Capitalism: Take it or leave it?

[EvilDarkMagicians]

I'd say leave Capitalism, switch to something much more efficient.

Whats more efficient than perfection?

There is no such thing as Perfection. In my own humble opinion, Socialism, is much more efficient that Capitalism.

No bananas or other import food. One low quality kind of clothes. Lack of progression. Waiting for 10 years, just to get a car. Toilet paper that is only good for 6 months a year, rather than 12.

Truely efficient, ain't it?

Yeah because the socialist British NHS is really stagnated.

NHS isn't socialist, silly. It's merely social-capitalist (AKA a sign of a mixed economy).

No it isn't. The NHS in England is controlled by the government.

[Hassett]

Capitalism is the only system proven to work. Check out my ideoligies for more reasons why Capitalism is awesome.

[Sibirsky]

I'd say leave Capitalism, switch to something much more efficient.

Whats more efficient than perfection?

There is no such thing as Perfection. In my own humble opinion, Socialism, is much more efficient that Capitalism.

No bananas or other import food. One low quality kind of clothes. Lack of progression. Waiting for 10 years, just to get a car. Toilet paper that is only good for 6 months a year, rather than 12.

Truely efficient, ain't it?

Yeah because the socialist British NHS is really stagnated.

Like reusing equipment?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... d-NHS.html

[Offenheim]

Wasn't it started by Labour? Which was "socialist" and still is part of the Socialist International?

True. But it's only one measure, saw many reforms and didn't even have anything to do with what I wrote. Or since when does the NHS provide people with bananas, cars and toilet paper?

One measure can still be socialist. It was also accompanied by four other programmes, to address five societal ills.

I'm not sure what bananas, cars, and toilet paper have to do with it.

[The Adrian Empire]

You know, it just occurred to me that one of the arguments here was the the US population gave the most in charitable contributions. And this is often an argument in free market circles, that charities can accomplish far more in a far better way than government can.

Except... they can't. And it's pretty clear they can't. Things have gotten worse since 1980, for the vast majority of people. At this point 25% of the people own 87% of the wealth. And they keep that wealth, not because they are better than the remaining 75%, but because having wealth provides a firm base to continue making money. Not because they compete better, or more efficiently, or even provide better services. In my opinion, a really good capitalist system would be where one would not be allowed to pass one's wealth onto your children. Thereby always fostering competition among the many, rather than the few.

I have seen these numbers before, and they are ever changing (a few years ago it was 99 and 10%, then 95% and 3%, 85% and 10%) and almost certainly inaccurate as I have yet to see a reliable source for them, this seems like a reasonably acceptable number, so I will run with it.
Except that that base is ever shifting, the top 25% of wealth holders this year are not comprised of the same individuals as 1990 or 2000, people rise and fall based on wealth accumulation.
Now, we come to the nature of the argument, what does the distribution of wealth have to do with the effectiveness of charity? It doesn't as when we speak of charities we are talking about soup kitchens and food banks, homeless shelters, not welfare, the rich aren't giving the poor money, they are buying them food, and shelter. Expecting them to earn their own money. To some this is ineffective, John Stossel makes an excellent argument against government anti-poverty and even soft homeless shelters (feed and forget sorts that don't try to help the rock-bottom of society rejoin the rest of the workforce).

Our economy just collapsed, because people were making millions off of lies and deceit. The pro-market people will come along and explain to us that this is because of too much regulation. And too some degree, yes, the laws we created were obscure, and drafted by corporate interests, and favored the corporation. But this process began under Reagan and was continued by his successors, of deregulating, of removing safeguards against exploitative practices, and the rich have grown richer, and the poor have grown poorer.

I see you have fallen for the propaganda, no my friend, it was not the free market that brought the economic collapse, it was government intervention, like George Bush's initiative to increase rates of homeownership, how did he accomplish it, he encouraged banks to take on sub-prime loans on people who cannot pay off the debts they take on, not only that he regulated the banks so that 35% of every banks loans were to be to lower income families, as you can guess this is absolutely parallel to sane market thought. The free market is the way out of our economic mess, not the way in, no sane economist would make that claim. Keynesians aside

At the same time, charities in the US give more than anybody else. But they have completely failed to mitigate the relatively even society we had. Income inequality has skyrocketed. And don't say, well, this is necessary to foster creativity. For the simple fact of the matter is that America has excelled at extending equality, and freedom, and ability at its most socialized points. Since the rise of social security, a middle class was created, solely by the government. Public education was of a greater quality, because the government dictated that we learn science and math to compete against the Soviets. We put a man on the moon, while we continued to expand welfare coverage. Our inventions of the 1940s-1970s excel most of the inventions since. Our accomplishments definitely excelled then.

You are hilarious you know, income equality is trivial and near unimportant, so long as the poor and the middle class can afford a luxurious lifestyle, and they can, there is no reason to care what the man across town makes, it does not matter if your neighbour lives like an Emperor if you live like a King.
To your second point, I highly suspect you are unaware of historical fact. Our most free points? Hardly, government encroached more on personal freedom between 1950 and 1980 then ever before, from gun control, bans on hate speech. Most equal for all, is that what you call the high inflation of dollar forcing women to leave homes and take jobs as no other society has ever had to before, this was not the glorious feminist charge of equality, it was simply the effect of dire market conditions. The media was explicitly censored by government bureaucrats "in order to protect American interests", property rights were frequently trampled by zoning laws which came into effect at that time.
Most able, there you might claim to be accurate, but inventive, no, creative certainly not, and where there were cases, government intervention was rarely the cause. We went to the moon to stick it to the commies, while they stuck it to us by way of getting us to pervert ourselves into a socialist country in fear of them.

And have charities halted the negative changes in society? No. In fact, as people grew rich off the government giving away services, cutting control, they attempted to force the system to keep them rich. The rich rigged the practices so the poor would have to pay more money. And it's caused more trouble for the majority of people than it's been worth. Charities are an utter and abject failure. We get angry at government, and we say it can't do anything right. Yet our army is held aloft as the supreme army on earth. If you can trust the government to run the army, you can trust them to run postal services, and collect taxes, and write laws, and provide welfare, and manage the economy. Because let me tell you, the military is just as incompetent as any other organization, within the government or without.

I don't trust the government to run the army, first off, even as a minarchist I don't believe in a government monopoly of force, they should have an army privatized if possible to manage the nation's coordinated defence which should mostly be consisted of trained militias. And manage the court system (unless a viable free market alternative is developed). Nothing more.

