Topic: Can there be a government funded social safety net consistent with "capitalism"? - page 2. (Read 4256 times)

I could just feel which way this discussion was going. LOL

So instead of foreign aid building schools and factories in poor countries and buying their cheaply produced products, we should just let them mind their business but bomb them if they start burning our flag in their streets?

benefits are not simply handouts it's an investment in the future workforce, which has the side effect of reducing the number of gun slinging drug addicts.

Would not cheap, reliable firearms, in the hands of the populace, be a more cost-effective solution to crime?

You mean subsidizing them so they don't rob us? Yes I do, and I don't imply that the subsidized reason that they can threaten their way to welfare. it's just a cause and effect mechanism. As i edited in while you wrote, it can also be a financial benefit for society.

I see. So basically, we're subsidizing not robbing people. Is that a fair characterization?

It benefits society to give benefits. As the cost of crime and social unrest at some point exceed the cost of benefits at a certain level. You can also argue that lifting poor neighbourhoods with free education sanitation, you also increase the value of their work long term, which generates a higher tax revenue and consumption.

A private business can either fire an employee when they find a better qualified in the wild, or educate or provide cheap housing for the emploees that need it, so they can add more value to the company. This makes perfect sense from a cost benefit view point.

If you make the poorest less poor with incentives you grow human assets available for your economy in your country it is good business if you strike the right balance.

Calling it Dictatorships and democracies was an extrapolating brain fart, but in a democracy the poorest have a vote, so there will always exist a minimum of government benefits. Every election in any country is also about the level of benefits the number of the poorest voters demand. In a pure Stalinistic dictatorship benefits can be non exsisting as there is no political incentive to waste money on the poor to get votes.

Hmm, I don't recall mentioning either democracy or dictatorships. I was talking about capitalism and non-capitalist systems, like socialism or corporatism.

If someone cannot provide for themselves, who, besides them of course, does it benefit to support them? Who does it benefit to artificially lift the value of their labor to the same as that of someone who can support themselves?

Yes Myrkul, but there still is the same limit. I think it's in Thailand whole families collect waste from restaurants and deep fry the lot. It's sold as BAK-BAK for a few cents to just as poor hired hands that sleep under sheets of cardboard. In Mexico city I have seen mum and dad with small children pushing cards around at 2 AM collecting plastic bags for the cents they get from the recycler. They all make a living and their only hope in life (I have talked with them) is that their children get some minimum of education so they can have a maginally better life than they had. So you are right, Mexico City uses less on street sweepers and they all persue their dream, but i don't think either of them can tell the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship. As you say, not all are able to provide for themselve for the value of their work, so there is a level of poverty a maximum percentage the population can be below before they either have to get some benefits, or the "not starved to dead" need higher wages for the sake of stability.

Im not talking about us in the western world. We are the 20%. Benefits are given to people considered wealthy in most of the world. With us it's a balance between benefits vs. the willingness to work for minimum wages, but as this is an ideological thread about capitalism and benefits, extreme case examples are relevant.

There have always been people who are willing to use coercion in order to force their will upon others. But that's hardly a justification for bestowing an air of legitimacy on one particular set of them and accepting their moral authority. All this does is create a society with an entrenched Stockholm syndrome of continued fealty in exchange for ever-increasing levels of parasitism and domination.

Actually, that's what non-capitalist countries do as a matter of course... keep people just above starvation.

In capitalism, you work, or you starve. This provides incentive to work, but most people won't need this incentive, they'll have other desires above and beyond food. It also provides for keeping too many from "scraping the bottom"... at least for very long.

A capitalist society also has to limit the percentage of people scraping the bottom, as too many leads to social unrest.

One can do as China: Let the millions live just above the limit of starvation, but not too many or too hungry that they overpower your law enforcement. If such a government strike that balance they have the added benefit of lowest payed largest sustainable bluecollar workforce. Social safty and other benefits is just another way to pay your workers.

You can't have elections in such a country as the politicians would have to promise more and more and end up with an uncopetitive production.

Ups! non capitalist countries do that too.

So the question is: Can a capitalist society support democratic parlamentarism?

There is a trick: Print more money, so people think they are getting more.

I just already agree with everyone here. Need new input.

"Government funded" means "funded by theft." Since theft is not capitalism, the simple answer to the OP is "no." Anyone else who came in and offered any suggestions would be offering suggestions that either were not government funded (like I did, in the first reply), or not consistent with capitalism.

Circle jerk? Who the fuck masturbates when they are depressed as FUCK about the state of our dystopic world?

Well this thread is an ancap circle jerk so far. Anyone else wanna chime in?

And irrational societies call these people "past, present, and future government".

Rape or be raped is what daddy always said....  *feels guilt at this joke :-( just pretend I never said it

In all seriousness .... no the government should not be providing social safety nets, they are completely and utterly incapable of doing this effectively, private organizations (both smaller and localized with possibly wider interconnected relationships to other organizations) serve this purpose much more directly and efficiently.  Also, humans are particularly resilient creatures, when left with no guaranteed safety net provided by someone else we often take certain precautions to make our own safety nets and this is how it should be.  Families and communities should be held accountable for their own and when the problem is too great for them alone be on good relations with their neighbors, it'd make the world a better place.

The government should be there to defend our civil liberties and god-given rights, we need to be smart enough to not hang ourselves in the process.

But not universal, therefore not human nature.

There will always be people willing to use aggression. Rational societies call these people "criminals."

Ok, so then it comes down to whether or not it is "human nature" to always have a biggest gang (willing to use aggression to feed itself) around. If so we are doomed to "rape" and are only trying to limit the pain of the rape. Historically this seems to be very common.

Capitalist is to Capitalism as voluntary participant is to sex
"biggest gang" is to capitalism as rapist is to sex.

Capitalist is to Capitalism as Rapist is to Rapism
Socialist is to Socialism as Rapist is to Rapism
etc

The analogy doesn't make intuitive sense to me. Rapism isn't commonly accepted to exist, which is why its underlined in red as i'm making this post.