Hugo

No, it does not. The greater the economic freedom, the greater the prosperity. Take a look at the economic freedom index and comparative real incomes, etc., if you don't believe that. Absolutely and completely, because any attempt to prevent "market distortion" is market distortion. It is self-contradictory. There is only market distortion where state interference makes it so. You see, the anti-trust laws are based upon a false premise, i.e. that the free market system, if left alone, will generate monopolies. This has never, ever been borne out. The theory exists in denial of the empirical facts, therefore, the theory is wrong. Monopolies have only ever existed where government interference made it so. Think of the East India Company, who only held a monopoly because British laws and British troops ordained it. The best safeguard against monopoly and dominance is the removal of state regulation from the economy. Because of that, anti-trust laws actually harm what they are trying to protect. I'm not sure where you are going with this. I'm arguing against both the specific anti-trust laws that we have, their vagueries and their unjust nature, and against the principles they are based upon. I'm sorry if that was not clear. I am concerned with efficiency, but more than efficiency I am concerned with freedom and liberty. Those are far more important than anything else, and so I am opposed to state interference in the economy not primarily because of the disruption and inefficiency it causes but because it violates individual freedom and human rights.

Nonsense. The greatest opposition to the American Way comes from within America. He's kind of hard to miss, but there's this guy, Michael Moore, hates America, has lots of support. How do you argue that Ralph Nader and George W Bush are pushing the same message? You think Greenpeace and Exxon are skipping down the yellow brick road, hand in hand? I don't think so. Look at how many different subcultures there are within America. America's Marxist-Leninist parties have greater membership than the Canadian versions. In fact, I think the Canadian Marxist party doesn't even have official status anymore. Think of all the different media spins: CNN vs. Fox News, Moore vs. Limbaugh, Chomsky vs. Charen, but in Canada, Fox News is banned.

Cultural differences. North American culture is individualistic, which has both positive and negative results. On the positive side, it leads to great economic performance and scientific or technical output. However, individualism or nonconformity expressed in negative ways becomes crime. Because of the differences in cultural outlook between Norwegians and Americans, Norway is unlikely to ever have the same crime problems but is also unlikely to ever match the economic or scientific output of America, even on a per-capita basis.

The same reason there is so much rape and murder. People are not always moral and do not always obey the law.

Unfortunately, antitrust laws have nothing to do with "trust" and everything to do with putting high-priced lawyers in command of the economy. The anti-trust laws in America are profoundly unjust. They speak of completely ambiguous crimes such as "unfair competition," "restraint of trade," "collusion," and "intent to monopolize." There is no way for any company to have any idea of whether they are in violation of these laws until a judge rules on it. Anti-trust laws also rule that if a company attempts to defend itself against the charges, and loses, it will pay triple damages. The products of a company are owned by that company and may be sold or disposed of any way it sees fit. Anti-trust laws violate freedom of property and freedom of contract because they strike down these rights. Exactly, and anti-trust laws completely violate that. You see, an anti-trust suit basically says that a company has no right to enjoy profits or to be successful, and may be stricken down for nothing more than being successful. In this environment, no potential participant can feel sure of any benefit from participating.

The key tenet of capitalism is that all transactions and trade be voluntary. The children in this child porn have not given their consent and cannot, because they are of diminished responsibility. Your business idea is profoundly anti-capitalist, and for examples of such egregious kinds of dealing you would have to look at the Soviet Union or the PRC.

Prove it.

Because the steel unions lobbied him to. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. I agree that we need intelligent and just laws. However, you seem to want to make laws based upon the assumption that corporations are evil, but what you need to realise is that corporations are no more intrinsically evil than people are, because after all, they are composed of people. To legislate on the assumption that they were would be like legislating on the assumption that blacks or Jews were intrinsically evil, an atrocity. Therefore, laws that are unnecessarily punitive and punish success (like anti-trust laws), laws that interfere in private affairs where neither state nor judiciary should be meddling (like insider trading laws) and so forth are unjust. You assume that it was the fault of corporatism that Congress never discussed the Act, when in fact that is a failure of Congress, not corporatism. You assume that the government would not have passed such an Act anyway, when all indications are to the contrary. And this is a special interest group complaining because a particular law doesn't benefit them enough. If we had a dollar for every time that happened, there'd be no more national debt. You are assuming what you need to prove. Government is passing down law as written or requested by corporate interests, but this does not prove corruption, nor that corporatism is evil. If the laws were unjust, government would be more culpable than the corporate interests who requested it. Until you can prove that government has no alternative but to pass laws suggested by business interests, you have no case when you claim that business unduly influences politics. Politicians are able to listen to various opinions and make judgements accordingly. I can list you many examples of politicians making decisions that went directly against the wishes of business interests, even where substantial money was involved, for instance, many of the politicians who received money from technology companies voted against the Trade Promotion Authority proposal that they were in favour of.

