Why Socialism is Necessary for Civilization - Page 6 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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As either the transitional stage to communism or legitimate socio-economic ends in its own right.
Forum rules: No one line posts please.
#15051508
Julian658 wrote: OK, so if I live in a socialist nation I could become a billionaire if I work hard? Is that correct? Could I still practice capitalism in a socialist nation?

I said "it's also silly to think you would be required to share your wealth under socialism." I didn't say anything about BUILDING wealth under socialism. And of course, if socialism has been fully established in a nation as a finished, functioning system, then by definition you most likely would not be allowed to start a business that included employees and produced a privately-owned profit. Laws would specify, in all likelihood, that business profits must be distributed according to Articles of Incorporation that provided for the business to be a worker-owned, worker controlled cooperative enterprise under the laws of the state.


Bill Gates reveals the 2 reasons he's giving away his $90 billion fortune

Irrelevant. He doesn't live under socialism.


Calories in>calories out = obesity. No point in denying this.

I will. It's not that simple. Do you know the effect hydrogenated oil (Crisco for example) has on health? As a former chemist who worked in a lab where we hydrogenated oils, I know what it's about and the effect of cis-trans isomers have. Also, do you know the effects HFCS has on the body? (More to follow.)


High-income countries have greater rates of obesity than middle- and low-income countries (1). Countries that develop wealth also develop obesity; for instance, with economic growth in China and India, obesity rates have increased by several-fold (1). The international trend is that greater obesity tracks with greater wealth (2,3).
Poverty and Obesity in the US

"Obesity is a complex health issue to address. Obesity results from a combination of causes and contributing factors, including individual factors such as behavior and genetics. Behaviors can include dietary patterns, physical activity, inactivity, medication use, and other exposures. Additional contributing factors in our society include the food and physical activity environment, education and skills, and food marketing and promotion."
https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/adult/causes.html

Certainly calorie intake is a big factor, and calorie intake increases when the diet is confined to low-cost, low-quality foods and "junk foods". Hence, in the US we find higher rates of obesity among the poorer sections of society, although it is a complex subject with influences of ethnicity, race, and family history.

"Overall, men and women with college degrees had lower obesity prevalence compared with those with less education."
"Among women, obesity prevalence was lower in the highest income group than in the middle and lowest income groups. This pattern was observed among non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic Asian, and Hispanic women." - https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

But this is getting off-topic.
#15051515
Julian658 wrote:Here we go again: This is a favorite fallacy of lefties. Of course, the most famous one is that we never had real socialism.

There are zillions of definitions of socialism and this gives the left the opportunity to make false and illogical statements. It is fertile ground for those that seek to dupe people with nice words and does not take into account human nature.

Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production and workers' self-management,[10] as well as the political theories and movements associated with them.[11] Social ownership can be public, collective or cooperative ownership, or citizen ownership of equity.[12] There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them,[13] with social ownership being the common element shared by its various forms. WIKI

Compañero POD: Could you care to describe what was the initial "means of production" Steve Jobs and Bill gates had when they develop their ideas? It was their brains. Are we going to nationalize the brains of creative people.

What is the "means of production" of UBER or LYFT?

You didn't identify the source of that "definition" but I recognize it a a capitalist one. How about quoting the source of modern and historical socialists' ideas, .... Karl Marx?

To him, socialism constitutes a complete rejection of worker exploitation by "masters" which are usually unaccountable business owners. His characterizations include "cast off the chains of wage slavery" and "workers' freedom from exploitation" and "the end of expropriation of labor power for private profit". As such it's about elimination of business owners lording it over workers who have no say in their own work.

For those who can understand simple language, socialism is an economic system in which the workers own and control the MoP. It is a system in which private ownership of business for private profit is banned.

Socialism is a departure from the work relationships in which workers are directed, managed, and organized by an owning and managing class.

