Caps lock is me shouting at you because no other way seems to work to get through that thick barrior of nonsense you have put up around your brain. Seriously, I do not know how to put it any more bluntly that socialism and anything resembling it fails. Get your head out of the media-induced Obama sewage, go read some actual historic books. I would start with Karl Marx's book for analytical reasons, then move to Wealth of Nations. The free market is the backbone of the modern world. Socialism cannot exist unless someone works hard. That said, why should someone work hard when they know the government is going to take their money and redistribute it. I work hard and I expect to keep the fruits of my labor, however small they may be. If I made more money than someone else, than who are YOU to judge this and tell me, "Oh, I think you are greedy, I think you have no reason to have this much wealth, to hell with the fact that YOU made it by investing a part of your life that you are never getting back. We are going to take this money now and give it to someone else because they are poor for whatever reason. Even though this is your money, this is your labor, you have no say in the matter. Have a nice day".
Barack Obama and Socialism
- Thread starter Mistah Kurtz
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Enough of it, I think. Certainly enough to tell the difference between a mixed economy and the pure-planned economy Lenin built up around Marxist principles.PillowFire post=18.74687.845656 said:
This isn't a binary situation; this isn't a choice between Rand and Marx, which I believe was Rand's biggest mistake. She took one look at the USSR and decided that it was evil, so that the exact opposite must be good; and that trivialises a lot of really complex interactions between people. But she concluded that acting in a collective manner is bad, so society must be atomised to prevent that... never mind that humans are humans, and will congregate and pool resources for reasons other than pure self-interest and not necessarily in an optimal fashion.
Rand and Marx made the same mistake of assuming that everyone is alike, just like the caricature she/he had in her/his head. If either system could have worked, then humans wouldn't have needed any particular system at all because perfect consumers/workers don't need anything else.
In my opinion, the smart move is to balance powers; government (of the people, by the people, and for the people, remember?) acting as a counterweight to business and labour and creating the dynamic balance in which none of the sectors alone can dictate to the rest. "All power to the state/market/workers" leads to tyranny no matter which of the three gets it.
-- Steve
My bad, Adam Smith. Anyways, the point is that no one has yet to name a country in which socialism has worked. Communism and socialism are practically the same thing. Socialism, however, comes just before Communism. Anton P. Nym, practically every instance of the government interfearing with the private sector and adding on regulations has always failed and backfired heavily. I understand the need for some regulation, and this is what a basic government should do, as outlined in our constitution. However, don't you think it's a bit too much when we have tens of thousands of pages of regulation in the law book? When the government controls over half of the housing market, the oil industry, and is well on it's way to nationalizing other things as well? Socialism is a failure. The USSR was a socialist nation. It was not communist because, by definition, nothing can be communist unless everyone is absolutely equal. This is a utopia-pipe dream. It goes against basic human nature, and that is why Capitalism succeeds and Socialism fails.
*sigh*PillowFire post=18.74687.845750 said:
Executive summary; the world is too complicated to sum up in a simple label and a few rules of thumb.
Expanded view: to come later... alas I'm outta time.
-- Steve
That's moronic. Consumers, ie - most people, are what control the market. When the power goes the market, the power goes to the people.Alex_P post=18.74687.845736 said:
In order to compete in the economic struggle we have to have a strong economic philosophy, not a philosophy that has been proven to not work every single time it was attempted, and always seems to evolve into a totalitarian human rights violating dictatorship.Cheeze_Pavilion post=18.74687.845896 said:
The argument is not whether or not they're "Less of a person". The argument is whether they're entitled to top notch health care. (The answer is no.)Cheeze_Pavilion post=18.74687.845864 said:
So you're saying a system that has never succeeded except on paper is the ideal system for our nation to adopt? You're willing to put the fate of your country in the hands of a system that's never worked? Stop saying the USSR wasn't socialist, it most certainly was.Cheeze_Pavilion post=18.74687.845954 said:
I understand where you're coming from, most of my college professors (liberals) seem to share that sentiment - you believe that republicans have a knee jerk reaction against socialism because of the red fear. We do not view socialism as a boogeyman never to be mentioned, it's a terrible economic system and we realize that. We also realize there were some good ideas in an otherwise shitty plan and have willingly incorporated them into our economy. The difference between democrats and republicans is that you want to keep incorporating more and more, and republicans want to stop where we are, and we have good reason to feel that way.
socialism=epic fail and more specificly socialised medicine, for 1 the quility of treatment goes down because say my doctor has 400 paitents now and sees 150 per week but then she would have 1000 and see 500 a week unless the gov`t forces ppl to be doctors then there will be more medical mistakes and there fore more deaths 2 you wont get treatment for a long time like in canada if you have breast cancer and need surgery then it takes 6 months because of 1 a waiting list and 2 they want you to die first so they wont have to pay(no offense to my neighbors to the north) like i have crohns disease and the only treatment ive tried is remicade and thats 1500 every 2 months and our insurance pays for most of it. 3 when has the government done anything right? in a examination on 24 nation we scored 18 for education and we poump billions into the school system 4 were is this money going to coem from? taxes and i dont know about you but i dont want more taxes
No, it's not quite the same thing. People participate in the economy far more than they participate in democracy. Something like half of people vote on election day, while 100% of people participate in the market. What the market produces is based on what people want, which means that I decide what to buy instead of the government deciding for me. That's what socialism does.Cheeze_Pavilion post=18.74687.845967 said:
I don't think anyone's entitled to health care. I misspoke. My point was that you DO seem to think that everyone's entitled to everything they need to survive, and this is just not how we do things in America. We are granted the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The PURSUIT of happiness, not happiness itself. It's up to the individual to create his own happiness and his own stable economic standing. I don't want the government to be my parent, and I don't want to have to pay for the government to be anyone else's. Babysitters are expensive.Cheeze_Pavilion post=18.74687.845982 said: