I wonder if the many dozens of millions of people that he had killed were counted in that life expectancy equation?

Also if you're going to show polls taken by a population that has some of the worst freedom of speech and press laws in the history of the World, maybe take it with a pinch of salt.

This thread reminded me of a film I saw on PBS recently about life in Cuba called "Cuba's Secret Side"...

Cuba’s Secret Side

Wow! Someone is actually defending Mao...creepy. He killed more people than Stalin and Hitler combined. The Great Leap Forward only killed an estimate of 30 to 45 million people, throw in a couple thousand more murdered during the cultural revolution.

Top Ten Most Evil Dictators of All Time (in order of kill count) | Popten

LMAO. This is a total disqualifyer lol. Wow! a true Communist, that's like finding a white supremacist on the forum. Crazy!

I'm not trying to whitewash Mao. You were claiming that the people of China preferred capitalism to socialism, which is not the case. You were also using the fall of the Soviet Union as proof of capitalism's superiority, when most Russians actually want the Soviet system back.

Lol, you go Communist. To argue in favour of Communism is so preposterous to me, I'll let you have the day lol. You won the argument. All praise the glorious of Communism, were do I sign up to allow some a$$hole to have complete control over my life, lol. Take care.

I'm signing off from this thread temporarily. I don't like where this is heading and don't want to cause any trouble.

No trouble, you're just goofy.

I think a highly regulated monopoly on all goods and services would be the most fair economy. It would probably also be the death of creativity. Seems you can't solve the worlds problems without destroying diversity and culture. Conflict for the warmth of fire or some shiz.

Fair in what sense? I exist therefore gimme some of Bill Gates money kinda fair?

It wouldn't be fair at all, in fact it would be your worst F'n nightmare!

Studies have shown that a great deal of people who are in the top echolons of power are either people with extremely type A, aggressive personalities, or people who are good at articulating themselves socially (ie; bull$hitters like Trump)

If you were to nationalize everything and get rid of private enterprise, you would simply allow these people to consolidate and concentrate their power at the top like they did in the Soviet Union, and there would be no escape.

At least in a capitalist society if your boss is a dick at the Home Depot you can go work for the competition, imagine if you were stuck under one big government corporation and your only chance of escaping a dick was by transferring out.

What society needs is a strong labour movement in all sectors of society to counteract the abuses of corporate power, and in today's day and age, we have to have multinational, international unions that support workers in several countries. The only way we can bring wages back up in North America, is by bringing wages up in China and Mexico. Whether you like it or not were all in this together.

I've never understood how libertarians could think that abolishing minimum wage and allowing market competition to bring back American manufacturing would be a good idea. People in countries that have "our" outsourced jobs make next to nothing. To be competitive we would have to make comparable wages. So we'd be going back to the industrial revolution basically.

The argument is that getting rid of the minimum wage reduces unemployment, and although there is some truth to this, it does not make a substantial difference from what I have read. Of course many of these countries without a MW are premier welfare states like Denmark, but even mean lean Asian countries like Hong Kong (China) were eventually forced to bring in a minimum wage.

It's a very popular idea amongst business circles, because reducing the amount of pay to workers, means a company can cut its overhead and pay out more stock or dividents to your shareholders, or have more money to reinvest.

It's a very unpopular idea amongst labour workers, because it is effectively a slave wage if you can barely survive on it, making you more dependent upon your employer, which means they can push you harder and longer in hopes you will get that raise or promotion to get out of the doll drums. This is why I against abolishing the minimum wage. I think its shifts the power relations too much in the favour of the employer.

Anyhow, for me personally, libertarianism is similar to Marxism, in that they are both pedaling utopian bull$hit, they just have completely different views on how to get there.

I understand the gist of it, and why corporations would like it, but there being so many working class people who are so militant about the idea just seems like Stockholm Syndrome, combined with the usual knee jerk contrarianism just because those damn dirty commies think the opposite. It's like they refuse to grasp the concept that if big government will abuse its power then unelected corporations should be at least as mistrusted.

There is a strong strain libertarinism in your culture going all the way back to Thomas Jefferson.

The concept for blue collar republicans and its advocates, (Newt Gingrich, Pat Buchanan ect), has always been an anti free trade country with strict immigration that ensures prosperous manufacturing jobs for the vast majority of the population, while limiting the welfare state as much as possible. (How realistic this is? I have no idea)

Unfortunately this ideology is the complete opposite of the classical liberals, libertarians and its advocates (Koch brothers, Jeb Bush) who are the elites within the Republican party, who want more free trade and mass immigration.

This explains the civil war going on in the Republican Party right now, its basically a class war and it is why I am somewhat sympathetic to Trump, If he wins it would put the screws to the 1%. If he loses, they will undoubtly regain control of the party and find a candidate that will beat Hillary in 4 years.

Anyways I'm getting off topic. I don't get either, being poor and advocating for a no minimum wage is like running around in prison with a mini skirt on....your just asking to get fu(ked.

Pretty spot on.

Marxism and libertarianism (or liberalism) are about as different they can get. Marxism calls for the working class to take over the means of production, while libertarianism seeks to legitimize private ownership of the means of production. Marxism is aimed at the working class, while libertarianism is aimed at the middle- and upper classes.