As such, "collective ownership" that consists of government ownership, control, and management of the work force and the MoP DOES NOT REPRESENT A CHANGE IN THE RELATIONSHIP OF WORKER TO MANAGING CLASS.
Rather, the workers' relationship to management remains unchanged, and is therefore NOT SOCIALISM, except in the definitions promulgated by capitalists.
Last edited by Senter on 28 Nov 2019 21:41, edited 2 times in total.
#15051517
Julian658 wrote:.... Yes, it is not formally called socialism. But, the family unit pretty much behaves like a socialist state. I share everything with my wife and kids.

Do you really think you can call it actual "socialism" if workers are not liberated from exploitative relationships?
#15051532
Senter wrote:Do you really think you can call it actual "socialism" if workers are not liberated from exploitative relationships?


Senter, Julian is going to continue to insist on shit that is not what the real definitions are about.

You already said it. He believes propaganda. Not some reputable sources for his information.

He insists on stuff that has nothing to do with his subject. He doesn't know his subject and as you found out on your own he makes stuff up as he goes along.

In another thread he admitted to me he doesn't read what others post. The answer was in your information to one of his questions. But he doesn't read it.

Why? His answers are based on propaganda and not doing work.

It is almost impossible for him to understand what he is trying to convey because he has to insist on fantasy ideas of what he wants something to be.

Mondragon he doesn't get because the only model he understands is the propaganda against socialist models that he has been told by pro capitalists doing disinformation campaigns.

He is one of the posters with the worst study habits on a subject I have ever come across in my life.
#15051548
Senter wrote:First of all there has never yet been a country in which an established, functioning economic system has been based on workers actually owning and controlling the MoP (businesses). So it is a false statement that claims socialism has never worked. Neither has any attempt to put a human settlement on Mars.

Socialism has never worked well, as a peace time system. One could debate its merit as a war time system. All of the major participants made significant steps in the direction of Socialism. The factory committees were a signifiant part of the the Russian Revolution even if the Bolsheviks fairly quickly sought to emasculate them and centralise power. Your comparison with Martian settlement is absurd. There have been many attempts at socialism, whether you liked the methods they chose to achieve that or not. There have been no attempts to launch a manned mission to Mars.
#15051554
Rich wrote:Socialism has never worked well, as a peace time system. One could debate its merit as a war time system. All of the major participants made significant steps in the direction of Socialism. The factory committees were a signifiant part of the the Russian Revolution even if the Bolsheviks fairly quickly sought to emasculate them and centralise power. Your comparison with Martian settlement is absurd. There have been many attempts at socialism, whether you liked the methods they chose to achieve that or not. There have been no attempts to launch a manned mission to Mars.


Look Rich, if you deal with just the realities of what is wrong with capitalism? You find the answer to why socialism became a result of the instability inherent in capitalist models. You got a lot of obvious reasons.

Why did FDR introduce the New Deal in the USA? Because capitalism with the boom or bust stuff for ordinary wage earning workers? If you don't have a safety net and the capitalists don't want to use workers? Because of many reasons having to do with the volatility of capitalist markets, you have violent social unrest. People need to pay rent, eat, and live.

I live in a society where the wages are very very low. Many people here do informal jobs, odd jobs, and many other ways of staying afloat. It is a regular outcome for a capitalist model. Socialist safety net programs keeps poor people from rioting, getting violent and having social unrest and instability. It also allows people to consume both services and products that are normally not easy to consume. But how much should we get people to consume? Got to re-examine the reasons why people buy products in the first place.

There are many models that can work very well advancing socialism. But it breaks apart the way capitalism syphons off profits and distributes its wealth. And that is why they resist all the very well done socialist models from becoming the principal and central model. The excuses are that it doesn't work. Of course it works. It just won't follow what @Senter stated in a society that only allows a dominant form of wealth accumulation.

Monopolies are very consistent in capitalist models. The laws back capitalistic models not socialist ones.

Democracy? Popular votes are not even working in the USA. What kind of democracy works? The non majority kind? Lol. Beacon of democracy the USA is currently not. Non popular vote ones? It is ridiculous the amount of denial we are living in.

