Communism Taking Over the USA on January 20th?

[Tennessean]

The open-air prison is already here. Speech and assembly are de facto dead, thanks to Israeli-based tech companies, and the de jure is catching up to reality thanks to propaganda. Property rights are next, because "we can't let terrorists have guns" or whatever. Once we aren't persons, we'll be seeing Ruby Ridge every day. My local sheriff's Desert Storm surplus is greased and waiting.

Shaming in China's Cultural Revolution


Shaming in America's Cultural Revolution


Never mind the average American black is a quarter white, so you are kneeling for a white man somewhere. Genuflecting was purposely chosen to attack the Church, along with the beheadings of Marian statues, and church fires across Paris. When Tebow knelt after that one game, he became universally hated by these people, and you heard the average person saying "religion doesn't belong in my handegg." The anticlerical, antichrist system is here.

[Tennessean]

Capitalism and Communism are diametrically opposed on property rights.  Capitalists want to protect them and communists want to destroy it.  I personally don't like the term "capitalism" as for some it means the system of monopoly and usury, which is arguably better described as corporatism, at least the monopoly part, or perhaps mercantilism.

They were opposed on property rights, but I don't think capitalists and communists are so opposed on any point anymore. In fact, I think they share the same Enlightenment priors, so they lead to the same fate: hell on earth.

Interesting fact you bring up on Smith's theory of money.  Money serves as a store of value and a convenience for exchange.  Money stores value because it is relatively rare (here Smith is somewhat correct), and it derives it's value from the service it provides in exchanges.  However I don't see how a theory of money led to Smith's theories on economics, e.g., his division of labor.

Plato and Xenophon both discuss the division of labor over 2000 years before the Scottish Enlightenment. Xenophon even says its detrimental to society that craftsmen should be replaced by more productive, unskilled labor. As for monetary theory, well an invisible hand is Smith's own metaphor of the free market. I'm not interested in following some Masonic "free market" deity, and the Chartalist theory of money bypasses the hidden hand. Its the state's prerogative to issue its own currency, so restricting or growing it's own market.

https://www.scribd.com/document/490532383/Del-Mar-History-of-Monetary-Systems

[ralfy]

That's not free market capitalism but the result of it. That is, one starts with a free market which grows thanks to technology leading to industrialization, and with that we have free market capitalism. Those who gain from that take over, which is what we saw with robber barons in the U.S. who also went into financing, and then took control of money supply through the formation of the Federal Reserve, which is a private consortium of Wall Street banks. From there, we see the rise of manufacturing, what Eisenhower referred to as the military industrial complex, then voodoo economics from Reagan onward.

A simpleton view absent any distinction and detail.  What is the difference between "Free Market Capitalism" and "Laissez-Faire Capitalism"?  When we had free markets protected by anti-competitive practices act, was that free market capitalism?  If we break up monopolies and allow competition is that free market COMPETITION?  And is not the private consortium of Wall Street Banks government protected?  I know, we need MOAR GOVERNMENT!!

then took control of money supply through the formation of the Federal Reserve, which is a private consortium of Wall Street banks.

You know, a "private consortium" sounds a lot like a guild.  And it is government protected.  Distributism.

NO TRUE SCOTMAN!!  When you form a bankers guild, that's not really distributism.  It is for other industries, and it will work great, but not for banking!!

There is no difference between free market capitalism and laissez faire capitalism.


A free market that is protected by anti-competitive practices act is free market capitalism because capitalism cannot thrive without regulations, including those needed for fiat currencies as part of more efficient transactions and even legal systems needed for private property ownership.


Your second point is also wrong. A private consortium of Wall Street banks is not a cooperative and in no way an example of distributism. Rather, it was an attempt by U.S. financiers to take control of U.S. money supply by encouraging legislators to vote in their favor, and they succeeded.


Your last point--that it is government-protected--is inane because all corporations are supposed to be protected by the law.

[ralfy]

You'll find some details explaining the phenomenon and results here:

So you don't understand it and send me to a link.  I'll play:

Because petrodollars are denominated in U.S. dollars—or greenbacks—their true purchasing power relies on both the core rate of U.S. inflation and the value of the U.S. dollar. This means petrodollars will be affected by economic factors the same way the U.S. dollar is affected. So if the value of the dollar falls, so does the value of petrodollars, and thus the government's revenue.

So in your own words, please explain how pricing oil in dollars keeps the dollar from falling.

By the way, the article is junk.  If the value of the dollar falls, usually government revenue, measured in dollars INCREASES, e.g. during an inflation you get higher COLAs, which means higher tax revenues.

