Communism. Good or bad. What do you really know about Communism?

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

That's an anecdote. The US is not particularly large investor in France, and France has all sorts of problems with manufacturing. Manufacturing has moved all around the world-- France has huge exports to China, but of the things that France is good at-- making suitcases cheaply probably isn't one of them

Bear in mind that Chinese tourists use those suitcases to pack their clothes and visit France-- tourism is one of France's biggest earners, and a low pollution highly profitable industry. Would you rather
a) make suitcases
or
b) have paying guests at your hotels and museums?

France has the better of the deal there.

To see which nations invest in France:


https://en.portal.santandertrade.com...ign-investment

Mass tourism is huge waste of energy.
An unfair behaviour in regards of the next generations.

Capitalism is a monstruosity.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

Why US pensions funds of... teachers, firemen or owning an enterprise in the same kind of business, buy actions of a French company of suitcases

OK, so we're worried about the fate of all those French suitcase workers, got it . . .

Originally Posted by xyzde69

Mass tourism is huge waste of energy.

. . . so we won't be needing those suitcases then, will we?

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

OK, so we're worried about the fate of all those French suitcase workers, got it . . .



. . . so we won't be needing those suitcases then, will we?

Exactly we don't need them as we don't need that many French, German, Japanese and American cars, etc....

You still didn't understand the dangers of consumerism created by capitalism.
A capitalist doesn't care if an 8 years old African boy dies in a mine to build his Iphone, he wants that the product extracted from the mine costs the less possible, to let him more money to spend in other useless commodities.
If it's a 7 years old African girl who can do the same job instead of the 8 years old African boy, because she costs 30 cents less money, that's better for the dividend of the Iphone shareholder.
That's the terrible truth of capitalism.

Shareholders never write laws to protect workers. NEVER. They only want more dividends. If states create laws to protect workers, shareholders are unhappy and vote Reagan and Thatcher.

Capitalism is a totalitarianism. This system collapsed in 2008 and came back thanks the help of the Democrats and Obama.
It will regulate the human life until the next crisis.
By the way I read several articles that tell that the next one could destroy American pension funds.... That could be fun. Because that's not normal that pension funds dictate the life to the young generations.

(Fun in French the word is totalitarisme, thanks to you, I learned that in English it was totalitarianism. )

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

Exactly we don't need them as we don't need that many French, German, Japanese and American cars, etc....

You still didn't understand the dangers of consumerism created by capitalism.
A capitalist doesn't care if an 8 years old African boy dies in a mine to build his Iphone,

So, the spread of markets -- which is what we're talking about, "capitalism" is a vague bogeyman, we're really just talking about people buying and selling things as they please-- is accompanied by rapidly increasing living standards for most folks, and dramatic increases in life expectancy and health.

Let's look at China. In the 30 years since the death of Mao, when China embraced markets, Chinese life expectancy has increased by a decade, and hundreds of millions have been raised out of poverty. China choosing markets over Marxism is one of the two great boons to human well being of our lifetime (the other being the "Green Revolution", the dramatic improvements in agriculture, made possible by American technology).

Somehow you fail to notice that in your fervor to put the hate on markets -- the ability to sell things and work as they please-- your beloved communists make people desperately poor, and quite often kill them by the millions, either intentionally, or simply because of their incompetence at essential functions like producing food.

The supply chain that builds the iPhone has lifted millions out poverty, only a handful working at "mines in Africa" (I'm assuming you're talking about Cobalt, of which there is a grand total of 26 cents' worth in an iPhone). And note that you ignore the impact of cell phones on communications in Africa. Years ago, I used to box up old copies of medical and scientific journals to send to places like Cuba and Zaire-- the medical schools had precisely zero access to current opinion in medicine.

Today, much of Africa has cell phone coverage-- that means that folks in remote and very poor places can get help. Africa is actually the fastest growing cell phone market in the world, and gives even very poor people access to information and services they've never had before; and yes, that was all brought to them by "the market" -- not communists. That's not some trivial consumerism-- that's the ability to read newspapers and scientific journals, to send photos of massacres . . . today, its next to impossible for a government to massacre its people without word getting out, almost always by cell phone.

For a look at the impact of cell phones on poverty in Africa, see:
"The long-run poverty and gender impacts of mobile money"
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6317/1288

[SanteeFats]

Looks like this guy had it right.

