Topic: Why Socialism is the key - page 21. (Read 33165 times)

You're missing an important point:
You don't have a choice.

You're telling me "it's not because 70% of population agrees on it that it's good".
Fair enough. But then?
If it's not the people who decides, who will? An elite? Lol, we all know what "elite" do...

Addressing the bold points, the fact that morality is subjective is exactly why you need to restrict government to the most basic rights. In the southern US in the middle 19th century, there was widespread consensus that slavery was a justifiable economic model and that black people were inferior and therefore could have no rights as human beings. The notion was so widely accepted that the Supreme Court itself ruled that blacks had no rights under the Constitution. This is clearly an immoral and unjust viewpoint, despite being widely supported. Democracy clearly failed in this instance. The popularity of an idea has no relation to its morality, so simply saying that something that enjoys 70+ percent approval does not make it a legitimate point. Because morality is subjective, we need to limit government to a role of protecting the most fundamental freedoms that everyone agrees every person possesses: life and liberty especially, and most people will also include property. As a nation, we can decide that certain people do not have the right to be free and must serve as slaves for the benefit of the rest of society, and this idea could have the approval of 99% of the population. It is still an evil notion, and the role of government is to enforce everyone's rights equally, and especially to protect the minority who the majority would otherwise take advantage of if given the opportunity. When you have unequal rights, you have arbitrary law, and arbitrary law is unequivocally evil. Arbitrary law is what the American Revolution was fought over, and the Declaration of Independence was an indictment of the British practice of instituting arbitrary law to suit their whims. And the history of socialized government is one that has repeatedly instituted some measure of arbitrary law, because there is no way you can protect all rights equally while also redistributing wealth, because it necessitates infringing some group's rights arbitrarily under the direction of popular government.

The only reason why people react socialism in a negative sense is because the prime examples it took place in back in 2008 with the financial crisis.

Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor.

Banks get bailed out which was a socialism and while an actual business that does bad will stay bad and file bankruptcy.

We can debate about this all we want, but I`m just going over whats already been done in history over and over again lol.

And an important point: it can't really be worse than the shit we have now which is nothing but a big fat oligarchy as the Harvard study proved :-/

Interesting comment, thanks for your constructive answer.

Well it is true that by giving the absolute power to the majority, you hence take the risk of the majority being wrong.
But a few things allow me to have faith in such a situation:
-First majority doesn't mean 51%. Majority can be higher. It would seem rather logical to write in the first constitution of such a democracy that any law needs 65% of the people vote to get approved. Being hence sure that the people really wants that and not that it's close to civil war with a big 50/50. We can also ensure some stability by saying that changing the consitution needs 80% of approval, hence only crucial changes can be written in the constitution.
-Second, I strongly believe in transformation under responsability. Indirect democracy made people weak and stupid. They're not interested in politics and easily manipulated, because they all know they can't change anything. But if tomorrow they know they have the faith of the country in their hand, I do believe they'll get much more involved on politics. Exactly as the Greeks citizens did thousands of years ago.
-Third, moral is subjective. If more than 70% of the population wants something, who are you to say it's bad? What kind of moral absolute value could you take?
-Fourth, developped countries have a high education hence strong history knowledge and shouldn't tend to repeat mistakes.

Of course I can't guarantee anything, but it's still what I believe.

The one criticism I have of socialism is that majority rule and moral rule are not the same thing. Just because something is undertaken with the will of the majority does not make the action just. In your post, you seem to advocate that the crucial missing piece to a successful socialist government is simply a strong democratic element. My answer to this notion is that a tyranny of the majority is still tyranny, and socialism is more prone to justifying tyranny because it is popular. This doesn't make things better necessarily, it just makes people more certain that they can't possibly be doing harm when in fact they are, or worse, that the harm they are doing is creating a greater good. Historically, a group acting with the certainty that they are morally superior generally doesn't lead to a decrease in the level of violence they commit or are willing to commit. In America, we don't believe the ends justify the means. That's why we instituted the Constitution, to limit the potentially destructive means the majority could otherwise inflict simply because they have the popularity to do so.

So in your opinion the current USA government is already a dictatorship? What kind of government would not be oppressing the people then?

And no, not with guns, simply by saying "if you don't respect the laws of the country, hence don't pay the taxes you deserve, you won't be able to continue your activity anymore".
Then of course if the company says fuck to the state, the company gets sued, seems rather logical no? It means being sued for breaking the law.

With guns.

I'm sorry to scare you, I didn't know you were a child.

Dude, you're not only extreme, you're also stupid ^^

How are the current governments making companies pay taxes?

How are you going to "make" them pay?

What if they say no?

That's where your elite leaders use their extra power and guns to control people and force them.

If they can't control them, can't arrest them, and can't take their money, then they'll get rid of them.

Did I say "to get rid"? Why are you always trying to transform my words in extremism speech?

Currently McDonald's pay exactly 0€ of taxes in France. Same goes for Apple and Google. Apple makes billions of € every years in France and pay NOTHING on it.
Don't you think there is a difference between making them pay something and getting rid of them?