Now a question to you, if you admit that the government can't run the army competently, then why do you trust them to run postal services, and collect taxes, and write laws, and provide welfare, and manage the economy?

And if we are talking about today, then what you are blaming is not capitalism but corrupt governments. Stupid corrupt governments that have regulated the market so greatly that the only ones who can weasel their way to the top are the absolute genius and the absolute crook and either way they will likely grease a few government palms just for expediency.

Again, salvation army, and the thousands upon thousands of other successful charities, that have kept there from being a class of citizen starving in the street beg to differ, it is the free market that runs these not for profit groups and they help more people then the government has ever done so, just look at what the government has done with the unemployed poor, given them incentive to stay there, provided the means of their downfall by illegalizing narcotics. And forcing them donwnwards with the host of regulations preventing them from forming new business.

And I thought of an altruistic act that not only makes me feel good, it contradicts your "money is needed to provide the incentive to cure anything" and that probably also contradicts my point about charities as well:

Salk.

You mean Jonas Salk, the Russian-Jewish Scientist who cured polio, Salk?
You mean the Jonas Salk whose immigrant parents came to the United States in the 1900's at the height of the free market, whose parent's worked exceptionally hard in order to give their son a formal education.
The Jonas Salk who was born poor in the heart of New York City but rose to success and acclaim by curing polio, then distributed the cure not-for-profit, seriously, that is not a very good argument. Had his parent's not the desire for wealth he would not have received the education he did. The incentive of money to his parents was great enough to cause his success.
Jonas Salk was a great person, but his work doesn't prove that "money isn't needed to cure anything", there is no rule in the free market that you have to make a profit, or you even have to care about money. Salk is a great example of a person whose hard-work pulled him out of poverty by the bootstraps, had he still be in poverty when he developed the cure, I am certain that Mr. Salk would be more concerned about his profit.
Also it is only slightly altruism, one could easily argue that he did it out of personal aspiration, desire to be loved or even personal fear of the disease. As it has been said, altruistic acts are rare, if they exist at all. Because there is an identifiable motive for everything, and his acts weren't quite a sacrifice, he still lived a comfortable and happy life, now if he had done all this from his basement at the very pinnacle of poverty, invented the cure and just gave it away for free, then he would have been an altruist.

[Sibirsky]

There is no such thing as pure Capitalism, nor pure Communism. Our current system is a mesh of both, as are all others.

But, in principle, I do not believe in Capitalism. It's growth rate is too gaudy--it tears up everything in it's path. It consumes resources at a manic pace. It does nothing to ensure a fulfilling social, creative, and intellectual life.

And, of course, it's on it's way out.

It breeds creativity. It's not on the way out. Freedom will prevail. Capitalism is freedom.

A one sentence surmise of my 1000 word post. This most emphatically this^

Example. When I left the Soviet Union in 1991 I have never heard of an automatic dishwasher. It was a luxurious item a very few elites had. While on the other side of the world in the United States it was invented in 1886 and became available in the consumer market in the 1950s. By the 1970s they were commonplace. That is creativity. Examples like that are abundant. Just like consumer products are abundant under capitalism.

The economic boom that allowed that Washing Machine to be affordable, and gave Americans the money buy it, was a government caused and sustain economic boom. I love Capitalism, but you don't need to be absolute about it, there are bounds of reason.

Source?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Capitalism

The GI bill, low mortgage interest rates provide by the government, military contracts and spending, the national highway system, and the stuff set up by the new deal, helped, along with good ole Capitalism.

Like a said before, the top marginal tax rate in the fifties was 90 percent.
http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php

Link fail. The first link talks about capitalism after WWII (1945) but the automatic dishwasher (which is what I used as an example) was invented in 1886. The 2nd link talks about tax rates, but the first income taxes came after that as well. Besides, taxes don't kill innovation, merely slow it down.

I was merely pointing out how the Keynesian economic polices after World War Two allowed an invention that before was too expensive for anybody, to be affordable. The wealth just didn't exist before. Also natural capitalism played a big part. You keep talking about the differences in life between the Soviet Union and the West, which were huge. One of the reasons they were huge was because of the positive government intervention of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and even in part, in the 80s. My father's first job was created by the government. He worked as an engineer for company which had many military contracts (I forget which one, it was one of the big ones) When the contracts dried up in the early 90s, he, and many workers at the plan, lost their jobs. The experience my father gained from this job though, allowed him to eventually own his own business, and be extremely successful like he is today. My Grandfather has a very similar story, except the business he owned was a family one, and it was in construction. When monetary policy was contracted in the early 80s, his business went bust, and he dies (Unrelated)

Like any new invention, they were simply too expensive when they first came out. Early adopters pay a premium. Once the production process is streamlined (which took much longer back then) prices drop and more people are able to buy them. Look at anything in your house. Especially things like electronics, computers things of that nature. The first CD player was $1000 in the early 1980s. That is in 1980s dollars NOT adjusted for inflation. Now you can get an MP3 player, that is a much better device, for a fraction of the cost, while incomes have gone up.

I understand that! That is Capitalism, which is awesome. I love it. But government intervention can be positive. Did you read the first part of my post?

I read it, but I disagree with it.

[EvilDarkMagicians]

I'd say leave Capitalism, switch to something much more efficient.

Whats more efficient than perfection?

There is no such thing as Perfection. In my own humble opinion, Socialism, is much more efficient that Capitalism.

No bananas or other import food. One low quality kind of clothes. Lack of progression. Waiting for 10 years, just to get a car. Toilet paper that is only good for 6 months a year, rather than 12.

Truely efficient, ain't it?

Yeah because the socialist British NHS is really stagnated.

Like reusing equipment?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... d-NHS.html

Yeah because nothing like that has happened in a private hospital.....

[Sibirsky]

incomes have gone up.

For some. But in 1980, our income inequality was nowhere near as bad as it is now. Incomes may have gone up due to inflation as well. But costs have also risen. We're at Gilded Age levels of income inequality.

Adjusted for inflation incomes have gone up for everyone. I will give you the inequality expanding, as in higher incomes went up faster, I admit that. Yes, costs have risen, but incomes have risen faster than costs outside of healthcare and higher education which is a problem with the government, not the market.

[Len-Marx]

There is no such thing as pure Capitalism, nor pure Communism. Our current system is a mesh of both, as are all others.

But, in principle, I do not believe in Capitalism. It's growth rate is too gaudy--it tears up everything in it's path. It consumes resources at a manic pace. It does nothing to ensure a fulfilling social, creative, and intellectual life.

