Capitalism and Socialism: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

[trendsetter37]

In general, I tend to view capitalism as a framework to provide value to a multitude instead of just for yourself and/or nuclear family. It is possible to be an entrepreneur with the aim of putting the customer first. Yes, you are compensated but at some point this can very well be an example of serving self through others, i.e. STO. Surplus funds after a lifestyle upgrade very rarely end up going towards increasing creature comforts past a certain point. The rest is usually re-invested into other projects or business ventures that will provide more value to others. That is in fact how they remain wealthy. Atleast that's what I've been able to glean thus far.

I'm sure we are all familiar with the lottery winner archetype. Someone hits it big and there life takes a turn for the worse along with going bankrupt in a few years. In those cases the spend money only on themselves until it runs dry. In contrast, a" self made" millionaire continuously puts their money out their. They have their money work for them and more often than not they are providing value to someone. To me, these scenarios point to one's mindset being the determining factor.

IOW if some people (looking at you Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) think the ultra-rich are similar to Scrooge McDuck swimming in a pool full of gold coins. No, I don't think that's the case based on some acquaintances I've rubbed elbows with here and there. Usually a "net-worth" is really the value of a profitable business or assets rather than having a huge lump sum just sitting in a bank account doing nothing.

Additionally, huge monopolies are used as the example of "what capitalism creates" but in reality that is a small subset of capitalists. There are many more businesses that fail because they are not providing value or ignore customer complaints. There are even more that may take in $100 million or more which are seemingly unknown and yet have reached that point by providing value to a large populace.

So in short capitalism, imo, is a framework where you still have a choice in how you participate if you so choose. I don't think it's productive to point the finger at an economic framework to remediate ponerology.

I need to borrow this for a second @Beau




Admittedly, i'm more bullish on capitalism and did have an "Eww socialism" moment as well. That being said, I totally understand people generally shouldn't suffer needlessly or live in a constant state destitution. But at what point are we vying to re-architect the school? There are probably certain lessons to be had in a state of poverty that you couldn't get elsewhere. There's also the possibility of showing empathy for the poverty-stricken and even somehow working your way out of a sticky financial situation that wouldn't exist otherwise. It could be that there are many "other" worlds that contain some of the desired financial environments mentioned here but we didn't incarnate there and most likely we had some say in that imo.

I think competition and inequality are just part of life, and if you take socialism to the extreme (i.e. communism/equality of outcome), only bad things will come of it. The question is just "how much is okay"? I think most people don't have a problem if Stephen King or some lawyer working 80+ hours a week earn, let's say, 10 times more than them. But if global capitalists earn 1000 times as much as the average guy, then something is deeply wrong!

Is it? That's an arbitrary figure which could be a factor of scale rather than something being inherently wrong or pathological. If you provide a service by way of the internet, your audience is huge. It simply doesn't take some mega EvilCorp to reach those figures. Further the skills needed to pull that off can be learned on the internet. We live in a different world compared to even 10 years ago. Given that, the barrier to entry becomes that of constant effort and learning new skills. I'd say most could do that even with a family.

Thinking some more about the "free-market": it actually even falls short on the local village level. For example, people may buy at a specific farmer because they enjoy chatting with him, or they know his wife is ill and want to support him etc. even though he may not have the best products at the best price. Or someone buys at a shoemaker becaue the guy's cousin helped him raise his barn etc. It's community-driven. Life just ain't no free market!

There is such a thing as supporting local for the sake of local or because you have rapport. That's still a free-market. Also markets are not a uni-dimensional construct that abides by profit alone. In you're example there is social bond. However, you can sell something identical to another company in the same sector and provide superior customer service and actually pull customers away from a goliath competitor.

Lastly, and this has been said multiple times already, an ideal situation probably includes aspects from different systems without going to extremes. The argument that scale could dictate which system is optimal is interesting as well -- I haven't thought of it that way.

 

[Joe]

Is it? That's an arbitrary figure which could be a factor of scale rather than something being inherently wrong or pathological.

Indeed, let's say the owner of a company, through his/her hard work and ingenuity and natural talents, provides jobs for 1,000 people, or 10,000 people. Is he/she not entitled to 1,000 times that salary of the lowest paid worker? Could it not be said that, given the livelihood he/she has provided for 1,000 or 10,000 people, he/she is essentially worth 1,000 times more? I don't have a problem with that idea, except when it occurs in a 'system' where the lowest paid workers are unable to afford health care on the salary they are given by the employer.

