?????

if they dont have the $100 to begin with what then ?

They have their body, their mind,...

The question is: Who was S.B. Fuller?

u should use chrome

highlight text , right click - search google

why is that the question ?

As an seo I don't like to share information with big G.


It's one of Tom Woods "33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask".

Even if you start with nothing (have no capital), you can still "make it". Is it easy? No. Can it be done? Of course. I'll refer to a thread I started last year: https://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1037719 ("The typical self-made millionaire has been broke or nearly broke an average of 3.2 times before he made his first million")

Socialism? :disgust :) :pimp :error :thumbsup :mad:

Actually yes, wealth is a function of value, and value is a relative term, applied individually in the eyes of the beholder amd often referenced in mass by an agreed upon currency. Currency is not wealth, wealth is value. (Currency is a way we agree to measure wealth, but it is not intrinsic.) People create value out of nothing based on the creation of a product, service, or improvement in either, that other people value. The amount of wealth in the world one thousand years ago is far far less than there is now, based on the above fact. U-bob has quite abily explained this.

We're listening? The silence is deafening:warning

It is too complicated to write about it. To be more precise, not so simple question at all like person who made this post is trying to present.

There are various forms of socialism and capitalism and rules depending on country. It depends on personal ideas and vision of life what do you like more. While in capitalism you can become very rich and have incredible things ,is socialism you can have things like free education,health care, secure job, free housing. Life without stress and tensions resulting in lower death rate and much less crime and agression.

Not all people have need to be rich or buy stuff all the time. Some appreciate living more secure.In my country during socialism, people were protected as polar bears. no one could kick you from job, people were getting apartments from state (yes, I have two in my ownership right now and it is a myth that you had to be in party and stuff like that). So, it's stupid to write about this, especially on forum where average (arrogant) user probably have all knowledge in this world already sucked in the moment of birth

Socialists and Communists do NOT believe all people have equal abilities, they believe that all should have equal rights and opportunities.

Capitalism gives people some equal rights and laws, it's illegal for both rich or poor to sleep under bridges. Poor and rich people have the right to buy that life saving medical operation, or send their child to private exclusive schools.

Socialists would say that all should have equal opportunities to power, success and happiness in life.

The rich mostly inherit their wealth. The idea that the clever get rich by their "hard work" is a propaganda myth.

The rich get wealthy by employing people to produce wealth for them. The worker for example would produce goods for his employer worth 1000 dollars per week but only get paid 200 dollars per week.

It's called "intelligence". Something hard-working, yet dumb, people usually lack, which is why they turn to socialism to voice their discontent.

There's no such thing as "free education", "free housing" etc. It doesn't matter if the government gives it away for free, there will always be a costs involved. School buildings cost money to build, to maintain, to heat,... Teachers don't work for free. They too need to eat and feed their families. etc.
The difference between free market capitalism and socialism here is that under free market capitalism, you are free to buy the services you want and you are free to not buy the services you don't want. Under socialism, the government will use force to take away part of your earnings and use that to pay for those so called free services.

I live in one of those Western European countries with so called "free health care". When I go to the doctors, I pay him for his services and he gives me a piece of paper. I can then mail that piece of paper to some government licensed organization and they'll send me a refund for the amount I paid the doctor. Guess what I do with those little pieces of paper. I throw them in the trash. I refuse to ask the government to rob my fellow human beings in my name.

How can you give people "equal opportunities" if they are all different?

To use a saying that once used to be popular on GFY:
"When the wind of change blows, some build walls, others build windmills".

When the wind blows everyone has the same "opportunity", yet everyone will use it differently. As a result, some will make a profit, others will not. What are you suggesting? That after people have taken advantage of a certain opportunity, we should "reset" things so those who made the right call won't have any advantage over those who made the wrong decision?