Then what are you proposing? So, the shareholders decided to give him $730m. It was theirs to give him. What you are basically saying is that people have no right to decide what to do with their own money. Who does? You, el Generalissimo? Funny, I thought the judicial, executive and legislative were all separate. That's what it says in the US Constitution. Or are you telling me that Congress, or George W Bush, sent the Enron CEO to jail? And so, based on the "2 samples", you are indicting the whole capitalist system? Yet you reject my indictment of all government based on my "2 samples" of Hitler and Stalin. Yes, and you can "elect" a corporation as often as you want by buying from them, or refusing to do so. and you quoted me as saying: So, because I want to help the poor, you conclude I am a social Darwinist?

John Connally probably had more corporate backing than any other politician in history. According to you, he should have had it in the bag, but instead he was a dismal failure. What you are doing is arguing against democracy. You are saying that the electorate is so stupid that they cannot be trusted to vote according to their true desires when money is involved, so you propose to pass laws to try and prod the electorate in the direction you want them to go in. You tell me how many. Don't forget to tell me which ones, too. When he passed the steelworker protection laws. Next question. Extremely debateable. I would say that lobby groups hold far more influence. What you're also saying is that, since corporations are allowed no representation at the front door, you want to slam the back door on them too, while you continue to freeload off them and bleed them dry for "redistribution" and social programmes. Correct? Ah, I don't remember you telling me where you drew the line. Do you also advocate banning the two-man landscaping operation who takes care of my lawn pests? What about the five-man garage that services my car? What about Dell? Or do you draw it by profits? Is there a set dollar amount below which is a harmless small business and above which lie evil, amoral corporations?

In the criminal justice system and tort law, yes, absolutely there is. But that is not the fault of capitalism, it's the fault of our legal system. Whether or not laws promote corporate abuse is highly debateable. I submit that corporations are punished by our laws unnecessarily and unfairly already. I'll offer a couple of examples for your consideration. The first is insider trading laws. There is no moral basis for this to be illegal (quite the opposite) and it's another hangover from the protectionist early 1930s. Insider trading laws basically state that it is illegal for an individual to use his knowledge to better himself. Before it became illegal, it was up to the shareholders of a company to establish whether or not they would allow executives to trade on insider information or whether they would even allow them to own stock at all. One noteable railroad company paid it's CEO no salary at all and allowed him to own stock and trade it on insider information as a form of renumeration. The second example is the old American revolutionary maxim: "No taxation without representation." Corporations pay taxes that would make you scream if you saw them, but they have no representation in our democratic process and are forced to resort to lobbyists to try and protect their interests. Only the executives of a company could be expected to vote for the interests of their company, and why should they have to give up their vote on their personal interests? If corporations are to be denied a say in our political process (and those who would ban lobbying would completely muzzle corporate interests), it is only fair to exempt them from contributing to the demands of that political process. Anything else is tyranny. Quite frankly, I feel that the social ills people blame on capitalism are actually the symptoms of a legal and political system that is still stuck in the 18th Century. I suggest you consider exploring reality. A corporation is nothing more than a group of people who have voluntarily banded together for mutual benefit. What other such organisations will you abolish? Unions? Social clubs? Churches? Political parties? I'd hate to live in your world, where freedom of association is a pipe-dream.

Alright, then it seems I'll have to explain this to you. What you are saying is that since some corporations act irresponsibly, rather than punish those corporations under the law we should distrust all of them and punish all of them. So my analogy was that since some governments - like Hitler's and Stalin's - abused their power and murdered people, we should distrust and disempower all government. Or, if you prefer, consider that we've all heard cases of private citizens committing acts of robbery, rape, and murder. This happens very often, "in many country [sic]", as you might say. Clearly, private citizens can't be trusted and they should all be permanently incarcerated, or subjected to a police state or something for our own good. Right? They get a golden parachute because once one has been at the top it's hard to get work again. Without it, nobody would take the position. And where is the former CEO of Enron now? Jail. And yet, the story was made public anyway. More to the point, why do you find it problematic that corporations can influence a TV station but that the government owns a TV station (the CBC)? The irony that Fox is also a corporation also seems to have escaped you. You're objecting because corporatism didn't save you from corporatism. Then you need to get out more, quite simply. Even though the Canadian government hasn't started murdering people, it has mired itself in scandal and corruption and precious little has been done about it. Where is your outrage against that? Strangely, you want corrupt corporations to be replaced by an even more corrupt government. Examples of my social darwinism, please? Anybody can be a threat to your security. I could be a threat to your security. This is why we have laws, but laws are to protect as well as punish. You seem to want laws that punish corporations, and as corporations are made of people, you basically want to punish people for working.

