The Problem with Libertarianism

Leon Mcnichol wrote:In Sweden... they have free health, free education

As for the cancer patient, in Sweden he is not paying for his retirement, he is paying for his free medical assistance, free psycological aid for him and his family, etc etc.

V for Valjean wrote:Its really very simple. If private enterprise can perform a service at a more efficient price than government then government ought not to perform that service. There are really only a very few things which must be provided by government when you boil it down.

Government must provide a criminal law system as well as a tort law system where people or businesses who take advantage of other citizens can be punished by paying great sums of money. They must provide for the common defense in the form of a military. Government must have an infastructure to collect taxes, etc. There are a few other things, but not many that can only be done properly by government. Now that doesn't mean there aren't other things where its not inappropriate for government to be involved, but that's a different matter than essential.

But you asked how we know if its efficient to have government perform a certain task. If I can go to Home Depot and buy a toilet seat for $10 but the US government buys them for $500 (and this is a real example) then that's not an appropriate role for government is it? Its not appropriate because government isn't purchasing efficiently. Its charging the citizens collectively $500 in return for a $10 item. The result is basically a $490 tax called "government waste".

V for Valjean wrote:That's the lure of government programs isn't it? "Here, we will give you something for free." Now whoever told you that did you a very great misservice at the most fundamental level.

You don't have a free good. It isn't coming from nowhere. People are being forced against their will to pay for it all their lives, and the real question is are they benefiting from it in a cost effective way? Of course they aren't. In America you don't "pay" to go to public school. But guess what, America collects $16,000 in taxes per child in K-12. Each year. Using this as a simple example no one believes for a second in a normal classroom of 20 third graders that it costs a third of a million dollars a year to provide their education. The amount of benefit that reaches each of those 20 students is only a small fraction of the $320,000 collected. The rest is wasted by government inefficiencies which you don't have in private enterprise.

Regardless of the specific example, next time you see whoever it was that told you there's a free good out there that materializes out of nowhere ... slap the taste out of their mouth for misleading you.

V for Valjean wrote:... or Communist China where government employees make up 50% of the workforce.

DSN wrote:

V for Valjean wrote:... or Communist China where government employees make up 50% of the workforce.

Rev Scare wrote:To begin, you should be restricted to the OV section, as your reactionary libertarian views are contaminating the main forum.

Admin wrote:No one is attempting to censor your posts. We are merely recommending that you direct your content to the opposing views section of the forum. This is a reasonable request given the nature of your disposition.

With respect to your offer, I doubt anyone here has an interest in wasting any time on a vacant forum managed by a sophomoric propertarian.

V for Valjean wrote:It is vacant absolutely, I just migrated it onto a paid server today and am still setting the SEO up. And given that this forum has fewer than 10 active members a day I don't know that you do yourself a service through your attempts at censorship.

As for the last, insulting piece of your remark, it would take a very insecure person indeed to call someone with an MBA from Chicago who took economics from a man with a Nobel Prize sophomoric. You make some gross assumptions about the level of education & sophistication of people just because they reach a different logical conclusion than you on issues. Prejudice is such an ugly, petty trait isn't it Administrator?

prej·u·dice
noun
1.
an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.

Leon Mcnichol wrote:we had far more sophisticated and intelligent trolls around here.

V for Valjean wrote:It is vacant absolutely, I just migrated it onto a paid server today and am still setting the SEO up.

And given that this forum has fewer than 10 active members a day I don't know that you do yourself a service through your attempts at censorship.

As for the last, insulting piece of your remark, it would take a very insecure person indeed to call someone with an MBA from Chicago who took economics from a man with a Nobel Prize sophomoric. You make some gross assumptions about the level of education & sophistication of people just because they reach a different logical conclusion than you on issues. Prejudice is such an ugly, petty trait isn't it Administrator?

prej·u·dice
noun
1.
an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.

Admin wrote: Specifically, I would suggest that you respond to Rev Scare's comprehensive refutation of your recent claims, lest you wish to convey your ignorance and ineptitude to everyone here.

V for Valjean wrote:Which is it Administrator? You either want me to participate in this portion of the forum or you don't. I can even hide behind erudite language instead of presenting my ideas so clearly if throwing the word rubric around a few times would help ease the tension.