And, of course, it's on it's way out.

It breeds creativity. It's not on the way out. Freedom will prevail. Capitalism is freedom.

^This

And we are not about to stagnate. Communism is stagnation. Capitalism is progression. A 100% communist society could never find cure to anything, since it's people are instilled with the idea that their life is perfect as it is.

B.S. There are two responses. First, people would have the time to devote to finding cures without worries of funding or various other stress factors that get in the way.

The other option is to say, well if life is considered perfect, is there really a problem?

Funding gets in the way? In communism, cures are harder to come by, because there is no incentive to create cures, as there is no profit motive. The Russians are just as smart, if not smarter than the Americans. They are better educated, and have a higher literacy rate. Yet, the Americans have far more inventions. The profit motive bred creativity.

Far more inventions that are solely for profit. Take, for example, things like The Magic Bullet, Snuggie, Jack LaLanne's power juicer, all these infomercials and stuff; all these inventions that really do not benefit the human race. Look at Russia: The Periodic Table. Automatic Kalashnikov. Kamov Ka-50 Black Shark. Electric spacecraft propulsion. The first man in space. The GEV Ekranoplan. LEDs. Paratroopers. Space and high-altitude pressure suits. Unmanned re-supply spacecraft. Sputnik. The first ever spy bug. Tetris.

[Self--Esteem]

Wasn't it started by Labour? Which was "socialist" and still is part of the Socialist International?

True. But it's only one measure, saw many reforms and didn't even have anything to do with what I wrote. Or since when does the NHS provide people with bananas, cars and toilet paper?

One measure can still be socialist. It was also accompanied by four other programmes, to address five societal ills.

I'm not sure what bananas, cars, and toilet paper have to do with it.

Well. My initial post (the one EvilDarkMagicians responded to) was about how many socialist and communist systems lacked basic necessities like foreign fruits or hygiene products.

Doesn't really matter though. The truth is that the NHS provides all but a good service. The health standard has proven to be much lower than the US one.

[Sibirsky]

Capitalism is the only system proven to work. Check out my ideoligies for more reasons why Capitalism is awesome.

Straight to the point. I agree. I like the early stages of democracy. Before everyone realizes they can vote more and more government in for handouts. Because it's the other guy paying taxes. They do not realize that in the end it's bad for everyone.

[EvilDarkMagicians]

Wasn't it started by Labour? Which was "socialist" and still is part of the Socialist International?

True. But it's only one measure, saw many reforms and didn't even have anything to do with what I wrote. Or since when does the NHS provide people with bananas, cars and toilet paper?

One measure can still be socialist. It was also accompanied by four other programmes, to address five societal ills.

I'm not sure what bananas, cars, and toilet paper have to do with it.

Well. My initial post (the one EvilDarkMagicians responded to) was about how many socialist and communist systems lacked basic necessities like foreign fruits or hygiene products.

Doesn't really matter though. The truth is that the NHS provides all but a good service. The health standard has proven to be much lower than the US one.

Source?

[Qwcasd]

There is no such thing as pure Capitalism, nor pure Communism. Our current system is a mesh of both, as are all others.

But, in principle, I do not believe in Capitalism. It's growth rate is too gaudy--it tears up everything in it's path. It consumes resources at a manic pace. It does nothing to ensure a fulfilling social, creative, and intellectual life.

And, of course, it's on it's way out.

It breeds creativity. It's not on the way out. Freedom will prevail. Capitalism is freedom.

A one sentence surmise of my 1000 word post. This most emphatically this^

Example. When I left the Soviet Union in 1991 I have never heard of an automatic dishwasher. It was a luxurious item a very few elites had. While on the other side of the world in the United States it was invented in 1886 and became available in the consumer market in the 1950s. By the 1970s they were commonplace. That is creativity. Examples like that are abundant. Just like consumer products are abundant under capitalism.

The economic boom that allowed that Washing Machine to be affordable, and gave Americans the money buy it, was a government caused and sustain economic boom. I love Capitalism, but you don't need to be absolute about it, there are bounds of reason.

Source?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Capitalism

The GI bill, low mortgage interest rates provide by the government, military contracts and spending, the national highway system, and the stuff set up by the new deal, helped, along with good ole Capitalism.

Like a said before, the top marginal tax rate in the fifties was 90 percent.
http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php

Link fail. The first link talks about capitalism after WWII (1945) but the automatic dishwasher (which is what I used as an example) was invented in 1886. The 2nd link talks about tax rates, but the first income taxes came after that as well. Besides, taxes don't kill innovation, merely slow it down.

I was merely pointing out how the Keynesian economic polices after World War Two allowed an invention that before was too expensive for anybody, to be affordable. The wealth just didn't exist before. Also natural capitalism played a big part. You keep talking about the differences in life between the Soviet Union and the West, which were huge. One of the reasons they were huge was because of the positive government intervention of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and even in part, in the 80s. My father's first job was created by the government. He worked as an engineer for company which had many military contracts (I forget which one, it was one of the big ones) When the contracts dried up in the early 90s, he, and many workers at the plan, lost their jobs. The experience my father gained from this job though, allowed him to eventually own his own business, and be extremely successful like he is today. My Grandfather has a very similar story, except the business he owned was a family one, and it was in construction. When monetary policy was contracted in the early 80s, his business went bust, and he dies (Unrelated)

Like any new invention, they were simply too expensive when they first came out. Early adopters pay a premium. Once the production process is streamlined (which took much longer back then) prices drop and more people are able to buy them. Look at anything in your house. Especially things like electronics, computers things of that nature. The first CD player was $1000 in the early 1980s. That is in 1980s dollars NOT adjusted for inflation. Now you can get an MP3 player, that is a much better device, for a fraction of the cost, while incomes have gone up.

I understand that! That is Capitalism, which is awesome. I love it. But government intervention can be positive. Did you read the first part of my post?

I read it, but I disagree with it.

Why is that? Also, read my modified quote... it better explains how my Grandfather was helped by the government.

[Offenheim]

The standard for service users may be lower. But the NHS gets more service users. Or a higher percentage of service users. No one in Britain has to think twice about getting something treated because it'll sink them into massive debt.

[Sibirsky]

You know, it just occurred to me that one of the arguments here was the the US population gave the most in charitable contributions. And this is often an argument in free market circles, that charities can accomplish far more in a far better way than government can.

