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Vietnam war - Domino

 
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JK: One of the main problems with the communist theory was that while it described how people should get what they need, it didnt describe how to properly allocated luxury goods, which are (in terms of keeping people happy) much more important than the early communists realised.
I was looking for something else, and came across this Deng Xiaoping's speech. I'll leave it without comment, since it's good by itself, and I don't know a thing about China anyway

In my CPPCC talk on New Year's Day in 1980, I talked about four guarantees, one of which was the enterprising spirit in hard struggle and plain living. Hard struggle and plain living are our traditions. From now on we should firmly grasp education in plain living, and we should grasp it for the next sixty to seventy years. The more developed our country becomes, the more important it is to grasp the enterprising spirit in plain living. Promoting the enterprising spirit in plain living will also be helpful toward overcoming corruption.
After the founding of the People's Republic, we promoted the enterprising spirit in plain living. Later on, when life became a little better, we promoted spending more, leading to waste everywhere. This, together with lapses in theoretical work and an incomplete legal system, resulted in breaches of the law and corruption.
Deng Xiaoping. JUNE 9 SPEECH TO MARTIAL LAW UNITS
http://tsquare.tv/chronology/Deng.html

 
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Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
So are you saying that all those "rags to riches" stories are lies?


No, I just don't think they are that common either. The great theory behind capitalism is that if you work hard, life will be good. In a free market, that may well be true, but like all other perfect things, a free market does not exist. There are some people who manage, through hard work, to earn enough to have a really comfortable life, but for every one of those there will be many more people who work hard and don't get anywhere near the same reward and there are many people who do very little of use and get loads of money.
The other thing is that we are looking at capitalism from the view point of people for whom its worked. The average person in the west (particularly professionals as I imagine most people on this site are) are probably in the top 5% wealth wise of all the people in the world. Its not surprising that capitalism works for us, because we live in countries that either have a lot of resources, or a lot of historical trade links built up. Ask a person in a poorer country if capitalism works, and you'll probably get a different answer. Again, one of the great ideas behind capitalism is that a global free market will, through market forces, allow these poorer countries to improve, but again there is no such thing as a global free market.
Capitalism may be great on paper, but I'm worried that its a good tool being used in the wrong place, and that at some point in the future we may need something else. The key reason behind this is that we measure the success of our economies by how much they grow, but there is only so far that they can grow. Eventually they will reach a point where they cant grow any more, and then we'll be stuck..... I suppose that's why improving space technology is important, but that's an entirely different thread.
This leads to an interesting question - what is the aim behind an economic system? I'm not sure. I guess to make everyone's lives better, but it hard to quantify that.
 
Joe King
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Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:

I was looking for something else, and came across this Deng Xiaoping's speech. I'll leave it without comment, since it's good by itself, and I don't know a thing about China anyway


Its quite interesting. I suppose that at the time in which communism came in (particularly in Russia and China) it was a time in which most people in the country where in a desperate state, and a new idea that will ensure that everyone will have a shelter, clothing and food was amazing, and certainly better than what they had. Trouble is that one of the basic economic theories is that people's want's are infinite - as soon as they had the food, shelter etc they said "what next?", but by that point the economic system could not (or would not, because of the desires of the leaders,) be changed. Maybe their way forwards could have been to begin a slow change over to a compromise between communism and capitalism - state control of resources for the purposes of vital stuff (such as housing, food, education, health etc) and market control for the purposes of luxuries.
 
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Originally posted by Joe King:
Ask a person in a poorer country if capitalism works, and you'll probably get a different answer.

Name a poor country that actually practices capitalism.
 
Thomas Paul
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What do you think he meant by, "enterprising spirit in plain living"?
 
