open discussion about personal conviction's

shutin wrote:I'd disagree that people who make more don't deserve it or work for it. Those people paid for college and paid for the job through the years spent in college. There are exceptions through that. Some people win the lottery or choose a career that paid excessively. A veterinarian will not make as much as a psychiatrist and doctor, and a doctor will not make as much as a CEO, but all three require extensive training.

The problem now is that we are seeing these CEOs of big companies giving themselves huge bonuses even though they've driven their companies into the ground. Then they blackmail the US government to bail them out. And it works for them. Those are the guys who should be chopped up and turned into dog food. Their companies never should have been allowed to get too big to fail.

I hate to necro a thread, but I've never felt more compelled to correct something. It's not a disagreement of values. It's a correction of definitions.

Snowball wrote:Logically, if one wishes people to get a fair return on their work, i.e. the full value of their own labor-power, one should be an anti-authoritarian, or libertarian, and therefore a socialist.

Socialists are NOT anti-authoritarian. Socialists are NOT libertarians.

Socialists simply move control from one hand to another.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/socialism
Socialists move power from private hands to "public" hands. "Public" hands very easily become "government" hands, especially in the US which is a representative republic.


Libertarians seek to maximize individual rights and minimize the role of the state.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ ... ?qsrc=2446
Libertarians ARE anti-authoritarians, but they are NOT socialists. Libertarians ARE anti-socialists. A libertarian is closer to an anarchist than to a socialist.


Communism is a sad irony. I've lived in Russia. I know. It's great on paper and in tiny villages. But as soon as it expands to a large scale, it becomes more controlling than any other form of government. It becomes an oligarchy with a ruling elite--very close to a dictatorship or a monarchy.


Thank you for the forum space.

--Frayed

It's cool that you've seen some of that stuff in Russia firsthand, but that doesn't have much to do with socialism in general. The Soviet Union failed before it even started because of the same backwardness that has plagued its development for centuries.

You can't equate socialism with any one attempt. The only thing they all have in common is that they did not go far enough, which is why they have failed.

But even look at weak third-way socialism, which keeps 99 percent of capitalism and exploitation intact. Nationalized resources and good taxes are enough to eliminate homelessness, provide education and healthcare, and even good wages. Nobody loses, there is no violation of freedom in these countries. They rate higher in livability than the USA.