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Greece Illustrates 150 Years Of Socialist Failure In Europe
Submitted by Patrick Barron via Mises Institute,
Greece cannot pay its debts ... ever. Nor can several other members of the European Union. That’s why Europe’s elite are loath to place Greece in default. If Greece is allowed to abrogate its debts, why should any of the other debtor members of the EU pay up? The financial consequences of massive default by most of the EU members is hard to predict, but it won't be pretty. Europe has built a financial house of cards, and the slightest loss of confidence will bring it crashing down.
The tragedy of Europe has socialism at its core. Europe has flirted with socialism since the late nineteenth century. Nineteenth century Bismarckian socialism produced two world wars. Leninist socialism slaughtered and enslaved hundreds of millions until it collapsed, mercifully without a third world war. Yet, not to be deterred, in the ashes of World War II, Europe’s socialists embarked on a new socialist dream. If socialism fails in one country, perhaps it will succeed if all of Europe joined a supra-national socialist organization. Oh, they don't call what has evolved from this dream “socialism,” but it is socialism nonetheless.
Socialism will not work, whether in one country, a multi-state region such as Europe, or the entire world. Ludwig von Mises explained that socialism is not an alternative economic system. It is a program for consumption. It tells us nothing about economic production. Since each man's production must be distributed to all of mankind, there is no economic incentive to produce anything, although there may be the incentive of coercion and threats of violence. Conversely, free market capitalism is an economic system of production, whereby each man owns the product of his own labors and, therefore, has great economic incentives to produce both for himself, his family, and has surplus goods to trade for the surplus product of others. Even under life and death threats neither the socialist worker nor his overseer would know what to produce, how to produce it, or in what quantities and qualities. These economic cues are the product of free market capitalism and money prices.
Under capitalism, man specializes to produce trade goods for the product of others. This is just one way of stating Say’s Law; i.e., that production precedes consumption and that production itself creates demand. For example, a farmer may grow some corn for his family to consume or to feed to his own livestock, but he sells most of his corn on the market in exchange for money with which to buy all the many other necessities and luxuries of life. His corn crop is his demand and money is simply the indirect medium of exchange.
Keynes attempted to deny Say’s Law, claiming that demand itself — created artificially by central bank money printing — would spur production. He attempted, illogically and unsuccessfully, to place consumption ahead of production. To this day Keynes is very popular with spendthrift politicians, to whom he bestowed a moral imperative to spend money that they did not have.
We see the result of 150 years of European socialism playing out in grand style in Greece today. The producing countries are beginning to realize that they have been robbed by the EU’s socialist guarantee that no nation will be allowed to default on its bonds. Greece merely accepted this guarantee at face value and spent itself into national bankruptcy. Other EU nations are not far behind. It’s time to give free market capitalism and sound money a chance: it’s worked every time it’s been tried.
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ISIS cannot really happen in Greece, Greeks have Orthodox Christianity dominance. But history has shown a tendency to civil war and coups.
you never know
Ukraine Merges Nazis and Islamists
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/07/ukraine-merges-nazis-and-islamists/
at least in greece they won't carjack you or shoot you in the street like the debtor Chicago!
Go back to the start of how Greece got in the eurozone, there you find the cause of this calamity today, that is Goldman Sachs getting fees to lie their way into the eurozone. Claw back the estates of the Golman Sachs and Greek and Bond buying assholes at Deutche Bank , as usual these parasites pick the body clean and leave the bones for the masses. No theory on types of economic systems, just plain old fashion scams on a huge scale.
Oh, we understand. We prepared. We warned. and you didn't. We understand that people will burn our homes simply out of spite because we had ours paid for and they lost theirs to the bank. Its not hard to understand the hostility. Its always been that way.
What a bullshit article this is. When has the Free Economiez ever been tried? It's never free, it's always more like Sopranos, it's just that they are wasps and dress differently.
Would love to hear Patrick Barron explain why London and New York capital was poured into the socialist "project" in Europe.
What's that Patrick? What the hell do you mean you didn't know!!!??? Jesus -- everybody knows socialism was funded by the Secret Tribe who run the City of London and Wall Street. Everybody knows they funded socialism to keep Europe split down the middle, and at all costs to keep Germany and Russia from coming together economically to dwarf the British Empire and its sidekick across the pond.
Get with the program dude. You're 90 years behind the times you senile old fool.
"We see the result of 150 years of European socialism playing out in grand style in Greece today."
