Occupy Wall Street

Yeah, we need to get all upset and turn our first world nation into the former Soviet Union's third world economy with a first rate military...

That will make things so much better for everybody...

:rolleyes:

We can even invade Afghanistan... that way we can do everything they did... wait....
 
I, honestly, never thought I would see the day when American workers got off their fat arses and grew balls.
Welcome to the real world where workers feed the only food they have into the screeching maws of the fat, spoonfed, exploiting rich.
 
We don't need a socialist revolution what we need are 4 year plans. After the 2012 election the government needs to create a 4 year plan that will solve some of america's problems. The plan can include both capitalist and socialist solutions. Our government needs to start thinking long term and also come up with plans to solve immediate problems.
 
Damocles said:
Yeah, we need to get all upset and turn our first world nation into the former Soviet Union's third world economy with a first rate military...

That will make things so much better for everybody...

:rolleyes:

We can even invade Afghanistan... that way we can do everything they did... wait....
Click to expand...

The Soviet economy was actually surprisingly strong. Of course, it was never half as strong as America's on a per capita basis. But they weren't starting with much, and their economic success in rapidly industrializing such a backwards nation initially surprised the world (if you've ever look at literature from that period, it sometimes seem like you're in a different universe, because people talk as if it's necessarily a given that state intervention leads to economic growth; completely different from our own assumptions). In some of the earlier years, GDP grew at 10%+ a year, and, interestingly, it didn't seem to suffer from the boom and bust cycle.

Of course, things started to stagnate after the 70's, so that their growth, which had initially exceeded America's, eventually fell far behind. And the economy was heavily specialized towards industrial goods. It was capable of making shit, but it wasn't something that'd be pleasant to live under. I guess this logic kind of makes sense if you're looking at things collectively - are we really going to waste time building entertainment devices while there are still people who are hungry?

But it sort of loses the point. You're letting the people live in shit in order to serve the people. And the whole thing fell to pieces in the transition to capitalism, with GDP plunging to 1/3 of previous levels, because most of it was clearly a system designed for something other than human beings.
 
Watermarx said:
The Soviet economy was actually surprisingly strong. Of course, it was never half as strong as America's on a per capita basis. But they weren't starting with much, and their economic success in rapidly industrializing such a backwards nation initially surprised the world (if you've ever look at literature from that period, it sometimes seem like you're in a different universe, because people talk as if it's necessarily a given that state intervention leads to economic growth; completely different from our own assumptions). In some of the earlier years, GDP grew at 10%+ a year, and, interestingly, it didn't seem to suffer from the boom and bust cycle.

Of course, things started to stagnate after the 70's, so that their growth, which had initially exceeded America's, eventually fell far behind. And the economy was heavily specialized towards industrial goods. It was capable of making shit, but it wasn't something that'd be pleasant to live under. I guess this logic kind of makes sense if you're looking at things collectively - are we really going to waste time building entertainment devices while there are still people who are hungry?

But it sort of loses the point. You're letting the people live in shit in order to serve the people. And the whole thing fell to pieces in the transition to capitalism, with GDP plunging to 1/3 of previous levels, because most of it was clearly a system designed for something other than human beings.
Click to expand...

You shouldn't forget, with the exception of tanks, the crap they made was crap. Their best vehicles, for instance, didn't even have windows that rolled down and they also had no air conditioning. Another problem that became extremely evident in the 70s through the 80s was the incredible dearth in quality control. Medical companies creating medication that was essentially saline to meet quotas...

According to my teachers at the DLI (Defense Language Institute) The cities generally could find product on their shelves, but it was almost impossible to obtain some items outside of the city, and even then they had lines for even the most essential items (toilet paper) that would often wind up with "shelves are empty come back Thursday of next week"...

It was a very unpleasant way to live and often even the cities had circumstances we would find intolerable in our society. It is not something I would wish on anybody. That, of course, doesn't even take in the totalitarianism that was evident in the every day lives of the population.
 
Damocles said:
You shouldn't forget, with the exception of tanks, the crap they made was crap. Their best vehicles, for instance, didn't even have windows that rolled down and they also had no air conditioning. Another problem that became extremely evident in the 70s through the 80s was the incredible dearth in quality control. Medical companies creating medication that was essentially saline to meet quotas...

According to my teachers at the DLI (Defense Language Institute) The cities generally could find product on their shelves, but it was almost impossible to obtain some items outside of the city, and even then they had lines for even the most essential items (toilet paper) that would often wind up with "shelves are empty come back Thursday of next week"...

It was a very unpleasant way to live and often even the cities had circumstances we would find intolerable in our society. It is not something I would wish on anybody. That, of course, doesn't even take in the totalitarianism that was evident in the every day lives of the population.
Click to expand...

Exactly. They placed pretty much no emphasis on making consumer goods decent. Who needs air conditioning when you can allocate those resources towards making more steel? If anyone complains, or stops doing their job in protest, well, bullets are cheaper as well.

I'm personally a fan of the state-driven capitalist model currently employed in Singapore and China. I think it has some of the advantages that allowed the Soviet Union to progress so rapidly and stably in its initial years, while still being a system that's basically geared towards humans. I especially think that such a model has advantages during recessions - inheriting some of the resistance to the boom-bust cycle present in a command economy. While every other major economy in the world is collapsing or stagnating, China is still growing at an amazing rate, and Singapore grew 15% last year, which is, to my knowledge, basically unprecedented for a developed economy.
 
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