If you provide a service by way of the internet, your audience is huge. It simply doesn't take some mega EvilCorp to reach those figures. Further the skills needed to pull that off can be learned on the internet. We live in a different world compared to even 10 years ago. Given that, the barrier to entry becomes that of constant effort and learning new skills. I'd say most could do that even with a family.

Most can do it, but not all, and the minority that cannot is a sizable percentage of the population. About 20% of Americans still don't have health care coverage. That is to say, when they are ill, they have to seriously consider just not going to a clinic or hospital or doctor to get their illness treated because the cost is so exhoribant that they simply cannot pay it. They just have to live with it. That fact is, IMO, a direct result of the 'American way', i.e. capitalism and the core 'me first' idea that it espouses. In most European countries, the entire population would be up in arms if they discovered that millions of people were unable to get access to medical treatment. In the USA however, the 'survival of the fittest' paradigm encourages people to turn a blind eye and bullshit themselves that the person in question simply isn't working hard enough. That may be true in some cases, but not in all, and to be honest, it's kind of irrelevant. Any state that makes claim to being both 'modern' and morally developed is only so to the extent that it makes sure that a $2 lifesaving treatment is NOT denied to anyone who needs it.

 

[Joe]

I think you already answered this in your latest post above, but why do you have to choose? I think one of the great implications of Haidt's work is that we can't ignore these other taste buds (and it's actually liberals who choose one over the other, and conservatives who try to balance them all). Actually, I think an 'ideal' state has to take all this into account, i.e. by giving each value its due: fairness, care, etc.

I wasn't implying that the other 'taste buds' should be ignored, but rather asking which of them should be made the focus. Given that the care and fairness foundations are common to 'both types' of people, it seems obvious that that foundation can and should be prioritized. Is anyone going to disagree that the core foundation of modern America - the 'American dream' - is pretty much the opposite of that?

 

[dugdeep]

To me it seems like in any functional society there should be some kind of "safety net" that makes sure everyone is taken care of - the bare minimum that everyone should have. To me that seems like where 'socialism' can come in. Everyone needs to be able to eat, have shelter, be educated, cared for when sick and be able to get from A to B. So having a basic system in place where these things are covered seems reasonable, and it's hard to argue that it would be justified that anyone should go without these things. When I first started thinking about this, I was only thinking of health care, but it's kind of expanded to all the basic necessities of living, so that even if someone hits absolute rock bottom, they're not going to be entirely lost.

It seems to me that where socialism goes wrong is when it's used as a means to enforce 'equality' for everyone. It isn't necessary that everyone be equal, have the same sized house, the same food on the table, the same amount in their bank account. Someone who works harder, is smarter, or even in some cases is just luckier, shouldn't be brought down to the level of the lowest common denominator in the name of 'equality'. You have to let people thrive, if they're so inclined, especially considering that the ingenuity of individuals can benefit the greater society.

It seems to me that having billionaires wouldn't be such a big deal, wouldn't be resented, if there weren't people living on the streets and the people working for them weren't being exploited. Maybe it's a naive (or maybe it's because I'm Canadian ), because "who's gonna pay for it?" But honesty, it seems like any reasonable system put in place should have this kind of safety net at it's foundation.

 

[Jones]

@dugdeep That and remove the capitalistic imposed restrictions on those who choose to live off grid and grow their own etc. and barter or trade. The more that things are automated - a seeming necessity of capitalism to protect profit, the higher the unemployment rates will be, so I've felt that there will need to be some kind of adjustment to take into account a growing necessity for cottage industry and a way to protect those crafts and skills that may become obsolete in the capitalistic system.

 

[luc]

I need to borrow this for a second @Beau

Ah yes, welcome to the club I must say, I have oscillated between more left-wingy socialist thinking and very free-market thinking for my entire life. During the last couple of years, I have leaned more towards right-wingy free market thinking, partly because of all those loony lefties and their pathological "equality thinking". And I have read many of the classical conservative arguments against socialism and for free-market capitalism, some of which are quite convincing IMO. But I think it might be a worthwhile exercise to reexamine the other side of the coin. I think I have gained a few insights already from this thread in that direction. So take the following in that spirit - trying to explore the counter-arguments. It doesn't mean we have to buy them all or identify with them.

