What are your thoughts on communism -negative and positive?

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FWIW two things Chomsky and Amartya Sen neglect are human nature and desire something Friedman always takes into account in his models:

This clip should be helpful in not only understanding people but business:

 
Nicene said:
Your the one defending communism, if it walks like a duck
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Aw you didn’t even ask me my political opinions. Think that’s a bit unfair.

As for Milton Friedman clips, no thanks. Familiar with his work and the libertarian critique of it.
 
Nicene said:
…something Friedman always takes into account in his models
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I would also recommend Steve Keen’s trenchant criticism of Friedman’s love of models in his classic work Debunking Economics. Keen was one of the few economists who saw the recession of 2007 coming and accurately predicted it.
 
You do realize predicting trends and understanding HOW economics work are two very different things, right?
 
Some choice quotes from Dorothy Day, Servant of God (fully admitting I took these from Wikipedia; I don’t have the energy to go plodding through her works on the Catholic Worker website):

“We stand at the present time with the Communists, who are also opposing war… The Sermon on the Mount is our Christian manifesto.”

“We need to change the system. We need to overthrow, not the government, as the authorities are always accusing the Communists ‘of conspiring to teach [us] to do,’ but this rotten, decadent, putrid industrial capitalist system which breeds such suffering in the whited sepulcher of New York.”
 
Nicene said:
Capitalists don’t tend to execute their opponents, nor jail and execute dissenters. We have free speech.
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Rendition and torture, Guantanamo, drone strikes, torture and electrocution in Iraq, hanging of Saddam, massacre of innocent in Vietnam, setting children on fire in Vietnam? What free speech did these children have as they were set on fire with napalm by the capitalist sympathizers in Vietnam?
 
So those were our opponents in the senate and house, interesting. I thought they were foreign enemies. Oh well my bad. Glad to be corrected
 
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Nicene said:
So those were our opponents in the senate and house, interesting. I thought they were foreign enemies. Oh well my bad. Glad to be corrected
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Any comment on the Pope calling communists closet Christians? The Dorothy Day quotes?
 
And here you put such credibility on being a Nobel prize winner, I guess except in Friedman’s case. Interesting
 
Nicene said:
And here you put such credibility on being a Nobel prize winner, I guess except in Friedman’s case. Interesting
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Um, okay. Hayek was a Nobel Prize winner too. I’m allowed my opinions.
 
And was her order adhering to Catholic doctrine. You are implying she was. Further the sermon on the mount doesn’t address economics, so yeah there’s that. As an anarchist ( even after her conversion) Catholic social reaching? Is communism Catholic social teaching, or was she just plain wrong?
 
“It has been said many times and my response has always been that, if anything, it is the communists who think like Christians . Christ spoke of a society where the poor, the weak and the marginalized have the right to decide. Not demagogues, not Barabbas, but the people, the poor, whether they have faith in a transcendent God or not. It is they who must help to achieve equality and freedom.”

Guess who said that?
 
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hrmm which Popes to believe:
Pope Pius:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/aas/index_en.htm

The document, as published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis , bears the date July 1, 1949 and the heading Decretum (Decree), and is presented in the form of a dubium : that is, in question-and-answer format. It presents four questions, together with the Holy Office’s replies: (1) Is it licit to join or show favor to Communist parties? (2) Is it licit to publish, distribute, or read publications that support Communist doctrine or activity, or to write for them? (3) May Christians who knowingly and freely commit the acts in parts 1 and 2 be given the sacraments? (4) Do Christians who profess, defend or promote materialistic Communist doctrine incur the penalty of excommunication as apostates from the Christian faith, with the penalty reserved so that it may only be lifted by the Holy See?

The fourth question is answered yes in the encyclical.

and Pope Leo:

http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-x...nts/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html

so whom to believe, one who makes a mike comment in a personal opinion or two Popes who write encyclicals against it as anti catholic, one with the penalty of excommunication.
 
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You brought both topics up, should the second one go unanswered by the church’s official stance? Or should it be silent and pretend it’s not the doctrine of the church.
On the first one, again you brought it up, I’m sorry that you believe no one should put up the opposing view of economists. (hints of suppression of speech in communist states}
 
Nicene said:
(hints of suppression of speech in communist states}
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So now I’m a stalinist I suppose. Good grief I’m losing track of how many things I’m supposed to be on here.

All without asking what I even believe. How uncharitable.
 
I’m not sure you keep throwing out curve balls like Day in opposition to war as in an economic topic. So I’m never sure where you are trying to throw the next straw man up to avoid the topic of communist economics being against catholic teaching. Again thee are encyclicals on this as official teaching, no matter how much you wish they weren’t.

As for the economists at least I put up a guy who went from kensyianism to moneterism {not defending capitalism per se, but its closest model is capitalism) vs putting up socialist economists.
 
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