Just apply the idea to grade point redistribution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCg9E0Pxu80
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Just apply the idea to grade point redistribution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCg9E0Pxu80
Still put the first man in space.
Aye Denmark is an awful place to live :(
How are they doing these days? Give us the details.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xei
You were a university student last I heard. What do you think of forced redistribution of grade points? What flaws do you think there would be in such a system?
Well, you have fun living in Denmark. I would never even consider it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvo
Lessons Better Left in Denmark | Tea Party Patriots
I support LA, but Rasmus Brygger is insane.
e: also, all those things he mention are indeed bad, but they are also being worked on. I think with the next parliament election, we will see a lot of things change, since LA will get a lot of power.
Grade points are not supposed to be based on competition. You're rewarded for the amount of work you complete, so if everyone does just as well they'd all get the same grade, hypothetically. Analogy failed, thread failed.
^^ Sure, who cares if the answers are actually right or anything…
There may be a slight influence from having the correct answers but only slight.
What you're describing sounds like today's dumbed-down, no-child-left-behind, let's not hurt anybody's feelings who cares if America drops to the bottom in world education, left wing (aka socialist) school system. Funny how when we actually did rank high on education we graded on correct answers.
They are both based on competition. Grades are based on accomplishment, and so are paychecks. Redistributing either discourages accomplishment and rewards lack of accomplishment and results in stagnation. Both are terrible ideas for that reason.Quote:
Originally Posted by Original Poster
Do you think a system of grade point redistribution would work well? If not, why not?
I'm a little confused. Are you saying that achieving a certain grade is based on competition?
It is based on effort, and a student is just as free to compare his accomplishments to those of others as an employee is. What's the difference, and how is it relevant? The point here is that punishing success and rewarding failure is a disastrous practice. Don't you agree with that?Quote:
Originally Posted by BLUELINE976
At most law schools, the grade you make in a course is based on how well you did compared to how everybody else did. Is that how capitalism works? I wouldn't say it is, but it's not relevant to the analogy any way.
What analogy would you use to illustrate why socialism fails?
Hold off on the barrage of questions, I'm trying to understand what you're saying first.
Here are two options
1: The grade a college looks at when deciding if it should accept a student or not are based on competition.
2: The grade a student achieves by completing any given amount of work assigned in a class are based on competition.
Obviously the grades are identical. An A is an A, a B is a B, etc. But I think competition applies to only one of those scenarios.
It looks like we are splitting hairs over the word "competition," and I am not sure why. It is not relevant to my analogy. My analogy addresses accomplishment and how taking away from it where it is earned and giving it where it is not earned hurts a system.Quote:
Originally Posted by BLUELINE976
The questions I asked you are very relevant. Please answer when ready, "libertarian."
The meaning of "competition" is relevant to your analogy, because if you want to draw a parallel between a system of distributing grades and a system of distributing resources, it would make sense for both grades and resources to be scarce. When a student receives a grade in a class, it's not like he's receiving a scare resource. There's no limit to the number of B's a teacher/professor can hand out, for instance. I'm inclined to agree with OP in general on this point.
But to your credit, it's not without merit. It relates to incentives, and any thorough take-down of socialism will have to mention the incentive problems related to it.
My analogy is only about how redistribution of what is earned affects incentive and thereby affects performance of the overall group. The fact that grade points cannot be scarce does not cause a problem for the point made by the analogy.
In law school, grade points are scarce. If you score the fewest points on an exam, you make an awful grade even if you do what would otherwise be considered really good. If you want to address my analogy only in terms of law school, that is fine, but I don't see what difference it makes.
I remember once receiving an assignment on Kirchoff's laws. As I live in a capitalist society I have a strongly held subconscious belief that I live in a world of scarcity as I have always lived in the lower class of this society. I noticed (subconsciously) that the circuit diagrams could be simplified and that the number of electronic components could be reduced to save the components for something else; which is a very good idea in a world of scarcity. I made the calculations for the adjusted circuit diagrams. I checked my calculations against the original circuit diagrams and had the same answers. I handed in my assignment and received a grade of 0%, the lowest grade possible, for getting the correct calculated answers; saving components; truly understanding Kirchoff's laws by my re-design; exercising my ability to think constructively and wasting an extra hour of my time for doing so. I wonder what score I would have got in a university in a socialist country.
