What is Socialism?
- Thread starter Musburger1
- Start date
BevoJoe
10,000+ Posts
What is Socialism?
Call or make an appointment to go visit with Dr. Harry Cleaver, Jr. Economics Professor Emeritus BRB 1.116, C3100, Austin, Texas 78712, 512-471-3211 He can answer your questions since he teaches a class covering that and other economic theories and topics in the graduate program.
Call or make an appointment to go visit with Dr. Harry Cleaver, Jr. Economics Professor Emeritus BRB 1.116, C3100, Austin, Texas 78712, 512-471-3211 He can answer your questions since he teaches a class covering that and other economic theories and topics in the graduate program.
I35
5,000+ Posts
It would be interesting to hear from Dr Cleaver. But why do I feel like him being a college professor that he’d be a pro-socialist. I’d like to think not, but with 90 to 95% of the college professors preaching to our kids from a leftist bias view makes me wonder.
Joe Fan
10,000+ Posts
BevoJoe
10,000+ Posts
I took two Eco courses under Clifton Grubbs. He was a good prof, had good examples and was hilarious. If a student wanted to argue with him, they better know their stuff. I needed an upper division Eco to graduate but the ones open required prerequisites that were closed. My adviser gave me permission to take Marxist Econ in the Graduate School which Cleaver taught. It was an interesting class, main thing I took from it was the when a small ruling elite controls or owns all the wealth and means of production, the lower classes have nothing, and a middle class is nonexistent, a revolution might happen to overthrow the government and the elite class, seize and all the property, particularly the means of production which is subsequently vested in the state. But every one has a job and basic needs are taken care of. Nice utopian type theory, but when have we ever seen it work in practice over the long term? The "Politburo" begins to collect the wealth for themselves and sprinkle a little perks to the masses, enough to keep them from revolting. The freedoms we enjoy are practically unheard of in those nations. Eventually, there are collapses, and they start over again and it's a crap shoot whether it is better, about the same or worse. The only two nations that are still communist are China and N. Korea, maybe s couple of other insignificant countries. The rest have morphed into something different, usually.
LongestHorn
2,500+ Posts
Socialism is how we fight and control pandemic outbreaks.
LongestHorn
2,500+ Posts
How sad. You might have been happier at a private university.
Hookem.
Hookem.
That's the irony that these dense socialists can never grasp. Social programs that they love so much can only be successful if capitalism is allowed to flourish in order to subsidize them. Bernie can only point to other capitalist countries as examples of Socialism being successful. Although he was dumb enough to praise Castro's Cuba recently.Perhaps my favorite - they dont just want to kill the golden goose, then they gonna eat it
....of freedom.
I35
5,000+ Posts
What jumped out at me the most in this video is that Phil allowed him to respond. We just don’t see that anymore from the left.
To those who say "Capitalism has given us an inequitable division of the country's wealth, and we need to redistribute that wealth in a democratic, socialist manner," I say, "Just how do you think all that wealth was generated in the first place!"
It doesn't have to. They don't have anywhere near the state support that Mao's crackpots did. We're just choosing not to fight back.
Austin_Bill
2,500+ Posts
You want to know what Socialism is. Play the game of Monopoly except you cant buy any property every time you go around you get 200 from the government but don't hit any property with hotels on them (they all have hotels) except for the cheap ones, they are the projects you get to live in so you can land on those for free. Everyone is equal but the banker who represents the government.
That is socialism. When you run out of money you are a burden on society and killed off or thrown in jail.
That is socialism. When you run out of money you are a burden on society and killed off or thrown in jail.
Austin_Bill
2,500+ Posts
If Slesnik is still there in the eco dept at UT, he can readily explain the follies of socialism in great detail. I remember him going off topic for almost half a class debunking the concept of rent control. Jane Fonda had been promoting more rent control in NYC. His conclusion about rent control after his proof—a stupid idea proposed by a stupid person.
Monahorns
10,000+ Posts
That's because the Left waged a culture war starting in the 60/70s, and has won. Antonio Gramsci said for the US to fall to a Leftist movement that academics would have to a long march through the culture to change the way Americans looked at themselves and their country. It happened. I can't pin point the exact moment but a switch flipped somewhere in Obama's Presidency.
Rent control might be the most notorious failure of the command economy. I had an economics professor in undergrad who was a pretty liberal guy - very critical of Reagan and Milton Friedman and loved all the big liberal Keynesians and central planners like John Kenneth Galbraith.
However, he decimated a student who thought rent control was a good thing. Not sure why the kid thought he should argue, but he did. The professor initially was very nice about it and just explained why it's bad. However, the kid was persistent, and eventually he just said, "the bottom line is that everywhere that has ever done rent control has seen either a massive housing shortage or has seen rampant circumvention of the rent control - under the table "fees," etc. And everywhere that has ever gotten rid of rent control has seen greater supply and lower housing costs. It's a crappy policy in every regard."
I remember thinking, "damn, you sound a lot like pretty much every conservative economist on everything." The reason he could see the problem with rent control so well is that he was from the Northeast and had lived it first hand. It was just surprising that he was so ideologically blind that he assumed that the usual problems that go with rent control wouldn't go with everything that central planners would try to manage.
I'm not sure that a switch flipped as much as that a tipping point was reached. The WWII generation was mostly gone by that point and was being replaced by indoctrinated millennials reaching adulthood. Combine that with culturally ignorant immigrants and Baby Boomers who never turned into adults, and here we are. I started to see it with the BLM agenda after Ferguson. That crap would have been politically toxic just a few years earlier. In 2014 it was edgy but viable. Now it's mainstream. Scary.
Weekly Prediction Contest
* Predict TEXAS-KENTUCKY *
Sat, Nov 23 • 2:30 PM on ABC
Recent Threads
-
The Media Industry
- Started by texas_ex2000
- Replies: 8K
- West Mall
-
President Biden Accountability Thread
- Started by 2003TexasGrad
- Replies: 4K
- West Mall
Prediction Results Threads