It is possible to be an entrepreneur with the aim of putting the customer first.

Obviously. That's what I do in my business. The problem with such statements is that they are trivial. Nobody is arguing that businesses are inherently evil or something like that. It's about going way too far with "free market" thinking that seems to be tied to a Darwinian, materialist, "selfish-theory" outlook on life. And this can screw up the value system in a society. Part of that is rewarding the wrong kinds of actions/people.

Additionally, huge monopolies are used as the example of "what capitalism creates" but in reality that is a small subset of capitalists.

Monopolies and oligopolies may be a small subset in terms of their numbers of companies, but that's by definition the case. However, their monetary worth and might is staggering. Think of Big Banking, internet giants, Big Oil and the like. To talk about anything resembling a "free market" there is quite the stretch.

So in short capitalism, imo, is a framework where you still have a choice in how you participate if you so choose. I don't think it's productive to point the finger at an economic framework to remediate ponerology.

But is it an "economic framework" or is it a whole package of ideas, a whole philosophy and outlook on life? And isn't the idea of a "free market" way too simplistic, given the complexity and many facets of life, human interactions, relations etc.?

There is such a thing as supporting local for the sake of local or because you have rapport. That's still a free-market. Also markets are not a uni-dimensional construct that abides by profit alone. In you're example there is social bond. However, you can sell something identical to another company in the same sector and provide superior customer service and actually pull customers away from a goliath competitor.

One of the tricks of free-marketeers is to oscillate between proposing an obviously wrong theory ("homo economicus") and then, once they get criticized, just revert to trivialities. What I mean is that if by a "free market" you just mean that you are not forced into tight guilds or communist collectives, then OK, but it seems free market as an ideology goes way beyond that. For example, it posits that a "free market" always produces better products, economic growth, great companies, technological development etc. But if people are not only about "choosing the best product at the best price", or if business transactions generally are not only about "rational choice", how so? And to the degree that capitalism arguably produces such great results, are there other reasons for it? Etc. And again, let's not forget the influence such ideologies have on ethics and values.

Similar for the homo economicus and rational choice: the theory is completely absurd. But what its proponents do once you point that out is that they say "but even if you act out of feeling, community sense, loyalty etc. that's still a rational choice". This is just meaningless. It's like saying "people do something because they are motivated to do something".

But at what point are we vying to re-architect the school? There are probably certain lessons to be had in a state of poverty that you couldn't get elsewhere.

For sure, but that's a dangerous line of thought. It's like the karma argument - when someone is suffering, he had it coming. Well, perhaps. But that's kind of lazy. The better approach would be to help those in need in an informed way, looking at the details and so on. There is such a thing as undeserved poverty, needless suffering and so on. And if you want to be cynical about it, at least you could say if you "pay those at the bottom off", they won't start a revolution and destroy the whole school.

Is it? That's an arbitrary figure which could be a factor of scale rather than something being inherently wrong or pathological. If you provide a service by way of the internet, your audience is huge. It simply doesn't take some mega EvilCorp to reach those figures.

It doesn't matter that much whether you have any chance or not in reaching these figures (though I think the story of the self-made billionaire is kind of oversold - it's incredibly unlikely, no matter how hard you work). The deeper question is whether there is any correlation between wealth and work/virtue. If that correlation gets screwed up too much, then this produces lots of (justified) resentment and the society isn't healthy. If one guy earns 10/h, and another one 10.000/h, this essentially means that the latter guy's hour is considered 1000 times more valuable than the first one's.

You might say, if he's a guy providing thousands of jobs, that this is justified. But I dunno. Does he really do that much more/better work? That seems impossible. Is at least the effect of his work (jobs etc.) worth the massive inequality? Maybe. But then again, if Bezos wouldn't run Amazon, the business would go to other shops, or someone else might have come up with something like Amazon. It's really hard to say.

Speaking of Bezos, perhaps the whole question is a deeper one about values. Should our society reward someone like Bezos so massively? For all intends and purposes, guys like that are the modern Kings and Priests. They are at the very top. But should they? How about valuing the wisest, most advanced, positive and enlightened being instead of the one running the most massive business?

I think these are interesting questions that go beyond "economic models" and the like. And I suspect that to the degree that those criticizing massive inequality are not driven by resentment and envy, they criticize it because of such deeper issues.