I'll quote Rothbard again:
Human life is not some sort of race or game in which each person should start from an identical mark. It is an attempt by each man to be as happy as possible. And each person could not begin from the same point, for the world has not just come into being; it is diverse and infinitely varied in its parts. The mere fact that one individual is necessarily born in a different place from someone else immediately insures that his inherited opportunity cannot be the same as his neighbor's. The drive for equality of opportunity would also require the abolition of the family since different parents have unequal abilities; it would require the communal rearing of children. The State would have to nationalize all babies and raise them in State nurseries under 'equal' conditions. But even here conditions cannot be the same, because different State officials will themselves have different abilities and personalities. And equality can never be achieved because of necessary differences of location.
-Murray N. Rothbard

i would refuse to live in a society that is only survival of the fittest.

i have no problem that my taxes are used to finance things like schools, streets, government, police and so on. i dont even have a problem with unemployement benefits and social welfare.

what i insist on is that "my" money is spent responsibly and that people are encouraged to not rely on benefits but move their asses. here i some room for improvement (mildly said)

but in general i believe that the 2 countries i come from and live in are pretty great compared to many other places

Socialists are thieves that are too lazy to steal.

A free market is not survival of the fittest. In a free market it's those who best serve their fellow human beings that make the biggest profits. In a free market you actually have an incentive to help your fellow human beings.

In a socialist economy, you have an incentive to do less than your fellow human beings because if you do more than the "average worker" does, your earnings get taken away from you by the state.

Voluntary donations are not prohibited in a free market. Voluntary transactions are what free markets are all about. If you want to voluntarily donate part of your earnings to a local school or a fund for children with special needs you are free to do so. The whole point of a free market is that you or the government can't force anyone to give away his earnings against his will.

did you notice that i didnt use any of those labels like socialist, capitalist etc?

i described what i consider a society worth living in - no matter what people call it

but: you know that "voluntarily" many things will not work. Would i donate part of my income voluntarily to help children (i actually do that for christmas), schools, unemployed etc?

probably not and most other probably neither

am i ok that my government does that with my taxes?

yes

So it all boils down to this simple question: Are you allowed to commit acts of injustice when your intentions are good?

Are you allowed to steal from the rich to give to the poor?

Are you allowed to steal from a family that has 2 cars in order to give to a family with no car?

Are you allowed to force someone to donate to charity?

Are you allowed to steal from a hungry healthy individual in order to give to a hungry sick individual?
...

You know what the road to hell is paved with? good intentions. The most heinous acts, the worst crimes in human history were committed by people who thought they were doing the right thing. it's a slippery slope. As Bastiat pointed out in "The Law", once you think it's ok to violate people's property rights when your intentions are benevolent, it becomes simply a matter of coming up with a good excuse and you can do whatever you want.

listen... i am sometimes sad that i dont have the time and energy to read all these clever books anymore and my times at the university studying business management and economics are long gone (11 years now). And i forgot a lot.

but what i clearly remember from economics is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merit_good

i completely agree with that concept.


other than that i simply dont agree with what you wrote above because i dont see it happening. would you please provide me an example where someone had to donate his second car to someone else?

From a utilitarian point of view, the concept of some politician or bureaucrat determining what is good and what is bad, what is a merit god and what is a demerit good, simply won't work. As Hayek pointed out, it's a knowledge problem. See my post about the coordinating function of prices in a market economy.

From a deontological point of view:

Those example questions I asked all illustrate the same basic question: are you allowed to violate someone's property right simply because you have good intentions? My answer is: no, you are never allowed to violate someone's rights. The pro-intervention pov is yes you are allowed to violate people's rights when your intentions are good.

You can't blame him. You would probably talk same in case you are getting info from BBC; Cnn, etc..I guess he believes that there some armed people goig on the streets and taking other properties and shoot at site if you try to defend.

Equal opportunities meats the needs that all humans need, all babies need food and care, all need education.

The rich are not the most intelligent in fact it looks like they are more stupid. In the UK 3 private schools give the best education money can buy to their pupils. They then take the best places in Oxford and Cambridge, The same number of places as the top 2000 free state schools. This way the rich prevent poor children from going to the best schools and taking the best jobs. By hot housing their young in small classes, boarding schools.

If you don't like paying taxes you would like living in a socialist state, there were no taxes, there is no need for them.

What a laugh about the freedom not to pay taxes to help the poor, the rich don't mind sending the sons of the poor off to fight in their foreign wars for markets.

