Because this one thing I really need to get off my chest.
If a billionaire, or even a millionaire, or even some one with a house with no mortgage, wants to have a welfare state, I won’t believe he is genuinely altruistic or decent or socialistic, if he doesn’t give away everything besides what he really needs before he asks anyone else to pay anything to the government.
See Im that sceptical of human motivations. I knew in my life one good communist, thats my granddad, who worked his ass off in parliament and gave away his salary to the party, and received a minimum wage from it which he gave to his wife who made sure they could all live, the seven of them. The rest of them were all hypocrites and hypocrites stink and I want nothing to do with them.
Also, everyone who receives welfare should really do some community service. If you don’t, you’re an asshole and a parasite and leeching off people who pay your food and housing without being worth a shit to anyone and thats definitely NOT social, ism or clean.
So recapping, I believe in deeds, not words and definitely not in votes for some glib head on tv as being anything to do with efforts for social justice, the traditional, basic simplistic idea of fairness that has understandably taken hold of people who are in debt and under government scrutiny and all sorts of shitty things.
Billionaires who call for socialism are obviously crooks. If Sanders doesn’t share his millions with students in debt or immigrants who are poor, he is obviously completely profiteering. If anyone ever got rich over poor peoples back its this guy.
Okay that was basically it. You either give everything above what you really need, or you are obviously just a capitalist like the rest of us and need to really STFU as they say.
Don’t tell me it isn’t realistic because this guy did it.
and he had him a bunch of good looking children too.
But none of this was even the goddamn point Ecmandu,
The point was and still is, that for a socialist to financially exist anywhere above subsistence level is to be a fraud, like Bernie the Millionaire Socialist Sanders.
Ok so this case is won.
People don’t have it in them to be real communists.
So what we will get is a state that preserves the earf and guarantees food and shelter and basic healthcare like once the church did but gives out no welfare money whatsoever. Money is for people who work specifically for that purpose, in the Market, that wonderful thing.
Its not hard to be a vegan at all, you just don’t eat meat and milk products. Its also easy to live without electricity as you won’t have to pay the bill for it and n to worry about doing stuff online, which is exhausting.
Its very hard to be In the resistance against the nazis and then to maintain a perfect political record for defeating NATO initiatives as well as USSR initiatives and be loved by peoples of all sides despite being a communist, all the while keeping a happy family with five children on a minimum wage.
The military industrial complex which capitalism had become just logically won of the ideological complex.
Its just logical. It was shitty in many ways, losing was shitty as shit. And a lot of people went down who were good and should have been honoured.
Maybe its not too late to honour them. But whats gone is gone and we must look forward.
Capitalism is like an animal that tries to live where apparently we need to be transfixed by deathcults. It is not capitalism which makes us slaves it is slaves which make the form of capitalism is. Capiterpillism.
A summary of your position that you can deny/accept/correct/add/subtract/adjust as you please:
Mentioned aspects of Socialism -
Use of a circulated currency
Private property
Loans
Welfare state
Central government (including parliament)
Minimum wage laws
Community service
Charging of tuition fees
Permitted immigration
Non-hypocrisy requirement: subsistence level living or below.
Therefore insufficient funds to campaign for their cause.
Some questions to establish some basics:
This sounds to me like Social Democracy, is that correct? Capitalist mixed economy with economic and social intervention?
You appear to support market driven Capitalism - either business ownership or paid employment by business owners, voluntary trade, yes?
Do you support any taxation to pay for government services at all? Fire department etc? If so, where do you draw the line - at what point is it too much Socialism, where only poverty is acceptable if it is to be supported?
If not, do you support charity? If the choice of charity is not directed to certain citizens, do you support their destitution until if/when they find further employment? Motivation perhaps? Does this go for times of economic depression where unemployment is much more common? Or do you believe economic depressions are solely due to government intervention and would not happen under your preferred economic model?
What if Socialists pay more towards any welfare state than they ask of others, even if they are still able to stay above subsistence level after doing so? If this is ok, would you be going by paying flat amounts or a flat rate (percentage)?
How about if they subsist using non-privatised services that they themselves or a group of people work together to provide?
