Socialist = Bad. Why?

[Kane Starkiller]

Because a company that's liquidated removes jobs from the market. End of story. And there is absolutely no guarantee that those jobs will be replaced by new ones. Where as a company that's running at a loss, failing and basically struggling on life support is still providing jobs regardless. From the perspective of a worker the only thing that matters is that the wages keep coming. What happens beyond that in the corporate structure is irrelevant.

How does it remove the jobs from the market? In your example the owner decided to liquidate a successful company because he thinks he can make more money from renting the space or whatever. Fine, another company will expand to fill the gap left by the exit of the former company and then they will need workers. Again you fail to provide a response: how will getting a job be more difficult than if they lost the job through criminal mismanagement of public companies?
In fact your response proves my point: employees, as people who do not own the company, don't care how healthy the company is and whether there is any future for it as long as wages keep coming. Precisely my point regarding managers of public companies vs owners of medium and small companies.

[Purple]

How does it remove the jobs from the market? In your example the owner decided to liquidate a successful company because he thinks he can make more money from renting the space or whatever. Fine, another company will expand to fill the gap left by the exit of the former company and then they will need workers.

Why are you so certain of this? Why do you feel that someone else must suddenly appear out of nowhere to fill said gap? Provide your reasoning.

Not that it matters anyway because your reasoning ignores one important fact.
Say we assume you are right and the gap is filled. What's stopping said gap from being filled on the other side of the planet by a factory in China or France or what ever that decides it just needs to hire local people to produce more to fill said gap? The gap is formed as you predicted and filled as you predicted. But the original workers are still out of a job.
Or do you expect the workers to just move to China?

Again you fail to provide a response: how will getting a job be more difficult than if they lost the job through criminal mismanagement of public companies?

It is not, and I newer claimed that it was. That was all you not understanding what I wrote. What matters is not loosing the job to begin with.

In fact your response proves my point: employees, as people who do not own the company, don't care how healthy the company is and whether there is any future for it as long as wages keep coming. Precisely my point regarding managers of public companies vs owners of medium and small companies.

You don't get this, do you? Let me start from the beginning. The employee does not and should not need to give a fuck about how the company works. And in capitalism the employer does not and should not give a fuck about it either. Both only care about earning money. Thus, with private ownership employers are free to fuck employees out of a job all day just as long as it makes economic sense for the employer. And the employee has no say in it. Meanwhile state or pubic ownership you can rely on the fact that the people in charge of choosing if your job keeps existing are accountable directly to you due to the political pressure you can exert as opposed to their own economic interests. Their reelection relies entirely on you keeping that job. And thus it is in their interest that you do.

One system values and emphasizes productivity and economic efficiency whilst the other focuses on keeping people fed.

[K. A. Pital]

You said destroy the company. Selling the company outright and selling the companies assets piecemeal but in a way that still nets you more money than you could reasonably get within several years is not destroying the company in a way "destroy" is usually understood in the context.

Selling the assets and firing the people is generally the end of a business and sure as hell it is the end of employment for those who work there. And there are plenty of fully rational - and that also means financially rational - reasons to end a business, despite what you say.

In your example the owner decided to liquidate a successful company because he thinks he can make more money from renting the space or whatever. Fine, another company will expand to fill the gap...

Why? What is the reason? It may be that this company was only successful due to the personal contacts of this businessman. How will some other guy in another field instantly 'fill the gap'? Would he even know there is a 'gap'? Besides, the businesses can be profitable for decades, sometimes centuries, and then start operating at a loss. Which, in anyone's book, is a good time for asset reconfiguration. If you accumulated a sizeable capital already and you see changes in the market, why not react before its too late? This is why people often liquidate even while the company is marginally profitable: they value their own effort more than the tiny profit generated, they understand well enough that the profit can turn into a loss if they push on, and they are willing to enjoy the amassed wealth before they get old. Your businessmen are drones. Mine are people.

Therefore the employees who lost their jobs will find another job easier.

