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Zoltan_Cobalt
Guest
Please don’t go away…
My attempts at Irish humor fails sometimes. I am Hungarian. My wife is Irish. After 48 years. when she is serious I think she is joking. When joking I take her seriously…
Is it ludicrous to think that the world will remain Capitalistic?
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My attempts at Irish humor fails sometimes. I am Hungarian. My wife is Irish. After 48 years. when she is serious I think she is joking. When joking I take her seriously…
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Ridgerunner
Guest
I think this overstates it, or is at least too broad a statement. After all, Australia, and to a lesser extent the U.S. was populated by people from British debtors’ prisons. On the eve of the American Revolution (which was technically a good decade and a half into the Industrial Revolution in England) American colonists were vastly wealthier on average than was the average Brit in England, notwithstanding the much greater industrialization of Britain at the time. Certainly, the major capitalists in Britain were wealthier than the comparable level in America, but on average, it was far from true.
In the early 19th Century in Britain, the lot of the lower classes was terrible. Toward the end of that century, it improved greatly, but still didn’t equal that of Americans, most of whom were still farmers.
But there was definitely a lot of capital in Britain looking for a place to grow. That’s why Brits financed nearly every railroad in the U.S. in the 19th Century, bought enormous tracts of land and had all kinds of enterprises here. To this very day, Brit owned assets in the U.S. exceed those of every other foreign nationality combined. We just don’t notice it because it has always been around and, after all, their companies all have English names, not German or Swedish or Japanese names.
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nmgauss
Guest
Has anybody ever though about what it is like to operate your own farm or run your own business?
One hundred years ago, the United States had millions of individual farmers, who did well in good years and suffered in bad years. Grandparents on my father’s and mother’s side had their own small farms. Neither farm brought in enough money to support the family. Were they justified in applying for help from the government during downturns? Perhaps they were, but in those days government help was almost non-existent. So did my mother’s family or father’s family starve to death? No Way?
My father’s parents worked in seasonal jobs for maybe twenty-five to fifty cents an hour in fruit packing houses to make ends meet. My father’s older brothers worked on the farm and worked as farm hands on neighboring farms to help support the family.
In my mother’s family where her father died when my mother was only 18 months old, there were twelve mouths to feed. My grandmother remarried to a crippled farmhand, and he did limited work. Did anyone starve to death? Again, no way. The older kids did most of the work, and several got jobs bringing in a few dollars a week. Nobody suffered from lack of food, there was a roof over their heads, and they had plenty to occupy their time taking care of the younger kids, helping around the house, and doing daily chores taking care of the livestock.
Was this unfair, since people in town who worked in offices and retail stores had steady income? Why didn’t they voluntarily donate to those poor people on the farm? My devout Catholic grandmother invited priests to Sunday dinners and fed them better than her own family. Why were the priests better than her own children? Why couldn’t the priests donate to my grandmother rather than the other way around?
One hundred years ago, the United States had millions of individual farmers, who did well in good years and suffered in bad years. Grandparents on my father’s and mother’s side had their own small farms. Neither farm brought in enough money to support the family. Were they justified in applying for help from the government during downturns? Perhaps they were, but in those days government help was almost non-existent. So did my mother’s family or father’s family starve to death? No Way?
My father’s parents worked in seasonal jobs for maybe twenty-five to fifty cents an hour in fruit packing houses to make ends meet. My father’s older brothers worked on the farm and worked as farm hands on neighboring farms to help support the family.
In my mother’s family where her father died when my mother was only 18 months old, there were twelve mouths to feed. My grandmother remarried to a crippled farmhand, and he did limited work. Did anyone starve to death? Again, no way. The older kids did most of the work, and several got jobs bringing in a few dollars a week. Nobody suffered from lack of food, there was a roof over their heads, and they had plenty to occupy their time taking care of the younger kids, helping around the house, and doing daily chores taking care of the livestock.
