Socalism out of neccesity

[MindOverMatter2]

I agree that socialism in general, when properly understood, is not morally sufficient. It is also true that to kill another human being, in general, is not morally sufficient. However there is a context in which the rule is not absolute, and that is when killing is absolutely necessary. If all private businesses took all the means of production else where and what was left could only sustain the common good (men women and children) by systematic government imposed sharing, then it seems, insofar as the common good is concerned, that socialism would be the least of two evils until some kind of just economy could replace it. The greatest evil would be to let many people starve for the sake of the few. Please note that i am not trying to justify socialism as a moral system in and of itself, but rather i believe that God would nevertheless permit it in certain extreme circumstances; and it may even be necessary, as a temporary phase, in order to bring about a just form of capitalism based on the common good rather than just the individual. I do not believe that God would permit capitalism at the expense of many lives, since private property is not an absolute right. When private property becomes oppressive, either physically of psychologically, this is the same as stealing from the common good.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Well, you did ask. Maybe asking for trouble.

Your series of “what if’s” is trumped up.

By experience, we know that the key to societal success is private property rights. AND the need for charity is an individual responsibility.

By experience, we know that this system works and works extremely well.

The PROBLEM is the problem of POWER.

YOU cannot gain power over others through a private property rights system that thrives with open and free competition.

HOWEVER, if you can “game the system” by creating a coercive entity [government] then YOU can gain POWER over others.

In other words, if you don’t work, you don’t eat. However, IF you are UNABLE to work, then private charity and charity via the Church will provide the help you need.

The private property system provides the best sources of food, clothing, shelter, heat in winter, and medical care. We know this from experience. There are financial mechanisms such as insurance [ship/cargo, fire, home, life, car, and medical] to help pay for it and to take some of the bumps out of the road. And financial mechanisms to help people prepare for retirement and for unforeseen contingencies.

These are well known and work successfully.

The problem with socialism is that it uses a one-size-fits-all policy administered by government employees applying coercion [try not paying your taxes and see what happens] and with those government employees being immune from the poor results from the bureaucratic system and procedures that they create.

Socialism removes the church-based and voluntary systems which have been proven to work but which do not allow people to gain personal power over others.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

In other words, if you don’t work, you don’t eat. .

What has that got to do with anything i have said? In a socialist society you would have to work, or you can’t eat. Working is a natural law of nature regardless the system invoked. Charity evidently cannot help everyone, and neither can the market place if it is focused on individual success rather than the success of the common good.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

What has that got to do with anything i have said? In a socialist society you would have to work. Charity evidently cannot help everyone, and neither can the market place if it is focused on individual success rather than the success of the common good.

In a socialist system, you might not have to work if you can game the system.

In a socialist system, you can use the Cloward-Piven technique to gain personal power by deliberately causing the private property system to fail.

In a private property system, you cannot game the system for very long.

OR, in a socialist system, the government will tell you what kind of work you can and cannot do, rather than letting you make your own free choices.

That’s the other (or another) problem with socialism: you cannot make your own free choices … which you can do in a free and open competitive system.

The paradox of a free society is that people pursuing individual success DO contribute to the common good. Some people like being farmers and produce food. Some people are able to earn a living by working in a canning factory and other people by driving a truck and other people by putting cans up on a shelf. What they do is what they are good at doing, and they have the freedom to pursue other, more profitable, avenues if they so desire. They can acquire more skills; they can move to another part of the country; they can invent something that nobody else has thought of that people want.

What “Adam Smith” referred to as the “invisible hand”.

Charity is not intended to “help everyone”. Charity is intended to help people who cannot be productive on their own.

Read Mark Levin’s book: “Liberty and Tyranny” www.marklevinshow.com

 

[MindOverMatter2]

In a socialist system, you might not have to work if you can game the system.

Everybody would have to do some kind of work in any system purely focused of the common good; it is the law of nature and the common good. Perhaps if one gets fat of the kind of capitalism that exploits human need, then certainly such a person does not have to work while others struggle for crumbs breaking their backs all their lives trying to support ones weight. If people could some how control air in order to artificially limit it, they would exploit that to.

OR, the government will tell you what kind of work you can and cannot do, rather than letting you make your own free choices.

This happens anyway because of a coercive market, not everybody can be plumbers or technicians if the jobs are not available; and not everybody can gain work if the market place cannot gain a profit from it. That’s just logic. If i do not have my own means of production, then i am a slave to the whim of the market place, and profit will always come before people where their is an abundance of wage slaves. There are plenty of university students who deserve better but are instead living on wages that barely supports them and are working in jobs they really don’t want to do; and they have a big debt hanging around their necks for tuition fees; Just because they wanted to learn. Its not hard to comprehend. And as for government, their duty to support the common good is undermined by the coercive power of the market.

