Capitalism - the Ultimate Religion

[ChromodynamicGirl]

I live in a socialist country and i'm not a slave to the government... in fact it protects me from abusive corporations, and helps the people that can't help themselves(and let some game the system...)

Ahhh...thanks for adding yourself to my ignore list. As long as you people keep saying crazy bullshit, it's so easy to eliminate you.

[Skipper]

Nah that's capitalism, socialism makes higher people to pay for low people

No, dumbass, socialism makes everyone a slave to the government. This isn't fucking Candyland we live in.

Not necessarily.

Edit: Also, I fail to see how Capitalism is a religion.

[Rhizomorph13]

I want to go to the peanut brittle house.

[ib.me.ub]

I live in a socialist country and i'm not a slave to the government... in fact it protects me from abusive corporations, and helps the people that can't help themselves(and let some game the system...)

Don't worry, its just how their system teaches them about other systems that arn't the same as their own.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

I live in a socialist country and i'm not a slave to the government... in fact it protects me from abusive corporations, and helps the people that can't help themselves(and let some game the system...)

Really? I didn''t know there were any.(seriously) Which country is that?

[Amethyst]

Do you want a government telling you that you HAVE to be in a certain career all your life, regardless if you enjoy it or you're good at it? That's what Communist governments do. They say "you have to be a brick layer" and that's what you are. If that isn't authoritation, I don't know what is. I want a choice in what I do for a living. I want to be able to change jobs if I have a crappy boss, or careers if I decide to do something else for a living.

Do you want a government telling you that you MUST give ALL of your money to everyone else? In Communism, you don't get to pick a charity. You HAVE to get your wealth redistributed. If that isn't authoritation, I don't know what is. I don't want to be working at Walmart at age 80. I want to actually retire someday. The government redistributing everything I own, would make that not possible. And I don't want to be working at age 80. But if I have to work at age 80, I want a choice in what I can do to make money.

Communists also kill people who disagree with them. They also kill people based on a lot of other criteria that has nothing to do with whether a person ever actually committed a crime. Do you really want that? My guess is no.

In the U.S., I could actually see Atheists as one group of people being targeted by the government to be killed, if a totalitarian state actually took over. Non-believers are unpopular here. I don't want a totalitarian government. I want a free society.

[Ace Otana]

Try not to confuse socialism with communism. Socialism doesn't always mean communism. There is such a thing as democratic socialism, which does support human rights and freedom like any western nation.
I'm not with capitalism, nor am I fully with socialism and I'm dead against communism. I like some ideas of socialism but not all of it. I like the idea where everyone puts money into a system that helps everyone.
I lust for social equality, where everyone can get it whether they be rich or poor.

[Ashendant]

I live in Portugal and about half of europe(or the whole thing) follows socialism, which i think it's the middle ground between capitalism and communism

[Anomalocaris]

Some factual corrections:

Do you want a government telling you that you HAVE to be in a certain career all your life, regardless if you enjoy it or you're good at it? That's what Communist governments do. They say "you have to be a brick layer" and that's what you are. If that isn't authoritation, I don't know what is. I want a choice in what I do for a living. I want to be able to change jobs if I have a crappy boss, or careers if I decide to do something else for a living.

That was never strictly true in any soviet bloc state or china. In Cambodia, maybe, but combodian's atavistic agrarian communism is the complete reverse of notional fully industrialized Marxist state envisioned by communists elsewhere. In china today it is totally untrue.

Do you want a government telling you that you MUST give ALL of your money to everyone else? In Communism, you don't get to pick a charity. You HAVE to get your wealth redistributed. If that isn't authoritation, I don't know what is. I don't want to be working at Walmart at age 80. I want to actually retire someday. The government redistributing everything I own, would make that not possible. And I don't want to be working at age 80. But if I have to work at age 80, I want a choice in what I can do to make money.

Giving all your money to everyone else means you also get a share of all of everyone else's money, so relationship to working at 80 is not clear. In any case, it would be a systemic problem only if you think your contribution was of greater value than your what you got back. Otherwise you'd be happy with the windfall.

The soviet bloc communist states do in fact Give you back far more then the average share of money and perks if your skills and services are highly value, such as if you are a missile engineer, nuclear physicist, or olympic gymnast. In that case your pay can be 100 times average national salary and your perks are many, like cars, chauffeur, gated community living, subsidized luxury goods, even shopping trips abroad, etc.

Retirement benefits are usually excellent relative to general standard of living for most. You are not expected to work at 80. Communism mostly were not deficient in providing good social services relative to available standard of living, nor was it deficient in rewarding it's subjects for skills and services it value.

Where communism fell short in a critical way was in identifying which skills to value, and raising the general standards of living. It's the gap in standard of living with the west that ultimately discredited the soviet union in the eyes of it's citizens, not the burden of its collectivism pre se.

Communists also kill people who disagree with them. They also kill people based on a lot of other criteria that has nothing to do with whether a person ever actually committed a crime. Do you really want that? My guess is no.

Communists think disagreeing with them is a crime. This is hardly unique to communists. Religious and moral conservatives think disagreeing with them ought to be a crime.

[Existentialist]

The guy doesn't believe that people should use standardised definitions; his entire purpose here is to abuse and misuse language.

Please note it is incorrect to say I don't believe that people should use standardised definitions. I am not prescriptive about what definitions people use, because I believe that when people are struggling to express their meaning, freedom of expression is essential. As it happens, I have used standardised definitions throughout this thread. It is also incorrect to say that my "entire purpose here is to abuse and misuse language". My purpose is to debate atheism and find out more about it.

If you would like to actually make a positive contribution to this thread, rather than repeatedly calling into question my right to debate in it, you could do worse than to reply to the question I posed to you at the bottom of Post 91. This is pertinent to your own use of dictionaries where you appear to have decided that I cannot use one word because it is not included in the definition of another word.

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I live in Portugal and about half of europe(or the whole thing) follows socialism, which i think it's the middle ground between capitalism and communism

I would agree that Portugal is a social democracy. This is a variant of capitalism, I wouldn't call it "middle ground" between capitalism and communism, I would say it is 1 step an a 1,000-step journey away from capitalism.

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So capitalism is a religion, atheism is a religion, communism is a religion, science is a religion, blah, blah, blah. I eat cereals in the morning. That MUST be a religion!

I suspect you have not read the thread. Capitalism is a religion, atheism isn't, communism does appear to be like one, science not. Please explain what you mean by blah, blah, blah as I think it's slightly ironic that you use this expression and then suggest that I am misusing and abusing the language. The fact that you eat cereals in the morning doesn't to my mind make that activity a religion, in fact it is so trivial I suspect you are attempting to ridicule the thread (you wouldn't be the first!) However by all means come back to me if you wish to argue genuinely that eating cereals in the morning is a religion, I would not want to stamp out you freedom to argue this.