Was this unfair, since people in town who worked in offices and retail stores had steady income? Why didn’t they voluntarily donate to those poor people on the farm? My devout Catholic grandmother invited priests to Sunday dinners and fed them better than her own family. Why were the priests better than her own children? Why couldn’t the priests donate to my grandmother rather than the other way around?
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Catolico65
Guest
I don’t have to think my friend, I live in the Dominican Republic and have a friend who works in the Dominican Consulate in Havana. If the DR is considered Third World then Cuba has to be Fifth World. Not only that I lived in Florida for many years and have met many native born Cubans.
As far as Venezuela goes, we are seeing the real fruits of socialism.
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Catolico65
Guest
You are right, the world will convert to godless socialism and in fact already has started and was predicted in Revelation. We Christians need to pray to God for Him to spare us from this “error” as the Virgin Mary calls it.
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Robert_Sock
Guest
Why does socialism need to be godless?
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Catolico65
Guest
Why did the Virgin Mary say it is an error?
Not only do we have the Blessed Virgin Mary as source in this matter we have history, and it is clear, no other system has been responsible for more deaths in recent history.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
Quite possibly some of those priests didn’t have much themselves. If one goes into an average priest’s house or apartment today, one will usually be surprised at how sparse it is. Perhaps the greatest such shock I had was once when I went into a Jesuit residence. Indeed, they had a very nice “public area”, but the individual Jesuits’ rooms were like something one would expect Trappists to have. Lots of books, but not much of anything else.
My own grandmother, a widow for decades, sometimes invited priests for dinner. She fed them the same as she did us. The difference, I suspect, is that we ate well every time we were there, while the priests’ meals fell off drastically when they weren’t there. She cared about us and she cared about the priests too. One needs to remember that in older times, a great deal of the quality and quantity of the meal depended more on labor than it did on money. My grandmother was an exceedingly energetic type and made incredible meals out of very basic things. It took a lot of labor, but she was equal to it.
With farms, a lot depended on where and who one was. In my own area (the Ozarks) farmers were really poor when I was a kid…except for those largely Catholic or Lutheran farmers, usually Germans in both cases, who had an eye for the land, and worked like nobody else. If there was a strip of bottom or prairie land among the rocky hills, you could bet the bottom or prairie land belonged to a German Catholic or Lutheran, while the rocky hillsides belonged to the native Scots-Irish. Those people with good farms and ferocious appetites for work always ate well while the natives often depended on game for protein.
Cultures can make a great deal of difference.
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nmgauss
Guest
Vows of poverty are taken by some religious orders. Look at how nuns live in convents? They live in cells, not rooms. So the apparent poverty may be by choice.
.The same holds true for both of my grandmothers. My Lutheran German paternal grandmother used to make her own noodles. My Portuguese maternal grandmother worked very hard, according to the accounts told to me. I have seen her go out into the yard, grab a chicken by the neck and swing it around overhead to kill it, cut off the head to let the blood run out, and then pluck it, gut it, and prepare it for boiling. Then she would make meals containing coives and feijao. Many times I observed her making rag rugs and crocheting doilies. And washing clothes was always on a washboard using water pumped by hand and heated on a wood stove.
The Scots-Irish were immigrants just like the Germans. But they had immigrated from the old country much earlier. Also, Scotland and Ireland are noted more for livestock raising than cultivated farming. This is in contrast to Lutheran Germany, which is mostly flatland and amenable to cropping.
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Robert_Sock
Guest
The socialistic societies of which you speak were not only dictatorships, but were also atheistic. I would have expected your results given either of these factors.
LOVE!
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nmgauss
Guest
Has there ever been a purely socialistic society to your knowledge that was not a dictatorship? Has there ever been a purely socialistic society to your knowledge that did not minimize God?The socialistic societies of which you speak were not only dictatorships, but were also atheistic. I would have expected your results given either of these factors.
LOVE!