That’s the other (or another) problem with socialism: you cannot make your own free choices … which you can do in a free and open competitive system.

The same exact effects can occur in a capitalist market that isn’t ordered toward the common good. In any case i am not arguing for socialism as a moral alternative to capitalism, i am arguing that perhaps it would be a necessity in certain extreme circumstances. Your kneejerk emotions towards socialism failed you in comprehending that fact.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Charity is not intended to “help everyone”. Charity is intended to help people who cannot be productive on their own.

You’re not serious. I dare say you understood the context in which said everyone, as in everyone that cannot support themselves!!!

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Everybody would have to do some kind of work in any system purely focused of the common good; it is the law of nature and the common good. Perhaps if one gets fat of the kind of capitalism that exploits human need, then certainly such a person does not have to work while others struggle for crumbs breaking their backs all their lives trying to support ones weight. If people could some how control air in order to artificially limit it, they would exploit that to.

This happens anyway because of a coercive market, not everybody can be plumbers or technicians if the jobs are not available; and not everybody can gain work if the market place cannot gain a profit from it. That’s just logic. If i do not have my own means of production, then i am a slave to the whim of the market place, and profit will always come before people where their is an abundance of wage slaves. There are plenty of university students who deserve better but are instead living on wages that barely supports them and are working in jobs they really don’t want to do; and they have a big debt hanging around their necks for tuition fees; Just because they wanted to learn. Its not hard to comprehend. And as for government, their duty to support the common good is undermined by the coercive power of the market.

The same exact effects can occur in a capitalist market that isn’t ordered toward the common good. In any case i am not arguing for socialism as a moral alternative to capitalism, i am arguing that perhaps it would be a necessity in certain extreme circumstances. Your kneejerk emotions towards socialism failed you in comprehending that fact.

First of all, the use of expressions such as “kneejerk emotions” and “you’re not serious” give away your real position.

Your real position is that the people with college educations DESERVE the best jobs.

And that anyone who disputes socialism is using kneejerk emotions.

In fact, socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried.

The argument then revolves to “well, then, socialism hasn’t been tried right; it needs another chance”.

But, command economies fail consistently and constantly.

That is the unpleasant fact of life.

NO ONE is entitled to a high paying job.

If you want a high paying job, you have to provide a good or service that enough people want that it is considered valuable.

For example, “Wall Street fatcats” make a lot of money. So your college educated friends can work on Wall Street. Well, they don’t WANT to work on Wall Street. But if you want to make money you have to go where the money is.

There are two kinds of Wall Street fatcats, by the way. There are the ones who manage insurance companies and mutual funds and other financial institutions, the flow of funds that allow commerce to flow. And then there are the fatcats who rotate between government and industry, so they make the financial rules in government that allow their friends and themselves to make a LOT of money, while making rules that mess things up, such as “mark to market”.

But to make a decent amount of money you need to make a contribution to society. Just having a college education doesn’t cut it.

You need to make something that other people will willingly pay for.

So, what can you and your friends do that other people will willingly pay for?

But getting bitter and angry because right out of school you can’t make a ton of money does not convince anyone.

And being just out of school doesn’t give you enough life experience to be able to perform a necessary service or make a needed good. Coming out of school only gives you a license to learn.

You still need to serve an apprenticeship of some kind or other.

And the specific college education you got may not give you actual real world skills.

Even if you have an engineering degree doesn’t mean that you can design a new airplane or a new car, right out of college.

If you had a degree in math, you might be able to make a lot of money as a professional gambler or as an actuary.

But it takes more than a college degree.

Sorry, charlie.

 

[Carlan]

What has that got to do with anything i have said? In a socialist society you would have to work, or you can’t eat. Working is a natural law of nature regardless the system invoked. Charity evidently cannot help everyone, and neither can the market place if it is focused on individual success rather than the success of the common good.

I think you are right M&M, Common sense tells me that it has got to be a balance of Social justice and free enterprise. That’s Democracy and while it isn’t perfection it is the best we’ve got, Peace , Carlan

 

[Monte_RCMS]

I think you are right M&M, Common sense tells me that it has got to be a balance of Social justice and free enterprise. That’s Democracy and while it isn’t perfection it is the best we’ve got, Peace , Carlan

What is social justice?

