This one is at least funny.This does a better job at illustrating why Conservatives are stupid.
-
Joe Conservative wakes up in the morning and goes to the bathroom. He flushes his toilet and brushes his teeth, mindful that each flush & brush costs him about 43 cents to his privatized water provider. His wacky, liberal neighbor keeps badgering the company to disclose how clean and safe their water is, but no one ever finds out. Just to be safe, Joe Conservative boils his drinking water.
Aljosa23
Joe steps outside and coughsthe pollution is especially bad today, but the smokiest cars are the cheapest ones, so everyone buys em. Joe Conservative checks to make sure he has enough toll money for the 3 different private roads he must drive to work. There is no public transportation, so traffic is backed up and his 10 mile commute takes an hour.
On the way, he drops his 12 year old daughter off at the clothing factory she works at. Paying for kids to go to private school until theyre 18 is a luxury, and Joe needs the extra income coming in. Times are hard and therere no social safety nets.
He gets to work 5 minutes late and misses the call for Christian prayer, and is immediately docked by his employer. He is not feeling well today, but has no health insurance, since neither his employer nor his government provide it, and paying for it himself is really expensive, since he has a precondition. He just hopes for the best.
Joes workday is 12 hours long, because there is no regulation over working hours, and Joe will lose his job if he complains or unionizes. Today is an especially bad day. Joes manager demands that he work until midnight, a 16 hour day. Joe does, knowing that hell lose his job if he does not.
Finally, after midnight, Joe gets to pick up his daughter and go home. His daughter shows him the deep cut she got on the industrial sewing machine today. Joe is outraged and asks why she doesnt have metal mesh gloves or other protection. She says the company will not provide it and shell have to pay for it out of her own pocket. Joe looks at the wound and decides theyll use an over the counter disinfectant and bandages until it heals. Shell have a scar, but getting stitches at the emergency room is expensive.
His daughter also complains that the manager made suggestive overtures towards her. Joe counsels her to be a good girl and not rock the boat, or shell get fired and theyll be out the income.
His daughter says she cant wait until shes 18 so she can vote for change or go to the Iraq War.
They get home and theres a message from his elderly father who cant afford to pay his medical or heating bills. Joe can hear him coughing and shivering.
Joe turns on the radio and the top story is a proposal in Congress to raise the voting age to 25. A rare liberal opinionator states that its an attempt to keep power out of the hands of working class Americans. The conservative host immediately quashes him, calling him a utopian idealist, and agreeing that people arent mature enough to make good choices until theyre at least 25.
Joe chuckles at the wine-swilling, cheese eating liberal egghead and thinks, Thank God I live in America where I have freedom!
Is this a good example illustrating the perils of socialism?
This topic is locked from further discussion.
[QUOTE="Stesilaus"][QUOTE="ghoklebutter"]
No, because it's based on a narrow, wholly-distorted idea of socialism. At the very least, you won't find us libertarian socialists supporting any kind of socialism close to what is presupposed in that example.
ghoklebutter
The classroom scenario sounded more like a metaphor for communism than for socialism.
It doesn't even really argue against communism, as most theorists conceive of it. Ok, so how does "theorists" conceive of it?[QUOTE="airshocker"]Flabbergasted? At the fact that some people actually think the story reflects a valid critique of socialism? Sure. It just shows how simple minded some conservatives are. Sometimes I think they get their political knowledge out of cartoons.Notice how all of the socialists are quite flabbergasted ITT.
ghoklebutter
Its an extremely rough view, however I think it sums up enough as if it were students who were smarter would then be able to gain more books or time at the computers as a reward, thus making them smarter so the lower people would fall behind in the end anyway because of an unfair disadvantage.
There needs to be a balance. Not everyone is equal to which I think (I have ignorance of the subject however) that socialism makes everyone "equal". Personally if you want to work harder than someone else and what you do gains you rewards of certain sorts then good for you, I wont stop it. However what I dont like about extreme capatlism is that it really does create a huge divide between the "Rich" and everyone else.
