The cost of monoculture (Gen Kanai)
The cost of monoculture (Gen Kanai)
Posted Jan 27, 2007 9:52 UTC (Sat) by drag (guest, #31333)In reply to: The cost of monoculture (Gen Kanai) by branden
Parent article: The cost of monoculture (Gen Kanai)
Companies come and go that is the nature of the business. Other companies come in and take over leading to higher efficiency, better products, and more profitability.
When ford screws up all the people that pay are the employees and the shareholders. If I don't like how Ford is run or I don't like their cars I can choose not to give them money. They die, another company comes in and take over.
When governments are put in charge of people's lives and they mess up people starve, people get their property seized, and nations go to war. If the government is being run badly and demands more money and I don't want to pay they send armed men to my house to put me in a concrete cage.
No corporation has ever killed off millions of it's own employees because they didn't like their race. No corporation has ever sent millions of people to die in work camps in Siberia. No corporation has purposely controlled or accidently mismanaged the food supplies that caused millions of people to starve. No corporation had killing feilds were they shot the men, clubbed the women, and smashed the children against trees in massive numbers for no good reason.
That's MILLIONS of people. Through the direct and purposefull actions of governments set on killing their own population simply to have them dead you have a total of about 170 million people killed during the 20th century. The majority of this was done by socialist governments places like Germany, Russia, China, Cambodia, and other assorted countries through out the world. The majority of it was done after WW2 (except in Germany, obviously)
Since WW2 you had about 76million people killed by their own governments. 66 million of them killed by people calling themselves 'communist'.
And that is a somewhat lowball figure. Other estimates put killing by governments of over 260 million people.
but I suppose that is possibly governments just being very very efficient? I suppose, like in China, the best was to solve hunger during the 50's and such is simply to eliminate the hungry people!
As a counter example to your Ford in economics:
Take the shining beacon that is Venezuala.
After Hugo Chavez's reelection he blithly announces that he is going to seize control of the country's infrastructure from foreign companies and return it to government control.
Oops. There goes a fifth of the country's value within a week of the announcement as foreign investors pull out.
As a result of Hugo's mismanagment and him and his buddies seizing control of all the economic assests in the country under the big lie of 'populism' almost all foriegn investment in his country has pulled out. This has resulte in massive amounts of inflation (as in devaluation of the currency) and the country is spiraling to poverty.
Last I heard the county has about 50% the worth it had just a couple years ago. The only thing that is saving their ass is the fact that they are major oil exporter.
Lets see how well government control works for it's people with things like 29% inflation.
But maybe the government can get that ecological destroying sewage situation under control, eh? (I expect not...)
Personally I can ignore Ford and go on with their day. The investors learn to invest more wisely and nobody with any brains invests all their money in one place, investment 101 says that you have to diversify your risk. The employees get different jobs at different companies.
On the other hand it's going to realy realy suck for me if I was stuck anywere in Venezuela in next 5-10 years. Everybody in that country is going to be heavily screwed over.. especially when Hugo seizes enough control he is not going to be dependant on the 'populist' vote to remain in power.
Posted Jan 27, 2007 16:45 UTC (Sat)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
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ROTFL, any student of European history (won't write about parts of the world I know little of, though I suspect it's pretty much the same thing) knows pretty much every single of its big famines was aggravated if not orchestrated by private interests hoarding food dumps to speculate on price (with the governments usually ending up confiscating them to avoid starvation riots)
> No corporation has ever sent millions of people to die in work camps in
Also, I suggest you read one or two books of russian history (the official pre-1917 tsarist ones that were massively re-published in the 1990's).
They'll explain you how economic powers (aristocrats then industrialists) lobbied for centuries for serfdom and maintaining people in abject conditions in poor fields then factories to make more money (with many laments on the hard russian climate and the "economic necessity" of serfdom)
Then they'll tell you how the state expanded its borders by turning a blind eyes to people fleeing in Ukraine & Siberia the economic powers of the day (yes, it was that bad people were happy to flee to Siberia).
I don't like governments much but I have no illusion about what would happen if economic powers (named corporation nowadays) were freed from them. It's easy to point the finger to 20th century communist states but the great atrocities of previous centuries (new world conquest, colonization) have more often than not been perpetrated in areas where historic states were weak and power surrendered to private interests.
Posted Jan 28, 2007 12:43 UTC (Sun)
by drag (guest, #31333)
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Good stuff. I bet russian history is a good one.
They'll be easy to find hopefully, or do they have a name so I know which ones your talking about?
""I don't like governments much but I have no illusion about what would happen if economic powers (named corporation nowadays) were freed from them. It's easy to point the finger to 20th century communist states but the great atrocities of previous centuries (new world conquest, colonization) have more often than not been perpetrated in areas where historic states were weak and power surrendered to private interests.""
I don't trust big corporations anymore then big governments. It's just currently their power is much more limited.
There are people like from the "Mises institute" http://www.mises.org/ that advocate just that (no government and only business). That a capitalist society, if properly setup, is essentially self-governing and that there is no need for structured government.