So you are saying the CIA, USA, NATO haven't been playing in that sand box all these years.
- US Congress passed legislation in 1947 to fight communism in Greece & Turkey, and has been involved in Greece for all that time, NATO was created to Defend against Communism
- There are lots of reports of NATO covert activities in Greece
- the 1967 Military Coup seems to dispute the 150 years absolute, but we can agree that 70 years has had US/EU and Communist/Socialist involvement
- Seems like the January Election of Communists in Greece was after 40 years of Crony Capitalism??
Another Economist who seems to have no experience with real systems or real governments or real taxpayers.
What he has never acknowledged Corruption in the Right wing or the Capitalist Institutions?
No knowledge of Accounting Control Fraud?
Last I checked Wikipedia had long lists of Accounting Frauds that disappeared ...last year (for both the Western world & for USA)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_fraud
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_scandals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporate_collapses_and_scandals
I'll have to check the Accounting Scandals list maybe that was it.
I put the blame on inherent flaw in fiat currency - the fact that it lowers perceived credit risk though the ability to inflate away obligations over time. I don't think socialism is even capable of getting off the ground without paper money.
Greece wants to trade one roll of toilet paper for another? Well, that ain't really a reform. Then again, since they are import dependent and attempt to use solid currency would lead to immediate depletion of all vaults. Any country contemplating the use of commodity backed money has to have a trade surplus first. Greece is nowhere near being self-sufficient.
Their only realistic option they have is to go knock on Russia's door to try and gain leverage, as they are doing. Bigger shit is about to go down and Greece, as well as any other country, should not be locking themselves into anything they cannot walk out of at a moment's notice.
This thread just underscores it is way past time to go Galt and watch people learn lifes lessons the hard way........on their own dime. Life is too short not to enjoy.
What a stupid article. The debt has been created by bailing out the failed banks and allowing the rich to free ride the system by not paying and/or avoiding tax. Add to this unfunded wars and lashings of corporate welfare. It is the fictious capitalist system that has failed as it has morphed into a system where the banks and corporations own the resources of the state.
Stupid f*ck you missed the point: - capitalism vs socialism - individual vs the masses.
With all the historical lessons, idiots still confused how society should be organized.
this is a case where the comments are much more interesting and entertaining than the short, relatively insightless article.
Is the 'free market Capitalism' really a free market when they shut down trading whenever its advantageous to do so? Is Free Market Capitalism theoretically real if all markets are rigged, fixed, and nakedly shorted? Are we blind to the reality of the term 'free market capitalism'?
Who on Z/H believes this 'free market capitalism' tripe?
Can't have free markets without honest money / honest exchange.
We saw what unbridled capitalism gave us in 2008. It wasn't pretty.
2008 wasn't unbridled capitalism...
So long as the Fed exists there is no capitalism. They rig the most important market in the world - the price of capital.
After Clinton and Greenspan annuled Glass-Steagal it became a feeding frenzy for the banks. Cause the FED is in bed with these banks.
it was the whitest of blacks that year or was it the blackest of whites.
sure we have unbridled capitalism in the USA in 2008. maybe 1808.
There is no such thing as a free market cause some are more free than others. Unrestricted capitalism leads eventually to monopolism and corporate fascism. True free market capitalism does not bail out banks that made bad investments (as in Greeceor in the US after Lehmann) by tax payers. Adam Smith already recognized that and called for government regulation to make sure that there would not be any of that.
Is there a single non-socialist "government" in existence today? Isn't the very nature of the State socialistic in the extreme?
So it's true; Socialism does work. Right up until you run-out of "Other" peoples money. Weird.
Sweden? Failure? hahahahaha
Enjoy Alabama dipshit.
no one expects those born yesterday to know the economic history of sweden, but you could read at least wikipedia before commenting.
Rogue capitalism works right up until you run out of future generations' money.
I do not believe that pure capitalist or socialist nations do exist today, except perhaps for Cuba and North Corea. There are countries that are socialist in many ways and function very well, like Sweden annd most of the Nordern European countries. I think that it depends more on the particular culture of the people and in their consciosness of being part of a homogeneus group where they share common objectives. The pure capitalistic society places profit as the main measure of success and the accumulation of money as its final objective. This, at the extreme, can lead to abuse by one group on others, corruption is often the result in the excessive quest for mney and power. Because of human nature pure capitalism will never exist in the same way as pure comunism will never exist, they both end up in falure.
