10 Reasons Why You Should Reject Socialism

[ok doser]

I do not agree. In today's culture narcissism is everywhere. Many young women go into sex work because of the exposure and the belief that it empowers them. This would not change in a socialist systems. The supposed democratic socialist Nordic countries have all sorts of sex workers in their red light districts. Prostitution is legal. Amsterdam's Red Light District is legendary. Since Holland is not a poor country the sex workers there are not driven by poverty.

Modern tech makes going into sex work a breeze, no johns necessary, no standing on street corners - just download an app, hook up, do the dirty and pocket the money. So no, it's not just for desperate girls preyed upon by pimps anymore.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/apps-social-media-fuel-booming-online-prostitution-study/


btw - I walked through Amsterdam's red light district with my folks when I was 13. Awkward.

 

[ok doser]

should #Millionaires exist?


For example - Climate change will inevitably open up large new areas of the Canadian north to exploration in a manner previously impossible. If I roll the dice, risk my wealth, health and time, explore the area south of Salluit and discover vast, previously unknown deposits of mineral wealth, gold for example, and develop my claim, what would you say is the limit to my compensation? Let's consider the Kirkland Lake mining area - total extracted wealth of roughly 400 billion dollars so far. Let's say my discovery up near Salluit dwarfs Kirkland Lake and is worth 2 trillion dollars. After development costs and extraction costs (including worker salaries and taxes), the mining operation yields a net profit of 500 billion dollars, US.

What share of that profit do you think I'm entitled to keep?

Let's reframe your question.

"If I discover natural resources that I had absolutely no hand in creating and OTHER PEOPLE dig them up and refine them (I, of course, not even laying a single finger on a shovel to help those people dig the resources up), how much money should I get from that?"

Is that basically what you are asking me?

that's not reframing it, it's totally changing it, because my question, as asked, condemns you for theft

so, i win that round

round two:

Trad asks: "If I discover natural resources that I had absolutely no hand in creating and OTHER PEOPLE dig them up and refine them (I, of course, not even laying a single finger on a shovel to help those people dig the resources up), how much money should I get from that?"

OK, back to the Salluit example - I do the exploration and the discovery, stake the claim and then sell it to a mining company to develop.

They anticipate profit of 500 billion dollars and buy my claim for ten percent of that.

In your view, how much of that 50 billion dollars should I be allowed to keep?

 

[Traditio]

OkDozer, at the end of the day, in both scenarios, you're asking me how much you should get paid for not working/having other people work.

Its a ridiculous question and displays just how stupid capitalism is as an economic system.

 

[Trump Gurl]

The Case Against Socialism

Rand Paul takes on socialist arguments about Venezuela, Scandinavia, and “fairness”

 

[ok doser]

in a discussion of exploiting mineral wealth:

... had absolutely no hand in creating ...

worth pulling out for its own examination

Scenario 2: I create an algorithm that analyzes stock and bond trading and allows me to exploit characteristics of the market to my benefit.

I use this algoritm and trade a single stock a single time and accrue a benefit of $1

Question #1. Am I justified in keeping that $1?

I use this algorithm and trade multiple stocks multiple times and accrue a benefit of $1 billion

Question #2. Am I justified in keeping that $1 billion?


as you might have gathered, I'm interested in principles more than concrete examples - I use the examples as an approach to the principles. Which is why I focused on what appears to be a principle of yours, concerning "creating"

 

[ok doser]

OkDozer, at the end of the day, in both scenarios, you're asking me how much you should get paid for not working/having other people work.

Its a ridiculous question and displays just how stupid capitalism is as an economic system.

No, in both scenarios, I risk wealth, time and health, exploring the formerly frozen north, enduring clouds of black flies and hungry bears, etc. I dig in the frozen ground, crush the rock I unearth and test it on site. Some samples I label and store, on my back, for analysis back at camp. I suffer in hopes of a payoff. This is work, of a physical nature foreign to a philosophy student. And it isn't an abstraction - this is happening today.

