Not necessarily. At least in Europe, the political opposition between socialists (center-left) and communists (authoritarian far-left) is generally quite clear. It's often baffling when neoliberals scream about stalinism each time socialists push or defend the slightest social policy...

But then again, "liberal" means basically the opposite, over here. So, words... :-/

I brought up elements of capitalism to try to show you that a mostly socialist society can be the best of both worlds. How do you know their decline has anything to do with socialist policies? From my observation, it is other things that are causing the decline.
Most people who love capitalism here, usually call the Nordic model "Socialism" or "Communism" so sometimes it rubs off on me. And I start calling it what they call it.

I can't imagine what it was about this thread that reminded me of Idiocracy.

Simple mathematics; socialism is, at best, a Ponzi scheme which puts off the problems of one generation so that the next has even more they must confront.

It's the age old philosophy of "give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime". There's nothing wrong with giving a man a fish, but it is wrong to take someone else's fish without their permission. And while temporary solutions can work short term, they should be kept short term, and not be thought of as long term solutions.

Lots of churches in the US send charitable aid to various parts of the world that are still tribal in nature; they will often send water to these places since they often don't have a reliable source of clean drinking water. But more importantly, they also help them to build wells so that, even when they're gone, they'll still have water.

The problem is that these terms can either describe global systems as a whole (never pure), or ideal "poles" (mutually exclusive). That is : situations, or directions to go. In practice, we all live in a capitalistic (and socialist) system, and, after all, we all defend the capitalistic system we live in (by opposition to communism, for instance). But within it, we can fight for or against "capitalism" as some puritan exclusive value. That is, fight for "more" capitalism or "more" socialism, in terms of components.

Rhetorics easily jump from one usage of the word to the other. I don't know many anticapitalists who are actually against capitalism-as-a-background, as the discussion isn't even there. But they are against capitalism as some exclusive value in and by itself, and as some autonomous ideal (they are for social regulations in the sense of "more socialism on that capitalist background"). The capitalist fanatics, those who are all for absolute deregulated capitalism (capitalism as a pole of purity to reach) are prone to wave a pure communist alternative as some boogeyman threat. And the in-context of leftist militantism, even its phrasing, even the goes-without-saying aspect of this background, make this easy. Heck, it also makes it easy for the left-winged militants to forget this background themselves.

The thing is, anti-capitalism is seldom as anti-capitalist as ultracapitalists (and some heated anticapitalists) make it look like... It's a denunciation of an unheathy reductive ideology, but denouncing its reductivism doesn't mean obliterating as a component of society. It means, fighting to remind people that it is only a component. Something that no socialist forgets about "socialism" (in the older communist sense).

In short : words just fly everywhere, not always honestly (but sometimes). Lots of time is wasted on that. But heck, it's also part of politician rhetorics, especially the neo-maccarthyst kind...

Not a moot point at all. The uselessness of money when there is only one person in this world doesn't make the point moot. You just missed the point. The people who need benefits need benefits because they are not able to make enough money to take care of themselves. So to say they are greedy because they are getting the benefits of society and then not paying society back is silly. There is a difference between not wanting to pay back society and not being able to. Welfare only prevents suffering and death at the expense of some people not being able to enjoy having extra money for another big screen TV or Lexus. Whether or not, welfare makes people comfortable with not elevating themselves(if they can elevate themselves), depends on each person's morals and how susceptible the welfare system is to being abused. Yeah it makes sense for skilled labor to be more valuable than non skilled labor but that doesn't justify treating non skilled labor, worse than Roman slaves. When you spoke of minimum wage, you pointed out that you managed to improve yourself to a point you no longer had to work for it 20 years ago. 20 years ago. The USA was very different country back then. There were more opportunities back then. The cost of living was also much lower back then. This country has changed a lot since then. This is 2015. And you talk about your own life, only. You were able to reach a certain point in your life because you didn't have mental problems or health problems that got in the way and most likely had some help from your family or connections. You were also able to build yourself up before the great depression of the USA. That is luck. We are all victims of causality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npn4oH0AifU But of course, you would rather see yourself as some kind of godlike warrior who battled to a high position so you will never believe we are victims of causality. Because such beliefs will mess with your pride. You are just desperately grabbing at straws here, desperately trying to prove me wrong. One more thing. Minimum wage only makes goods cheaper for us all because the corporations would rather make the customers pay than mess with their profits out of greed. That is why raising the minimum wage would result in higher prices(and less jobs). It's because of greed. So should the answer be, let things stay the way they are and let people continue to suffer and die because of greed? OR...make this country a better place by having a welfare system(the USA doesn't have one right now BTW) that basically cancels out the horrible consequences of people's greed and throw away all the beliefs that result in Americans treating their fellow countrymen like garbage if they are unlucky in life? Do you also know that 99% of employers here refuse to hire homeless people for work? Just some food for thought.

