RE: Socialism, Theft, and the Original Sin
Is this the anti-communist manifesto? :D
It's a caricature of sorts, as you're probably aware. It's not exactly a fair criticism I think!
Let's consider the opposite, capitalism, and the extreme discrepancies of wealth that it creates that, I assume, you'd consider fair (because who is unaware that Kim Kardashian worked much harder than Einstein or Philip K Dick who had to sustain himself with dogfood, and therefore deserves her money?)
So, what is capitalism? Perfect competition?
Are there any examples of perfect competition in nature so we can compare them to capitalism?
Oh, wait, natural selection is such an example!
Ever seen a lion kill a deer and carry it back to its warehouse where it stacks it alongside the other 1000 gazelles that it's killed, that could feed an entire forest, while other lions starve to death? No? Neither have I.
In nature, perfect and fair competition means that the difference between the successful lion and the lion that starves to death, is that the successful lion gets to starve one day longer. The successful lion manages to catch its prey just days before it finds itself on the brink of death. There's no rich lions. Just lions that are dead and lions that are not dead yet.
So when one human owns an island and another human doesn't know if he'll have enough money to feed his children tomorrow, I know something's wrong. I know capitalism isn't what it's pretending to be. It's not perfect competition, for sure. It favors only some kinds of traits (possibly psychopathic ones), and ignores others.
In general, there's only one thing that concerns me personally: under which system do the geniuses do better? We know some people are better than others - we just do. The question is, which system rewards actual worth and effort better?
I myself am not a communist, but I'm more liberal-leaning from what I can tell.
I like your interpretation of the apple of Eden story!
You are making the mistake of assuming because I criticize something I have to automatically be on the other side of the issue. I think you are missing quite a number of the points that I made, such as people stealing charity out of the hands of those for whom the charity was intended. If I give a coat to someone who needs it because they've had problems in their life that have brought them to a bad state, I want that person to be the one who gets it - not someone who just comes along, who is probably not even in as bad a state as that person is, but who feels that he has the right to take it just because he has less than a wealthy person. If I give money to a beggar on the street, no one else has the right to take it from that person because they believe that they need it more (even though they don't).
If you checked the links, you would be aware of the fact that this is what is happening in this city. It is not the wealthy who are suffering and having their precious resources sucked away, but the people who are already most in need in our city. This is because people who don't believe in property rights are not the ones who are having their shelters and food taken away from them.
It is too bad that you jumped to the wrong conclusions about the right to own property. It doesn't mean capitalism and conglomerates, and all of that other nonsense. If you take that knee-jerk reaction, you cannot see the bigger picture. If you look closely enough, corporations are just huge co-operatives, the military is the biggest government welfare system that exists, and property rights are nonexistent.
Property means you own your business, you own your own house, you own your own body. You are nobody's slave. It doesn't mean huge conglomerates that are owned by distant shareholders. People have their own land, and we take care of the people who need help - but without the restrictions of wage-slavery (as some people call it), very few people would need it. If you look closely, all those 'psychopathic' individuals you mention are not even owners in the companies they run, but workers lording it over other workers.
Neither communism nor capitalism offer freedom to do what you were meant to do, nor the opportunity to find out what that is. In the end, communism is pretty much the same as capitalism, that is, all the available resources concentrated in the hands of one small group of people.
BTW, I spent most of my life quite enamored of communism. I still see the educational opportunities to be far superior - but I never lived in the communist Soviet Union. From the people I have met who actually did live there, and came here after it crashed, life there was not as the propaganda made it out to be, and I am not a person to tell them that they are wrong when they actually lived it.
I have to add that I did see extreme socialism in Norway, and the effect that it had on the family. I think I have mentioned in other posts that I spent considerable time there, with a certain friend who has passed on. I saw how 'the state' was expected to do everything for him when he fell ill, how his family believed 'the sate' should arrange to help him move, how they believed 'the state' was the one who should look after him, etc... . It made me sick to see how little responsibility they took for their own son. They just threw up their hands and said, 'It's not our responsibility'. There were plenty of flaws in the Norwegian system, and his parents' attitude was only part of it. In the end, this is what socialism looks like in an advanced state, and the breakdown of the most important relationships - that between parent and child - is very real. What is going now over there is just the evolution of those policies, though Norway seems to have a bit more spunk than poor Sweden. Socialism didn't help my friend at all. It cast him completely adrift at a time when he needed an anchor. It enabled his parents to unload him and f-off to another country when he was a teenager, and then say that the state had to take responsibility for the behavioral problems that resulted. This is socialism. It pissed me off.
Thanks for your reply, it certainly casts a different light on the post. I now understand better what you meant.
As someone who is half Russian, I had relatives who lived during those Soviet years and they always told me it was better than it is now. I don't know, maybe they were the lucky ones, lived in a richer part of the country, or whatever, but it's certainly something to take into consideration.
I don't know as much about politics and economics as I'd like to, but I probably agree that both communism and capitalism are not the answer. Maybe science is? Just leaving each issue to its experts? Who am I to vote on climate change for instance? Who am I to decide about education?
I still think though that it's the state, or some impersonal entity, that should care for the citizens. Because otherwise, if a person has no family, or he happens to have a family that sucks, does that mean he'll have to depend on the kindness of strangers? If I'm a beggar and you come along and help me out, am I supposed to appreciate it and bow down in thanks? If doing what you did is the right thing, then it's your responsibility to do it, not your choice. But you'd argue it's your choice. I definitely don't want welfare to depend on choice. I don't want a cute freckled redhaired ponytailed girl to take precedence over my ugly darkhaired son (I don't have children, just an example) in the surgery room cos the doctors or benefactors are more aroused by her than by him. I'm exaggerating, but you get my point. I don't want to feel beholden to anyone. I don't even like the term charity. It's not charity. It's an obligation. Otherwise it's just like buying flowers. It just so happens that you get a bigger kick our of helping someone cos it makes you feel more superior and you can flaunt it to others or to yourself.