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Originally posted by Joe King:

No, I just don't think they are that common either. [referring to rags to riches stories]


Its true that it is not the norm for everyone to be to be rich in capitalistic societies. In one sense that's simply because we are measuring the "richness" relative to others in capitalistic societies. On average, it is very common, expected, and normal for the average citizen of a captalisitic country to have a much higher standard of living than those living in communist societies such as Cuba or North Korea, or even societies that are no longer communistic but still trying to recover from the effects of communsim, such as many of the former Eastern Eurpoean countries. Simply put, the essential and important bottom line is that people's standard of living is higher in capitalistic countries compared to communist or even formerly communist countries.


The great theory behind capitalism is that if you work hard, life will be good. In a free market, that may well be true, but like all other perfect things, a free market does not exist. There are some people who manage, through hard work, to earn enough to have a really comfortable life, but for every one of those there will be many more people who work hard and don't get anywhere near the same reward and there are many people who do very little of use and get loads of money.


You completely misunderstand what a market based economy is all about. Its not about being rewarded for working hard; its about being rewarded for providing goods and services that people want. In a sense, every capitalist truly becomes a provider to the common good or at least to what society wants. Compare that with a spoils system whereby parasites clamor for their unearned "fair share" of the wealth they did not create and that was confiscated from its owners. Hard work should never entitle anyone to anything : For example breaking big rocks into little rocks with a sledge hammer is extremley hard work, yet why should that entitle anyone to wealth when little of value is produced? Value is the criteria, and free people acting through free markets determine value.



The other thing is that we are looking at capitalism from the view point of people for whom its worked. The average person in the west (particularly professionals as I imagine most people on this site are) are probably in the top 5% wealth wise of all the people in the world. Its not surprising that capitalism works for us, because we live in countries that either have a lot of resources, or a lot of historical trade links built up.


The essential point you are not stating is why the West is rich to begin with. Even Marx has conceded that it was due to capitalism. The take home point is capitalism works, builds wealth, and raises the standard of living for everyone. And not just in the West. And not just in countries with lots of resouces. Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan are not blessed with natural resources, yet they are relativel rich countries compared to their neighbors who have not embraced capitalism as much.
Capitalism does require certain ethics,social virtues, and social capital amongst its participants however for it to work. For example , there must be some degree of trust amongst the participants in a merket economy. If there is some degree of trust, then everything else can be worked out and there is strong motive to make the whole thing work. However, where the government has too much control of the market, corruption is an ever present danger and this also has prevented capitalism from taking off in some countries.


Ask a person in a poorer country if capitalism works, and you'll probably get a different answer.


Herb : Does capitalism work ?
Foreign Poor Person : Can you get me a via to USA?
There was some anecdotes about the first thing some Iraqis where asking the US soldiers concerned whether they could help them emigrate to USA. Also, there seems to be large number of legal and illegal immigrants looking to come to predominately capitlistic USA. The point is that the poor are speaking and voting with their feet (by immigration).


Again, one of the great ideas behind capitalism is that a global free market will, through market forces, allow these poorer countries to improve, but again there is no such thing as a global free market.


Tell that to the thousands of unemployed programmers in the US. By the way, India seems to be picking up a bit of the capitalistic habit and doing better because of it.


Capitalism may be great on paper, but I'm worried that its a good tool being used in the wrong place, and that at some point in the future we may need something else. The key reason behind this is that we measure the success of our economies by how much they grow, but there is only so far that they can grow. Eventually they will reach a point where they cant grow any more, and then we'll be stuck..... I suppose that's why improving space technology is important, but that's an entirely different thread.


I don't understand the limits on growth or why standards of living cannot keep increasing if technology is allowed to progress (which it does quite welll under capitalism) and the population size does not become excessive (population growth slows as income increases and is not much of an issue in prosperous countries)


This leads to an interesting question - what is the aim behind an economic system? I'm not sure. I guess to make everyone's lives better, but it hard to quantify that.


Do you understand the concept of liberty? Capitalism is simply an extension of liberty into the economic realm.
 
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Nice Herb.
 