Except... they can't. And it's pretty clear they can't. Things have gotten worse since 1980, for the vast majority of people. At this point 25% of the people own 87% of the wealth. And they keep that wealth, not because they are better than the remaining 75%, but because having wealth provides a firm base to continue making money. Not because they compete better, or more efficiently, or even provide better services. In my opinion, a really good capitalist system would be where one would not be allowed to pass one's wealth onto your children. Thereby always fostering competition among the many, rather than the few.

I have seen these numbers before, and they are ever changing (a few years ago it was 99 and 10%, then 95% and 3%, 85% and 10%) and almost certainly inaccurate as I have yet to see a reliable source for them, this seems like a reasonably acceptable number, so I will run with it.
Except that that base is ever shifting, the top 25% of wealth holders this year are not comprised of the same individuals as 1990 or 2000, people rise and fall based on wealth accumulation.
Now, we come to the nature of the argument, what does the distribution of wealth have to do with the effectiveness of charity? It doesn't as when we speak of charities we are talking about soup kitchens and food banks, homeless shelters, not welfare, the rich aren't giving the poor money, they are buying them food, and shelter. Expecting them to earn their own money. To some this is ineffective, John Stossel makes an excellent argument against government anti-poverty and even soft homeless shelters (feed and forget sorts that don't try to help the rock-bottom of society rejoin the rest of the workforce).

Our economy just collapsed, because people were making millions off of lies and deceit. The pro-market people will come along and explain to us that this is because of too much regulation. And too some degree, yes, the laws we created were obscure, and drafted by corporate interests, and favored the corporation. But this process began under Reagan and was continued by his successors, of deregulating, of removing safeguards against exploitative practices, and the rich have grown richer, and the poor have grown poorer.

I see you have fallen for the propaganda, no my friend, it was not the free market that brought the economic collapse, it was government intervention, like George Bush's initiative to increase rates of homeownership, how did he accomplish it, he encouraged banks to take on sub-prime loans on people who cannot pay off the debts they take on, not only that he regulated the banks so that 35% of every banks loans were to be to lower income families, as you can guess this is absolutely parallel to sane market thought. The free market is the way out of our economic mess, not the way in, no sane economist would make that claim. Keynesians aside

At the same time, charities in the US give more than anybody else. But they have completely failed to mitigate the relatively even society we had. Income inequality has skyrocketed. And don't say, well, this is necessary to foster creativity. For the simple fact of the matter is that America has excelled at extending equality, and freedom, and ability at its most socialized points. Since the rise of social security, a middle class was created, solely by the government. Public education was of a greater quality, because the government dictated that we learn science and math to compete against the Soviets. We put a man on the moon, while we continued to expand welfare coverage. Our inventions of the 1940s-1970s excel most of the inventions since. Our accomplishments definitely excelled then.

You are hilarious you know, income equality is trivial and near unimportant, so long as the poor and the middle class can afford a luxurious lifestyle, and they can, there is no reason to care what the man across town makes, it does not matter if your neighbour lives like an Emperor if you live like a King.
To your second point, I highly suspect you are unaware of historical fact. Our most free points? Hardly, government encroached more on personal freedom between 1950 and 1980 then ever before, from gun control, bans on hate speech. Most equal for all, is that what you call the high inflation of dollar forcing women to leave homes and take jobs as no other society has ever had to before, this was not the glorious feminist charge of equality, it was simply the effect of dire market conditions. The media was explicitly censored by government bureaucrats "in order to protect American interests", property rights were frequently trampled by zoning laws which came into effect at that time.
Most able, there you might claim to be accurate, but inventive, no, creative certainly not, and where there were cases, government intervention was rarely the cause. We went to the moon to stick it to the commies, while they stuck it to us by way of getting us to pervert ourselves into a socialist country in fear of them.

And have charities halted the negative changes in society? No. In fact, as people grew rich off the government giving away services, cutting control, they attempted to force the system to keep them rich. The rich rigged the practices so the poor would have to pay more money. And it's caused more trouble for the majority of people than it's been worth. Charities are an utter and abject failure. We get angry at government, and we say it can't do anything right. Yet our army is held aloft as the supreme army on earth. If you can trust the government to run the army, you can trust them to run postal services, and collect taxes, and write laws, and provide welfare, and manage the economy. Because let me tell you, the military is just as incompetent as any other organization, within the government or without.

I don't trust the government to run the army, first off, even as a minarchist I don't believe in a government monopoly of force, they should have an army privatized if possible to manage the nation's coordinated defence which should mostly be consisted of trained militias. And manage the court system (unless a viable free market alternative is developed). Nothing more.

Now a question to you, if you admit that the government can't run the army competently, then why do you trust them to run postal services, and collect taxes, and write laws, and provide welfare, and manage the economy?

And if we are talking about today, then what you are blaming is not capitalism but corrupt governments. Stupid corrupt governments that have regulated the market so greatly that the only ones who can weasel their way to the top are the absolute genius and the absolute crook and either way they will likely grease a few government palms just for expediency.

Again, salvation army, and the thousands upon thousands of other successful charities, that have kept there from being a class of citizen starving in the street beg to differ, it is the free market that runs these not for profit groups and they help more people then the government has ever done so, just look at what the government has done with the unemployed poor, given them incentive to stay there, provided the means of their downfall by illegalizing narcotics. And forcing them donwnwards with the host of regulations preventing them from forming new business.

And I thought of an altruistic act that not only makes me feel good, it contradicts your "money is needed to provide the incentive to cure anything" and that probably also contradicts my point about charities as well:

Salk.

You mean Jonas Salk, the Russian-Jewish Scientist who cured polio, Salk?
You mean the Jonas Salk whose immigrant parents came to the United States in the 1900's at the height of the free market, whose parent's worked exceptionally hard in order to give their son a formal education.
The Jonas Salk who was born poor in the heart of New York City but rose to success and acclaim by curing polio, then distributed the cure not-for-profit, seriously, that is not a very good argument. Had his parent's not the desire for wealth he would not have received the education he did. The incentive of money to his parents was great enough to cause his success.
Jonas Salk was a great person, but his work doesn't prove that "money isn't needed to cure anything", there is no rule in the free market that you have to make a profit, or you even have to care about money. Salk is a great example of a person whose hard-work pulled him out of poverty by the bootstraps, had he still be in poverty when he developed the cure, I am certain that Mr. Salk would be more concerned about his profit.
Also it is only slightly altruism, one could easily argue that he did it out of personal aspiration, desire to be loved or even personal fear of the disease. As it has been said, altruistic acts are rare, if they exist at all. Because there is an identifiable motive for everything, and his acts weren't quite a sacrifice, he still lived a comfortable and happy life, now if he had done all this from his basement at the very pinnacle of poverty, invented the cure and just gave it away for free, then he would have been an altruist.

