Thursday, April 22, 2010

Capitalism vs. Socialism



"I never ... believed there was one code of morality for a public and another for a private man."
Thomas Jefferson, In a letter to Don Valentine de Feronda, 1809


Many people today feel the following statement may be true.


"I don't see that we're headed for socialism, though a lot of people are asserting that. It's just hyperbole, an attempt at rabble-rousing.”


When it comes to protecting our American republic this is the crutch of the whole debate, is it not? If you visit Wikipedia.com you can get paragraphs of definitions and variation there of, related to the subject. We could find one that fits our general philosophy quite well, depending on our understanding. But I believe the following one, found elsewhere best states my understanding of socialism.


1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
2. The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved.
The Free Dictionary.com


I like this one because it not only defines it well, but the second definition points to the reason any acceptance of socialism is repugnant to a free market system, which America is suppose to be. So now ask yourself, “Is our government distributing and/or controlling goods or direct plans that controls our economy?” How about social security and more recent, company bail outs and now the new government healthcare system? If these are not forms of socialism then what are they? It is taxes used to redistribute the wealth.


I can not argue with the faults stated by some that the Bush administration has helped this drift we are talking about. As a matter of fact, I can think of only one recent president who might have understood this and tried to remedy it and that was the Regan administration. The subject of American socialism might seem like a hyperbole because many who adhere to capitalism have drifted so far from our founders principals and philosophies, which should control the free market that it does seem at times one is no better than the other. But the answer is not going to be to replace it with a new or different system un-related to capitalism, like socialism all progressives are trying to institute; nor any big government either party sees as the answer.


Progression away from our founders’ principles (my definition of a progressive) under any party affiliation is wrong. No big government plan is good for the republic. The difference between the Bush and Obama administration is that Bush may have been uninformed or misunderstood the principles our republic should work under, but Obama seems very direct and purposeful in his decisions directly headed for socialism. He truly believes it is the answer, but he would be wrong.


What is the answer? Why is capitalism sometimes the overbearing, power grabbing entity it should not be? As a nation we have drifted away from the principles that would help it be the positive influence our founders intended. As I mentioned in my previous post yesterday, we need to come back to the American religion. It needs to be taught once again as it use to in schools and college and lived every day by the people. We, as the people, need to be the virtuous, honest, respectful citizens as a whole the nation was founded upon. Our republic intended such and the founders expected it to be taught and practiced this way. If we are that people, then our economy (and all aspects of community) would reflect it and we would not need the government or anyone to direct us or our resources because it would be taken care of without it. Our founding fathers profoundly understood this and expounded diligently for us to hold these truths. We need to stay away from socialism and practice the principles our republic was found upon.


"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, (A)nd if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”
Thomas Jefferson




"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests."
Patrick Henry

9 comments:

Gaia said...

A lot of people do want the means of paying for health care that exists in every other industrialised country; through our taxes, guaranteeing health care to everyone. Think of it as a utility; or like the police, firefighters, road builders, military, etc. Most countries pay half of what we pay, and nobody is refused care. No pre-existing conditions, no bankruptcies due to medical costs. No health care-related yokes around the necks of entrepeneurs: people (like my husband) can’t afford to leave jobs with health benefits in order to start businesses.

Gaia said...

En garde, Rick: The health care refore that was passed is actually health INSURANCE reform, a large portion of which was written by insurance executives. It still will be run by private, for profit companies. The only real differences are that those companies won’t be able to deny coverage due to pre-existing conditions, and some folks will be forced to buy insurance from these private, for profit companies- not from the government.

Gaia said...

The reason ANY health care reform was passed was because people were pushing for all they were worth. Obama and the Legislature wanted to drop it like a hot potato. They took it from a few pages to a thousand or more with ammendments and rewrites and earmarks and doo-das in an effort to kill it. They refused to even consider a public plan at first, even though 76% of the public backed it (http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/090617_NBC-WSJ_poll_Full.pdf. This poll is a morass to wade through, but you should know where I get my info). The prez and our reps succeeded in dropping single-payer and the public option, but at least passed medical insurance reform. Remember, media and most polititians, including Dems, had been saying that reform is dead in the water for almost a year. Nancy Pelosi said at first that it was off the table. Remember how often they said that? Yes, it’s flawed, but it passed because we raised hell. If this had truly been socialised medicine, we’d have had single-payer medicare for all.

