[grandpaw7]

NOTE: in my original post, I used the term "socialize". Of course, that brought forth the usual barrage of replies from people for whom anything that might have a semantic kinship with the word socialist causes mental and emotional upheavel so that they miss the main point. So, I've edited out the word "socialize" to see if there are any responses which come to grips with the real problem pointed out in the post.

No better example of what capitalism will do if it is not properly regulated, made fit to exist in society without exploiting society. Unregulated, it is like a wild beast that will devour whatever it can in its quest to acquire more and more money. Regulated, it has proven itself to be the best economic system there is. When regulated, the greed which is a major driving force of capitalism is harnessed so that its gains and benefits go, not just to those who generated them on the backs of the rest of us, but are shared by the public in general. Obviously, regulating capitalism is an ongoing and never-ending process since man's greed is always devising new ways to exploit.

Of course, human greed is not confined to the capitalists. It is a trait which all human beings must grapple with, including in spades government employees, who teamed with private industry to bilk you and me out of billions of dollars.

The story shows the folly of relying on people's conscience to do the right thing, the folly of relying on the predatory kind of capitalism that we experienced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Of course, the quest to take the exploitation out of capitalism is a liberal quest. There are many conservatives, however, you see the need for the regulation and thus join with the liberals to puruse liberal goals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/wa...th&oref=slogin

Excerpts from:
Breathtaking' Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid

By ERIC LIPTON
Published: June 27, 2006

FEMA spends $250,000 a month to store about 10,000 empty mobile homes at an airfield in Hope, Ark.

WASHINGTON, June 26 — Among the many superlatives associated with Hurricane Katrina can now be added this one: it produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing taxpayers up to $2 billion.

A hotel owner in Sugar Land, Tex., has been charged with submitting $232,000 in bills for phantom victims. And roughly 1,100 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast apparently collected more than $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance.

There are the bureaucrats who ordered nearly half a billion dollars worth of mobile homes that are still empty, and renovations for a shelter at a former Alabama Army base that cost about $416,000 per evacuee.


And there is the Illinois woman who tried to collect federal benefits by claiming she watched her two daughters drown in the rising New Orleans waters. In fact, prosecutors say, the children did not exist.

The tally of ignoble acts linked to Hurricane Katrina, pulled together by The New York Times from government audits, criminal prosecutions and Congressional investigations, could rise because the inquiries are under way. Even in Washington, a city accustomed to government bloat, the numbers are generating amazement.

"The blatant fraud, the audacity of the schemes, the scale of the waste — it is just breathtaking," said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The estimate of up to $2 billion in fraud and waste represents nearly 11 percent of the $19 billion spent by FEMA on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as of mid-June, or about 6 percent of total money that has been obligated.

[Mulderator]

Capitalism needs to be regulated, which is not synonymous with "socialized" in the way you are using it.

Don't we have an almost identical thread?

[Chicon]

Encore ? And why not Predatory communism in need of being eradicated for a change !

[poochee]

Originally Posted by grandpaw7

Excerpts from:
Breathtaking' Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid

By ERIC LIPTON
Published: June 27, 2006

Disgraceful!

[Stoner]

Originally Posted by Mulder

.....................

Don't we have an almost identical thread?

I believe we do.
Perhaps they should be merged ................

[Gabriel]

I think he is trying to desensitize us to his verbal usage, and defense of the word, socialized...I can't imagine that anyone could not know that this is a repetition of the last 5 threads But then again, what do I know?

[Mulderator]

The real irony here is that the example grandpa used--the fraud that occurred after Hurricane Katrina occurred precisely because we attempted to socialize capitalism. That was an excellent example of how a system where the government is intricately involved as a participant a capitalistic system that huge frauds invariably result. Its not capitalism that was the problem, it was capitalism on only one side of the equation. Had this been a system where the parties paying for the reconstruction were private enterprises, there is no way they would have allowed that kind of fraud to occur. But because the government cannot possibly be as efficient with use of money as the free enterprise system, the result in Katrina was inevitable. In fact, many conservative commentators were making this point as the liberals rushed in to provide aid to the victims in record amounts. Another example of liberal compassion run amok. Nothing wrong with the compassion, mind you, but its the liberal's beleif that compassion can be fairly handed out by the federal government is where their master socialistic plans invariably fail.

I also found interesting that when President Bush set a "maximum" wage to prevent gouging of victims by contractors, the liberals were outraged--thought Bush was attempting to screw the poor working man!

[Guyzer]

Originally Posted by Mulder

Don't we have an almost identical thread?

Mulder I was going to say that. It's obvious that when he gets beat up in one thread he has to start another and change the wording ever so slightly. Still means the same thing in the end.

[kilowatt1]

Enough already!!

The idea that you can somehow mix socialism with captitalism is ludicrous. It is like mixing water with oil. No matter how hard you stir, the two will never mix into a single solution. Why don't we just cut to the chase and declare whether you think that the United States should be a socialist country or a capitalist country. It can't be both.

Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements that envisage a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to social control. [1] As an economic system, socialism is usually associated with state or collective ownership of the means of production. This control, according to socialists, may be either direct, exercised through popular collectives such as workers' councils or by groups on behalf of specialized interests (see oligosocialism), or it may be indirect, exercised on behalf of the people by the state.

Capitalism is the name given to the economic system that has been most common across the world since the industrial revolution. It has been defined in numerous, but similar, ways [1]. For instance, according to Encarta, capitalism is an economic system in which private individuals and business firms carry on the production and exchange of goods and services through a complex network of prices and markets.[1] The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics defines capitalism as an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production; and the production of commodities for sale, exchange, and profit.

The bottom line is simple. Do you want government to have total control (socialism), or do you want government to have limited control (capitalism)?