This is because downsizing and outsourcing don't cause unemployment. Regarding the causes of the Great Depression, without the protectionist measures it would certainly not have been nearly as bad, had it occurred at all. All evidence shows a global economic slowing, however, without the protectionist measures instituted it would not have become a depression. Once again, I refer to FDR's Folly as a good source on how both Hoover and FDR worsened the Depression with their meddling. You say that speculation was a cause of the Depression. It was not. The reaction to speculation was a cause, specifically, the Federal Reserve's effort to "cool off" the market by raising interest rates. They did this knowing that it ran the risk of causing a recession, but they clearly did not know how deeply their knife would cut. Yes, it does. Directly following the Smoot-Hawley tarriffs, U.S. imports from Europe declined from a 1929 high of $1,334 million to just $390 million in 1932, while U.S. exports to Europe fell from $2,341 million in 1929 to $784 million in 1932. Economic recovery followed the liberalisation of trade, starting with the 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act. The US State Department says, "the Smoot-Hawley Tariff was more a consequence of the onset of the Great Depression than an initial cause. But while the tariff might not have caused the Depression, it certainly did not make it any better... such policies contributed to a drastic decline in international trade." Trade creates wealth. Lack of trade does not. Or would you like to dispute that? All these were in place before or during the Depression. None helped. The post-WWII period has one crucial economic caveat - it was post-WWII! The need for foreign aid was a great stimulus to economic trade, and the changes to the labour market and so forth all skew the picture far too much for your example to have any validity.

Well, then this is the difference between our ideas of what "learning" means. To me, "learning" is about exploring many different ideas scientifically, discussing and debating, with the idea that you will become well-versed in general theory and in specifics and then be able to make a well-informed judgement of your own. To you, "learning" means memorising textbooks by rote and certainly, if we "learnt" by that model, we'd get nowhere. Incorrect. The Great Depression was caused by import tarriffs that caused repercussions in other countries. A year after the Depression began, world trade was at less than 25% of what it had been. Price fixing and minimum wage laws also contributed. Furthermore, if what you say was true, we would be in the midst of a far greater recession right now because the "problems" you allege were the cause of the Depression are far more prevalent today. Private debt, speculation and downsizing are all at far greater levels, and yet the economy is ticking over quite well. The empirical evidence denies your viewpoint. And it would certainly be a very, very odd coincidence that the Great Depression was the depression in which government became the most involved in the economy, and also the longest and most severe depression in human history. Depressions before and since, when governments were more laissez-faire, were never so severe or so long. This is also not true. Protectionism sealed off foreign markets as well as foreign industry and international trade died. This caused far more damage than anything else.

It's my opinion that economics should be complusory subjects in school, so that the electorate doesn't keep picking politicians who are economically ignorant or who propose economically disastrous policies, like trade protectionism. I'm sure nobody here is old enough to remember the Great Depression, but that's what happens when you start fiddling with the economy, fixing prices and slapping tarriffs on imports to "protect" domestic jobs and industry.

No commodity has a cost of $0, but healthcare has a price of $0. Do you understand the difference? Because it damages the economy, creates unemployment and lowers real income. It's sad that I have to explain this yet again on this forum, but here we go, real basic economics coming up - again. Remember when George W Bush moved to protect the US steel industry from foreign competition to protect US steelworker jobs? Now, Americans can't import cheap steel anymore. Everything that involves steel in its manufacture is going to cost more. When things cost more, people buy less of them. In the steel production industry, jobs will be saved, but in the industries that use steel, many more jobs will be lost. What Bush has done is to save 3,000 jobs at the expense of 30,000 or maybe 300,000. The difference is that because the relationship is voluntary, they actually work. Because not everyone in the USSR wanted to be in a collective, the Soviet government was forced to use violence against it's people, and as a result they weren't terribly co-operative and didn't work very hard. The effects of their poor productivity were also hidden from them, because they did not see the impacts that their economic failure in the international market was having. But yes, the corporation is essentially a collective. That's what "corporation" means. It's ironic that capitalism produces far more collective organisations and socialist sentiment than socialism itself. Look at the huge variety of voluntary organisations in our society: companies, social clubs, churches, charities, trade associations, trade unions, student bodies - the list goes on. I'm sorry, I thought we were going to seriously discuss corporations? If that's your argument, then I propose to abolish all government based on Hitler and Stalin. I'm sure you can see your own fallacy. Entirely wrong. The CEO is held ultimately accountable and, if he is not doing his job well, the board of directors can fire him and any other executives they please. The goal of a corporation is to make money but making money depends upon a whole lot of things, one of which is public opinion, so it really pays for corporations to clean up their mess and play nice. And yet, you seem to have this information anyway. Where did you find it, your crystal ball? Tarot cards? Apparently the efforts of corporations to cover things up don't work very well, because their dirty linen is hung up in public on a daily basis. Based on historical precedent your government is a far greater threat to your security than any corporation. The fact is that the best agent of my own security and happiness is myself, and that means I need a system of individual rights as found in democratic-capitalism that will protect me from my fellow citizens and from my government.

