[QUOTE="Cow4ever"]
[QUOTE="theone86"]
Wow, thank you for telling me what I know, I've been trying for so long to figure out what I know, and I'm glad someone finally cleared that up for me.
Actually, there are a lot of reasons why people were standing in bread lines, one of them being a devalued currency, which again can be traced back in part to unsustainable military escalation. Another reason is corruption of the beaurocracy, which again was an effect of Vanguardism/Stalinism, and again neither one owns a copyright on socialism. Communism also is not synonymous with planned economies, and is not as interchangable with socialism as you are making it out to be.
theone86
Planned economies leads to bread lines and shortages and surpluses in general. Supply and demand are way to complicated and unpredictable to be planned by men. And communism leads to planned economies since all means of production are state owned.And I'd be happy if you can tell me the difference of socialism and communism
Whoa, what a mess, where to begin. Capitalist economies lead to shortages and surpluses, the natural progression for a capitalist economy expressed as a wave goes from extremely high to extrmely low. That's the whole basis of Keynesian economics, is that economic planning can reduce the height and depth of the waves (fewer booms and fewer busts). Bread lines have also been fairly common in every capitalist society, there are points in U.S. history where people broke into stores and stole basic food supplies because of periodic downturns in the economy.
In general, yes, supply and demand are too complicated. In specific situations, supply and demand are inadequte to achieving certain goals and therefore must be shirked in favor of planning.
Communism is vague and hard to define. I'll define it in two ways, in the same manner as socialism, allowing for the fact that there is a lot of grey area. One, communism is a classless economy ruled primarily through democratic means. Two, communism is any system which operates on communal ownership of property, such as council communism (ownership of a company by its employees). Socialism is the ownership of the means of production by the government, or the ownership of certain means of production by the government (although this latter definition can be debated).
Socialism was popularized by governments who believed socialism to be a way to usher in a communist society. If the government owned the means of production, their thinking goes, then labor disputes would become a thing of the past. Over time people could begin to focus more on doing work they enjoyed rather than simply doing a certain job because they had to, and this would eventually lead to a society where the means of production were no longer owned by the government but by everyone, and where work would be facilitated through the mantra of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
Further, Vanguardism and Stalinism are two schools of socialist though. Early socialists were typically revolutionary or democratic, that is they believed in a toppling of capitalist systems either by revolution or democracy, both of which required mass action. Lenin believed that waiting for mass action was foolish, most people needed to follow and therefore needed to be led as well. He believed that a socialist revolution must be led by a party of elite communist intellectuals best suited to manage the country, a vanguard party. Stalinism is an evolution of this idea, though some might call it a bastardization. Stalin devised the cult of personality, saying that instead of a vanguard party socialist countries needed an adept leader whom people followed implicitly. Many modern day socialist countries are based on this idea, including North Korea, Gaddafi-controlled Libya, and Mao-controlled China. Most of these also show little inclination towards communist principles such as destroying class systems, and are little more than a pretext for dictatorship.
No they don't. Only external forces creates surpluses and shortages, not the economy itself. If it did it'll adjusts itself. If there is a shortage prices would rise and more producers would enter the market eventually and in case of surplus the opposite. In a planned economy shortage and surplus occurs because it wasn't planned correctly. No producers will enter to enter to satisfy increasing demand for example. This is planned for a long time in advance so there's nothing to do until it's too late. But yes sometimes government interventions are necessary. For example if there's a war or if there is a chance of monopoly. But with planned economy the government has monopoly on the whole economy. Well though it's obvious you know more than me. Too much information to understand. All I can say is Sweden is definitely nothing of that. A long time ago it maybe had more similarities.
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