Latest experiment is socialism ending the same as always...

Yeah, okay buddy. I care.

It isn't "scary." The word has a meaning, and idiots on both right and left think it means "free stuff from the gub'mint."

Okay, buddy. Good to know.

So what is socialism to you, then?

Socialism is an economic system characterized by the social ownership or control of the means of production.

It stands in contrast to capitalism, an economic system where private entrepreneurs seeking profit control capital and sell goods and services allocated by price in a free market.

So do I. Now, if you could edumacate your fellow "libertarians" to the differentiation, the rest of us would appreciate it.

One problem is that there are often conflicting views on what a free market means.

One can argue about the definition of any term, and one can also claim that anything that is 99% pure is 100% impure.

For the purposes of definition it means goods are offered in a competitive context and exchanged at a mutually agreed price between producer and consumer.

That competitive context part is important. Plenty of supposed free market advocates who see nothing wrong with companies amassing monopolies or power that makes it impossible for any exchange to be reasonably "mutually agreed".

Be that as it may--and the whole anti-trust question can support a thread of its own--capitalism does generally operate in a free market, even if the concept is stretched in some cases.

But squandering money as bad or worse than ever:

How to Blow $700 Billion

Much, much more detailed article here.


So much money completely wasted that could be put to better use. People should be in prison for that shit.

And fuck anybody who thinks that the situation as-is is just fine. :maud2:

Extensively and frequently. I've crossed every line of longitude on Earth at least twice.

I read the article that you linked to. It doesn't claim what you say it does.

I see your reading comprehension is as bad as ever, especially if you "read" an article of that length in ten minutes.

In fact, there's no way you read the second linked article in that amount of time, mentiroso.

yet you have the second worst literacy rate in the entire G20

And also, your Navy actually pays an actual living wage, which is nice so people aren't getting married to be able to afford off-base housing.

We were all pretty amazed by that when my ship hit port in Sydney 8 years ago.

Generally, but not in most cases now. My ISP options are AT&T or nothing, so they refuse to update or maintain the service because they don’t have to compete with anyone. Other companies want to move in, but AT&T’s contract with the county blocks other companies competing with them. Yay freedom!

Also what’s wrong with workers controlling the means of production, meaning the factory? Seems like it would benefit those who do the actual work. It would even give them motivation to create better products because they would sell more, earning them more. Then others would strive to create even better products creating competition. Plus people who make more can buy more.

I think you’ve confused socialism with a dictatorship trying to call itself something it isn’t.

You're right, that's not a free market, but it's the state that's keeping it that way. You said yourself that other firms would like to compete, but aren't allowed. I started to add above that most monopolies can't persist without the government erecting barriers to competition, but didn't want to go off on that tangent.

Been tried. Doesn't work. When everyone owns something, nobody really does.

All I can say is that every effort made along those lines has ended in one degree of catastrophe or another. People don't actually function that way; it's not human nature.

You also have problems coordinating decisions when everyone's the owner. Need to lay someone off? Who's it going to be? The person who is least valuable to the organization, or the one who has the fewest friends or personal influence? What happens when someone wants to spend this year's profits on an investment in new capital, but others don't? How do you motivate someone who slacks because they're getting a cut no matter what?

Look up Robert Owen, an early utopian socialist who thought along the lines you do, and see what came of the communities he started.

Socialism usually entails dictatorship sooner or later, since economic freedom isn't tolerated when the state plans and controls the economy. And political freedom inevitably goes out the door with it, because you can't have the peasants objecting to the plan.

^Heh, yeah, the staunchest proponents of adding new and costly regulation are invariably the biggest industry players.

Just looking it up yeah, Navy isn't bad pay: https://navy.defencejobs.gov.au/lifestyle-and-benefits/pay-and-allowances

We tend to get a lot more people involved in the military as a career rather than just getting in for health/education benefits.

Regulations that limit competition, while wanting the government to cut regulations that prevent abuse like pollution or taking from their own employees. The later of which conservatives love to cut while adding the former. Conservatives are fine with regulations if it benefits their wallet.

I ran that through the exchange and that equals about $52k American, which is definitely middle class. I can tell you that three years in and a cost of living adjustment for my overseas duty station, my yearly pay before taxes was nowhere near that much.

Shit, I've worked in one of the skilled trades that are supposed to be in such demand now, and I never made that much. Presently, I work in an unskilled labor job and I take home more than I did as a skilled worker. The difference? Where I work now is unionized. Still not as much as an Aussie sailor.

Don't get too excited, cuz Sydney at least was expensive as shit. The cheapest thing I saw at Burger King Hungry Jack's was $2 and a box of Lucky Charms was $11.

Even the New Yorkers and Angelinos were flabbergasted.

That said, I hope to God that the rest of country isn't that expensive and I'm sure that it's still enough so that a sailor won't need to be on the Aussie equivalent of food stamps to feed their spouse and children on top of all that.

Oh, and buy Australian Ding-Os for cereal, I guess

Last time I checked, minimum wage in Australia was $21/hr, which worked out to be $15 US, or nearly double the going rate here. Adjusting for the exchange rate, what you're saying is that a Whopper flopper could bring home more money on the hour than a significant number of the jobs in a skilled trade position I've held have offered. Now, if I could afford to move to other parts of the US, things might be different, but where I live, if you're bringing home $12/hr, you're making "good" money, skilled trade or not.

Sydney is fucked in terms of prices. Unless they really have to for a (well paying) job it's rare for people to move there.

The lucky charms pricing is just because they aren't sold here and shops can gouge for specialty stuff. A box of Frosties or Coco Pops goes for about $4.

We don't have any equivalent to food stamps, benefits are all cash.

Minimum wage is adjusted every year, that seems a few years out of date. The current minimum wage is AU$18.93 an hour. That however is for full-time and part-time employees (meaning you acrue sick and holiday pay, along with paid public holidays off, at least a couple of weeks notice required for dismissal).

If you are a casual employee (no sick leave, no paid vacations, no mandatory notice period) which I believe is closer to the standard American "at-will" employment model then the employer has to pay an extra 25% as compensation, so minimum wage for those employees is currently $23.66 an hour.

It's complicated, because even in places where someone in the US would be considered to be full-time, they'd still meet your definition of "casual employee" and could be paid no more than minimum wage ($7.25 where I live, higher in other parts of the US). But the short end of it is that if I had to choose, I'd rather be a Whopper flopper in your neck of the woods than I would here. (And that's without throwing in things like your medical system and it's "free" health care.)

That's an interesting factoid I didn't know about. Are there any restrictions, or can they spend it on beer, ciggies, and tats?