The key term on "communism" and other leftist movements is the commune. For a community to work everyone has to give their part. The example is wrong because it assumes many could just do nothing and live a at the expense of other well that is blatantly wrong. In fact the community model puts more weight on the personal responsibility of the people and less on the government. The government is there as a support but the success of the community depends on the individuals working together. Of course if all people don't work together then the community will falter so that's why you can't have leeches. Also a community wouldn't work well if one or two people hoard 99% of the resources while the rest get the scraps so that's why everyone receives similar benefits for keeping the community stable and working. That's basically the idea.Its an extremely rough view, however I think it sums up enough as if it were students who were smarter would then be able to gain more books or time at the computers as a reward, thus making them smarter so the lower people would fall behind in the end anyway because of an unfair disadvantage.
There needs to be a balance. Not everyone is equal to which I think (I have ignorance of the subject however) that socialism makes everyone "equal". Personally if you want to work harder than someone else and what you do gains you rewards of certain sorts then good for you, I wont stop it. However what I dont like about extreme capatlism is that it really does create a huge divide between the "Rich" and everyone else.
o0squishy0o
Your example describes a mini society without any authority (only students who are equal to each other and can't force each other to do anything) or with the one which does not care about its members at all (the professor).Â
That does not sound much like a socialist government to me. From what I've read, watched, heard, been told, many of socialist goverments (at least the ones which trully took the idea of interfering with the society seriously) were not just heavily invested in redistributing the products made by the members of society, but also in other aspects of their life (e.g. tighter control of media, expressions of opinions, public behaviour, unemployed people,...). Probably more so than many capitalist goverments.
Therefore, I believe that chances are that if the class was really supposed to act like some kind of small socialist state (subscribed to the idea of redistribution of products and services and to the idea of strong government / authority), either the professor himself or some self appointed group of students would form some kind of committee the members of which would heavily control (spy on?) what the students are doing and report it back to their authority (professor / said committee) which would be expected to interfere if needed.
Of course the system would be far from ideal and the atmosphere in class could be quite bad, but the class would most likely not fail the test as badly as the OP predicts. Â
greece should have never been in the EU, not until they fixed their government[QUOTE="evildead6789"]
[QUOTE="BMD004"]Like Greece?
Â
and so does the U.S., btw.
Â
BMD004
and the us is still a beginner when it comes to social systems.
All of those European countries have a lot of problems. Greece isn't the only one. All countries have problems, it's after all still an economic crysis
So what is your ideal system of government where we can be competitive, yet not cutthroat?[QUOTE="theone86"]
No. For one, the students weren't born into their grades, they all earned their grade after the first test. I'd like to see this experiment performed where 1/3 of the class starts out with C's, 1/3 with A's, and 1/3 with F's. Having the entire class start out from a blank slate is actually quite socialist in spirit. Second, that's quite a broad generalization of socialism. If we're talking about a socialism where everything is distributed equally ot everyone then yes, it highlights a problem within that system. However, there are many different kinds of socialism, like cooperative socialism where all businesses are employee-owned. Hell, Karl Marx referred to the sort of socialism where everyone was subject to the will of the masses as crude communism and said it negates the creative capacity of man in every sphere of existence. Moreover, I've often seen this example used to discount what we commonly call socialism today, that is the existence of programs to help the poor and provide a safety net. This example certainly doesn't speak to that as those programs don't give the same "grades" to the entire country, but rather ensure a minimum standard of living that still leaves quite a lot of room for improvement. That we naturally compete with one another doesn't mean we have to let our competitiveness become cutthroat.
BMD004
Therein lies the problem with all of these threads. Capitalism is an economic system, period; it is not a system of gov't. Capitalism is compatible with a wide range of gov't and policy choices.
Almost every complaint about capitalism in this thread is actually a complaint about goverance and priorities/choices. For instance, the previous posters comments about a safety net etc has nothing to do with capitalism. It is entirely about goverance choices and has nothing to do with how wealth is created. It is entirely about how wealth is distributed by the collective society and for what purposes, neither of which is incompatible with capitalism and how wealth is created.
