How Badly Does Modern Collectivism Hurt You?

Posted by CircuitGuy 11 years, 5 months ago to Culture
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How bad is collectivism today? Clearly the US is not Galt's Gulch or Stalin's USSR. We're somewhere in between.

I'm writing down some negative ways collectivism could affect individuals, from most innocuous to worst.

A) Collectivism is an annoyance at present. I usually find good ways to work around it.
B) If it weren't for poor gov't policies and collectivism, we might have fantastical things like a cure for cancer, affordable space travel, robots than can do most human tasks.
C) Collectivism keeps me from my dreams. (e.g. “A union or affirmative action is keeping me for being promoted out of turn, and there are no other options for me to do the work I love.” “A personal passion of mine is illegal.” “I can't get funding for my organization because of a sweetheart network around gov't, financial institutions, and my industry.”)
D) One or more Gail Wynands, Ellsworth Tooheys, or Wesley Mouchs are out to sabotage my life and are having some impact on me. We all agree these types exist. This item says your name personally is on their “list” of enemies or people to sabotage.
E) My business or career is failing because of collectivism and poor gov't policy (e.g. regulation, taxes, monetary policy).
F) We are on the cusp of totalitarianism and/or severe economic collapse similar to in Atlas Shrugged.

This is not an exclusive list, just the first six things that came to mind.

I'm curious which of these things are happening to Gulch members. Is it we're at A and B and just mindful of preventing the more severe items? Or we over halfway through a real-life Atlas Shrugged?

Note: I expect it varies depending on location, industry, interests, experiences, etc. Also, it could be a mix, say A and F but not B-E; they don't necessarily happen in order.


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  • Posted by Boborobdos 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Isn't a big enough problem to warrant disenfranchising so many people, particularly when it's the right wing that wants to discourage so many from voting.

    No go back to the Koch brothers, left, right, left...
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  • Posted by khalling 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    don't be absurd. Almost immediately after "plamegate" she had her first novel ready to publicize and did a huge photo spread in Vanity Fair to kick it off. she was quite worried, I guess...
    and before the supposed "outing" she was in a photo spread for a DC magazine-
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  • Posted by $ Mimi 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Progressives don’t care about the truth. They care about the results.
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  • Posted by khalling 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    where's your outcry over the WH leaking the identities of the Navy Seal team that took out Bin laden that resulted in an ambush and two navy seals being killed-where's your outrage over that? where is the investigation?
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  • Posted by $ Hiraghm 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yeah, Bush's daddy forced Hussein to invade Kuwait.

    Bush didn't lie; if he did, every intelligence agency in the world did.

    Hussein had WMDs, because he'd USED WMDs. Aerial and orbital photography showed, while we dithered about invading, trucks of WMD equipment headed for Syria , *which used WMDs just a little while ago, of the same type used by Hussein*.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    In a world where teenagers can fake an ID, we still use cash money.

    No, the ID thing is a way to keep dead people and people not eligible to vote from voting.

    Identity theft is rampant (guess what segment of the population benefits most from it...) and you don't want to do a thing to prevent legitimate voters votes being stolen or nullified.
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  • Posted by $ Hiraghm 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Ah, lying again, and projecting leftist tactics onto the right.

    Not uncommon from the left.

    Everything Mimi just said is true, and documented.
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  • Posted by $ Mimi 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Now who is believing BS? Valerie Plame was not covert. No one was killed. Her husband had already outed her in a book prior to any of the accusations. Scooter did nothing wrong until he lied under oath that he had a conversation involving her, but the content of the conversation was not illegal. Bush chose not to pardon Scooter, though he took a lot of heat from the Republican Party for it, and rightly so. The whole thing was a BS dog and pony show cooked up by the Dems. Now if you want to discuss how the loose lips of the Obama administration has caused death of top marines, I be more than happy to have that factual argument.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    So you're saying Soros didn't help the Nazis seize the goods of his fellow Jews during the war?
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  • Posted by $ Hiraghm 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    By the way, the "issue" of WMDs was raised by the traitors on the left.

    Hussein fired on our warplanes flying the no-fly zone to keep him from using WMDs against his own people... AGAIN.

    That's an act of war that nullified the armistice. It was an act of war that merited conquest of Iraq, all... by... itself.

    But, the left never cared about that, because their general attitude was always "F* the U.S."
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  • Posted by Boborobdos 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Really????? Where are the WMD?
    Leaking the CIA agent's name got people killed. And Bush let Scooter off the hook.
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  • Posted by Boborobdos 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Seeing as how the Soros quote is bogus that leaves the right wing extremists ripping things down.
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  • -1
    Posted by Boborobdos 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Really... In a world where teenagers can fake an ID do you really think adults will have any problems?

    The ID thing is a way for the right to discourage segments they believe to be opposed to them from voting. Sadly that too is simple to see.
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  • Posted by $ Mimi 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Nay. It’s more like they are willing to believe everything they read, but it’s no different then the Pavlov-dog like response you got during the last presidency against Bush. Most of what was written about Bush and Cheney was false as well.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    There is a difference between destroying America and destroying the American government.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It'll prevent dead Chicagoans from voting repeatedly. And more importantly, it'll keep illegal aliens from voting repeatedly.
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  • Posted by Boborobdos 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Hmmmmmm, looks like you are trying to convince me that both Soros and the Koch brothers want to destroy government.

    BTW, the George Soros quote turns out to be bogus.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    To address what I *think* you were saying...

    Hussein *used* WMDs. Hence the no-fly zone as part of the armistice he violated. The WMDs used against the people in Syria most probably originated in Iraq, as we saw truckloads of such materials heading to Syria as we stalled our invasion.

    Death panels... a real concern. There's already talk of rationing healthcare under Obama. Healthcare rationing will require some bureaucracy for determining whether a person's life is worth saving.

    There may not be a serious problem with "voter cheating", but "voter fraud" is a serious problem, whether it's one vote or a million votes; and there has been examples and evidence throughout the history of the nation, mostly on the local level for local elections, of voter fraud; from ballot boxes being moved before voting closes in a district, to dead Chicagoans voting repeatedly, to military ballots being held up or discounted.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 11 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Bisquick. Cocoa Puffs. Raincoats. That there is a serious problem with fabric computer cases.

    See? I can throw out out-of-context meaningless words, too.
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