Unknown said...

So temped to take up my saber and defend a capitalistic view from a socialist bent:
1) Healthcare reform or health insurance, “a rose by any other name is still a rose”. Or I might be more inclined to say crap is still crap by any other name. Call it what you need to, it is still the same problem.
2) Insurance is not a right. Americans have rights but too many “wants” are tied up with them and this is one. Insurance companies are the problem sometimes and they act against ethical and proper standards but this should be handled through checks and balances by other systems and leave the government out of it.
3) People have made their voice heard on the subject including some pushing for government control, but I believe the largest percentage was against the one passed and only those for it are deaf to the louder out cry against it.
It would be fun and I could spend pages and pages expounding upon these and other points you made but it would all be a moot point, because none of it would address the real issue.

As always I turn to our founding fathers to understand how our republic should work. If we had a government and the people supported it as the founders designed it, many of the issues we discussed from the news would be completely different. Why? Check our history. The first hundred years we understood the tenets our government worked from but the last hundred years, progressives (not parties, because they reside in both) have taken us down a road away from such and now we have to address issues from views not natural to our republic.

Our founders never expected our government to be involved so much in the peoples’ lives as it has today. We the people are suppose to take care of ourselves and help those who need it. As I mentioned above, we have a few basic rights protected by the government. None of them include houses, insurance, a car, a job, and the list goes on and on. No, we have the right to pursue these things and the government should protect us by protecting our right to property (the things we work for, earn or inherit) without someone else taking it.

Tell me, is this right. Two neighbors have discussions on property. One has two cars and his neighbor has none. The guy from across the street takes matters into his own hands and one night takes a car from the one who has two and gives it to his neighbor. What would happen to that “good Samaritan”? That is right, he would go to jail for stealing, even though his intentions were good. Good intentions don’t make things right. Our government is too much like the guy across the street. Our founders understood this from other nations’ government and built something that worked much different. Look up the writings of de Tocqueville from France who wrote about what our founders and our young nation had compared to the rest of the known world. He could hardly believe what we had done, how well it worked and why it worked the way it did.

Enough for now. If you don’t get my point then a comprehensive study of American history is needed. Basically, I disagree with the basis of your modern, progressive ideals, even though the intentions might be good.

Gaia said...

I'm not talking about sharing property, Rick. I'm saying that people have a right (yes, a right) to health care. It's basic humanity that compels us to offer aide and compassion to those who need it. When someone in our family or our circle of friends needs help, we show up with an offer to help, knowing that it will come back to us in kind. The collective known as the USA has pooled our resources to supply firefighting and police to everyone, public airwaves to everyone. We could easily make public health care available to everyone, if only to give folks the ability to continue to support themselves. When a person gets knocked out of their job due to illness, and is refused health care by the company he bought insurance from for that very reason, he ends up on the dole or homeless. That doesn't benefit society. I'm not advocating property redistribution. How many cars or houses someone has is irrelevant, it's just stuff. I would much rather my taxes went to feed a hungry child or heal a broken person.

As far as your "rose is a rose", health reform to my mind is single payer medicare for all, and health insurance would be an option, not a necessity that they can yank out from under us with the least provocation.

Unknown said...

I love your heart cousin and I say that not like it is something I just learned for I’ve known it all along. Our passion shows for the ideals we hold and I think we share much. I couldn’t agree more with “When someone in our family or our circle of friends needs help, we show up with an offer to help, knowing that it will come back to us in kind”. That is the way it should be but the way to get there is our disagreement. Let me qualify what I mean.