[grandpaw7]

Mulder seems to say that if the government wasn't in the business of trying to regulate capitalism, that capitalism would keep its own house nice and orderly. Yeah,sure, just like it did before we enacted food and drug laws, child labor laws, industrial safety laws, privacy laws, civil rights laws, wage and hour laws, security fraud laws, deceptive advertising laws, consumer protection laws, etc.

I can't recall reading anything so wrong-headed in a long, long time as capitalism will police itself if the government will just let it alone. You won't find the most conservative politician, statesman, or commentator in the world agreeing with such nonsense.

Originally Posted by Mulder

The real irony here is that the example grandpa used--the fraud that occurred after Hurricane Katrina occurred precisely because we attempted to socialize capitalism. That was an excellent example of how a system where the government is intricately involved as a participant a capitalistic system that huge frauds invariably result. Its not capitalism that was the problem, it was capitalism on only one side of the equation. Had this been a system where the parties paying for the reconstruction were private enterprises, there is no way they would have allowed that kind of fraud to occur. But because the government cannot possibly be as efficient with use of money as the free enterprise system, the result in Katrina was inevitable. In fact, many conservative commentators were making this point as the liberals rushed in to provide aid to the victims in record amounts. Another example of liberal compassion run amok. Nothing wrong with the compassion, mind you, but its the liberal's beleif that compassion can be fairly handed out by the federal government is where their master socialistic plans invariably fail.

I also found interesting that when President Bush set a "maximum" wage to prevent gouging of victims by contractors, the liberals were outraged--thought Bush was attempting to screw the poor working man!

[Mulderator]

Originally Posted by kilowatt1

Enough already!!

The idea that you can somehow mix socialism with captitalism is ludicrous. It is like mixing water with oil. No matter how hard you stir, the two will never mix into a single solution. Why don't we just cut to the chase and declare whether you think that the United States should be a socialist country or a capitalist country. It can't be both.

There is no doubt he would choose socialism. The problem is he seeks to obfuscate the debate by using "socialism" in its generic dictionary defintiion form and "socialism" as an economic system interchangeably. Most regulation and law in society is done for social reasons--that is we wish to make our society one that provides us all as much benefit as we can reasonably obtain and prohibit as much anti-social behavior as we reasonably can, wether it be in our economic system or in our justice system. So of course in any economic system you are going to have rules and regulations that can be called "social" in nature. We require employers to meet reasonable safety requirements, as an example.

Socialism as an economic system, on the other hand is completely different--there the goal is for society to work as an ecnomic whole for the good of all. And as you rightly point out, that cannot be mixed with capitalism since the goals of the two systems are diametrically oppossed.

[grandpaw7]

Well, we've got these people who just don't think the dictionary is right. They just refuse to believe that the word socialize means what the dictionary says it means. I guess I've made a mistake in continuing to use the word since we have the folks like kilowatt1 who get all bogged down with the semantics and don't even seem to see the problem, which is the need to regulate capitalism more and more as people find more and more ways to use it to exploit. kilowatt1 seems unconcerned about the billions being lost to fraud and corruption; his only concern is with the semantics I use. So, bowing to such sophomoric pressure, I'm editing my post to eliminate the word "socialize" so that these people who get lost in semantics will hopeful muddy the waters a little less.

[Mulderator]

Originally Posted by grandpaw7

Mulder seems to say that if the government wasn't in the business of trying to regulate capitalism, that capitalism would keep its own house nice and orderly. Yeah,sure, just like it did before we enacted food and drug laws, child labor laws, industrial safety laws, privacy laws, civil rights laws, wage and hour laws, security fraud laws, deceptive advertising laws, consumer protection laws, etc.

I can't recall reading anything so wrong-headed in a long, long time as capitalism will police itself if the government will just let it alone. You won't find the most conservative politician, statesman, or commentator in the world agreeing with such nonsense.

That's NOT what I said at all. In fact, I absolutely agree that capitalism needs to be regulated. However, there is a difference between government as regulator and government as participant. In post-Katrina New Orleans, Government was there with billions of dollars to hand out with little or no control at all. Government does a very poor job at regulating itself which is why there was so much fraud in NO. Do you really think if it were a private enterprise that was bidding out the contracts and controlling the money with profit motivation that all those frauds would have occurred? oif course not, because when people are controlling their own money, they watch it like hawks. When government is controlling other people's money, the don't watch it much at all.

Again--post Katrina is an example of why you are completely wrong, not right.

[Mulderator]

Originally Posted by grandpaw7

Well, we've got these people who just don't think the dictionary is right. They just refuse to believe that the word socialize means what the dictionary says it means. I guess I've made a mistake in continuing to use the word since we have the folks like kilowatt1 who get all bogged down with the semantics and don't even seem to see the problem, which is the need to regulate capitalism more and more as people find more and more ways to use it to exploit. kilowatt1 seems unconcerned about the billions being lost to fraud and corruption; his only concern is with the semantics I use. So, bowing to such sophomoric pressure, I'm editing my post to eliminate the word "socialize" so that these people who get lost in semantics will hopeful muddy the waters a little less.

Actually, he has the semantics entirely accurate--it is you that is playing a semantical game. You can sell that crap to the children you care for, but you're not going to get it by many of the people on this board who tend to be just a wee bit sharper than who you are used to dealing with.

[grandpaw7]

Mulder: "Do you really think if it were a private enterprise that was bidding out the contracts and controlling the money with profit motivation that all those frauds would have occurred? oif course not, because when people are controlling their own money, they watch it like hawks."

Why, of course not, Mulder. You take Halliburton for example. No government participation there and we all know how squeaky clean its operation has been.