Over many years people have lost sight of the difference between the underlying economic system and governance. Now we have all these sub terms from laissez faire capitalism to state capitalism, etc. All of the sub terms simply confuse and pollute the discussion...they reflect the various goverance/socio types that are applied on top of the base underlying economics.
All the wannabee commies in this thread are absolutely confused on this. Feel free to rant and express viewpoints about the wrong choices we make as a society, there certainly is plenty of room for improvement; but you are horribly misguided in thinking that the basic principles of private property and free markets are the problem.
Likewise, there are plenty of people that think every policy choice of goverance is somehow incompatible with capitalism. Americans especially are quick to label things socialist and therefore bad eg. the safety net. Yes you can have a safety net, yes it is redistribution of wealth, no it does not undermine capitalism and the generation of wealth. It is simply a societal choice...get over it as it isn't going to destroy capitalism.
/rant
lol, i thought this was going to be about social security, public works, medicare and the dozens of other socialist things we all use everyday but don't call socalism because we are too stupid to realize it is socialism.
hey remember that time that stupid people were so stupid they chanted "we built it" in a giant stadium built with public funds?
because i do.
:lol:
No, because it's missing two events:
1. The part where the smartest members of the class, realizing that they would see their GPAs tank, would leave class that first day, head for their advisors, and withdraw, either to transfer to another section with a more meritocratic system in place ot to wait until that experiment failed.
2. The part where the remaining smart member of that section, realizing after the first test that unless everyone pitched in, they'd fail, hunted down the slackers and either executed them "for the good of the class" or sent them to the gulag.
Over many years people have lost sight of the difference between the underlying economic system and governance.SUD123456Marx thesis was that capitalism evolves naturaly into a state where it is one and the same with the system of government. As we today see plutocracies that cause recessions due to them conspiring to benefit their groups we can see that Marx was right. His study was scientific in nature he realized that an economic system and a governance system are not separable entities since both are part of the social structure and immersed into a cultural context. Everything points to Marx being right and using a scientific approach to analyzing capitalism while Smith was wrong and he was using an ideological approach which was simple fantasy. To be fair Marx was more of an ideologist whith respect to socialism but with regards to capitalism he was basically spot on.
This does a better job at illustrating why Conservatives are stupid.
Aljosa23
Ad hominem incoming!
-
Joe Conservative wakes up in the morning and goes to the bathroom. He flushes his toilet and brushes his teeth, mindful that each flush & brush costs him about 43 cents to his privatized water provider. His wacky, liberal neighbor keeps badgering the company to disclose how clean and safe their water is, but no one ever finds out. Just to be safe, Joe Conservative boils his drinking water.
Joe steps outside and coughsthe pollution is especially bad today, but the smokiest cars are the cheapest ones, so everyone buys em. Joe Conservative checks to make sure he has enough toll money for the 3 different private roads he must drive to work. There is no public transportation, so traffic is backed up and his 10 mile commute takes an hour.
On the way, he drops his 12 year old daughter off at the clothing factory she works at. Paying for kids to go to private school until theyre 18 is a luxury, and Joe needs the extra income coming in. Times are hard and therere no social safety nets.
He gets to work 5 minutes late and misses the call for Christian prayer, and is immediately docked by his employer. He is not feeling well today, but has no health insurance, since neither his employer nor his government provide it, and paying for it himself is really expensive, since he has a precondition. He just hopes for the best.
Joes workday is 12 hours long, because there is no regulation over working hours, and Joe will lose his job if he complains or unionizes. Today is an especially bad day. Joes manager demands that he work until midnight, a 16 hour day. Joe does, knowing that hell lose his job if he does not.
Finally, after midnight, Joe gets to pick up his daughter and go home. His daughter shows him the deep cut she got on the industrial sewing machine today. Joe is outraged and asks why she doesnt have metal mesh gloves or other protection. She says the company will not provide it and shell have to pay for it out of her own pocket. Joe looks at the wound and decides theyll use an over the counter disinfectant and bandages until it heals. Shell have a scar, but getting stitches at the emergency room is expensive.
