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Author | Topic: Socialism is legalized theft. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
emo star Inactive Member |
the right to life does not mean you have the right to be as successful as your neighbor, or even have all your basic needs. it simply means you have the right to work to keep your life and better it without oppression from another individual or group.
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emo star Inactive Member |
dude. we should slow down.
------------------"I am Jack's complete lack of surprise."
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emo star Inactive Member |
yes there is. no one forces you to have a job. you could go live in the woods and live off of shit.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1721 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
no one keeps you in a job!you can quit. How the hell does that help? Going from a sub-standard wage to no wage at all doesn't help anything. Do you think about things before you type them?
check out a communist governmetn where refusal the work towardsd the will fo the state results in imprisionment, a train to siberia,or a bullet in your skull. No one's arguing that communism was better. While capitalism is better, it's not the best. Capitalism still leaves too many of our most important workers behind. Anyway, this is all just a slippery-slope fallacy. "Paying our workers a livable wage will make us Communist Russia!" Nothing could be further from the truth.
if the worker doensn't like it he can serach for a better job if he feels he can find one. THe Capitalist PROVIDES the job. it is not a right to have a job. Like I said, a guy working 60-hour weeks doesn't have time to go search for a job during business hours. so your worker mobility arguments don't hold water. Right to have a job? No, I don't think so. People who contribute nothing don't deserve anything, although provision should be made for victims of economic downturn. Nobody deserves a free ride. But people who make the goods we depend on every day deserve better than starving on our behalf. The more you post, the more you appear to be out of touch with the reality of the working person. I suspect you're some kind of young republican college student or something. or maybe you'd like to tell me how you worked hard for every penny you have? Look, get your head out of Ayn Rand and Rush Limbaugh's world of infinite capital and benevolent business leaders. The real world is one where the people you depend on the most get the least of your money, and business is largely a predatory affair.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1721 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
Maybe we should stop replying to each other's posts one by one. I'll try to address more points per post.
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joz Inactive Member |
quote: "wealth distribution" meaning a mechanism whereby the proletariat gets its 40 pieces of silver (danegeld whatever) to buy it off of the concept of class war.... Don't believe me? England 1381.... France 1789 through 1793 or there abouts....... Russia 1917..... And yes it could be "private charity" but that has never worked particularly well.... Look at it this way, if you are a good person you would be giving the money anyway, if you aren't the state is taking it from you for your own benefit so that me and mine don't turn you and yours into eloi.... Does that make it more palateable (pun intended).....
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1721 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
you could go live in the woods and live off of shit. Oh, really? What woods are those where you can just go live? All the woods in America are either private property or national parks, neither of which places take kindly to squatters. Those days are long gone, dude. There's no more wilderness, not really. It's comments like these that suggest (again) that you're divorced from economic reality.
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Celsus Inactive Member |
Well, well, well. You know something is wrong when someone uses a dictionary to define economic terms and makes no attempt to figure out which definition we're actually using! But never mind that, let's look at your argument (if I may be allowed the liberty of calling it that).
quote:Out of curiosity, what experience in economics do you have? Actually, scratch that question, I know the answer to it. What experience in logic and argumentation do you have? Because for all your incredulous questions, I can't find a single argument in these first few lines. Let's look at some more of your points: quote:Well, I gave a definition of equality? Where? Do you have a clue what I'm talking about? Equality that I'm talking about here is between firms. That is to say, some firms will do better than others (i.e. greater profits, more excess for technical investment, etc.), and thus start to exercise market power. This leads to monopolistic competition, which of course, is the only type of competition between firms that exists in the world today. But I'm sure you don't even know what I'm talking about (as shown by your first little tirade and your inability to grasp that I'm talking about firms and market structure). So moving swiftly on... quote:Do explain what you mean by "true equality is justice." quote:And who fed you when you were young? And how long would you last if a plague wiped all of humanity out bar yourself? We cooperate with others as a part of our existence. Think of some non-capitalist institutions, like, say, the family. Humanity wouldn't last very long if every single parent decided taking care of their children wasn't worth doing (what a sacrifice!). There are things beyond individual selfishness that make our fragile world go round. Cooperation is one of them. quote:No. By the "leveller" I mean an institution that understands that poverty brings social costs on the whole of society, and that it is worth doing something both from an economic and humanistic viewpoint, to prevent people from suffering. Have you heard of the French Revolution? Letting the poor eat cake didn't quite work out now did it? Of course, it might be a good idea to explain exploitation to you, but then I'd probably end up being called a Marxist. quote:You must be confusing me with someone else. How good are your reading comprehension skills? quote:I'd tell you the point, but you wouldn't understand, as you'd have to be familiar with Marx's Labour theory of surplus value (or more probably, I'd have to tell you what it is in agonising detail though flying over your nescient head). Secondly you'd have to figure out that socialism is not necessarily anticapital or antimarket. But I wouldn't want your brain to explode just yet. Thirdly, I'm not a socialist, so it's far too much trouble. But if you're interested, you might try reading an introductory economics text book. Look out especially for the section on "externalities." If you're