Are there any free enterprise economies that haven';t been successful?
Cause I'm reading that part of America's success is due to its free enterprise economy and its dedication to it.
Which is fine on the surface, but simply committing to free enterprise isn't enough to actually make your country successful, is it? DDon't you also need a large workforce, a steady flow of credit, and a middle class/other markets to export to?
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Anonymous2011-05-19 11:20
Most startups fail, no one is perfect, nothing is perfect, it's inevitable, the difference is when they fail the businesses are economically shut down, selling off assets to reimburse losses. Non-free enterprises on the other hand are simply subsidized more heavily by the state forcing taxpayers to foot the bill just so some bureaucrats can keep their unproductive jobs.
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Anonymous2011-05-19 11:21
Don't you also need a large workforce, a steady flow of credit, and a middle class/other markets to export to?
Yes, and you also need an efficient system of administration, free enterprise is it.
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Anonymous2011-05-30 7:03
We're also starting to see the U.S. fall apart at the seams, so I'm not really sure why you chose that example. Lets use two of your points to demonstrate why.
1.) Having a large work force is a huge draw back in a free enterprise system in the modern world in regards to any prosperous society. Think about it, the number one drive of every major corporation on the planet is to expand and turn profit, and when they can accomplish both of those goals by out-sourcing labor to another country, they will. The result of this is what we're seeing in the U.S. currently: rising unemployment rates, increased emphasis on improving social programs, and of course, rising crime rates.
2.) Assuming standards and practices are in place in which loans of all kinds can only be given out to those who have the ability to pay it back, sure. The problem comes in when money is being handed out to every moron under the sun hand over fist by people who turn around and bundle the debt, sell it to people with the knowledge that it won't be paid back, and make even more money by "betting" against it. In short, this and many, many other things lead to huge chunks of money being created literally out of thin air, which of course leads to rapid inflation and the devaluation of said currency. It's also fair to note that the example I just used (which is a big part of the U.S.'s current economic problems) is far from the only way to manipulate and destroy a free market economy.
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Anonymous2011-05-30 13:37
Nazzi Germany
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Anonymous2011-05-30 15:57
Roman empire, Somalia
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Anonymous2011-05-30 16:09
Roman empire
Though the Rome did collapse for a variety of reasons, self-driven economic failure was not one of them.
The US isn't falling apart at the seams, countries with ppp per capita 10 times lower and higher gini coefficients aren't falling apart at the seams.
The free market just responds to supply and demand, if a hopelessly corrupt country decides to nationalize everything then it will just end up with corrupt civil servants instead of corrupt businesmen.
Money can only be dished out to every moron under the sun by a wildcat bank and only the federal reserve is able to dish out cash in the US. What does that mean?
It is very fashionable to hate on the US and capitalism and you could whine all day about something by comparing it to theoretical perfection, a real edgy rebel though would stand amongst hipsters and say "sure they're fucked but our perspective is all wrong...".
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Anonymous2011-05-30 21:43
#9, your post is riddled with an insane amount of assumptions about me and my beliefs, and I don't understand why. Nowhere in what I said did I say that a better system exists.
All the same, I have a big problem with this part of what you said: "Money can only be dished out to every moron under the sun by a wildcat bank and only the federal reserve is able to dish out cash to US" Nothing about this is incorrect, but you're completely ignoring the obvious factor of what happens to a democratic government when major corporations are able to throw tens (sometimes hundreds) of millions of dollars into campaigns and essentially buy votes in congress/the white house to further their own agenda? It's pretty clear that that very thing has happened in the U.S. and shows no signs of changing in the near future.
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Anonymous2011-05-31 5:14
>>10 insane amount of assumptions about me and my beliefs
Maybe. I view most of leftism in the same way hipsters view fox news, they seem to think they are the opposition to evil corporations but in reality they are tools. I've forgotten the exact quote by Machiavelli but it goes something like this "as a prince moves from eliminating the most threatening of enemies to lesser and lesser opponents, at a certain point it becomes more beneficial to seek to control them than to obliterate them".
Why do you think the corporations throw money at campaigns? It's so they can keep control over entities like the federal reserve. And it can change, you just need to realize revolutions are stupid because they quickly revert to the most natural system suited to the country's socio-economic conditions, humanity should have learned this when Cromwell/Napoleon/Lenin started acting like the Kings they replaced. What you need is to target evolutionary forces and what will follow is a "revolution" which consists of the changing of laws and political processes to fit the new conditions. With this in mind the merits of removing corporatism instead of removing capitalism should be clear, the middle class is a good thing, we should be upgrading the proletariats to the middle class not dragging everyone down to the proletariat. Am I putting words in your mouth again? I'll just leave that there anyway...
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Anonymous2011-05-31 17:31
A decentralized economy does not fail- firms fail. Down turns occur because of the central bank's manipulation of credit and even then systematized risk doesn't occur like in a centrally planned economy.
Research: business cycle- Hayek/Mises, creative destruction- Joseph Schumpeter.
>>13
So you've never heard anyone say "fox news is a tool of the corporations!"?
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Anonymous2011-06-02 9:37
>>14
That doesn't sound like a hipster to me at all. I don't know what youre getting at.
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Anonymous2011-06-02 9:55
>>11
I wonder why people here are always obsessed with "leftism" in America when our nation is almost entirely moderate to conservative. Newport at times resembles an evening with Mccarthy.
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Anonymous2011-06-02 12:08
>>16
>typical commie scum still using the mccarthy = witchhunt fallacy despite the fact it's been proven wrong countless times.
The president is a communist, how can our nation be "entirely moderative to conservative" ? The media and government is utterly infested with leftist vermin. Try taking a second in any academia, the professor quite literally will FAIL YOU for being conservative!
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Anonymous2011-06-02 13:30
>>17
16 is right though, the US itself is the most conservative western nation on this planet. European conservatives would probably be deemed socialists in the US
Okay I already graduated college and as a right-leaning moderate I graduated with honors.
You also have presented 0 evidence for anything you have said especially the claim that Obama is communist, and our media is clearly controlled by private interests.
Also there's no evidence of communists controlling our government in the McCarthy era or now. If you want to ever actually prove anything it might help to present evidence.
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Anonymous2011-06-02 19:06
>>18
USA may be the most conservative western country, but that doesn't make it moderate or right wing! That just makes it slightest less communist/socialist.
>>19
>and our media is clearly controlled by private interests.
more like jews.
>>20
Look up venona project you lying commie.
McCarthys problem is that the evidence he needed was classified, and the problem was 10+ times as big as he thought it was.
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Anonymous2011-06-02 23:16
>>21
the venona project? You mean one of the only cases of spies in america who were promptly executed? Yeah that really backs your argument up well.
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Anonymous2011-06-02 23:25
>>22
No i mean the venona project you dumbass, look it up.
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Anonymous2011-06-02 23:30
That's not my job you asshat. When you present an argument and someone asks for evidence you provide it, you don't tell them to look it up. That's not how a debate works.
>>28
I did look it up, and it affirmed that I was not wrong, and that you were wrong. So did you look it up yourself? Go and look it up. You are wrong.
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Anonymous2011-06-04 12:46
>>29
I would look shit up but at this point I've forgotten what it is I am supposed to look up.
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Anonymous2011-06-04 16:17
I agree communism is the way to go!!!
We now need to round up all the republicans,and 50 percent of the democrats.
Afterwards,we can send them to force labor camps, to fix our crapshooter infrastructure. Once everything is all fixed, we can execute them all!!
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Anonymous2011-06-04 16:59
>>31
There aren't enough of them to compose an effectively sized labor force. I suggest we re-enstate slavery.