Lots of questions - I do apologise. You can ignore if you please. I’m sure you will agree no economic discussion went anywhere whenever huge variations in positions and definitions of concepts were generalised over.
Of course, money is moot. Communists organized by character and were elected on the merit of deeds. My grandfather certainly didn’t have anyone campaigning for him, it was circumstance and character. Thats how I like it.
Both. And I support a church or a state institution that deals out basic necessities, but never money and never ideology, thought police.
You are getting dishonest here. I never advocated poverty. My grandparents weren’t poor. Absurd.
They were proletarians and actually happy, despite having the usual dose of tensions the stablest of marriages have.
Fire departments and policing always arise naturally. The state comes about by clerical bureaucrats who take charge of what naturally comes about.
I favour no taxation of privates, whatsoever, ever. I think we aren’t born beholden to the state, morally. If there is morality for me it doesn’t involve the state.
Charity is a natural impulse and bureaucracy the worst way to handle it. I give freely far more than what I charge for, and that makes me happy. All rich people like to share but no one likes to be compelled to give to the state.
Taxation of corporations is necessary to keep them in check.
I believe in only taxing 20 million plus estates and putting ay a 30 percent flat tax on any net income beyond that threshold.
Maybe change it to 5 million and 20-25 percent.
Obviously I am against people going by peoples flats, that is the whole point.
Are you even serious man? Or is this a tease for my time?
Are you going to think about my answers even?
Im being honest with you, I expect … well, nothing in return.
You mean would I want a radically minimal government designed to not interfere, to interfere with a bunch of peaceful citizens?
What happens with a flat rate kicking in suddenly above a pretty high threshold is that it keeps the size of companies under that threshold, unless theyre really sure of themselves. Meaning an economy conductive of localized effort.
Im not the one to worry over what is done with the tax money, it all depends what the people want.
There should be no bureaucrats, only professionals, working for the state. Only problem solvers, no delegators. We’ve got our pods and algorithms for that.
Medical students can serve in social hospitals to “pay” (Giving Back, a known philanthropic concept and a name of an organization of a billionaire philanthropist) for their education. And so on.
Keeping companies under a certain size, I think, is key. Amazingly this is often assumed to keep us all unfree, as if we were corporations and they were us. They are states with kings.
The way I compiled that list was simply by going through your posts on this thread and pulling out assumptions that I could easily recognise about the kind of economy that you’re arguing against. So if only the Welfare State applies to what you’re arguing against, and only somewhat, then largely what you’re arguing against contains mostly concepts that you’re fine with - but with only the addition of the Welfare State tipping the balance - and even then, only somewhat? Is that correct?
I’m guessing that your grandfather, in spite of his laudible character and deeds within his circumstances, did not gain much influence - relatively speaking, compared to the political powers that were in charge of the society and economy that he was living in at the time? I might be wrong - correct me if so.
I’d also guess that the political powers in his society and economy got there and stayed there through spending money to pay the right people to get the best version of their message out to the most number of people that might otherwise be swayed to support other parties.
Unless, of course, the country in question at the time did not allow campaign donations, in which case - that would be awesome! Ideally, yes, money would be moot in this kind of thing. In practice, the world powers get there through money - so it’s not moot in the slightest. And in this case, it’s convenient that you have this impression that Communists are only good Communists if they run based on their deeds, character and circumstance alone - because that guarantees their lack of success, which is what you want, right?
It’s interesting how the economic models with higher emphasis on cooperation and sharing are associated with sacrificing the means to gain power - “or else they are hypocritical”. If an economy is productive, meeting all the needs of its people, perhaps even by a long way such that the economy is decidedly wealthy, is it therefore less wealthy if all that same amount of produce is shared around more equally? Of course not. A cooperative and sharing economic model does not mean everyone has to be without any riches beyond subsistence level, because even if they all donated/got taxed down to subsistence level, they’d be getting it all back and thus each remain net-wealthy. The issue is the institutions that their donations/taxation is mediated through. In Capitalism, these institutions are businesses who only pay those who work for them, and perhaps charities that they support as well (also businesses) - decentralised and competing with each other to keep each other in check. In Statism, there can be much less decentralisation, which lacks that competitive control that cuts down on corruption. There are other ways of redistributing wealth in a decentralised way than Capitalism passing it through competing businesses, but popularly Social Democracy, Socialism and Communism are all associated with too much centralisation. You can have a decentralising economic model with a higher emphasis on cooperation and sharing that both isn’t centralised, and doesn’t necessitate that its people have to live at mere subsistence level in order to avoid being called hypocrites.