My case is my case. I am grasping at nothing. I proved that it can be done, with willingness to improve. I didn't like the life I had, so I changed it. People who CAN'T should be helped. People who can but WON'T shouldn't be. How can you say there is no wellfare program in the US? There are millions of people sucking up money everywhere, gaming the systems to stay on government benefits. Are they the majority? I don't know. But my wife taught at several community colleges and has experienced these leeches first hand. People attending school because it's that or get a job, or stop receiving a gov't check. So they choose the simplest of the three. And they carousel around the schools and programs, amassing debt many of them have no intention of trying to pay back. These are the people being supported by my tax dollars, and there are a LOT of them. My wife saw only a small portion of people in her classes, and yet the leeches made up a SIGNIFICANT portion (nearly 1/3 of all total students she met) of those students. The schools are no better, nor are the case workers who both tell people how to maximize benefits rather than help people to get off them. These same peoplw on government assistance have nicer phones than I can afford, and more toys, so to speak than I can get. This isn't greed? This isn't a broken system enabling greed? Welfare should only EVER be a temporary measure for anyone, not a permanent status that so many work to maintain. These people are a complete detriment to society, and will be the cause of the downfall. The rich are no better, using loopholes and getting tax breaks so that not only is their % of taxation much lower, but the actual amount paid is less than mine. I still lean towards a society where I keep what I earn rather than one where my earnings are divvied up amongst those who did nothing for it. If you're not pulling your own weight, then why are you here? People have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They do not have the right to take my earnings because it's easier than earning their own way. Abuse of the system goes both ways, so stop pretending it doesn't. People lie about income and forge documents, or lie about who lives in a household and the household income to get benefits, and case workers go out of their way to turn blind eyes to these lies so that people who don't deserve benefits can receive them anyway.

And I stand by my statement that luck is what you make of it. If something bad happens you pick yourself up and keep going. Being unlucky is something losers say when they don't know what they're doing wrong. Winners make their own luck and don't let adverse situations keep them down for long.

Our biggest problem here is idealism. There's going to be problems in any system. We just don't agree on which system is a better focus. The community minded one drives the will to succeed out of people. It tells people "contribute a lot, contribute a little, you get the same either way"

But the singular minded capitalist one encourages individual success at all costs. "Work hard, find the right route, win the game, screw those other guys!" The ones at the very bottom have the same problem: work hard, don't work, you get about the same either way. The ones just above them who get away from the bottom have a bit more hope. But ultimately very few change castes or classes. The poor are generally going to stay poor, and the lower class will stay lower, etc.

There's no perfect answer. Personally I prefer to live where people will work for a living and pull their weight rather than a world where most of the people are waiting on the working class to pull the load for everyone. Thanks for the discussion. Maybe you'll convince someone less set in their mind set that your socialist paradise is the way to go.

You didn't prove your beliefs to me with your life story. You just proved you were fortunate enough to not have life shit on you so badly, you were prevented from rising up. Something bad could of easily happened to you that made you useless and you could be a homeless bum in Los Angeles today. Shit happens.