There are enough resources and enough human beings working for decades with responsibility to be able to give everyone who needs a basic standard of living a decent education, health care, and housing and training, and a very vested interest in being a part of their work place, and making it highly democratic and productive....but if the people who keep insisting that it can't be done? Keep with their chanting the lie that cooperative models for the economic future of the world is never
going to work forever? It will take a lot longer than necessary Rich. But the socialism is coming in full force. It has to....each system has to deal with conditions. Sitting on the potential of hundreds of millions of workers all over the world and denying huge groups basic living standards won't go without a fight for a thousand years...no, that stuff is going to go out the window within a certain time frame. What needs to happen is that tiny fractions of people can't dominate all resources or the majority of resources. It will create the polarization in interests we are currently seeing and answer is going to be some serious conflict.

Once it does? People will be saying...why were the capitalists so intransigent? This new system that is socializing the workplace for democracy and having worker owned cooperative models and socialist distributions is a much better solution to top down power structures.

It is obivous. It is obvious to those not married to old capitalist policies who are scared shitless of being realistic about where the wealth comes from. Not from one or two fat cats, but from the vast seas of working people being responsible and consuming, making, and being the source of all wealth for the entire system.
#15051558
See this short five minute video:

They deal with it by keeping large groups with differing businesses and they all basically share a bunch of risk and a bunch of wealth. By not allowing it to be so top heavy they avoid job loss. More people should adopt it. The beginning of a socializing and democratizing the entire system.

With more expansion within a lot of cooperatives. But the stock market people don't like it. And the capitalistic traditional models hate it.

You got to start dealing with a change in mentality. Because the lay off and let people who want to work rot and never get a living that is secure is going to be a big big problem.



Some more in depth University of San Diego business school lecture on Mondragon:

#15051572
Senter wrote:You didn't identify the source of that "definition" but I recognize it a a capitalist one. How about quoting the source of modern and historical socialists' ideas, .... Karl Marx?


Karl Marx described the flaws of capitalism in very elegant manner. He is correct! Working for another human is a form of slavery. In every generation millions fall in love with the ideas of Marx . However, the prescription to fix the problems have has not worked, The prescription has failed time after time.

To him, socialism constitutes a complete rejection of worker exploitation by "masters" which are usually unaccountable business owners. His characterizations include "cast off the chains of wage slavery" and "workers' freedom from exploitation" and "the end of expropriation of labor power for private profit". As such it's about elimination of business owners lording it over workers who have no say in their own work.


I agree 100%. However, the solutions to this problem have not worked.

For those who can understand simple language, socialism is an economic system in which the workers own and control the MoP. It is a system in which private ownership of business for private profit is banned.


Note the part in bold. That is why socialism is always an authoritarian oppressive system. There is NO FREEDOM.

Socialism is a departure from the work relationships in which workers are directed, managed, and organized by an owning and managing class.


Indians with no chief. Yeah, let's try that and see how it goes.. :knife: :knife:
#15051584
Julian658 wrote: That is why socialism is always an authoritarian oppressive system. There is NO FREEDOM.


I have already provided you with examples of when democratic socialism has been successful in the past.

Either you forgot and are now mistakenly making the same incorrect claim, or you are knowingly telling something untrue.
#15051586
Pants-of-dog wrote:I have already provided you with examples of when democratic socialism has been successful in the past.

Either you forgot and are now mistakenly making the same incorrect claim, or you are knowingly telling something untrue.


POD:

Socialism requires coercion. You already admitted this:

Pants-of-dog wrote:Sure, you can create whatever you want and have any ideas that you want. You cannot, however, exercise exclusive control over the means of production in order to enrich yourself with the labour of others.
#15051587
Rich wrote:Socialism has never worked well, as a peace time system.

You know, I'm getting really tired of saying this: You don't know how socialism works because you've never seen socialism nor has anyone else! There has never been a nation whose economic system was based on worker ownership and control of business, so there has never been socialism, ANYWHERE, EVER. What you are calling "socialism" are all cases in which various strategies were implemented to "get to socialism" but they NEVER GOT THERE.

There have been many attempts at socialism, whether you liked the methods they chose to achieve that or not.

