Topic: Socialism does not work

[Glock32]

Daniel Hannan on why socialism does not work:


Socialism Does NOT Work

[Glock32]

Theodore Dalrymple as well:


Socialism Does NOT Work | Theodore Dalrymple | Oxford Union

[Weisshaupt]

Got to love the idiot leftist who interrupts Daniel Hannan  .. first she wants to tell you a story about the best days of HER life in the 60s, then proceeds to talk about Democratic Socialism - which was discounted from the definition in Theodore Dalrymple opening.. and then won't shut up when she is told her time is over, and continues to try and talk over him. Because , you know, such rules are for little people.

 - but listen to this woman-- it is as if it never occurs to here that there IS  a minority who disagreed and voted in another way.  She makes the tribes decisions her own- reflexively. Automatically.  Without questioning them.  SO  much so that the idea that a Democratic Socialist society would still need to use force against dissenters never enters her mind - AT ALL. Once the vote is taken, its decided, and we all MUST BE  of one mind...  we are all socialists now.


We are the Borg and you have been assimilated. You have no rights. You have no individuality. The tribes decisions have always been your decisions.  And yes, most leftists are Drones like this.  They can't explain why they believe as they do, or how they reached that conclusion  - it was reached by consensus. We have always believed this way.  We are Landru, are you not of the body?

 I can only assume Democratic socialism was excluded from the definition for   purposes of debate - since Democratic socialism differs little form the other types - and relies on coercion and force.  It claims to justify the use of this force because the "tribe has spoken"- and a majority can't be wrong. Just ask the majority that voted to keep blacks slaves. Just ask the majority that voted for the Jim Crow laws.

Then you have the other interruptions including the classic "Hitler wasn't socialist- he arrested Communists!"  and How can you be free if you don't have access to food, housing or schooling! "  Hannan's answers were good,  but for the latter I would have asked " How can you have freedom, if others are free to deprive you of  your property and enslave you to supporting an agenda that is not your own, and that you only contribute to because of the threat of force? "  in addition to pointing out you have a better chance of bettering yourself in South Korea than you have in North Korea.

The left simply can't come to terms with the fact that they rely on violence to get what they want, because they want so desperately to think that they are good people, and that the world can be run in such a way to let them return to a comfortable childhood in some Adult Kindergarten class. You can be confident every lefty left that debate sure the left had won, sure that they had debated well, secure in their knowledge that utopia was just over the horizon and they would soon have the last laugh.

I can't wait to watch these people be bitch slapped by reality.  Let it burn.

[Glock32]

If you watched these videos with the sound turned off, would you have any trouble telling which members of the audience supported the "Socialism does work" side of the debate?  Not hardly.  These videos are a series that the Oxford Union runs, where various speakers argue a pro/con side of a debate.  I have not yet watched any of the videos from the "Socialism does work" presenters, but I will go out on a limb and guess that they aren't constantly interrupted like the "Socialism does not work" presenters were.

That sort of behavior is typical of the Left. Shout down your opponent, judge his ideology by its real-world shortcomings whilst insisting that yours be judged only by its theoretical promises.

I would guess they specifically excluded Social Democracy because on the one hand it does not meet the Oxford dictionary definition of "socialism", which was supposedly the guideline of the debate, and on the other hand the sort of Scandinavian welfare state that Leftists point to as a crowning achievement are really still products of private enterprise, just a private enterprise that has an enormous cut taken by the state. This sort of welfare expenditure is possible when you've spent 70 years under the nuclear umbrella of those dog-eat-dog capitalists across the Atlantic. There's any number of external factors that could suddenly eliminate the ability of their private economies to continue sustaining such lopsided public economies, and what then?

I like Theodore Dalrymple's takedown from the very start, when he reads the definition of socialism as state control of production and distribution for the betterment of everyone.  As he points out, the premise that "everyone" would or could agree on what constitutes betterment is absurd from the start. The Left has cobbled together an entire lexicon of euphemisms to describe what boils down to state coercion over virtually every aspect of your life. If there is anything worth resisting to the death, it's that.

