Democratic Socialism

[trthnd4jstc]

I love my country.
I love the Constitution.

I am against a global conspiracy to control everyone through a chip. And, there are those who believe in this global conspiracy who are against socialist, and other collectivist. For them, I have written this exposition to argue why I am a socialist. I am against corporations running the world. I am for the People, which of course includes the Rich, but not to exceed the 1 person 1 vote rule. I believe in Democracy, in the deepest sense. But I also believe in checks and balances, and the prevention of the tyranny of the majority.

Whereas, there are Socialists who do not believe in Democracy, there are those that do. I am not against private property to a point. I am against Monopoly. I am for a democratic control over markets, because markets can be manipulated, or played, by a small number of people to the deficit of others.


I believe that our government needs to be involved in the markets. This involvement should be open, transparent, and changeable. I believe that power derives from the People, as is stated in our Constitution. I believe the People collectively, should be in control of the markets.

The economy is too important to be left in the hands of the very wealthy

I believe in competition. I also believe that one should not allow people to fall into rabid desparation. I believe the government can, and should be involved in the markets to prevent monopoly, and to prevent desparation of the population.

I believe this involvement of the government should not be out of the hands of the People of this country. I am against tyranny of all forms. I believe in a mixed economy.

I believe that there are Republicans that will lie, and hatemonger against every idea that they are afraid of, and they will also use tactics to try to destroy the credibility of their philosophical opponents.

Here is an example of how people play the markets:
1. Oil costs about $22.00 to $36.00 a barrel to extract out of the Earth. It of course costs to transport. I do not know how much this adds to the costs, but I saw something in 2006 that said it was about $8.00 a barrel to transport. I am certain that it is more. It is easy for a determined few in an auction, especially given months, or years, through careful bidding, to raise the price of oil to its current price.
2. The costs of Ethanol, through government subsidies, has raise the prices of wheat and corn over the past 3 years. Our government could stockpile these grains, but in 1986 that program was cut. Congress People supported Ethanol production, partly, to increase the costs of grains, which does provide more revenue to our farmers, but increases our costs for food.
3. I know that hedge funds manipulate the market, but I cannot explain that sufficiently. I have had someone explain it to me, but I need to study this more.

The government can be involved to prevent inflation caused by manipulating the markets.

Further, because of outsourcing, and downsizing, there are industries that should be in this country that are no longer having manufacturing happen in this country. Also because of just in time inventory, when there is a sudden shortage, or shortfall in a parts production, prices will rapidly inflate. Our government can be involved in starting, and returning parts plants, steel smelting, and probably a whole host of other industries back to this nation.

I firmly support our constitution. I also support further amendments to protect our nation, our people, and our future. I support a third constitutional convention, so that we can, as a majority, support these new amendments.

I am not for State run socialism, nor for communism. I am for collectives, and cooperatives. I believe that the more of our population who are able to be self-sufficient, the more economic stability, and social stability we will have.

The government is only as good as the people who are involved in it. Currently, we are suffering because of members of both major parties, basically, working on behalf of corporations, giving these entities more power at the deficit of the overall economy, and the majority of the People.

Democratic Socialism is not about socialism for socialism sake. It is about socialism as a tool of the People, to increase the Peoples power, and not to increase the power of the government. It seems obvious to me that deregulation has not helped the markets, but further impoverished more people. Regulation, and government involvement can be a tool for improvement of the Macro-economy, as well as local economies.

I am not against having increased competition. Competition can help keep products, and services, at a fair price, and good quality. Deregulation has allowed less competition. And, I am certain that many will agree, customer service from several big corporations has decreased, and not increased after deregulation.

Checks and Balances are needed in our economy, and our world. The Rich do not have a right to treat the rest of us as Serfs.