Tell me you object to paying taxes to fund police to break strikes and for the government to subsidies high tech industries? Should Microsoft and Facebook pay back all the state funding that build computers and the Internet and made all their profits possible?

You are missing the point completely so as I've said, once you feel that someone is giving you apartment just after finishing university (that you didn't pay)or when you go to doctor and no one is asking you how much you earn and do you have money to pay, maybe you will understand. Until then, you can continue to believe in some evil people taking other properties. Idea behind system is to balance differences. Humanity was basic principle and a little logic and empathy. There are many people not able to work or work so hard as others.

As Madalton said, I don't have a problem giving money from my salary if I know that it is spent to those who need it. I could be the one in years coming. You can't understand this principle if you never lived it because it look strange to selfish profit (market) ideology. And that's not any special money, taxes are not much higher. I think that maybe Scandinavian countries have biggest percent of taking from people, but at the other hand, there was recently published study that people living there are most happy compared to other countries worldwide.

you sure know a lot of clever words - but reality is not what is written in economic theories. the world is not black or white

my rights are not violated when i pay taxes. if i dont want to pay taxes, i can move somewhere else - like Antigua or something like that. Dont know if theres any country with completely no taxes. Besides Monte Carlo, but i cant afford that.

i voluntarily pay taxes, it does not violate my property rights and i agree that the government does its job with my taxes. i dont agree that they do sometimes stupid stuff or buy weapons, but i can join a party and try to change things if i really disagree.

And sorry, no scientists i can cite for my point of view - just me

People aren't pawns you move around on a board, their every wish and desire ignored. People aren't plants you simply give some water and fertilizer. People are all different and all want different things. And there' nothing wrong with wanting something more than your neighbor. There's nothing wrong with wanting different things than your neighbor. In a free market economy, you are free to work to achieve your own goals.

The collectivist idea that some bureaucrat can somehow objectively measure what exactly it is people "need", ignores one of the basic facts of human life: our diversity.

LOL


I've done so many times already in the past. And if you would have read my posts in this thread you would know I object to all involuntary transactions and violations of property rights.

Ah the pseudoscience that is called "happiness research". It's the latest fad in Marxist circles. The idea that one can somehow measure happiness. For some strange reason all those "happiness research" studies all conclude that "more freedom and a higher standard of living doesn't make people more happy" and that "more government intervention in people's lives doesn't make them less happy". I wonder why.

In an earlier post in this thread I explained how value is subjective not objective. I'll refer to that post (the one with the Carl Menger quote) and add the following copy/paste from mises.org (I'm aware of the fact that a lot of people simply won't read it because of the source):

There is no way to measure an increase or decrease in happiness or satisfaction; not only between different people, it is not possible to measure change in the happiness of one given person.

In order for any measurement to be possible, there must be an eternally fixed and objectively given unit with which other units may be compared. There is no such objective unit in the field of human valuation. The individual must determine subjectively for himself whether he is better or worse off as a result of any change. His preference can only be expressed in terms of simple choice, or rank. Thus, he can say, "I am better off" or "I am happier" because he went to a concert instead of playing bridge (or "I will be better off" for going to the concert), but it would be completely meaningless for him to try to assign units to his preference and say, "I am two and a half times happier because of this choice than I would have been playing bridge." Two and a half times what? There is no possible unit of happiness that can be used for purposes of comparison and, hence, of addition or multiplication. Therefore, values cannot be measured; values or utilities cannot be added, subtracted, or multiplied. They can only be ranked as better or worse. A man may know that he is or will be happier or less happy, but not by "how much".

Accordingly, the numbers by which ends are ranked on value scales are ordinal, not cardinal, numbers. Ordinal numbers are only ranked; they cannot be subject to the processes of measurement. Thus, in the above example, all we can say is that going to a concert is valued more than playing bridge, and either of these is valued more than watching the game. We cannot say that going to a concert is valued ?twice as much? as watching the game; the numbers two and four cannot be subject to processes of addition, multiplication, etc

How much we value something is subjective. It's through our choices that we express that we value one thing over another. It's through voluntary transactions that prices are established. And again: it's those prices that play a coordinating role in the economy.