Nothing to do with democracy, by the way.

We have a constitutional republic. And socialists don’t like the political safeguards in our Constitution that protect us from mobocracy and from a dictatorship/ totalitarian bureaucracy.

What you need to do is find a job in a field where there is a lot of demand.

There is some work going on in natural gas exploration and development from Pennsylvania in a broad swath of geography all the way to Texas and up to Wyoming.

There WOULD be a lot more oil and gas exploration and development off shore and in Alaska, but the Federal government has put those areas off limits.

There is some work going on to design a compact safe nuclear reactor. Some designs use Thorium.

You could check those areas out.

Boeing is working full speed on the 787 which embodies new technologies.

Everybody is always working on new engine designs.

If you watch BookTV, there seems to be a ready demand for interesting books, thereby jobs for historians and writers of interesting fiction. But it has to be really interesting writing. Talent needed. Merely a college degree isn’t enough.

I was at a history seminar on Tuesday and the amount of good solid information at the U.S. National Archives that is utterly untapped and unread is staggering. All sorts of potential for people with liberal arts backgrounds to pursue. But that work would be entreprenaurial rather than a job working for someone else.

 

[Carlan]

What is social justice?

Nothing to do with democracy, by the way.

We have a constitutional republic. And socialists don’t like the political safeguards in our constitutions that protect us from mobocracy and from a dictatorship/ totalitarian bureaucracy.

You know what social justice is, and you think it is the complete responsibility or the Church and other charity,
I don’t
A Government of the people for the people is a democracy and I believe that for the most part we have to be and are concerned about the have nots as well as the haves. Peace. Carlan

 

[Monte_RCMS]

You know what social justice is, and you think it is the complete responsibility or the Church and other charity,
I don’t
A Government of the people for the people is a democracy and I believe that for the most part we have to be and are concerned about the have nots as well as the haves. Peace. Carlan

“You know what social justice is…”

Refusal to discuss the terms of the discussion … just relying on smart quick comebacks.

Not the right definition of democracy … it’s actually … not for the people and of the people …it’s BY the people.

It’s not about the HAVES and the HAVE NOTS … people don’t have or have not. They work or they work not. They produce or they produce not.

This thread is really about university graduates being entitled to and DESERVING well-paying jobs and not having to suffer with having to do stuff they would rather not do.

Did you know that even though the EPA is outlawing burning of coal for producing electricity, there is still a HUGE demand for coal around the world and one of the leading export products of the U.S.A is coal. Did you know that? But probably with a university degree you might not want to get involved in mining dirty coal and transporting it and exporting it.

---

I did a search on the net and this popped up.

Says it better than I can. About oil and natural gas field jobs.

It’s important to shop around. I’ve heard stories of excellent paychecks. I have also heard that the high paying jobs require skill, experience, and stamina … a lot of people don’t want to or can’t work that hard.

I have also heard complaints from employers that when they need to hire employees with clean records, they can’t find them. A LOT of guys with DUI’s or other blots on their records [assaults, breaking & entering, “road rage”, and some motor vehicle offenses], or who flunk drug tests or who have sex offender records. It’s difficult to get hired for a job that requires driving a rig, if you have a history of accidents. Sometimes even one accident is too many.

Got a complaint from a union guy who was willing to train a young fellow … but the young guy wanted to work as a union rep as a 9-5 M-F desk job … but job was evenings and weekends and the young person just couldn’t understand and didn’t want to work the crazy hours … but the actual job WAS a night and weekend job.

A lot of young people don’t want to work swing shifts and midnight shifts.

I have talked to young people who listed for me the prescription drugs they take … as many as TEN drugs. And the drugs have interactive side effects that severely impact their perception and motor skills. And the young people don’t think twice about it.

For whatever reason, a lot of young people don’t take it seriously … the idea of keeping their record clean. And then when they want to get a good job, they are SOL.

I know of one girl who has a felony conviction as a drug pusher. Her offense? She shared a Midol with a fellow high school student. No joke.

Kids need to be educated on what will get you into trouble, how to stay out of trouble and how to avoid the “friends” who ARE trouble.

With the recent push on “zero tolerance”, anything other than a perfect record will take you out of the running for any kind of decent job. So, then you are stuck doing low rate jobs at low pay.

Alternatively, if you have imagination, you can start your own business. Provided it doesn’t require a professional or business license.

Some folks join the military and get trained and experienced at building trades, heavy equipment operators, boat and ship operations, aviation mechanics, and even helicopter piloting. Depends on aptitude and attitude.