It sounds like you had a professor who was in competition with you and was angry that you did something so well. A lot of professors work mainly to showcase themselves and feel special. When somebody outdoes them intellectually on something, it makes those professors' blood boil. So many students think they are doing the right thing and impressing their professors and making them happy by coming up with brilliant ideas and doing high level stuff, but way too often, it majorly pisses off the professors. That fact makes my blood boil.Quote:
Originally Posted by mcwillis
Did you ask your professor why you received a 0%?Quote:
Originally Posted by mcwillis
That wouldn't have been his attitude at all. I was only displaying what a good university graduate would do in the workplace; which would be to engineer a working electronic circuit that also saves time and money for the capitalist enterprise producing such a circuit for a paying customer. He knew that and for whatever reason he decided to punish me for deviating from the questions that he had set.Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
No I didn't. In hindsight I should have done and started an argument. My friends who got the same calculated answers as myself got 100%. If I was that teacher I would have given me 100% for the correct answers due to calculations and explanations as to why the calculations were correct. Then deducted 20% for deviating from the questions asked. And finally adding 40% for initiative and good engineering skill to give me a final score of 120% and put a smiley face next to the score.Quote:
Originally Posted by BLUELINE976
So you put the mental effort into simplifying calculations and getting the correct answers anyway, received a 0%, and did nothing about it?
You should be frustrated with that decision rather than whatever the professor's reasoning was.
I just find it funny they used Regan, who was more of a socialist than Obama. People like to pretend Regan was some small government guy but he was for massive government and he put the entire country in debt. His philosophy was spend as much as you could today and have the future generations pay it off later.
What do you think you should have made on it? If you should have gotten a good grade but got literally a 0, your professor had a personal problem with you.Quote:
Originally Posted by mcwillis
I agree that Reagan is not the right person for that cartoon role. He was a very big government politician. He raised taxes multiple times and held the national tax increase record for a while. He is a terrible example for promoting capitalism, despite what Republicans think.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alric
People don't know what Capitalism or Socialism are, I find in most cases. They depend all of it on Social Safety Nets. So long as Obama pushes to increase them while Reagan pushed to decrease them, then Reagan's the capitalist and Obama's the socialist even though Republicans actually favor big government more once you take into account all other forms of government spending that get taken off the debate table. If you spend the commoner's tax dollars on the oligarchy rather than the other commoners, I guess that's not socialism.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alric
Find me socialist that equates income distribution with GPA distribution. You can't? Then this entire thread is a straw man. You are assaulting a political affiliation that does not exist.
In school if everyone completes the requirements for an A, everyone gets an A. In real life, if everyone completes the requirements, a sparse few actually receive the A, another small selection gets for themselves the Bs and Cs and the rest get left with Ds and Fs.
You're so afraid of socialism, meanwhile capitalism has destroyed the country.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/op...racy.html?_r=0
Ha ha, taking capitalism analysis from the New York Times. That's hilarious. Of course no socialists draw a parallel between academic and economic socialism. The parallel destroys their entire philosophy.
The difference you mentioned between economic and academic socialism is irrelevant to the analogy. Can you explain how you think it is relevant?
Now here's the million dollar question: How well would an academic system that involves redistribution of grade points work? Please explain your answer.
Grade point redistribution is an incredibly common, and incredibly asinine practice in school. But the difference is grade point redistribution in reality acts much more like capitalism. They call it grading on a curve. The top scorer gets the top grade, and every other position is filled in through comparison, with everyone's value compared to the other competitors. For it to work according to socialism, the real analogy would require primarily the understanding that in life, not everyone gets to manage the capital or no one would be left to produce the capital.
Therein lies the key problem with your analogy, it asserts that GPAs are competitive, and they're not. The competitive aspect comes after the GPA where it's used to get into college. If you want to make a sensible argument, you're best off starting there, stating that in socialism two students with differing GPAs would still be allowed into the same school.
But even then, to match the analogy with reality, we'd have to add a vocational school and accept that for every one person that gets into the university, 29 need to go to the vocational school and the other 70 need to work on the bottom of the pyramid.
And the rhetoric I hear in this country from pro-capitalist conservatives makes it sound like they're the ones fighting for unrealistic reform that evens out the pyramid. Then it's claimed socialists want to flip the pyramid. All socialists want is to collectively own what the workers produce in the first place.
Those are differences, but they are not relevant differences. Can you say what the parallels between the two systems are?
How well would an academic system that involves grade point redistribution work? Please explain your answer.
I will keep asking that question every time you dodge it.