[Weisshaupt]

So I suffered through watching the other "debaters" Katy Clark and Jeremy Corbin and confirmed they said exactly what you expected them to say:

They ignored the oxford English dictionary definition and every single point made against them  and instead chose to talk about Democratic Socialism with an emphasis on stories of poverty and suffering and how they are superior moral people (radiscals)  for daring to think there is a "better way" and for "dreaming" of a  "egalitarian" society.   Katy Clark  of course took credit for Pensions, schools, health care and so forth,  and basically said nothing of import. When  it was pointed out that the Rich still have better health care in Britain,  Corbin scoffs at that absurd notion and of course suggests its because they aren't egalitarian enough yet.  Then Corbin goes full envrio-nazi ( Did you even read Marx on the environment? Yes. He said it should be cynically used as a wedge issue to push his policies)  and suggests centralized democratic control is required   to protect our Earth.  Of course, when Russia is brought up as an example of such control, its absurd to say it has anything to do with him or his polices. Of course, its because Stalin and Russia didn't follow Marx's ideas closely enough.  You know, it didn't work in Russia because the wrong people are in charge. No acknowledgement that the "wrong people" always (Always!) seem to end up in charge of these systems or that the opposing side explained why.

 Corbin even goes so far as to throw out - verbatim - "from each according to his liabilities, to each according to his needs"  and how he ( superior as he is ) would choose a society arranged on that principle.  Left out of course is how he is perfectly willing to use force to make others - especially the people with abilities he wishes to enslave for his "dream of the common good"   - will be fined, imprisoned or killed for not complying.

I wish someone would have asked him about his support  of Mob rule  and slavery of the minority. But of course they don't address the coercion.  So yeah,  its the usual stuff.  I have a better dream than yours, and therefore I am justified in committing any sort of atrocity in my pursuit of a better world.

However, I would still argue that Democratic Socialism still falls within the Oxford English Dictionary definition. A country that takes 50% or more of all private endeavor may not control that endeavor, but it is saying it owns 50% of anything and everything done, for any reason.  You cannot say you have private ownership of a company when stock holders own 51% or more of the stock.

Sweden collects close to 50% of the National GDP in tax revenue with all security programs, VAT and other taxes.   Think about that.  That means the gover is either "saving " that money or spending it.  This site suggests that the Swedish govt is responsible for 25%  of its GDP a year..  So at Best,  25%  of the GDP is left in private hands.  IS that really a "private economy" or does 51%  claim  of every person and every service in the economy constitute ownership of that resource?

Socialism( in any form) laws claim to State  ownership of some portion of every person's labor, to be spend and used as the State see fit, with no restrictions or limits protecting the individual, inalienable rights of the individual.  That claim is the same made by slavers in days past, who also provided each of their slaves with food, health care  housing, and a job. Many slaves were allowed to raise their own chickens and to retain some personal belongings, with the implicit assumption those could be denied at the owners whim.  Just because the State is the owner, is any different principle being applied? They will magnanimously  will let you keep some of your own labor, we will let you have some belongings-- but you have no right to them.  You only have the rights to what we say you have rights to - like that free food, housing, healthcare etc that keep you ready to make us the profits we demand.
 


 


Once can only concluse that the State in Sweden owns at least 51%

  It is sustainable in Sweden only because of the homogeneity of the people  and their personal  ethics- and I suspect they will be corrupted over time as well, because they are humans and human nature will eventually win.   

[Glock32]

It has heretofore "worked" in Sweden because it's a country of only 9 million culturally homogeneous people in a land with significant natural resources. The only thing preventing another power from deciding to take all that for themselves is the fact that still other powers have committed to protecting Sweden. If they were to rely entirely on their own devices, then that would require substantially more spent on maintenance of armed forces, which would in turn make the vaunted welfare spending either impossible or finally onerous enough to produce dissent. In other words, it's like anything else the Left does: dependent on subsidy from the very thing they aim to destroy. Meanwhile they have either the sheer unmitigated nerve, or the profound lack of self-awareness, to point to this artificially subsidized condition as proof of their theory and its moral superiority.

The "it hasn't been done by the right people yet" defense highlights exactly what is wrong with their theory at its core. The whole thing is born of this mindset that "God is dead" and therefore Man himself can occupy that lofty position, that mankind is perfectible through their enlightened ministration, and anyway how dare you judge us on the past failures (read: piles of dead bodies) when you should instead judge us on the grand possibilities that will certainly become reality once it's done right.

The Founding Fathers of the USA operated from the exact opposite premise: that Man is a fallen being and his very nature means that the rogues among us will seek to pervert and manipulate the good among us, that Man is in fact not perfectible and his only hope is through the salvation of Almighty God, and that here on the earthly plane the best we can do is mitigate our sinful nature by tasking government with protecting the rights to life, liberty, and property (happiness) of everyone through equal application of the law. That is the only legitimate function of government.