One day I was just sitting around answering phones; I was still a student in school and just helping out. And a former Air Force sergeant came in to use the phone. He had flown in to visit his former (Air Force) lieutenant. A few years earlier, the lieutenant had told the sergeant that there was no place for the sergeant in the Air Force and to switch to the Army. So the sergeant did make the switch. The former USAF sergeant was now an Army pilot AND a Lt. Colonel; and the former USAF lieutenant who had stayed in the USAF, had gotten one promotion … to Captain.

talent, aptitude, attitude, ambition, energy, imagination, diplomatic skills, self-discipline, study, hard work, being at the right time at the right place, God’s will, … all of the above …

 

[Carlan]

“You know what social justice is…”

Refusal to discuss the terms of the discussion … just relying on smart quick comebacks.

Not the right definition of democracy … it’s actually … not for the people and of the people …it’s BY the people.

It’s not about the HAVES and the HAVE NOTS … people don’t have or have not. They work or they work not. They produce or they produce not.

This thread is really about university graduates being entitled to and DESERVING well-paying jobs and not having to suffer with having to do stuff they would rather not do.

Did you know that even though the EPA is outlawing burning of coal for producing electricity, there is still a HUGE demand for coal around the world and one of the leading export products of the U.S.A is coal. Did you know that? But probably with a university degree you might not want to get involved in mining dirty coal and transporting it and exporting it.

…talent, aptitude, attitude, ambition, energy, imagination, diplomatic skills, self-discipline, study, hard work, being at the right time at the right place, God’s will, … all of the above …

O,K, teach,I can take your admonition.
Must i apologize for not being on your level also?
You are talking to an old common sense kind of thinker,(you know time and experience still counts for something,.) even though you do not agree with me ,in this Republic I am entitled to it.
Your last paragraph adds up to perfection, yes. It seems you feel you have achieved it,
The trouble is,Monte, nothing is ever perfect in this world. Peace, Carlan

 

[ManOnFire]

I do not believe that God would permit capitalism at the expense of many lives, since private property is not an absolute right. When private property becomes oppressive, either physically of psychologically, this is the same as stealing from the common good.

Expense of many lives? Who is dying? Are there masses of starving, shoeless citizens in your country? Where do you live?

God gave people free will to spend money on what people value (capitalism and free markets). If free will could be used to resist buying the entertainment and fashion industries’ shallow behavior, then more people would have more money for basic food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare, instead of wasting it on drugs, lust, bling, etc. These shallow amusements are oppressive and enslaving the people, not capitalism. Where’s the social justice in taking money against one’s will from those who earned it to give to able-bodied people who did not earn it, so it can wasted on entertainment and fashion??? That would be unjust. Don’t you think the person who earned it would rather spend it on entertainment and fashion? What about responsible dads who are forced to pay for the health, education, and welfare of the children of dads who abandoned the mother because he preferred to “entertain” himself on his own rather than stay and raise his kids? Where’s the justice? We have DNA tests. Surely, we can swab the inside of the cheek so justice can be served by forcing him to pay for his own kids. No one is being forced to participate in pop culture’s lust and drugs, which leads to weak, selfish men who run, yet people keep funding the problem and refusing to see the great Deception. The problem is not Capitalism. The problem is a lack of virtues and values. Pop culture feeds off the weak. Why not raise up the poor by removing all these roadblocks of temptation in the pop culture that are holding them down and oppressing them??? No one is forcing us to fund our own reduction.

A few decades ago, the media figured out that it could steal people’s emotions and values away from the Church’s via entertainment. Where the Church used to create the culture, now the Media creates the culture, as we have been reduced from fortitude and sacrifice down to lust and drugs. They reduce people via Aldous Huxley’s Soma. Reduced, weak people are easier to control. Socialist rants by unthinkers are the best way to eventually destroy the greatest democracy in the history of the world.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Your writing has a real “edge” to it.

Re-read after a day or two.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

O,K, teach,I can take your admonition.
Must i apologize for not being on your level also?
You are talking to an old common sense kind of thinker,(you know time and experience still counts for something,.) even though you do not agree with me ,in this Republic I am entitled to it.
Your last paragraph adds up to perfection, yes. It seems you feel you have achieved it,
The trouble is,Monte, nothing is ever perfect in this world. Peace, Carlan

Your writing has a real “edge” to it.