V for Valjean wrote:
Dear DSN,
The Facts: Not always as funny as you thought they would be

V for Valjean wrote:I've always enjoyed discussing politics and economics with folks of a more collectivist or socialist leaning because, to pay you a very sincere compliment and i hope you'll take it as such, I've always observed that socialists are much more interested in economics than folks from other viewpoints. And i can tell from reading posts here a great many people who've spent considerable time thinking about topics like this. Its disappointing to say, but the truth, that most people from all the other schools of thought have given far less consideration to these topics.

Rev Scare wrote:Define efficiency. There is no universally upheld notion of what is and is not economically "efficient." Bourgeois economists… assume that the equilibrium prices arising out of conditions of perfect competition connote efficiency… the belief that private market competition generates "efficiency," … [is] empty nonsense.

There most certainly is a universally accepted definition of economic efficiency. Just because the definition is unfavorable to your viewpoint doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Efficiency means the use of resources to produce the most goods & services. An economy is more efficient if it can produce more goods & services for its society using fewer resources. That, of course, is also why the capitalist US won the Cold War and the communist Soviet Union collapsed upon itself… were I to boil down a complicated event to its most fundamental nature: that the Soviet economy was inefficient and unable to keep pace with the US economy. And I use that example because you brought it up although I’ll address it in more detail below.

Rev Scare wrote:Moreover, government enterprises typically stray from "equilibrium" (market) prices not due to some inability to calculate costs, but in order to avoid the heinous consequences of allowing vital services to be subject to the anarchic forces of the market.

If you’d stopped at ‘government enterprises typically stray from "equilibrium"’ you’d have the right answer. The fact is that every monopoly in human history has been caused by government interference in the free market. So if you want to talk about government interfering with market prices it only produces bad outcomes: government wastes taxpayer money by purchasing at a higher price than the taxpayer could have & government causes monopolies and other market externalities. And lest you want to respond and discuss monopolies I’ll just do it now and point out that there are only 2 recoded monopolies in human history which have not been caused by some form of government interference in the market, but I don’t believe you have an appropriate knowledge-base to find them so I’ll give them to you: the New York Stock Exchange until the mid 1900s and the DeBeers Diamond Company. If it is monopolies or other market externalities you hate then you prove my point not your own as the only way to avoid those things is to avoid government interference in the free market.

Now to the second part of your statement: “but in order to avoid the heinous consequences of allowing vital services to be subject to the anarchic forces of the market.” Plainly you do not believe that government pays way too much for the things it buys because it wants to make a philosophical point and thumb its nose at the “anarchic forces of the market”. Let’s not be ludicrous here. Government pays too much for the things it purchase because governments are wasteful & inefficient. The market is efficient because it is made up of people spending their own money on themselves. People are very good at determining where they get the best deal. They don’t do a good job when they’re spending someone else’s money. They do the worst job of all when they’re spending someone else’s money on a third party (which is the case of government purchases). I’ll introduce you to the psychology of how people spend money and how it applies to government waste with this very simple graphic:

Again you’re using terms that you’ve read somewhere but don’t actually know anything about. I’ve already written a small novel, but if you want to really get into equilibrium or game theory with me its going to be crushing to the ego I sense in all your writings. I do not advise it and I’m hesitant to allow it. But if you want I can’t stop you. But if you keep throwing around terms you don’t understand I’ll take the gloves off and you’ll come away intellectually destroyed. Stop using terms you don’t understand, especially ones that refute your point not prove it.

Rev Scare wrote:Marx… blah blah blah… capitalism is bad

I changed my avatar to an image of Marx just for you.

Rev Scare wrote:state enterprises may and often do deliberately deviate from market prices in order to fulfill more worthwhile goals, such as ensuring a stable supply of goods, maintaining employment during difficult economic times, allowing for the growth of fledgling but important industries, etc. This alone is reason to believe that the state is more suited for managing an economy than private capitalists.