Thomas Paul
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Originally posted by herb slocomb:
In a sense, every capitalist truly becomes a provider to the common good or at least to what society wants.


I am reminded of the story of the Soviet nail factory (perhaps apocraphyl).
When the central planners decided to set the factory's quota based on the number of nails to make, they made a lot of very tiny completely useless nails. When they set the quota based on how much raw material they converted into nails, they made huge railroad spikes. In neither case did they make what was actually needed. Without a market to tell them what kind of nails were needed they created them based on the easiest reward.
 
Mapraputa Is
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JK: Its quite interesting. I suppose that at the time in which communism came in (particularly in Russia and China) it was a time in which most people in the country where in a desperate state,
That's what I was thinking! But you didn't read my last posts.
Tom: What do you think he meant by "enterprising spirit in plain living"?
If I understand anything about communism, it means a permit to act like a damn capitalist: "enterprising spirit", but your soul should be preserved as communistic: "plain living". In fact, I was recently thinking about the same: how many things do we *really* need? A change of clothes, a spoon, a cup, a couple of favorite books and that's all
[ March 07, 2004: Message edited by: Mapraputa Is ]
 
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how many things do we *really* need? A change of clothes, a spoon, a cup, a couple of favorite books and that's all
And in this Nirvana of yours, you left out:
State supplied food for your cup.
State supplied water to drink.
State supplied housing to read in.
State supplied electricity to read by.
State supplied heat for the winter.
State supplied health care when the heat doesn't work.
State supplied infrastructure to get all of this to you.
No, even a modern woman like yourself needs a LITTLE more than a spoon and a cup .
Joe
 
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Tom: I am reminded of the story of the Soviet nail factory (perhaps apocraphyl).
This is most likely apocryphal. I suppose nails were standardized and every factory got an exact order of what and how many to produce.
Here is another similar story: in a glove factory, a shop of right-hand gloves challenged a shop of left-hand gloves to socialist competition and won with 220,000 gloves.
Another idea. It was voiced by a former Soviet economist (I forgot his name) on the "Voice of America" and I still have no idea if it's real or it's just an anecdote. He said that even civil factories in the USSR were planned so that they could be easily turned into military if there was a need. Examples: diameter of Russian cigarettes was the same as bullets, so that cigarette machines could be quickly turned to produce bullets. Russian tractors' track and Russian tanks' track had the same width for the same reason.
[ March 07, 2004: Message edited by: Mapraputa Is ]
 
Mapraputa Is
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Joe: And in this Nirvana of yours, you left out
Well, Joe, of course I left out a lot. It's just moving from one country to another and then back, you have no choice but to leave your junk somewhere.
So the day come and you ask yourself: what is this that you *really* need?
And the answer is "so little".
 
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A bit off the topic:
It's really difficult for a non-Chinese to totally understand how the Chinese society is really running. Well I don't think my country is really ruled by communism/socialism. Since 1949 it was actually not. Since 1978 it has been actually not, either. Although the communism/socialism has really brought quite a little setback and scars to my country. But it's our old, complicated/simple bureaucracy culture that had been built during the last 5000 years lost its way in front of a modern world. Now there are a huge amount of native capitalists. At the first look, places like Shanghai, Shenzheng ... are incredibly snazzy, they are so seemingly fabulous that my European classmates who had been to China asked me why I came to the European countryside to study. No I never feel really comfortable to say that my country is already being saved by capitalism now. I hope capitalism really is able to though. It's a modern world but our administrative structure and bureaucracy system is still old. Communism is way too modern to name it. Constitution and laws don't have the respect which they should have. Here are two books which are showing understanding of China in depth:
1. 1587: A Year of No Significance by Ray Huang. This book changed the way of my thinking. And, the underlying logic of my 20 years' experiences in China can be well mapped in this book. It's a true enlightment. And a pleasure to read. It's not dry or boring.
2. The United States and China by John King Fairbank. It's not a light reading. But this book is reliable.
I know very little about Vietnam. But I guess the bureaucray system of Vietnam was somewhat influenced by Chinese.
My boyfriend is currently working in Vietnam. It's always great enjoyment to read his emails describing the beautiful rivers and farms, old cities and friendly people in Vietnam. And yeah, sweet fruits.

