tax payers who would benefit from socialized oil, and compare it to the number of millionaries created by private drilling, a larger number of people would benefit from socialized oil then private drilling. In the end we still get to keep the money after all. We'd be buying the gas from ourselves.

1. The best and the brightest of the oil industry aren't going to want to work for the government. The private sector pays far more and provides better benefits.

2. With the United States government investing more and more into eco-friendly technology, it makes no sense to create an oil company.

3. Running schools and running billion dollar companies are two very different things.

4. The United States already owns a couple of companies: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Amtrak, the US Postal Service, Chrysler, and General Motors are run rather ineffectively. What makes you think that they would run an oil company effectively.

5.

 

[hippie_hunter]

You have to consider something else. What is economically viable to the country is not always the same thing that is economically viable to one private corporation.

Public transportation isn't about making profit off of the bus or the train. It's about helping Americans get back and forth to work. Something like that is very valuable to the nation as a whole. Getting people to work and increasing their job options makes for a competitive job market. It decreases our dependancy on foreign oil, and even the cost of oil. It gets people off of unemployment and back on the pay roll. It gets people paying taxes, which in itself pays for part of the costs of running public transportation.

All you have considered so far is whether or not the revenue from the number of tickets sold adds up to more than it costs to run the train. There is a lot more money than that to take into consideration.

But you can't just have something being a black hole of money. Especially in today's economic times. Have you been paying attention at all to what debt is doing to Europe?

Have you also considered that people don't want to use public transportation in its current form?

 

[StorminNorman]

You have to consider something else. What is economically viable to the country is not always the same thing that is economically viable to one private corporation.

No, it's not. Profit is proft, losses are losses. Never has the public sector proved to be more efficient in economic measures than the private sector.

Public transportation isn't about making profit off of the bus or the train. It's about helping Americans get back and forth to work. Something like that is very valuable to the nation as a whole. Getting people to work and increasing their job options makes for a competitive job market. It decreases our dependancy on foreign oil, and even the cost of oil. It gets people off of unemployment and back on the pay roll. It gets people paying taxes, which in itself pays for part of the costs of running public transportation.

All you have considered so far is whether or not the revenue from the number of tickets sold adds up to more than it costs to run the train. There is a lot more money than that to take into consideration.

Except that you still have to pay for the thing. For example, the railline they are starting in Florida is one of the greatest wastes out there. They are starting 2.6 billion dollars worth of work on a rail line that will take 6+ billion dollars with no plans on paying for the rest of it.

When the government takes on tasks it was not meant to do - like provide Americans with transportation - it becomes a money pit. Overtime, the increasing number of such programs leads to the economic problems we have today.

Want an example of public transportation? Amtran, and it's constantly in the red.

You are a communist because you don't grasp the full picture. It's understandable.

 

[Paradoxium]

Hong Kong also sez hi

 

[Hobodeluxe]

you see the problem with something as big as say the interstate system or a high speed rail system or public transit in any event is it's not "profitable" per say to the private operator of the line because the initial cost of development and the upkeep makes it hard or impossible to make a profit. especially in the short term (which is what we are all about now no one wants to invest in something that doesn't pay off in a decade or two) but the benefit to a community /society would be worth the investment for the govt because to the increased tax revenue because this allow people to work and shop more easily.

look at the interstate system and the commerce it allows. the dam systems that create living spaces out of deserts and farmland out of flood plains. plus provide electricity. not everything "socialist" or "communal" is bad. most of the construction and design is done by private contractors anyway.

 

[A&W]

No, it's not. Profit is proft, losses are losses. Never has the public sector proved to be more efficient in economic measures than the private sector.



Except that you still have to pay for the thing. For example, the railline they are starting in Florida is one of the greatest wastes out there. They are starting 2.6 billion dollars worth of work on a rail line that will take 6+ billion dollars with no plans on paying for the rest of it.

When the government takes on tasks it was not meant to do - like provide Americans with transportation - it becomes a money pit. Overtime, the increasing number of such programs leads to the economic problems we have today.

Want an example of public transportation? Amtran, and it's constantly in the red.

You are a communist because you don't grasp the full picture. It's understandable.

I don't really feel like responding to most of this, but I will respond to the last part. communism is all about the full picture. That's why I mentioned all the parts of the parts of the picture you neglected to look at. communism is all about central planning. It's about having social scientists and economists look at ALL of the data. Communism is all about the full picture.

I can't comment on that specific rail. I haven't even said that I support any specific rail. I was merely pointing out that there were other factors you hadn't considered.

 

[A&W]

But you can't just have something being a black hole of money. Especially in today's economic times. Have you been paying attention at all to what debt is doing to Europe?

Have you also considered that people don't want to use public transportation in its current form?

Make up your mind Hippie. I was defending your position.

 

[A&W]

Just so you know government owned oil companies such as Venezuela's PDVSA and Russia's Gazprom are utterly and horribly inefficient.

Often times government run programs seem inefficent when compared to the private sector only, because companies like BP cut corners to save money.

BP is the perfect example of how the private sector can be efficent. They cut corners to save money even when it's not in the best interest of the world.

 

[StorminNorman]

I don't really feel like responding to most of this, but I will respond to the last part. communism is all about the full picture. That's why I mentioned all the parts of the parts of the picture you neglected to look at. communism is all about central planning. It's about having social scientists and economists look at ALL of the data. Communism is all about the full picture.

I can't comment on that specific rail. I haven't even said that I support any specific rail. I was merely pointing out that there were other factors you hadn't considered.

Communism is about the full picture - in theory. In reality it's about economic incompetence and the slaughter of innocents.