How about you get fired first because some person sensibly values his comfort more than your job security, you filthy motherfucker, and then I'll see you get another job easier. Besides, I heard many small businesses often fill very small niches, where they are shielded from competition by standartized megacorporation goods. Which means, the employees are usually having skills which have only limited usefullness for other jobs. And you know what this means? The fired people usually have to get employed for a lower wage or even stay unemployed. Or even change the city of residence to find another job that has the rare skill needs which they happen to possess.

See? That's how life really is. What you are saying is just a fucking worthless mirage meant to lure fools into a sense of complacency and trust in the 'good boss'. The boss is never good. The boss is a motherfucker who can destroy your whole life just because he wants something else tomorrow, something for which you are no longer necessary. That is who the bosses are, and that is also who you are because you seem to propagate lies which only serve their interests.

[PKRudeBoy]

Thing is, it's not too common for a profitable company to be liquidated like that. Most times the company will just be sold to a new owner and business as usual goes on. It tends to be the struggling companies that get broken down into pieces.

[Knife]

Coming in a bit late, but a good way to look at practical socialism is a competing market idea from capitalism. Not an opposite though, but a competing. Capitalism is the needs of the individual over the group and socialism is the needs of the group over the individual, sort of speak.

Police are inherently a socialist idea, everyone pays for police, but the individual may not every directly benefit from a cop. That individual benefits from a better society with police but not directly. Freeways/roads/highways are inherently socialist. The Individual does not own a chunk of the road, there is not a name plate on a mile stretch in relation to the money he paid for it, but the society directly benefits from it and the individual indirectly benefits by a better society.

Our country's fear of communism goes back further than the cold war. Certain segments of our society have been fighting communist scare since the 20's, more or less because it is a competing system, and perhaps because it would not directly benefit them. But like I said, they are not opposite. They don't cancel each other out. You can obviously have a socialist policy working next to a capitalist policy just fine.

Edited for clarity.

[K. A. Pital]

Thing is, it's not too common for a profitable company to be liquidated like that.

I've seen enough profitable small companies liquidated like that. It is true that larger companies - public ones - don't get liquidated like that because as long as they make a nice profit, the shareholders are happy and there is many of them so it is easy for some to bail out while others keep on going. A small company is more likely to be liquidated on the whims of its sole owner.

[Flagg]

It might even be I just made a bitter joke about the pond scum that rules our society.

Not a joke to me. We should comic book team up.

[ArmorPierce]

I don't think Mike is a nuclear engineer. The rest of your point kinda stands. I'm pretty sure the 'rich' people he is referring to though are the 1-10%ers that hold most of the country's wealth. Not the guy with a really well paying job that worked for it. He's talking about people who make money by having money.

His father is a nuclear engineer. I think that Mike is a mechanical engineer.

but yeah a couple generations of engineers in your family pretty certainly puts you into upper middle class.

[Havok]

Coming in a bit late, but a good way to look at practical socialism is a competing market idea from capitalism. Not an opposite though, but a competing. Capitalism is the needs of the individual over the group and socialism is the needs of the group over the individual, sort of speak.

Knife, are you telling me that this can all be explained via Kirk and Spock?

Police are inherently a socialist idea, everyone pays for police, but the individual may not every directly benefit from a cop. That individual benefits from a better society with police but not directly. Freeways/roads/highways are inherently socialist. The Individual does not own a chunk of the road, there is not a name plate on a mile stretch in relation to the money he paid for it, but the society directly benefits from it and the individual indirectly benefits by a better society.

This is an awesome, direct, and wholly understandable to idiots way of explaining this. Thank you.

[Edi]

It should also be noted that these days anything related to social democracy or anything at all that involves the government doing anything (instead of just handing it for predatory private businesses) is considered "socialist" in the US by the right wing.

In the context of US political discourse, socialism is a word that has lost any meaning other than being used to scare people who are too stupid to think for themselves to vote Republican, against their own economic interests for the most part.

[Knife]

Knife, are you telling me that this can all be explained via Kirk and Spock?

Oddly enough, yes.

This is an awesome, direct, and wholly understandable to idiots way of explaining this. Thank you.

No problem.