getting more adventurous, try the following list. But don't forget that introductory economics text! Here are introductory texts to theories of economic institutions. You'll notice that the reason that these institutions (including government) exist, is that they increase efficiency. It's a rather obvious reason once you think about it. Eggertsson, T. (1990) Economic Behaviour and Institutions, Cambridge University Press North, D. (1990) Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge University Press For more historical perspectives--here's the sort of hard data that analyses the efficiency of institutions. I don't know which I like better, but I've only just started to get my teeth into the second one. North, D. (1973) The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History, Cambridge University Press North, D. (1981) Structure and Agency in Economic History, New York: W.W. Norton & Co. For a devastating methodological critique of neoclassical economics (although it would help you to first find out what neoclassical economics does and doesn't say--remember that introductory text!), this book is particularly powerful in deconstructing the methodological individualist and ahistorical mathematical positions: Hodgson, G. (2001) How Economics Forgot History: The Problems of Historical Specifity in Social Science, London: Routledge For understanding that basal equality exists in different spheres and that differing paradigms place differing levels of importance to these parameters, read this: Sen, A. (1992), Inequality Reexamined, Oxford: Clarendon Press For understanding why heterogenous economic theories for development and change are important to society, and why we shouldn't be so arrogant as to assume we have all the answers, try this. It also has a good a discussion of the shortcomings of both the Austrian and Marxist schools: Hodgson, G. (1999), Economics & Utopia: Why the Learning Economy is not the End of History, London: Routledge And finally, a nice professional take on why neoliberal structural adjustment programs in the third world failed and caused so much problems (and some possible solutions), there's this (you probably don't know what structural adjustment is, but rest assured, it does have to do with the sorts of ideas you like): Stiglitz, J. (2002), Globalization and its Discontents, London: Allan Lane Three of the aforementioned authors are mere Nobel prize winners in economics, and I'll go out on a limb to predict that Hodgson will join them one day. You would do well to learn from some of them. Joel Edited to correct the format. [This message has been edited by Celsus, 04-26-2003]
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Mister Pamboli Member (Idle past 7831 days) Posts: 634 From: Washington, USA Joined: |
I think I know who emo star is now. He was the guy in the audience at "John Q" cheering for the hospital!
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1721 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
What I can't get over is how he expects the working poor to just roll over and die, or leave, or whatever, without a fight. Plus these people are like the backbone of our economy. Who does he think is going to serve his food, clean his carpets, and make his clothing if the working poor all go away?
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1721 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
On another topic entirely - does anyone else think that the vast majority of corporate fraud could be eliminated by mandating that all corporations be privately owned? I think a lot of our problems stem from the conflict of interest posed by public stockholders. I don't really see what the benefit for the average person is to have public companies.
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emo star Inactive Member |
quote: The people I depend on get the least of my money, its my money. I don't understand why they should get any of MY money. the worker is paid his wage and does not get a 'share' of the profits - he did not invest in the company and therefore should not reap any of the awards. And yes business is a predatory affair but it is a system of competition that yields profits and a healthier economy overall ------------------"I am Jack's complete lack of surprise."
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emo star Inactive Member |
man, you like h.g. wells a lot.
Its not like i don't believe you. History is history, but the question i ask is it right, moral. To "pay off" the poor because you were successful and they weren't? Look, i think its very magnanimous to give to charity, however it is not a law. It is still your money and the government has no say - or shouldn't - on how you distribute it. Why would you support a system that is extortion and exploitation? I mean you certainly criticize capitalism for those qualities. Maybe, i just don't get the point. P.S. i intended this as a discussion of how socialism is immoral. While the characteristics of capitalism do bear on the subject i would like to discuss socialism rather than this just be an attack on capitalism. ------------------"I am Jack's complete lack of surprise."
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Celsus Inactive Member |
Huh. How come I don't get a reply to my post?
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NosyNed Member Posts: 9012 From: Canada Joined: |
quote: You forget that the "state" is, today, the society in which you are imbedded and supported. Humans are social animals and do not survive under any circumstance on their own. You depend on that socity for your existance and if you forget that and allow it to disintegrate you will find out just how dependent you are. Our ability to understand and live within our societies came into being with groups in the 10's of individuals. It is a struggle to make that work when the numbers are a million times greater. However, we need to learn our to do that. There are two classes of reasons for not just serving yourself:1) selfish you need to allow other individuals to be successful enough in your society to keep it working for your own benefit. 2) moral one measure of the success of a society is how much extra capacity it has and how it uses that. The US is successful on an extra capacity basis. Other societies are successful enough to produce extra capacity and moral enough to use them well for the society as a whole. The failure of the US society is in the use of the extra capacity and that is why it is not the "best" society in the world today. One could argue that even the second, apparently altruistic reason is also selfish. And that argument has been put forward here. A society that has no spare capacity is in danger of collapse. A society that uses the spare capacity poorly is also in danger of collapse. You seem to think that striving within the rules of the society that you would like is the only way of being successful. Push enough people far enough and they will find another way of being successful.
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