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Author Topic: Anarchist Communism  (Read 18686 times)
Angelfish
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Re: Anarchist Communism
« Reply #75 on: November 08, 2010, 11:17:25 am »

...because quite frankly, you're just a tiny little drop of water in an ocean...

I strongly disagree! I do not know nor care who you think you are, but I am no drop of water!

Err, then what are you? What is your significance in the world, or even in the country you're living in?

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People are capable of amazing things when properly motivated. With the right amount of hard work, almost anyone can improve their lot in life. Furthermore, people are individuals. They have unique personalities, values, and interests which all make them behave differently.

What have you thusfar been capable of?

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If you like the Chinese government so much, why don't you simply pack all of your worldly possessions and move there?  Roll Eyes

What has liking the chinese government have to do with this? Ofcourse I don't like it and I wouldn't want to live there.
Then again, I was not talking about what I like personally, but about what's best for the country.

Ask anyone what company they'd like to work for. A company which offers a high salary, many benefits, a low stress job and not much overtime. Such a company will likely go bankrupt in a few years Wink.
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Alvarin
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Re: Anarchist Communism
« Reply #76 on: November 08, 2010, 12:48:01 pm »

Ask anyone what company they'd like to work for. A company which offers a high salary, many benefits, a low stress job and not much overtime. Such a company will likely go bankrupt in a few years Wink.
Not true. Salary and benefits would be inferior to the personal interest and work surroundings. engaging and stimulating job and overtime requirement are sometimes even positive.
I work at Intel. My job is far from the top, but my salary is little higher than average on the market  (42nis/hr as opposed to 40) and work is not stressfull, overtime is very rare, and there are no signs of Intel going bankrupt anytime soon.
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Angelfish
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Re: Anarchist Communism
« Reply #77 on: November 08, 2010, 01:21:45 pm »

Ask anyone what company they'd like to work for. A company which offers a high salary, many benefits, a low stress job and not much overtime. Such a company will likely go bankrupt in a few years Wink.
Not true. Salary and benefits would be inferior to the personal interest and work surroundings. engaging and stimulating job and overtime requirement are sometimes even positive.
I work at Intel. My job is far from the top, but my salary is little higher than average on the market  (42nis/hr as opposed to 40) and work is not stressfull, overtime is very rare, and there are no signs of Intel going bankrupt anytime soon.
And if some company offered you double what you're being paid now for the same job? Would you consider that a better job opportunity?
PS: In euro's your salary is about as much as an average supermarked employee makes over here... No wait, it's even less than minimum wage.. wtf? Ofcourse Intel isn't going to go bankrupt on paying such salaries Wink.
« Last Edit: November 08, 2010, 01:27:44 pm by Angelfish » Logged
Dragon
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Re: Anarchist Communism
« Reply #78 on: November 08, 2010, 03:45:35 pm »

And if some company offered you double what you're being paid now for the same job? Would you consider that a better job opportunity?
PS: In euro's your salary is about as much as an average supermarked employee makes over here... No wait, it's even less than minimum wage.. wtf? Ofcourse Intel isn't going to go bankrupt on paying such salaries
On the other hand that's eight and a half times higher than minimum salary here and one could live pretty well; so it's all relative.

I strongly disagree! I do not know nor care who you think you are, but I am no drop of water!
Err, then what are you? What is your significance in the world, or even in the country you're living in?
I think you may have inadvertently made Angelfish's point for him.  You might strongly disagree that you're unimportant but teh goverments, it doesn't give a flying wombats fart what you think.
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Lukipela
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Re: Anarchist Communism
« Reply #79 on: November 08, 2010, 08:30:49 pm »

PS: In euro's your salary is about as much as an average supermarked employee makes over here... No wait, it's even less than minimum wage.. wtf? Ofcourse Intel isn't going to go bankrupt on paying such salaries Wink.

I'd wager stuff costs less where he is though. When I worked in a bar on Ireland I once worked with this Romanian who thought our employers were idiots for paying him such amazingly large sums of money, more than he could ever earn back home. But every time he came home from the supermarket he was furious with the price of basic necessities, so outrageously more expensive than back home.
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Alvarin
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Re: Anarchist Communism
« Reply #80 on: November 08, 2010, 09:04:16 pm »

I'd wager stuff costs less where he is though.
And you'd loose. The general prices are about the same as in US, electronics and cars cost about 150% due to taxes. What is much cheaper is the housind prices.
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Lukipela
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Re: Anarchist Communism
« Reply #81 on: November 08, 2010, 09:14:31 pm »

Yeah, but the US is dirt cheap compared to where Angelfish lives, and cheaper than dirt compared to the united Scandinavian socialist confederacy, so that's not saying much.
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Re: Anarchist Communism
« Reply #82 on: November 09, 2010, 07:12:39 am »

Err, then what are you? What is your significance in the world, or even in the country you're living in?
What am I, you ask? I am me. I am an intelligent human being. I am significant, as is everyone else with the potential to contribute positively to society if he chooses.