When I see a bunch of fucking socialists, I just see a herd of sheep waiting for me to shear them.
dumbest fucking cunts on the planet are socialists and deserve being shorn/
Fuck them all at your pleasure
I despise the people who use the label "socialism" in ways that have nothing to do with either the dictionary definition, nor the social facts. However, I can understand the ulterior reasons for such deliberate misrepresentations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
That has never existed, and it could never actually exist, because what actually controls civilization is the application of the principles and methods of organized crime. What people seem to be calling "socialism" are mostly the relatively superficial ways that the governments appear to be redistributing what is produced to those who do not apparently produce. However, those who focus upon the poorer people who benefit from that tend to deliberately ignore the more significant ways that the richest are much more massively subsidized by the governments than the poorest are!
That kind of "socialism" is NOT based on social ownership of the means of production, which are overwhelmingly still privately owned. There is NOT co-operative management of the economy, but rather runaway governmental corruptions, proportional more to the funding of the political processes being influenced by the special interests who make the largest financial contributions to the politicians, rather than proportional to the size of the public groups who are more obviously being subsidized by government actions. The systems of debt slavery and warfare based on deceits always orders of magnitude bigger than the welfare systems. Indeed, by far the greater subsidizations done by governments benefit the wealthy, who dominate the funding of politics, than the poor, who play an insignificant role in the funding of the political processes.
However, I believe I can understand how and why people want to promote oversimplified bullshit views, using various political labels that have little to do with their dictionary definitions, nor the real social facts, because to not do that drives one to face the ways that human beings operate as entropic pumps of energy flows, which most match the principles and methods of organized crime. That is the only actually existing political system: ORGANIZED CRIME. All of the other old-fashioned religions and ideologies are ways to conceal that basic fact. All of the various labels that most people use to discuss political economy systems are designed to conceal and distort the social facts, rather than reveal and consider those facts through perspectives that assess their proper proportions.
INTENSE PARADOXES abound that human civilization actually operates according to the applications of the methods of organized crime, whose successes result in that core of organized crime being surrounded by layers of controlled opposition groups. The established systems are due to the triumphs of organized crime, which end up appearing to be opposed by groups that they also have controlled, so that all of the discussions of political economy end up being layer after layer of bullshit, burying the basics, which are that basic human energy systems most match those of organized crime. Those basic social facts have been deliberately distorted as much as possible due to the biggest forms of organized crime being governments, which end up being controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals, as operated by the best available professional liars and immaculate hypocrites.
The label "socialism" is routinely repeated on Zero Hedge in ways that have nothing to do with its dictionary definition, nor the social facts. However, that never makes any difference to those who continue to spout that bullshit anyway, because they continue to have their own agenda for doing so, due to the ways that they have adapted to fit into the established systems of organized crime, surrounded by controlled opposition groups. Much of the stupidest material published on Zero Hedge is due to people not wanting to understand general energy systems, or wanting to misunderstand those in the most absurdly backward ways possible. Therefore, articles that discuss the limits of energy resources, or the limits to waste disposal, which come from and return to the environment, tend to provoke many of the stupidest comments.
Civilization has actually been based on being able to back up lies with violence for a long, long time, which systems have been able to develop at an exponential rate due to progress in physical sciences. However, that is deliberately prevented from happening with respect to political science, since the political economy which became based upon backing up legalized lies with legalized violence does NOT want to admit and address the ways that civilization does, and must necessarily, operate through ENFORCING FRAUDS. Those are the systems that actually exist, while all of the other typical labels for how political economy operates are integrated facets of those enforced frauds, which are designed to conceal, and thereby continue to enable to those enforced frauds to continue.
Human beings and civilizations are pumping their CONTRADICTIONS UP & UP, that progress in physical science understanding general energy systems better and better, BUT, that is NOT ALLOWED in political science, due to that requiring the admission of how and why human energy systems necessarily match those of organized crime, whereby the best organized criminals are able to promote the dominant social stories that they are not doing that, and also are able to also able to dominate the controlled opposition, which promotes that same basic bullshit that nobody should do that, whereas everyone necessarily is doing that ... while those who are the best at doing that are the most able to get away with pretending that they are not doing that, and most able to make sure that they control their apparent opposition, so that they can continue to most successfully do that.