God bless Vietnam. God bless China.

Regards,
Ellen
 
Joe Pluta
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So the day come and you ask yourself: what is this that you *really* need? And the answer is "so little".
I guess that's depends on what you mean by "need". I guess it's different when you're responsible for someone other than yourself. There were times in my life when I lived on little more than a cup and a spoon. But now I am responsible for my family, and I need a lot more than that, because I want them to have more than a cup and a spoon. If you think it's sufficient to raise your children to have nothing but a cup and a spoon, that's your choice, but in this country that gets you a visit from DCFS.
Joe
 
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JP: If you think it's sufficient to raise your children to have nothing but a cup and a spoon, that's your choice, but in this country that gets you a visit from DCFS.
Can DCFS revoke my parental rights and take custody of my children if I give them a copy of "Da Vinci Code" instead of a $200 toy for Christmass?
 
Mapraputa Is
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Ellen! Thank you for visiting this thread and for book recommendation. If you said they are good, they must be good.
 
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Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
So the day come and you ask yourself: what is this that you *really* need?
Apparently Lionel Richie's wife needs $300,000 a month: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=498379

 
Joe Pluta
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Can DCFS revoke my parental rights and take custody of my children if I give them a copy of "Da Vinci Code" instead of a $200 toy for Christmass?
No. What does this question mean?
If it was in response to the phrase you quoted, then you missed my point completely. Of course you did it as usual by introducing your own references, such as a $200 toy (where did that come from?).
My point was not that a surfeit of expensive material goods defines a good life, but on the other hand to give your child only a cup and a spoon is not proper parental care. There's nothing noble about a life that includes only a cup and a spoon, and nobody who has lived it would want that for their children.
I just get tired of the hyperbole occasionally. Really. A cup and a spoon. I don't think there's a person on this list who could survive a week with just a cup and a spoon.
Joe
 
John Smith
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No. What does this question mean?
I was just making a book recommendation, nothing else.
 
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Originally posted by Richard Hawkes:

Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
[qb]So the day come and you ask yourself: what is this that you *really* need?
Apparently Lionel Richie's wife needs $300,000 a month: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=498379[/QB]


Damn, ho!! that's a lot of money. Richies net worth is probably only arround 80mil (this is very generous, IMHO). Don't see how he could be worth more -- he's just a singer.
-Eleison

 
Ellen Zhao
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A bit off the topic again.
Some spoons of food, and such alike are just small matters. Currently the China society needs honesty and the courage to be honest. People don't trust the government and the government doesn't trust people. But both sides keep lieing or keep silent. Sad.

Regards,
Ellen
 
Richard Hawkes
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Originally posted by Joe Pluta:
I just get tired of the hyperbole occasionally. Really. A cup and a spoon. I don't think there's a person on this list who could survive a week with just a cup and a spoon.
Maybe not on this board. Jesus probably owned about that though, plus clothes and some sandals. However, He was crucified in His 30s, so methinks He would have been wise to invest in some steel capped boots and a pair of guantlets.
 
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However, He was crucified in His 30s, so methinks He would have been wise to invest in some steel capped boots and a pair of guantlets.
Yeah, but then he would not be able to walk over the water. The only benefit that we would get out of this would be an earlier invention of a drill by the Romans.
 
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Originally posted by Eugene Kononov:
However, He was crucified in His 30s, so methinks He would have been wise to invest in some steel capped boots and a pair of guantlets.
Yeah, but then he would not be able to walk over the water. The only benefit that we would get out of this would be an earlier invention of a drill by the Romans.