THERE HAVE BEEN MANY ATTEMPTS TO CREATE A SOCIALIST SOCIETY AND NONE ACHIEVED IT!!
#15051589
Julian658 wrote:Karl Marx described the flaws of capitalism in very elegant manner. He is correct! Working for another human is a form of slavery. In every generation millions fall in love with the ideas of Marx . However, the prescription to fix the problems have has not worked, The prescription has failed time after time.

THEY DID? Where did you ever see an economic system in which the workers owned and controlled businesses, fail?


I agree 100%. However, the solutions to this problem have not worked.

Precisely what solution, and where?


Note the part in bold. That is why socialism is always an authoritarian oppressive system. There is NO FREEDOM.

LOL!!! To the capitalist, "freedom" always and only means freedom to exploit. Freedom to organize to confront the exploitation? Nah! Freedom to collectively run the business that the capitalist owns? Nah!


Indians with no chief. Yeah, let's try that and see how it goes..

You really think that has anything to do with socialism? You don't think a sales manager is a worker? You don't think a department manager is a worker? I used to discuss these things with my department manager and he was in full agreement.

You seem to be going in circles.
#15051594
Senter wrote:THEY DID? Where did you ever see an economic system in which the workers owned and controlled businesses, fail?



Precisely what solution, and where?



LOL!!! To the capitalist, "freedom" always and only means freedom to exploit. Freedom to organize to confront the exploitation? Nah! Freedom to collectively run the business that the capitalist owns? Nah!



You really think that has anything to do with socialism? You don't think a sales manager is a worker? You don't think a department manager is a worker? I used to discuss these things with my department manager and he was in full agreement.

You seem to be going in circles.


You are preaching to the choir: Been there done that! I do not disagree with your words. Working for a living in a capitalist system is not easy. It means you have to move your legs and arms at all times to keep your head above water and not drown. Sure, that is no freedom! But, sadly socialism does not do any better. And I have said at nauseam you can start a Mondragon any time you want to. No one is stopping you!

The best you can do is to have a wealthy capitalist nation like Norway with a generous welfare state. And BTW, this system tends to work best in small homogeneous nations. They are still a tribe and related to each other (kinship) and hence some socialism is accepted with no issues.
#15073470
Julian658 wrote:
As I said before. Marx was correct in his analysis of capitalism and the description of the flaws and inequalities is correct. The problem is that we do not have a better system.



ckaihatsu wrote:
You obviously still haven't taken a look at my 'labor credits' system.



Julian658 wrote:
No I haven't. I am skeptical because socialism has never worked. At best, it works in families or very small groups with kinship. Otherwise, people are not altruistic.



You're conflating a 'communist-type gift economy' with 'altruism'.

Altruism has to do with individual-scale *morality*, or 'lifestylism', while a communistic gift economy has to do with a society-wide *providing for human needs*, through collective, post-capitalist social production. The more people devote their waking hours to putting in work efforts for the social good (mass production, particularly), the more advanced the *whole society* will be. Since everyone's necessarily-voluntary work efforts are collectivized and distributed to 'the commons', distribution can be directed to *unmet need*, directly, with no middleman-type administration or exchange values for private appropriations.

*Individual*-type needs, taken collectively by society, would translate at scale to *mass* needs, for whatever -- the most critical life-and-living needs would be *self-prioritized* by individuals (since only individuals themselves know best what they need to consume), yielding aggregations of mass needs-in-common at larger scales, for moneyless mass distribution.

No socialist argues for a new Stalinism, or bureaucratic elitism, because even while bureaucratic centralism would be an incremental 'radical reform' for capitalism ('single-payer' administration over any given industry), it's still a class-like bureaucratic *elitism*, meaning that workers are not actually the ones controlling social production.

What you term 'socialism' was actually the historical result of nascent workers' control -- 'soviets', or workers councils -- *mitigated* by Western imperialist invasions and domestic counter-revolution. It's best termed 'Stalinism', and is abhorred by the revolutionary left.

