What is so bad about socialism anyways?

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Sweetleaf
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11 Aug 2011, 3:35 pm

Fnord wrote:

Tequila wrote:

Sweetleaf wrote:

Well that's stupid.

And then there's ASH (plus the seperate charities of ASH Scotland and ASH Wales), the National Obesity Forum, Weight Concern, Alcohol Focus Scotland, the Consensus Action on Salt and Health. All dodgy as hell, all funded by the state, all telling us how to live our lives. That's the problem with social democracy as practiced here: it is authoritarian and controlling.

Here in the States, we call it "Nannyism" - every aspect of your life is monitored, critiqued, and corrected to match some convoluted standard that was cooked up by a committee of Uber-Nannies that have no direct understanding of what people really need.

I can agree with this, though I do not think providing the services I have mentioned would be nannyism, but telling people how to live their personal lives is, and taking limits on buisness and such too far and preventing anyone from profiting from their labors or things like that would be.

Tequila
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11 Aug 2011, 3:42 pm

Sweetleaf wrote:

Well yes that is a bit of an issue....my main concern is when the government is not providing public services and allowing huge buisnesses to basically do whatever they want in the name of profit alone. But I certainly do not think the government should be totally dictating how people live..and some of these anti-alchohol lobbies or what ever that even exist here are trying to do just that. same with the cannabis laws, laws against gay marrige and a number of things.

My point isn't that they are lobbying organisations: my point is that they have been set up by and are specifically funded almost entirely by the state in order to lobby government to bring legislation that government has already decided it wants to bring in. What then happens is that there are biased consultations (that often exclude the public), MPs are whipped into voting one way or another, and the public suffers.

Really, the system of 'democracy' we have in the UK stinks.

Sweetleaf
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11 Aug 2011, 3:45 pm

Tequila wrote:

Sweetleaf wrote:

Well yes I do not agree with that...state funding going to things like that.

Robdemanc
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11 Aug 2011, 3:48 pm

Phonic wrote:

I'm still waiting for someone to define socialism properly, I know I already did but my post was conveniantly ignored since it would mean most of the posts so far would have reality dissonance if what i said was taken in: you are all completely backward on what "socialism" IS, it's when the workers control their workplace and recieve the full allotment of their labour ("to each according to how much they work").
"

I'm sorry for my moron description of socialism before but I don't think my description was wrong, only simplified. Yes the idea that those working in industry have a say on how things are run, and that production is motivated by necessity and not profit is more detailed. But making a real description of it would take a long time, especially when trying to describe in social and economic terms etc. But I think in a nutshell, the primary industries are state run and democratically progressed.

ruveyn
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11 Aug 2011, 3:49 pm

Fnord wrote:

Sweetleaf wrote:

What is so bad about socialism anyways? ... I myself do not think aboslute socialism can work for a large population any better than absolute capitalism would.

You have just provided the best answer to your own question.

Well done, Ms. Leaf.

Well done.

She has answered the question. Reduce the large population to a small population.

ruveyn

Tequila
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11 Aug 2011, 3:50 pm

Sweetleaf wrote:

Well yes I do not agree with that...state funding going to things like that.

ASH has been funded for, I think, decades by the government in order to tell lies about smoking and, by extension, smokers. On the back of those lies a ban on smoking in all public places was brought in - including pubs. The year before the ban, I think about 300 pubs closed, then 250 before that, then 150 before that and so on. I forget the figure. The year of the ban? Something like 1,500 pubs had closed and the year after, the number was even higher. I'm sure I saw the figures but as soon as the smoking ban came in, pubs have closed at something like six times the pre-ban rate every year. Pubs are closing at the fastest rate in British history - largely, but not entirely, because of the smoking ban.

And now the anti-drink charities are setting the sights on the supermarkets and their "cheap booze" - which isn't especially cheap, but then it never was anyway. So many beer consumers expect to see massive price increases that no-one, apart from very well-financed lobbyists and some prohibitionist types, want.

Inuyasha
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11 Aug 2011, 3:55 pm

Sweetleaf wrote:

Tequila wrote:

Sweetleaf wrote:

Well yes I do not agree with that...state funding going to things like that.

Well this is also how things are going on in the US, a specific example is the Public Unions.

Almighty_CRJ
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11 Aug 2011, 3:57 pm

over9000 wrote:

What is wrong with socialism? I will tell you what is wrong with socialism!

There is nothing more evil than encouraging people to be more dependent on the government.

I'd consider being dependant on businesses to be the greater moral evil - They like to profit from other people's misery but they are honest about it.
Governments tend to make it look like they give a damn & get tricked into doing the moral good.
Better the devil you know than the devil you don't - they're both evil.

Churchill said "He who is not a liberal by 25 has no heart, he who is not a conservative by 40 has no brain."

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I don't need or want the government's help on anything.

Your right as global citizen. You don't have the right or the moral authority to impose those views on others however.