Oh and btw, Mc'Donald's doesn't employ "millions of people" only a few thousands. It wouldn't be the end of the world if they all closed you know? Especially as even is they closed, people would just eat somewhere else so other small restaurants would open and employ people. It might even create jobs in then end!

There have been countries that got rid of all the rich people and all the successful companies.

Citizens of those countries die trying to escape and go somewhere that still has rich people and successful companies.


McDonald's feeds millions of poor people every day.
If you get rid of McDonald's, how are you going to feed those millions of poor people?

touché.

But monetary inflation isn't exactly the problem. The root of all evils are banks

Banks cause monetary inflation upon which they make a hell lot of money. But even if we suppressed monetary inflation I bet the would find something else.

I think your have incorrectly identified the problem, the only thing killing socialism today is monetary inflation, the reason it's tolerated is greed.

This is something important. i'll try to give an example of why it's important. I live in a socialist country: France (even if more and more American influence make it become liberal and not socialist...). I'm from a rather poor family. We were not starving but we were clearly not rich. My parents worked a lot and earned little, they did whatever they could but life is what it is.

Well as France is a socialist country, the state paid for my studies, it even gave me money to study in another city where the school I wanted was! It allowed me to make great scientific studies and to become an engineer! Now I earn at myself pretty much the same salary as the sum of my parents salaries, which make me sure I'll be able to take care of them.

And so I pay much more taxes than what they did. But it's normal! It's fair!! I have my job because I made great studies, and I made them because I worked hard of course, but it was possible only because the state helped me. Because a socialist country is here to be sure you can do what you want if you work hard enough, that your parents' money is not the important thing.

Now I pay for the next engineers schools, and I'll pay it all my life. And I'll pay it with a big smile on my face, knowing if my country was not a socialist one, I wouldn't have been able to do this.

Where did I say that? Where did I talk about "being guilty"?
It's not the idea of being guilty! It's about inequalities! Of course the rich aren't guilty for being rich! Maybe they did bad things for that and in this case the law should punish them but that's not the question! The idea is not to take everything from the rich and give every one the same thing of course not! The idea is to take a bit more from the riches to help the poorest. Not to take EVERYTHING or not to take 90%, just to take a bit more.

Because let's face it, it's much easier to earn more money when you're rich than when you're poor. Which means the richest people will continue to amass wealth until the end. And that's what is currently happening, if someone doesn't balance things a bit, riches only get richer and poors only get poorer.

Of course again, the idea is NOT to take everything from the rich or to punish them for being rich. The idea is to make sure society doesn't become more and more unequal.

So rich people are guilty for being rich? I'm not saying that they are all clean, but just because some people work hard they should get their money taken away? Not cool.

I've read all your answers and (some of them) are interesting.

First thing, it seems you didn't all bother to read so I'll write it down again: the important part for a working socialism is a true democracy, which means that people should vote themselves the laws and the consitution. Which means the people are able to decide what should be taken and what should not, what are the priorities and where the money should be spent.

Second important thing, seems like there are a lot of Americans that don't get a clue about what is socialism. Socialism isn't communism. It doesn't mean you'll be taken everything you earn! It doesn't mean you'll no longer have the right to express yourself or to create a company! It doesn't mean you'll get oppressed or anything like that! Socialism is the idea that the government shall be careful about wealth inequalities, and do what is needed in order to not see 1% of the population own more than the 99%. That's all.

Finally it seems like you believe polices should be some kind of overpowered being in a dictatorial state...
What the heck? Police of a socialist country have no more power than police in the USA you know? Even a bit less!

The important part of socialism is that you would be abe to control companies and see that THEY ARE THE TRUE THREAT! They are the ones that ruin our world! They are the ones that get 99% of the wealth in the world and have NO OBLIGATION to give it back.

The main goal of a socialist country is to go see those companies and make them pay for what they do. The goal is not to take the money from the people but from where the money is. Hence, big companies and rich people.

So the "police" and "government" are individuals
with more power and extra privileges that the rest of us don't have.

How are they not an elite?






Yes, we all know that your ideas require us to bow down in front of the rulers.






So when your system creates tyranny and oppression for a minority of people,
"all they have to do is convince the majority to stop raping them". 
Great plan.






Right now we can work and use our own money to protect our own children.
We are allowed to use as much power as we can get.

You want to take that power away from us and tell us to
"trust millions of strangers to do what's best for our children".

Since you want to increase required trust and points of failure, you must think Ripple is better than Bitcoin.

Absolutely not.

The police will still be here to enforce the law and so will the government.
But the law will be decided by the population. By direct vote.
There is no power given to an "elite". If the "elite" tries to fool you, you have the power to change the constitution and the law.
Individuals have to bow in front of the group, not the contrary.
You don't want to pay a tax? Well create a law deleting the tax and convince a majority of the population that this tax is useless or unfair. Then you won't have to pay it.

This is the closest thing to individual power we can have. Current capitalism give infinitely less power than that to the people!