h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So, you ARE a libertarian, Two Bit! I base that on the fact that Ayn Rand wrote many, many indignant and bitter articles about socialised medicime. A while back, I asked : what is wrong with socialism? Seriously, I would like to know - what IS wrong with it? Communism even - is it really evil? It's about community, and being interdependent, far as I can see - "From each according to (his) ability, to each according to (his) need".. sounds fine to me..

Personally, I don't think it's really evil so much as flawed. While the concept of being fair to everyone is a noble one "on paper," it assumes that each human being *will* work according to a fixed rate of his or her ability. Some people will work less than their ability and other work more than they theoretically should, and there's just something about giving them equal rewards that rubs most the wrong way. As far as viewing Communism as evil, I think that's a historical issue, and not a theoretical one.

Philosophically, I am a libertarian, although I consider myself a republican. I didn't want to get into my views on socialism and communism here. As I wrote earlier, there's a conversation in my personal space about my views on Communism. I think I've already laid out my views on this subject in this forum.

I believe that when you restrict economic freedom, you will also restrict all other forms of liberty. Communism concentrates all political and economic power in the hands of the elite more effectively than any other political system.

I don't much care for socialism. It's the same thing on a smaller scale. I think this nation is great because of the effort workers and capitalists. They worked to become wealthy, and they took the rest of the nation with them. I think our social welfare programs take money from people who would use it effectively and gives it to people who squander it.

It's become a vote-buying scheme. The democrats offer to take money from the evil rich people, who pay the overwhelmingly huge portion of the taxes, and give it to people who offer nothing but a vote. A growing portion of our people couldn't care less, because nearly half of the adult population doesn't pay taxes.

It also tempts us to violate our Constitution. There's nothing in the Constitution that authorizes a nationwide pension system or a welfare system. This country was designed so that the states would handle most business, and the federal government would do very little. We've turned that on its head.

As for my views on dissent, I don't have a problem with dissent. Obviously, I have problems with how this country is run. What I have a problem with is people who want to turn the United States into another European leftist democracy. There are already plenty of countries with socialized medicine, centralized economies, and other elements of socialism. Why not live there, and leave people who want to be free one last place on Earth to live?

Do I think there are ideas we should swipe from other countries? Sure. I can't really think of any off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are some.

I saw some of the footage from the new Lord of the Rings movies, and I would not mind getting some of New Zealand's geography. It is beautiful country, but I cannot think of how we could do that.

Well, The U.S. can't really get New Zealand's geography. That's New Zealand's. America can implement ways to preserve its *own* geography, however.

TBTMP, does your objection to welfare also extend to the federal funding which has been the only thing to keep many states - possibly including your own - economically viable?

You have a massive unexamined assumption in there Two Bit - when you say that welfare takes money from those who would use it effectively, and gives it to those who would squander it. What????? So, living, paying rent, raising children and keeping afloat is squandering? (I am a 'solo Mum' on DPB (your AFDC, I believe.) If survival is squandering, what is effective use? Investing in oil companies and timber companies which then go in and rape and denude western habitats? Incidentally, the question of why I am on welfare (working part-time, BTW) is not an issue and I don't want it to become one, I just want to say that I am satisfied that there is darn good reason, ethically and morally, tho' a libertarian wouldn't accept that receiving welfare could ever BE 'moral', of course.
I worry about people who think that life comesdown to economic freedom. For goodness' sake, there's so much more to life than money. That's why someone like Ayn Rand, who literally worshipped money (or had her characters do so, in Galt's Gulch, in Atlas Shrugged) worries me so much.

Well done Della. I think all States should invest far more in enabling mothers to bring up their own children in a safe environment and lots of things would sort themselves out over the next generation. The present generations between 0 and about 50 have grown up in an increasingly money-grabbing world, where the individual does not count for much. If people didn't have pressures on them to own more and want more, they would give each other more attention and the general attitude to other people and their property would be far more respectful of each other, tolerant and considerate. This need not be a step backwards, it must be possible to create this sort of society without having to revert to WW2 and post-WW2 conditions. This applies to the States, too, I'm sure. Possibly even more so. But no government is interesting in investing in the next generation; they only want results that show up within their legislative period.

OK - back to the Americans.

The people who are taxed in this nation are the ones who are making money. Right now, the federal government taxes about the top 55% of income earners. These people have made good decisions and have achieved some measure of success.

