The mentality of socialism versus capitalism

Why do you use such outlier situations. This is not the overwhelming majority of people's situations. Taking an extreme situation to attempt to validate the failure of holding any level of personal accountability is wrong. There is no way to have a logical conversation about the topic when you throw out such drastic and isolated examples to attempt to validate your position.

What does any of that have to do with responsibility and personal accountability. Now you are meddling collectivism non-sense to attempt to validate a requirement to sustain people who have made poor choices? As if, because I drive a truck then that means I have to financially support a person that had 3 kids out of wedlock with 3 different baby daddy who dropped out of high school. Where is the logic in that?

What? Are you ok?

How is responsibility tied to freedom? You are attempting to make some sort of connection here that doesn't exist. People HAVE freedom to make poor choices that impact their lives. Are you suggesting that we should either; limit freedom to demand personal responsibility OR have unlimited freedom and oppose the concept of personal responsibility?

At what point do people get to be adults in your world? At what point do we allow people to make their own choices AND be responsible for the outcomes? Why is there always either some demand for authoritarianism or collectivism? It's time for people to put their big boy pants on and go out into the world, make their own choices, and be responsible for the results and repercussions of those choices.

Their parents are fully responsible.

 

Your arguments failure to understand the concept of force are absolutely flabbergasting.

Let's take two examples:

1. You see a person on the street that needs a little financial help. You elect to take some money from your purse and give it to them.

Situation 2

2. Some person sees you walking down the street and demands that you take some money from your purse and give it to the homeless or be subject to imprisonment.


The fact that you can't see the MASSIVE difference in these two situations is astounding. These are NOT the same thing, and pretending they are speaks to the weakness of your position.

 

Because here in the US we believe in things like freedom, personal responsibility, and concepts like rugged individualism. At least we used to. I am not extremely wealthy, and I choose the first, and due to prior proper planning, my wife and I are so well insured (which came at the penalty of choosing between really good insurance OR a higher salary) that my $1,000,000+ hospital bill (which was not the only one) cost us $200 out of pocket. And though the idea of me becoming disabled at the time we made that choice was so far in the realm of something that just wasn't going to happen fantasyland, we nonetheless chose as we did, so my coverage was not "I just got lucky".

We planned and prepared, the same as choosing to buy homeowners insurance despite being mortgage free and not required to. That was something else we planned and prepared for, we could have bought a bigger, nicer, keep up with the Jonses house, and easily afforded a hefty mortgage, but again we CHOSE not to. And that saved our ass when my income disappeared overnight.

Many if not most people who are in bad circumstances are there because they made poor choices. Dropping out of high school, having multiple felonies, kids, or both by the time they are 20, no work ethic, feeling entitled to free stuff just because they were once born... I'm sorry, but those people made their own beds, and they have to lie in them. People who are legit disabled, or vets, and possibly other categories I'm not even thinking about are worthy of our help and sympathy. Some idiot who dropped out of high school, has 5 felony DUIs on his record, and has spent his (or her) entire lifetime at the taxpayer teat does not.

 

Yes. Equal opportunity. Not equal outcome.

You could, but it doesn't matter. Everybody has their own hurdles in life. For the most part, and most people accept and support the concept of social safety nets to address isolated circumstances that are outliers. Like disability, social security, and various other programs. But this is not the same as social programs, which incentivize taking from some (by force) and giving to others deemed worthy by somebody other than the giver.

Im agnostic, so your pulls at religion to attempt to back people into a corner of compliance with your agenda fall on deaf ears for me.

So everybody is victim to their circumstance, and everybody has an excuse to justify their need for collective assistance. What a cluster **** of a society. Seriously. Excuses are like *******s. Everybody has one and they all stink.

Let's be honest what its ACTUALLY about. You want to dictate and have the power to take and give as you see fit to align with your perception of what is moral and right. Again, what a cluster ****. Everybody has their own opinions about what is moral and right, and all those influences are subjected to corruption, self interest, etc. mixing that with political democracy... holy hell what a ****ing disaster.

Because of life experiences. I was in the military, because my parents couldn't afford college, and there I met people that were from all walks of life. Street thugs, cajon backwoods, rural hicks. I watched as many of these people found purpose and career and went on to do awesome things. Then I went to college, and worked 2 part time jobs, broke, barely paying rent, getting a degree from a state school, went on to start my own firm 20 years later and do well. At the same time, I watched people with other circumstances succeed, and others fail or become complacent. Everybody has opportunity, at least in this country. Everybody has different starting points, different life hurdles, and different perspectives of success, but all of them have the ability to do and become exactly what they want.

My kids are adopted from DCFS. They are both minorities. They both have seen an unbelievable amount of trauma that I wouldn't wish on anybody especially a child. They come to our home from inner city schools YEARS behind the other students in terms of educational development. We never allowed them to feel sorry for themselves, make excuses, or use their situation to validate why their needs were higher than others. They are both now straight A students, have a great group of friends, and are musically inclined and athletic.