Rather than being dishonest, I wanted to bring up the term of “poverty” to be contrasted with your term of “subsistence”.
What really is subsistence? One is reminded of all the people who have a much higher standard of living than others, who still regard themselves as having no money simply because they spend it all on the things that everyone around them normally spends all their money on, but personalised in proportion with their own tastes. Yet even those in genuine poverty get by - they subsist on what they have - my point being, what really is the difference between poverty and subsistence in your estimation?
Never ideology and thought police? You and me both, brother.
I cannot stand these “new left” authoritarians who want to force restrictions on how we’re allowed to live our personal lives, or even speak. I am leftist in the older way that supports social freedoms, although believing that in order to acheive this, the economics that determines the means to live needs rules.
Church? No.
State? What is the difference between dealing out basic necessities and dealing out money? Basic necessities cost money. The difference between dealing out basic necessities and money is that the former has someone else deciding how the money should be spent, whereas the latter allows the receiver of said money to decide how it’s spent.
Agreed - I just wanted to establish what degree of state intervention you supported. The above quote, combined with “no taxation of privates, whatsoever” sounds like Minarchism to me. Is that accurate to describe your preferred economic model?
I think it is underestimated how many rich people have the impulse to offer charity, but a sure way to no longer be rich is to heed any such impulse too much. It does make one happy to follow it, absolutely, which is where the support for cooperative and sharing economic models comes from - but the contention is how and by whom such distibution is to be managed. Obviously you doubt the state’s ability to do so, where many on the other side of the political spectrum doubt more the ability of private parties to do it. The left tend not to think that private parties do it enough, or at least that they are reliable enough in doing so - and this is the origin of the perception of the left, by the right, to be forceful and tyrannical over their freedoms and rights. It’s not that compulsion is enjoyed (though I’m sure there are vengeful assholes out there who do enjoy this), it’s just that it’s seen as unfortunately necessary.
Didn’t you just say “I favour no taxation of privates, whatsoever, ever”?
The above quote could easily come out of a leftist’s mouth as a rightist - they share a huge amount of common ground in fact. The intention is to have controls in place to stop too much money going to too few people, whilst not negatively impacting on the possibility to earn the responsibility of dealing with more money, through your deeds.
Remember I don’t know you and you don’t know me - I want to be sure we are on the same page with respect to your position, and some questions will be easier than others.
I expect nothing from you either, but I hope for patience and as much honesty and integrity as I am trying to offer you.
I have the disadvantage of already having been boxed by you, in spite of our lack of exposure to one another, but fortunately I merely have to converse with you to prove that your prejudice is unfounded - that’s all I’m offering.
I meant that if it were possible for leftists to acquire significant wealth through their own collective means without engaging in the infrastructure already available to the private sector, would you still only trust them if they were living at subsistence level?
I’m simply offering scenarios that may or may not appear to you to counter your general dismissal of wealthy supporters of a welfare state.
Honestly, I feel like practical solutions are above my pay grade. I wish I could be confident of what such measures would accomplish, but I feel like I would be speculating wildly. I do like the idea of measures taking affect at a certain level. IOW I think it is fine to put say above this level new rules apply and we do this in part to keep the power of organizations like corporations at bay. IOW one can look at the constitution as organized to protect citizens from various kinds of abuse of power of governments. To both grant powers and set the limits of the various branches of government. I have not the slightest problem with viewing corporations as potential threats and having measures that restrict their powers and their powers to control government and thus people. I think current corporations have products and abilities that could not be imagined by the founders, but we can find in the founders skepticism about private organization power. I think that all the reasons to limit government power apply now to corporations and that this need not be conflated with limiting individual freedoms. Quite the opposite.