[EvilDarkMagicians]

The standard for service users may be lower. But the NHS gets more service users. Or a higher percentage of service users. No one in Britain has to think twice about getting something treated because it'll sink them into massive debt.

I have a source to show it isn't: Linky&Linky

[Qwcasd]

You know, it just occurred to me that one of the arguments here was the the US population gave the most in charitable contributions. And this is often an argument in free market circles, that charities can accomplish far more in a far better way than government can.

Except... they can't. And it's pretty clear they can't. Things have gotten worse since 1980, for the vast majority of people. At this point 25% of the people own 87% of the wealth. And they keep that wealth, not because they are better than the remaining 75%, but because having wealth provides a firm base to continue making money. Not because they compete better, or more efficiently, or even provide better services. In my opinion, a really good capitalist system would be where one would not be allowed to pass one's wealth onto your children. Thereby always fostering competition among the many, rather than the few.

I have seen these numbers before, and they are ever changing (a few years ago it was 99 and 10%, then 95% and 3%, 85% and 10%) and almost certainly inaccurate as I have yet to see a reliable source for them, this seems like a reasonably acceptable number, so I will run with it.
Except that that base is ever shifting, the top 25% of wealth holders this year are not comprised of the same individuals as 1990 or 2000, people rise and fall based on wealth accumulation.
Now, we come to the nature of the argument, what does the distribution of wealth have to do with the effectiveness of charity? It doesn't as when we speak of charities we are talking about soup kitchens and food banks, homeless shelters, not welfare, the rich aren't giving the poor money, they are buying them food, and shelter. Expecting them to earn their own money. To some this is ineffective, John Stossel makes an excellent argument against government anti-poverty and even soft homeless shelters (feed and forget sorts that don't try to help the rock-bottom of society rejoin the rest of the workforce).

Our economy just collapsed, because people were making millions off of lies and deceit. The pro-market people will come along and explain to us that this is because of too much regulation. And too some degree, yes, the laws we created were obscure, and drafted by corporate interests, and favored the corporation. But this process began under Reagan and was continued by his successors, of deregulating, of removing safeguards against exploitative practices, and the rich have grown richer, and the poor have grown poorer.

I see you have fallen for the propaganda, no my friend, it was not the free market that brought the economic collapse, it was government intervention, like George Bush's initiative to increase rates of homeownership, how did he accomplish it, he encouraged banks to take on sub-prime loans on people who cannot pay off the debts they take on, not only that he regulated the banks so that 35% of every banks loans were to be to lower income families, as you can guess this is absolutely parallel to sane market thought. The free market is the way out of our economic mess, not the way in, no sane economist would make that claim. Keynesians aside

At the same time, charities in the US give more than anybody else. But they have completely failed to mitigate the relatively even society we had. Income inequality has skyrocketed. And don't say, well, this is necessary to foster creativity. For the simple fact of the matter is that America has excelled at extending equality, and freedom, and ability at its most socialized points. Since the rise of social security, a middle class was created, solely by the government. Public education was of a greater quality, because the government dictated that we learn science and math to compete against the Soviets. We put a man on the moon, while we continued to expand welfare coverage. Our inventions of the 1940s-1970s excel most of the inventions since. Our accomplishments definitely excelled then.

You are hilarious you know, income equality is trivial and near unimportant, so long as the poor and the middle class can afford a luxurious lifestyle, and they can, there is no reason to care what the man across town makes, it does not matter if your neighbour lives like an Emperor if you live like a King.
To your second point, I highly suspect you are unaware of historical fact. Our most free points? Hardly, government encroached more on personal freedom between 1950 and 1980 then ever before, from gun control, bans on hate speech. Most equal for all, is that what you call the high inflation of dollar forcing women to leave homes and take jobs as no other society has ever had to before, this was not the glorious feminist charge of equality, it was simply the effect of dire market conditions. The media was explicitly censored by government bureaucrats "in order to protect American interests", property rights were frequently trampled by zoning laws which came into effect at that time.
Most able, there you might claim to be accurate, but inventive, no, creative certainly not, and where there were cases, government intervention was rarely the cause. We went to the moon to stick it to the commies, while they stuck it to us by way of getting us to pervert ourselves into a socialist country in fear of them.

And have charities halted the negative changes in society? No. In fact, as people grew rich off the government giving away services, cutting control, they attempted to force the system to keep them rich. The rich rigged the practices so the poor would have to pay more money. And it's caused more trouble for the majority of people than it's been worth. Charities are an utter and abject failure. We get angry at government, and we say it can't do anything right. Yet our army is held aloft as the supreme army on earth. If you can trust the government to run the army, you can trust them to run postal services, and collect taxes, and write laws, and provide welfare, and manage the economy. Because let me tell you, the military is just as incompetent as any other organization, within the government or without.

I don't trust the government to run the army, first off, even as a minarchist I don't believe in a government monopoly of force, they should have an army privatized if possible to manage the nation's coordinated defence which should mostly be consisted of trained militias. And manage the court system (unless a viable free market alternative is developed). Nothing more.

Now a question to you, if you admit that the government can't run the army competently, then why do you trust them to run postal services, and collect taxes, and write laws, and provide welfare, and manage the economy?

And if we are talking about today, then what you are blaming is not capitalism but corrupt governments. Stupid corrupt governments that have regulated the market so greatly that the only ones who can weasel their way to the top are the absolute genius and the absolute crook and either way they will likely grease a few government palms just for expediency.

Again, salvation army, and the thousands upon thousands of other successful charities, that have kept there from being a class of citizen starving in the street beg to differ, it is the free market that runs these not for profit groups and they help more people then the government has ever done so, just look at what the government has done with the unemployed poor, given them incentive to stay there, provided the means of their downfall by illegalizing narcotics. And forcing them donwnwards with the host of regulations preventing them from forming new business.

And I thought of an altruistic act that not only makes me feel good, it contradicts your "money is needed to provide the incentive to cure anything" and that probably also contradicts my point about charities as well:

Salk.

