Herman Cain: It's Your Fault if You're Unemployed

[Seth]

Socialists and Communists want fairness.

No they don't, they want something for nothing and they think wealth comes from the money fairy.

Libertarians and Conservatives want a return to Feudalism.

No they don't, they want people to be responsible for their own lives and they want them to work hard and achieve economic success without stealing from others.

Success is entirely due to luck, and nobody should make more just because they were lucky.

Success is due to a number of factors, which includes some luck, but it's mostly the product of hard work and a willingness to subdue cupidity in favor of enlightened and rational self-interest, something socialists are entirely unacquainted with.

Everyone should get the same.

If everybody "gets the same" then nobody's going to excel, and nobody's going to do any more than they have to in order to "get the same" as everyone else, and you end up with a race to the bottom. People get what they deserve, by and large, and those who work for it deserve to enjoy those rewards. Those who refuse to work for it, and expect that they will "get the same" for sitting on their lazy asses doing nothing deserve nothing, and they certainly don't deserve to be allowed to steal the fruits of OTHER people's labor to serve their interests.

If anyone has any more than anyone else something is wrong.

What are you, two years old or something? If you're sincere, then you won't mind if I come over and take your computer and all your clothes, because I've decided I need them more than you do, and since I'm entitled (in your deranged worldview) to take what I want so that I have "the same" as everyone else, I'll take your stuff with or without your permission, and if you resist, I'll just liquidate you.

That's what you're advocating.

Grow up.

[Seth]

Socialists and Communists want fairness. Libertarians and Conservatives want a return to Feudalism. Success is entirely due to luck, and nobody should make more just because they were lucky. Everyone should get the same. If anyone has any more than anyone else something is wrong.

Name a Communist country that hasn't devolved into feudalism. Rule by the worker quickly became rule by the privileged communist elite.

There's never actually been a Communist country, just ones that used the name.

That's because end-state Communism is an impossible utopian delusion that can never, ever be achieved by any large, complex society because its principles utterly ignore fundamental human nature and behavior.

"Communist" societies always end at State Socialism and disintegrate once everyone stops producing wealth and goes on the government dole because every time they try to achieve the smallest amount of economic success, the State hammers them brutally back down into dull, uniform proletarian conformity...or it kills them because they are disruptive "counterrevolutionary" irritants.

[Tero]

What if the fat cats get chopped off at 2000% of the income of lowly McDonalds worker? It's not like we can't waste the rest on tax funded projects. And creating jobs Obama style. Let's make them all firemen and soldiers. I don't care for cops.

[Coito ergo sum]

I gave a list of examples of people who moved up the socioeconomic ladder. It was very easy, and believe me, I can keep going.

Then keep going until your statistically insignificant little list of people who 'made it' becomes statistically significant and you'll have an argument.

Jesus jumping christ on a pogo stick.

Rebuttals of your posts should be made in the form of irrelevant youtube videos such as this:

btw, you have to remember who you're talking to. billions live under capitalism, "I can name 100 people who "made it" That's about the extent of it.

Billions live under capitalism? Just as there is no "real" communism, there is no "real" capitalism.

And, the 100 people aren't the only people, but you sure as shit can name a lot more people who "made" it in the US and Europe than you can who "made it" in Cuba or the Soviet Union.

[Seth]

Well, with unfettered Capitalism there is in fact a form of feudalism - as the wealthy and their families stay wealthy and own everything and it is very difficult for others to gain wealth so they are effectively the "serfs."

Complete mendacious and ignorant nonsense. History is replete with poor people who made good through hard work and good ideas.

One of them was John W. Gates, founder of Texaco Oil. In the 1800's he started out selling barbed wire to cattlemen in Texas and Oklahoma. To demonstrate his product and it's ability to hold the worst range cattle, he would buy an acre or two of land near a community for a few dollars, put up a fenced enclosure, and challenge the stockmen to bring their worst bulls and cows and put them inside and see if they would escape.

He sold a lot of barbed wire, but he also bought a lot of land, and by pure luck, combined with foresight and great personal vigor, he ended up with land right on top of most of the major oil fields in the Midwest.