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Robert_Sock
Guest
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Ridgerunner
Guest
True. It may be added, however, that the Scots-Irish who migrated from the Appalachians to the Smokies to the Ozarks to the Texas Hill Country were accustomed to hill land and held a belief about healthfulness of living at altitude; a belief that was not without foundation at the time. Of possible passing interest, in the 19th Century the Arkansas River Valley was incredibly rich farmland, but it was miasmic and subject to malaria. Owners brought in laborers from Italy where, it was believed, some immunity from malaria existed among the populace. True or not, the Italians, however, fled at the first opportunity and established communities in the more fertile parts of the northern uplands of the state where some exist to this day.
None of this is to condemn the Scots-Irish who were actually mostly from the English/Scottish border to begin with. They were, for a time, England’s “warrior colonists”. Many were moved to Northern Ireland to quell rebellion there and establish a loyal colony. But it was not so much true “loyalty” as it was having a common enemy. The same thing happened in America. They were encouraged out to the hinterlands because they were fighters. The Scots-Irish in America have a historic respect, if not reverence, for the military still. Many of Britain’s military officers are Scots-Irish. Gen. Montgomery of WWII fame, was one of them. But the relationship with the English was always a bit uneasy even so, which may account for the independent-mindedness of southerners, particularly those in the “mountain south”.
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Catolico65
Guest
With all due respect what I posted aren’t my results.The socialistic societies of which you speak were not only dictatorships, but were also atheistic. I would have expected your results given either of these factors.
LOVE!
My advice to you is to defer to the Blessed Virgin Mary’s advice because she knows more than we do. Furthermore given that socialism is the most violent system as of yet and the fact that the Catholic Church opposes it in it’s more purer form we should not promote it, after all we are good soldiers and try to do as we are told. Paz.
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nmgauss
Guest
Have you ever thought about how they would come about? How would the policy makers, planners and controllers be chosen? How could the populace monitor their performance and decide how to select the most qualified people to run the system and fire the incompetents? How would LOVE be part of the scenario when firing someone? How would LOVE be part of the process of taking from the haves and giving to the havenots? Would corruption be punished with LOVE? How about the do-nothings who have decided not to work?No, but that is no reason to believe that (non-totalitarian socialist non-atheist countries) cannot exist.
LOVE!
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freeRadical
Guest
Stop confusing political systems with economic systems. It doesn’t matter whether the government is a dictatorship or democratically elected. It doesn’t matter whether it’s atheistic or not. Socialism is socialism, and the Catholic Church has condemned it. It has specifically condemned the following:The socialistic societies of which you speak were not only dictatorships, but were also atheistic. I would have expected your results given either of these factors.
LOVE!
A community of goods
State ownership of the means of production
Abolition of private property.
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nmgauss
Guest
Since the Catholic Church owns millions of dollars of property, they would not support having this taken away from them.
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freeRadical
Guest
That’s why I said they condemned the abolition of private property. The Church believes ownership of private property is a natural right of man.
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Zoltan_Cobalt
Guest
Quote:
The Pilgrim colony at Plymouth was established by charter as a collective. The agreement called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well.
They nearly starved!
What Governor William Bradford found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else because there was no personal motivation.
Bradford wrote. “The experience that we had in this common course and condition tried sundry years…that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,”
“For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense, that was thought injustice.”
Bradford scrapped socialism…
“Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. This had very good success, for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.”
Plymouth Colony became bountiful and prospered to the extent that they began trading with the Indians and were able to repay their financial backers in London sooner than expected.
Capitalism/Free Market…the best economic system in the world.
Actually there was a very strong Christian community that tried socialism right here in America…and it failed.No, but that is no reason to believe that they cannot exist.
LOVE!
The Pilgrim colony at Plymouth was established by charter as a collective. The agreement called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well.
They nearly starved!
What Governor William Bradford found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else because there was no personal motivation.
Bradford wrote. “The experience that we had in this common course and condition tried sundry years…that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,”
“For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense, that was thought injustice.”
Bradford scrapped socialism…
“Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. This had very good success, for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.”
Plymouth Colony became bountiful and prospered to the extent that they began trading with the Indians and were able to repay their financial backers in London sooner than expected.
Capitalism/Free Market…the best economic system in the world.
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Brigid34
Guest
What is distributism?
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