Socialism as a Primitive Coping Mechanism
Posted by CarolSeer2014 9 years, 9 months ago to Government
Socialism is the most materialistic, instantaneously gratifying politico-economic system in history. Capitalism is an economic and moral advance, because it not only celebrates individual choice, in free markets, but it works to ensure future growth in that it is the accumulation of capital for investment purposes. Any monies gov't takes from business for tax purposes is money not usable for investment in future growth and jobs. You wonder what has happened to our economy?
Government has been taking from the producers and giving to those who don't. No society can last for long with that idiotology. Even China is rethinking economics.
Government has been taking from the producers and giving to those who don't. No society can last for long with that idiotology. Even China is rethinking economics.
that is my fear too. I wish the gov't would take action immediately, not wait until it becomes a crisis.
We're living in an amazing time and place for economic opportunity. It's hard not to notice all the amazing new technologies, often technologies that help connect producers with customers, appear every year.
If you have depression, though, you naturally come up with tortured logic to make things seem bad, at least until something bad really happens.
It goes like this. "Loose monetary policy is barely holding together the economy. It's causing everyone to raise prices w/o loosing business except for you and me. The nominal price of everything is going up, except for anything you and I happen to make or own.
We would never invest local businesses b/c everything's going to worms in our area. We would never take a long position in equities for the same reason. We wouldn't hold instruments of debt, either, b/c of rate risk. We wouldn't take short positions in equities b/c instead of a market generated by supply and demand, we envision villains working against our interests. If we buy a put, write a call, or just sell short, they conspire to tap us out. We won't sell puts, buy calls, or just buy long, though, for similar reasons. We'll just sit in the corner, rock, and tell ourselves that all the businesses and people succeeding and helping more customers all the time must be somehow cheating, not actually providing value to paying customers."
Here's an article you should read:
Bogeyman: Fox News Attacks Progressives With Fantasy Version Of Saul Alinsky
http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/01...
Excerpt from a 1972 Playboy interview with Alinsky:
________________
PLAYBOY: Did you consider becoming a [Communist] party member prior to the Nazi-Soviet Pact?
ALINSKY: Not at any time. I've never joined any organization – not even the ones I've organized myself. I prize my own independence too much. And philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it's Christianity or Marxism. One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as "that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're right." If you don't have that, if you think you've got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide. The great atomic physicist Niels Bohr summed it up pretty well when he said, "Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question." Nobody owns the truth, and dogma, whatever form it takes, is the ultimate enemy of human freedom.
Now, this doesn't mean that I'm rudderless; I think I have a much keener sense of direction and purpose than the true believer with his rigid ideology, because I'm free to be loose, resilient and independent, able to respond to any situation as it arises without getting trapped by articles of faith. My only fixed truth is a belief in people, a conviction that if people have the opportunity to act freely and the power to control their own destinies, they'll generally reach the right decisions. The only alternative to that belief is rule by an elite, whether it's a Communist bureaucracy or our own present-day corporate establishment. You should never have an ideology more specific than that of the founding fathers: "For the general welfare." That's where I parted company with the Communists in the Thirties, and that's where I stay parted from them today. [Playboy, March 1972]
Not in Rules for radicals linked above and not in his 1946 Rules for Reveille that Rules for Radicals expanded and updated http://www.historyofsocialwork.org/1946_...
He ran his own training center for agitators, made a lot of public speeches of mostly demagoguery, and gave interviews, at least two major ones in Harper's and Playboy http://harpers.org/archive/1965/06/the-p..., but there is no evidence of the list in any of that either.
The list is not Alinsky's style and not the kind of tactics for here and now nihilistic chaos he emphasized. As bad as the list mostly is it is too long-term and abstract for the scope of Alinsky's typical interests of short term agitation through promoting hatred and resentment. He was a precursor to the 1960s violent New Left and was influential on their street tactics. He did practice #8 in the form of short term agitation manipulating everyone in sight including his own allies but with no plans for future permanent goals. He wanted heavy taxes on "haves" but didn't plan for how to get it beyond "somehow" from constant chaos. If he didn't want religion in schools and government he isn't alone and didn't promote it for socialism, which is unrelated.
If you don't have a source for him giving that list it should not be recirculated with credit to him.
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/a/8...
http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/al...
http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/al...
To see what he actually wrote, which was mostly about tactics to further his nihilism, read his Rules for Radicals in this free pdf download: http://servv89pn0aj.sn.sourcedns.com/~gb...
And read Hilary Clinton's fawning college thesis on Alinsky, "''There is only the fight...' An Analysis of the Alinsky Model" https://nukegingrich.files.wordpress.com...
Where to begin.
Life is filled with absolutes, Emp, and I'm pretty sure you hold many absolute views. I know I do.
As for the rest... DA-YUM. REALLY.
No real reason to refute it point by point.
You see the same world I see - but you see THAT.
There is only one question I really want to ask.
It's "inappropriate" but it's the only question that could change my mind about carrying on this conversation.
Are you young?
If you are young you might still be able to question beliefs that have yet to ossify.
If you are not young, well... who have you ever known to change their worldview half-way through life?
But surely we could simply discuss our divergent views, you might say.
Yeah we could both recite our litanies, but what real discussion, what real UNDERSTANDING, is possible with a grown person who looks out into this world and sees an economy that is doing "GREAT"?!
(Jeesus, not even "fine" or "good" but "GREAT"!).
Nah, I'm good. Later.
They understand capitalism and are grabbing it by the horns.
Again, no-one is more aware of the decline of our civilization than I.
I'm just saying China is not better. By any measure. Not by a long shot. Not so long as the political structure is still... COMMUNIST!
Even with what Capitalism they've allowed to slip in, they could never be any better than the worst of the SOCIALIST states we fear descending into.
I'm not sure how much of our debt China holds, but as an accumulation of capital for investment purposes, that would certainly qualify.
As for OUR freedoms, if we don't acknowledge the losses we've so far suffered, we may not be able to change the road we're on.
It's easy to get carried away with our emotions sometimes.
The ultimate STATIST government in history becomes a little more free while the greatest of the Free States becomes much less so.
With such a dichotomy it is easy to over-react.
But they have FAR, FAR to go before they'll even begin to approach our freedoms. -
And we have far farther to fall before we feel the fist of a quasi-communist state.
Even on simply economic factors.
Try opening a business in China without Political Blessing. Try finding a free bank.
Not saying 1984 hasn't arrived - not saying everything is hunky-dory.
Just sayin'.
I'm presently staying in a town of about 200,000 people, which doesn't seem to see anything wrong or weird about only having water every other day. The municipal water system (government-owned of course) doesn't have the resources to staff or run the systems 'every' day, so half the town gets water one day, the other half the next day. The people adapted by putting in 10 foot deep x a garage stall width & length sisterns under their driveways with their own water tower on every roof, so as soon as the water turns on, it full-flows into their underground tanks, then they pump it to the roof into their water towers to have water pressure.
So, there isn't enough resources to just maintain constant water pressure and reliably available (of course you can't drink the stuff anyway - only bathe with it), but its apparently ok to fill an underground swimming pool of reserve for every home as soon as it turns on...
Gotta love Socialism...
All the gas stations of PEMEX (Mexican regime-owned) and they are only full-service from what I've seen, but you have to get out of the car anyway and watch the guy clear the pump, and put in exactly what you ask for. If you are buying say 300 pesos worth of gas, but the last customer only bought 50, there is a very above average chance they will just start pumping at 50 and pocket the difference.
I've really been missing the good old fashioned card swipe at the pump & pump it yourself in the US.
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