He started out with nothing, made a living working hard and using good ideas for marketing his products, and eventually made it big by being at the forefront of oil exploration, in a time when many people didn't know what to do with the oil that bubbled up on their land.

He did so well that at the turn of the century, he bet a million dollars on a single horse race. They call him "Bet-a-million" Gates to this day in Texas.

He didn't piss and moan about having to work hard, and nobody ever gave him anything. There's a lesson there for those with the wit to learn it.

[sandinista]

There will always be some levels of social/class structure in any society. Achieving equality sounds good, but only as long as it is not enforced at the expense of equity; people are born equal, but they don't end up that way. I'd say that government's role in term of class mobility is to ensure that a good meritocracy exists for the young.

My country doesn't ensure the meritocracy well enough, to be sure. The differences in quality of education between poor areas and middle/upper income ones is awful. But culturally, individualism is bred through and through here, and because there are plenty of rags-to-riches stories, we're often slow to blame someone's background and childhood education for his meager lot in life. A bit of pedantry: it was John Steinbeck who said “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

Not sure I agree with any "there will always be..." statements. Perhaps in my/your lifetime, but nothing stays the same forever. People are NOT born equal, a wealthy white child is not born equally with a poor black child. The "plenty" of rags to riches stories pale in comparison to the true reality of those who are born poor and stay poor. There isn't even a comparison to be made.

[Coito ergo sum]

Socialists and Communists want fairness. Libertarians and Conservatives want a return to Feudalism. Success is entirely due to luck, and nobody should make more just because they were lucky. Everyone should get the same. If anyone has any more than anyone else something is wrong.

Name a Communist country that hasn't devolved into feudalism. Rule by the worker quickly became rule by the privileged communist elite.

There's never actually been a Communist country, just ones that used the name.

That's because end-state Communism is an impossible utopian dystopian delusion

It would only be "utopian" if it would be a good thing if it actually became reality. True communism, as described by Marx/Engels and others, is a horror show. Somehow it has been sold as some sort of utopia, but if one gives the idea of "from each according to his ability to give, and to each according to his need" just a little bit of critical thought, one will see that it isn't a deal anyone would want. According to one's "ability" says nothing of one's "willingness" to give, and if one is "able" then one will "give" what one is told to give. And, one's "need" says nothing of one's "desires", "wants" and "happiness." You get what you need. Great... lovely.... Who really wants that? Anybody? The Party thinks you'd make a good bricklayer. But, you don't want to be a bricklayer, you want to be a poet. Fuck off. You need to give according to your ability.

[Seth]

Pretty much every country that exists it Capitalist. There has never been a country where the government owned the means of production and the workers shared the profits.

That's because when the government owns the means of production, it doesn't share the profits with the workers, it enslaves them to consolidate and ensure it's own power and privilege. This is a common and well-understood (by anybody but a Socialist) thing, and it's one of the reasons that Communism cannot, and never will, work in real life.

[Coito ergo sum]

There will always be some levels of social/class structure in any society. Achieving equality sounds good, but only as long as it is not enforced at the expense of equity; people are born equal, but they don't end up that way. I'd say that government's role in term of class mobility is to ensure that a good meritocracy exists for the young.

My country doesn't ensure the meritocracy well enough, to be sure. The differences in quality of education between poor areas and middle/upper income ones is awful. But culturally, individualism is bred through and through here, and because there are plenty of rags-to-riches stories, we're often slow to blame someone's background and childhood education for his meager lot in life. A bit of pedantry: it was John Steinbeck who said “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

Not sure I agree with any "there will always be..." statements. Perhaps in my/your lifetime, but nothing stays the same forever. People are NOT born equal, a wealthy white child is not born equally with a poor black child. The "plenty" of rags to riches stories pale in comparison to the true reality of those who are born poor and stay poor. There isn't even a comparison to be made.

The comparison to be made is between the nominally capitalist society and the nominally communist society. The number of rags to riches stories in the former, while not a major percentage of the total population, still dwarfs the number of such stories in the latter. So, while there may not be as much social mobility in capitalist-based countries as you would like - the pro-communists among us aren't offering an improvement.