Simply because you lack reading comprehension skills that doesn't mean I failed to address your question. See how my post basically only addresses that question? See how my entire post, every single sentence of it, directly relates to the analogy of GPA and economics, whether the analogy is relevant and how, if at all, it is relevant?
If you continue to assert that I haven't addressed your point I'll be forced to assume you're utilizing fallacy in order to dodge criticism against your argument. In which case, I win this thread. Your move.
(At first I thought, "fuck I should back out before this fool beats me with experience, then I thought, "No one's got more experience at being a fool than me!")
There was some talk about Denmark earlier in this thread, partly based on a blog post by some kid. However, same kid did not realise that socialism, as it is practised in Denmark, is also practised in a lot of other countries in Europe. When it comes to socialism, Denmark, the UK, and Germany are not far apart. And by most accounts, Sweden is more socialist than those three.
There is a widespread assumption in Denmark (and probably in many other places as well), that the US is an extremely capitalist country. However, clearly this view is inaccurate, since socialism thrives in the US; any country with a central bank that actively dictates interest rates, cannot be capitalist - if capitalism is seen as the "free market economy". And I believe zoning laws are in heavy use in the USA - these are also not compatible with a free economy.
As far as I know, there is not a single "free market economy" on this planet as this time; socialism in one form or another exists in each and every country.
That is true. There is at least some degree of socialism in every economy. Do you think we should do that with grades?Quote:
Originally Posted by Voldmer
No, you did not answer the question. I asked you how well an academic system involving grade point redistribution would work and to explain your answer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Original Poster
I have not followed this thread in detail, so I may be missing the point here, but I'm in favour of a completely free market and totally opposed to socialism in any form. As far as grading students is concerned, that should be left to the body issuing the grades. Ideally, there would be private organisations - completely unconnected to the educational institutions - that did the grading of students (for payment). Society would then work out, what a grade from the various private grading organisations was worth.Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
Good deal. I'm with you on that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Voldmer
The grade point analogy involves redistributing grade points so that the less fortunate students can pass. I am trying to get Original Poster to tell me what would go wrong in a system like that, but he is dodging the key question because he knows that his answer will involve saying exactly what is wrong with economic socialism. We've been arguing about socialism since about the time he became a member here.
Okay, thanks for the summary. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
Funny, I thought OP had a rather anarchistic ideology (the Guy Fawkes mask etc.), but I must have read too few posts here in "extended discussion".
He supports socialistic anarchy, which I don't think could ever happen even for two seconds on a large scale. He might want to tell you more about it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Voldmer
And in my post, I explain how we already have a form of grade point redistribution, it's called grading on a curve, and if it were analogous to economics, it'd be more analogous to how capitalism works than socialism.Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
Voldmer - I associate the Guy Fawkes mask with revolution, not anarchy. Guy Fawkes himself was a Catholic pushing for theocracy, or something like that.... nothing I support. I'm a libertarian socialist, which in a nut shell means I believe that producers should own their product rather than contract out their labor in a system of wage slavery.
That is not redistribution of grades. I have curved test grades myself. I know all about it. Curving grades doesn't involve taking any points away from anybody. I am asking about a system in which all of the grades for a test, class, course, or school are added up and then the sum is divided by the number of students and everybody gets that grade, or a less extreme version in which the best students lose a certain percentage of their points so that other students can get the extra points they need. What do you think of a system like that? How well would it work?Quote:
Originally Posted by Original Poster
I think a system like that is not at all what socialism is. You're depicting the straw man version of socialism used to excuse the actual socialism that takes place in our government, used to malign social safety nets and ignore corporate welfare.
You should really read that New York Times article I posted. For Capitalism to function in society even capitalists warned us about the potential for those that control the capital to derail the system; the potential for capitalism and democracy to oppose each other (as we have seen come to fruition where it's now factually incorrect to call this country a democracy)
Let's try this yet again. How well would such an academic system work? What would be wrong with it?
You want me to say that if you receive the same score as everyone else whether you do the work or not, then there's no point in doing the work, right? That's why I keep going back to the fact that the method of redistributing grades--or wealth, is a STRAWMAN and does not actually represent socialism. You're being lied to.
Are you capable of answering the question? Do you need me to explain it to you?
By the way, whoever keeps giving my threads one star, grow some balls and identify yourself so we can discuss your views. Don't be a chicken.