[patrice]

1. You have uncommon depth of perception.

I like these things you said:
"I am for the People, which of course includes the Rich, but not to exceed the 1 person 1 vote rule....
I am for a democratic control over markets, because markets can be manipulated, or played, by a small number of people to the deficit of others....
I believe in competition. I also believe that one should not allow people to fall into rabid desparation....
Currently, we are suffering because of members of both major parties, basically, working on behalf of corporations, giving these entities more power at the deficit of the overall economy, and the majority of the People....
Democratic Socialism is not about socialism for socialism sake. It is about socialism as a tool of the People, to increase the Peoples power, and not to increase the power of the government....
Regulation, and government involvement can be a tool for improvement of the Macro-economy, as well as local economies....
The Rich do not have a right to treat the rest of us as Serfs."

I guess that's pretty much everything you said, isn't it. "Socialism" in its many varieties and the responsibilities of the State to the Individual are topics we ABSOLUTELY ***MUST*** talk to one another about, for our survival as a nation.

The only thing you said that I disagree with is: "I am not for State run socialism, nor for communism. I am for collectives, and cooperatives." If the State wants Individuals to cooperate with its laws, economics, politics, ethics, plans etc. etc. etc., it MUST pay the individual's price for that cooperation. How else could the State expect economics to be a primary organizing principle, unless it respects a natural economy based on a social contract, in effect, which says "In exchange for my cooperative participation in the life of the group, the group will provide: appropriate and complete Education, Essential Health Care, rational national Defense, honest Justice, and functional Infrastructure." With these elements of our natural economic exchange ***gauranteed by the State***, those Cooperatives and other collectives you mention will flourish on their own resources.

The basic characteristic that makes Socialism Socialism (in all of its varieties) is that the State/Government DOES in fact OWE its INDIVIDUAL members something (other than money - and money, BTW, would even be possible without cooperation) for their lives. And I guess I'm saying it owes what the Individual says it owes, i.e. Individuals set the price of their own lives, not the State. And since we have to arrive at somekind of collective average of what that price might be, a good starting place would be the necessaries of functional cooperation with the group.

Thank you for having the courage to call yourself a Democratic Socialist trthnd4jstc. I hope mroe and more people support an ongoing discussion of what you said.

[trthnd4jstc]

2. I like the point you said, in your critique....

The only thing you said that I disagree with is: "I am not for State run socialism, nor for communism. I am for collectives, and cooperatives." If the State wants Individuals to cooperate with its laws, economics, politics, ethics, plans etc. etc. etc., it MUST pay the individual's price for that cooperation. How else could the State expect economics to be a primary organizing principle, unless it respects a natural economy based on a social contract, in effect, which says "In exchange for my cooperative participation in the life of the group, the group will provide: appropriate and complete Education, Essential Health Care, rational national Defense, honest Justice, and functional Infrastructure." With these elements of our natural economic exchange ***gauranteed by the State***, those Cooperatives and other collectives you mention will flourish on their own resources.

I completely agree that if the State wishes to have individuals cooperate with its laws...it must pay the individual's price.

I have been working on this line of reasoning for more than 30 years. The next thing I plan on doing with my "hobby" is to learn enough about economics to argue my points along an economic theory.

Thanks for your reply.

[patrice]

3. I'm a little newer than you to the idea of thinking of myself as a Socialist.

I was deeply inspired by Ayn Rand when I read her in highschool, almost 40 years ago. I have and will probably continue to consider some degree of competition as sacrosanct. But in comparison to that sacrosanct competition we have, as you so astutely phrased it, "rabid desparation". That's EXACTLY what desparation and ignorance does to you and then people are punished for their rabies! It does no good to be angry and punish a "cow" because it can't tap dance.

Yes, there are those who REFUSE to cooperate, or refuse to accept a social contract, but there needs to be some way of differentiating them from those whom "the system" has crippled.

It concerns me a great deal how afraid people are to admit any attraction to socialistic thinking. There are whole "worlds" of ideas and principles that are OFF LIMITS! For example, this perspective is SADLY missing from the Abortion "debate"; no one wants to admit that many abortions are the result of the fact that "we" have abandoned our responsibilities to one another. "We" have aborted whole classes of persons, before they were even conceived.

