Socialism Wastes Money, Capitalism Wastes Humans

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Updated November 16:

There has been a lot of talk, even by socialists, of the profound "wastefulness" inherent in various Communist economic systems. As I'm not an economist, I don't really understand what they are talking about.

However, I can give you a few ideas.

In recent years, Cuba has revolutionized organic agriculture to where they probably have one of the most highly developed organic ag systems on Earth. For starters, Cuba has more agronomists per capita than anywhere else on Earth. During the Special Period, they were put to work devising organic solutions to problems that were previously solved by industrialized agriculture.

Right now, in the intensive organic farming collectives all over Havana, crop yield has reached some of the highest levels on Earth per unit of land. And that's with a 100% organic system. Now, who ever said that socialism could not produce?

However, interviews with collective farmers reveal that the system could not be replicated on a capitalist model. It is "wasteful", that is, it has to either spend too much money to get that yield, or it pays too many farmers as workers to get the yield. It's pretty much the same argument.

A similar complaint has been leveled at Cuban enterprises. In some office jobs, it seems as if there are four or five workers for every real job. They rest are screwing off or shuffling papers or engaging in make-work.

I suppose all of these examples are of "waste", right? Waste of money! Well, Cuba is a poor country dedicated to 100% employment.

In most of the Third World, college grads just don't have any jobs. The state has no jobs for them and the private sector doesn't either. So there are vastly more applicants than positions. A lot of these places have much more wealth than Cuba.

Cuba's not going to go that route. It has enough money to hire workers even for jobs that barely even exist, and it wants everyone to have a job, figuring that's better than sitting on your ass. 3rd World capitalism creates armies of over-educated young unemployed men with no income to start a family. In the Muslim World, lots of them are going in for radical Islam and blowing themselves up.

I suppose that Cuba has a similar problem, but they just dealt with it by creating make-work jobs and at least giving folks an income and something to do with their time. There's waste of humans in one case (3rd World capitalism) by lack of jobs for them, and waste of money in the other case (Cuba) for creating make-work jobs.

I would point out that the Cuban organic collectives are run by the workers themselves. They hire other workers to join on. If you don't pull your weight and slack off, you're fired. They have to sell some of their produce to the state, but there's plenty left over for farmers' markets. There are many people clamoring to get into these collectives, as it's seen as a good job with a good income.

As a collective economic form, it's also non-capitalist. Right now, only 6% of Cuban agriculture is in state farms. Most is in farming cooperatives. Much is made of the very high productivity levels of the private farms (they are limited to 150 acres), but they do this by using vastly more than their share of labor, so perhaps they are not so productive after all.

Here in the US, a lot of very smart people are just completely wasted by capitalism. I'm not talking about myself here, because I'm not healthy enough to work in a regular job, so I just live off a meager trust fund.

But I know two people with IQ's over 140 who are not doing much productive. One works at low-level jobs and the other is on disability, but could work if they wanted to. What puzzles me is why this wonderful market is not beating their doors down trying to hire our most valuable citizens (cognitive elite)?

If the stupid market can't utilize their brains in any way, why doesn't the state? The very same thing happens in 3rd World capitalism. Very bright people, with degrees and advanced degrees, have nothing to do.

If aliens landed on the Earth and saw a bunch of the smartest people around being wasted by society, wouldn't they say that was insane? The capitalists would explain to the aliens that these folks are useless for making money, so they are a waste of air, and that capitalists don't give a damn about talent or brains or anything.

I guess that's what it boils down to? Capitalism is good for creating wealth, that's it. Hell, even Marx said that. Read The Communist Manifesto. He praises this greatest wealth-creating engine to the skies.

What else is capitalism good for? Nothing. It ain't good for fuck-all else. I assure you that Cuba would find something to do with everyone in the land who had a 140-150 IQ.

I guess the market feels it can't use the smartest people in society to help it make cash, so it has no use for them. Capitalism and the market is just a fucking money-generating machine. It's in business to make money, nothing else.

That's what all this crap the market-fetishists go on about in terms of "generating wealth" is all about. Making money. "Generating wealth" means making money. Big deal. Since when is that a value worth anything of importance?

I hate capitalism and the damned market. Looking at the failure of socialist models (For example, when Albanian leader Hoxha died in 1985, there were shortages of even the most basic foodstuffs.) I'm willing to acknowledge that it may be necessary, but it sure sucks.

Have you ever noticed the contempt that capitalists have for professors in universities, our finest minds at work in various sciences and fields, advancing the knowledge of our species? They sneer and call them eggheads and talk about how their tax dollars are wasted on these guys. They brag about how they never went to college.

There's no money in a lot of these fields of study at the university (probably, or at least at the moment, or from what we can tell), so capitalists figure it's all a total waste. If there's no money in it, it's worthless. That's your glorious market.

Fuck the market.

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