[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

I do not totally agree with you.
Marx explained, demonstrated and quoted other economists, that the prices given by the market are arbitrary and absolutely do not reflect the reality.

Market prices in their purest form are determined by supply and demand, provided there is a willing buyer and a willing seller. Where arbitariness enters the equation is in deciding what the buyer is willing to pay, which is a key reason why speculative bubbles arise. But Communist countries will experience market distortions from shortage of supply. What often happens is that the price is kept artificially low and the suppliers will refuse to supply if they cannot break even on the official price. Then the black market comes into play.

Originally Posted by xyzde69

Today you can tell me what you want, but that's not normal that a liter of gasoline is cheaper than a liter of red wine. It's not normal to see the price of the gasoline that cheap. We burn important gasoline... to have fun.

At £1.20 or €1,40 a litre, petrol is not cheap and we are not being encouraged to squander it thoughtlessly.

Originally Posted by xyzde69

Value of gold or silver are cultural, but not real.
When the conquistadors arrived in South America, Azteks and Mayas were surprised about the gold addiction of European invaders.
South American cultures were well developped without thinking that gold was a financial reference.

One has to remember that the Aztecs would sacrifice you to Quetzalcoatl at the drop of a hat. I feel reserved about the superiority of their culture.

Originally Posted by xyzde69

Why do we destroy environment for diamonds, or in stocking gold or silver, when we could perfectly live without them?
We destroy areas in extracting gold that we burry again in strong safes.
That's pure absurdities.

This is not a specifically capitalist issue. If Marxism were a safeguard of good environmental practise, then where has the Aral Sea gone?

Originally Posted by xyzde69

That's all these kind of absurdities that were revealed by Marx and today environmentalists.

See above.

Originally Posted by xyzde69

I've to thank Brecht, deepsepia and a friend of mine thanks to debate, in pushing me to read Marx and anarchists after all these years, because 150 years ago Marx put on paper an analysis of our today problems far before that he had faced.
He faced social problems that we clearly see coming back but didn't face the environmental problems that are caused by the operation of Capitalism that push enterprises to make always more money to.... survive. But he was aware about environmental problems.

Karl Marx did not foresee Chernobyl of course. But he might have foreseen how a centrally planned economy would lack environmental protection or law enforcement, might not be economically stable and worst of all, would be above being held accountable.

Originally Posted by xyzde69

That's all the problem. Capitalism doesn't know how to create a virtuous circulation of money. Capitalism need to destroy the environment to survive. It's a real dramatic system in front of which people daily are confronted and stay paralized because they learned it was the only solution.

The record of state communism is very much worse than the record of free market capitalism. But what makes both systems fail is how averse they are to effective government regulation of environmental and safety standards.

I have always argued for a mixed economy in which both the state and the free market have key roles.