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by SanteeFats

Looks like this guy had it right.

Here in Europe, we observe that in the USA a lot of American people think that Lee fought for a good cause, that Buffalo Bill was a fair hunter, that Kennedy was a prude and lovely President, that Reagan was a socially caring President....
But... several European economists think that Reagan was the president who dramatically increased social inequalities in the USA and started to destroy your industry. Since 2008, American people pay cash his stupid vision of economy.
USA became a country of services and exported the industry to Asia.

Reagan was an bad actor and a bad President. He was... not clever at all.

I spent quite a lot of time to listen to philosophy courses these days.
According to philosophers, there are no points of Leninism in Marx's theory.

Lenin tried to politically adapt Marx's social analysis. He messed up Marx.
There was no line of Marx about making war. He didn't want to get blood on his hands.
Even Brian or deepsepia agreed to say he was a humanist.

So... because he was not very clever, for sure, Reagan (the miserable denunciator as American propaganda was used to blame about Stalinists) surely never read one line of Karl Marx.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

I spent quite a lot of time to listen to philosophy courses these days.
According to philosophers, there are no points of Leninism in Marx's theory.

Lenin tried to politically adapt Marx's social analysis. He messed up Marx.

So, do you understand that Marx never ran anything? Nothing.

He was a journalist, a very good one.

Lenin actually tried to run a country using Marx's ideas. So did Mao. So did Pol Pot. So did Stalin.

You see, actually running things is different than writing a book, or teaching a philosophy lecture.

What part of the fact that no one has been able -- despite more than a century of trying-- to translate Marx's ideas into an acceptable political system have you missed?

Because that's the record.

The Soviets had whole universities devoted to studying Marxism. They had smart people who tried for years to make things work. They even conceived the notion of a computer network tying every factory in the Soviet Union together with the planning ministries-- a really brilliant idea, almost Internet-like, in some ways.

But they could never actually make it work. That's the record.

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

So, the spread of markets -- which is what we're talking about, "capitalism" is a vague bogeyman, ....


For a look at the impact of cell phones on poverty in Africa, see:
"The long-run poverty and gender impacts of mobile money"
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6317/1288

I resume here a horrible documentary made by the state TV channel France 2 about "The secrets that you wouldn't know about our smartphones".

You can find it on youtube.

For an Iphone that costs about 900 €, the total Chinese workforce is paid… 2,38 €.
As example a Chinese worker had to verify 6000 screens per day (5 screens each 30 seconds) during 10 hours a day for … 70 cents per hour.

Chinese workers sleep at 8 together in a dormitory of 20 square meters.

Half of the workforce in Chinese enterprises that build smarphones are… children. They even work during the night and begin to work at 9 PM. They work during the night… every two monthes.

They have one free day every two weeks and two days of holiday per year. Children earn 160 € per month.

Before they were used to employ women instead of men, because it was easier to manage them.

Now women became too difficult to be managed, so it’s better to use children.
They cost less, are more disciplined, they obey better orders.

Smartphones are made by more than 300 pieces. The major parts of them are made of minerals.
During an interview of the manager of Nokia France (today a Microsoft company), he said: “We are transparent.” But when the journalists asked to the enterprise, could you provide us informations, where do you take your minerals and from which enterprises, the reply was: “It’s impossible for our company to be that transparent.”

Rubaya : Northern Kiwu. Republic Democratic of Congo.
A bag of 40 kg of coltan costs 600€ in Congo, but is sold 3500€ on international markets.
It makes 43°C in the mine, with rare oxygen.
African minors work 12 hours a day, for 5.5 € per day.
Each monthes about 50 minors get terrible traumas and a lot of them are handicapped for the rest of their life.
According to the Dr. Julio Carvisperri, he has to cure the injured minors, but he never see the dead minors. Why? Because when there is a landsline, the minors dig around the landsline. Buried minors already get their tombs.
Sometimes more than 200 minors died in the same landsline.
Families of dead minors still live in huts made of dried mud.
Yep… African foremen use smartphone, to call the team leaders to evacuate children of the mine, because it’s illegal to use under 15 years old children in the mine. But there are a lot of children.
Children are paid 0.40€ per day.
MHI is one of the Congolese enterprise that employs children minors. It collaborates for the American enterprise called AVX.
AVX sells coltan capacitor to Blackberry, Motorola or Nokia (owned by Microsoft).
According to the Dr Julio Carvisperri, Nokia or Motorola leaders never go to the African mines, because they would be considered as responsible to make children working.
According to this doctor, it’s called… slavery.