You mean Jonas Salk, the Russian-Jewish Scientist who cured polio, Salk?
You mean the Jonas Salk whose immigrant parents came to the United States in the 1900's at the height of the free market, whose parent's worked exceptionally hard in order to give their son a formal education.
The Jonas Salk who was born poor in the heart of New York City but rose to success and acclaim by curing polio, then distributed the cure not-for-profit, seriously, that is not a very good argument. Had his parent's not the desire for wealth he would not have received the education he did. The incentive of money to his parents was great enough to cause his success.
Jonas Salk was a great person, but his work doesn't prove that "money isn't needed to cure anything", there is no rule in the free market that you have to make a profit, or you even have to care about money. Salk is a great example of a person whose hard-work pulled him out of poverty by the bootstraps, had he still be in poverty when he developed the cure, I am certain that Mr. Salk would be more concerned about his profit.
Also it is only slightly altruism, one could easily argue that he did it out of personal aspiration, desire to be loved or even personal fear of the disease. As it has been said, altruistic acts are rare, if they exist at all. Because there is an identifiable motive for everything, and his acts weren't quite a sacrifice, he still lived a comfortable and happy life, now if he had done all this from his basement at the very pinnacle of poverty, invented the cure and just gave it away for free, then he would have been an altruist.

[Comaak]

Goods aren't allocated efficiently in a market.

The market is the most efficient way to allocate resources. Even hard core leftists and Keynesians admit as much. It is simple, and it is common sense. Please educate yourself before posting this non sense.

The title of your link is misspelled. The idiocy expands to grammar apparently.

Here is a lesson from history.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRuK9hrpQGc

Capitalism is inefficient. For instance, if people don't buy enough stuff one year, there's a recession and workers get laid off. In other words, some people have to go without being paid just because some other people didn't buy enough stuff. Because unemployed people don't consume as much, this can feed back into itself, less consumption leading to more unemployment leading to even less consumption, so on and so forth, until you've got 30% unemployment like in the Great Depression. Thrift creates catastrophe. Instead of laying people off when they produce less, why not just reduce everyone's hours? That way everyone benefits when there's less consumption instead of some people being forced to go without.

[Sibirsky]

There is no such thing as pure Capitalism, nor pure Communism. Our current system is a mesh of both, as are all others.

But, in principle, I do not believe in Capitalism. It's growth rate is too gaudy--it tears up everything in it's path. It consumes resources at a manic pace. It does nothing to ensure a fulfilling social, creative, and intellectual life.

And, of course, it's on it's way out.

It breeds creativity. It's not on the way out. Freedom will prevail. Capitalism is freedom.

^This

And we are not about to stagnate. Communism is stagnation. Capitalism is progression. A 100% communist society could never find cure to anything, since it's people are instilled with the idea that their life is perfect as it is.

B.S. There are two responses. First, people would have the time to devote to finding cures without worries of funding or various other stress factors that get in the way.

The other option is to say, well if life is considered perfect, is there really a problem?

Funding gets in the way? In communism, cures are harder to come by, because there is no incentive to create cures, as there is no profit motive. The Russians are just as smart, if not smarter than the Americans. They are better educated, and have a higher literacy rate. Yet, the Americans have far more inventions. The profit motive bred creativity.

Far more inventions that are solely for profit. Take, for example, things like The Magic Bullet, Snuggie, Jack LaLanne's power juicer, all these infomercials and stuff; all these inventions that really do not benefit the human race. Look at Russia: The Periodic Table. Automatic Kalashnikov. Kamov Ka-50 Black Shark. Electric spacecraft propulsion. The first man in space. The GEV Ekranoplan. LEDs. Paratroopers. Space and high-altitude pressure suits. Unmanned re-supply spacecraft. Sputnik. The first ever spy bug. Tetris.

If people buy them, they benefit society. The AK-47 is a gun, something that was invented long before. The Kamov Ka-50 is a helicopter, ironically invented by a Russian immigrant to the US. Electric spacecraft propulsion was first considered by Robert Goddard from Massachusetts. Paratroopers are not an invention. I dislike the Russian government for spending so much money on space flight and war while their population lived in poverty. Their priorities were to beat the Americans in space and in the arms race at any cost. The Russian people be damned. I cannot agree that it is a good thing.

[The Adrian Empire]

You know, it just occurred to me that one of the arguments here was the the US population gave the most in charitable contributions. And this is often an argument in free market circles, that charities can accomplish far more in a far better way than government can.

Except... they can't. And it's pretty clear they can't. Things have gotten worse since 1980, for the vast majority of people. At this point 25% of the people own 87% of the wealth. And they keep that wealth, not because they are better than the remaining 75%, but because having wealth provides a firm base to continue making money. Not because they compete better, or more efficiently, or even provide better services. In my opinion, a really good capitalist system would be where one would not be allowed to pass one's wealth onto your children. Thereby always fostering competition among the many, rather than the few.

I have seen these numbers before, and they are ever changing (a few years ago it was 99 and 10%, then 95% and 3%, 85% and 10%) and almost certainly inaccurate as I have yet to see a reliable source for them, this seems like a reasonably acceptable number, so I will run with it.
Except that that base is ever shifting, the top 25% of wealth holders this year are not comprised of the same individuals as 1990 or 2000, people rise and fall based on wealth accumulation.
Now, we come to the nature of the argument, what does the distribution of wealth have to do with the effectiveness of charity? It doesn't as when we speak of charities we are talking about soup kitchens and food banks, homeless shelters, not welfare, the rich aren't giving the poor money, they are buying them food, and shelter. Expecting them to earn their own money. To some this is ineffective, John Stossel makes an excellent argument against government anti-poverty and even soft homeless shelters (feed and forget sorts that don't try to help the rock-bottom of society rejoin the rest of the workforce).

Our economy just collapsed, because people were making millions off of lies and deceit. The pro-market people will come along and explain to us that this is because of too much regulation. And too some degree, yes, the laws we created were obscure, and drafted by corporate interests, and favored the corporation. But this process began under Reagan and was continued by his successors, of deregulating, of removing safeguards against exploitative practices, and the rich have grown richer, and the poor have grown poorer.

I see you have fallen for the propaganda, no my friend, it was not the free market that brought the economic collapse, it was government intervention, like George Bush's initiative to increase rates of homeownership, how did he accomplish it, he encouraged banks to take on sub-prime loans on people who cannot pay off the debts they take on, not only that he regulated the banks so that 35% of every banks loans were to be to lower income families, as you can guess this is absolutely parallel to sane market thought. The free market is the way out of our economic mess, not the way in, no sane economist would make that claim. Keynesians aside

At the same time, charities in the US give more than anybody else. But they have completely failed to mitigate the relatively even society we had. Income inequality has skyrocketed. And don't say, well, this is necessary to foster creativity. For the simple fact of the matter is that America has excelled at extending equality, and freedom, and ability at its most socialized points. Since the rise of social security, a middle class was created, solely by the government. Public education was of a greater quality, because the government dictated that we learn science and math to compete against the Soviets. We put a man on the moon, while we continued to expand welfare coverage. Our inventions of the 1940s-1970s excel most of the inventions since. Our accomplishments definitely excelled then.

