20 Years After The Fall Of The Berlin Wall And I Think We're Finally Ready To Cast Off Capitalism.

lol you referring to people as sheep, I think youre forgetting that we, along with all the other animals in the animal kingdom, are animals

and animals do whats best for themselves to breed, if thats getting more money, thats what happens

your posts are always 100% trolling, *** off please

I pulled this off an Email sent to me today. Made me think of this thread.:


The Ant and the Grasshopper

The Original
The ant busts his *** in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY:Be responsible for yourself.

The New Version(2009)

It starts out the same but when winter comes the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving. CBS, NBC, and ABC show up and show pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to film of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can it be, in a country of such wealth that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Then a representative of the NAAGB (The National Association of Green Bugs) shows up on Night Line and charges the ant with "Green Bias" and makes the case that the grasshopper is the victim of 30 million years of greenism. Kermit the frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when he sings "It's Not Easy Being Green."

President Obama make a special guest appearance on the CBS evening news and tells a concerned nation that they will do everything they can for the grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he deserves by those who benefited unfairly during the summer.

Acorn stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing,"We shall overcome." Rev. Jeremiah Wright then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

Nancey Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Greenism Act" RECTRO-ACTIVE to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and having nothing left to pay his Retro-Active taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he's in....which just happens to be the ant's old house.... crumbles around him since he doesn't know how to maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. And on the TV; which the grasshopper bought by selling most of the ant's food, President Obama is standing before a wildly applauding group of Democrats announcing that a new era of "Fairness" has dawned in America.

Ludoggy did this a while back on the first political thread here.

ya I just got that email about 15 mins ago. Figured I'd post it.

It's such a great story though.

What the hell is this crap? If you can't post a normal reply without an abnormally, incoherent analogy why do you even try? -_-

Please stop.

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Capitalism is actually destroying our planet. The continuous growth, greed and gluttony will lead to the depletion of natural resources on Earth far sooner than it need be, I believe. Fierce capitalism, I mean. I don't want to give the impression that I'm some marxistic communist.

1) how am i german? (if you say "flag" i say "trolled")
2) cold war ended? look at the situation today, USA attenpting to build rocket defence systen im poland to defend europe from Iran... USA vetoing almost every Russian UN resolution and vice versa. ended my mithra furry bottom

Wait...so only Capitalists enjoy warm homes, clean water and a nice car?
You are telling me that the communists in china and such arent trying to own cars and suck up natural resources too?

So, growth is now a bad thing?

In case you haven't figured it out yet, Captialism has lead to the establishment of EPA, which governs our usage of natural resources.

Capitalism isn't about leaving everything into the hands of a few (like you lead us to believe) but in the hands of many. If you don't like how a corporation is running, then don't buy their product. They will find out (by customer, a key word for Capitalism, by customer survey) why people are not buying their product, change their ways, advertise it, and people will buy their products again.

Its in the best interest for corporations to perserve the environment anyway. Its only because of a very select few who desides that it is in their best interest to not perserve the environment, and its that who the media glorifies (for revenue purposes, another capitalistic idea). You only hear about the bad, you have to look for the good. Like in every ideological society.

Edit: Deleted last statement because it was way too agressive.

The idea that capitalism is bad because people think a group steals resources from another group.
The idea is based on the thought that there is X amount of stuff. However for development you need a concentration of resources and wealth. From this accumulation you get much more than from even distribution. Capitalism brought us where we are today in the 21st century. Communism (even distribution of goods) never worked: USSR, NKorea, Kuba, China (capitalist trend now)

I don't agree. Capitalism inevitably results in unequal wealth distribution. Your example of a customer not buying the product doesn't matter. Since he can go to a hundrerd, a thousand different places for his product. You think of this as a good thing, I think of this and see the negative sides.

I want to say, once again, that I don't want to restrain capitalism completely. I just want it monitored, controlled. In every system there is a rich and poor balance.

And capitalism being a system that offers opportunity for someone to improve their economic situation? I believe those days are pretty much over. If you don't have the money to make the money, you can't get anything going.

Employees are considered so expandable these days. There is very little chance that hard work and clean living will enable a person to rise to a higher economic level these days.

The USA is not a capitalist society, and hasn't been for a long time. The government manages too much. You think that capitalism separates the rich from the poor when in fact it makes the poor, richer. The standard of living for even the poorest people is better than it was 50 years ago let alone 100,150,200 etc.

The government SHOULD be protecting people from big monopolies which it doesn't do it actually creates them. If the government forces everyone to get health insurance, who do you think will benefit most? It will be the insurance companies, and once everyone is forced to get an insurance policy those policy prices will be to climb because you don't have a choice to cancel.

In summary its not capitalism that creates these super wealthy CEO's its the government in their back pockets that allows them to buy up all their competitors and corner the market.

So you think everything being monopolized by the government would be better?
Maybe if you want everyone to be driving the same lame GM car, eat the same lame chicken noodle soup and watch government run news on equal sized t.v.s

I think capitalism in moderation is ok, but I think every nation should moderate the basics. Inequality in the kind of car we drive and inequality in education or health care is something worlds apart.

Unequal wealth distribution? You want it so you don't have to do anything and get the same rewards as somebody who busted their *** doing their job? And you find that fair?