His daughter also complains that the manager made suggestive overtures towards her. Joe counsels her to be a good girl and not rock the boat, or shell get fired and theyll be out the income.
His daughter says she cant wait until shes 18 so she can vote for change or go to the Iraq War.
They get home and theres a message from his elderly father who cant afford to pay his medical or heating bills. Joe can hear him coughing and shivering.
Joe turns on the radio and the top story is a proposal in Congress to raise the voting age to 25. A rare liberal opinionator states that its an attempt to keep power out of the hands of working class Americans. The conservative host immediately quashes him, calling him a utopian idealist, and agreeing that people arent mature enough to make good choices until theyre at least 25.
Joe chuckles at the wine-swilling, cheese eating liberal egghead and thinks, Thank God I live in America where I have freedom!Aljosa23
If it takes significantly more words for a rebuttal, something ain't right. Your post does a better job showing the critical thinking skills of current liberals.
Everyone gets "general welfare" wrong. It's not a safety net. It's for everyone. People will see that they can get greater benefits from working themselves instead of relying on the "safety net."No. Â For one, the students weren't born into their grades, they all earned their grade after the first test. Â I'd like to see this experiment performed where 1/3 of the class starts out with C's, 1/3 with A's, and 1/3 with F's. Â Having the entire class start out from a blank slate is actually quite socialist in spirit. Â Second, that's quite a broad generalization of socialism. Â If we're talking about a socialism where everything is distributed equally ot everyone then yes, it highlights a problem within that system. Â However, there are many different kinds of socialism, like cooperative socialism where all businesses are employee-owned. Â Hell, Karl Marx referred to the sort of socialism where everyone was subject to the will of the masses as crude communism and said it negates the creative capacity of man in every sphere of existence. Â Moreover, I've often seen this example used to discount what we commonly call socialism today, that is the existence of programs to help the poor and provide a safety net. Â This example certainly doesn't speak to that as those programs don't give the same "grades" to the entire country, but rather ensure a minimum standard of living that still leaves quite a lot of room for improvement. Â That we naturally compete with one another doesn't mean we have to let our competitiveness become cutthroat.
theone86
Of course it took more words, it's fairly well written and actually has some humour to it. It also doesn't pretend to be true which is always a plus.If it takes significantly more words for a rebuttal, something ain't right. Your post does a better job showing the critical thinking skills of current liberals.
LOXO7
Leave the class meaning the richest would leave the country and the totalitarians would rise up to force compliance with those that didn't get away, which would make a number three.No, because it's missing two events:
1. The part where the smartest members of the class, realizing that they would see their GPAs tank, would leave class that first day, head for their advisors, and withdraw, either to transfer to another section with a more meritocratic system in place ot to wait until that experiment failed.
2. The part where the remaining smart member of that section, realizing after the first test that unless everyone pitched in, they'd fail, hunted down the slackers and either executed them "for the good of the class" or sent them to the gulag.
OrkHammer007
3. Civil war.
[QUOTE="LOXO7"]Of course it took more words, it's fairly well written and actually has some humour to it. If someone had the time they could make up the progressive side of the story, but there isn't any need to because it's a waste of time. Unless you're a comedian.If it takes significantly more words for a rebuttal, something ain't right. Your post does a better job showing the critical thinking skills of current liberals.
Ace6301
[QUOTE="Ace6301"][QUOTE="LOXO7"]Of course it took more words, it's fairly well written and actually has some humour to it. If someone had the time they could make up the progressive side of the story, but there isn't any need to because it's a waste of time. Unless you're a comedian. Okay?If it takes significantly more words for a rebuttal, something ain't right. Your post does a better job showing the critical thinking skills of current liberals.
