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Post by Astroruss on Dec 6, 2008 12:42:00 GMT -5
'"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is a fundamentally good idea.' That's a non-question. I mean just look at countries who've tried the Marxist socialism and communism and look how "good" they had it and how it ended. Like most idealistic statements, this one never worked well in reality, precisely because it is impossible to prove a person's needs and abilities in concrete terms. Marxism is dead, and deserves to be. It's been tried so many times and always failed miserably. but certain avenues of it are valid, and deserve to be tried again. Benefiting the whole from the means of production is a great idea, for example, but collective ownership of production doesn't work well, and produces less in the long run. Then, inevitably, govt turns to involuntary acquisition of produce.  But i'm realistic enough to admit that socialism can work well in smaller, more interdependent societies, where people know the other citizens well. Humans are by nature sinful, and as such, capable of doing whatever they feel like. So their needs change greatly over time. The trick is to capture that sinful and selfsih nature and use to its greatest advantage in order to actually help society, not hinder it. Real life example; Twice a year, we get profit share bonues from our output at my job. The more we work and produce, the higher our own bonues will be for the next quarter. Thus, by working hard for ourselves we also benefit the whole. But this doesn't mean we are taking away from others in the process of getting more profit. No, we are producing more for the whole, and increasing its size.  |
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Post by Naptaq on Dec 6, 2008 13:14:48 GMT -5
Russ, I agree, socialism isn't as bad or destructive as communism, that's for sure. This test and it's results are a little odd.. or maybe it's just me. Let me explain: I've done the test twice with similar results (+1,8 and +2,5) and if I look at Senators' 'positions' by State I get that I'm the closes to Vermont's Senators. Wow. One is a Democrat (Patrick Leahy) and the other is an Independent (Bernie Sanders) who is a self-desribed "democratic socialist". Wow. Suffice to say this test is not perfect. ;D John McCain, on the other hand, is like +6, +6, on their chart and I like him better. What's even more suprising, to me, is the site's ranking of EU's positions by country. They lump all of these countries with moderete, right leaning tendencies. Hmm. |
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Post by Naptaq on Dec 9, 2008 19:17:16 GMT -5
Marxism is dead, and deserves to be. Are you sure? In sociology this guy rules. I took a sociology class once and this guy's theories were a big part of the class. But yeah there are only a few communist and few (truly) socialist countries left in the world. The rich always exploit the poor, that's why socialism and communism are better - there is always a victim in a capitalistic society, and a perpetrator, according to Karl Marx. |
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Post by Naptaq on Dec 13, 2008 12:02:21 GMT -5
I did the test again and got 2.62 and 2.62, which, for reference means: Economic Left/Right: 2.62 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 2.62 Now the most interesting and revealing chart is US presidential election 2008. It looks like Obama (2 and 3) is closer to me than a McCain (7 and 6) or Palin (6 and 7). Another interesting thing from the chart is Ron Paul. They place his economic position as +9 (he's a free market & small government kinda guy) and 'Social Libertarian/Authoritarian' he scores a +1. Which is fairly interesting but I'd expect him to score more in the Libertarian left. That said, his economic position is spot on. Bob Barr is 7 and 4 on the chart. hmmm In their commentary they also make the case that a Democrat in US would be considered a moderate conservative in Europe. There is certianly some truth to that, but on their chart they place all EU governments as right leaning, economically, with only a few leaning left on the social scale, like for example Netherlands. According to their UK Parties 2008 chart most parties are leaning right and parties like 'Liberal Democrats' are starting to lean right. Even the Dutch are starting to ban some drugs. A thing occured to me recently about the gun ownership thingy. Nobody is stupid enough to invade a country like United State, by foot, because you wouldn't just get shot by the army, ordinary people would shoot at them. In Europe the people would be pretty defensless against armed people walking the streets, because most people don't have guns. The downside of the gun law, in the US, is the gun shooting that goes on, as was displayed recently by an 8 year old, killing two people. You don't see news like ' 70 year old woman holds robber at gunpoint' in Europe. |
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Post by Naptaq on Feb 19, 2009 9:55:16 GMT -5
This is what happens when 4 armed thugs try to rob a home in Arizona, USA. If that happens in Europe the owner gets robbed head to toe and possibly even killed. |
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