Gothic.net Community - What's wrong with Capitalism?

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- - What's wrong with Capitalism? (https://www.gothic.net/boards/showthread.php?t=15920)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Despanan (Post 578094)

Yeah, that was funny as shit. But seriously, it's a pretty obvious that he's not, this entire time our point has been that there are good capitalists and bad capitalists, just like there are good socialists and bad socialists. Kontan's friend is an example of this, as opposed to what you seem to be arguing: that capitali is some draught of hateraid that transforms innocent people into bloated, baby-devouring, bastions of death. Systems, creeds and governments grow out of humanity, not the other way around. Alan, why the hell can you not comprehend the duality of man? For that matter, why can't you wrap your mind around ANY kind of duality?

Dude I'm sorry. But if you want me to reduce my argument without hominem atacks, then just answer this question:

Why do you justify capitalism when all the positive aspects of society Kontan and you have mentioned are those which are against capitalism, an obstacle to capitalism for the sake of socialist respect for human dignity?

Alan, your way of arguing is poor. Somebody presents a point and then you're like "Aight but ANSWER ME THIS", completely derailing the discourse that they were trying to approach so that you can manufacture the argument in your favour.

That's why I always end up losing my shit and getting personal when I argue with Alan - sheer frustration at the fact that he refuses to answer direct questions and cherry-picks from the answers given, instead of actually engaging with the issue as a whole.

I can't see how that is an issue here. Again, that's the whole point right now. There are good capitalists only in the sense that they are good people, not because they are good capitalists. What would you say is the issue here?

Now you're trying to to sidestep the issue. Seriously, come on.

The issue here is that you're not going to be convinced even by a polemic masterstroke of such gravity and intellectual breadth that Bakunin would rise from the grave and perform a tapdance extravaganza on the graves of Bolivian child workers, so argument is futile. You just stated that you see good actions as being in spite of capitalism, rather than being able to even acknowledge the possibility of a benevolent capitalist. This whole thread is pointless while you argue in it.

But when I argue that there are benevolent capitalists just as there were benevolent masters and benevolent feudal lords and benevolent dictators, NO, that's different! Right?

Uh... what? I'm not denying the possibility of a benevolent dictatorship.

And therefore we shouldn't complain against dictatorship? We should just hope that the dictator is good, and now dictatorship itself is salvageable? It's just a balance of dictatorial power and civil rights and then we can salvage it. The problem is not dictatorships, it's people?

I didn't say that I agree with benevolent dictatorships, but I understand that a dictatorship can be benevolent. Because of that, there is always the possibility that I can be convinced of its merits, no matter how unlikely. By the same token, I don't agree with benevolent capitalism, but I acknowledge that benevolent capitalism can exist. You, on the other hand, deny that benevolent capitalism can exist, and that all benevolence is in spite of capitalism, because you see capitalism as this overarching bogeyman that is the very antithesis of goodness rather than just being a theory on how best to produce and distribute. That's why this argument will always be entirely fruitless, you're not looking for a discussion, you're looking for prolix; you want to hammer your point home until people don't give a shit any more and stop arguing, then you can say you've won.

I would lose if people stop giving a shit. How exactly can a dictator be benevolent qua his position as dictator.

Because a dictatorship could be undertaken with the good of the community at heart, take the idea of proletariat dictatorship as an example of that. I'm not saying that would be justified, but it would qualify as a benevolent dictatorship.

I'm not asking you for an example. I'm asking why why this would be justifiable.

So you didn't read my previous posts at all, instead taking snippets and veering away from them so that you could ask a question with your own agenda for this discussion in mind? Well I'll be damned.

You really frustrate me sometimes Alan, and I'm not even arguing with you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JCC (Post 578815)

So you didn't read my previous posts at all, instead taking snippets and veering away from them so that you could ask a question with your own agenda for this discussion in mind? Well I'll be damned.

I was actually going to say the same thing.
This thread is called "what's wrong with capitalism"
I have argued about what is wrong with capitalism, and how it's not justifiable. I have repeated myself countless of times, saying how all these arguments simply defend capitalism by no virtue of capitalism itself.
I keep talking about how you people justify it, and yet you avoid that word. I tell you examples of benevolence that are still unjustifiable, such as that of a benevolent slave master, to which Desp bitched and called me a racist (but I'll be damned if I make an ad hominem).
And you sidestep the issue of benevolent people still not being an excuse to defend an unjustifiable system.

Tell me your understanding of how is it that I sidestep the question, when you blatanly even fucking lied, saying I don't believe there are benevolent people as capitalists - something that completely contradicts my fucking argument.

I think we broke Jillian.

This thread is boss.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JCC (Post 578082)

He's not a normal human being, he's an idiot.

You like the Series of Unfortunate events?

I don't read books that suck so that reference just went over my head.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JCC (Post 578927)

I don't read books that suck so that reference just went over my head.

You quoted Charles Baudelaire...

Aight so I've tried out like three or four different responses to that, all of them abusive in some kind but differing in tone, sarcastic, angry, restrainedly contemptuous, laconic. Each one I've had to delete because I'm pretty much lost for words here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JCC (Post 578933)

I googled the quote..
You were No.1 on the Google Search page.
Lol.

As now, thanks to Jillian, this thread has lost all intellectual credibility, I think we all need to take some time to appreciate the father of slavepunk Geroge Fitzhugh. This guy was awesome, check it out:

Quote:

Originally Posted by wikipedia

George Fitzhugh was born on November 4, 1806, to George Fitzhugh Sr. (a surgeon/physician) and Lucy Stuart. He was born in Prince William County, Virginia, but moved to Alexandria, Virginia, when he was six. He attended public school though his career was built on self-education. He married Mary Metcalf Brockenbrough in 1829 and moved to Port Royal, Virginia. There he began his own law business.

Fitzhugh took up residence in a "rickety old mansion" known for a vast collection of bats in its attic that he inherited through his wife's family. He was something of a recluse in this home for most of his life and rarely travelled away from it for extended periods of time, spending most of his days there engaged in unguided reading from a vast library of books and pamphlets. Of the writers in his library, Fitzhugh's beliefs were most heavily influenced by Thomas Carlyle, whom he read frequently and referenced in many of his works. Atypical for a slavery advocate, Fitzhugh also subscribed to and regularly read abolitionist pamphlets such as The Liberator. He made only one major visit to other parts of the nation in the entire antebellum period - an 1855 journey to the north where he met and argued with abolitionists Gerrit Smith and Wendell Phillips.

Something of a recluse? REALLY? I would never have thought that a crazy, self-educated old man living in a rickety, bat-infested mansion, exiting only occasionally to travel hundreds of miles to argue for universal slavery against a couple of people might be socially awkward!

I love this man:

Quote:

Originally Posted by wikipedia

Sociology for the South, or, the Failure of Free Society (1854) was George Fitzhugh's most powerful attack on the philosophical foundations of free society. In it, he took on not only Adam Smith, the foundational thinker of capitalism, but also John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and the entire liberal tradition. He argued that free labor and free markets enriched the strong while crushing the weak. What society needed, he wrote, was slavery, not just for blacks, but for whites as well. "Slavery," he wrote, "is a form, and the very best form, of socialism."