Just trying to think about it from a different perspective.

 

[Voyageur]

After reading this thread with some interest – trying to fix on these two words that seem to have come to define for people the way systems should work ideally - throw in the word democracy so it can be rounded off, brought up part of this discussion in my home country. These days, these are like trigger words, and from friend who seem to sit in either one camp or the other it gets a little frustrating – only because they don’t seem to want to look in the other camp and like to exploit their differences (often manufactured of mind).

When it comes to capital it can have different connotations, and money also (i think Laura described this at some point) has its own energy. With what dugdeep wrote above, a society kind of needs the basic social means as a balance, and I can well agree with this. With fiat capital’s energy, the state can redistribute it up and down and it must be collected (taxpayers, resources, trade) and then measures applied for its redistribution. Where it is distributed it has an energy effect often now negative. However, it was not always this way.

As I said previously, it's probably not very productive to talk at a practical level of how these systems are implemented today because they are corrupted by pathology, but rather in their 'ideal' implementation. In an ideal scenario socialism would be encouraged or facilitated by the state, i.e. there would be no impediments to people cooperating with others, it would be facilitated and encouraged. To do that, people would have to be free of unnecessary suffering brought on by the selfishness and ruthlessness of others. Again, we're talking about an ideal society here, and in an ideal society I don't think anyone would disagree that a "me first" or "dog eat dog" mentality has no place.

Capitalism and socialism are not, IMO, pathological ideas in essence. They are only pathologized to the extent that we have seen in modern history, particularly the 20th century, by a pathocracy that infects them and twists them to distorted versions of what they are in essence.

So I agree with this, and without getting into the weeds too far (the pro's and con's as it has been kicked around) - I agree too that in times older societies did not think so much in these modern definitive word terms, and even in Russia there is some interesting word play (still used by the West) to describe their systems with tyranny (we know the latter communism), yet the people in Russia knew within the context of certain times of rulership that their leaders cared for them; I'll dig up these examples at the end. Here, though, is an example from within Canada not all that long ago that began with the election of Pierre Trudeau in the 1970's (I'm going to say that he might have been under extreme pressure or there might have been a form of Canada does this or else, or he might have learned it at law school and been co-opted). Now there are many people who like that PM, and when young I thought he was better than the last guy – way cooler, and I even worked the voting booths as part of my civic duty, I thought.

What I did not know at the root of the money system that then operated in Canada could have filled a volume, unlike this young brave Canadian girl Victoria Grant who nailed down our past and current economic situation and why it exists.

So, I didn’t know anything about the Canadian Bank Act and didn’t know anything concerning banking other than it was a place where people put their paychecks; payed there bills, borrowed and hopefully one day realized their dream.

In the meantime, and although it is inferred in this long thread, as said, capitalism’s energy can be defined by its monetary system – its capital to improve a nation vs enslaving it (most countries are the latter today). The example here is as follows from Canada then and now.

Joe said until “a pathocracy that infects” comes along, and in Canada it took off in the early 1970’s or earlier.

Canadian lawyer Rocco Galati (interview below) in the last decade or so has been in a legal fight on behalf of a Canadian group against the Supreme Court of Canada who still to this day refused to rule – in fact they have been 100% dismissive of it (and they call it justice). The implications for Canadians, if they have ever even considered it, is huge and should make them a wee annoyed. The Supreme Court had basically refused hearing a law regarding capital and its control (no surprise), and this has to do with the the very Canadian Bank Act that Justin Trudeau’s dad took over while basically putting the Bank Act into abeyance, and that redefined capital banking in Canada.

So, the Bank of Canada by law (one of the few countries that still has it on its books) was responsible for money creation and distribution at the government level. The mechanisms under the Bank Act were about as organic as it gets when lending capital. The capital was owned and printed by the Bank of Canada on behalf of the citizens to provide for the functioning of government and to lend to provinces, cities, municipalities, towns et cetera for projects that benefited people (work, transportation, infrastructures, libraries, hospitals and on it goes). It was lent with little interest, and more than favorable terms that could be generally achieved along with other mechanisms in place so as to pay it off. This suddenly changed and the Bank Act was traduced and swept under the rug, quite illegally. With the signature now on paper the Bank of Canada was transformed under Pierre Trudeau to the international private banking system who took it over by setting up their typical middleman scheme of fractional reserves banking and interest.