Re-read after a day or two.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

I agree that socialism in general, when properly understood, is not morally sufficient. It is also true that to kill another human being, in general, is not morally sufficient. However there is a context in which the rule is not absolute, and that is when killing is absolutely necessary. If all private businesses took all the means of production else where and what was left could only sustain the common good (men women and children) by systematic government imposed sharing, then it seems, insofar as the common good is concerned, that socialism would be the least of two evils until some kind of just economy could replace it. The greatest evil would be to let many people starve for the sake of the few. Please note that i am not trying to justify socialism as a moral system in and of itself, but rather i believe that God would nevertheless permit it in certain extreme circumstances; and it may even be necessary, as a temporary phase, in order to bring about a just form of capitalism based on the common good rather than just the individual. I do not believe that God would permit capitalism at the expense of many lives, since private property is not an absolute right. When private property becomes oppressive, either physically of psychologically, this is the same as stealing from the common good.

Communism just doesn’t work. In every country it’s been a part of, including the early settlements of this nation, people will not work hard for community benefit. So then you get into a forced labor situation, and there is a power imbalance. Someone has to be the power in charge. So communism’s advertised goal of being egalitarian is dishonest, and denies human nature. It will never work. People starve under communism, but those poor souls aren’t the government officials in charge of the work camps. Want to take a trip to North Korea right now and find out? No, I didn’t think so.

Hypotheticals are kind of silly when we have history to review whenever we want the truth.

 

[Steel_Pinwheel]

Socialism: Punish those who work, reward those who don’t work.
Result: collapse of society because people won’t work.
Solution: Put a gun to people’s heads and force them to work.
Therefor, socialism=slavery

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Socialists want to be evaluated based on their intentions and on their theories, not on their actual results.

I was surfing around and found this:

The issue of practicalities is of no concern.

Socialists radicals are into economic theory.

The radicals subscribe to the school of thought of “deconstructionism”. In other words, you utterly destroy the present system and then something far better will emerge from the wreckage.

There was a French theorist/philosopher who was pushing that notion.

Hillary Clinton is one of his really big boosters/believers/followers.

You can read this stuff until your eyes bleed.

Here is one paragraph that is interesting:

“Writing and Difference is a collection of essays published by [Jacques] Derrida in 1967. Each essay is a critical negotiation by Derrida of texts by philosophical or literary writers. These essays have come to be termed deconstructions even though some of them were written before Derrida’s first use of the term in Of Grammatology. For example, the chapter “Cogito and the History of Madness,” dating from 1963, has been referred to as a deconstruction of the work of Michel Foucault, yet the term “deconstruction” does not actually appear in the chapter.”

Who is at fault? We are. We give them credibility. And we send our children to the schools where these teachers teach. And so our children end up believing this “stuff”. And our children end up with zero common sense.

Read “The Death of Common Sense”.

amazon.com/Death-Common-Sense-Suffocating-America/dp/0446672289/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291145331&sr=8-1

Read also, “The Coercive Utopians” .

amazon.com/Coercive-Utopians-Deception-Americas-Players/dp/0895268159/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291145677&sr=8-1

 

[Carlan]

Communism just doesn’t work. In every country it’s been a part of, including the early settlements of this nation, people will not work hard for community benefit. So then you get into a forced labor situation, and there is a power imbalance. Someone has to be the power in charge. So communism’s advertised goal of being egalitarian is dishonest, and denies human nature. It will never work. People starve under communism, but those poor souls aren’t the government officials in charge of the work camps. Want to take a trip to North Korea right now and find out? No, I didn’t think so.

Hypotheticals are kind of silly when we have history to review whenever we want the truth.

Yes, of course, atheistic communism. is wrong’ evil, but that is not what Mind over Matter is saying. Or what I am saying. Why can’t a Democracy have a Government that is a balance of enterprise and compassion when the people are hurting and in need.
Churches and charities do their part and why not Governments also? I can’t see that being a bad thing. All should consider “the sermon on the mount”. It does seem to fall on deaf ears in these times.Peace, Carlan

 

[Monte_RCMS]

In a socialist state, who actually decides on where the balance lies?

In a private property state, everyone decides.

I know what is best for me. You know what is best for you.

But in a socialist state, the decisions are made by a cadre of bureaucrats.

A small group make those decisions for everyone based on a set of policy and procedures manuals written by a committee which believes that they know what is best for everyone. Because of the inherent limitations of a small group making ALL the decisions, they are forced into a “one size fits all” mentality.

To enforce the rules, they are forced to “watch” everyone, just in case someone is deemed to have taken too much or not done enough.

Who watches the watchers?