I've updated that model framework since I last posted at this thread -- take a look at the latest version of my model framework for a post-capitalist political economy:


Emergent Central Planning

Spoiler: show
Image



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ckaihatsu wrote:
I don't defend North Korea as a fulfillment of the Communist Manifesto, mostly because the workers aren't fully in control of production over there. And I'm definitely *not* for Western capitalism and imperialism. I defend any quasi-collectivized "socialist" state (like Venezuela) in the *geopolitical* context.



Julian658 wrote:
It turns out that socialist countries are often authoritarian fascist like states with massive oppression.



No, this is an inaccurate characterization because fascism *upholds* private property, while the Stalinist countries at least somewhat *collectivized* social production, directing it from a single locus of administration, for better or for worse.


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Julian658 wrote:
You have failed to tell me how you can impose socialism without an authoritarian repressive state. What will you do if someone wants to be a capitalist within a socialist nation?



First off, no individual -- myself or anyone else -- can *impose* socialism, because then it wouldn't be socialism anymore, it would be *Stalinism*. Any proletarian revolution that aims to overthrow bourgeois ruling-class rule has to, by definition, be bottom-up in the way that it transforms social production and the rest of society.

The reason we aren't living in socialism now is basically for this reason -- there has to be a *mass movement* that's sufficient in size and intent to *sweep away* the existing bourgeois hegemony, worldwide. This movement itself *may* be authoritarian, and also repressive against the bourgeoisie / counterrevolutionaries, but it would do so only due to underlying *mass support*. (So it's just a formality, basically.)

This kind of vanguardist centralism tends to unnerve anarchists, since they think that revolution can be *purely* localist, lateralist, and yet worldwide somehow this way, but I'm not an anarchist. I'm a vanguardist, meaning that the revolutionary workers must, for logistical reasons, form an organization of class struggle that's large-enough and coordinated-enough to rival, and defeat, the bourgeois class foe.

If someone was so against-the-tide during a global revolutionary upheaval that they *insisted* on holding onto some kind of private accumulations, they would be considered a *counterrevolutionary* by the revolutionary proletariat.


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ckaihatsu wrote:
Your descriptions sound exaggerated and propagandistic, nonetheless -- biased.



Julian658 wrote:
Sure, I am biased, but one cannot argue with success. Capitalism has given us the most prosperity in world history.



The prosperity is on an *elitist* basis, though -- there were *two world wars* in the 20th century due to capitalism's inherently *competitive* bent, and I don't need to remind of the *income inequality* dynamic and how it's grown to gargantuan proportions here in the 21st century.


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ckaihatsu wrote:
I'm not a Chavista, but I am in the context of geopolitics. Again, it's the *workers themselves* who need to be in collective control of production, worldwide.



Julian658 wrote:
Venezuelans are leaving the country in large numbers. The food stands in grocery stores are empty and most people are now quite thin due to caloric restriction. The state is repressive and violent with dissidents. I would say the workers are not running the system in a very efficient manner.
And BTW, they are a petroleum rich nation. Why are they doing so poorly?



Well, I'm not going to defend Maduro's administration of the country, though I do defend Venezuela, and Syria, etc., against geopolitical imperialist Western predations. There's the elitism of the boliburguesa within Venezuela, so that's Stalinistic and undefendable. The workers are *not* in direct control of either production *or* the Maduro administration, so you can't use Venezuela as an indictment of the aims of socialism.

Venezuela's economy has been / is heavily dependent on its oil exports, and the price of oil has been pushed downward lately due to the machinations of the OPEC cartel, so we're seeing the results of that market manipulation by the West.


ckaihatsu wrote:
More hilarity from you -- as though cars and computers are physically assembled by the brain of a software engineer -- ! Oh, industrialism is still how goods are produced, via workers' labor.



Julian658 wrote:
I agree, but workers on their own cannot produce anything unless they are directed by an organization with talent.



Well, this is the crux of the difference in our respective politics -- the entire *point* of a proletarian revolution, post-vanguard / post-revolution / post-class, would be exactly that, for the world's workers (liberated-laborers) to *collectively* co-administrate over their own respective work roles. (See the 'Emergent Central Planning' diagram.)