I mean, sure, its "fair" for the lazy person, but can you honestly say that its "fair" for the hard working person?

Take this for example: You and your coworker both do the same job equally. You are both as efficent as the next person. You both find out that (situation A) you make more money than him (or) (situation B) you make less money than him.

Situation A: You will think you are worth it, and become less productive (studies shown this) and your coworker finds this unfair and works less to "even" the pay out.

Situation B: Roles are reversed. You work less because you find that equal pay for equal work, and you work to a degree that you find you are being paid for, while your coworker thinks he deserves it and works less on the mentality that his contribution far exceeds you.

Either situation, both of you will work less because you have something to compare with, although to make up the slack, somebody outside of this group of 2 has to take over. Which leads to less production (overall lession is to not discuss pay with each other, but you find that this example works for this situation).

Think I'm bullshitting you? Talk to Robert L Mathis and John H. Jackson, they wrote my textbook about Human Resources. You would find a lot of information about Capitalism by reading.

There are many economists, businessmen, and academics who basically all agree that Capitalism is the best option we have now. But don't take my word for it, go read Journal of Business and see for yourself.

What inequality in education? Everyone has to pass the same national test to graduate. How is that unequal?

Inequality in health care? Buy insurance. Can't afford it? Stop buying beer on the weekends (or cut back on it) and buy simple insurance. Insurance is CHEAP. You just don't think it is because people are telling you it isn't, but you haven't LOOKED, have you?

I love how you think that every nation should moderate the basics of capitalism, tell that to Nigeria.

And what national test is that, Korpg?

And you're 100% right, insurance can be cheap, but you get what you pay for, and you probably don't want it.

Damn it, I need to proofread my ***.

I was thinking of the TAAS test (way back when Texas still did that) but thats a State issued test. Either way, I'm sure (don't quote me on this) that every state has its own state test that every student needs to pass to graduate.

Now I think its the TASK test or whatever they call it now.

Either way, national tests = SAT/ACT anyway. My bad.

Btw, if the government would have done nothing with the recent crisis the economy would have been hit much, much harder.

When ***goes wrong people blame the government for not "saving" them and when things go butter and cream people whine about the government having too much influence.

Hypocrites.

Welcome to politics 101.

Thats why I don't complain about the government's influence....much.

Or I try to limit it.

And I do believe that if the government did nothing, we wouldn't be having this crisis in the first place (see Reagan/Clinton administrations and what policies were passed to encourage homebuyers and what policies were passed to deter banks and their ability to deny people loans based on bad credit). Government action caused this current crisis. But thats a whole new can of worms, you don't want to open it. Trust me, you really don't want to open this can of worms.

back to topic . and helixx was close with the "fall of the wall "

it all began with incomplete brodecast from the west german channel ARD
with information from "the spokesperson for the politburo" press conference. they said "This ninth of November is a historic day.East Germany has announced that, starting immediately, its borders are open to everyone."

After hearing the broadcast east gemans began gathering at the wall, demanding that border guards immediately open its gates .The surprised and overwhelmed guards made many hectic telephone calls to their superiors, but it became clear that there was no one among the East German authorities who would dare to take personal responsibility for issuing orders to use lethal force, so there was no way for the vastly outnumbered soldiers to hold back the huge crowd of East German citizens. In face of the growing crowd, the guards finally yielded, opening the checkpoints and allowing people through with little or no identity checking. Ecstatic East Berliners were soon greeted by West Berliners on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. November 9 is thus considered the date the Wall fell.

--- Off topic ----
In the days and weeks that followed, people came to the wall with sledgehammers to chip off souvenirs, demolishing lengthy parts of it in the process


greetings from east germany !
nowadays sometimes it still seems that the wall is still there . speaking of the wages between east and west germany for the same work ...

I can't find an exact number, but there are states that don't require students to pass a test to graduate. Many high schools sign their kids up for the ACT or SAT, but those are college preparatory exams, and not quite suited for that purpose.

I think it would be a great idea to nationally mandate a test to pass high school, in fact it would be great if there were national tests required to pass every grade, because the sad fact is that our education system does contain inequalities, a prime example of this is the fact that 47% of Detroit's adults are functionally illiterate. Given minimum drop out ages, it's clear to see that in at least that district, our education system is dropping the ball.

China's economic system has actually become very capitalist. Since 1978 China has worked very hard at changing much of it's domestic economic policy.

Source: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/issues8/index.htm



The effect this has had on China is amazing. For comparison some of America's most explosive economic growth, during and after WWII, reached GNP average rates of ~5.2% a year, with a peak in 1941 of ~19.9%.



It's very interesting seeing the effect China's reforms have had on it's economy. It is pretty clear that capitalism can do amazing things for a country's wealth.

That being said I think there comes a time when the system becomes stagnant, and you need a breath of fresh air. America is no longer the producer it once was. After WWII all our competitors were rebuilding factories; we had a major head start. Now China is putting it's massive work force into action, while we are outsourcing ours. I find a lot of truth in the words of Henry Ford, for he is the one that said: “There is one rule for industrialists and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible”. After all, if we don't pay workers well, who will buy the goods.

"It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages."

Korpg, we don't have to have another discussion on health care here do we? I love how you defame those that can't afford health insurance. Nice way to show how unbiased your stance is.