Allow me to introduce you to a principle that will be new to you called “The Forgotten Man.” You, yourself, are the forgotten man in a great many arrangements as am I. Here’s how it works. You have a politician who wants to be elected. A voter comes to him and says “Mr. Politician I have this horrible problem. Its just an awful circumstance for me and if you could do anything to solve it I’d vote for you and tell all my friends to vote for you now & forever.” The politician goes out and finds a way to get government funding to award a special favor for that constituent because her circumstance is so unique and very unfortunate. The constituent is happy. The politician is happy. But there weren’t 2 parties in that transaction, there were 3. The third party is the Forgotten Man. He’s the one who had his dollar taken from him and given to the constituent. He funded the entire transaction, and he got no benefit, and he’s not happy. Under a capitalist economy, especially one with a small federal government, you don’t have a Forgotten Man. Under a socialist economy that taxes people at 70% or 80% you have a lot of Forgotten Men. Eventually they get pissed off, when they do they are known to do random things that are very unfavorable to repressive socialist governments like tear down the Berlin Wall:

Rev Scare wrote:Exploitation is not the consequence of involuntary contracts: it is a product of the private owners appropriation and distribution of the labor of others through the social relation of wage labor. In other words, the private capitalist is a parasitic middle man who gains something in return for nothing. This unjust social relation is the basis of the capitalist mode of production, and it alone is worthy of its condemnation.

Red Aegis wrote:You forgot about my response

V for Valjean wrote:I'm glad to see Administrator was able to hide his inability to intellectually defend the core portion of his beliefs by burying this thread to a non-mainstream portion of the forum.

People are better off making their own choices and not relying on government.

Have you been to Hungary before? Ever visit Eastern Europe, or the Soviet Union or Czech Republic? I have. I was there after the collapse of the socialist governments that started out with the very best intentions. Just like you, they were intending only to improve the lots of their citizens, but – as would you - they all ended up making the people poorer, miserable and into slaves.

In the center of Prague is the Grand Hotel Europa. It’s a relic of from the days when Czechoslovakia was one of the wealthiest countries in the world… when I see it I see a reminder of a more productive past before communist central control. The same culture, the same people, the same resources… yet under socialism this country suffered a drastically lower standard of living. That is the result of substituting orders from the top for market incentives from below.

Your whole line of logic fails because it does not consider that while political change or political freedom can be achieved very quickly economic freedom and prosperity is a different matter and takes time.

See you are concerning yourself, in my opinion very short sightedly, with the equality of finished results. I am concerned with the equality of opportunity. The system I advocate for below provides equal opportunity to everyone and that is freedom. To have a government give you your small portion, the same portion as your neighbor is given… equality of results… that is not freedom its slavery. Under no circumstance is it correct for government to intervene in a free market system to do something about inequality of results. Not distress, inequality, which is the issue you’ve raised.

There most certainly is a universally accepted definition of economic efficiency. Just because the definition is unfavorable to your viewpoint doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Efficiency means the use of resources to produce the most goods & services. An economy is more efficient if it can produce more goods & services for its society using fewer resources.

That, of course, is also why the capitalist US won the Cold War and the communist Soviet Union collapsed upon itself… were I to boil down a complicated event to its most fundamental nature: that the Soviet economy was inefficient and unable to keep pace with the US economy. And I use that example because you brought it up although I’ll address it in more detail below.

If you’d stopped at ‘government enterprises typically stray from "equilibrium"’ you’d have the right answer. The fact is that every monopoly in human history has been caused by government interference in the free market.

So if you want to talk about government interfering with market prices it only produces bad outcomes: government wastes taxpayer money by purchasing at a higher price than the taxpayer could have & government causes monopolies and other market externalities. And lest you want to respond and discuss monopolies I’ll just do it now and point out that there are only 2 recoded monopolies in human history which have not been caused by some form of government interference in the market, but I don’t believe you have an appropriate knowledge-base to find them so I’ll give them to you: the New York Stock Exchange until the mid 1900s and the DeBeers Diamond Company. If it is monopolies or other market externalities you hate then you prove my point not your own as the only way to avoid those things is to avoid government interference in the free market.

Now to the second part of your statement: “but in order to avoid the heinous consequences of allowing vital services to be subject to the anarchic forces of the market.”

Plainly you do not believe that government pays way too much for the things it buys because it wants to make a philosophical point and thumb its nose at the “anarchic forces of the market”.

Let’s not be ludicrous here. Government pays too much for the things it purchase because governments are wasteful & inefficient.The market is efficient because it is made up of people spending their own money on themselves.

People are very good at determining where they get the best deal. They don’t do a good job when they’re spending someone else’s money. They do the worst job of all when they’re spending someone else’s money on a third party (which is the case of government purchases).