Julian658 wrote:
The employee of the bakery is useless if there is no wise man with vision and incredible work ethic that founded a successful bakery (insert any kind of factory).



You're *mythologizing* and *glorifying* the entrepreneur -- keep in mind that capital ownership is in a *ruling class* internal social organization regarding its role as private ownership. Such people are hardly 'rugged individualists' -- they can receive loans from banks, investment capital from investors, tax breaks from government, and, most importantly, stolen labor value from workers on an hourly basis. Yes, there are in-factions and out-factions among the capitalist class, but, combined and coordinated, they have a collective *class* interest in the continuation of the exploitation of labor.


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show
Image



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ckaihatsu wrote:
Such specializations (software engineer, blue collar work, complex systems engineering) wouldn't even *be* necessary once all workers are collectively in control of social production. They could just use project-based learning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project-based_learning) and work-backwards from the intended production goal. No more work specializations needed anymore, especially with modern-day Internet-based communications technologies.



Julian658 wrote:
Why would they work that hard? What is the motivation?



It's not-even about 'working hard' -- it's about liberating the combined productive capacities of *millions* and *billions* of liberated laborers, post-capitalism.

For example, consider what we do here at PoFo, but then think of the same within a world where all productive equipment / factories would be collectively available to all, subject to co-coordination. (Or maybe *teleconferencing* would be used, etc.)


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ckaihatsu wrote:
I don't *bemoan* the rich -- as long as capitalism exists they'll exist as well. People with money may use it for socially *progressive* and enlightening purposes (books, films, art, whatever), or they may not. I *know* it's not a zero-sum system because the sum of products of labor is ever-increasing, especially with our world population of billions.



Julian658 wrote:
Your words about the Utopia are naive. The only reason we have plenty in the West is simple:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.



ckaihatsu wrote:
No, it's because of capitalism's inherent dynamic towards *overproduction*, combined with the large workforce in the U.S., *and* U.S. imperialism, that the U.S. economy is so much more stable and supported economically by everyone else in the world. (The U.S. dollar is the world's reserve currency.)



Julian658 wrote:
Overproduction makes everything extremely cheap. Why do you think homeless people have cell phones?



It sounds like you *agree* on this point, that it's due to capitalism's inherent dynamic of overproduction that goods become more cheap, advanced, and readily available.

Btw, I wasn't describing anything that could be conceivably stereotyped as 'utopian' -- you simply inserted that epithet into your post, irrespectively of what I actually wrote.

*Of course* under capitalism we're all conditioned to look after our own individualistic self-interest -- that's the capitalist dynamic / component of private property. But it's incorrect to ascribe this conditioning / behavior to the human being him- or herself, as with the 'human nature' argument. If people happened to be born in a *post-capitalist*, collectivized-production society, then the norms of *that* society would be taken as 'normal', and people would live their lives correspondingly, for the most part. (In my communistic-gift-economy model framework, for example, I *detach* necessarily-voluntary liberated-labor work efforts from the expected economic rewards, since it would be *human need* that would demand and drive consumption, and thus production -- but this conceptualization is human-nature *valid* because as long as people were collectively *provided-for* then the system would be viable, with no private-type incentives being necessary.)


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ckaihatsu wrote:
So since you're acknowledging inherent, objective *interests*, it's within the working class' inherent interests to organize on their own / our own terms, against the economic predations of the elitist ownership class.



Julian658 wrote:
As I said: Anyone that lives in a the gutter or is dirt poor benefits from socialism. But. how about the rest of the people that are doing OK in a capitalist nation?



Well, maybe we could get into this aspect a bit more -- I happen to think that human needs, and wants, extend all the way up to sheerly *luxurious* standards of living, as long as 100% of every last person's basic needs can be collectively fulfilled as a social priority. (See the Bastani 'Fully Automated Luxury Communism' thread.)


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ckaihatsu wrote:
So what's *your* position regarding the role of the capitalist government within capitalist economics?



Julian658 wrote:
The government should be hands off. The only role is to provide a framework of no aggression between the parties that exchange services or goods.
All capitalists need is freedom and a pact of no violence or aggression.