In order to have more rational discussion of political economy, we would have to recognize how and why most of the labels, like "socialism" are most routinely used in ways which have nothing in common with either their dictionary definitions, nor the actual social facts. However, any such attempt at becoming more rational contradicts the history of successful warfare being based on backing up deceits with destruction, and successful finance being based on enforcing frauds, which requires the paradoxical applications of human intelligence to primarily be to become better at being dishonest and backing that up with violence, and/or requires human intelligence to be neutralized by adapting to accept living inside of worlds controlled by lies and violence, in ways that deliberately do not challenge or discuss that those are lies. Hence, the entire political economy is now based upon a public "money" supply created out of nothing as debts by privately controlled banks, which frauds are enforced by governments, while those basic social facts are deliberately ignored and disregarded as much as possible within the mainstream of the society that is based upon doing that!
All human beings live through systems of organized lies, operating robberies, which are in dynamic equilibria with each other. INTENSE PARADOXES abound due to the ways that the best organized systems of lies, operating robberies, are able to publicly present themselves as not being that, and are able to get way with doing that, due to the long history of how they could persistently back up their lies with violence, so that their lies gradually became the dominate social stories, since those best organized gangs of criminals were able to thereby also control their opposition. Pretty well all of the public significant religions and ideologies manifest at that kind of controlled opposition.
In those ways, it makes perverse sense that it is so common for so many people to deliberately misuse labels like "socialism" and for it to be so extremely wide-spread for people to deliberately distort more scientific overviews of how human energy systems are situated inside natural energy systems. In that context, the development of the industrial revolutions has driven INCREASINGLY INTENSE PARADOXES, that progress in understanding general energy systems has been deliberately obstructed and sabotaged when those methods were tentatively applied to better understand human energy systems.
That is why another recently republished article on Zero Hedge, What Greece, Cyprus, And Puerto Rico Have In Common, provoked so many stupid comments. Similarly, the article above has an EXTREMELY STUPID TITLE: Greece Illustrates 150 Years Of Socialist Failure In Europe. There has never been anything remotely like the dictionary definition of "socialism" existing anywhere in Europe during the last 150 years. Rather, what has actually existed is that the international bankers, as the biggest gangsters, or the banksters, have been dominating all of the political events in Europe during that time, while advancing their agenda of debt slavery through wars based on deceits.
In general, there are TWO ERRORS, the FIRST is to not perceive that human civilizations actually operate according to the principles and methods of organized crime, and SECOND to not perceive that that must necessarily be so because organized crime methods best match the ways that human energy systems had to operate. On Zero Hedge, most of the articles and comments are relatively intelligent when presenting an analysis of the FIRST set of social facts, regarding the problems caused by the banksters dominating the political economy. However, pretty well everything else continues to drown in the same old-fashioned bullshit regarding those problems. Whenever it comes to understanding human beings and civilizations better as manifestations of general energy systems, inside the context of the relatively objective environmental energy systems, the typical content published on Zero Hedge becomes stupid and stupider!
Normally ZH does not publish such total BS. Blaming socialism for the problem makes about as much sense as blaming Poseidon, it has nothing to do with the problem. What we are watching is the inevitable result of the power to create money being commandeered by an evil group of private bankers, intent on stripping the general public of all their wealth.
Funny how they don't call socialism zionism when Zionist bankers are running the show taking all the risks and profits with the public treasury and none of the liability.
Puh-leeze.That guy is clueless about either history or word definitions.
Reading this is like seeing a tiger being called a dolphin in all seriousness by a dude who honestly doesn't know the difference between both, but thinks he can teach everyone.
1) There is NO socialism in Europe, let alone in the EU. What this fool is talking about, I have no idea but he's messed up alright. Waw.
Because something is called Socialism doesn't mean it is. It only means they want left-wing voters to vote for them. It's like Hillary calling herself something different from the Republicans. Anyone sees a difference? Republicans, Democrats are a phony choice between two wings of the same business party. The same happens in Europe.
2) The Greeks can't pay their debt because they are lazy commies? What about the USA? Is the US debt unsustainable because of those commies at its top? If the dollar wasn't the world reserve currency and if the debt ceiling couldn't be raised every so often like it is, the USA would have defaulted a long time ago.
Along with its deregulated free market economy, "invisible hand" and liberty.
The tragedy of Europe has US-style NEOLIBERALISM at its core. Same causes, same effects: soaring sovereign debts.
Mises institute? For Heaven's sake, who are these dudes? How can anyone be so confused?