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Anyone who thinks this sort of thing will work are wide eyed idealists

Wide eye ideals got us a US flag on the moon, the locomotive, penicillin, the empire state building, the US constitution end of human slave ownership... anybody else like to add?

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They need to shut the hell up.

We won't, for all the reasons I listed above.

Double standard for you to tell people what to do and then complain about government people telling you what to do.

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There is no compassion in the welfare system. NONE. ZILTCH.

I know, I've sat in a welfare hospital.
It sort of is compassionate by nature rather than practise, though. A lot of people on welfare can't afford such food or health care.

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Are you going to be compassionate with your own money, or someone elses?

False dichotomy. You can do both or neither.

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Europeans don't give to charity hardly at all because they know the government will do it for them.

Quite to the contrary. Private donation in the UK is often quite substantial. Only problem is private donations only raise millions, governments generally donate billions.

Besides charity donation is behavourial socialism (needs of many over few) isn't it?

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And since when was it compassionate to pass out handouts when you know that it is not going to help them learn how to manage themselves?

Sometimes is needed to stop starvation or ill health but yes.

Last edited by Almighty_CRJ on 11 Aug 2011, 4:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ruveyn
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11 Aug 2011, 4:04 pm

Almighty_CRJ wrote:

over9000 wrote:

What is wrong with socialism? I will tell you what is wrong with socialism!

There is nothing more evil than encouraging people to be more dependent on the government.

I'd consider being dependant on businesses to be the greater moral evil -

Do you enjoy eating? Then unless you grow every mouthful of food you eat on your own turf, you depend on business. the business of the farmer who grows food or raises cattle, the business of the distributors that transport it to a place near you and the business of stores that make it available to you in convenient quantities. Just about everything you have is dependent on business. The food you eat, the clothes you wear, your heat, your light your transportation. Without business you would be living in a cave like some Neanderthal.

ruveyn

Tequila
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11 Aug 2011, 4:06 pm

ruveyn wrote:

He's right. Life - or at least a life that's any good - depends on business and interacting with other people.

Sweetleaf
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11 Aug 2011, 4:07 pm

Inuyasha wrote:

Sweetleaf wrote:

Tequila wrote:

Sweetleaf wrote:

Well yes I do not agree with that...state funding going to things like that.

Well this is also how things are going on in the US, a specific example is the Public Unions.

Well no crap I think I kind of already said things like that go on in the U.S and that I do not support it.

pay attention.

Philologos
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11 Aug 2011, 4:08 pm

ruveyn wrote:

Without business you would be living in a cave like some Neanderthal.

ruveyn

Not to knock your valid point, I like to think that by now the Neanderthal would have a social tecnology at least as good as the best we have.

Tequila
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11 Aug 2011, 4:08 pm

Sweetleaf wrote:

Well no crap I think I kind of already said things like that go on in the U.S and that I do not support it.

The problem is, love, is that once the state gets control of your private health care, and too much of your wages, and provides everything you need, it starts thinking it knows better than you do about how to live your life. See the relentless anti-smoking/drinking/eating campaigns we have here in the UK.

ruveyn
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11 Aug 2011, 4:11 pm

Tequila wrote:

Sweetleaf wrote:

Well no crap I think I kind of already said things like that go on in the U.S and that I do not support it.

First comes the Nanny State that tells what you must not do, then comes the Daddy State that tells you what you must do, at which point you have zero liberty and freedom. The worst is the collective state where each One lives and dies for the All. At which point the human race becomes a Hive.

ruveyn

Sweetleaf
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11 Aug 2011, 4:11 pm

Tequila wrote:

Sweetleaf wrote:

Well no crap I think I kind of already said things like that go on in the U.S and that I do not support it.

My private healthcare? what private healthcare...as it stand now I certainly don't have access to that and last time I applied for medicaid I got denied so at the moment I have no healthcare. And well I don't really have wages just college grants/loans.

I do not think the government regulating basic services, would have to lead to them trying to tell people what to eat, drink, not to smoke ect......and I do not support that but I do support regulations on things like healthcare that would insure all the citizens have access to it.

Tequila
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11 Aug 2011, 4:23 pm

Sweetleaf wrote:

I do not think the government regulating basic services, would have to lead to them trying to tell people what to eat, drink, not to smoke ect......and I do not support that but I do support regulations on things like healthcare that would insure all the citizens have access to it.

We have public health care in the UK. Unless you're fairly well-off and have private health care, you're stuck with the state system. Which is variable, at best. Sometimes it's absolutely fantastic, much of the time it's average or mediocre but often it's dreadful. I am not joking but I have at times seen cleaner bus stations than I have hospital wards. It's embarrassing.

The main point is though that because the state basically has the monopoly over healthcare, it can tell its citizens what to eat, drink, smoke etc on pain of potentially refusing treatment to those that don't comply. Even those that have paid their taxes for decades.

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