Money as energy without middlemen is a curious thing – like that funny example of $100.00 dollars moving through a town paying off each other’s debt with their neighbour. As long as the money is not interrupted, it can even go full circle back to its originator and start again - everyone had payed off their hundred dollar debt with each other (in simplistic terms). Obviously the monetary system, fiat of not, does not like capital unsupervised and uninterrupted. So, proper control of capital by the citizens through their government can provide for a marriage of the two so called isms without extremes. Yet as is clear, we don't seem to be able to function as societies without extremes of ism meddling - which means we function even worse and things rapidly breakdown.

Going back to the Bank of Canada’s shift, have a look at this graph of the Canadian debt just after Pierre Trudeau came to power. Thereafter the citizens capital took flight on a negative energy trip with unsupervised gatekeeper owners. Thus, life was not the same, not only was it not the same it then took two members of a family to go to work just to make enough capital in the ism. At the same time social programs skyrocketed in demand and private bank interest rates did the same to double digits. In essence, there was not a town, city or province that did not suffer to make ends meet while their infrastructures started to fall apart and the citizens were put under further pressure. Really, there were not many families that did not now shoulder a larger yoke of debt - without trying to be in debt. However, not to worry, though, it would all be explained by the new banking scheme backed by an army of economists that had ways to help out our understanding of the great system.



The USofA’s own history prior to the Fed seemed to be a series of back and forth between government capital creation and private control, and the mountain of debt is where things are now at. Europe has had private banking for some time, yet still, it was not always like that.

Social programs within a capital system that looks out for people who are in need, as has been discussed, is not really a subject that can be dismissed – these are obligations of a functioning society. And then there is corporate welfare that moves along under the guise of capitalism robbing people of what could be used to help lighten their already taxed to death load while shoring up the countries functioning.

Back to mentioning despots and tyranny. Guy Matten in his book Creating Russiaphobia looks at the changes in Europe over time with word use along with authors (even like Bram Stoker and Kipling) who played their role to demonize Russia using false narratives of word understanding.

Matten says:

“Can There Be a Tyranny with Consenting Subjects?”

…All of these authors ended up with a conceptual paradox, inasmuch as tyranny only exists if the czar constrains his subjects to servitude by force, but not if his subjects are consenting. And this seemed to be the case of the Russians. So, to solve this problem, some authors suggested that the Russians were born slaves and barbarians and thus doomed to despotism by nature. A simplistic explanation which, under today’s criteria, is a form of racism or at the very least of crass cultural prejudice.”

To explain this widely spread critical bias without denying the Russians’ free consent to czarist authority, Marshall Poe offers more convincing arguments. The first one is a matter of terminology: the translation of Russian words into European languages has been subjected to semantic shifts that have reinforced the tyranny-slavery cliché.

In the mouth of a Russian sovereign, “autocratic” means that he is no one’s vassal, that he is free regarding any foreign power and owes his power only to God. When Ivan III (the Great) takes the title of czar (Caesar) after the disappearance of the last Byzantine emperor, the Russian Court, which has just ratified the end of subjection to the Tartar Khans, conquered the city-States of the North and gathered “all of Russia,” changes its ceremonial and adopts a new label sanctioning this new reality.

This is how the Great Prince, who until then was but some sort of primus inter pares, takes the title of Gospodar or Hospodar (a word derived from the Tatar language meaning lord, master, slave-owner) while, by logical antisymmetry, the subjects adopt the formula kholop tvoi (your slave) to greet the prince while bowing their heads with the polite formula bit’chelom, which means “with my humble salutation.”

The Europeans will do the same at the court of Louis XIV and will keep greeting the king and the nobility, calling themselves “your servant” without, for all that, considering themselves as their slaves. But when transcribing Russian texts, , given the distance and religious and cultural prejudices, it was the literal sense that prevailed, when it is obvious that all those formulations have to be taken metaphorically.

A similar evolution will explain the sense the word “despot” took on in European languages: what was originally the translation of the Slavic word for “king” little by little took on the negative meaning of “tyrant,” as a Slavic king (despot) could be nothing but a tyrant. In the mouth of a European, the word designates a tyrant who only dreams of reducing his people to slavery. For a Russian, originally at least, it was a word of praise. For a Westerner, it is an insult. The same misreading would happen if the polite “monsieur” of the French were interpreted literally as “mon sieur” i.e. “mon seigneur”: no Frenchman would ever think of his interlocutor as his lord deserving of a low bow.