More likely an earlier invention of the armour piercing crossbow bolt and the firing squad
Romans had drills already, but they weren't much good at piercing steel
 
Jeroen Wenting
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Originally posted by Ellen Zhao:
Some spoons of food, and such alike are just small matters. Currently the China society needs honesty and the courage to be honest. People don't trust the government and the government doesn't trust people. But both sides keep lieing or keep silent. Sad.


If it's keep silent or get tortured to death, most people will choose silence I think.
 
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Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
Name a poor country that actually practices capitalism.


* Albania
* Armenia
* Benin
* Botswana
* Burkina Faso
* Cameroon
* Cape Verde
* Republic of the Congo
* C�te d'Ivoire
* Dominica
* Dominican Republic
* El Salvador
* Ethiopia
* Fiji
* The Gambia
* Ghana
* Guatemala
* Guyana
* Honduras
* Kenya
* Kiribati
* Kyrgyzstan
* Lebanon
* Madagascar
* Malawi
* Mali
* Mauritius
* Moldova
* Mongolia
* Mozambique
* Namibia
* Nauru
* Nicaragua
* Niger
* Nigeria
* Palau
* S�o Tom� and Pr�ncipe
* Senegal
* Sierra Leone
* Suriname
* Tanzania
* Trinidad and Tobago
* Venezuela
* Zambia

Obviously being pedantic there is no such thing as a truely capitalist state at the moment, but the countries above (IIRC) have economies largely controlled by market forces, which seems to be the common definition of capitalist.
[ March 09, 2004: Message edited by: Joe King ]
 
Thomas Paul
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Very humorous list. Most of those countries have had political instability and have not been practicing any form of capitalism for more than 10 years. But just to pick one at random, Burkina Faso has actually seen a vast improvement in their economy since they became a republic. Unfortunately the civil war in another one of the countries on your list (I can't believe that you included it), C�te d'Ivoire, has hurt their trade and commerce. Mongolia is another interesting choice. it is being run by the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (basically the same communists who ran the country into the ground) but they have permitted some capitalism in the country. And they have seen 5% GDP growth!
But that is fairly typcial of the list. Most of the countries are politically unstable, have suffered from civil wars, or aren't really capitalists. Why not pick a single country that you think demonstrates a true capitalist country with a stable government that shows that capitalism doesn't work there.
 
Joe King
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Originally posted by herb slocomb:

Simply put, the essential and important bottom line is that people's standard of living is higher in capitalistic countries compared to communist or even formerly communist countries


Agreed. I think that capitalism is the best system we have at the moment, but its not perfect. I'm just trying to point out some of its flaws - its only by questioning it that we can improve it. There seems to be a (predominantly American?) view that capitalism is perfect and not to be questioned. Maybe this is because of the need, during the Cold War, to emphasise capitalism as being good and communism as evil.


In a sense, every capitalist truly becomes a provider to the common good or at least to what society wants.


I agree they provide what society wants, but not necessarily what it needs. Market forces are great at determining an efficient way of turning resources into good and services in *most* areas of what is needed in society, but in other areas it is deeply flawed. Areas like education, health care, maintenance of public buildings, running museums, funding government etc must be organised by the state - we cannot risk market forces deciding that they are not needed. In a totally capitalist state there would be no army unless people paid for it directly, so some would pay, some would not - this would be a crazy situation. What I mean is that although capitalism is great for many areas, it is not the solution to all of our needs.


Hard work should never entitle anyone to anything : For example breaking big rocks into little rocks with a sledge hammer is extremley hard work, yet why should that entitle anyone to wealth when little of value is produced?


Obviously this person should not be rewarded much (unless lots of small rocks are needed by society ). By working hard I didn't mean in terms of calories expended, I meant in terms of effort made to provide a good or service required by society. A teacher or a nurse would provide extremely important services by working hard, but not be rewarded as much as a person doing less work in a less important role. Again, the point is that although capitalism is good for many things, there are certain areas where is doesn't work.