What has liking the chinese government have to do with this? Ofcourse I don't like it and I wouldn't want to live there.
Then again, I was not talking about what I like personally, but about what's best for the country.
Again with the country... As long as the people live in misery, the country means jack squat. The people are the country. Without them, you're just a big army camp, and I see very little civilization in that. Since when is taking military action against any and all people who dare to protest their conditions better for a country? Like I stated before, the country's legacy is important. In the event of a country's inevitable fall, is it not ideal to be remembered in history as a prosperous, civilized nation?

While China has constructed many feats of engineering due to their harsh system, other countries have built their fair share of great structures as well. The Hoover Dam did not require the use of slave labor, nor did millions of people die in its construction.
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Angelfish
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Re: Anarchist Communism
« Reply #83 on: November 09, 2010, 11:40:45 am »

Err, then what are you? What is your significance in the world, or even in the country you're living in?
What am I, you ask? I am me. I am an intelligent human being. I am significant, as is everyone else with the potential to contribute positively to society if he chooses.

Just saying you're significant doesn't make it so, dude Smiley.

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What has liking the chinese government have to do with this? Ofcourse I don't like it and I wouldn't want to live there.
Then again, I was not talking about what I like personally, but about what's best for the country.
Again with the country... As long as the people live in misery, the country means jack squat. The people are the country. Without them, you're just a big army camp, and I see very little civilization in that. Since when is taking military action against any and all people who dare to protest their conditions better for a country? Like I stated before, the country's legacy is important. In the event of a country's inevitable fall, is it not ideal to be remembered in history as a prosperous, civilized nation?

While China has constructed many feats of engineering due to their harsh system, other countries have built their fair share of great structures as well. The Hoover Dam did not require the use of slave labor, nor did millions of people die in its construction.

[/quote]

The 3 gorges dam wasn't built with slave labour and millions of people didn't die.
However, the country you live in wouldn't even have existed without slave labour Wink. Slaves ever so generously provided by us, the dutch.
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Lukipela
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Re: Anarchist Communism
« Reply #84 on: November 09, 2010, 01:43:22 pm »

Just saying you're significant doesn't make it so, dude Smiley.

Well, some people are more important than others. For instance, I dream the dream that you call life and when I wake this plane of existence will be no more. So I'm pretty important. The admiral, not so much.

The 3 gorges dam wasn't built with slave labour and millions of people didn't die.
However, the country you live in wouldn't even have existed without slave labour Wink. Slaves ever so generously provided by us, the dutch.

Pretty sure they weren't provided generously, but rather at at fair price.  Wink
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Re: Anarchist Communism
« Reply #85 on: November 10, 2010, 02:48:08 am »

I know no one's talking about Anarchism in this topic much any more, but I found this little video (looks like part of a documentary) on Anarchist Spain:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUig0lFHDDw

It doesn't get very far; it kind of seems like it was cut off early. But it's interesting, anyway.
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onpon4
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Re: Anarchist Communism
« Reply #86 on: November 15, 2010, 02:51:53 am »

Sorry for double-posting, but I found an interesting article by chance (I was looking for a human civilization simulation game, but this showed up as one of Google's top results).
http://www.naturalnews.com/029056_environmental_protection_population_control.html

It's actually about climate and natural resources, so you might be scratching your head right now, but I noticed this statement:

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There is almost no such thing as a successful business person who is simultaneously an effective steward of our planet's natural resources. The simple act of generating more business -- in any business -- always results in more consumption because our entire economic system is based on consumption. It's even true about internet businesses, by the way. Every bit and byte you consume over the internet has an indirect environmental cost due to the electricity consumption of the CPUs delivering that content to you as well as, more importantly, the enormous cooling demand in data centers that spend fortunes just cooling all the computers running there.

The fact that our economic activity is fundamentally based on consumption rather than conservation demonstrates why humanity is doomed to destroy itself. After seeing the failure of so many environmental summits, I'm convinced of it. I don't see any possible way that human beings will suddenly gain the intelligence and foresight necessary to live in balance with our natural world. Not without a crisis to teach everybody a few lessons, anyway. But even the Gulf Coast disaster isn't fundamentally changing the way business leaders think about consumption. They think it's just an "oil problem" not a global problem with the business models that drive our world into a self-destructive cycle of mindless consumption.