We need to stop accepting excuses. We need to stop assuming that fairness means everybody starts at the same starting line or try to equate outcomes. We are not robots. We are not only subject to outside influences to determine fate. Our freedom of choice is the number one determination of what happens in life, with a very small exception of catastrophic situations like health or an accident.

Ignoring personal choice, and pretending that people's fate is not 99.99% inside their own realm of control is an absolute failure especially when applied to a societal organization. It's absolutely make believe fantasy land that 1. people are not responsible for their outcomes, or 2. everybody else has a responsibility to determine outcomes regardless of individual choice.

That's the number 1 thing the left fails at understanding. Personal accountability, personal freedoms, personal choice.

 

Hear hear.

Capitalism tempered with elements of socialism = Social Democracy.
Advocates are Social Democrats.
Countries are Social Democracies.

 

There is a difference as I pointed out.

People ion Denmark do not call it socialist.

No they work because people are not under any congtrol and forced to do nothing,.

 

WHy are you getting personal?

The fact is everyone judges whether it is safer to merge or not and clearly that works better than trying to control who goes where.

 

Ok, so when you say 'socialism' you are mean to totalitarian communism? Why not just say totalitarian communism if that is what you are talking about?

 

Not personal, just an observation. Most people try to run people over or even bully their way, that's why we have so many traffic deaths.

And no, it clearly doesn't work better. It hardly works at all. Look at all the deaths.

Totally automated cars could fit more than 5x the cars on the roads as we have now. Think of that, You literally could not make 5x the roads, not even with paving over everything

https://www.wired.com/1994/07/alt-pave/

 

Most people do not do any such thing. It does work better as the stats clearly prove,

 

No I mean socialism

 

Ok, so NOT communism like North Korea, USSR and Cuba, and NOT 'cradle to grave' welfare country like Denmark........Ok

Which country would you use as an example of a nation which is socialist but not communist where everyone is forced to share everything like you described?

 

I don't know where you're driving. 30,000 dead annually sure doesn't look like working to me

 

You're avoiding the larger issue. No surprise.

The original post...

So, then, how did this happen?



Why have worker wages only gone up only about 5% in 40 years? Are they lazy? What about you? Did your income follow the blue line or the red line?
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You weren't asked for your income. Your caterwauling is just an attempt to deflect attention from your inability to respond. In short, you have no idea what you're talking about. Workers in this country aren't useless layabouts who only rated a 5% pay increase over four decades.

 

My early 30s next door neighbors are throwbacks to an earlier generation. Not everyone is the same.

 

We all know registering is easy, but what would motivate an illegal to vote?

If I was an illegal, I wouldn't risk getting caught. One vote doesn't make much difference.

 

Most of them are "lower paid" because of poor choices they made themselves.

 

There's little margin in taking a chance by voting. That's why, I suspect, illegals aren't voting very often.

 

Never let facts get in the way of Trumper propaganda.

No need to reply to my posts. I'll continue commenting on yours as I see fit.

 

Oh come on. There are rules made to control traffic flow on these so no one enters when they want and everyone goes round the same way.
Everyone uses them as a collective and gives way when both the individual and the collective benefits.

 

Oh sure.
They chose to be born blind or with a genetic disease like cerebral palsy.
They chose to be educated in poor schools.
They chose to have to care for their sick parent (s) because they can't afford the medical care they need.
They chose to be defrauded or stolen from.
They chose to be abused and traumatised hen they were a child.

Are you so very wrapped up in your own good fortune that you can't even know others aren't born with it?? Are you so disconnected from your "community" that you don't even think about those who aren't so lucky??
Or do those "on the right" just blame them for not being as able as you and carry ont his Puritan idea that bad fortune or poverty is somehow God's punishment for something and that you don't count as a human being?

 

Nor would I. The only countries meeting my criterion as a place to live are Canada, Australia and New Zealand. France is a maybe.

 

Stop right there.
These ARE social programmes.
They fill your criteria which I have highlighted.
an what do you mean by giving to others deemed worthy by someone other than the giver.
Do you mean contracts given by the government to friends and lobbyists as is done under capitalism in the name of "you have a lot of money so here's some more because I know you"?

 

You are miusing the word

You missed my point.
Situation 3. I voted for No 2. because I want to help those less fortunate.

 

What do the 900,000 deaths from Covid - half of which were likely not from Covid as some of the data suggests - a whole bunch more which could have been prevented with proper treatment .. and the remaining coming from folks with pre-existing conditions .. have to do with the freedoms of healthy folks .. ? especially in relation to Omicron.

I do agree that its a damn shame that the healthy folks who have nothing to do with these deaths of any statistical significance - are being subjected to forced medication which has a risk of harm far far higher than Covid.

Shame that these authoritarian, lying, propaganda spewing control freaks have gotten off the leash