As you can see, I have many thoughts on Socialism, but I also need to understand more about the economics of Socialistic policies; I will watch for your posts here.

Thanks again, and BTW, Welcome to DU! :hi:

[trthnd4jstc]

4. I am working on a new socialist theory, are you interested?

I would like to work with others to create a Democratic Socialist Manifesto. The idea is to avoid the pitfalls of State Socialism, and to have Democracy at the base of all of the Socialistic programs. I believe a mixed economy is the best of worlds. I think that our system has provided too much power for the few who wish to dominate the rest of us. This is something I would like to see changed. It appears to me that any plan for a more perfect union will have to take many decades to perform, and will not be simple or easy. Even with the basis in Democracy, we will have those on the Right, and probably Left, and Center, who would be against us.

I am against all tyranny. Also I am 43 years old, a Master Electrician, and the President of a Contracting Company. I am not Rich. I actually am not interested in Great Wealth, nor Power over others. I am interested in Power over my own self, and my own life. I like the ideals embodied in our Constitution. I would like there to be a concerted effort towards a more perfect union.

One of my criticisms of Communism is the idea of taking wealth away from those who have it. I believe in fair taxation. I would like to use Business as a method of making the Capital needed to run our Social Experiments for Democratic Socialism. Another criticism that I have is the lack of Democracy in the Communist models out there. I do know that would be antagonist to any attempt to create a socialist system.

My idea is to never try to dominate the People. To always have the People as the final check. To never lie, nor manipulate. I believe that I do not have all the ideas necessary to try to bring this into reality. But, compared to the idea of doing nothing, this, I believe is a superior idea to the idea of supposed Free Market Capitalism, which leaves the majority poor, and struggling.

Please contact me with a private e-mail, if you have an interest in helping start this. This is actually what I wish to do as my lifes work.

[AdHocSolver]

13. We do NOT now have "free market capitalism". We have a corporate oligarchy running this country.

What we need is regulated capitalism with strong antitrust laws and social services such as police, fire, and Health Care provided by government or nonprofit, quasi-governmental organizations similar to the postal service.

The corporations control the government and this country because of deregulation and runaway mergers concentrating monopolistic controlling power in the hands of a small elite with no oversight.

These monopolies wrote our trade laws (solely to benefit themselves), rigged markets to eliminate competition (eg., health care), and subvert the government because of their ability to control elections.

Capitalism cannot work when monopolies make the rules, and there is no "referee" to make sure that the players aren't cheating. There are no "free" markets in this country anymore, and there is no "free" trade. NAFTA, the WTO, the IMF are set up to benefit corporate cartels. The Federal Reserve has been used, especially under Greenspan, to transfer the assets of the middle class to the corporate elite. We did not come to this economic meltdown by chance. Enron was no accident, and many corporations were in on the thievery. It was an inevitable outcome of schemes to steal the assets of the middle class.

Study the Great Depression and the New Deal laws and regulations that were initiated because of the corruption and thievery that brought on the depression. Consider the Glass-Steagall Act and the subsequent additions and revisions to it. These laws were designed to prevent the kind of schemes that caused the mortgage market meltdown we have seen. The Glass-Steagell Act was overturned in the late 1990's.

Anything you read that discusses "market forces", "competition", "free trade", and so on as if they actually exist is bovine manure. If what you read talks about controlling supply and demand, price fixing, suppressing competition, and similar monopolistic practices, then that is a starting point for what we have now and what we need to do to eliminate it. Hope this has been of some help.

[trthnd4jstc]

18. Thanks for your Reply

If you have not, will you recommend my Post? I am a history buff. Thanks for mentioning something that was not on my mind, the Glass-Steagall Act. I will look that up tomorrow. Yes, it has been some help!

[gravity]

5. Markets aren't controlled by manipulation

They are governed by supply and demand.