Well, this is *incrementally* enlightened as a social policy, but what we've seen throughout capitalist history is almost-ceaseless *warfare*, both physical and economic.

This political ethos would still allow colonialist-type *land grabs*, like that which is going on right now by Israeli settlers, for the Palestinian lands that remain.

I'm surprised that you libertarian types aren't more vocal, as here at PoFo, about *this* particular present-day incursion onto others' land.
#15073538
Socialism does not take into account the human condition. In fact that was the only error that Marx made. He assume MAN would diligently work in a collectivist manner for the good of the group. So far it has not worked. I am with you in your theoretical views, but the application of the theory to reality will fail because MAN is defective beast.

There has never been a system that provides to the masses as effectively as capitalism. The only problem is that capitalism affirms the concept of winners and losers in society and that is probably the natural state of MAN.

Socialism pretends to create a society with no winners or losers, but in the end it generates uniform mediocrity. If you have a 400 meter race some finish ahead, many in the middle and quite a few in the back. If you try to make the race fair the only way to accomplish this is by slowing down the fast runners. Slowing down a fast runners is easy to do whereas making a naturally slow runner go fast is nearly impossible.



The in the 70s Swedes tried more socialism and had to regroup into capitalism to pay for social programs system.

Image

Socialism will be the natural culmination of capitalism once wealth becomes redundant. We already see people with redundant wealth sun as Bloomberg or Gates. They have so much money that they cannot possibly spend that money in a lifetime. Once redundant wealth becomes common it will be freely shared with ALL of those that are at the bottom. The only problem is that it will likely leads to nihilism and a very dystopic existence among the recipients of that wealth. MAN needs a purpose to exist .

Open borders. Let's import the 3rd world into the West. That will not work! The reasons are obvious.

Income inequality is not the best way to measure poverty.

Assume I have $100 in wealth and my neighbor has $500 in wealth. That is a $400 wealth gap.

If my wealth is $100 and I double my wealth I have $200.
If my neighbor increases his wealth by 50% he now has 750$
Now the wealth gap is $550 even though I am doing much better.

Wealth gap measurements is more of keeping of with the Jones philosophy. Nevertheless, the psych effects of the wealth gap are real.

The problem with Venezuela is not socialism. The problem is the corruption and imperfection of MAN. This is where most people make a mistake: MAN is imperfect!
#15073543
Julian658 wrote:
Socialism does not take into account the human condition.



Actually, it does.

Your fundamental flaw is looking at people as liabilities instead of as assets to be cultivated.

Not the only one, to be sure, but one has to start somewhere.
#15073551
late wrote:Actually, it does.

Your fundamental flaw is looking at people as liabilities instead of as assets to be cultivated.

Not the only one, to be sure, but one has to start somewhere.


There is no equality among humans. Even siblings achieve differently. A man may become a billionaire and his brother ends up in the gutter despite similar opportunities. Hank Aaron hit 755 home runs as a baseball player. His brother Tommy Aaron only hit 13 home runs.

Even identical twins achieve differently.

People will align themselves according to competence. Some will be on top, many in the middle and quite a few at the bottom. NO SYSTEM CAN ALTER THAT.
#15073558
Julian658 wrote:A man may become a billionaire and his brother ends up in the gutter despite similar opportunities.


The guy in the gutter with the smaller carbon footprint is a greater asset to society than the globe-trotting, gas-guzzling billionaire.

Success is relative to your family and community, not your pocketbook.
#15073560
Donna wrote:The guy in the gutter with the smaller carbon footprint is a greater asset to society than the globe-trotting, gas-guzzling billionaire.

Success is relative to your family and community, not your pocketbook.

The guy in the gutter lives of the taxes collected from the productive members of society.
The successful brother creates jobs so people can put food on the table.
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You are a supporter of the genocide against the P[…]

@skinster well, you've been accusing Israel of t[…]

Before he was elected he had a charity that he wo[…]

Candace Owens

... Too bad it's not as powerful as it once was. […]