You are hilarious you know, income equality is trivial and near unimportant, so long as the poor and the middle class can afford a luxurious lifestyle, and they can, there is no reason to care what the man across town makes, it does not matter if your neighbour lives like an Emperor if you live like a King.
To your second point, I highly suspect you are unaware of historical fact. Our most free points? Hardly, government encroached more on personal freedom between 1950 and 1980 then ever before, from gun control, bans on hate speech. Most equal for all, is that what you call the high inflation of dollar forcing women to leave homes and take jobs as no other society has ever had to before, this was not the glorious feminist charge of equality, it was simply the effect of dire market conditions. The media was explicitly censored by government bureaucrats "in order to protect American interests", property rights were frequently trampled by zoning laws which came into effect at that time.
Most able, there you might claim to be accurate, but inventive, no, creative certainly not, and where there were cases, government intervention was rarely the cause. We went to the moon to stick it to the commies, while they stuck it to us by way of getting us to pervert ourselves into a socialist country in fear of them.

And have charities halted the negative changes in society? No. In fact, as people grew rich off the government giving away services, cutting control, they attempted to force the system to keep them rich. The rich rigged the practices so the poor would have to pay more money. And it's caused more trouble for the majority of people than it's been worth. Charities are an utter and abject failure. We get angry at government, and we say it can't do anything right. Yet our army is held aloft as the supreme army on earth. If you can trust the government to run the army, you can trust them to run postal services, and collect taxes, and write laws, and provide welfare, and manage the economy. Because let me tell you, the military is just as incompetent as any other organization, within the government or without.

I don't trust the government to run the army, first off, even as a minarchist I don't believe in a government monopoly of force, they should have an army privatized if possible to manage the nation's coordinated defence which should mostly be consisted of trained militias. And manage the court system (unless a viable free market alternative is developed). Nothing more.

Now a question to you, if you admit that the government can't run the army competently, then why do you trust them to run postal services, and collect taxes, and write laws, and provide welfare, and manage the economy?

And if we are talking about today, then what you are blaming is not capitalism but corrupt governments. Stupid corrupt governments that have regulated the market so greatly that the only ones who can weasel their way to the top are the absolute genius and the absolute crook and either way they will likely grease a few government palms just for expediency.

Again, salvation army, and the thousands upon thousands of other successful charities, that have kept there from being a class of citizen starving in the street beg to differ, it is the free market that runs these not for profit groups and they help more people then the government has ever done so, just look at what the government has done with the unemployed poor, given them incentive to stay there, provided the means of their downfall by illegalizing narcotics. And forcing them donwnwards with the host of regulations preventing them from forming new business.

And I thought of an altruistic act that not only makes me feel good, it contradicts your "money is needed to provide the incentive to cure anything" and that probably also contradicts my point about charities as well:

Salk.

You mean Jonas Salk, the Russian-Jewish Scientist who cured polio, Salk?
You mean the Jonas Salk whose immigrant parents came to the United States in the 1900's at the height of the free market, whose parent's worked exceptionally hard in order to give their son a formal education.
The Jonas Salk who was born poor in the heart of New York City but rose to success and acclaim by curing polio, then distributed the cure not-for-profit, seriously, that is not a very good argument. Had his parent's not the desire for wealth he would not have received the education he did. The incentive of money to his parents was great enough to cause his success.
Jonas Salk was a great person, but his work doesn't prove that "money isn't needed to cure anything", there is no rule in the free market that you have to make a profit, or you even have to care about money. Salk is a great example of a person whose hard-work pulled him out of poverty by the bootstraps, had he still be in poverty when he developed the cure, I am certain that Mr. Salk would be more concerned about his profit.
Also it is only slightly altruism, one could easily argue that he did it out of personal aspiration, desire to be loved or even personal fear of the disease. As it has been said, altruistic acts are rare, if they exist at all. Because there is an identifiable motive for everything, and his acts weren't quite a sacrifice, he still lived a comfortable and happy life, now if he had done all this from his basement at the very pinnacle of poverty, invented the cure and just gave it away for free, then he would have been an altruist.

I have income and net worth data compared to taxes paid someplace. I will try to dig it up. No guarantees.

I question some of Adrian Empire's statistics.

You will note that, outside of the statistics of Offehiem, which are very likely false, my argument was based on reason, market trends and historical evidence rather then statistics.

[EvilDarkMagicians]

I messed up the thread how do I fix it?

[Qwcasd]

You know, it just occurred to me that one of the arguments here was the the US population gave the most in charitable contributions. And this is often an argument in free market circles, that charities can accomplish far more in a far better way than government can.

Except... they can't. And it's pretty clear they can't. Things have gotten worse since 1980, for the vast majority of people. At this point 25% of the people own 87% of the wealth. And they keep that wealth, not because they are better than the remaining 75%, but because having wealth provides a firm base to continue making money. Not because they compete better, or more efficiently, or even provide better services. In my opinion, a really good capitalist system would be where one would not be allowed to pass one's wealth onto your children. Thereby always fostering competition among the many, rather than the few.

I have seen these numbers before, and they are ever changing (a few years ago it was 99 and 10%, then 95% and 3%, 85% and 10%) and almost certainly inaccurate as I have yet to see a reliable source for them, this seems like a reasonably acceptable number, so I will run with it.
Except that that base is ever shifting, the top 25% of wealth holders this year are not comprised of the same individuals as 1990 or 2000, people rise and fall based on wealth accumulation.
Now, we come to the nature of the argument, what does the distribution of wealth have to do with the effectiveness of charity? It doesn't as when we speak of charities we are talking about soup kitchens and food banks, homeless shelters, not welfare, the rich aren't giving the poor money, they are buying them food, and shelter. Expecting them to earn their own money. To some this is ineffective, John Stossel makes an excellent argument against government anti-poverty and even soft homeless shelters (feed and forget sorts that don't try to help the rock-bottom of society rejoin the rest of the workforce).

