Is all socialism bad?

[PaulOakenfold]

Well America is a place where you (should) have to work for what you have. I for one have no problem watching the house burn down if that guy isnt paying the fire department for their services. They arent a charity, and he basically called their bluff that they wouldnt help him if he needed it. If only doctors would do the same thing we'd be okay.

"Haha, stupid guy's house burnt down that didn't pay the fire department corporation... oh wait a second... why the hell is our house on fire now too? WAIT WE PAID YOU, THROW THE WATER OUT OF THE HOSE.... oh, it's too late now because the fire spread around the neighborhood? Stupid socialists."

[Supreme]

oh, and this is some pretty weak-ass fuel if you're trying to start an ideological fire. i'm having trouble connecting the dots here.

[kthx]

On top of this, you can't just take away money from people who have earned it and give it to people who have been proven to be bad with money. If you take a guy with a million bucks, tax away 1/4 of that and give the 250k to a single mom raising three kids with three different dads and expect her to make the right decisions to make sure her kids will have good lives she won't chances are. She is going to buy a car for 60k, buy a house for 150k and spend the rest on crack rocks and booze to find her next kids sperm donor. Trickle up economics doesn't work any better than trickle down economics does. And like I said the problem with your utopian idea is society itself, crackheads are gonna be crackheads, rich people are going to remain rich, and no amount of social engineering a change in that is going to change anything in the long run. That millionaire is going to end up getting that money back and the broke lady is going to end up broke and having her house foreclosed on and car repo'd because she didn't realize she had to still pay taxes on the land.

[kthx]

The problem with that is society itself fucking sucks. Even if we offer free education to every child as they leave high school we aren't doing the country any favors. College (besides specialized field studies) isn't really about education anymore it is about propaganda, and about giving the idea that having an education entitles you to a great life. We have entire fields of study where the only career path available to that person is to teach the field they studied in to the next generation of students who don't need to learn it. Take women's studies for instance. We aren't maximizing the potential of kids by giving them a free education unless we clamp down on what classes the people can take for free. I don't want my tax dollars going towards paying someone to go to school for a useless trade so they can pull some occupy whatever bullshit and whine about not being able to find a job. So yeah you want to go to school to become an electrical engineer blah blah blah thats fine. But honestly what they should be doing, instead of general studies in high school they should allow people to learn trades in high school instead. Learn how to be an electrician or a plumber instead of having to take two years of foreign language etc. If we handled our pre-college schooling better we wouldn't need to offer free education to maximize the potential of adults.

[Epinephrine]

Yeah but lets also just face it, nobody teaches dogs to be loyal pets, nobody teaches cats to be prissy stuck up animals. I mean besides from very basic and primal survival and communication instincts you can look at nearly any domesticated animal in the world and see that a certain trait has been bred into their genetic code to a certain extent. I say if you take a baby away at birth from a mom who a crackhead and replace that baby with one who comes from multiple generations of success and wealth that the baby who should have been wealthy will still end up better. The nurture over nature argument only works up until you reach the "nurturing ceiling" of the canvas you are working with. Some kids are just naturally bron or bred with a higher ceiling.

Actually you hit the nail on the head as to why we shouldn't have a fully 'free for all' type society, and why some aspects of the state and universalism are important. Please note I am not arguing for socialism, just something in the center.

It's just pure statistics. For instance, in a given population, there are so many people who are born talented. The more you maximize the chances of those talented people to rise up in the ranks to contribute as much as they possibly can to society, the better off society is.

Back in the pre-industrial world, at a minimum there were a huge number of people who were never empowered to be able to contribute anything irregardless of their talents. This includes all women, those born in the 'lower classes' and slaves. The only 'intellectuals' were actually just rich people who also happened to be talented. Yes, even in ancient Athens, only Athenian MALE ADULT citizens (less than 1/5 of the population of the city as most were slaves, women, children) could sit around debating philosophy, not counting those too poor to ever sit around. Most of the famous people that we read about in history were rich to begin with. The big difference between then and now, is that now we have systems in place where even people born with many disadvantages due to NURTURE but have many natural talents due to NATURE are given opportunities to succeed.

This includes things like universal health care, affirmative action, welfare, unemployment assistance, public schooling, higher education grants, public libraries, public services (i.e. policing, fire, ambulance, public water systems, etc), and laws that guarantee equality for all. Basically by giving a certain amount of assistance to those who are born with less resources to maximize their potential, all of society benefits. This by definition means that resources have to be taken from those with the most (the rich) and given to those with less, in order to achieve this.