For millennium leaders with the best intentions assumed that when prices are high, it is due to manipulation or speculation. They would instigate price controls and the same results occur every single time. There will be shortages where people who are willing to pay for something can't be able to use it. The US has tried this in the past and it failed.

If you want to lower the price of oil, you either have to find ways to increase the supply of oil or find ways to lower the demand. You aren't going to solve the problem doing it any other way. Now OPEC has manipulated prices by decreasing supply, but they couldn't have raised the price any other way.

I'm all for regulating the economy for society's benefit, but you have to obey the laws of supply and demand in the process.

[trthnd4jstc]

6. I am not a hyper-genius, but I know markets can be manipulated.

Supply and Demand is not the simple explanation for why oil is at $103.00 a barrel. Speculation has an effect. Further, look at the prices of Petroleum before it went onto the Commodities Market. Oil was about $20.00 to $25.00 a barrel. I have heard directly from an Oil man, and another Woman involved in a famous Hedge Fund describing how the market is played. I will continue to increase my knowledge about this so I may explain it better, which I will do as soon as I find the references needed. I am not against Supply and Demand having an effect on Pricing. I just do not believe that, if we wish to live in a just society, we can allow the "invisible hand" to have the means of determining prices.

[uberllama42]

7. Supply and demand are extremely difficult to overcome

Markets are not infallible, and you are right that prices are sometimes manipulated to the detriment of society. But generally speaking it is a very bad idea to set prices by fiat. In Venezuela, for instance, most agricultural commodities are subject to price ceilings, which makes it extremely difficult for farmers to stay in business. Many can't afford to grow food, which has led to many empty shelves in Venezuelan groceries. People aren't being fed any better by the government than they were by the free market. Those who do grow food often smuggle it across the border and sell it at the market price in Colombia.

Not every stupid intervention is supposedly on behalf of the people, either. The motivation of creating a just society is not what makes intervention risky. During the Reagan years, the federal government gave very generous subsidies to the dairy industry in the form of a price floor. In order to keep more dairy farmers in business (and yes, corporate operations reaped the greatest benefit) they set the price high. The USDA bought and stored the surplus. Eventually it was decided that the milk should be processed into powdered milk and cheese in order to extend its shelf life. Not wanting to hurt the same industry they were trying to protect, the USDA sat on the dairy products until they expired. The story goes on like that for a while, but the long and short of it is that price controls are a counterproductive policy.

I agree that society has a profound responsibility to provide education, health care, shelter, etc. to all of its members. Because markets usually don't achieve that, the government should step in to meet those needs. I agree that that constitutes a just society. But governments have to be very careful when they suppress market forces. In most cases prices equilibrate where they "belong".

[Hannah Bell]

8. This man disagrees with you.

Presentation to the world bank.

"http://www.venerosoassociates.net/Reserve%20Management%20Parts%20I%20and%20II%20WBP%20Public%2071907.pdf"

oil, metals, & probably some foodstuffs are all being manipulated, similar to the way electricity was in the "enron market". Physical supplies being bought up by hedge funds & other financial speculators & taken off-market.

when 1% of the earth's population controls more than half the cash flow, directly or indirectly, & makes the rules, directly or indirectly - not that difficult.

[A HERETIC I AM]

9. Hedge funds don't take delivery of 100,000 bushels of wheat or 10,000 barrels of oil

so how do you figure "physical supplies (are) taken off-market"?

Putting up an 86 page .pdf document to support your contention is tedious.

[Hannah Bell]

10. outline in the intro. n/t

[A HERETIC I AM]

11. Non answer n/t

[Hannah Bell]

12. too much to read 3 paragraphs?

"Thank you for this second invitation to speak at your treasury management conference. Last year I was asked to speak only because Larry Summers ...could not make it..The following paper is very long. So let me give a road map of where I will be going.