These people make the whole country rich through their efforts at work, by investing their money, and purchasing items. These are the things that move us forward. If they invest in oil companies, those oil companies provide us with fuel to move products from their source to market, and us from home to work. It employs people in high paying jobs to produce that oil.

Therefore, if we are going to provide welfare, that money is taken from the people who actually earn it and given to people who haven't. Welfare sucks money from people who are being productive and giving it to people who aren't.

Those people who are on welfare, are there as a result of their own choices. I don't see any reason to reward poor choices by subsidizing it.

Properly raising a child is a good thing. Of course, I think it's best when it is done in a stable marriage, or at least have the financial ability to be able to afford it independently.


I don't even have that big a problem with welfare. I think it should be handled differently. I think it should be a loan to help people out of temporary bad spots rather than a give away.

I don't really worship money. I make just over $30,000 a year. I enjoy my profession. I could make a lot more money in the computer industry. I really have more of a gift for that than my profession anyway. As far as economic decisions go, that wasn't the best one. I like my job, and I'm not dependent on the state for a hand out.

I've never read Ayn Rand.

della, tc....

the welfare state is one that has troubled me for some time. here in the states the beurocracy that administrates social programs is top heavy. its been said (and i cant verify this) that roughly 80% of the social programs budget is spent on administrative costs. supporting beaurocracy hardly seems like offering a helping hand to those in need?

keep in mind as well, while there are many many who the systems of aid help, there are many many who abuse it. i dont want to write a whole long list of ways that the system is abused, but, suffice to say, it happens. a lot.

im just not sure we need all the beaurocracy. and i definitely am irked by being called "insensative" or a "radical right wing fundamentalist" simply becuase i think that welfare programs should be limited to those who need them, and that the administrative costs should be cut. i certainly am not against those that need the help taking advantage of it.

TBTPM, are you sure you're not dependent on the largesse of the state or the federal government? If memory serves, Oregon gets rather more out of the federal government than it pays in, and the proportion of your salary you pay in tax is very unlikely to cover government expenditure on your behalf.

Incidentally, your statement that the expenditure of the rich benefits the economy, while being perfectly true does not tell the whole story. It's not as if people on welfare stuff their checks under a mattress to deliberately run down the economy. In fact there's a direct correlation between income and expenditure on imports which definitely do take money out of the economy, so if the economic well-being of the country is your goal, it's better to keep handing over the cash.

I was rasied in Oregon, but I'm a resident of Georgia. Just because the federal government is spending money in a state, doesn't mean that the government is spending it on my behalf.

Why take the money from one person and give it to another in the first place? Wouldn't it be better for the economy to have the person who originally earned it spend or invest it?

That could depend a lot on what she (the person who earned it in the first place) would spend it on. It's quite correct that those who get 'welfare' spend their money and keep the economy rolling along. Back in 1991, a Tory government here cut welfare by a huge amount - result, recession. They did not expect that, but should have. It's a philosophical thing, basically, because if you believe that people are interdependent and responsible for the well being of one another, then you will favour the idea of welfare. If you believe in being well hard and that all should be self reliant, well then... Then, there's what's called 'corporate welfare', when large firms, some of them multi-nationals, are given huge tax breaks and other help to induce them to locate a new office or factory somewhere else. I have also heard of oil and timber firms in the West and Midwest given *huge* benefits in the form of public land and forests. What do you think, TBPM?

The only economic argument against redistributive taxation applies when marginal tax rates are so high that a significant proportion of high earners either decide it's not worth their time to work harder or head for the nearest tax haven, as was the case in the UK during the 1970s when it was possible to pay up to 97% income tax in certain cases. Otherwise the economy is always better off with the Robin Hood approach.

In any case, what people earn and what they get paid aren't necessarily the same thing.

Hi! Got room for an unreconstructed American hippie freak? (I guess, by definition, the words 'of advancing age' ought to be in that description, but I'm in denial, ok?)

To be totally up-front, so that there are no mistakes: *I* consider capitalism to be nothing more than justified greed. How someone can feel good about getting something for nothing - maximum income from minimum outgo - baffles me. I think it was Brecht who said, "Property is theft." And it is the evangelical nature of the American capitalist that I consider to be the ugliest thing about us.