Nah, marxism is aimed at the intellectual class who will never be the working class.

It's aimed at the working class, but that doesn't mean it hits very well.

You're a teenager. You have no real frame of reference.

I'm quite aware of that, they are at the polar opposites of the ideological spectrum economically, but they both peddle utoptian bull$hit.

I guess I should make the point I'm not all against classical liberalism, and I understand the argument of increasing the population in the United States through a North American Union with Canada and Mexico in order to remain competitive with China, the EU and India, but at the end of the day, for me, workers rights trump empire.

I wanted to get down with the utopian idealism bull$hit, and this hit my mailbox this afternoon.

Curious to see what he has to say.

http://i.imgur.com/qjdiGgRl.jpg

Yes. Because the government doesn't **** up everything it touches.

I'm all for lateral hierarchal structures and worker-operated collectives, but the nagging question which I can't resolve is how a nation without a government or private industry would achieve large-scale technological projects like internet infrastructure, big data analytical engines which empower the citizenry, complex hospital equipment for health services, etc?

Is that the utopian caveat?

I see that as kind of like using duct tape to hold together leaky pipes. It might work in the beginning, but after a while, the tape will fall off and the pipes are leaking more than ever. Social democracy can't get rid of economic equality. It does nothing to remove social classes and the class struggle that follows. It doesn't stop imperialist war and the environmental mischief caused by multinational corporations. Norway has long been one of the social-democratic poster countries, but over the last fifteen years, our economic inequality has just gotten worse and worse, while private companies gradually dig into our public sector to profit from schools and nursing homes. When the TISA agreement comes into operation, it'll be next to impossible to take back our public services. The age of social democracy has been a fun ride, but it won't last forever. Neoliberalism is on the offensive, and reforms won't make it flinch.

At most the government should be a regulator to make sure monopolies and oligarchies don't form in a free market system; equality opportunity (but not equal outcome) is everything, and we've drifted away from that. Socialism isn't the answer (at least not in a bigger country like the United Sates), because the population isn't racially or culturally similar, and also human nature goes against the very concept of socialism, communism, etc.

How so?

Oh, just echoes of McCarthy.

McCarthy... McCarthy... McCarthy...

Plankton?

Plankton wishes.

I wouldn’t say that socialist principles are against human nature. Quite the opposite, in fact. Just look at the massive wave of socialized tech that has emerged in the last 7 years.

Wired published a feature about it way back in 2009 titled, The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online. It mentions several great examples of what John Barlow called, “dot-communism” where thousands of users join their collaborative efforts for the empowerment of society rather than for profit. But the participatory numbers it cites have grown exponentially in the years since the article was published.

Here are some more recent stats on the state of this global collectivism:

• Creative Commons reached a new record with 1.1 billion licensed works in 2016
  
• The Linux Kernel took an estimated 6,193 years of effort (COCOMO model) starting with its first commit in February 2002 ending with its most recent commit 3 months ago.
  
• 234 million Redditors are living in their parents' basements
  
• LibreOffice has over 100 million users
  
• 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
  
• 10 billion photos on Flickr are contributed and tagged with categories, labels, and keywords
  
• Wikipedia presently features 40 million articles in 293 languages resulting from the collaborative efforts of over 29 million users

The web is the new socialism.

This isn't the most serious fact based "debunking", but it is funny and points out how stupid the video you posted is.

Spot on points that have been made many times before, but are reduced to less than 10 minutes. Good job! The rebuttal video: I couldn't make it past the first 5 minutes because, like usual, the straw man rears its ugly head a number of times. The "socialism kills" crowd love to use "authoritarianism" and "totalitarianism" as the bugaboos for their argument - oh, and "the people asked for socialism, so this is what they got" canard that the guy in the rebuttal video began using is also incredibly disingenuous - and he may know this. Don't see anything funny with the rebuttal but I also can't take him seriously with his line of "reasoning." Does the guy in the first video really call himself a communist somewhere? He may be, but I didn't see this mentioned by him (?) Maybe it's because I haven't had any caffeine yet this morning. I'll have to search in more detail for that.

He's an open communist. And I did say the vid I posted wasn't too great of a debunking, just posted because I recently watched it.

I was actually in the process of editing my post (removing the vid in the process) but thought maybe somebody might have watched it - which seems to be the case - so I will just keep it there.

But I will leave you with an argument for Capitalism that is more substantive:

For all I poke fun at you we actually do agree on that.

I agree with elph on most things I just think he's d-bag about things.

I find it unbelievable that anyone could live in America and not totally despise capitalism

I hate it with every fiber of my being

A lawn maybe a pool a supposedly nice or cute house

Facebook family pics smile smile smile

Probably voted for Hillary

Certain clothes certain restaurants no friends just networks

Hate these ****ing people

Thank god I'm unlikeable and broke or else they'd be all over this dick.

You can **** their wives if you want. Convince them that you represent an pure form of authenticity that their lives are missing. That you're the link to that reality they were always afraid to live. Boom. You ****ed some yuppie's wife. He ain't gonna do **** about it. Too much to lose lol