To summarize, it says that our current economic system is based on consumption, and as a result, getting people to conserve resources is incredibly difficult or even impossible.

This is one advantage I can see in any sort of Communist economy. People are not encouraged to create unnecessary surpluses which waste natural resources, because they can gain no profit from that. Rather, people would try to do as little work as possible (because of laziness) by making fewer, more durable products. This was also briefly mentioned in this two-part video which I found a few weeks ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvuB46y2x2Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2ROCykU__E

Just something to think about. Wink
« Last Edit: November 15, 2010, 03:03:36 am by onpon4 » Logged

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Re: Anarchist Communism
« Reply #87 on: November 24, 2010, 04:17:10 am »

Weeeelll... consuming energy is potentially not going to squander natural resources, so long as the energy sources are not things that can be used up - solar, wind, geothermal. At present, we are wasting irreplaceable resources on energy, but long before using up these energy resources would cause civilization to collapse on the account of their exhaustion, the sources that won't be exhausted will outcompete them in the most dramatic way. This is not to say that overconsumption is harmless, but unless it spawns nuclear war, energy overconsumption won't end civilization altogether.

And we'd love it if recycling businesses managed to exhaust their resource - our trash.
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Cedric6014
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Re: Anarchist Communism
« Reply #88 on: November 24, 2010, 10:39:40 am »

Onpon4:  that quote is garbage.

All economic systems require consumption because economics relies on supply and demand.

You cant just say "Hey let's have a an economc sytem that doesn't consume anything!"

It's a matter of having an economic system which produces more than it consumes, thereby creating wealth.

Wealth = everyone having a good life

Societies form to create governments which create regulations to protect the environment. This is because societies as a whole realise the importance of the environment and also appreciate the futility of expecting people and businesses to take stewardship of the environemtn. So they say "right, this is the tax/punishment for polluting" thereby creating an economic incentive for responsible behaviour.

Individuals are selfish and all about looking after number 1. Businesses are the same - their goal is to make money. But individuals are smart enough to know that if everyone abides by the same rules then its an even playing field and we all win. Thus governments are creaed to enforce these rules

Admittedly its not working that well in the environmental sphere at present, but it will start working when people start appreicatiate the importance of our only planet. Most countries realise that taxing people for health and education has benefits.

To eliminate free enteprise and commerce in favour of some communal system goes agaisnt every fibre of human thought and motivation. People have been trading with each other for hundreds of thousands of years. Its what allows us to innovate and thrive.

« Last Edit: November 24, 2010, 10:42:59 am by Cedric6014 » Logged

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Re: Anarchist Communism
« Reply #89 on: November 24, 2010, 01:41:19 pm »

All economic systems require consumption because economics relies on supply and demand.

No, all economic systems require consumption because humans need certain resources to survive. Life itself is not much more than a method of consuming energy available in the environment. I wasn't saying that it's possible to consume nothing; that is absurd. I was only saying that our capitalist system wastes a lot of resources, which is true. Imagine how must plastic gets wasted on cheap toys for children, ending up in landfills in the next year, for example.

The problem is that there is no incentive to save resources. If it turns out that it's an absolute waste of resources (i.e. McDonald's toys), it doesn't matter as long as it earns them money.

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It's a matter of having an economic system which produces more than it consumes, thereby creating wealth.

Wealth = everyone having a good life

True, we do produce more than we consume, but we also waste quite a lot.

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Weeeelll... consuming energy is potentially not going to squander natural resources, so long as the energy sources are not things that can be used up - solar, wind, geothermal. At present, we are wasting irreplaceable resources on energy, but long before using up these energy resources would cause civilization to collapse on the account of their exhaustion, the sources that won't be exhausted will outcompete them in the most dramatic way. This is not to say that overconsumption is harmless, but unless it spawns nuclear war, energy overconsumption won't end civilization altogether.

I'm actually not talking about energy, but physical goods, such as toys, computers, beds, etc. I'm thinking of toys in particular, because that seems to be the most wasteful set of goods at present (because kids can be easily tricked into wanting more toys). However, it can also apply to other goods, if you factor in the elimination of our need to have our own stuff (many things can be shared, i.e. video game consoles, webcams, board games, screwdrivers, wireless routers, etc, etc).

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To eliminate free enteprise and commerce in favour of some communal system goes agaisnt every fibre of human thought and motivation. People have been trading with each other for hundreds of thousands of years. Its what allows us to innovate and thrive.

People have been making war with each other for thousands of years as well, you know.

Besides that, trading wouldn't disappear if a more collective system emerged. It would just happen between large communities, rather than individuals. Cuba has a communist type economy, but that doesn't stop them from trading with other countries (their sugar and cigars for other goods).
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