I have come to believe this because I realize that material things are, in essence, immaterial. I have nothing that I didn't earn with my own sweat - I don't have much, but I worked very hard for what I do have. So what? It could all be gone tomorrow, either by accident, stupidity, hostile action, neglect, whatever. There can be no absolute concept of ownership because there can be no absolute guarantee that one can mantain that ownership. My American ancestors 'owned' other human beings. How ludicrious is that? Native Americans 'owned' North America for hundreds of years (by the European definition of 'ownership')... And look what happened to them.

There is the potential for the same thing to happen to anything we try to "own". So it never bothers me if someone needs or wants something from me. It's utimately a waste of energy - as well as destructive - for me to try and hang on to it, so why not let them have it? 'Earned' is such a subjective term, anyway, isn't it? Who has the capacity to fairly decide what work equals what reward?

Didn't mean to get so loud-mouthed. It's fun to sharpen up the rusty ol' commie-pinko synapses. Given the debacle of the last presidential selection here, it's obvious I'm out of practice.

Engage.

-7rob7

What's wrong with Americans? As individuals: Nothing. As a group: The same as any mass of people, they become the mob. What is wrong with America - very different question, and it is this that it seems we're addressing now. Before i reply to what everyone has been saying, i'd like to quote from what i think i the most succinct diatribe on the matter by one of AMerica's finest writers - William Burroughs' Thanksgiving Prayer (It's still in Copyright so i can't quote it all, but look it up, it's in Tornado Alley, you can find him reading it on N*pster).


Thanksgiving Prayer

Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons
destined to be s**t out through wholesome American guts
Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison
Thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger
Thanks for vast herds of Bison to kill and skin leaving the carcasses to rot

Thanks for the American Dream to vulgarise and falsify until the bare lie shines through
Thanks for the KKK, for n****r killing lawmen feeling their notches
for decent churchgoing women with their mean pinched bitter evil faces
Thanks for Kill a Queer for Christ stickers
Thanks for laboratory AIDS

Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.


And it's got to be this last line (which ends the poem) which is America's greatest failing, and which earns it the world's contempt. The hipocracy and stupidity with which the country defiles its own aspirations.


Perium said (321)
>>However there are few governments that come close to mirroring our Constitution. It is because of this that I say America is still the best country in the world. Even though it isn't a perfect style of government, its goal has always been to serve the people<<

Well, i would say that the Declaration of Independence, the constitution document, and the Bill of Rights, are some of the finest, most admirable and noble pieces of legal documentation ever set down. And i would say that no country has ever betrayed the ideals in which it was founded like America. Not even Stalin, the Betrayer of the Revolution, so actively and wantonly disregarded the ethos of the state he represented. And yet America still prides itself on the oft repeated dreams of it's historic past.


Two Bit Trigger Pumping Moron (329)
>>I feel like if that person wants to try living in a nation with no private firearms ownership, socialized medicine, no death penalty, etc, then there are plenty of nations like that. Why can't they go live there, and leave us to live as we see fit.<<

There are not plenty of nations like that, there are very few, precisely because of the systematic war waged against these principles by the US and the Multinationals that hide behind it's skirts.


Perium (331)
>>It is a mark of a failing point in our governmental system when a minority can define the rules for the majority.<<

What percentage of the US population are actually eligible to vote? And what percentage of those eligible, do?


Mandragora Scrymidden, Keeper of the Corset Laces asked
>>Could you explain Labo(u)r Day?<<

Isn't it connected with a memorial for the Haymarket Martyrs?


Two Bit Trigger Pumping Moron (343)
>>Communism concentrates all political and economic power in the hands of the elite more effectively than any other political system.
I don't much care for socialism. It's the same thing on a smaller scale<<

That's not communism - that's Stalinism.
And if you don't like socialism you can set fire to that bill of rights, that declaration of independence, that Gettysburg address - some of the finest definitions socialism you'll ever read.


It's not the best argued peice of debate,, it's late and i'm ill, but i wanted to try to raise these points because i've enjoyed reading your arguement because it has been largely, an intelligent and good humoured one, i feel that some points have not been made however, i in the spirit of the conversation, i'm sure you'd all like the chance to discuss them.

It was Proudon who said "All property is theft"

Brecht did howevr ask the wonderful question "Who is the true criminal? He who robs a bank, or he who founds one?". And he wrote Mack the Knife, what more do you want?

Surely you knew that I would be one of the first to reply.


