rdmcandie wrote:
No they are not communist countries but they do fall into the spectrum of liberalism.
But that's not the word I used.
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It could be argued that these countries are socialist (i like to think canada already is a social democracy.)
I also didn't use the word socialist(ism).
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I suppose you could look at it like this.
America is far right
China is far left
Canada, Russia, France, Brazil, Germany, Australia, Sweden, Finland, and so on and so forth, are between them.
Yeah. Great. Not even remotely what I was talking about originally though.
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Im no sure how to make this easy so you don't miss the point. um.
You have capitalism, and you have communism, the countries I listed take a little bit from each extreme, resulting in a free market social program filled country.
Uh huh. Still not sure how this applies to the statement I made.
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Oh and before you throw your hands up and shout I didn't say that I said this...
Too late!
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Communists and Libertarians might both oppose "government corruption", but have very very very different ideas about what to do about it.
Everyone of those countries is doing better than the US, and everyone of them have both capitalistic, and social policies that mesh very well together. For instance the Canadian, French and German Govt's all pay less as a % of GDP on their universal health system, then the US does for it's free market health system. Just one example.
Again, that's a completely different subject. What I said (and which has been quoted twice, so you shouldn't be confused) is that a "libertarian" and a "communist" might both speak about opposing "government corruption", but would have very different ideas about what to do about it.
I didn't say one was better. I just said they'd have different ideas. A libertarian would say that the way to reduce government corruption is to get government out of business. A communist would say that we should instead put government more in control of business. That was my point. More broadly, it's that just because a group of people are all standing in the same square saying that they oppose something, does *not* mean that they agree about what to do about it.
While the tangent about which economic systems are "doing better" is amusing, it really doesn't address the point I was making at all. It doesn't matter which is better. What matters is that it's a mistake to think people are united in a cause simply because they agree about what they oppose. It's when people agree about what they support and the way to get there that you have real unity.
And *that* is a key difference between these Occupy protests and the Tea Party.
Edited, Oct 14th 2011 12:20pm by gbaji