Poor kids who grow up to be engineers/scientists/doctors because they are smart are good for everyone if only because if you just take the best of the rich kids, there actually isn't enough of these people to go around. Rather than have them have to not go to school ever (like in 3rd world countries where people can't afford schooling), have no health care and die early (like in 3rd world countries where high infant and child mortality rates are common) and go doing menial jobs for a living. No matter how smart you are, if you die before you can contribute anything, or if you or your family is living on subsistence levels, there's not much you can do to contribute to society.

Sure some of these people eventually manage to succeed against all odds, but the absolute percentage of those who do is far less, and thus society as a whole is worse off because it loses the potential contributions of so many people who could have contributed.

Yes it's important to not go 'too far', because for these people to succeed, not only do they need help, but they also need a system that rewards them for trying hard so that they have the motivation to try. Only a system that manages to balance these two competing interests will thrive in the long run.

Basically put, the more society is able to maximize the abilities of its members, the more benefit to all.

[Izor]

Well America is a place where you (should) have to work for what you have. I for one have no problem watching the house burn down if that guy isnt paying the fire department for their services. They arent a charity, and he basically called their bluff that they wouldnt help him if he needed it. If only doctors would do the same thing we'd be okay.

[PaulOakenfold]

We're talking about the first humans, Euro. Not Neanderthals.

So wait, were our first ancestors already in Europe when Neanderthals went extinct?

[genocidal]

We're talking about the first humans, Euro. Not Neanderthals.

[PaulOakenfold]

Just gonna drop a small hint in here. Nobody even thought of the fact that the first humans who had migrated to colder regions (north if you insist) had pretty fucking thick fur/hair. Ever seen how white the skin of a hairy dog is? Hair + tan = fail

Did they really? I understand there's no reason to have a darker skin tone if all of it is covered with hair, but why is it 'fail' (god I hate that word)?

[PaulOakenfold]

Hmm, I guess I just assumed we were all decendents from mid-Africa and all originally had darker skin. I guess I didn't take into consideration the possibility that some people had mutated genes right from the beginning for skin tone, and somehow realized that moving north was better for them? Mostly because we don't see that today unless they're albino.

European royalty is pretty damn gross. The Austrians were just as guilty as the Castilians: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Habsburg

[RednaZ]

Just gonna drop a small hint in here. Nobody even thought of the fact that the first humans who had migrated to colder regions (north if you insist) had pretty fucking thick fur/hair. Ever seen how white the skin of a hairy dog is? Hair + tan = fail

[Jerome Scuggs]

lol white people existed before royalty started inbreeding

edit:



is this how a family tee is supposed to look haha

[kthx]

You are right but what I meant about the whole evolution thing wasn't from a single generation, I mean just how black people became darker from being in the sun with no shade for such a long period of time, we are looking at several hundred years or more of pale royalty only having children with other pale royalty sometimes from the same bloodlines. I believe that evolution did eventually change the genetic code to not having the need for as much pigment through 10-15 generations of children.

[genocidal]

Well I am sorta guessing that is partly due to the fact that in Europe they developed towns that had numerous shops that people had to watch and the fashion at the time was to be pale because the lords and ladies were never outside which proved they had lots of money. I mean obviously that doesn't explain everything but I could imagine a more advanced country getting paler who didn't have to send the entire village out to collect water all day or hunt animals or plant crops. You notice the closer a country is to being a third world country the darker their skin is in general.

But that doesn't explain Irish people (which a majority of aren't Irish like you think of IE gingers) who were for the most part really poor potato farmers. But thats my best guess PO

That's not exactly how evolution works. Most likely, pale people always existed from the beginning (when everyone was in Africa). They were either ostracized socially or environmentally (sun damage) and migrated north. Because humans are fickle and always have been it was more likely that lighter-skinned people reproduced with other lighter skinned people. Evolution would say that there were external factors that made pale people mate and migrate together, not that their skin became lighter over a single lifetime in a single individual (if that's what were you saying, could not be).

But yeah you're basically right on the rest, there were social impetuses for paleness (just as there were social impetuses for darkness in some communities).

[Jerome Scuggs]

equality of opportunity in law as a direct, literal law (ie no matter what, every kid gets the same array of opportunities/money/education/etc) would create a sort of "free rider" problem in that i could live my life not giving a fuck being useless, knock up some chick and then continue to not give a fuck and let someone else, the state, pay for and raise my kids, who in turn might follow my path since there's no real incentive to look beyond yourself or the next few years

i mean it's kind of sadistic and Machiavellian but it's uncertainty and the fear of dying/not providing which drives people to put effort into alot of things which drive progress in this world.

not really sure where im going with this, just throwing out a random thing for Summa to discuss in his paper if he's looking for ideas to argue for/against in his paper