On capatilism:
I think the maxim somethine from nothing is a foolish concept. Even if someone is only selling their opinion, it is still a service that is worthy of being sold. So, even though they have earned their money with less manual labor, it still is labor.


"Well, i would say that the Declaration of Independence, the constitution document, and the Bill of Rights, are some of the finest, most admirable and noble pieces of legal documentation ever set down." I'm not sure what you're agreeing to here. These are American documents, all this does is exemplify my previous point.


"And i would say that no country has ever betrayed the ideals in which it was founded like America. Not even Stalin, the Betrayer of the Revolution, so actively and wantonly disregarded the ethos of the state he represented. And yet America still prides itself on the oft repeated dreams of it's historic past." You will definetly have to explain your opinion. I cannot abide my country being compared to Stalin and his regime. I won't say that we haven't had our failings, show me the one true utopia and I'll show you an island of Lotus Eaters.

"There are not plenty of nations like that, there are very few, precisely because of the systematic war waged against these principles by the US and the Multinationals that hide behind it's skirts" No one is hiding behind anyones skirts, but I do think that the offer still stands, if it bothers you so much, go visit one of those countries. Systematic war, how ridiculous! How about it being one of my rights! as an American to bear arms.

"What percentage of the US population are actually eligible to vote? And what percentage of those eligible, do?" I don't know but I do know how to find out.

"And if you don't like socialism you can set fire to that bill of rights, that declaration of independence, that Gettysburg address - some of the finest definitions socialism you'll ever read." Please do elaborate. How is it that these documents are socialist?


And last, I would expect that since Americans have been compared to a mass of people, a mob, that you have things to say about Britian as well? Perhaps get the Nzer's riled up a bit? Because it seems that even though we have a government and laws, we're really and truly a just a mob with a fancy bit of writing on paper somewhere. Or perhaps that's just my cynicism talking....

>And last, I would expect that since Americans have been compared to a mass of people, a mob, that you have things to say about Britian as well?<

Sorry i didn't make myself clear, what i ment was that an american individual is just an individual, like any other, and individuals are rational, careing, reasonable and humane. Generally.

But American's as a mass of people are like the British en masse, or the French, or the Indians or the Thais or the Butanese, are a mob, the group does not think, it's whole is not the sum of it's intellectual parts it becomes reduced to it's lowest common denominator. This was a comment about crowds not americans, sorry if you thought this was trying to be an insult.


>How about it being one of my rights! as an American to bear arms.<

If you stand on your lawn and bear arms fine, just don't go marching round the world destroying other peoples systems of government.

I'll write something on the documents later when i get back from work and with the care and detail it deserves. Until then, back to the treadmill...

Ok,

But, I don't remember going around to ANY of the other governments in the world and attempting anything of the sort!

I know, all people who are right of center are cruel heartless b*****ds. I think in the long run, we all do better when we don't subsidize failure.

I don't like welfare not because I'm mean, it's because I think it prevents people from being a success.

Any drastic change in the economy is likely to go bad and have unforeseen circumstances.

I'm against corporate welfare as well. That's worse than individual welfare. The whole point of being a capitalist is to make a profit. If you aren't really making a profit, you have problems. Corporate welfare makes our companies weaker.

I don't know that I would lump tax incentives for a company to locate facilities in a certain area in with corporate welfare. That's more of an enticement than a crutch. I question the wisdom of some of the governments that do it, but I don't really have a problem with it.

In a capitalist economy, a person earns what they're paid. It's a free market. If another executive could take over the position at a lower salary, I'm sure they'd let him. If a company was paying an executive too much, then the company would suffer.


Capitalism is about greed. People have goal of making more money, and do what they can to make it. The beauty of our system is that we've balanced many forces out to keep the playing field somewhat level. If a person has the talent and drive, they can go as far as they want. That greed has made this whole country rich.

Stalin didn't betray the revolution. Stalin was a natural part of communism. You can't concentrate power without any checks and expect anything else to happen. We have betrayed our ideals in this country from time to time. We recognize it, and try to improve.

Flinch, have you ever read any of those documents? I see nothing in those documents that hints at any form of socialism. Nor do I see anything like a socialist government in this country for the first 110 years after the writing of the Constitution.

Personally, I don't care all that much about the rest of the world. As long as we can trade with you, and you don't try to mess with us, your business is your business.