Are we Americans ready, now, to talk seriously about the "s" word?

[KingOrfeo]

That is to say, socialism.

As distinct from, say, social democracy. The difference being, that social democracy is not something INSTEAD OF or AFTER capitalism. To a social democrat, the means of production need not be socialised/nationalized so long as there's an aggressive welfare state. For what that's worth. And Obama ain't no socialist -- not even a social democrat.

Are we ready, now, to talk about REAL socialism as a serious alternative for and in America? Are we?

 

[fair_warning]

No.
No way.

 

[LadyVer]

Nope..But I'd like to hear more about social democracy.

 

[BotanyBoy]

That is to say, socialism.

As distinct from, say, social democracy. The difference being, that social democracy is not something INSTEAD OF or AFTER capitalism. To a social democrat, the means of production need not be socialised/nationalized so long as there's an aggressive welfare state. For what that's worth. And Obama ain't no socialist -- not even a social democrat.

Are we ready, now, to talk about REAL socialism as a serious alternative for and in America? Are we?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

You wish to discuss distinctions without merit and the parsing of "definitions" to advocate the form of Socialism that you think will come to predominate as does everyone who desires just a little bit of government now thinking that they will be able to stop its advance before it becomes total government and the rise of the strong man later...

"The more communal enterprise extends, the more attention is drawn to the bad business results of nationalized and municipalized undertakings. It is impossible to miss the cause of the difficulty: a child could see where something was lacking. So that it cannot be said that this problem has not been tackled. But the way in which it has been tackled has been deplorably inadequate. Its organic connection with the essential nature of socialist enterprise has been regarded as merely a question of better selection of persons. It has not been realized that even exceptionally gifted men of high character cannot solve the problems created by socialist control of industry."
Ludwig Heinrich Elder von Mises

Any advocate of socialistic measures is looked upon as the friend of the Good, the Noble, and the Moral, as a disinterested pioneer of necessary reforms, in short, as a man who unselfishly serves his own people and all humanity, and above all as a zealous and courageous seeker after truth. But let anyone measure Socialism by the standards of scientific reasoning, and he at once becomes a champion of the evil principle, a mercenary serving the egotistical interests of a class, a menace to the welfare of the community, an ignoramus outside the pale. For the most curious thing about this way of thinking is that it regards the question of whether Socialism or Capitalism will better serve the public welfare, as settled in advance -- to the effect, naturally, that Socialism is considered good and Capitalism as evil -- whereas in fact of course only by a scientific inquiry could the matter be decided. The results of economic investigations are met, not with arguments, but with …"moral pathos" …and on which Socialists and (Statists) always fall back, because they find no answer to the criticism to which science subjects their doctrines.
Ludwig von Mises

The technique of these parties is based on the division of society into producers and consumers. They are also wont to make use of the usual hypostasis of the state in questions of fiscal policy that enables them to advocate new expenditures to be paid out of the public treasury without any particular concern on their part over how such expenses are to be defrayed, and at the same time to complain about the heavy burden of taxes.
The other basic defect of these parties is that the demands they raise for each particular group are limitless. There is, in their eyes, only one limit to the quantity to be demanded: the resistance put up by the other side. This is entirely keeping with their character as parties striving for privileges on behalf of special interests. Yet parties that follow no definite program, but come into conflict in the pursuit of unlimited desires for privileges on behalf of some and for legal disabilities for others, must bring about the destruction of every political system.
Ludwig von Mises

But the notion that a capitalist form of government can prevent people from hurting themselves by controlling their consumption is false. The idea of government as a paternal authority, as a guardian for everybody, is the idea of those who favor socialism.
…
And, as you know, for many hundreds of years governments and authorities believed that this really was their duty. Nor did this happen in far distant ages only; not long ago, there was a government in Germany that considered it a governmental duty to distinguish between good and bad paintings — which of course meant good and bad from the point of view of a man who, in his youth, had failed the entrance examination at the Academy of Art in Vienna; good and bad from the point of view of a picture-postcard painter, Adolf Hitler. And it became illegal for people to utter other views about art and paintings than his, the Supreme Führer's.
Ludwig Elder von Mises

There is black and white, and if you refuse to believe that, then you will accept grey and let me tell you gray tends to black for when you say ∃ of anything is a good function of government then ∃ is everything ¬∀ and while you may be able to advocate for ∃ you won't be allowed to define it and in this manner its limit will be ∀ for ∑f(∪∃)i [i=from you to the total population] will never tend to ∅ by definition so it is easy to see that it is, indeed, an ∀ or ∅ when it comes to government. (Now, the ∑f(∩∃)i [i=from you to the total population] will tend to ∅ but that is politically unattainable for the obvious reason that the more ∃ is defined, the smaller the ∩∃ becomes.)
A_J, the Stupid

 

[fair_warning]

* yawn*

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Socialism is a committee of numnutz and haystacks homesteading a sweet gig where they make long lists and take little action. Socialism is the existential form of A DAY LATE AND A DOLLAR SHORT.

 

[richard_daily]

A_J, the Stupid

At least you got one thing right.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Usually much, much more that a dollar short.