Without prices, there's no way of knowing how much of a certain product will be needed and there's no way of knowing what products shouldn't be produced.

What are you talking about,?Scandinavian countries are some of the richest in the world and with best living standard.(personally, if someone ask me where I would like to be those would be countries like Sweden or Norway...and I know why, because of how much they care for it's own people) I've just mentioned that and didn't think it is important. and if you have a time to comment sentence that is basically not relevant for the theme, better try to put yourself in situation where you have free college and free apartment (not to use but to become your property once and for all), instead of working next 30 years to pay off credists that and give money to already rich people running banks. That is not matter of choosing like you said on free market, all people have same basic needs (food, shelter, education, health and transportation) and idea behind socialistic (or call it however you want it's not important) is to take care about those needs. As I've mentioned, you need to live that before you say that's shit. Of course, I know many people that lived both system and say that capitalism is better, but much more of those who think oposite. (somehow those first now have money earned by fucking up other people and using their work) I really can't bother to type about this, no use. you already have your opinion.

George and U bob found themselves in a lifeboat after their ship sank. George was in the lifeboat first and he said that all the food and water was his. Why should he risk his chances of survival sharing with U bob?

Was the ship (and everything on it including the lifeboat) the property of let's say a company that George and I each owned 50% of or...?

Never mind the technicalities. Let's just say, I'm in the water and George happens to pass by in his boat that is 100% his property. Why would he help me? Common decency? Morality? Because he's tired of doing all the rowing by himself? Out of charity?...

It's funny how collectivists seem to think that unless someone forces you to help no one will help his fellow human being.

you just have to read GFY enough to see the flaws in this concept. Or watch Fox news.

Doesn't the baker help his fellow human beings by selling them something they value more than the money they pay in exchange for a loaf of bread?

you're avoiding the point - read this place, all the threads where people say that foodstamps, unemployement benefits, bail outs etc. never should have happened. or that no one deserves health care who can not afford it. many people would agree to kill all that if they could. and they for sure would not pay voluntarily instead.

if you have no government that takes care of this and let everything run buckwild, you end up in african dictatorships.

sorry, but i dont want to live like that

Of course there's bad people out there and that's one of the reason I don't want the government to tell me what i can or cannot buy. That's one of the reason why I don't want the government to tell me how to run my business. Because government officials are also humans. Government officials also make mistakes and some of them also have bad intentions. When a local baker time after time makes a mistake and sells bread that tastes like shit, I can choose not to buy their and his mistakes won't affect me. When some unelected government bureaucrat makes a mistake his actions affect millions of people.

You mentioned bailouts. Do you think it's fair or productive that people who run their business in inefficient manner get rewarded by a government that transfers the costs of those mistakes onto the public?

i refuse to see the world as black and white as you do. under some circumstances i would say no, under other circumstances i would say yes.

Opel and Schlecker are 2 great examples in Germany at the moment.

GM screws up Opel and eventually without government intervention you will have 20-30.000 unemployed people from one day to the other in one city. The effect would be devastating - for the employees, the city in general, local businesses and lastly the government who has to pay unemployement benefits.

Schlecker went bankrupt with 11,000 people, but they are all over Germany. And the chances of finding new jobs are pretty good for them. Should the government intervene here? No.

i dont see the government as my enemy. as idiots sometimes, but i am not paranoid and think they're after me trying to steal from me.

I eat bread in Britain till I was 21, it was garbage, capitalism had destroyed small bakeries and produced crap like "Mothers Pride", went to live in Poland during communist times and eat fantastic healthy bread from the small bakeries.

Eastern European food is still better, and my experience in trying to buy good food in the US is tragic, outside of the big cities.

This little capitalism doing the best is a fairy story, without NASA , military spending, state building of the Internet the US would be on its back. No capitalism without a state to make it work.

isnt it funny?

i bet most of the people in this thread went to a public school, how socialist, those damn public schools, and all those roads and highways they use to get to the mall or walmart to shop.

we should rid this country of roads and schools immediately!

geez can you imagine america without socialism? LOL it wouldnt exist :1orglaugh

the word socialism is very loosely used here...

Ergo, if you really wanna be free, off yourself.