Our economy just collapsed, because people were making millions off of lies and deceit. The pro-market people will come along and explain to us that this is because of too much regulation. And too some degree, yes, the laws we created were obscure, and drafted by corporate interests, and favored the corporation. But this process began under Reagan and was continued by his successors, of deregulating, of removing safeguards against exploitative practices, and the rich have grown richer, and the poor have grown poorer.

I see you have fallen for the propaganda, no my friend, it was not the free market that brought the economic collapse, it was government intervention, like George Bush's initiative to increase rates of homeownership, how did he accomplish it, he encouraged banks to take on sub-prime loans on people who cannot pay off the debts they take on, not only that he regulated the banks so that 35% of every banks loans were to be to lower income families, as you can guess this is absolutely parallel to sane market thought. The free market is the way out of our economic mess, not the way in, no sane economist would make that claim. Keynesians aside

At the same time, charities in the US give more than anybody else. But they have completely failed to mitigate the relatively even society we had. Income inequality has skyrocketed. And don't say, well, this is necessary to foster creativity. For the simple fact of the matter is that America has excelled at extending equality, and freedom, and ability at its most socialized points. Since the rise of social security, a middle class was created, solely by the government. Public education was of a greater quality, because the government dictated that we learn science and math to compete against the Soviets. We put a man on the moon, while we continued to expand welfare coverage. Our inventions of the 1940s-1970s excel most of the inventions since. Our accomplishments definitely excelled then.

You are hilarious you know, income equality is trivial and near unimportant, so long as the poor and the middle class can afford a luxurious lifestyle, and they can, there is no reason to care what the man across town makes, it does not matter if your neighbour lives like an Emperor if you live like a King.
To your second point, I highly suspect you are unaware of historical fact. Our most free points? Hardly, government encroached more on personal freedom between 1950 and 1980 then ever before, from gun control, bans on hate speech. Most equal for all, is that what you call the high inflation of dollar forcing women to leave homes and take jobs as no other society has ever had to before, this was not the glorious feminist charge of equality, it was simply the effect of dire market conditions. The media was explicitly censored by government bureaucrats "in order to protect American interests", property rights were frequently trampled by zoning laws which came into effect at that time.
Most able, there you might claim to be accurate, but inventive, no, creative certainly not, and where there were cases, government intervention was rarely the cause. We went to the moon to stick it to the commies, while they stuck it to us by way of getting us to pervert ourselves into a socialist country in fear of them.

And have charities halted the negative changes in society? No. In fact, as people grew rich off the government giving away services, cutting control, they attempted to force the system to keep them rich. The rich rigged the practices so the poor would have to pay more money. And it's caused more trouble for the majority of people than it's been worth. Charities are an utter and abject failure. We get angry at government, and we say it can't do anything right. Yet our army is held aloft as the supreme army on earth. If you can trust the government to run the army, you can trust them to run postal services, and collect taxes, and write laws, and provide welfare, and manage the economy. Because let me tell you, the military is just as incompetent as any other organization, within the government or without.

I don't trust the government to run the army, first off, even as a minarchist I don't believe in a government monopoly of force, they should have an army privatized if possible to manage the nation's coordinated defence which should mostly be consisted of trained militias. And manage the court system (unless a viable free market alternative is developed). Nothing more.

Now a question to you, if you admit that the government can't run the army competently, then why do you trust them to run postal services, and collect taxes, and write laws, and provide welfare, and manage the economy?

And if we are talking about today, then what you are blaming is not capitalism but corrupt governments. Stupid corrupt governments that have regulated the market so greatly that the only ones who can weasel their way to the top are the absolute genius and the absolute crook and either way they will likely grease a few government palms just for expediency.

Again, salvation army, and the thousands upon thousands of other successful charities, that have kept there from being a class of citizen starving in the street beg to differ, it is the free market that runs these not for profit groups and they help more people then the government has ever done so, just look at what the government has done with the unemployed poor, given them incentive to stay there, provided the means of their downfall by illegalizing narcotics. And forcing them donwnwards with the host of regulations preventing them from forming new business.

And I thought of an altruistic act that not only makes me feel good, it contradicts your "money is needed to provide the incentive to cure anything" and that probably also contradicts my point about charities as well:

Salk.

You mean Jonas Salk, the Russian-Jewish Scientist who cured polio, Salk?
You mean the Jonas Salk whose immigrant parents came to the United States in the 1900's at the height of the free market, whose parent's worked exceptionally hard in order to give their son a formal education.
The Jonas Salk who was born poor in the heart of New York City but rose to success and acclaim by curing polio, then distributed the cure not-for-profit, seriously, that is not a very good argument. Had his parent's not the desire for wealth he would not have received the education he did. The incentive of money to his parents was great enough to cause his success.
Jonas Salk was a great person, but his work doesn't prove that "money isn't needed to cure anything", there is no rule in the free market that you have to make a profit, or you even have to care about money. Salk is a great example of a person whose hard-work pulled him out of poverty by the bootstraps, had he still be in poverty when he developed the cure, I am certain that Mr. Salk would be more concerned about his profit.
Also it is only slightly altruism, one could easily argue that he did it out of personal aspiration, desire to be loved or even personal fear of the disease. As it has been said, altruistic acts are rare, if they exist at all. Because there is an identifiable motive for everything, and his acts weren't quite a sacrifice, he still lived a comfortable and happy life, now if he had done all this from his basement at the very pinnacle of poverty, invented the cure and just gave it away for free, then he would have been an altruist.

I have income and net worth data compared to taxes paid someplace. I will try to dig it up. No guarantees.

I question some of Adrian Empire's statistics.

You will note that, outside of the statistics of Offehiem, which are very likely false, my argument was based on reason, market trends and historical evidence rather then statistics.

Yeah, but still, I would like a source.

[Sibirsky]

The standard for service users may be lower. But the NHS gets more service users. Or a higher percentage of service users. No one in Britain has to think twice about getting something treated because it'll sink them into massive debt.

Not may be but is. Kenya's satisfaction with their healthcare is higher than Americans' with theirs. It's not a measure of quality of service but a demonstration of lowered expectations. Few would argue that Kenyan healthcare is of better quality than American healthcare. Americans live 20 years longer than Kenyans.

[Crematorial Souls]

I basically believe in capitalism

^Pretty much this.

Though I believe in some restraints. Capitalism is efficient.

Yep

[Offenheim]

I messed up the thread how do I fix it?

I actually think Sibirsky did and it affected you first. It happened on another page as well. It's the spoiler in the quotes, seems to cause it.