LOXO7
[QUOTE="Ace6301"][QUOTE="LOXO7"]Of course it took more words, it's fairly well written and actually has some humour to it. If someone had the time they could make up the progressive side of the story, but there isn't any need to because it's a waste of time. Unless you're a comedian.Here you go, the progressive side:If it takes significantly more words for a rebuttal, something ain't right. Your post does a better job showing the critical thinking skills of current liberals.
LOXO7
Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.
All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance -- now Joe gets it, too.
He prepares his morning breakfast: bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.
Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.
He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.
Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.
If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment checks because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.
Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.
Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the taxpayer funded roads.
He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans.
The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.
He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.
Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved conservatives have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."
Â
Â
A pack of monkeys live on an isolated island with a fair amount of vegetation. The monkeys form a society where alpha monkeys are in power of resources and beta monkeys. The beta monkey tricks the alphas into a socialism where the alphas support the betas. Cycles or revolt and control repeat, the end.playmynutz
Consider the opposite.
If at some point, when 100 beta monkeys work for a system to keep 1 alpha monkey happy, the beta monkeys would look pretty stupid.
[QUOTE="playmynutz"]A pack of monkeys live on an isolated island with a fair amount of vegetation. The monkeys form a society where alpha monkeys are in power of resources and beta monkeys. The beta monkey tricks the alphas into a socialism where the alphas support the betas. Cycles or revolt and control repeat, the end.one_plum
Consider the opposite.
If at some point, when 100 beta monkeys work for a system to keep 1 alpha monkey happy, the beta monkeys would look pretty stupid.
He mentioned revolt. How many people live in China?[QUOTE="one_plum"]He mentioned revolt. How many people live in China?Consider the opposite.
If at some point, when 100 beta monkeys work for a system to keep 1 alpha monkey happy, the beta monkeys would look pretty stupid.
LOXO7
Well, if you're gonna add in oppression...
This is why you are stupid BDMNo. Â For one, the students weren't born into their grades, they all earned their grade after the first test. Â I'd like to see this experiment performed where 1/3 of the class starts out with C's, 1/3 with A's, and 1/3 with F's. Â Having the entire class start out from a blank slate is actually quite socialist in spirit. Â Second, that's quite a broad generalization of socialism. Â If we're talking about a socialism where everything is distributed equally ot everyone then yes, it highlights a problem within that system. Â However, there are many different kinds of socialism, like cooperative socialism where all businesses are employee-owned. Â Hell, Karl Marx referred to the sort of socialism where everyone was subject to the will of the masses as crude communism and said it negates the creative capacity of man in every sphere of existence. Â Moreover, I've often seen this example used to discount what we commonly call socialism today, that is the existence of programs to help the poor and provide a safety net. Â This example certainly doesn't speak to that as those programs don't give the same "grades" to the entire country, but rather ensure a minimum standard of living that still leaves quite a lot of room for improvement. Â That we naturally compete with one another doesn't mean we have to let our competitiveness become cutthroat.
theone86
greece should have never been in the EU, not until they fixed their government[QUOTE="evildead6789"]
[QUOTE="BMD004"]Like Greece?
Â
and so does the U.S., btw.
Â
BMD004
and the us is still a beginner when it comes to social systems.
All of those European countries have a lot of problems. Greece isn't the only one.Greece is in their situation because something like 90% of people were dodging their taxes.You're misrepresenting what's going on.
Leave the class meaning the richest would leave the country and the totalitarians would rise up to force compliance with those that didn't get away, which would make a number three.[QUOTE="OrkHammer007"]
No, because it's missing two events:
1. The part where the smartest members of the class, realizing that they would see their GPAs tank, would leave class that first day, head for their advisors, and withdraw, either to transfer to another section with a more meritocratic system in place ot to wait until that experiment failed.
2. The part where the remaining smart member of that section, realizing after the first test that unless everyone pitched in, they'd fail, hunted down the slackers and either executed them "for the good of the class" or sent them to the gulag.
LOXO7
3. Civil war.
The semester isn't that long.Besides, after you've shot the worst offenders and "re-educated" the rest, who will actually have the ambition to start that civil war?
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