@blackjack21 said:
I read him in high school as part of a Utopian Literature class. So keep in mind, I was reading him alongside BF Skinner, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, etc.
You know who you should read? Thomas Sowell. He was a dedicated Marxist and ended up becoming a capitalist libertarian. Why? Empiricism. He actually went to work as an intern for the federal government's labor department. He saw the evidence of mandated minimum wage increases in the sugar industry of Puerto Rico and a rise in unemployment in that industry there. He had the empirical evidence, and came to realize that the people working at the labor department were more concerned about their own jobs than the plight of poor people in Puerto Rico.
He's a brilliant guy. He's written countless well-researched books. He is very critical of the welfare state too. State-owned businesses. State-owned public housing, etc. There is a lot of empirical evidence that the type of policies you prefer lead to serious economic and social problems, which is counter-intuitive to people like you. You don't need to look far beyond Venezuela to see how rapidly a rich country can become poor when it adopts socialist policies.
See someone like you approaches this as a moral question. If goods are too expensive for poor people, you want to impose price controls so that poor people can afford things. This happened in Venezuela. Do you know what happens when marginal cost exceeds marginal price? Firms go bankrupt. They shut down. You need a really strong foundation in microeconomics and macroeconomics to understand why so much of "good intentions" produce very bad results. This is why you shouldn't approach economics emotionally. It's why economics teaches a clear distinction between positive analysis and normative analysis.
I don't approach it as a moral question. I approach it as an anthropologist who studied the history of human behavior over a long period of time. Over this kind of stretch:
To think my politics is about irrational moralism? Or something like that? It means you really have underestimate what I value or don't even know what I think. You accuse me of being illogical or lacking empiricism. I am not BJ. I do think nature has the upper hand in human behavior and reason takes a lot of work and time to develop. Got to leave the reptilian as a political system as something that has outgrown our societies. Because reptilian reactions and NUKES don't spell=Survival. They spell death. For me the socialism is a leap forward. After everyone has their basic needs met and you got healthy people and cared for societies and lands not being deserts through lack of limiting capitalist exploitation or state capitalism.....PRC style polluting everything trying to become the dominant system in the world. No, I don't agree.
Sowell is a black conservative I don't care about his blackness. I won't ever be like him. He is a conservative. For me to agree I would have to think that capitalism is logical and stable and that poverty goes away with what?
Answer me this BJ? @blackjack21 how does one eradicate the issue with poverty like the dude who worked for Mercedes Benz factory? Who worried about it?
I don't see the Right conservatives making sure poverty is eliminated. They want churches to do it only? Why hasn't all the churches only dedicated themselves to eradicating world poverty? Why do Protestant churches think that being wealthy is the sign that God approves and poverty is the sign of the disapproval of God? The Roman Catholics don't go for that mentality neither do the Buddhists or the Muslims.
So who is going to cope with the working class? You? People like you?
I fail to see a movement for helping the entire spectrum of poverty stricken nations being planned for being fed, clothed, educated, housed and brought to independence.
The war on poverty ain't over. Sowell solved it? Mexico did not get the memo BJ. I see it over here all day every day. So?
The Marxists deal with economics. Well. For working people. Not for plutocrats. So? You tell all those evicted people how they under a pandemic are going to be housed, fed, and vaccinated, and re-employed or how they are going to make a decent living again?
It better not be go and threaten a liberal. Lol. If you say that? I will think you are very partisan indeed.
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