To those semantic misunderstandings was added a misinterpretation of what the Russians meant by “slavery” and submission to the prince. None of the authors ever saw fit to encompass the whole of that relationship, and specify that if the subjects are the “slaves” of the prince, the prince, for his part, is the “slave” of God, whose mission is to protect his subjects, to ensure their personal safety and that of their possessions, defend them against invaders, who were numerous (Teutonic Knights, Mongol invaders, Catholic missionaries, Polish and Lithuanian aggressors, Swedish invaders) and protect them against themselves, that is to say, against their own divisions and disastrous civil wars.”

This seems today, as then, to be such a driver of our discourse among nations and it is disingenuous. Obviously, socialism can lean far left and capitalism can lean far right and like today, whatever words we use to designate the left/right – socialist/capitalist splits comes back to “a pathocracy that infects” either as a form of fascism - working both ends of the spectrum, or corporate globalism behind a mask of 'democratic' sanity. If citizens and their elected representatives can't even control their very monetary systems without being 'infected' then that is perhaps a better example of true tyranny, corporate tyranny that our governments and leaders have become enslaved by.

Someone mentioned above the subject of eliminating - divorcing, the corporate lobby from government, and that would be a good start in some type of step by step recovery process (in a perfect world).

 

[Martina]

Has nothing to do with a gene; it's all psyche.

I really needed to hear that, thank you

 

[Hindsight Man]

How about valuing the wisest, most advanced, positive and enlightened being instead of the one running the most massive business?

I think these are interesting questions that go beyond "economic models" and the like. And I suspect that to the degree that those criticizing massive inequality are not driven by resentment and envy, they criticize it because of such deeper issues.

First off,who is going to decide who is the wisest,most advanced,positive and enlightened?By which metrics?Are decisions going to be based on amount of self flagellation a man submits himself to in public,how much he donates,how many people he provides for?And by provides are you going to include the people that can eat because he hired them?Is level of advancement decided by technology or (as is often mentioned here) consciousness and if consciousness who is going to sit down and be the judge?You?That's usually what people mean when they say that.
Some considered Rajeeshpurnam the ''most enlightened,wisest most positive being'' .Curiously they ignored his lust for expensive cars.And what makes you think that no large businesses are run by ''enlightened'' beings?It's not like they're going to advertise it.Moreover,imagine trying to implement something like that in society,Jesus Christ what a nightmare.The best you could do is implement a social focus on competency.

As for criticism coming from ''resentment and envy'',I'd say the majority of it absolutely is.When you have an unthinking,uncritical portion of the population believing that those from the ''oppressor'' groups are fundamentally inhuman and that they are evil no matter what and you can do anything to them and still be ''good'' simply because they are the designated evil group it breeds pathology and it breeds it quickly.I bet 10 bucks to anyone here that they'll try something within 10 years.I see and hear terms like ''parasites'' being thrown around when talking about regular well off people.Not even multi millionares.The idea being that them having more money than average is absolute proof of them stealing from people.What is the answer?Why to take it all from them ofcourse,doesn't matter that you'll wipe out a good portion of local tradesmen and engineers,nevermind the local economy.Just take it from them and gimme gimme gimme.Such people tend to be pro-wealth distribution (the murderous kind,not the taxes kind) because they have a mindset of ''all for me none for thee'' and genuinely think that merely giving all the poor people money will magically erase poor people.

People need a carrot on a stick,money works pretty well as far as carrots go.During the 70's immigrant Russians were among the most well off demographics in USA,because when your society allows for upward mobility and another doesn't bright people won't stick around the ''other''.

Right now there's a narrative of ''everything the west has is stolen'' and that's simply not the case.A lot of innovation came from European immigrants bringing their ideas to a more receptive market and trying to escape WW1/WW2.People move where there is opportunity for them to do well.

P.S. I'm not attacking you per se,I guess I'm also #triggered because many people where I study are socialists/communists (not that there's much of a difference tbh) and I constantly have to hear ''trump this,right wing that,whites this,capitalism that''.Gets tiring.