Capitalism does require certain ethics, social virtues, and social capital amongst its participants however for it to work. For example , there must be some degree of trust amongst the participants in a merket economy. If there is some degree of trust, then everything else can be worked out and there is strong motive to make the whole thing work.


I totally agree with this, although I'd add that for capitalism to work properly it needs a free market - no barriers of entry, no monopolies, lots of information etc. Trouble is that this is hard to achieve.


However, where the government has too much control of the market, corruption is an ever present danger and this also has prevented capitalism from taking off in some countries.


Don't totally agree with this though. Although I agree that corruption is halting economic growth in many countries, I think that corruption is probably more due to the lacking of a properly democratic system in these countries rather than too much government control of the market.


Also, there seems to be large number of legal and illegal immigrants looking to come to predominately capitlistic USA


Yes, but many will have come from predominately capitalist country X. Its just that they are moving from a poorer capitalist country to a richer capitalist one. Its not "voting for capitalism", its "voting for a better capitalism".


Tell that to the thousands of unemployed programmers in the US. By the way, India seems to be picking up a bit of the capitalistic habit and doing better because of it


This demonstrates my point - given a free market a poorer country can improve. The fairly free IT market has allowed India to improve in this area. The trouble is that there isn't a free market for many areas of international trade i.e. agriculture. I'm not saying that capitalism is bad, I'm saying that it needs a free market to be good.
As for programmers complaining about loosing jobs to India - I don't particularly like it (being a programmer myself), but we cant really complain. We've lived quite comfortably for years because of capitalism, so when it comes back to bite us we can't really moan about the system.....


I don't understand the limits on growth or why standards of living cannot keep increasing if technology is allowed to progress (which it does quite well under capitalism) and the population size does not become excessive (population growth slows as income increases and is not much of an issue in prosperous countries)


I don't think we'll reach a significant growth barrier for a long time (several generations), but it could happen. Although technology is helping us to be more efficient, there's only so far we stretch limited resources without seriously lowering our standards of living. It may be a bit sci-fi-ish, but maybe looking for extra terrestrial resources would be a good thing to do soon (I'm sure that market forces will encourage this eventually). As for population growth, I think you're right in that making people richer will lower the growth rate, but I'm not sure that this will be done before there is a significant increase in the population of the world. Hopefully this increase will not to badly destabilise the world economy, but it will have a negative effect.


Do you understand the concept of liberty?


Yes. Who doesn't?


Capitalism is simply an extension of liberty into the economic realm.


It would be in a free market, but that simply doesn't exist in many areas.
I agree that capitalism is mostly good. There's not much out there at the moment, but this doesn't mean that it's perfect, and it doesn't mean that it can't be improved. As a socialist I strongly believe that a free market should play a role in deciding the allocation of resources (just as strongly as I believe that communism is flawed), but I don't think that its good for deciding the allocation of all resources - a balance is needed. Luckily this is what most countries are trying to do.
 
Joe King
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Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
Very humorous list. Most of those countries have had political instability and have not been practicing any form of capitalism for more than 10 years. But just to pick one at random, Burkina Faso has actually seen a vast improvement in their economy since they became a republic. Unfortunately the civil war in another one of the countries on your list (I can't believe that you included it), C�te d'Ivoire, has hurt their trade and commerce. Mongolia is another interesting choice. it is being run by the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (basically the same communists who ran the country into the ground) but they have permitted some capitalism in the country. And they have seen 5% GDP growth!
But that is fairly typcial of the list. Most of the countries are politically unstable, have suffered from civil wars, or aren't really capitalists. Why not pick a single country that you think demonstrates a true capitalist country with a stable government that shows that capitalism doesn't work there.