In the initial scenario, I develop and run the company that grows, working 16 hour days. Yes, I hire people to work for me, and I pay them well. I have to or they go to work for the competition.

In the second scenario, I sell my claim.

In both case, my question to you was clear -

How much should I be allowed to keep?

All of the $50 billion offered?

Half?

None?


In the Socialist model, the answer is none. And there's no motivation to risk wealth, time and health to do the initial exploration or any of the development, because the government will take it away from you.

 

[Traditio]

In the Socialist model, the answer is none. And there's no motivation to risk wealth, time and health to do the initial exploration or any of the development, because the government will take it away from you.

Why should such exploration and development be vested in private capitalists? Under a socialist economy, such exploration and development easily could be done 1. by the government or 2. by worker owned cooperatives.

Frankly, I think that natural resources should largely be nationalized anyway.

 

[Trump Gurl]

Why Marx’s Socialism Is Evil
https://stoppingsocialism.com/2018/08/why-marxs-socialism-is-evil/

Winston Churchill, one of the twentieth century’s most important and influential leaders, once said in a speech before the United Kingdom’s House of Commons, “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

Since Churchill delivered these remarks, little has changed in the way supporters of individual freedom address socialism; generally speaking, the emphasis is always placed on why socialism isn’t an effective economic system.

In my article published previously titled “Why Socialism Will Never Work,” I spent a little bit of time outlining some of the reasons I believe Marx’s view of socialism, the same philosophy espoused by many of the world’s modern socialist parties, is severely flawed. However, the primary purpose of this website/project isn’t to present an open-and-shut case against the effectiveness of socialism. Why? Because although it’s true that whenever socialism has been attempted (it’s never been fully implemented), it has always ended in tragedy, American progressives, socialists, and other leftists have been quite successful in convincing millions of people to believe socialism can work and that the mixed-market socialized societies of Europe are models that should be adopted everywhere, including in the United States - - (CUT)

(CUT) - -To win the ideological war against socialism, the debate needs to focus on the numerous moral problems with socialism - - (CUT)

(CUT) - -But before explaining why I believe Marx’s socialism is highly immoral, I strongly recommend you take a few minutes to read my short article discussing how to define “evil” and “morality” in the post-modern West. It’s available here https://stoppingsocialism.com/2018/07/how-to-define-evil-and-immorality-in-the-post-modern-west/

 

[ok doser]

Why should such exploration and development be vested in private capitalists?

why shouldn't an individual who wants to roll the dice for untold wealth be allowed to?

Under a socialist economy, such exploration and development easily could be done 1. by the government ...

"the government"? :freak:

which government are you thinking of that isn't corrupt and ineffective?

or 2. by worker owned cooperatives.

well, we've run that experiment, for 69 years

how'd that work out in the Soviet Union?

Frankly, I think that natural resources should largely be nationalized anyway.

there's a strong argument to made for that, but it always butts up against private land ownership

do you oppose private land ownership?

 

[Trump Gurl]

Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian
https://mises.org/library/why-nazism-was-socialism-and-why-socialism-totalitarian
.

My purpose today is to make just two main points: (1) To show why Nazi Germany was a socialist state, not a capitalist one. And (2) to show why socialism, understood as an economic system based on government ownership of the means of production, positively requires a totalitarian dictatorship.

The identification of Nazi Germany as a socialist state was one of the many great contributions of Ludwig von Mises.

When one remembers that the word "Nazi" was an abbreviation for "der Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiters Partei — in English translation: the National Socialist German Workers' Party — Mises's identification might not appear all that noteworthy. For what should one expect the economic system of a country ruled by a party with "socialist" in its name to be but socialism?

Nevertheless, apart from Mises and his readers, practically no one thinks of Nazi Germany as a socialist state. It is far more common to believe that it represented a form of capitalism, which is what the Communists and all other Marxists have claimed.

The basis of the claim that Nazi Germany was capitalist was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands.

What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.​

 

[Jefferson]

 

[Jefferson]