Moved from D1 forum

[FireIceTalon]

I believe I called your statements childish and ungrateful.

Which part would you call childish? The one where he says you are a conservative tea partier? Rofl! Or, the implication that you engage in a homosexual act?

For young idealists, trashing capitalism has been in vogue since the late 1800's gave rise to the abuses of the industrial revolution, and yet there is some form of it in every nation (to my knowledge). Before industrialists, the wealthy were known as "the ruling class" and supported monarchy.

China would be one of the best examples of what happens with, and without capitalism. Were it not for their usurpation of the rule of law and lack of egalitarianism, they could be the most powerful nation on the planet (due to their economic power). It is childish to expect handouts, and to get something for nothing. What could be more paternal than to expect to be taken care of by the State, and to renounce your ability own property. I don't favor the abuses of capitalism, but I do think we need to rely on the fruits of capitalism. One of which is that we will take care of things that we own, but we won't care as much about something we are merely using. If our children have the potential to inherit this thing we own, we will endeavor to keep it in good condition. Ownership by the state removes both the positive and negative emotions, and often the utility (e.g. in the extreme, who wants a communal toothbrush).

"If markets reflect human choice of actions, then competition is at its heart. When competition is understood to be the logical outcome of choices that drive economic behavior, then markets can be seen as a pure, if crude, form of democracy. And the outcomes can be crude indeed. However, contempt and condemnation for market outcomes reflects an elitist view of the choices of the unwashed and ill-tutored. Those who accept such nonsense have taken the notion of "fallen man" a bit too far while being equipped with too little knowledge. It might be said that the market, like democracy, is the worst economic system available except all the others." -- Dr. Christopher Lingle

I would love to see D1 reworked with more modern graphics, and since they still own it, they might do that someday. Were it in the public domain, then any aspiring competitor would be able to alter it in anyway they wanted. Anyone who saw the Gus Van Sant remake of 'Psycho' can see the negative potential if a classic gets into the wrong hands.

The Diablo series, and the game company exist because the US affords the rights of people to own intellectual property, including copyrights on software and designs. The tremendous hardware we enjoy playing these games on keeps doubling in power every few years directly due to the competition between manufacturers of the computers, components, and chips. Competition has been a characteristic of humanity since a cave man one day hauled in the bigger antelope to camp, and scored the hottest gatherer babes. Then the other geeky cave men invented socialism.

It's nothing more than an excuse by the wealthy and powerful to exploit those who have less resources or who are less fortunate and to promote social darwinism in other socially constructed aspects be it imperialism, racism, or otherwise; then turn it around and use the folklore that you described to justify its means to an end, regardless of the human suffering, alienation, and exploitation it both creates and manifests.

Because, the Marxist movements over the past millennium have been so bloodless? Tyranny in any form is evil, when wielded by oligarchs, theocrats, industrialists, or social engineers.



Just between the Soviets and China you have 100 million deaths based on anti-capitalism and, then we could talk about the Khmer Rouge, and Pol Pot for a couple million more dead... So, get off the high horse. And... I'm not trying to white wash the blood trail of greed, from *real* Imperialism, exploitation, pollution, and other suffering at the hands of economic tyranny. Marx envisioned a world without the need for a "State", a place evolved to beyond socialism, and communism. The motivation of the wealthy is merely a return on investment, and whatever evil occurs in capitalism results from amorally following that axiom. It is easy to demagogue "the wealthy" as an uncaring, group of money grubbing scrooges. I offer you Bill Gates as an example. I mean it's pretty shocking how just the global health care portion of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation contributes more to world health than the entire UN World Health Organization.

However, we've seen repeatedly that once the "State" (in any form) gets enough power, it is misused and tyranny results. The revolutionary experiment in the US was to try to build a form of limited government, where the power remains with the people (not the corporations, or any government). It's still a work in progress and we've strayed a bit lately from that ideal. The "tea party" that you denounced are in favor of personal freedom through returning to limited government, but not, by and large, in favor of unfettering the reasonable restrictions on corporate responsibilities (e.g. pollution, fair labor, non-discrimination, etc.

Anyway, that's just this Nazi forum trolls opinion.

Too bad neither the USSR nor China were ever truly communist, but rather, totalitarian. A true communist society, in the context of Marx's theory, has never been seen before. So to say that Marxism has produced much blood shed is, technically, incorrect. It's so funny that people love to say Marxists are these evil people that want to kill everyone and control the world, yet if you read Marx's theories you would see there is a huge difference between Marxism and Stalinism or Maoism. Marx would have turned over in his grave if he knew the actions of either dictator. You guys may not agree with Marx, but the guy, right or wrong, was a genius and his theory represents, more than anyone else's, the central struggle of humankind. You can criticize him all you want, but at the end of the day, everyone on this board, including myself, is an intellectual peon compared to him

And as for the Tea Party, that's just their problem, they dont get it: big government isnt the problem, but rather big business is the problem, and thats what they fail to see. Transnationals have far more power and control in both the business world and our daily lives than so-called big government does. We have constitutional amendments to protect us from "big government", but no such amendments to protect us from corporations. Yea, I have some problems with big government too, but most of that ties into the fact they act as an executive for carrying out the agendas of Wall Street banksters and CEO's who have far more political power than the common citizen. If big government is the problem, its only because of the symbiosis they have with big business, everyone else be damned. As I said before, capitalism is not just merely bad for the economic inequality it creates between social classes as how Marx pointed out, but its evils go far beyond that: for what it PROMOTES: materialism, consumerism, anti-intellectualism, and "false consciousness". Americans in general are pretty stupid compared to their European counterparts when it comes to politics, and thus they take part less in the political process which is why our political culture here is so weak. Because were too busy worrying about buying that 3 million dollar mansion, filling up that Mercedes SUV and get raped at the pump while the oil companies laugh all the way to the bank, chatting on FaceBook and twitter, to the exclusion of almost everything else......meanwhile the Republican Party and the Tea Party want to cut every social service in the book so civil society itself collapses, give tax breaks to the wealthy, all in the name of making oil and weapons contract companies richer by use of counter-terrorism. And no, im not bashing capitalism because its fashionable to do so, but rather because, it sucks

Socialism > capitalism. For without equality, you cannot have freedom or democracy, not the other way around. Anyway, thats my perspective. But then again, im just a young naive, political science/sociology major in his 30's that thinks people can (and should) put their self interest aside for the greater good - nothing more, nothing less. Heh.