There in no welfare system in the USA even though the USA is spending a little bit of it's money on people in need to help them. You are wrong to think most of your tax dollars are going to people in need(and scammers). Most of it is going towards things that benefit the rich and wealthy. There is SSI, Medicaid and Food Stamps but no welfare. There is also something that is called (General Assistance) but many people here call it "welfare" and think it is actually welfare. It's not really welfare though because people are required to work many hours(like 40 hours a week) for General Assistance benefits(which is a little bit of cash, like around $200 a month). So this only helps the people who have a car and can work or the really sneaky scammers. But very few people are abusing the system to avoid working. That is just conservative propaganda that tries to trick Americans into supporting a system that takes a giant dump on Americans who can't take care of themselves so some people with power have more tax money to spend on wars and other things that benefit the rich and wealthy. I'm not saying there aren't such people who scam the system out of laziness and I'm not saying your wife is lying when she told you she encountered such people in life but these scammers are just the few bad apples.

Making welfare(if it exists one day) temporary is just cruel and unusual punishment for those who can't become productive members of society. You should realize, there are people who are simply unemployable and people who simply can not work no matter how bad they want to... The bodies of most human beings are plagued with bad genes and are extremely fragile. The minds of human beings are very fragile too. So many things can go wrong when it comes to your health and then you become as useless as a baby. And long gone are the days, when there was more jobs than people... Now there is too many people and not enough jobs... Over population is a bitch and when when robots capable of doing what a human being can do start being made, most of us will be seriously screwed with the current system.

PS
Even if most of the people in need, getting help are really just scammers, is it right to punish the people who actually need benefits(by cutting everyone off) because of these scammers? You also should realize that this country makes it extremely difficult for people to find work and then go to work. Do you know that most of the USA lacks decent public transportation? So simply by not having a car, a lot of people are doomed to need government assistance to not suffer and die even though they want to be productive members of society. The USA is a very hostile place for poor people. You should stop looking at your life and the lives of your friends and family to see what life is like for most Americans. Put yourself in the shoes of someone right now with no money, no skills, no car, no home living in a country with more people than jobs and ask yourself this. Would you be able to avoid suffering, death and then be able rise up without any assistance whatsoever? Put yourself in the shoes of someone right now who has horrible health problems or mental problems that make it impossible for he or she to work and ask yourself this. Would you be able to avoid suffering, death and then be able to rise up without any assistance whatsoever? If the answer is yes, then can you please tell me how?

Because I feel like being lazy, I'll just assume in this instance you are rather doing good natured ribbing - like me - though I suspect otherwise.

If you're actually peeved at some of the stuff I've been telling you recently, we should rather have a 1o1 chat mate.

Good post this one... mainly... I actually agree with it all... practicaly... but the one sided omission Telika... the omission... if inaction ethically equals support then you probably see what omission equals to... :)

I posted higher some of the rhetoric used by anti-capitalists in this very thread. Did you find it justified I wonder?

Let me now point out the obvious fact that I replied to Mr D. I participated on the thread earlier in the more generous spirit of it, despite all the ideological rethoric already flying around (again - starting with the title and very first sentence) and it was only when he hypocritically assumed the moral authority position for the second time that he got the full fisking - for the benefit of the public, because I was sure he'd not reply or acknowledge my post.

It's like you don't realize socialism fanatics, those who are all for absolute undemanding welfare socialism (socialism as a pole of purity to reach) are prone to wave a pure capitalist alernative as some bogeyman threat.

It's like you don't realize anti-socialists likewise are not as anti-socialism as ultra-socialists make them to be.

Funny that :(

You posted a lot of good points, so did paladin.

I'll focus on a couple I disagree with.


The fundamental moral disagreement I think I find when you said: "So to say they are greedy because they are getting the benefits of society and then not paying society back is silly. There is a difference between not wanting to pay back society and not being able to."

The problem we (I'm using plural as an assumption since paladin didn't focus on this) see is not about the want to pay versus ability to pay distinction. It's the benefits of society part. You are assuming a lot there.