Okay, got it! I'm essentially an anarcho-capitalist (for those who know, what that is), and I think that producers do own their products (but that they had better sell them, if they want any real benefit from them).Quote:
Originally Posted by Original Poster
Threads can be star-rated?Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
Brilliant go getters will find it worth there time to get a doctorate if it means earning $85,000 (as opposed to $20,000 with out it), despite the fact that with out taxation it would be between $120K and $180K. Those types may bitch that it is not fair, but they will not choose to forgo using their talents and work fast food instead. Fast food may be harder work in many ways.
Then we have the lazy drunk, who will not change even if we take his food and shelter away. He will just beg and steal, if he is that type. However, giving him access to free mental health medications, is not ever going to make him less likely to seek work.
It sounds more like the video is describing communism, which is very different from socialism.
Yeah. I don't really see what it's worth because the topic of the thread has a lot to do with its value and if the discussion on it sucks, I try to make it better. It seems like it's mostly a way for cowards to have their fits and run away.Quote:
Originally Posted by Voldmer
The brilliant go getters are much more likely to become doctors if they are not taxed too much. If we had equal distribution of wealth, almost nobody would want to be a doctor. Why do that when you can be a lifeguard or answer a phone and make the same amount of money? That is the extreme case. The less extreme cases reduce the tendency to be lazy as the taxation levels go down in the heirarchy, but somebody making $20,000 a year would be much more likely to become a doctor if he can take home $170,000 than if he can take home just $85,000.Quote:
Originally Posted by sivason
Communism and socialism have different definitions, but in practice, the attempts to make communism and pure socialism happen result in the same reality. The government controls everything and gives people what it decides to give them. The governments will have different ways of describing and labeling what they are doing, but it's the same thing. That is why the Soviet Union is referred to as communist and also socialist. It was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but it was controlled by the Communist Party. Really, it was just a totalitarian Hell hole where people lacked incentive to work hard, business absolutely sucked, and the government collapsed because the economy was absolutely pitiful.
Producers are the laborers that actually build the product, support the entire industry through their labor and reap nothing but their contracted wage. Essentially anarcho-capitalism exploits labor from an anarcho-syndicalist perspective. It's called wage-slavery because laborers have no choice but to be exploited if they want to make ends meet.Quote:
Originally Posted by Voldmer
This discussion seems much more interesting than the OPs ridiculous game of redefining socialism and taking any attempt to clarify socialism as question dodging.
How well would a system of grade point redistribution (as described by me and the video) work? What might go wrong with it?Quote:
Originally Posted by Original Poster
Is it even possible for an economic system not to carry an amount of disadvantages. Can anyone name an economic system that benefits everyone in the country?
As far as I'm concerned the most important factor in any country is education, no system will ever work fairly if the population is uneducated
That is why all schools need to be private. Capitalism gets things moving.Quote:
Originally Posted by dutchraptor
Do you have any studies to back that claim? why couldn't a non-private school provide good education?Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
The best education systems around the world are usually regarded to be from socialistic countries.
I actually went ahead and watched the video you posted.... it's imbecilic at best.
Socialism is about instilling fairness into the community by giving everyone a similar chance. Instead of focusing on product, socialism focuses on how hard you work according to your own limits. The money you earn is equally influenced by what you are doing and how hard it is too fulfill the job.
Capitalism works by exploiting the majority, the competitive and greedy can thrive and become rich.
The reason capitalism is effective is because all focus is spent on cheap labor that will that will allow the more fortunate to thrive, pro-capitalists confuse this for an environment where anyone who works can eventually become rich. In reality the majority of the population is born into a disadvantageous position. By privatizing schools, poor people will never get the education they need to get a job to pay for their children's education. So the cycle continues and the rich are guaranteed a good life. Through inheritance never even has to work a day of their life.
Quality of life essentially revolves around income.
Socialism on the other hand works by rewarding people for working hard. Everyone gets the same initial chance at thriving, but the money they receive for two different jobs isn't necessarily the same. The amount of money you earn is proportional to the amount of work you put it, working as road-worker will get you the money to sustain your life comfortably, putting work into an education and getting a more demanding job will eventually provide you with a slightly higher income.
The beauty is that people will choose in what path they take their life based on their interests, not on the income they could earn. Overall, people are well educated and focused on the more important aspects of life while still living a lifestyle worth for a "westerner".
Whenever I use the word socialism, I'm referring to a specific kind that could work (excuse my lack of knowledge on the terminology involved, it's quite lengthy at times). Same goes for capitalism. You really can't say either works or doesn't since there are so many different strains.
