Patriotism = Imperialism

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seeing and agreeing arent the same thing..... I understand their radical viewpoints are all that they know. I also understand that freedom is what we are acustom to.

Yes, and it was a patriot in the American Revolution that said "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country"



*chuckle* And round we go........

What if the people decide they don't want to be socialists anymore? It's happened before. It's happening in Germany right now. They're tired of high unemployment, low economic growth, and flagging industry.

If the people decide they want a more productive economic model, will you support them?



How do you propose to prevent it from degenerating into that? The countries that adopted communism did it out of the same sort of idealism you're expressing now. But now, a century later, can you point to a single one that didn't wallow in an economic quagmire after devolving into an authoritarian regime? The only example I can think of is China, which did fall into the authoritarian trap, but managed to reverse its communistic policies in time to salvage the economy.

The problem, as I keep saying, is that socialism leads to ret*d economic growth. A faltering economy in turn creates conditions which allow the government to become stronger and more centralized. Widespread unemployment and poverty is a sure recipe for a dictatorship.

Your ideals are admirable, but I think your refusal to give economic considerations their proper weight makes you incapable of seeing the flaws in your ideas. It's easy to dismiss money as base and unimportant, but in so doing you fail to see just how vital money is to everyone and everything. Money isn't just slips of paper, it's a tangible representation of human energy. Likewise, a faltering economy isn't just numbers on a screen, it's a sign that people themselves are becoming less productive. That way lies the death of a country.

Jeremy

But what if that change would make them happer and healthier? Utopia can not remain constant and remain utopia.....


if Utopia was boring, would it still be a utopia? And once you start talking of collective change, you start getting backinto human nature and people wanting their way and people attempting to influence the vote one way or another to further their cause....


But what about the minority that wanted car B because of some other feature?
then you no longer would have uniformity, but you'd have choice again. And with choice you have the desire to make again a better style, perhaps an AB hybrid, and thus the insentive to change and individualize. and when one person has X and some one else wants it, but doesn not have it, then what? Do they steal to get it/ utopia would be corrupt if choice was entered into the picture and beget crime.....

I didnt say I was a social darwinist. but it is the way the world operates. I dont even think that its right. But it is how it is... in a captalist economy, the people rise and fall in the scheme of things. Bill gates is a good example. He rose to the top, and one day some one else will take his place. Survival of the fiscally fittest..... Although private enterprise isnt encouraged in a communist or socialistic forms of government, the social darwinism stops with the government. Government in those settings furthers its own existance and weeds out any competition by "other means". So it exists even if we dont want to see it.

As far as the "cave men" go, I was mearly making a point about the nature of the human mind and how long that instinct has been seen.... by no means was it a lack of imagination...


open perhaps to some and closed to others. But past results often (not always) predict future results. Studying the past could help prevent making many mistakes again....

True, but I used technology as an example. but think for a moment about how technology has affected society. In many cases it has been part of the degridation of moral standards. It has created a more efficent global market, but it has also created a political and economic environment that moved much much faster than ever before. As a result actions recieve speedy reactions, and sometimes the size of those reactions is exponentially larger than they would have been had technology not allowed the timelyness of said responce to be a factor. Our society also has shifted, and Ill say that this is NOT a good result of technology, into an impatient, "Got to have it now" group of people. Instant gratification is brought about by faster and more efficent services and the expectation that comes along with becomoing accustom to that. Advanced, in all areas, may not be all that its chalked up to be..... only time will tell there though......

Stalins Russia WAS a right-wing fascist dictatorship, which called itself communist but retained no communist political sentiment and only partially a communist economy.

In a completely money-free society, those lives wood be saved without need of money.

There's no such animal and never will be.

Jeremy

If that was truly what the peeple wanted, then what wood there be to stop them, in a directly democratic political system? the founder woodnt have to support it necessarily

What do you think communism is?

Can you name any communist state that retained "communist political sentiment" for more than a decade or two?

One might even go so far as to argue that communism is inherently unstable.

Jeremy

A fantasy.

In a directly democratic political system, what's to stop the people from creating a state religion, or voting to reinstate slavery? Or making Jews wear yellow stars? Or banning free speech?

Direct democracy is just as problematic as communism (and doubly so when they overlap), and just as likely to lead to tyranny. Representative democracy with an independent judiciary is the way to go.

Jeremy

your right, people always have to trade for something.....

Exactly. If you ban official currency, then people will just invent their own mediums of exchange, starting with simple barter and moving up to company scrip and finally privately-regulated de facto currency.

Also, even communist countries would need money. How else are you going to monitor the distribution of resources and the level of overall production? It's not like economics simply stops in a communist system, especially when you'd still need to trade with the outside world.

Jeremy

As far as im concerned, blind faith in any orgonisation/institution, including a country, is a mistake, because theres allways a possibility that you could be wrong about what that institution stands for, or that it coud change.

Peeples loyalty shoud be to there ideels, and the ones they THINK/HOPE the institutions they belong to stand for, not the institutions themselves.

China didnt, and Russia sure as hell didnt, I no absolutely nothin about the political situation in Cuba, apart from that it calls itself communist, i dont no whether its true or not...

So... possibly not, but possibly Cuba.




You coud be rite about that, but we cant no until we try it with a direct democratic system. Even if complete communist economic policy isnt possible democraticly, we can still get incredibly close throogh taxation. Just raise the poverty line so that anyone under the national average income gets income support, that way everyone gets the same money.

Its the peeple who say the basic concept of communisms a bad idia to begin with that i have a problem with.



ok, whats to stop the peeple from going back to capitalism in a representative democracy if they want to then? but we have to beleeve in peeple, and if peeple are fallible, then so is the judiciary. we allreddy have proof of that - the american supreme court allowed the patriot act to be passed.



money isnt needed to keep the internal economic system running, at leest not as far as the necessities are concerned - thered be rationed based on individual needs presented by a doctor (in the case of food, this wood be metabolism) - but i gess for luxuries, something resembling a monetary sistem wood be needed, becos different peeple woodnt want the same entertainment, etc.

Last edited by Assassin on 08 Dec 2005, 5:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.

OK LadySmokeEater, be honest....are you a cynic or a enthusiastic supporter of Social Darwinism?

Since you claim not to be the latter, I must conclude that you are the former.

Ok, you are a cynic who accepts "the way things are" - whatever you perceive that to be. However, you do not have the imagination to come up with a better system. You have a lazy mind that cannot think outside the corporate box. You want the elite to do the thinking for you.

At least I have the imagination to come up with a better system.