The benefits of society are libraries, roads, etc... I doubt anyone is saying the poor and destitute should be excluded from that. Neither of those benefits are actual welfare though - they are benefits of society, as in we all benefit from them. Specific benefits such as welfare targetted at some people, that's a very different thing - those are not benefits of society, those are welfare benefits. Some of us see a moral problem in them, because of two big reasons:
1 - they are coerced out of A to give to B - we have no issue if they are voluntary.
2 - they are counterproductive since they actually disincentivize the welfare recipients to improve their situation - especially if the social stigma is also removed.


Then on an optimist note, I want to make an anti-luddite case. The opportunity is huge for another living standards radical improvement. If a lot of service desk jobs are automated, I expect a lot of supply for individualized consumer services to create demand. You would be amazed how far ahead the US is in regards to that compared to even Europe - having a chef cook your meals every single day, havign a personal entertainer, a personal trainer, a personal assistant, personal accountant, personal lawyer... If the price of labor really falls as much as I expect and hope due to robotics, there will be a huge demand boom that will allow masses of people to leverage their skills: cooking, singing, designing games, working out, reading law books, running spreadsheets... to make a decent living. I don't think that's so big of a utopian stretch. We see the beginnings of it already.

1. Sometimes people have to be coerced to care for their fellow countrymen to prevent suffering and death. In a perfect world, there would be no need for such coercion but a lot of people are too selfish and greedy in this world. The coercion is the lesser of two evils.

2. Whether welfare is counterproductive or not depends on each individual welfare recipient. You can't just say. everyone who receives welfare won't want to improve their situation. It's not like, everyone who receives welfare will join some kind of Borg collective.

And welfare is a benefit to all of society because when a lot of people are facing suffering and death, they turn to crime. And I don't think these people are bad people because being homeless is a hellish existence and nobody wants to die. In the USA, many people shop lift and then let themselves get caught so they can be put in jail so they don't freeze to death during winter. Most of the crime in the USA would go away if poor people and people with nothing stopped being treated like garbage. These victims of the current system also become full of rage and hatred. Rage and hatred against their fellow countrymen. If a lot of people in your society is angry and full of hate towards their fellow countrymen, then everyone will suffer. Rage and hatred is very contagious. It spreads and spreads until the environment is toxic for everyone And everyone except the rich and wealthy might fall without anyone to catch them some day and then not have to be subjected to suffering and death if there is welfare. It is foolish for someone to assume, their life will just keep getting better and better and nothing ever bad will happen to him or her. Do you think everyone who is homeless today, were always homeless or poor? One day, you could be making a decent amount of money, be 100% healthy mentally and physically, be enjoying life, be 100% independent and then one day, your whole world could be turned upside down(someone ruins your life, you get in a horrible accident, your bad genes reveal themselves with horrible health problems, you become an outcast, you become addicted to something etc). So all of you people who are well off, arguing against welfare and other benefits are really arguing against your own security unless you are well off in a rich or wealthy kind of way. :) And there are some cases of rich people losing everything too. I also find it kind of funny that a lot of these people who see socialism as evil, have no problem with enjoying social security, Medicare and other benefits like SSI offered to them when they are senior citizens. :) Ayn Rand was one of these people. The hypocrisy.

I believe in stoicism monkey. I think a lot of people think I'm an hypocrite, but I've had my hard knocks in life, and I actually do believe it is better to not expect anyone will help you out. That way when they do, you handle it the correct way - with gratitude. And if they don't you avoid ressentment from what I think is wrongful entitlement.

Bottom line, I don't disagree with your logic - much - I just think morally in a different way... like with crime, granting the premise about poverty leading to crime, (which I disagree with - it's a correlation where the causation is more complex and I think it's culture causing both crime and poverty) I would just be much much tougher on criminals. That's another solution huh? Give them welfare of the food and board kind in jail, and/or force them to work somewhere.

I think this is preferable to spreading the rage and hatred by promising welfare and then not actually being able to deliver to expectations. Unrealistic entitlement expectations are still expectations - particularly when populist politicians just want to get elected and god damn the long term consequences.