Though I don't believe that pure capitalism can ever work, I do believe that socialism is a key component of a successful country. Every single study in the past decade proves that income inequalities cause more problems than they solve, not to mention that people do not get happier when you give them more money then they need to live comfortably. There is no reason why the wealth of a country should aggregate in a few peoples hands.
How is the video imbecilic? It's a true story. A college professor actually tried equal distribution of grade points. The result was that the grade level of the class hit F level. How do you explain that?
Socialism is a pipe dream. You might as well be saying that we should use leaves for money so that everybody can be rich. It doesn't add up in reality. You say that everybody should get paid according to how hard they work. Who gets to decide how hard people are working? Who gets to decide how much money people get for what they do? How could you possibly make such as system happen on any level without stealing from people? If a ditch digger works as hard as a brain surgeon, does the ditch digger get as much money as the brain surgeon? According to your idea, yes. Do you see the problem with that? Why would people go to medical school to become brain surgeons if they can just dig ditches and get the same money? Do you know any doctors? I know tons of them. The truth is that they are driven by the money and the prestige that comes with the job. In your utopian pipe dream, people become doctors just because they love the work. In reality, they rarely do. Why would anybody in your ideal system ever start a business? Why would they care if it is well run? In the Soviet Union, they didn't. That is why it collapsed. In your system, a business owner, if there ever is such a thing, could just load a bunch of unnecessary stuff onto trucks and go, "Well, I worked hard today. Give me my money." And who the Hell would he be talking to?
The reason capitalism works is that people are naturally rewarded for pursuit of greatness. It gives people reasons to start businesses and make them kick ass. It gives people natural incentives to climb business ladders. That is the reason for the success of the United States. We are losing it, but that is how we got to where we got.
Private charities could take care of the money situation for private schools. If we would end our welfare state, we would stop funding and incentivizing the mass reproduction of the poor, and we wouldn't have such an issue with masses of poor people. People would tend to have kids only when they can afford to. It is absolutely insane for poor people to have kids. Also, if we would have a much more reasonable tax system, our economy would improve so much that people would have a lot more money to give to private charity. They would also feel more of a need to do it if there wasn't so much poverty rooted in laziness.
Let's go back to the grade point analogy. What do you think of a grading system in which kids are given points based only on how hard they work? If a kid works hard and makes what would be a C, he makes an A. If a supergenius studies for 5 minutes for a test and gets every answer right, he gets a D because he didn't work that hard. Would that be a good system? What would be wrong with it?
Do you believe in keeping scores in sports? Are winning teams greedy? Is it the case that the will to do well makes both teams do closer to their best than they would if they were just given points based on how hard people are trying, according to some person or people? Giving points based on effort is not even close to the incentive giving points based on accomplishment is. Rewarding accomplishment is the best of all possibilities, and it happens naturally if a government doesn't interfere with it.
Well good to know you read absolutely none of my post and just started spewing the same old story.Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
Here's a thought for you, stop thinking black and white. Socialism has many forms, take a minute to appreciate what I'm laying in front of you before you dismiss it with your "grade analogy".
I never discussed how the exact mechanics would run, neither did I say that people would earn the same amounts (you seemed to have missed pretty much my entire post in that respect). A doctor and ditch digger will not get payed the same, the doctor will certainly get more because he worked harder for it, ie he spent many years studying. Another point to be made is that you are still limited to your own abilities. Standards for jobs aren't lowered, someone who can't be a doctor must choose something else. The system is not without it's flaws as I said earlier but provides a system through which everyone has a similar chance and the population can be well educated.
You are mistaking my utopian form of socialism for communism, which it is certainly not. No one gets money for laying around doing nothing and no one is being pampered.
The funny thing is that my post explicitly mentions that the beauty of my form of socialism would be that money is placed second to human needs (happiness being one of them), and your reply focused almost entirely on how people would lose out money wise. That's the point, the value of money in people's lives goes down, they get can pursue their interests and live happy lives. It revolves entirely on removing the mindset that you must ascend a corporate ladder to attain happiness.
You seem to think it's terrible because it can't produce massive economic growth, because one cannot be competitive to another. Why are these things of importance to a human being, the happiest people in the world are those who care not for money or greed. If a human can live a western lifestyle and be happy isn't that wonderful. People can express their competitive side through sports and debates, not how much more wealth they can produce within a year.
As for what I think about the grading analogy. It's stupid, as with any good system there must be rewards and punishments. And there is certainly no reason why the education of a country should follow communist trends. I can think of many different education systems you could implement within a socialist economy. As I said earlier, it's not about pampering anyone, it's about giving fair chances. Everyone get's their shot at their dream. If they fail multiple times they can still sustain themselves of lower ranking jobs.
