got tonkaed wrote:Napoleon Ier wrote:To the contrary, capitalism allows free individuals to make decisions and be accountable for them. The poeple who are drowned out by the vast ocean of society are hose who live in your socialist utopias, from whom things are stolen in the name of the majority, who must conform to what the central authority, representing the uniformity of the "majority", dictates, and learn to be lobotimized servants of a totalitarian superstructure they dpn't know or understand.
do you really think that in a captialist system you are free? Certainly your not a slave in the traditional sense of the word,
but can you really act in your own self interest for very long as a free person. I think its pretty fair to argue that you cannot, given the system we have at the moment.
Where again you fail to see the picture, is that im much more of an idealist capitalist, than an actual socialist napoleon. Yes there are a lot of elements of socialism that are pretty good ideas, and i thought they would rectify a lot of the ills of the system as is. Your blinded ideology of socialism however, has restricted you from seeing some of those flaws behind that convient little curtain of self interest, which is not nearly what you hold it out to be.
What will be stolen from you in socialism on a practical level? You think you really can get the full value for your work in a capitalist system? Theorectically is this even possible given the profit motive...not unless you change how you concieve of people to think of them as less than the amount of the daily labor they perform.
Alas there are problems that would make a transition from capitalism to socialism by and large very difficult if not impossible, what would we do with our consumption models, and consumerism?
Yet i know you think the communitarian ethic is slavery and the like so all of the idea must be bad. How much say do you think you really have over your own life right now? Much of a say in the politics of your country? Much control over where in the world you can live? maybe you or i have more because we live in wealthy countries, but we dont have nearly as much as you think. Not because there are overlord lizards who are holding us down, but because there are structural elements that really do erode the agency of the self that would seem rather necessary for this self interest you tout.
Also everything in the last sentence you say holds just as true for capitalist systems...its more of a product of being a member of a large society than any particular one. How much do you understand about the societal norms that affect macro scale issues? Probably not much, because its too big of a thing in large societies to understand. Sure you might take elements of it and adopt it to yourself in order to get by, but thats not understanding.
Actually, as it happens, yes. Yet, and here's the magic of capitalism, through a series of Nash equilibriums, society advances, the individual is free.
To propose curtailing the rights of individuals to enter into consenting contracs based on some lofty ideal of a magical land where all the races join in peaceful harmony hand in hand sharing the fruits of mother earth whilst singing songs with the happy elves whilst showring flowers on each other is however, unfortunantly for you, most likely going to result in a serious misfiring. Russia come to mind much?
Furthermore, we don't live in a truly capitalist society. Some great minds of this past century have even suggested that the US of A, the Grand Satan, eternal bane of the pot smoking hippie leftist, is almost socialist in many respects.
Not that this matters to you, you prefer to blame teh corporations for everything gone wrong in your life. However, if people, rather than relying on Uncle Welfare, got of their asses, did some work, and got tonkeducated, we'd see some changes.
You see, fundamentally, it boils down to this : those who want to make it in this world without someone telling them how, when, where, and with what three-page form, and the weaklings who need to a system to tell them how to use their insignificant lives, and to provide them with an eternal crutch to rest their puny, pathetic, bony limbs as they wheeze and wail about how it's all teh corporations.
And guess what? It's good old fashioned capitalism and free trade that produce the results.
Here's a little diagram to help the more intellectually challenged to understand:
That's tonky's utopia, up on top, by the way...