I’ll introduce you to the psychology of how people spend money and how it applies to government waste with this very simple graphic:

There is a fundamental error in Pareto optimality although it has nothing to do with what you’re saying.You may know some of these words but you’ve clearly not yet been exposed to the deeper ideas of them.

The problem with the Pareto theory is that it is fundamentally flawed because it assumes that in order for one party to become better off another must become worse off. In capitalism both parties benefit.

By definition no transaction can take place unless both parties believe they’re better off for it.

That brings us to employment, which you take obvious affront to. There is no person employed in any capitalist country in any arrangement for which they’re not better off than their alternative. I don’t care if you want to take a sweatshop worker stitching Nike’s in Asia somewhere. They are better off than their alternative for that job, which is why they’ve CHOSEN FREELY to do it. It is a pure fallacy of reason to assume that you, or a government, or any collection of people could decide better what someone ought to be doing than they themselves can decide. No one knows more about that individual’s situation than he does.

Now to your last point about collectively managed enterprises: there have been many in human history, they’ve all failed.

If it was such a great idea to put a bunch of people in a warehouse with no one in charge and let them all own a tiny fraction of what they produce…

well if that idea led to greater production of goods & services then it would have spread widely long ago. But it doesn’t… history is not on your side my friend.

The facts are not on your side. And using a bunch of words you only partially understand won’t change that.

I notice the pattern that you fail to suggest what you believe would be optimal, and instead just insult other systems you feel are stupid. So, as this is getting long, do recognize that the true strength in conversation doesn’t lie in putting things down it lies in persuasively presenting your own ideas, which you’ve not even started to do.

On that point: who is to say what government should provide?

Every nation on earth has its own founding document defining the role of government. Likely you’ve heard about these before? Were I to take America as an example the enumerated powers in the Constitution define what the federal government is allowed to do, whether they’ve been deviated from is a separate matter.

More philosophically, and less specific to any given nation, government ought to do provide those goods and services it can purchase for its citizens at a cheaper price than they can purchase them for themselves.

See, what you have forgotten in all your writing, is that government has no money of its own. It only has the tax revenue it collects from its citizens.

Inflation is just a tax without legislation, so a government that just prints more money so it has some (whereby causing inflation) has really just levied a tax.

SO because government has no money but the money its citizens have given it, it is only logical that government should purchase those things it can get a better price for its citizens collectively than they can get for themselves individually. A few exceptions government must provide go to areas like national defense, a court system, etc because they are things citizens cannot individually purchase. Government must also be involved in areas where the transaction of 2 parties effects a 3^rd party like in the case of pollution. The problem you have with big government (which you advocate) is that it wastes its citizens money in ways they would never approve of in order to cater to special interests.

That’s why, as an example, in the US you see billions of dollars a year spent to educate people on the health hazard of smoking,

and billions of dollars in subsidies going to the tobacco industry.

Prove it. Its far from a myth, it’s a proven fact that a free private sector is more productive. If you want to make very pedantic, dogmatic, unfounded statements like that then to this one I shall put the burden of proof on you. And since your entire dogma rests upon this statement being correct I assume you have a very sophisticated and well bolstered explanation for that statement. Lay it on me Rev.

And I’ll lay on you the example of Hong Kong. It has limited space, no natural resources of any kind and until recent history had almost no capital. Through laissez-faire economic policy its become the economic center of all of Asia and has an average standard of living comparable to the United States. That’s the power of capitalism.

Please, go find a socialist example… lay the Nordic countries on me where the median household income for a family of 4 is below the US poverty level in 2 out of the 3 of those countries. Go on now, you want to be pedantic and dogmatic then let’s see the substantiation for your dogma.

If what you said is true how do you rationalize the long term decline of the Soviet state socialist model and the relative stability & growth of the capitalist western model?

As you can see, the Soviet state collapsed and the capitalist states around it did not. But if you feel the Soviet & Soviet era socialist states were superior let’s take a poll. See you have no idea what you’re actually talking about because you didn’t live there. Neither did I. So let’s take a look at the behavior of the people who did live there. Let’s look at how people voted with their feet. It was Soviet East Germany who had to put up walls to keep its people from leaving not West Germany. Its communist China who has to put border guards out to keep people from fleeing to capitalist Hong Kong not the other way around.

But since the fact Soviet citizens would gnaw their own arm off to escape is likely to not be proof enough for you, let’s have some analysis of the Soviet economy compared to the US economy shall we?

