I'm merely balancing the extremes of socialism with illustrations of why socialism (Marxism) is a Very Bad Thing.Blind groper wrote:To Seth
A problem many of us have with your views is that they come across as extremist and absolutist. Life is not like that, of course. Life is a set of compromises, and every value is not absolute but relative. My own view is that we must constantly strive for a kind of balance between extremes.
But they aren't. You just have not taken the opportunity to explore nuance. Typically you just bash capitalism, or corporations, or gun nuts or whatever without any nuance whatsoever, so I reply just as absolutely. Moreover, your drunk driving example is a very bad one because we're (or at least I) am not talking about conduct that is obviously harmful to others. Drunk driving is "exported harm" in the same way that pouring pollutants into a river is.For example : your views on liberty appear to be absolute. That is : all or nothing. There is no such thing with respect to liberty, of course. Everyone has his/her liberty restricted by the needs of the community. Drunk driving is my usual example. Permitting people to get drunk and drive is bad for the entire community, so there are restrictions, which are an infringement on individual liberty. That infringement is totally reasonable, given the nasty consequences of open slather drink/drive behavior. The same applies across the board to many other restrictions on individual liberty.
Your anti-handgun arguments are the typical sort of liberal hoplophobe unreason that you falsely try to equate to drunk driving or water pollution. You don't focus on the people who do bad things with guns as you do in your drunk driving example, you instead create strawman and red herring arguments by comparing the social damage of criminals using illegal guns to commit crimes with law abiding citizens lawfully and peacefully possessing handguns. You conflate crime and negligence with lawful peaceful possession in a vain attempt to argue that all handguns should be banned merely because a tiny fraction of one percent (like one ten-thousandth of one percent) of all handguns are used by criminals to commit crimes.
When I speak of liberty, I am speaking of lawful, responsible adult behavior, not of criminal, dangerous or harmful antisocial behavior. When you hear me mention liberty, you, like rEvolutionist create a strawman version of liberty which in your mind is, as you suggest, absolute. And you never even try to make a distinction or solicit explanation, nor do you pay attention when I do provide examples of the reasonable regulation of individual liberty that is obviously necessary in any crowded society. We get stuck on arguing about the nature of liberty and you have your own set of presumptions about what that means. As a Socialist, your evident internal definition of liberty includes an assumption that the individual is subordinate to the collective and that therefore impositions on personal liberty by the collective are prima facie reasonable and appropriate even when the individual has done nothing which justifies such an imposition.
As a Libertarian, I take the opposite view, that individual liberty is preeminent and that unless the individual and particular exercise of liberty infringes upon the rights and/or liberties of others, either individually or collectively in a manner reasonably deemed to be harmful, the individual is free to exercise any and all liberties he wishes to exercise. But as I say, one's exercise of individual liberty may not infringe upon the liberties or rights of others (your right to swing your fist ends at my nose) in an unreasonable manner.
Law is the framework of social conventions by which we balance competing liberty interests. We do that in large part by creating a hierarchy of rights in which some rights are more important than others, and therefore take precedence. My right to speak freely outweighs your desire not to be exposed to my speech, unless my exercise of free speech crosses the line into incitement to imminent violence or public disorder (falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater).
But as a Libertarian the presumption is ALWAYS that the individual's exercise of liberty is just and correct unless and until it can be demonstrated that the exercise unduly and improperly infringes on the rights and liberties of another. This is why prospective regulation or law is improper in the Libertarian philosophy. For example, in a Libertarian law, rather than saying "you cannot dump pollutants into the water (which indirectly morphs into government creating agencies and agents to surveil people to make sure they don't do so) says "If you dump pollutants into the water that exports harm to others, the penalty is...)
Or, for example, rather than saying "It's illegal to own a firearms magazine that accepts more than 10 rounds" the law would say "Use of a firearm to commit any crime if that firearm holds a magazine that accepts more than ten rounds is a capital offense that bears the death penalty."
In other words, rather than proscribing the object, which prohibition is both impossible to enforce and an unreasonable burden on law-abiding citizens who have reason or occasion to use 30 round magazines lawfully, a law written as I suggest deters the unlawful behavior by making the penalty so severe that criminals will be dissuaded from violating the law and will be permanently removed from society if they do commit it.
The Ockham's Razor argument is that because criminals don't obey laws that interfere with their intent to commit a crime unless the penalties are severe enough and certain enough to deter them, laws that affect only the law-abiding (like magazine capacity or handgun or any other type of gun ban law) are both unreasonable intrusions on their individual liberty and a facilitator of criminality because they disarm law abiding citizens without likewise disarming criminals. This is the simplest, and therefore most likely the correct answer.