Lastly, the reason the united states was successful was because they managed to exploit half the world for their labour and resources, not because it was "land of the opportunity". The American lifestyle has always been unsustainable and relies entirely on a large number of people somewhere in the world being taken advantage of. Anyone who thinks it's a reasonable way of living is delusional.
That is what makes socialism attractive, people can be content with a sustainable life, unlike capitalism where grand materialistic lifestyles are endorsed.
I know you didn't discuss the exact mechanics of your idea. That is why I asked you about them. I did not say you said anything about people earning the same amounts. That is exactly why I presented a revised grade point analogy based on your idea. How much of my post did you read?Quote:
Originally Posted by dutchraptor
Okay, so you want the money to be based on work involved in necessary education for jobs also. You didn't say that earlier. It's a step better, but I still think it would be a disaster. Should somebody who starts a business that brings in billions get less money than his ditch diggers because he no longer has to work much to keep the business going? How do you accomplish that without stealing what belongs to him? Also, as I asked earlier, who determines who gets what amount of money? Who are these control freaks you want to entrust with such decisions?
I am all for doing more than working. Look at how many posts I have on this site. My concern with your system is that it would collapse or else be extremely stagnant.Quote:
Originally Posted by dutchraptor
But what will make businesses function? We need them for economies to function. Laziness doesn't do the trick. Do you want us to all go back to living in caves, tee pees, and huts?Quote:
Originally Posted by dutchraptor
I revised my grade point analogy to fit your concept of socialism.Quote:
Originally Posted by dutchraptor
Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
A lot of Americans have exploited people of other nations, but that is not the secret of our success. Extreme determination to succeed is what made the United States so successful. All of these greedy people you keep saying are misguided are the business owners and operators who made our society advance so much.Quote:
Originally Posted by dutchraptor
I ask you again who would decide the amounts of money people get. Although your idea is a bit different from other socialistic models, other models involve exactly that problem. Think about how it has been handled. What have North Korea, Cuba, the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, and China done to regulate the distribution of money? Is it just a big coincidence that they were/are so oppressive? The laid back lifestyle of happiness you have been discussing has not existed where socialism has been tried. It has been a total nightmare every time.
Yay! USA! Enthusiastic hurrahs for my home land. We allow for a regulated capitalism. Something the "Republican" wants to shift towards pure capitalism. We do not have free health care. That means taxes are much lower, and each person keeps more money. However, if you go into a emergency room they must save your life. We enforce rules to protect an employees safety, and we enforce minimum wages.
However, if I am gifted and spend 12 years of childhood schooling and 8 more adult level years of education, I can earn 4-8 times as much money as someone who did not finish 9 years of childhood schooling. It is easy to say people will go through the hell of 8 years of brutal testing and constant stress just because it "interests them." No way! I think the allure of a life free from finance lack, is the carrot hanging in front of the horse (the incentive) for such hard work.
We don't have pure capitalism, but we have a relatively good system. It has a whole lot of room to improve.Quote:
Originally Posted by sivason
hmm this is hard, you do present some good arguments. I'm going to have to go with the idea that a successful form of socialism would require a major revamp to society. You see, most forms of socialism or communism that have ever existed were either dictators ships, overly oppressive or just disguised to be purely socialist, but in reality were only socialist parasites on a fundamentally capitalist system.
Surely there can be a system which can regulate everything properly. Where people live with a completely different mindset.
Capitalism works, almost every time. However it also brings with it a slew of social and economic problems. Perhaps there is a utopian form of capitalism that could work flawlessly, as I said earlier, I believe the core concept to any successful society should be education.
If I can make it one step better with a simple idea, than it could be another step better. I can keep adding ideas to enrich the system, there's no reason why a problem can't be solved.Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
I wouldn't say he would get less, he worked to get to that position. He would get the amount equal to the amount of work it took to set up his business in that fashion, which is a lot more work than a ditch-digger does. Also how do we define what "belongs" to him. He created the concept but he is not making the product, the ones who are manufacturing it own just as much of the product as he does. That is not a problem in a society where people recognize that you cannot own something purely because you thought of it first. The manager is still rewarded with a higher income and less work to do in his later life.
I'm not sure how that would pan out, it seems like you're asking for failure by distributing money in such a fashion, but maybe the problem lies on our current mode of thinking. The belief that such a tolerant system is possible.