This is what happens under the Economics of Legal Plunder, people distrust, people hide, people evade and eventually they begin lashing out and engaging in pogrom, purging and cleansing.

 

[mercury14]

Usually much, much more that a dollar short.


This is what happens under the Economics of Legal Plunder, people distrust, people hide, people evade and eventually they begin lashing out and engaging in pogrom, purging and cleansing.

I see AJ is on one of his Obama = Hitler tirades. They used to be fun but now they're just plain boring. It makes one wonder why AJ hasn't left America though.

 

[richard_daily]

I see AJ is on one of his Obama = Hitler tirades. They used to be fun but now he's just plain boring. It makes one wonder why AJ hasn't left America though.

He has left the US, he's living in the cult fringes of "new 'merica" now.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Usually much, much more that a dollar short.


This is what happens under the Economics of Legal Plunder, people distrust, people hide, people evade and eventually they begin lashing out and engaging in pogrom, purging and cleansing.

And often more than a week late!

The state usta shelter kids who were homeless for various reasons, and most came with nuthin in their kit. And the state SOP was to ink their names on the assessment list, schedule the assessment committee meeting a week later, then dump the assessment form into the mill for vouchers at a later date.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

And often more than a week late!

The state usta shelter kids who were homeless for various reasons, and most came with nuthin in their kit. And the state SOP was to ink their names on the assessment list, schedule the assessment committee meeting a week later, then dump the assessment form into the mill for vouchers at a later date.

The fucking Socialists cleared out the mental wards to protect the rights of the patients and then want to strip us of guns when the logical unintended consequences ensue...

That is Socialism in a nutshell.

"It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
CS Lewis

… an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fate. It is absolute, detailed, rigid, far-seeing and mild. It would resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood; it likes citizens to enjoy themselves. It willingly works for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that.
Thus, taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrial animals of which the government is the shepherd.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

"Three main tendencies or tenets mark the drift toward totalitarianism. The first and most important, because the other two derive from it, is the pressure for a constant increase in governmental powers, for a constant widening of the governmental sphere of intervention. It is the tendency toward more and more regulation of every sphere of economic life, toward more and more restriction of the liberties of the individual. The tendency toward more and more governmental spending is a part of this trend. It means in effect that the individual is able to spend less and less of the income he earns on the things he himself wants, while the government takes more and more of his income from him to spend it in the ways that it thinks wise. One of the basic assumptions of totalitarianism, in brief (and of such steps toward it as socialism, state paternalism, and Keynesianism), is that the citizen cannot be trusted to spend his own money. As government control becomes wider and wider, individual discretion, the individual's control of his own affairs in all directions, necessarily becomes narrower and narrower. In sum, liberty is constantly diminished."
Henry Hazlett, 1965

 

[mercury14]

He has left the US, he's living in the cult fringes of "new 'merica" now.

I'm going to volunteer to be on his Death Panel. I'll promise to make his passing swift and maybe even a bit premature.

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Now there's a happy fucking thought to mark the season.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Oikophobia

Xenophobia is fear of the alien; oikophobia is fear of the familiar: "the disposition, in any conflict, to side with 'them' against 'us', and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably 'ours.' "

The oik repudiates national loyalties and defines his goals and ideals against the nation, promoting transnational institutions over national governments, accepting and endorsing laws that are imposed on us from on high by the EU or the UN, though without troubling to consider Terence's question, and defining his political vision in terms of universal values that have been purified of all reference to the particular attachments of a real historical community.
The oik is, in his own eyes, a defender of enlightened universalism against local chauvinism. And it is the rise of the oik that has led to the growing crisis of legitimacy in the nation states of Europe. For we are seeing a massive expansion of the legislative burden on the people of Europe, and a relentless assault on the only loyalties that would enable them voluntarily to bear it. The explosive effect of this has already been felt in Holland and France. It will be felt soon everywhere, and the result may not be what the oiks expect.
Roger Scruton, British philosopher

Contemporary leftists, on the other hand, view their opponents as people you send off to the Gulag, unworthy of any respect, deserving of any kind of low blow, no matter how foul. So you accuse Goldwater of insanity, slander Justice Thomas as a sexual monster, casually publish plays, books, and films calling for the assassination of President Bush, and assault the first serious Republican female candidate at her weakest point -- her family. And of course, you scream to high heaven if any form of turnabout occurs in your direction, as in the case of the Obama family, which was declared "off limits" early in the presidential campaign, at the same time that Palin's family was being stretched on the media rack.

