11-05-2020, 07:26 PM
(11-05-2020, 03:30 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 05-Nov-2020 World View: Political gridlock
(11-05-2020, 08:07 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: > ** 05-Nov-2020 World View: It's almost over
> As of this moment, it appears that the election counting is almost
> over, and Biden will be president, the Republicans will lose one
> seat in the Senate but still control it, and the Democrats will
> lose several seats in the House, but still control it. The stock
> markets are cheering because this means political gridlock.
(11-05-2020, 12:20 PM)David Horn Wrote: > There is something uniquely bad about market economics that sees
> political failure, and gridlock guarantees it, as a huge plus for
> capitalists. We're less and less on the same team. Nick Hanauer
> is right. Eventually, the trampled-upon will take revenge, and it
> won't be restrained. https://nickhanauer.com/
Lol! Unlike those glorious Communist economies, like the ones in
North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela.
Tell me what Democrat believes in turning ownership and operation of the bulk of business to the government or believes in central planning. A social market economy is something very different. Example: as Czechoslovakia cast off the 'socialist' system it sold off the productive sector to establish a welfare state modeled after the German Federal Republic, which does much well.
Quote:As I'm working on my Vietnam book, here's a statement that Communist
Party Secretary-General at the time, Truong Chinh, said in 1986:
Quote:> "We have made mistakes due to ‘leftist infantilism’,
> idealism, and to the contravention of the objective laws of
> socio-economic development. These mistakes were manifested in
> the...[emphasis given to] developing heavy industry on a large
> scale beyond our practical capacity...[maintaining] the
> bureaucratically centralised mechanism of economic management
> based on state subsidies with a huge superstructure which
> overburdens the infrastructure. As a result, we relied mostly on
> foreign aid for our subsistence."
Socialism collapsed in China in the 1970s, in Vietnam in the 1980s, in
the Soviet Union in the 1990s, and in Cuba in the 2010s. It's a
near-perfect record.
So if 'socialism' collapses, then the problem with a regime such as that of the People's Republic of China is that it is a dictatorship and not that it has adopted significant characteristics of capitalism.
Quote:But not completely perfect. Socialism is still alive and well in the
socialist paradises of North Korea and Venezuela. Nobody is
trampled-upon there, huh?
North Korea is probably the worst place in the world that is not a war zone or a near-war zone. North Korea has no liberal apologists. Venezuela is still fairly new to its 'Bolivarian' socialism, whatever that is, that it has its large number of True Believers.
Quote:Even today, the Chinese people in "Communist" China have about 1/4th
of the income of the same Chinese people living in free market Taiwan.
Those poor Taiwanese people are really being trampled-upon.
Free markets work far better than do despots, central planners, or entrenched monopolists. With the monopolists come the political hacks and bureaucratic enforcers who need Big Government to mitigate the inequities and protect the monopolist from competition.
Quote:But oh, let a capitalist economy take a short breather from its rapid
growth through gridlock, then the trampled-upon will take revenge, as
the antifa-blm fascists have been doing.
The American economy had a stronger and more sustained era of economic growth under Barack Obama than under Donald Trump. OK, it is difficult to keep any eight-year bull market going. The economy has become a far rocker road under Trump, and he has certainly mangled the economy due to his bungled response to COVID-19.
Antifa (Anti-Fascist Action) is shady... but we are all anti-fascist, are we not? Black Lives Matter is about ending some bad police work, and not about giving any equivalent of a "Get Out of Jail Free" card to criminal offenders. Black Lives Matters attracts even people who have a general respect for law and order...
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
