[ExI] Japan's young turn to Communist Party ...

Stathis Papaioannou stathisp at gmail.com
Mon Oct 20 11:51:59 UTC 2008


2008/10/20 Techno <neptune at superlink.net>:
> Because socialism does not work.  It's not that it's never been tried in
> practice.  It's been tried close enough and economic theory points to why it
> won't work -- in the same way that physical theory points to why perpetual
> motion doesn't work.

This astonishing statement reminds me of the Marxists' claim that
their theory is "scientific" and therefore *must* prevail. If there is
any empirical evidence to the contrary, well, that must mean the
system has been sabotaged by the capitalists, or you haven't observed
it long enough to see the real trend, or something.

>> They've been in recession or near-recession for 20 years while, if
>> anything, becoming more right wing economically. What does that tell
>> you about laissez-faire capitalism?
>
> What, indeed, does it tell us about "laissez-faire capitalism" or free
> markets?  Not much since Japan is a heavily regulated economy -- not a free
> market.  Part of the reason for its 20 year recession is because it has a
> central bank system and this system has basically kept pumping the money.
> Another reason is the price system is very rigid theory, especially on the
> labor side.  So, instead of allowing the recession to clean up the economy,
> the government has interfered to keep unsustainable firms going.  Further
> socializing Japan's economy won't resolve this problem.  It'll only shift
> more of the costs to either direct taxpayers or everyone else in their
> economy via inflation (which acts as indirect taxation*).

So every success of the Japanese economy was *despite* government
action while every failure was *because* of government action. Must be
so; the dialectic demands it!


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou



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