devil wrote in message ...
On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 00:44:03 -0800, Tchiowa wrote:

Do you need to understand Bernoulli's Principle to know that
flying is safe? Or which airline to choose?

No, and anyway it's a gross oversimplification.\

I disagree. Planes will fly whether or not you know the scientific
principle behind it. You can see for yourself by studying statistics
and news that planes are safe. Same principle for Capitalism. You
don't need to know who said what in 1582 about Capitalism. You can see
for yourself in the real world that it works.

But spelling his name right might help. :-)

I did. :-) Lucky for me. Haven't spelled it since college and that was
a looooong time ago.

http://www.mste.uiuc.edu/davea/aviat...Principle.html

Not surprising. In the meantime, try looking at what Socialism did to
a billion Chinese and a quarter of a billion Russians and maybe you'll
begin to understand. The maybe you can reply to yourself.

Actually, in both cases, one might build a case to the effect that it
served them quite well.

This should be interesting.

Particularly for China, the peasant leader Mao and his peasant rebellion
(in the best Chinese tradition BTW) certainly helped rebuild a country
that had been mired in a hopeless civil war, torn between small time
warlords and their presonal interests. Make no mistake, without Mao,
China would be much much worse today. Not htat this has much to do with
socialism, except to the effect that they used the label.

Actually if you compare where China is with where Taiwan is the
primary difference is the economic system. No question that Taiwanese
people live better than mainland Chinese, on the whole.

You say China progressed under Mao and Socialism. Ending the wars and
having relative peace certainly helped. But hundreds of millions of
people ended up living in poverty. Ask yourself how much better they
would be now if Mao hadn't imposed Socialism. To help answer that,
look at the areas in China where limited Capitalism is now being
permitted. People can own their own land and businesses and benefit
directly from the profits. China is booming and poverty is being
reduced.

Poverty that was largely caused (or kept in place) by Socialism.

Russia is more controversial. Still, before 1917, Russia was a mediaval
backwater.

No more than the rest of Europe, particularly Eastern Europe.

And the fall of the soviet regime was precipitated by the cold
war and the incapacity of the relatively poor country that Russia was (and
always had been) to compete on military spending.

So why was Russia so poor after nearly a century of a Socialist
economy? Answer: nearly a century of a Socialist economy.

Futhermore, it's not that now that Russia is no longer socialist it is now
significantly better.

But it is. Have you been there? I have. Also some of the other 'stans
and former SSRs (like Kazakhstan, Latvia). Things have improved
dramatically. Go to Moscow. The lines of babushkas wrapped around city
blocks waiting to buy bread that most likely won't be there are mostly
gone. (Now there are lines around the block trying to get in to the
McDonald's.)

Most problems are structural and cultural. Largely
orthogonal to the ideology of the day.

It will take time to change the mindset of people to understand that
the promises of Capitalism and Free Enterprise work. The current older
generation may already be lost. Millions of people whose lives were
permanently damaged by Socialism.

The younger generation doesn't have the same fatalistic mindset. They
will succeed. Correct: *are succeeding*.