Edit : fixed spelling

 

[Joe]

It seems to me that where socialism goes wrong is when it's used as a means to enforce 'equality' for everyone. It isn't necessary that everyone be equal, have the same sized house, the same food on the table, the same amount in their bank account. Someone who works harder, is smarter, or even in some cases is just luckier, shouldn't be brought down to the level of the lowest common denominator in the name of 'equality'. You have to let people thrive, if they're so inclined, especially considering that the ingenuity of individuals can benefit the greater society.

Totally agree. This is one major area where an kind of 'spiritual' understanding is totally missing from proponents of 'equality'. Not only is it not necessary for everyone to be equal it's not even appropriate due to the clear and sometimes radical differences between people. Some people's idea of 'heaven' is a very simple life (which usually comes at low cost), while others require exotic distractions (that often cost more). So desired lifestyle and therefore its cost varies greatly between people, ergo, there's very little room for equality, and it has to be realistically limited to a baseline of needs that the vast majority of people will agree on as necessary. Beyond that, it's each to their own and the work involved in getting it.

 

[Corvus]

I think it has to be applied in the right context, as we live in a STS world and people get things by easier way, many that have lots and by that way can influence things are pathologicals and psychopaths, not getting that what they have by conscietus work and being smarter but by back stabbing others and getting it by legalised robbery and thievery, position and familial ties and using the situation at the moment at the expense of many others, and there is no difference be it capitalism or communism, it all comes down to same thing in most cases.

I bet if you could use some statistics in most countries in the world those that have did not get it through hard work and their smarts. Even if someone got there by hard work it is not a justification to treat others like things and expendebals, and it usually comes to that because not only power attracts greedy but makes people more greedy, and rare are those not influenced by this law on this level.

Equality is not possible by nature but also in this world equality of chance is not possible by spirit, and I think that is what it should be understood under "equality" along without exploatation of others less material oriented and respect for their lifestyle, balance, but as said everybody has a different meaning and definition of it on a personal level depending on their inner or outer landscape and thus realize it based on that.

 

[luc]

First off,who is going to decide who is the wisest,most advanced,positive and enlightened?By which metrics?

Maybe those weren't the best words to choose.

I think maybe the bottom line is this: what are a society's values? This was Joe's original point I guess. And it's very important. The US/capitalism/free market thinking promotes a very materialist, money-oriented value system. It is their God in a sense. So capitalism/free market is an ideology that often overrides common sense and human decency.

Now compare that to Putin, for example: he isn't anti-free market by any stretch. But he has higher values that come first. So he told the oligarchs: keep your mansions and private jets, but respect the rules. Respect that there are values higher than you and your riches. And he has no ideological restraints doing something about those among the rich who destroy companies out of greed, or who avoid taxes and the like. In the US, nobody does anything about such things, because "free market" overrules common sense and decency.

I think Tucker Carlson's famous rant is very apropos here - as a conservative and anti-SJWer, he derides free-market ideology and as such triggered quite a few right-wingers :) Notice how he doesn't care about economic theories, but about higher values.

It's absolutely brilliant IMO and well worth the 15 minutes:

 

[Tuatha de Danaan]

What amazes me is that Tucker Carlson is allowed air time., Things that he says are having people disbarred from You Tube and other sites. What's his magic in all of this.? It's very puzzling to say the least.

 

[goyacobol]

What amazes me is that Tucker Carlson is allowed air time., Things that he says are having people disbarred from You Tube and other sites. What's his magic in all of this.? It's very puzzling to say the least.

I have wondered about that too. That video was from Jan 2, 2019 so maybe he will face more restrictions if he becomes too much of a of a critical thinker for MSM at some point. I hope not since I usually like his style of critical thinking (assuming that it is really his?).

 

[Ennio]

What amazes me is that Tucker Carlson is allowed air time., Things that he says are having people disbarred from You Tube and other sites. What's his magic in all of this.? It's very puzzling to say the least.

I've had this same question myself. A big part of the answer would seem to be ratings: Carlson had the third most seen cable news show only behind Rachel Maddow (if you can believe it ) and Sean Hannity, in 2018. This means that he brings in A LOT of revenue for Fox - which motivates them to keep him on with as little fuss as possible. But it also says something about the large segment of the US population that values, and is empowering, his on-going analysis. And thank goodness for that. Having said this, and given the incredible upswing in insane news coverage, I fear it is only a matter of time before he is made to lose his platform under some bogus pretext or another.