[Seth]

Ironically i think the whole mantra seth and others espouse would hasten that process you describe matt.

Interestingly, it doesn't, in real life. That's why Communism has never been well-accepted in America, nor in Europe. People innately understand that Communism is not about improving or securing individual happiness, it's about pounding everyone down into proletarian equality of outcome. Real, actual people don't like it when their labor is stolen by the state to serve the needs of others while their own needs and desires go unmet, which is why they reject Marxism once they've had a chance to think about it, or experience it.

[Seth]

What if the fat cats get chopped off at 2000% of the income of lowly McDonalds worker?

Because if his work product is worth 4000% or 10,000% of the McDonald's worker to the investors in his company, he should get to enjoy the fruits of his labor fully, without being deprived of his due merely because somebody thinks it's not "fair" that he gets paid more than a McDonald's worker. Once you start such calculations, the ultimate end is Marxism, Communism, and societal collapse and death and destruction.

The "fat cat" gets paid what those who employ him think he's worth in return for his generating profits for them. Why should it be anyone else's business how much he makes? Ray Croc, who invented McDonalds, worked his ass off for many years working behind the counter of his first restaurant. Who are you to say he was not entitled to reap the rewards of his innovation and hard work?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

What about the fat cats who didn't labor?

[Coito ergo sum]

Coito's saying that better avenues for advancement exist in a free market than in a planned one. Of course Sandi chides him for only listing a handful out of the billions living in the capitalist world, as if Coito could possibly list everyone who's advanced through hard work and self reliance. But the "land of opportunity" is not a theoretical talking point, it's real.

Thank you. That is the point. We can make a list, and we can look at the statistics of socioeconomic advancement in larger numbers.

What's more, communism doesn't even promise advancement. It promises the opposite. It promises that others will not advance, in the name of fairness to those who don't. Communism promises - make no mistake about this - a reduction in western standard of living, because the idea is that we, in the West, ARE the rich (relative to the rest of the world) and that WE are the petit bourgoisie that need to get our balls cut off. I don't think most folks who think communism is a great idea think much past some notion that everyone else in the world will live as well as us. The possibility that communism will require us in the West, on average, to take a huge step down, doesn't seem to enter people's minds much.

How about one more anecdote? My father moved to this country from Jamaica when he was 12. He made it through high school and then spent his adult life installing carpet. My mom's from a similarly working-class background as well, and I grew up in a blue collar household. But they had the sense to make sure that my brother and I had access do a decent (public) education, and stressed that education and hard work were important in life. I got the message, but my brother never really did. I did well in college, finished my graduate degree, and served in the military for ten years; today I own a home and two cars and have a good career. My brother quit junior college after a semester, then became a feckless musician for a while and wound up working for my dad, installing carpet.

In the final analysis, we're all responsible for ourselves.

According to some, you were just lucky, and your brother unlucky. You should not have more than your brother, because luck is all that stands between he and you.

Which is an interesting and statistically testable concept, actually. If luck is all that matters, as MattShizzle says, then there would be a statistically consistent number of lazy asses at the top of our society, among the successful CEOs. For every Steve Jobs who toiled 16 hours a day for 40 years to build something monumental, there would be a 40 year old with an XBox, just "lucking" his way to millionairedom.

So, when the question is, does hard work, sweat equity and perseverence increase one's odds at improving one's lot in life - I think it's pretty obvious that it does.

Folks like MattShizzle dismiss your parents' and my parents' struggles and toils to rise up the socioeconomic ladder as worthy of scorn and derision, and they hand wave it away as luck. I can tell you, I feel the same pride in and gratitude for my parents as I sense you have in yours. I damn well know what they did wasn't based on luck.

[Coito ergo sum]

What about the fat cats who didn't labor?

Maybe she's the rich one, and he's just hung like a stallion?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

What about the fat cats who didn't labor?

Maybe she's the rich one, and he's just hung like a stallion?

What color is the sky on your planet?