Anthony Weiner Goes Ballistic At GOP
- Thread starter Joecoolyo
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Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
I'll back you up on that one. It's golden.
Mental imagery which goes with it is priceless.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Honest hard work? Bill Gates bought another guy's operating system for dirt cheap after lying to IBM that he himself had developed a working operating system to sell to IBM. Gates goes and buys the operating system for a few thousand dollars without telling the guy that there's a buyer looking for an operating system, who did not advertise their search because they believed they had found an honest seller. Basically Bill Gates started his career on being a lying middle man.
No, they're not. Communism in particular fails specifically because it doesn't take into account selfishness.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
"Selfishness" and "self-interest" are traditionally considered distinct, the former tending to exclude altruistic behaviour, and the latter informing it.
People say this quite a lot, but they never really explain what they mean by "take into account". Perhaps you could elaborate?
In a nutshell: Communism assumes everyone will be content with their fair share.
Not even "fair share". But assigned share. What if someone genuinely believes that the share they earned fairly is higher than what was assigned?
GhostWriter16
Deity
Exactly.
Communism is "From each according to his ability (What he rightfully earned) To each according to his need (The collective again.)
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
That's a rather simplistic evaluation. The theory is generally rather more complex than that. This is a criticism that has been made for over two centuries, remember. It has been addressed many times by collectivists of all stripes.
That's why most strains of socialism demands workplace democracy. Not all socialism is a centralised Soviet-style bureaucracy, remember, and many socialists do not consider that to be proper socialism at all (and it's worth noting that this isn't necessarily just a "No True Scotsmen" pejorative).
Fr8monkey
Deity
As opposed to Capitalism... I got mine; but it's not enough. I want your too!
Personally, Domination, I see that as "from each according to his ability [i.e. what he can comfortably afford], to each according to his need [i.e. what he actually needs to have a modern Western life]". Note that neither clause involves either only paying what you feel like or getting whatever you like.
Fr8monkey
Deity
In the Conservative world:
Someone who works for 30 years only to have their pension taken away...
Too bad. Get another job.
Someone who sits on their ass all day by the pool waiting for their $100,000 a weed dividend check....
Wow! They are a God and need to be protected!
Someone who works for 30 years only to have their pension taken away...
Too bad. Get another job.
Someone who sits on their ass all day by the pool waiting for their $100,000 a weed dividend check....
Wow! They are a God and need to be protected!
GhostWriter16
Deity
Umm.... If someone is stupid enough to pay them that much.
That wouldn't happen though.
I know that. But with all the efforts to say what socialism isn't, it's still a problem to get some consensus of what it is. And then making that work. And the concerns about who gets what based on what effort is one of the problems that cripple the theory.
But it does happen all the time. Most billionaires don't do something useful any more to earn their living, even if they did once. Even you must see that this is a bit of a waste of talent?
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Differing opinions do not "cripple" do socialism, any more than differing opinions cripple any broad school of thought. One may as well suggest that the disagreements between proponents of presidential and parliamentary systems "cripple" democracy. They just produced different trends or schools of thought within it. Dogmatism is not strength, after all.
Let's say then that it seems to cripple the appeal the theory has for the people who need to accept it for it to succeed.
Charity has no chance of meeting all the need.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
I'm not sure that's true either. Most people how oppose do so on rather more basic grounds; this is an issue of execution, not of basic principles. Somebody who is not committed to the socialist ideology of collective ownership won't care about theories of value, and somebody who is will either pick a side or remain open-minded (which is often quite easy to do, given the non-immediacy of the issue in a capitalist society).Let's say then that it seems to cripple the appeal the theory has for the people who need to accept it for it to succeed.
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