Why do you Want communism?

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faerwin wrote:

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Nonsense. You can't maintain "only I count" and economic specialization at the same time. If only I count, then what use have I for the goods and services produced by others? None. Depending on another is tacit admission that the other is valuable to you; she who doesn't properly respect the web of people she's dependant upon risks being cut off from them and forced to endure greater hardship. Sexual reproduction may be the ancient concept that bonds the family, but economic specialization is the concept that bonds community by encouraging even the most self-interested to provide value to others. Which brings us to...

Except that it's not how it works. Capitalism is not the search of equitable exchange. It's the search of leverage and "winning" the exchange.

Really? Because when I look at a definition of capitalism, such as "an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market," I don't see that. Instead, I assume that if both parties to a transaction agree to said transaction, and there is no coercion or fraud, then both are winners, or at least believe themselves such.

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faerwin wrote:

I'm fairly sure that, as someone that backed Trump, that you didn't like deportation of jobs to China/India at the cost of jobs of americans. Yet, this is something that's hardcore capitalism. The truth is that with industrialization, there's less and less needs for specialized labor because machines can do the same work for cheaper and at a much higher efficiency. The result is the deportation of jobs to wherever cost less. I don't see how you can argue for capitalism if you aren't ok with this side of it.

Let's say there are two producers of widgets, company A and company B. Company A trades for the labor of its workers on a free market with voluntary exchange; all of its workers choose to work there. Company B, however, doesn't trade for labor; it kidnaps vulnerable people and uses them as slave labor. Because of this, Company B can bring its product to market cheaper, assuming no government restrictions. Are you saying you can't see how a believer in free markets could be opposed to a lack of government intervention in such a scenario?

(Now let's say that there's two more companies, C and D, that both buy widgets as raw materials to make thingamajigs. Both companies purchase their labor on the free market, but C buys widgets from A and D buys them from B. Assuming no government intervention, who do you think will have the competitive advantage? I say this because Canada and many other nations buy Chinese steel and make it into products imported into the US.)

HOWEVER

I do feel that tariffs are not a satisfactory permanent solution to such problems. The root cause of overseas underbidding is usually government subsidy, wherein all the citizens of a nation have their money stripped from them by taxation, then that money is granted to businesses that have no legal obligation to repay the investment, allowing them to underbid competitors. Protectionist economics counter that tax on the people of that nation with a tax upon the business concern that benefits from it, which either 1) makes it impossible for that business to compete in foreign markets, which was the problem the foreign government was trying to fix when it subsidized them in the first place, inviting greater subsidies to escalate the situation and further taxing its people, or 2) isn't enough to drive the foreign business out, which effectively means the taxes upon foreign peoples are routed to the country implementing the tariff.

The best solution to the problem is to get the foreign government to repeal the subsidy and embrace free market competition, which is more difficult to do if that government believes the tariff will remain after the subsidy is removed. In a way, tariffs send a message that the country implementing them sees economic diplomacy with the foreign government as hopeless and would rather isolate itself than conduct trade with them. Ultimately, I hope Trump is using tariffs more as a high-pressure negotiating strategy and less as a permanent solution — although perhaps the situation truly is as hopeless as tariffs imply.

And on top of all of that... US industry is rife with subsidies of its own. It's not like Al Gore took the initiative in creating the Internet as a private entrepreneur.

Most people wouldn't care about what A or B does, only the price of the end product.

See:

Adidas, Nikes, Apple, Wal-Mart and just about every major brands that deal with clothes or computer parts.

There is a few people that do concern themselves with such issues but it's nowhere near enough for a company to become a major brand unless they have a much higher degree of quality and even then, it's very hard.


There's many situations in which one of the two parties have no say in the trade. A good example is the oil industry.

Everyone need gas for their cars. The price of gas fluctuate greatly for no reason despite stable prices for a barrel (at least it does where I live). The price of a barrel can go DOWN but the price of gas can go up by 10 cents a liter for no good reason. Yet, everyone that own a car that isn't electric is forced to buy at that price despite knowing they are getting fucked. There's no option.

Someone that lives in a place with just one ISP that needs an internet connection for work is forced to take that ISP even if their prices are crazy.

There's plenty of government deals that are given without being put on auction and it's the citizens that are fed the bill, even if the price is insane.



There's seriously hundreds of such situations where competition doesn't exist and whoever sell the product hold the big stick.

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faerwin wrote:

Everyone need gas for their cars. The price of gas fluctuate greatly for no reason despite stable prices for a barrel (at least it does where I live). The price of a barrel can go DOWN but the price of gas can go up by 10 cents a liter for no good reason. Yet, everyone that own a car that isn't electric is forced to buy at that price despite knowing they are getting fucked. There's no option.