You write “I'm saying that people have a right (yes, a right) to health care.” And “resources to supply firefighting and police to everyone, public airwaves to everyone”, indicating all as rights. We must distinguish the difference between unalienable rights and vested rights. Our Declaration of Independence specially calls out unalienable (sometimes called natural) rights. These are inherent rights given to us by the Creator. An unalienable right can only be loss through an individual’s misbehavior. The government can only assure these and not take them away at all. The Declaration mentions three up front but others are found in other writings or implied by the founders. Just a few other examples would be the right of self-government, the right to bear arms, the right to assemble and the right to petition. Vested rights are ones created by the community, state or nation for our protection or well-being. The government can change these anytime the lawmakers feel like it. These would be “police, firefighting and public airwaves for everyone”. Other examples might be hunting during certain seasons or the right to travel on public highways. Healthcare would fall into this category. So when I say healthcare is not a right I qualify that it is not one protected by the constitution or bill of rights alone.

For examples to help understand the difference: “the government could not pass a law to destroy all babies under the age of two, or lock up everybody with blonde hair. In one case it would be destroying the unalienable right to life and in the other case it would be destroying the unalienable right to liberty.” (5000 Year Leap by W.Cleon Skousen)

Unknown said...

So how do we handle the vested rights if we don’t allow the government to control every aspect of it? In our republic the founder were careful to also map how society is expected to handle this. They believed along with unalienable rights man has unalienable duties. Thomas Jefferson said man “has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.” (Bergh, Writings of Thomas Jefferson). I won’t expound more on this except to say the founders believed the Creator Who gave us certain unalienable rights also expected us to provide the needs along with wishes or wants of our American culture. That is why the founders expected our government to fund and assist in teaching the principals used to build the republic we have. Those principals should be second nature to our society’s original worldview but for almost one hundred years progressive have hacked away at these to the point that today most good Americans can not comprehend why we need a growing government.

What I disagree with is big government (federal) to handle what should reside in the community, local, city or state government and in that order as small as possible. We would have much more control how our tax dollars would be spent instead of an extremely large federal fund, which historically squanders, misappropriates and waste those dollars otherwise. Federal government intrinsically makes it difficult for “we the people” to get our hands around how we would like government to work for us. At lower levels our voice has more impact to direct our wishes. A whole nation’s consensus will be impossible where as ideas tested at local, city or state levels can help us evolve laws that work over time. An example might be the healthcare system Massachusetts has tried. Much has been learned by it and other states could use it for theirs to modify or change it completely for better results. The people of another state might find a better system to emulate or do nothing at all. But the people can more easily make wishes know at that level.

At the federal level healthcare (I include Medicare/Medicaid, which I believe should not have been at the federal level) is only another step of many towards socialism, which naturally leads us away from our republic as intended. “We the people” have much to learn in order to regain what has been lost but we will be a better people, the kind our founders intended if we begin and eventually succeed.

Gaia said...

You written much with which I can agree, including the balance between state and federal government. I still say that health care is one of those god-given rights that the founders acknowledged in the Constitution. My other bone of contention is your view of progressives. Liberal folk have been fighting FOR the Constitution, and have been dismayed as the Bill of Rights has gradually been made null and void under Republican rule.

By the way, these are my main sources for information. I don't watch TV, and wouldn't trust Fox News as far as I could throw my car:

My local newspaper, the Oregonian, which is available on line. Slightly to the right, fairly factual.

The Huffington Post. Liberal, factual, multisourced.

Factcheck.com. Just the facts, ma'am.

Various liberal radio and blogs. Liberal, yet their facts check out. See Factcheck.com.

Democracy Now, a podcast with real journalists. Fact-based reporting. And, yes, liberal.

Other newspapers on line.

Where do you get your information?

Unknown said...

OK, some comments on these and then another post to address the rest.

“You written much with which I can agree, including the balance between state and federal government. I still say that health care is one of those god-given rights that the founders acknowledged in the Constitution.”

You might say wearing a dress is a god-given right but that wouldn’t make so. The government might get involved and make it a vested right but an unalienable it is not no matter how much you want it to be. Sorry, that is just the truth.

“My other bone of contention is your view of progressives (progressives and liberals are not synonymous. More on that another time). “Liberal folk have been fighting FOR the Constitution, and have been dismayed as the Bill of Rights has gradually been made null and void under Republican rule.”

This statement we could probably agree upon if I alter it slightly. “Sensible folk have been fighting FOR the Constitution, and have been dismayed as the Bill of Rights has gradually been made null and void under Democrat and Republican rule, which neither have a right to do.”


For more on your comments about sources of information see the next post.