OK, so my list isn't 100% perfect
What is your definition of a true capitalist country? America? Not really - things like state education, state run army etc are not capitalist, but socialist. By these (pedantic) terms, there are no true capitalist countries.
What I was trying to do was counter the idea that capitalism automatically means that a country does well. It was hinted above that there are no capitalist poor countres - this is not true.
 
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Originally posted by Joe King:
things like state education, state run army etc are not capitalist, but socialist.


You keep saying this but this is not true. Every government has the responsibility to provide certain basic services for its citizens. Just because a government, any form of government, provides some form of service does not make that service socialistic. The chief among those being protection, such as the Army. Socialism is defined in Marxist-Leninist theory as the intermediate stage between capitalism and communism. In other words, all these forms of government will share some simularities. We've already agreed that there is no pure capitalism and there is no pure communism, so labeling every government service in a capitalist society as proof of the benefits of socialism is a bit off kilter. There is quite a long way to go from saying that if a government providing a few essential services to its citizens is a good thing, then a government providing near everything for its citizens must be a better thing.
 
Thomas Paul
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Originally posted by Joe King:
What I was trying to do was counter the idea that capitalism automatically means that a country does well. It was hinted above that there are no capitalist poor countres - this is not true.



Ok, so name one that is a cpaitalist a country and is not doing well. Just pick one, explain why you think they are capitalist, and why you think they remain poor in spite of capitalism.
 
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Originally posted by Joe Pluta:
I don't think there's a person on this list who could survive a week with just a cup and a spoon.
Joe


A cup, a spoon & a dash of Java. Hmm. Sounds like utopia
 
Mapraputa Is
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Tom: Ok, so name one that is a cpaitalist a country and is not doing well. Just pick one, explain why you think they are capitalist, and why you think they remain poor in spite of capitalism.
My nomination is Mexico. Now need to do more research on why I think they are capitalist and why they remain poor in spite of capitalism. I suspect to get a tautology at the end, but maybe not, there is always hope.
 
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Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
Tom: Ok, so name one that is a cpaitalist a country and is not doing well. Just pick one, explain why you think they are capitalist, and why you think they remain poor in spite of capitalism.
My nomination is Mexico. Now need to do more research on why I think they are capitalist and why they remain poor in spite of capitalism. I suspect to get a tautology at the end, but maybe not, there is always hope.


Mexico wasn't very capitalistic until recently. After Mexican Revolution 1904-30 (or so) they were governed until 2000 (or so) by a party called Partido Revolucionario Institucional.
Like in lots of developing countries in 50/60/70/80ties they followed politics of heavy statal control in mexican economy.
Though one could argue that neoliberal reform agenda in latin america of 90ties did not fullfill the expectations, Chile for example had quite a positive performance. Chile is country were reforms were put into practise in most sustainable manner.

Another point is that reasonable "socialist" government like that in Chile or Brasil are clearly supporting free market principles this days. Chavez from Venezuela not, but I fear that one can't take this guy for serious.
[ March 10, 2004: Message edited by: Axel Janssen ]
 
frank davis
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Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
Tom: Ok, so name one that is a cpaitalist a country and is not doing well. Just pick one, explain why you think they are capitalist, and why you think they remain poor in spite of capitalism.
My nomination is Mexico. Now need to do more research on why I think they are capitalist and why they remain poor in spite of capitalism. I suspect to get a tautology at the end, but maybe not, there is always hope.


Besides the traditional heavy government control of major industries as mentioned by Axel, Mexico continues to have a huge problem with corruption which seems to be the result of police, armed forces and some civil authorities being involved with the highly lucrative drug trade with their neighbor to the North. Severe overpopulation seems to be a problem in Mexico city and in general birth control is less used for religious religions (majority are Catholic) so the usual trend of family size decreasing as income increases may be less pronounced than in other societies. If population growth doesn't decrease, the per capita income rates will not increase as fast as they could otherwise, even with capitalism.
[ March 10, 2004: Message edited by: herb slocomb ]
 
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