This style of political loathing has become effectively innate. It has been systemized to such a degree as to become integral. Modern liberalism cannot do without it. An entire structure has been erected on the basis of political hatred, and from that structure a whole new strategy has arisen.
J.R. Dunn

The answer was no; it [that their drug use was currently considered an illegal act by their own 'democratic' government] didn't bother them. It doesn't really bother anyone who accepts mob rule as a desirable form of social organization. The reason is that democrats never regard existing democracy as their preferred political system — they regard it only as a transitory state to a democratic utopia in which the elected leaders will agree totally with their own values and social-political views. Mises has observed that "the critics of the capitalistic order always seem to believe that the socialistic system of their dreams will do precisely what they think correct." Hence, when people talk about the importance of democracy, it is never democracy as it has ever actually functioned, with the politicians that have actually been elected, and the policies that have actually been implemented. It is always democracy as people imagine it will operate once they succeed in electing "the right people" — by which they mean, people who agree almost completely with their own views, and who are consistent and incorruptible in their implementation of the resulting policies. This is what allows an intelligent group of people to espouse mob rule as a desirable principle, even as they simultaneously commit acts that brand them as criminals worthy of imprisonment under the very social system they maintain.
Ben O'Neill
http://mises.org/daily/5879/Worship-of-the-Mob

We have already seen that the close interdependence of all economic phenomena makes it difficult to stop planning just where we wish and that, once the free working of the market is impeded beyond a certain degree, the planner will be forced to extend his control until they become all-comprehensive. These economic considerations, which explain why it is impossible to stop deliberate control just where we would wish, are strongly reinforced by certain social or political tendencies whose strength makes itself increasingly felt as planning extends.

Once it becomes increasingly true, and is generally recognized, that the position of the individual is determined not by impersonal forces, not as a result of the competitive efforts of many, but by the deliberate decision of authority; the attitude of the people towards their position in the social order necessarily changes. There will always exist inequalities which appear just to those who suffer, disappointments which will appear unmerited, and strokes of misfortune which those hit have not deserved. But when these things occur in a society which is consciously directed, they way in which people will react will be very different from what it is when they are nobody's conscious choice.
From Who, Whom?
FA Hayek, Road to Serfdom, Chapter eight p. 137

 

[mercury14]

The fucking Socialists cleared out the mental wards to protect the rights of the patients and then want to strip us of guns when the logical unintended consequences ensue...

That is Socialism in a nutshell.

Your partner in the elephant shroud will be the first to tell you that there were a whole lot of people in locked residential facilities that were better-served at a lower level of care. A lot of folks didn't like it because it meant that society had to see its severely mentally ill members walking around again. Sorry if it made you uncomfortable.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Now there's a happy fucking thought to mark the season.

Something said by the great fork-tongue?


I wonder if I have to repost the litany of his known lies again...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

While you're at it, could you come up with a plan to cancel out America's nigger amnesty policy? And who gave Pocahontas and her drunk-ass tribe citizenship?

Merc’s Day Alt:
http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?p=33735857&highlight=physician#post33735857
The lying
http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=800325

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

The fucking Socialists cleared out the mental wards to protect the rights of the patients and then want to strip us of guns when the logical unintended consequences ensue...

That is Socialism in a nutshell.

"It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
CS Lewis

… an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fate. It is absolute, detailed, rigid, far-seeing and mild. It would resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood; it likes citizens to enjoy themselves. It willingly works for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that.
Thus, taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrial animals of which the government is the shepherd.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

"Three main tendencies or tenets mark the drift toward totalitarianism. The first and most important, because the other two derive from it, is the pressure for a constant increase in governmental powers, for a constant widening of the governmental sphere of intervention. It is the tendency toward more and more regulation of every sphere of economic life, toward more and more restriction of the liberties of the individual. The tendency toward more and more governmental spending is a part of this trend. It means in effect that the individual is able to spend less and less of the income he earns on the things he himself wants, while the government takes more and more of his income from him to spend it in the ways that it thinks wise. One of the basic assumptions of totalitarianism, in brief (and of such steps toward it as socialism, state paternalism, and Keynesianism), is that the citizen cannot be trusted to spend his own money. As government control becomes wider and wider, individual discretion, the individual's control of his own affairs in all directions, necessarily becomes narrower and narrower. In sum, liberty is constantly diminished."
Henry Hazlett, 1965

After they emptied the state hospitals they gotta bag of money to shepherd the lost souls but no one wanted the constant bullshit the whackos create. At the hospitals they could steal margarine from the mess hall for love in the dorms later, and taxpayers were out a few pennies, but out on the street they made lotsa babies.

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Something said by the great fork-tongue?


I wonder if I have to repost the litany of his known lies again...

It's just another empty pint, probably in more ways than one.

 

[mercury14]

Black Hitler is in power and pogroms are about to begin. Yet AJ chooses to live in America anyway. It's almost like he doesn't believe a word that's coming out of his own mouth.

 

[fair_warning]

Black Hitler is in power and pogroms are about to begin. Yet AJ chooses to live in America anyway. It's almost like he doesn't believe a word that's coming out of his own mouth.

Yes...and no.....

 

[mercury14]

After they emptied the state hospitals they gotta bag of money to shepherd the lost souls but no one wanted the constant bullshit the whackos create. At the hospitals they could steal margarine from the mess hall for love in the dorms later, and taxpayers were out a few pennies, but out on the street they made lotsa babies.

Most of them shouldn't have been in there in the fist place though.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

It's just another empty pint, probably in more ways than one.

It is like he is on a double super-secret double-knot Agent 86 spy mission to prove me right in the things I say about the ideas and emotional instability of the Left being positively 100% balls-on dead accurate...