I wouldn't say stagnant, there is a clear reward for working hard, money will still flow, food and other produce will still be bought. It will just run at a slower rate.Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
No, as outlined above there is incentive to set up a business, laziness will not earn you the money needed to survive. Though you bring up a nice point there about caves and tee pees. I actually think bringing our lifestyle down a notch would work wonders. Within in boundaries of course, the flamboyant life we live nowadays is unsustainable and relies entirely on the rest of the world providing the materials we need to continue our lives of ignorance. If a country could sustain itself without outside influence then it would inevitably have a simpler way of life, not fueled by consumerism. Exotic foods and a new iPhone every year probably wouldn't exist, though with the technology of today I do believe we could manufacture a large number of fancy products for ourselves, just not at the same rate as capitalism would allow for.Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
Unlikely. Spain, England, the Netherlands, Portugal and France, pretty much every successful civilization ever managed to reach their position through exploitation. Slave labour and an excess of raw materials is what allowed nations to thrive, despite their broken social and economic systems. The same goes for America, it's massive and full of natural resources. It was essentially guaranteed success if it followed in the foot steps of its founders. America's size dwarfs that of all European countries and their early introduction and ample amounts of oil certainly helped them too. Extreme determination only played a minor role.Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
Yes that is the hardest problem. I really have no idea how you would distribute wealth. I doubt it would be static, money incentives would change according to demand (a concept which goes against the grain of usual socialism but would have to exist to allow the economy to function).Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
The reason socialism failed in those countries is because they all originally functioned as dictatorships, and none of those countries ran true socialism. In all of those but Cuba, government leaders were paid much more than your average worker. Cuba does in fact have some very admirable aspects despite it being a failure, though the quality of life there is poor, overall human happiness is higher than in the USA. Even they have never used a true form of socialism, they earn their wealth through selling sugar, it's what 90% of Cuba produces. They where doomed to fail since they relied entirely on other countries providing them with food.
That laidback style exists in Sweden which is a partial socialist. Happiness is high, education is high, sure there are problems but I would pick that over the USA or the UK any time.
I think anarcho-syndicalists are adulterating the word "slavery" here. Slavery used to mean a system where people were captured like animals, and then kept as workers in a place under the threat of physical or psychological torture if they attempted escape, or did not perform the work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Original Poster
Anybody working in a (at least somewhat) free country is not being threatened in a similar manner, nor are they being captured.
In a free country, a person who does not wish to "be exploited" as a worker, has several options available:
- Starve to death
- Rely on gifts from others
- Go into business for him/her self (in the case where capital is needed, the person may possibly obtain a loan).
- Move away to unclaimed land, and live off that land.
If a person, given all these options, still chooses to seek employment with an organisation, and accepts a contract stipulating the mutual conditions for the employment, then this person is, in my opinion, by no stretch of the imagination a slave in the traditional sense of the word.
Thanks.Quote:
Originally Posted by dutchraptor
I think the attempts at real socialism fail every time because of the lack of incentive it creates but also because of the issue of who gets to distribute the money. No matter how much people in a society talk about how neat they think the idea of socialism is, the truth is that the masses don't want it. People don't like having their property taken from them. That is why the distributors have to be oppressive hard asses, to the point that the government becomes insane with rules and threats. Some levels of socialism exist in functional countries. Sweden and Denmark are examples. However, I think those countries would be better off if they went capitalistic all the way, though capitalism does have its problems. The United States has become way too socialistic, and I am concerned about where we are headed.
The problem is that either the doctor or his boss owns the business and is doing the trading. If somebody, who would have to be working for the government, makes decisions on how much of that money the doctor or his boss gets to keep, he is stealing from him. The person who made the trade should be the person who is in charge of the money because he is the one who made the deal with it using his business that he owns. Who is anybody else to take that money from him (reasonable taxation aside-- there is a legitimate range of charge for living in a country and using necessary government services)?Quote:
Originally Posted by dutchraptor
That is what I meant by "stagnant."Quote:
Originally Posted by dutchraptor
What would be the incentive to set up a business?Quote:
Originally Posted by dutchraptor
You have made good points about happiness being more important than money and success. I just don't think we would be happier if our economies slowed down too much. Unemployment and lots of economic problems come with it and make life really stressful. That is partly because we are spoiled, but we would inevitably hate it. I'm part native American, so I have ancestors who were living off the land until really not that long ago. I'm sure their lives were not totally miserable, but I don't want to live like that. I like my computer, car, and air conditioning too much. I also like having job opportunities and knowing that everybody else who needs them has them.