In the first part of this paper on the “Commodity Bubble”, I make the case that, in real terms, we have had an unprecedented commodity bubble in this decade. This bubble has occurred because of unprecedented investment and speculation in commodities, largely
by way of derivatives. The far more important engine of this bubble has been leveraged speculation by hedge funds....

In part two, “Metals: A Speculation to the Point of Manipulation”, I turn to the leading edge of this cycle’s commodity mania – metals. In base metals and to some degree in white metals hedge fund speculation has extended beyond derivatives TO PURCHASES OF THE PHYSICAL

.This has resulted in several variants of classic market “squeezes” across the metals sector. These squeezes in the context of a runaway speculative fervor have resulted in increases in real prices for some metals that are far in excess of anything that has ever occurred before for these metals, in particular, and almost all commodities in general.

In the third part of this paper, I consider gold... The last advance in the price of gold since mid 2005 has been driven by funds..."

[AdHocSolver]

16. The "market" is in the contract, not the actual commodity.

The hedge fund buys a contract for wheat which takes the actual commodity off the market. They have effectively reduced the supply because no one else can buy that wheat. The wheat never leaves the granary. It is effectively no longer part of the supply in the market place.

People who buy gold don't actually take possession. A quantity of gold is set aside for the person who "buys" the gold. However the gold never leaves storage.

The price of a company's stock depends only on the ratio of buyers to sellers of that stock at any given time. When more people want to buy than there are sellers (demand greater than supply), the buyers will bid up the price. When there are more sellers of a stock than want to buy it (supply greater than demand), the price will drop. The profitability or solvency of the actual business is not relevant (if the insiders can cover up any bad news). Some companies are making plenty of profits, but their stock price is relatively low (low price to earnings ratio). Other companies make little or no profit and have a relatively high price because there are a lot of buyers for the stock. Enron, among others, "cooked their books" (i.e., made it look like they were making huge profits, even when they weren't), so that people bought their stock, even as the company was tanking.

[AdHocSolver]

15. Your dairy example is one of setting a price, not by fiat, but by manipulating supply and demand.

The government became a buyer of milk (it increased demand) which is what drove the price up. At the same time, it stored the milk which it bought which reduced the supply to the public. It manipulated supply and demand to set the price. The government did NOT set it by fiat.

[AdHocSolver]

14. Markets ARE controlled by cartels by adjusting supply and demand to benefit themselves.

OPEC, in collusion with the oil companies, sets the price of oil by controlling how much they pump out of the ground and how much gets refined (called supply). The oil companies increase consumption (demand) by adding ethanol to gasoline which reduces gasoline mileage so that you have to fill up more often.

Your message paragraphs refute your own subject header.

The markets are controlled. They are controlled by the corporate cartels to rip us off by their manipulation of supply and demand.

[CGowen]

17. I think they are terrified of people like H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell (Fabian Socialism)

and the ideas they represent.

[melody]

19. Excellent post

My only reservation is I do not trust "isms". Any system can be used to pilfer and prostitute (in fact, that's what they usually do). The more powerful the system, the more effective it is, but that cuts both ways. A liberal center government with more power (and resources) given to local governments seems to me the better way to go about things.

[reprobate]

20. I like the way you think, trthnd4jstc. Count me in with your plans.

I've thought along the same lines myself for a few decades. IMO, since Ronnie the Raygun capitalism has degenerated to the point where it has lost it's purpose. Originally capitalism was supposed to be a system where individuals could pool together and form a business so all could prosper. As an incentive to combine into a business the corporation was formed to provide legal cover for the individual so that each was liable for only the sum of his/her investment.

The idea has been perverted to the point where the corporation - and the few who control it - now even control the government. If you want an example just look at the FED. Here we have a private corporation which has taken control unto itself of ALL the financial transaction in the nation, even most of the world thru the World Bank, WTO, among others.

I have an idea that could help change things around to a system that could work for all. If you're interested in hearing my babblings just PM me and we can discuss it.