So I like the idea in the abstract, since it fits in with the general idea of starting to limit corporate power above a certain size. I think other measures related to control of their own oversite (revolving door stuff), lobbying, campaign finance and information gathering/behavior mod, etc. need to be looked at also. I wish I had the confidence to say ’ these measures will work, these will not, no bad side effects of this policy need to be mulled over’ and so on, but I do not think I have the expertise. Right now I think the main thing is to geto n the same table about these things, think outside the traditional right/left split - which I think is benefitting the wrong people ultimately - at least some of the time, - and then move into problem solving with some shared goals.
If we don’t recognize the problem, enough of us, then specific solutions can’t really even be considered well.
Well the Donald gives away his whole salary so don’t worry about that
Well but you are still looking at it from a fearful perspective of judgment. Not that fear and judgment aren’t logical results of this time but theyre never helpful for oneself. What I like about my own proposition is that it is without any judgment or without an outspoken motive of keeping companies small, it is only from a motivation of taxing big capital because big capital can’t complain about being troubled for money.
Taxing your average struggling middle class citizen is I think a great great evil. Ridiculous. The idea that there are well paid people in congress deciding that some soccer mom holding two jobs should give a part of her income to the state, noooononononono. Just, no. But that a business of 20 million plus capital should be asked for some contribution is perfectly fine with me.
Many companies will try to prevent it and stay small, thus holding little societal influence, others like car manufacturers can’t stay that small and have to simply pay taxes. I don’t see a down side.
Yeah and my solution recognizes both the concerns of the traditional left and the right.
The current left is composed entirely of corporate power and social engineering institutes, so it will disagree to exempt citizens. But persistent humanity, ideas and logic are a formidable force and might even prevail.
Bottom line: for a state to automatically have the right to tax any citizen who just happens to be born in that state is such a banal form of tyranny that I don’t expect it to last. As long as it does last we are unfortunately inferior to insects.
As long as we have people wielding coercive power being payed with money the state took from hard working small living people we are a prison camp. This is why the Donald gives that filthy bureaucrats salary away.
In fact to make all this tight and viable, logical economically as well as ethically, no government worker should ever be paid.
People should only be working for the government who decide to do it out of the overflowing of their being. People who have made a nice life for themselves or received great charities from others and are living well, and out of gratitude and a sense of logic decide to spend some time educating themselves and working for a police or fire department or putting themselves up for public office. In the past I don’t think there was a Senators salary.
I don’t think its right that governing other people should be a paid job. It should only be a service. Also teaching. Otherwise you get the “Im getting paid for it and you’re not so Im the boss” classroom which is basically our current “education”. Real education happens for example online by non profit initiatives like wikipedia or hell, this, or when people decide to pay some expert in for a private exchange of services for resources. Sharing and valuing.
I bet 99 percent of all wealth in the world is being wasted to bribe, counterbribe and retribute and defend. Bureaucracy is at the top simply a bargaining floor for political favours, and favours go for the costs of whole national wealth pools. Bureaucracy must stop. All lethal regimes were showing bureaucratic prowess.
Communo-Aristocracy as the ethical axis of the capitalistic world.
No one will ever starve under this scheme, as people will be competing with each other for the privilege of feeding nations.
How will this be accomplished?
It’s like Lennon said, I am the walrus.
So if one of the motivations gun owners have is to protect themselves. IOW that is part of why they take the measure of having a gun and perhaps practicing its use - the prevention of potential intruder threats - you would consider them ‘looking at it from a fearful perspective of judgment’? They should come up with a formulation for choosing to have a gun that never mentions potential threats? or should refer to them as ‘interesting targets’, as in I bought my gun because home invaders are interesting targets I wouldn’t want to miss out on shooting? Now I am being satirical, but I saw no reason to frame my reaction to current abuses and problems in terms of my emotions. Assessment of problems and threats, it seems to me, is a pretty given portion of any practical approach to life. And the motivation of taxing them since they cannot complain is not a motivation. IOW it states that one will not suffer some negative consequence, but doesn’t explain why one wants to tax them. And that want, it seems to me, comes from concerns about the power an untaxed corporation past a certain size. It is a solution to something, not simply a random policy passed because it won’t have a certain negative consequence.