I think the success that has been created since slavery and colonialism ended in the Western world shows that exploitation is not necessary for success. Exploitation is just something convenient and self-serving for evil people.Quote:
Originally Posted by dutchraptor
That's one of the key problems. Socialism involves giving the government way too much power. With mass power comes mass corruption.Quote:
Originally Posted by dutchraptor
I would rather live where I live, but like I said, we have gotten way too socialistic ourselves. Our welfare state is a nightmare that has got to end. One of the biggest problems with it is that it takes away lazy womens' fear of not being able to take care of kids if they get pregnant. The result is that poor women who can't afford to have kids have them any way without hesitation because they know the government will take care of their kids financially. That also gives fathers less reason to stick around, so what we have is a large faction of society in which lazy, dysfunctional women are raising more kids than they can keep up with and not having the help of fathers. Kids who grow up in environments like that very often end up being dysfunctional and sociopathic. That problem is a major source of our crime problem, and we really have a bad one.Quote:
Originally Posted by dutchraptor
I live in one of the most dangerous cities in the United States, so I am extremely opinionated about our welfare state. I am also extremely opinionated about the war on drugs, partly because of how it has contributed so much to the crime problem. There is an underground world of dangerous gangs because that is what sells the drugs when the stores can't. The same thing happened in the U.S. with alcohol. What we have now is like alcohol prohibition on steroids.
You're right that slavery is used hyperbolically, however only in the sense that the word rape is often used to define forms of sexual assault which do not necessarily result in penetration because the result is similar. If someone is sexually assaulted but not penetrated, there's still deep psychological damage, and simply because someone isn't shot for leaving the farm in today's society doesn't mean you've presented reasonable alternatives to wage-slavery.Quote:
Originally Posted by Voldmer
The key to the claim is that workers are being exploited, and yes slavery is heavy handed rhetoric but our current system is only a couple steps down from full penetration slavery, and one of those steps, which people have died for, is currently being rolled back in pursuit of a capitalist nightmare called corporatism.
When workers fighting for their rights is equated to statism, when you read any single post UM has made in this thread, redefining things as he chooses, equating the type of exploitation we see today to slavery is a pretty miniscule hyperbole. Regardless of whether or not it's full penetration slavery, the system enables a parasitic class of people to control the media and control the language so that the label parasite is instead given to those that fight for their rights. Where class warfare is labeled to those who attempt to defend their class rather than the ones assaulting it, much like how Christians deem it an assault on Christianity when you protect your right to practice your own religion, I find myself perfectly comfortable using the word slavery.
The Nazis were socialists. Interestingly, their full name was the National Socialist Party.
A Little Secret About the Nazis (They were left-wing socialists like the modern left of today)
That is actually Fascism: Here is a clip from Websters:Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
Full Definition of FASCISM
1
often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
They were both. Socialism has to be enforced by an oppressive regime. It could never happen naturally. The masses don't want socialism, so it has to be forced on them to exist.
Since the 19th century there have been the two opposing socialist groups: the internationalistic movement (marxists), and the nationalistic movement (various names, including fascists and nationalist socialists - i.e. nazi's). They tend to hate each others guts with a vengeance. Because they appeal to exactly the same voters!
They mainly differ in two respects: 1) the marxists want socialism to embrace the whole planet, so that there is only one country, whereas the fascists are perfectly happy to realise socialism in the country, where they are. And 2) the marxists don't just want de facto private ownership of the means of production erased, but also the nominal private ownership. The fascists can accept nominal private ownership, for as long as the actual control over the means of production is in the hands of the government.
Big differences, seen from their viewpoints. But pretty small to everybody else.
That is something very terrifying about Marxism. It is the threat the Cold War was about, and it is a common agenda now. It has infiltrated the U.S. government, and it is what makes the "New World Order" conspiracy theory sound not so crazy. However, I don't accept the major theories about who all has been involved in it. Bush 41 made the term famous, and I am pretty sure he was one of the people who worked hard to take down the Soviet Union. He might even get runner up to the MVP award. He was president when the Soviet Union collapsed, and he was vice president when the MVP award winner, Rondald Reagan, was president. They knew that socialism makes economies extremely weak, and they knew how to exploit the weakness and give the Soviet Union the right push and make it fall apart completely. I also think Mikhail Gorbachev might have been working for the CIA.Quote:
Originally Posted by Voldmer