Topic: I hate socialism but..... shouldn't a nations resources be nationalized? - page 2. (Read 2526 times)

nah, my resources are mine. nation schmation.

You know how you don't discriminate don't you? Mathematics and a brain OOOOOOO! It's like how I don't give to major charities because I know just how much they get tax free and how a lot of it goes to 'administration' costs, I got pretty pissed recently with people from charities who claimed on the radio that the 1 billion they were getting ( seriously 1 fucking billion and I think it was either in pound or euros ) was not enough to help the people in Syria long term.

Charity may have it's problems but they're far better and more single minded than a government who is far more likely to extort you for money and use a large percentage of that money to pay for their armies and equipment than anything genuinely useful to their people.

Edit: I just re-read my post and realised it's a bit daft since I wrote it while I was sleepy, while it's true you can choose not to discriminate by mathematics and brain, humans are discriminating by nature, sorry about that >_<

Think of it more like mutual aid associations. Get enough French-Canadians together, without Ottowa shoving it's nose in, and they can help each other out, assimilation be damned.

Charity doesn't work when there's discrimination from a stronger group toward a weaker group. It often transform into a collective mental masturbation between members of the strong group. Like how those native americans are so "lucky" that rich white english people build schools for them to brainwash them to the "good" culture. Or how the rich white english people are so generous by trying to make the french-canadians "evolve" by trying to assimilate them in every way possible.

It was the same thing with the black people back in the states. You're black? Oh, you're sooooo lucky young man, with my true american charitable spirit, I'll let you eat 2 times a day.

It's not that charity is bad, it's more that it's easily contaminated by discrimination. Charity is the act of choosing who gets the privilege and who is left behind. In my own society, we have another mentality, more of the type "no one left behind", that's may be why I don't like charity that much.

What I find a lot of people who support these kind of socialistic or communist ideologies is that what they are supporting is thievery, either through stealth inflation or direct taxation, I'm all for spreading the wealth around, I'd even be for building roads etc. in inhospitable places so it would make peoples lives easier. What I can't stand though is people who use emotional blackmail and extortion to get their way.

All the time we hear about how it would be a disaster if we got rid of taxes but of course these arrogant people don't realise there is such a thing as charity which shows you how little they trust their fellow humans, if governments really do end up collapsing because of Bitcoin the first thing I'm going to do is donate to some hospitals

No.

Ding ding ding!

The government has to create a corporation to nationalize the resources. It's a business like every other and is managed like any real business out there. It exist to make profit for its shareholders (in this case, the state) and will try to get the best deal possible for the resources instead of simply playing the politic game.

You can't simply lobby a politician anymore to get the resources, you need to close a deal with another business and buy massive amounts of resources for the right price. I don't care if the buyer has to pay more, I'm completely against social security for private businesses. Make money or die. Big corporations are always out there crying out to get bailed out, be subsidized or having laws changed. They are the biggest welfare leechers, always looking for taxpayer money to stay profitable. At least, by paying the right price for natural resources, they can't leech taxpayers anymore.

Often astoundingly so. In a recent scandal here, it turned out politicians were redirecting millions of taxpayer dollars for what amounted to chump change.

Politicians are cheap, compared to actually buying massive amounts of resources.

Under true capitalism, in order to clear the whole forest, you have to buy the whole forest first. Then, in order to make further profit, you would have to either restore the whole forest, or buy another one. Kinda expensive, isn't it?

When a forest is owned by "the people", you just have to bribe "the people" (aka government), in order to chop it down. Much less expensive.

I'm a socialist minded person and I agree with what you say. But it's more like Monster Tent said


I have no problems with a company cutting some wood, transforming it and making awesome products. But I have certain problems with the same company clearing whole forest just because it's more efficient and "I paid for it". Or going into a country, pumping resources and getting out.

Last century, Americans company were coming in Canada, pumping iron and buying mining companies for cheap. With the same iron, they shipped it back into the US, made steel with it and sold it back to us at like 5x times the original price. I know "capitalist/freedom/etc", but this type of business doesn't create any plus-value. You just suck blood from a society and quit when there's nothing left. We were lucky, our government got stronger and somewhat stop that type of business, but other countries like a ton of them in Africa were not so lucky.

The whole pump-and-run that Americans are so good at can make money short-term. But in the long-term, it's only a take-all relationship where there's only one winner. Nationalization of resources doesn't prevent business from getting resources, its mostly to help the local society get a nice part of the profit and help control environmental damage.

Thanks so much for pointing this out.  I really wish socialist-minded people could understand that:  ownership is not a static process, it's dynamic.  If you give something to someone, he might very well not know what to do with it and then he will sell it to someone else.  In the end, stuff end up belonging to people who are the most willing to own them:  those who are willing to pay, notably.  This is true for resources and means of production.   Giving them to people on an equal basis would only lead to a unstable economic situation which would rapidly end up back to the current situation again, at the cost of having confiscated stuff initially just to eventually fail to change anything.

I think the main problem is companies benefitting from resources and failing to pay the true cost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

For example producing plastic bottles to sell water the cost of the product doesnt reflect the damage it does to the environment.

I'll let myself remove from your question emotional and illusory stuff. The concepts of "nation" and "country" are illusory and are in complete contradiction with basic human rights. Your love / hate are emotional and not related to your question. What's left is this:


Now, I have a few questions.

What's "resources"? Like, I am not allowed to burn wood, coal, oil, uranium, build hydroelectric powerplants, dig for stone, copper, iron, eat animals or plants? Just because this might cause some damage to the environment? Ok. But I will die from starvation. And you won't have too much time to be happy for the environment, because you will die too.

Let's suppose you meant something else. Say, some resources, like oil, should belong to everybody, and everyone should have a vote on how to use them. Fine. Suppose you have that vote - you are a shareholder of Worldwide Oil, Inc. Where do you find oil? Where would your company get money to build an oil well? Are you willing to participate in shareholders' meetings? Who's going to pay employees? Are you really interested in working on this? If not, wouldn't it be better for you to sell your share to a person who knows what to do with it, and has the resources necessary to start the business, so that you could buy a share in a well-established company instead? Can shareholders of Worldwide Oil, Inc. decide for a split-up into American Oil, Inc., Asian Oil, Inc., and so on, to make it more manageable? You see where I am getting it. We might end up with something that is almost like what we have now.

I don't like it.  It still gives favor to the guy with the most money.  I hate that guy.  His name is probably Steve.

Well yeah, where do you think the resources are? I don't know for other countries, but in Canada, even when you "own" a part of land, you only own the surface. If there's a gold mine under your house, any mining corporation can buy a mining claim for the gold mine under your house and own the underground of your land. If they need to dig, you need to get the fuck out, their private rights goes over yours.

If I have to choose, I prefer a lot having my land owned by a state corporation instead of a private corporation. At least, I can vote for the government controlling the state corporation.


Yeah sure, the administration will be made by a couple of persons. Like I said before, at least, I can vote for the government, but I can't for the private firms. Also, the profit made from the raw resources come back in our collective pockets, instead of going into the pockets of a few shareholders.

And controlled by a privileged few.

EVEN LAND?

I completely agree with that. One of our local politician leader is trying to promote the nationalization of our resources since, like he said: "What nobody has made should be owned by everybody."

Isn't SOP that the raw resources are the property of the state but they lease the rights to exploit (often for next to nothing admittedly).