It's no more complex than that.
Taxes and socialist redistribution of wealth is another example. Obviously this is an infringement on individual liberty, but is good for the wider community. For example : by providing people who are without a job or source of income, with welfare payments, we allow them to live a life without falling back on crime in desperation. Such payments reduce crime, for a much lower pay out than simply putting each potential criminal in prison at $ 100,000 per year each.
Quite right. It comes in many flavorsSocialism is not an absolute.
I disagree. Socialism is the spawn of Marxism. Always has been. It bears the fatal DNA of Marx in its very core, and it's therefore just as corrupt as hard-core Marxism because, as I have said many times, it begins with the presumption that the individual is beholden to and the chattel subject of the collective, which may command and dispose of the individual's labor without his permission or consent.You refer to socialism as Marxism, which it is not.
Marxism is anti-capitalist. Marxism requires a sharing of everything instead of the opportunity to become individually wealthy, which is capitalism.
No, that's end-state Marxism, which is called "Communism."
Indeed, which is one of the most heinous and perverse hypocrisies of Socialism. Socialism is based on the Marxist principle "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." This fundamental tenet of ALL socialist societies gives the government license to control and redistribute the labor of the individual on the behalf of the collective. The fact that socialism cannot function (and indeed neither can Marxism or Communism) without the functioning of the markets and capitalism is what makes it a fatally flawed and doomed-to-failure socioeconomic system.Socialism, though, can live comfortably side by side with capitalism, and indeed, relies on the wealth produced by capitalism.
For example, the socialist society of Denmark relies on oil exports to capitalist nations for the wealth required to support its social welfare sate. This is manifest hypocrisy because if Denmark were consistent with it's Marxist philosophy, Denmark would be wrong to expropriate the oil it finds and sell it to anyone. The socialist model says that Denmark owes that oil to the entire socialist world free of charge because that's what Denmark can give according to its ability. In other words, to be ethically and politically consistent, Denmark should be transferring an equal share of its oil, without charge, to every other socialist nation and society on earth. When Denmark (and its citizens) profit from the oil itself and does not equally share that natural bounty with everyone, it is violating the very principles of socialism.
No it doesn't. The dependent class, when allowed to vote itself largess from the public treasury, inevitably causes far more trouble than it would if it were required to work hard to obtain that largess.Capitalism benefits also, since it provides a way for the "other half" of the population to live without causing trouble.
Socialism means that, if a person who has worked hard suddenly find him/herself unable to work through illness or becoming disabled, they will still be cared for.
No it doesn't. Most often it means the promise of assistance, which is, or soon becomes empty as the government's coffers are emptied of funds by legions of "disabled" people who are not producing and are stealing the labor of those who are, which is a self-fullfilling prophecy that ends when everybody quits working and expects the Money Fairy to support them.
And there is nothing about capitalism that prevents or prohibits the free markets and capitalistic society from caring for those who through no fault of their own are unable to be productive.
Socialism, on the other hand doesn't just protect the disabled, it protects and encourages able-bodied individuals to be less and less productive until they become utterly non-productive and turn into the dependent class. I've explained how this happens many times, and one need only look at the Soviet example to see how and why this inevitably happens.
Wrong. Socialism is always at war with the richer sectors and is seeking ways to expropriate their wealth because the poorer sectors, having the ability to vote themselves largess from the public treasury because they outnumber the productive class, always view the richer sectors as selfish, despotic, evil, and therefore unworthy to possess or administer their own wealth. And since socialism is based on the premise that the individual is subordinate to the "needs" of the collective, that wealth will inevitably be expropriated to satisfy the greed and selfishness of the poorer sectors.Socialism permits society to stratify into relatively richer and poorer sectors, while attempting to prevent the poorer sectors from becoming excessively poverty stricken.
No, it does not attempt to do so, although it inevitably does so. It's intent, so stated, is to make everyone equally wealthy. It is the fundamental flaws of Marxism that makes the practical effect universal poverty, deprivation and dispair.Marxism attempts to keep society all one stratum, and generally results in just that, with everyone poverty stricken.
The problem is that it all requires OPM to serve the needs of the dependent class, which means enslaving the productive class against their will to the interests and "needs" of the dependent class.There is no absolute socialism in our society. Just socialism to a degree. Socialist policies can be and are altered to increase or reduce the availability of services. In other words, all is relative.
That's because you have a childishly simplistic understanding of the nuances of Socialism and view it as something that it is not.So, personally, I reject views that are extremist and absolutist.
, but I also recall ces calling himself a "liberal" so... Just terms, nothing but.