Here's what I remember:

Before petrodollar recycling was Bretton Woods, where the U.S. dollar was used as a global reserve currency, with the purpose of establishing stability, and it worked. The reason was actually quite reasonable: the U.S. had the largest manufacturing base, a large supply of oil, and lots of gold thanks to, among other things, payments and loans made by other countries which needed armaments during WW2.

The catch is that it also made the dollar more valuable: more countries needed it for trade, and the only way they could earn more was to sell to the U.S. With no competition, the U.S. could buy cheap and spend a lot, which they did. But at the same time, it also made the goods they produced more expensive, which meant other countries had to import less to save more dollars and export more in order to earn more dollars in order to industrialize.

One problem is that the U.S. also had superpower ambitions, and needed higher military costs to counter the Soviets and, among other things, prevent a "domino effect" in places like Indochina. That's why it spent large amounts of money to build more military bases and engage in proxy wars in various countries. Those higher costs made their allies edgier, and in turn encouraged them to pull out gold that they had deposited in the U.S. That's why amidst the Vietnam police action debacle, Nixon ended up dropping the gold standard. But that plus U.S. conventional production peaking two years earlier plus what would become a series of oil shocks did not help. So, they tried to kill two birds with one stone and make deals with the Saudis, who like more producers, were wrestling oil fields away from Western countries and taking over, by encouraging them to price oil in dollars. In return for that and investing their profits in U.S. businesses, the U.S. would provide military aid and armaments. Thus, many birds were killed: the Saudis and others got their military hardware to counter Israel (which the U.S. was also arming), the Soviets which were attempting to strike deals with countries like Egypt could be deterred, the U.S. had a steady supply of oil, its economy could receive some support from petrodollars invested, it now had "allies" like Israel and Saudi Arabia and could play one against the other, and many countries still remained dependent on the dollar because they could only buy oil using that or by exchanging their currency for such.

It even reached a point when, a few years after, petrodollar recycling took place, such that through the IMF-WB, the U.S. could extend low-interest loans to countries in South America and the Philippines to kill more birds with one stone: they developed economically through cheap loans, and the U.S. got more "allies."

The problem, just like that of Bretton Woods, is probably seen in light of the Triffin dilemma: the country whose currency is used as a reserve currency or valued globally will eventually experience trade deficits because its exports would be to expensive and imports cheaper. With that borrowing and spending will begin to increase significantly across the board.

That might explain why chronic trade deficits took place from the 1970s onward, then coupled with increased debts and spending from the early 1980s thanks to voodoo economics:

http://blogs.reuters.com/rolfe-winkler/2009/09/30/krugman-and-the-pied-pipers-of-debt/

Now, more countries want to form their own oil bourses and use different currencies for trade, if not to use SDRs or even engage in bilateral deals.

[GiftOfGod]

It's nice to finally have someone who isn't just regurgitating what they heard in the oil fields or from a college roommate. Are you an economist?

[ralfy]

Capitalism and Communism are diametrically opposed on property rights.  Capitalists want to protect them and communists want to destroy it.  I personally don't like the term "capitalism" as for some it means the system of monopoly and usury, which is arguably better described as corporatism, at least the monopoly part, or perhaps mercantilism.

Interesting fact you bring up on Smith's theory of money.  Money serves as a store of value and a convenience for exchange.  Money stores value because it is relatively rare (here Smith is somewhat correct), and it derives it's value from the service it provides in exchanges.  However I don't see how a theory of money led to Smith's theories on economics, e.g., his division of labor.

Also, I learned not too long ago that both Marx and Smith believed in the false labor theory of value.  So that's another similarity.

Capitalism doesn't refer to monopolies or usury but the phenomenon where profits are reinvested or used as capital to make a business grow.

Monopolies take place if there is regulatory capture.

Usury takes place as a result of profit-making in businesses invested, but it can also take place as part of financial gambling.

Corporatism takes place as capitalism leads to large and more complex businesses. But it might not take place if a capitalist economy does not industrialize or grow quickly.

Mercantilism takes place when the state sees businesses as the means to make itself richer. Hence, state-sponsored capitalism or similar. But a country can have a neoliberal capitalist economy and thus not be mercantilist.

As mentioned, Communism isn't against capitalism but the private ownership of means of production, given the belief that this eventually leads to concentration of wealth (and thus, power) among a few. Such is the case for countries like the U.S., where the rich control the economy and the government ensures provisions to benefit it.

Between the two is socialism, which has a wide range of meanings, which is why many economies, including those of the U.S., are mixed: private and public corporations, some form of mercantilism but also deregulation, mixes of corporatist enterprises, small business, and cooperatives, and policies taken from half of Marx's planks, including free education and protection of workers' rights.