1. Bullshit. Just because you don't know what the reason is doesn't mean there isn't one. Unlike ISPs, gasoline is a hypercompetitive market with very low profit margins, so acting like you don't have a choice is silly; it's just that quality standards are so uniform and competition so fierce that gas stations don't have much of a choice when it comes to their pricing.
2. Electricity is usually, but not always, generated using fossil fuels.

electricity is almost exclusively generated through hydropower where I live (96% of it).

Gasoline is very far from being competitive, let alone hyper, where I live. Whenever there's a price increase somewhere, every other brands follow, same with a price decrease.

And there's literally no possible way for a price hike of 10 cents a liter to strike the 4 major oil brands we have all together when the price of a barrel go DOWN.

Edit: actually, I know the reason, it's just not a valid one. It's because of watching when there's the most influx of people that refill. They also tend to "mysteriously" always increase their prices the day before a national holiday. They do it because people tend to leave the city and need gas for it. Not because of anything else.

To give you an idea, remember when oil prices were super high? Over here, gas were around 1,40$ a liter, sometimes more. The price since then is around 30-35% of what it was but the price at the pump is around 1,05$ to 1,20$. Why? because they can get away with it because there's no alternative for the vast majority of the population.

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faerwin wrote:

Economics to me means money management. From taxes, to the operation of business (the money part) and pretty much everything involving money. That's the way I was taught so if you have a different meaning due to different time period/localization (I'm from Quebec), then I can see why there would be some issues here.

I think we have found the problem: you are from Canada, a country so different from the USA, it has got to be hard for us US citizens and you to even understand each other. Your country has a tiny population (less than some individual states in the USA) and has massive valuable resources that you are allowed to use and sell. Compared to the USA: You have extremely low crime rates, an extreme lack of diversity. Your situation is 100% different than the USA; it is almost like we are arguing from two different planets. Our points of view are so different, just trying to understand the other would be difficult.

we have a lack of diversity? what? I don't think you could find a place on Earth with more diversity than Canada.

Our population, while small, is demographically similar to most of the US with the exception of the most crowded areas. Even then, areas like Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto have a very high density of population (4k+ square kilometer each) with Toronto and montreal each having well over one million residents.

A high percentage of our territory is frozen wastelands that has under 0,1% of our population.

Yes, we have a very high amount of natural resources, but so does the US. The difference is that yours are much easier to exploit because a large amount of it doesn't lies in areas that has nearly nobody.

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faerwin wrote:

we have a lack of diversity? what? I don't think you could find a place on Earth with more diversity than Canada.

Our population, while small, is demographically similar to most of the US with the exception of the most crowded areas. Even then, areas like Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto have a very high density of population (4k+ square kilometer each) with Toronto and montreal each having well over one million residents.

A high percentage of our territory is frozen wastelands that has under 0,1% of our population.

Yes, we have a very high amount of natural resources, but so does the US. The difference is that yours are much easier to exploit because a large amount of it doesn't lies in areas that has nearly nobody.

According to wiki Canada is nearly 80-90% white, hardly diverse. Your country has a smaller population than some states; that alone makes Canada incomparable to the USA; and i notice you ignored the crime comparison. The biggest crime concern in Canada is rowdy biker gangs; consider yourself lucky.

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-010-x/99-010-x2011001-eng.cfm

That's the official stance on minorities and immigration in Canada.

"Among the G8 countries, Canada had the highest proportion of foreign-born population (20.6%), well above the shares in Germany (13.0% in 2010) and the United States (12.9% in 2010)."

The reason we have a high proportion of white people is because a lot of European countries citizens migrate to Canada as well as a decent amount of people from the US. That said, that doesn't mean that the culture isn't diverse.


The population numbers don't matter nearly as much as you think it does. What matter is the population density and the total population of a city. These two, aside from a few mega cities (like new york) is very comparable with Canada and the small towns are also easily comparable to those in Canada, the only difference being how many of those there are.

I didn't mention criminality because you are correct that Canada's criminality is very low compared to the US. But to be fair, almost half the countries on the planet has lower criminality than the US, including a lot of third world countries and emerging nations.

Double post

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Khoranth wrote:

According to wiki Canada is nearly 80-90% white, hardly diverse.

O rly?

I mean, I get that the US is technically more ethnically diverse, but nowhere else on planet Earth do first-generation immigrants make up a greater percentage of the overall population than Canada. You're comparing Canadians who were born on a different continent with black Americans whose families have been in the US for centuries.