Is Deliberately Starving Millions of the Populace to death A Good Thing

carolt

Sapphire wrote: »

But in general communism was a very bad and oppressive system, apart from for the loathsome party apparachiks in their dachas...

I would argue that was not 'communism' - it may have been called that, but it wasn't.

Kohoutek

It's amazing how we call our economic system 'capitalist', yet I think we're pretty far from the original conception of capitalism and free markets.

If we were really capitalist, the market would set interest rates, not a central bank. We would let failed companies and financial institutions go bankrupt, not bail them out, and creditors/bondholders/shareholders of failed companies would lose everything. We wouldn't have an enormous government that spends 50% of our GDP, and millions of families that depend on state entitlement programmes.

I think a lot of problems stem from the fact we're not capitalist enough - too many people work for or depend on the government, we have banks where shareholders do not exert enough pressure to limit ridiculous salaries and bonuses, and these institutions operate on the assumption if they fail, they will be bailed out. If bank accounts had no deposit protection, people would not invest in dodgy institutions like Northern Rock or Icelandic banks in the first place.

carolt

That's an interesting point.

Generali

Kohoutek wrote: »

It's amazing how we call our economic system 'capitalist', yet I think we're pretty far from the original conception of capitalism and free markets.

If we were really capitalist, the market would set interest rates, not a central bank. We would let failed companies and financial institutions go bankrupt, not bail them out, and creditors/bondholders/shareholders of failed companies would lose everything. We wouldn't have an enormous government that spends 50% of our GDP, and millions of families that depend on state entitlement programmes.

I think a lot of problems stem from the fact we're not capitalist enough - too many people work for or depend on the government, we have banks where shareholders do not exert enough pressure to limit ridiculous salaries and bonuses, and these institutions operate on the assumption if they fail, they will be bailed out. If bank accounts had deposit protection, people would not invest in dodgy institutions like Northern Rock or Icelandic banks in the first place.

I describe the Western Governments as Corporatist and thing thing is, it's in lots of peoples' interests for things to be done as they are.

For example, if you bring in some law that requires a compliance document to be written (is my business solvent or what do I do to protect the rights of certain groups at work for example), for Tesco, BP or HSBC it is pretty easy to comply as they can spread the cost of compliance over a huge sales base. For a person running a company with 20 or 30 employees it's much tougher as they can't.

Using business to further the aims of Government was a central tenet of Facism I believe.

vivatifosi

ninky wrote: »

link to source material please.

you ignore the prevention aspect of a non capitalist system....

.

The flaws of communism were highlighted by the world's leading Guru on development economics and Nobel Economics Laureate Amartya Sen (who incidentally does not give the right a particularly easy ride either):

Sen still calls himself a person of the left, but he says he felt something disturbing about the standard leftwing politics of his student days. Most of his friends were Stalinists. He liked their egalitarian commitment but felt they were not open to political pluralism and that they even saw political tolerance as a "weakness of will". "I thought it was a major defect of the Stalinist left not to recognise that establishing democracy in India had been an enormous step forward. There was a temptation to call this sham or bourgeois democracy. The left didn't take seriously enough the disastrous lack of democracy in Communist countries," he recalls.

This point was to stay with him in his famine studies, when he enunciated the view that no famine has ever occurred in a country with a free press and regular elections. He compared China and India. Although by most indicators, from life expectancy to literacy, Mao's China was ahead of Nehru's India, China had had a catastrophic famine between 1958 and 1961 in which up to 30m people starved to death. There was no free press or alternative political parties to give early warning. In democratic India, free from the Raj, this could not have happened.....


....."Opponents may see globalisation as a new folly, but it is neither particularly new or a folly," he says. He supports the "themes" raised by anti-capitalist and environmental protesters at Seattle, Prague and Davos, but not their "theses", which he finds too simple. He says the problem is not free trade, but the inequality of global power.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/mar/31/society.politics

Kohoutek

Generali wrote: »

Using business to further the aims of Government was a central tenet of Facism I believe.

Exactly. It's a scary thought. One of Tony Blair's buzzwords from 1997 ('the third way') was a direct lift from Mussolini!

I think we are slowly moving towards fascism in a way - bigger and bigger government and social engineering, erosion of civil liberties, perpetual war, and as you say big business having a very close relationship with government.

I remember from GCSE History that Hitler was very anti-smoking and very pro environment too - two more themes repeated in the last 15 years!

carolt

To be fair, Hitler may have been into brushing his teeth, too, for all I know, but that doesn't necessarily make it a Bad Thing.

I don't think Hitler's supposed avowal of environmentalism need lead us to rule it out on those grounds alone.

lostinrates

carolt wrote: »

To be fair, Hitler may have been into brushing his teeth, too, for all I know, but that doesn't necessarily make it a Bad Thing.

I don't think Hitler's supposed avowal of environmentalism need lead us to rule it out on those grounds alone.

True, and its a difficult balance. There must have been some real feeling initially at the very least, leading to the rise of Hitler. He spoke sense amid the nonsense too. Its far harder, I think to acknowledge that a wicked person said some things that were not wicked that than it is to dismiss everything as the ramblings of deranged evil.

Kohoutek

carolt wrote: »

I don't think Hitler's supposed avowal of environmentalism need lead us to rule it out on those grounds alone.

No I was only kidding about that one! Smoking, environmentalism and animal welfare were some of the few things you could say Hitler 'got right'. Mussolini was very keen on public health and fitness too - obesity is not an option in a fascist country!

carolt

Unless you were the leader!

Mussolini was a bit porky, wasn't he?