During a meeting, the journalist asked Bill Gates, what did he think about African children working in mines to build Microsoft smartphones? Bill Gates refused to comment.
“China labor watch” (a Chinese NGO) blames smartphones builders.
Samsung, Iphone, Motorola, Blackberry are considered to be among the less ethical companies in the world.
Several NGO proved that smartphones builders do not respect their ethical codes they advertise.
Smartphones builders pay holidays, travels, week-ends to computer journalists to promote their products.

China is facing huge environmental pollution because of producing… smartphones.

Why? Because they need to use magnetic material called neodyme.
In Northern Mongolia, in Baotou, there are the greatest mines of neodyme.
For 1 ton of Neodyme, 1 ton of pollution and 75’000 of liters of acid (called fluorid) are rejected in the nature.
600 000 tons of polluted material are rejected per year… only in this small area.
The zone is now… hugely radioactive.
Do you need a snapshot of the international radioactivity agency? Feel free to ask it. I’d glad to send it to you.
Mongols people and animals are suffering of radioactivity. They develop a lot of cancers.
In China, Baotou is called: The city of the cancers. 98% of the people going to the hospital, get terminal cancers.
John Higgins, the general director of Digital Europe, the enterprise that collaborates with Apple, Nokia, Blackberry and other companies, told that he had no idea about the pollution.
According to him, China and smartphone enterprises are both responsible about the environmental damages.
Smartphones enterprises finance a war in Republic Congo. This war has made between 3 to 5 millions dead people.
It’s the most lethal war since the WWII. The object, the mineral resources in RDC.

According to Martin Kobler, the chief of MONUSCO, smarphones enterprises are responsible. They are financing the war.
Smarphones enterprises collaborate with a screen company based in Hong-Kong that exploits the called : “minerals of blood”.
But the greatest company that buys the minerals of blood is called China national and they collaborate with…… APPLE.

Would you let your children or grandchildren work in this kind of conditions?

That's the today capitalism and there are hundreds of similar cases.

[SanteeFats]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

Here in Europe, we observe that in the USA a lot of American people think that Lee fought for a good cause, that Buffalo Bill was a fair hunter, that Kennedy was a prude and lovely President, that Reagan was a socially caring President....
But... several European economists think that Reagan was the president who dramatically increased social inequalities in the USA and started to destroy your industry. Since 2008, American people pay cash his stupid vision of economy.
USA became a country of services and exported the industry to Asia.

Reagan was an bad actor and a bad President. He was... not clever at all.

I spent quite a lot of time to listen to philosophy courses these days.
According to philosophers, there are no points of Leninism in Marx's theory.

Lenin tried to politically adapt Marx's social analysis. He messed up Marx.
There was no line of Marx about making war. He didn't want to get blood on his hands.
Even Brian or deepsepia agreed to say he was a humanist.

So... because he was not very clever, for sure, Reagan (the miserable denunciator as American propaganda was used to blame about Stalinists) surely never read one line of Karl Marx.

Man do you need to lighten up. Your nihilism shows in most all your posts.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

I spent quite a lot of time to listen to philosophy courses these days.
According to philosophers, there are no points of Leninism in Marx's theory.

Lenin tried to politically adapt Marx's social analysis. He messed up Marx.
There was no line of Marx about making war. He didn't want to get blood on his hands.
Even Brian or deepsepia agreed to say he was a humanist.

So... because he was not very clever, for sure, Reagan (the miserable denunciator as American propaganda was used to blame about Stalinists) surely never read one line of Karl Marx.

The problem with Marxist regimes is the lengths to which people will go in their failed endeavours; how many people had to suffer just because Lenin didn't get it right. No one has ever yet successfully created a Marxist state and every time it is tried, people die a lot. Should this not tell us that the theory might not be quite right, if it never works out when people try to follow it?

For example, I have drawn a map to Shangri-La but I myself have never been there. Every time people use my map they die of thirst in the Gobi desert. How reliable is my map?