No, August, it is you who is wrong. Government regulations set a precedent and an expectation, however, it's simply wrong to imagine that corporations have gone along fighting and pulling against every environmental safeguard. Compulsory unleaded fuel may have been the government's idea, but the hybrid car was not. The car companies involved developed this technology at massive cost to themselves without government regulations stating that they had to. The happy fact at this time is that environmentalism is, ironically, big business and corporations are happily jumping on the eco-friendly bandwagon. The idea that governments should regulate corporations in this way is therefore misguided and wrongheaded. If you can make the market demand environmentally sound industry, the suppliers of that market will bring it. You will get far more by voluntary co-operation than by forcible coersion. Therefore, the correct way to develop an environmentally sound economy is not to invest power in government to interefere wholesale in the economy, a statist policy that inevitably leads to ruin, but to educate the public in such a way that they demand environmentalism of their own accord.

Corporations are not really socialist. For one thing, they reject the primary maxim of socialism, instead, they say "from and to each according to his abilities". It's one of those things that keeps coming up. Back in 1776, American congressmen were complaining that delegates were shilling and selling their votes for land speculators and giving in to lobbyists, and George Washington himself was a member of a land speculation company. In ancient Athens, politicians were accused of much the same thing. Some things never change, and it's a common tactic of the left to claim that they've discovered something amazing (that everyone else actually knew all along) and that this something will be the doom of us all. You have it backwards. A command economy, where you are told where to work, where to live, what to earn and what to buy is tyranny. Capitalism enables you to work, live and buy whatever you want. It's freedom. A system that depends on voluntary exchange cannot be tyranny any more than night can be day. Incorrect. When anything is free demand rises higher than supply. You must have an infinite supply, or you will have infinite problems supplying. Healthcare is a prime example. There are queues because the service is free, so demand will always be greater than supply no matter what you do and we will never be rid of long queues as long as medicare exists. Come on, this is really basic economics. Where did you study? Government needs to be democratic because you cannot opt out. You don't necessarily need to have a say in who runs a company because if you don't like it, you don't have to buy from them or work for them. But you can't refuse to pay taxes if you didn't vote for the elected party. If only it were true. Like a bad hangover, the legacies of Marxist and even mercantilist thought are easily visible in leftist economics today. Every time somebody advocates the welfare state, that's the legacy of Marx. Every time somebody argues against outsourcing, that's the legacy of mercantilism. The left, quite simply, refuses to move with the times and remains mired in economic thinking that, at it's most modern, is 150 years old (and at it's oldest, millenia). People get stuck in familiar patterns of thinking. It's human nature to be afraid of change. Yes, you keep wondering that. In the course of your wondering, perhaps you could take the time to educate yourself on basic economics as well. Such as when?

I just told you of 240 studies that prove the opposite. Will you please address the points levelled at your arguments rather than going off on tangents? I don't need you to read the news to me, MS, I can read on my own. Like whom? Norway, who has 25% of the population below the poverty line and whose workers spend more than 6 months of the year goofing off? Great idea.

And you should spend less time watching sensationalist TV shows and more time reading good books.

