Thread: Socialism Works!

Originally Posted by jockeys

[citation needed]

Well, since this is such a fundamental ingredient, I guess I'll just point you to a whole bunch of them. Google scholar I think is a reasonable indexing of research articles, but you could refer to any other service, I don't think it'll take you too long to be convinced that while there is a lot of research into nuances and differences in the perception of fairness, the category itself is fundamental.

cultural psychology fairness - Google Scholar

Originally Posted by gugi

Well, since this is such a fundamental ingredient, I guess I'll just point you to a whole bunch of them. Google scholar I think is a reasonable indexing of research articles, but you could refer to any other service, I don't think it'll take you too long to be convinced that while there is a lot of research into nuances and differences in the perception of fairness, the category itself is fundamental.

cultural psychology fairness - Google Scholar

i read the first half dozen papers. interesting stuff. i think we may be saying the same thing, just in different ways. the IDEA of fairness is indeed omnipresent, i agree with that. most of the papers were bent on studying and even quantifying fairness.

i just don't think actual fairness is omnipresent. the papers suggest that people LIKE fairness, which i don't disagree with at all.

i merely thought you were saying actual fairness was constantly OCCURRING which is what i disagreed with. so yes, fairness is a common idea and a well-liked one, i agree. but what i was trying to say is that the world IS unfair, and unfairness, in fact and occurrence, is actually the more common of the two.

thus, my personal philosophy does not take fairness into account, since in practice it is vanishingly rare, and not to be relied upon.

I think we may be butting our heads up against cultural differences here. I do not think the purpose of Government is a generalisable thing. For example, I seem to recall the French had an expression, which ended up in their constitution, which contained the work "Equality" in there somewhere.

In my own case, Australia's Government has some basis in what we rather euphemistically term a "fair go". In fact, I think some may still refer to us as a Socialist Capitalist country, but I am not sure. We certainly were a lot more Socialistic several decades ago.

It seems to me that where you grew up, what you were/are exposed to and so on drive your thoughts on this issue. It makes perfect sense to me that people in the US have a different idea of what socialism is to say those who live in Sweden.

But socialism is just a word, as is capitalism and communism. They each have some form of technical socio-political definition that the academics can argue over. Pragmatically, however, all we will ever know about are their manifestations. So technically, all we are able to say is that this particular attempt didn't do so well, or whatever. From my way of looking at it, there is no empirical evidence one way or the other that any of these ideologies (capitalism included) works. What we see are "Shadowlands" - man's poor attempts to implement these idealistic constructions in a workable form.

So I think that any attempt to correlate what actual countries implement with the socio-political definitions of Socialism, communism, or Captialism is as fraught and pointless as me buying a Pakistani razor, shaving with it, and saying "straight razors are all crap".

James.

Originally Posted by Jimbo

So I think that any attempt to correlate what actual countries implement with the socio-political definitions of Socialism, communism, or Captialism is as fraught and pointless as me buying a Pakistani razor, shaving with it, and saying "straight razors are all crap".

James.

N=1
σ(sigma) is undefined
The confidence interval explodes to +/- infinity!

OTOH: if we are all regressing toward the mean, we should try and make the mean as desirable as possible! (assuming it doesn't play havoc with R-squared adjusted).

-Rob

Complete equality is a utopia that is never going to be realized that is true and social democrats agree with this. But Jockeys said "so why not get over it". Well, the utopia is a dream that can never be accomplished, it is a philosophical goal, but the realistic goal is to implement equality as far at it can be implemented in reality. But saying "so why not get over it" just because that the ultimate goal is a utopia would also be like saying get over trying to fight racism it is just not possible to totally disregard cultural or ethnic differences for example.

Anyway..

I think this discussion has drifted away from the main subject. It has become a war of opinions due to a cultural clash mainly between US. Americans and Europeans, Canadians etc.
The original subject was that socialism does not work and I think we in general have agreed upon that it does work, but then there are different opinions about what is a better form of government than the other.

Originally Posted by Rawaz

Complete equality is a utopia that is never going to be realized that is true and social democrats agree with this. But Jockeys said "so why not get over it". Well, the utopia is a dream that can never be accomplished, it is a philosophical goal, but the realistic goal is to implement equality as far at it can be implemented in reality.

not everyone thinks complete equality is good, regardless of whether it is achievable or not. i would think a completely equal society is DYStopian, and a nightmare. without inequality there is no motivation to innovate, to achieve, to take pride in one's actions.

humans are social animals, true, but social animals that have a pathological need for difference. i just think equality, true equality, would be utterly disastrous for us as a species. just my 2c.

Originally Posted by jockeys

not everyone thinks complete equality is good, regardless of whether it is achievable or not. i would think a completely equal society is DYStopian, and a nightmare. without inequality there is no motivation to innovate, to achieve, to take pride in one's actions.

humans are social animals, true, but social animals that have a pathological need for difference. i just think equality, true equality, would be utterly disastrous for us as a species. just my 2c.

Sure and that's a valid point to have. But for others equality is something to strive for, just like racism is something worth fighting for while others believe that would be a dystopia. (by this I of course don't compare you my friend, it was just an example)

Originally Posted by Rawaz

The original subject was that socialism does not work and I think we in general have agreed upon that it does work, but then there are different opinions about what is a better form of government than the other.

Yes, i agree socialism works, but it works to diminish individual liberty and freedom. Not a desirable system for a country that was founded for the purpose of keeping and protecting those rights.

Originally Posted by honedright

Yes, i agree socialism works, but it works to diminish individual liberty and freedom. Not a desirable system for a country that was founded for the purpose of keeping and protecting those rights.

Sums it up quite nicely Scott!

So which of these is indicative of socialism?
(rhetorical question)

having a government

having a government that collects 10% of personal income

having a government that collects 40% of personal income

having a government that uses that money to:

build highways
explore outer space
wage war
provide public education
provide public health care
provide living assistance to the most impoverished 10%
provide living assistance to the most impoverished 3%
provide a postal service
offer foreign aid
guarantee savings deposits in banks
maintain national parks
etc.

Sorry for the long post, but I really don't understand how providing extra services suddenly tips some arbitrary scale to the side of socialism. Either you have a government that collects taxes and provides services or you don't. Most of what seems to get people excited is just a difference of degree, not of ideology.