[/font][/color]1. It is true that in the ‘50s the Soviet economy was growing at around 5% a year, which was faster than the United States. But productivity was low and stagnant. For that extra output, the Soviet Union was burning capital. But more to the point, what you’re likely hiding behind is the fact that the Soviet economy grew at an annualized average of 14.6% from 1928-1940. This corresponded with the introduction of industrial manufacturing in the USSR and America experienced nearly identical growth rates during its Industrial Revolution period. Soviet growth in the following decades fell to an average of 7% in the ‘60s then 5.3% in the 70’s then 3.2% in the 80’s (and that’s using very liberal numbers it was likely much lower). Gradual decline, eventual collapse, failure of (and the abandonment of) the government run command economy. End of story.

2. The Soviet collective farms were an abysmal failure due to lower productivity. The American farmer produced 7 times more crops than the Soviet farmer, which is why the USSR was importing grain from America and not the other way around. In fact [/font][/color][color=white][font='Arial']Hedrick Smith (source: The Russians (1976)) observed that 25% of the agricultural production in the USSR in 1973 was produced on the private plots peasants were allowed (which accounted for 1% of farmable land). Doesn’t sound like a win for the Soviet collective farm if a guy in his backyard can grow 25% of the nation’s food and collective farms holding the other 99% of the farmable land 75%. Should we go back to the definition of efficiency?

3. The Soviet Union failed due to lack of free trade. In fact, only 4% of its GNP came from imports/exports & most of those were with other Eastern Bloc countries. A state monopoly on foreign trade was part of what crushed the Soviet economy.

No it’s not.No better system exists as you and I both know. There is no force in human history which has afforded more people more freedom while doing more to improve the condition of the average working man than the capitalist system.

All of the problems you described above are problems arising from government interference in free market.

Let’s take the occurrence of free rider problems: the biggest examples of which being western nation’s massive budget deficit to support welfare economics. Programs to which you advocate. The source of every problem you list above is government interference not the free market.

[color=white][font='Verdana']Again you’re using terms that you’ve read somewhere but don’t actually know anything about. I’ve already written a small novel, but if you want to really get into equilibrium or game theory with me its going to be crushing to the ego I sense in all your writings. I do not advise it and I’m hesitant to allow it. But if you want I can’t stop you. But if you keep throwing around terms you don’t understand I’ll take the gloves off and you’ll come away intellectually destroyed. Stop using terms you don’t understand, especially ones that refute your point not prove it.[b]

Allow me to introduce you to a principle that will be new to you called “The Forgotten Man.” You, yourself, are the forgotten man in a great many arrangements as am I. Here’s how it works. You have a politician who wants to be elected. A voter comes to him and says “Mr. Politician I have this horrible problem. Its just an awful circumstance for me and if you could do anything to solve it I’d vote for you and tell all my friends to vote for you now & forever.” The politician goes out and finds a way to get government funding to award a special favor for that constituent because her circumstance is so unique and very unfortunate. The constituent is happy. The politician is happy. But there weren’t 2 parties in that transaction, there were 3. The third party is the Forgotten Man. He’s the one who had his dollar taken from him and given to the constituent. He funded the entire transaction, and he got no benefit, and he’s not happy. Under a capitalist economy, especially one with a small federal government, you don’t have a Forgotten Man. Under a socialist economy that taxes people at 70% or 80% you have a lot of Forgotten Men. Eventually they get pissed off, when they do they are known to do random things that are very unfavorable to repressive socialist governments like tear down the Berlin Wall:

Curious how you’ve decided that political self-interest is somehow nobler than economic self-interest. You’d support a system that rewards political power & massively grows the size of the most inefficient invention of mankind (government), but you oppose a system where millions of people are completely free to each pursue their own individual interests as they see fit.

Curious how you feel that free people entering into agreements that they both benefit from are somehow less noble than a socialist arrangement that forcibly seizes property, takes huge proportion of a man’s wages in the form of taxes, etc. Take a hard look at what you believe if you think that a man who pays a 80% tax rate and thus works 9 & 1/2 months out of the year for the government is more free than one who chooses his own profession and keeps his wages in a free capitalist economy. Only dictators hate freedom enough to think that way. You’d advocate making an entire society essentially nothing more than slaves who work to give their earnings to the government yet you hate the fact they might freely choose an occupation they prefer & benefit from. Hmm…

I never said it was. Taxation is a basic part of the social contract everyone makes to live in a society. A government wasting the money of its citizens is immoral.