Yes, it is very true that capitalism embodies the ideals of socialism (co-operation and mutual prosperity) better than socialism itself does. However, it is incorrect to state that your examples are "socialism in action." They are examples of "corporations in action." When people band together for a common goal, they have formed a corporation. It is the personal freedoms that capitalism grants that make these corporations possible. Socialism, which recognises no individual freedom or right of association, does not. The difference between the "socialism" you give examples of and the "socialism" found in Marx is that the former is given freely and willingly, whilst the latter is coerced by violence and oppression. No evidence or citation, a far-fetched and unsubstantiated claim best held up for what it is: ridiculous. What are your examples of this? I've got some examples of the opposite. Congress confiscated $100bn from the oil companies in 1980. The DoJ went after Bill Gates like a rabid dog. Bethlehem Steel was virtually driven out of business by environmental concerns. John Connally, who had more corporate backing than any politician in history, only got one delegate from all the primaries he entered. The fact is that corporations have intangible power - money - and governments have tangible power - guns. Guns trump money any day. What happened when Nasser nationalised the Suez canal? How were the corporations able to fight back? Your post shows a real ignorance of the way the lobbying system works. Companies can't pay a politician to advocate their goals, because politicians want re-election more than money. Companies have to find politicians who already support their goals, and back them. This is why the tobacco industry has been beaten black-and-blue by government in the last 30 years. If what you say is true, then with all their money, wouldn't tobbaco companies be able to buy back some of all they have lost - advertising bans, public campaigns against them, public smoking laws, increasingly strict age restrictions, and so forth? -- Thomas Sowell

I would have to debate that. Redistribution of wealth and the welfare state have done a lot of harm to the interests of the poor. Redistribution, for instance, has taken money away from those that would have employed the poor and so denied those poor both jobs and income. It has also perpetuated the social injustice that those who earn wealth may not keep it, so removing an incentive for self-improvement. The welfare state has done much the same thing, and has done a lot to trap the poor in low incomes by removing an incentive to work and prosper. The transition from welfare to work is a near-impossible one because it transforms a person from a beneficiary to a benefactor, and not many want to take that step. I can go on, but suffice it to say that I feel that both redistribution and welfare are violations of individual rights, gross injustices and do far more harm than good, especially to those they are supposed to benefit.

What I am afraid of is that efforts to counteract this "problem" will divert attention from the true problems. Kyoto, for instance, addresses CO2 emissions at the expense of all other environmental issues, when all the evidence shows that CO2 is not even an issue. What we are effectively doing is damaging our economies and wasting our resources on a problem that doesn't exist. We also run the risk of falling into false complacency, we may believe that since we are in compliance with Kyoto, there's no need to worry, when in fact Kyoto compliance has solved nothing and we still have every need to worry. There is also the matter of trying to get water to flow uphill. Global warming is probably part of the natural cycles of the planet, just as it grew colder in 1300 or so, so it grows warmer now. Trying to arrest this is like trying to get water to flow uphill, and it's a question of how many billions of dollars and how many thousands of jobs we will sacrifice to this Canuteian white elephant. If global warming is nothing to worry about - and the scientific consensus confirms that - then we are creating additional headaches for ourselves. Ruining our economy and shedding thousands of jobs will cause us far more problems and social ills than climate change that is natural, unavoidable and, by all accounts, probably beneficial anyway. But this is not the situation here. The tobacco companies could play statistical games but all the scientific evidence proved that smoking was bad for your health. Not all the evidence proves that human CO2 emissions are causing an environmental catastrophe, quite the opposite, in fact.

I'm familiar with the text. I believe that Engels' essay is an attempt at historical exposition from a Marxist perspective rather than a Marxist vision of womanhood. I'm well aware. I'll quote Robert C. Tucker in the introduction to On the Jewish Question: "This, however, is not to deny that Marx, although he himself was of Jewish origin, harbored anti-Jewish attitudes, nor is it to deny that such attitudes found expression in this essay." Your intellectual honesty is to be congratulated. Many things are done in reaction against injustice. Hitler's thoughts and regime were a reaction to German defeat in WWI and what he viewed as Western, Communist and Jewish denial of the heritage of the German people. This reaction, however, created a horrifying entity. The American revolution, conversely, was a reaction to English economic and political oppression, and that reaction ushered in a new age of democracy and individual freedoms. What I'm getting at is that reacting to a bad situation is not an excuse for creating a worse one. I'm aware of this. What I said was: What I meant by this was that while the modern left has significantly diverged from Marxist dogma, one can see the heritage of said dogma today. Indeed, and I cited one such difference when I quoted Marx arguing against another socialist idea, that women should be communal property, in favour of the notion of women as private property. Par for the course on this forum, my friend.

And look at those problems 50 or 100 years ago. Progress, you see? Rome wasn't built in a day. Empty rhetoric and sweeping generalisations made without evidence. I'll give you some evidence. How about a few examples of private industry acting without government prompting? Like Ford's Rouge plant? Nike's disposable sneaker? The ecofriendly cleaning products in your local grocery store (Zehrs stocks a wide range)? The Insight, Civic Hybrid and the Prius? GM and Ford propane-fueled fleet vehicles? The diesel-electric Humvee hybrid? Show me the government regulations and interventions that forced these private companies to produce these products against their will, please.