I don't agree with that at all.
What is most horrible is when they combine forces.. When the government takes a active role in supporting economic success of big business over it's own subjects. You end up with a very strong form of fascism.
Personally I like a balance of power approach. Government and large corporations should be opposed to one another to a certain extent (but probably not in a combative manner). I beleive that individuals have the best ability to govern themselves. After all we are all humans and generally have barely enough good sense to rule ourselves... What makes us think that puting a couple thousand people in charge of a several hundred million will have good results?
In a perfect world morality would govern every individual and we each would try to make decisions that would end up in the greater good of all people... but there are many selfish and violent people out, along with enough gullible follows to give them power (it's quite shocking to meet somebody who is, in most respects, pretty evil and fairly smart. It gives you a lot to think about), there so the need for elected governmental structure to counter that is a absolute need.
It's just that big business and government both are nessicary evils, both are nessicary and both suck, and like all nessicary evils they should be kept at a minimum.
:-)
Posted Jan 27, 2007 21:20 UTC (Sat)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
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Posted Jan 27, 2007 23:25 UTC (Sat)
by Arker (guest, #14205)
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Posted Jan 28, 2007 12:23 UTC (Sun)
by drag (guest, #31333)
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Seriously. This is WW2 history 101 stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_German_Wo...
""The Nazi Party, officially known as the National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (help·info), or NSDAP), was a political party in Germany between 1920 and 1945.""
They called themselves socialist. What more do you want?
They were elected into power also. Democraticly elected, no less.
Go brown shirts! :-p
Posted Jan 28, 2007 21:15 UTC (Sun)
by Arker (guest, #14205)
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Posted Jan 29, 2007 17:00 UTC (Mon)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
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Posted Jan 29, 2007 21:29 UTC (Mon)
by drag (guest, #31333)
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So the Nazi party was definately a socialist party. But it's a strong 'Right Wing' one with paranonia towards non-germans and things like a strong pro-death penatly stance.
Modern European socialism is usually typified by a 'soft left' approach, which is certainly very different from what the nazis were.
Posted Feb 5, 2007 1:56 UTC (Mon)
by liljencrantz (guest, #28458)
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Both of these leanings can be found among some conservatives, sure, but they are very typical of communist states as well.
Posted Jan 30, 2007 10:13 UTC (Tue)
by ekj (guest, #1524)
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Deutsche Demokratische Republik may have been "Deutsch", but it was not really what we think of a a Republic, and certainly not democratic.
The Peoples republic of China is also not really controlled by "the people" in any reasonable interpretation.
Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya isn't really any of those things, except possibly libyan.
For that matter, even the kingdom of Norway isn't actually in any reasonable sense a kingdom. I mean, *technically* there is a king, but he doesn't actually rule the country. Infact he has very very close to no power whatsoever, certainly MUCH less than most presidents.
My point ?
The fact that some entity chooses to name itself something is no indication whatsoever. Infact it's frequently the oposite. Countries without "democratic" in their name are, on the average, a whole lot more democratic than those *with* that in their name.
Posted Feb 5, 2007 2:02 UTC (Mon)
by liljencrantz (guest, #28458)
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> No corporation has purposely controlled or accidently mismanaged the foodThe cost of monoculture (Gen Kanai)
> supplies that caused millions of people to starve.
> Siberia.
""Also, I suggest you read one or two books of russian history (the official pre-1917 tsarist ones that were massively re-published in the 1990's).""The cost of monoculture (Gen Kanai)
(Although they have very interesting and valid points in some respects and are worth checking out.)
(either through election or economic forces the end result is the same)
I started reading this but I stopped as soon as you described Nazi Germany The cost of monoculture (Gen Kanai)
as `socialist', because you'd just demonstrated your utter ignorance of
history for all to see.
Wow, talk about projection. The cost of monoculture (Gen Kanai)
Haha.The cost of monoculture (Gen Kanai)
Hitler infiltrated the red Socialists for the German secret police. He was fanatically opposed to them. At the same time, he adopted many key policies and tactics from them. His goal was a "National Socialism" to oppose the ostensibly "International Socialism" of the reds. The cost of monoculture (Gen Kanai)
And the DDR called itself 'democratic'. The name an organization gives itself does *not* necessarily indicate whether it actually conforms to those ideals (indeed in politics it is frequently an indication that it does not).The cost of monoculture (Gen Kanai)
They were definately not marxist, they definately aren't the same as modern European style socialism, but they did have the idea of a strong central government regulating the economy and providing a welfare state, government ran education, and government ran healthcare system.The cost of monoculture (Gen Kanai)
In what way is "paranonia towards non-germans and things like a strong pro-death penatly stance" right wing?The cost of monoculture (Gen Kanai)
There's a rule. Goes like this. When a country explicitly names itself something, it never actually isThe cost of monoculture (Gen Kanai)
The nazis are an exception to this rule. If you mix socialism with xenophobia, you pretty much get nazism.The cost of monoculture (Gen Kanai)