V for Valjean wrote:I'm glad to see Administrator was able to hide his inability to intellectually defend the core portion of his beliefs by burying this thread to a non-mainstream portion of the forum.

People are better off making their own choices and not relying on government.

Have you been to Hungary before? Ever visit Eastern Europe, or the Soviet Union or Czech Republic? I have. I was there after the collapse of the socialist governments that started out with the very best intentions. Just like you, they were intending only to improve the lots of their citizens, but – as would you - they all ended up making the people poorer, miserable and into slaves.

In the center of Prague is the Grand Hotel Europa. It’s a relic of from the days when Czechoslovakia was one of the wealthiest countries in the world… when I see it I see a reminder of a more productive past before communist central control. The same culture, the same people, the same resources… yet under socialism this country suffered a drastically lower standard of living. That is the result of substituting orders from the top for market incentives from below.

I am concerned with the equality of opportunity. The system I advocate for below provides equal opportunity to everyone and that is freedom.

To have a government give you your small portion, the same portion as your neighbor is given… equality of results… that is not freedom its slavery. Under no circumstance is it correct for government to intervene in a free market system to do something about inequality of results. Not distress, inequality, which is the issue you’ve raised.

The fact is that every monopoly in human history has been caused by government interference in the free market.

People are very good at determining where they get the best deal.

That brings us to employment, which you take obvious affront to. There is no person employed in any capitalist country in any arrangement for which they’re not better off than their alternative. I don’t care if you want to take a sweatshop worker stitching Nike’s in Asia somewhere. They are better off than their alternative for that job, which is why they’ve CHOSEN FREELY to do it. It is a pure fallacy of reason to assume that you, or a government, or any collection of people could decide better what someone ought to be doing than they themselves can decide. No one knows more about that individual’s situation than he does.

Now to your last point about collectively managed enterprises: there have been many in human history, they’ve all failed.

If it was such a great idea to put a bunch of people in a warehouse with no one in charge and let them all own a tiny fraction of what they produce… well if that idea led to greater production of goods & services then it would have spread widely long ago. But it doesn’t… history is not on your side my friend.

Every nation on earth has its own founding document defining the role of government. Likely you’ve heard about these before? Were I to take America as an example the enumerated powers in the Constitution define what the federal government is allowed to do, whether they’ve been deviated from is a separate matter.

Let’s take the occurrence of free rider problems: the biggest examples of which being western nation’s massive budget deficit to support welfare economics. Programs to which you advocate.

Allow me to introduce you to a principle that will be new to you called “The Forgotten Man.” You, yourself, are the forgotten man in a great many arrangements as am I. Here’s how it works. You have a politician who wants to be elected. A voter comes to him and says “Mr. Politician I have this horrible problem. Its just an awful circumstance for me and if you could do anything to solve it I’d vote for you and tell all my friends to vote for you now & forever.” The politician goes out and finds a way to get government funding to award a special favor for that constituent because her circumstance is so unique and very unfortunate. The constituent is happy. The politician is happy. But there weren’t 2 parties in that transaction, there were 3. The third party is the Forgotten Man. He’s the one who had his dollar taken from him and given to the constituent. He funded the entire transaction, and he got no benefit, and he’s not happy.

Under a capitalist economy, especially one with a small federal government, you don’t have a Forgotten Man. Under a socialist economy that taxes people at 70% or 80% you have a lot of Forgotten Men. Eventually they get pissed off, when they do they are known to do random things that are very unfavorable to repressive socialist governments like tear down the Berlin Wall:

but you oppose a system where millions of people are completely free to each pursue their own individual interests as they see fit.

V for Valjean wrote:Have you been to Hungary before? Ever visit Eastern Europe, or the Soviet Union or Czech Republic? I have. I was there after the collapse of the socialist governments that started out with the very best intentions. Just like you, they were intending only to improve the lots of their citizens, but – as would you - they all ended up making the people poorer, miserable and into slaves.

V for Valjean wrote:@ Admin - nice video. If that guy, and anyone else who'd actually lived under socialism and communism, were to join your forum though he'd be restricted.

V for Valjean wrote:@ Admin - nice video. If that guy, and anyone else who'd actually lived under socialism and communism, were to join your forum though he'd be restricted.