Socialism IS human nature

[igualitarist]

OP is right.

Human nature = poverty
Socialism = poverty

Thus, Human nature = socialism

Thankfully, we don't live in natural state anymore

[Leodok]

It's not.
And even if it was.
People talk about stuff being "unnatural" as if anything that's not natural is bad.
Medicines are not natural, clothes are not natural, using the internet is not natural, sitting for long periods of time is not natural, reading is not natural.

Human nature is living naked in a savanna hunting antilopes or something while constantly fearing a lion will come and kill you.
Sounds like a good way of life, huh?

[Dezerte]

So arguing around semantics is rather pointless;

I don't think it was a semantics issue, it was more of a clarification.

Scandinavian social democracy is CLEARLY further towards capitalism than socialism. So it's a bit disingenious to refer to it as "promoting socialist ideals but not outright abandon capitalism", an example of a better description would be "tempering capitalism by incorporating some socialist elements".

Was not my intent to assign any weight to either side, which I also think depends upon which framework you view our so called Nordic model.

[Super Kami Dende]

Applying the standards of small Cave communities to entire countries is Laughable.

Of course most people would care for people that are immediately close to them. But asking me to care for 8 billion people I give zero shits about? Laughable.

[Sama-81]

I can't disagree. You have me bested.
Yeah I remember when he said that. Are you politically active yourself? You seem very knowledgable.

No, not really, but I've had some involvement by association. My girlfriend used to be active politically, for one, and one of the current ministers is an old family friend for another. If nothing else, it's rather enlightening to hear about what happens and is said in the political world, when all cameras have gone black.

I mean that socialistic ideals and ideals of equality and freedom are strong in the Scandinavian countries, even if they're quite blue politically that blue is red compared to the US. I'm very clumsy in how I express myself.
But Venezuela's problem isn't socialism, it's corruption and ineptitude.

Well, overall I more or less entirely agree with you. Those ideals are indeed very strong in Scandinavia, and is more or less a given basis for any party if they wish to have any measurable success. And I likewise entirely agree that whatever blue you find in Scandinavia (at least that has representation), it would most assuredly be described as red in the US. But then the US is the extreme, not Scandinavia, and is an outright horrible political measuring stick for basically any other country.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't think it was a semantics issue, it was more of a clarification.

Was not my intent to assign any weight to either side, which I also think depends upon which framework you view our so called Nordic model.

That's certainly fair enough.

[tss]

Last time I checked, cavemen didn't speculate on the market value of silex or contracted student loans to learn how to make fire and hunt dinausaurs

Everyone was assigned a task and then they pooled their ressources together to share food and endure cold winters. That's how we survived and evolved.
If someone was injured, you treated her/him. If someone was sick you looked after her/him.

Studies have shown the acts of giving/caring for others triggered the brain's reward system.


We need to get rid of the ridiculous idea that socialism is against human nature and capitalism somehow was the natural way to go.

And it starts right now on mmo champion

you should be made a smear on the asphalt

[Deleted]

Cavemen were clearly superior to nowaday's primitive capitalistic world.

[A dot Ham]

Last time I checked, cavemen didn't speculate on the market value of silex or contracted student loans to learn how to make fire and hunt dinausaurs

Everyone was assigned a task and then they pooled their ressources together to share food and endure cold winters. That's how we survived and evolved.
If someone was injured, you treated her/him. If someone was sick you looked after her/him.

Studies have shown the acts of giving/caring for others triggered the brain's reward system.


We need to get rid of the ridiculous idea that socialism is against human nature and capitalism somehow was the natural way to go.

And it starts right now on mmo champion

Several key points that are wrong with your hypothesis.

First, in the caveman example, everyone was assigned a task EVERYONE pulled their own weight. Cavemen also did not appreciate the 'arts' in the sense that was a person's only job. Ugh 1 was not busting his ass in the field or endangering his life hunting for big game, while Ugh 2 was at home oogling the ladies and smearing finger paints on the walls.

Second, jealousy and the haves and have nots have been around since the dawn of time.

Ugh 1 was bigger, stronger, fast, and most importantly better looking than Ugh 2. He fucked who he wanted to when he wanted to fuck them... male, female, your chick, my chick... it didn't matter he was the alpha male. Ugh 2 couldn't stand Ugh 1 and he wanted everything he had, so instead of using his spear to hunt big hairy elephant... he hunted Ugh 1. Thus begins the cycle of the haves, and have nots.

This skewed example of socialism doesn't take into account those that DON'T contribute. Sink or swim. If you were not a contributing member of the society you were left behind, and you probably died. Also members outside the "tribe" were not typically treated as equals. Or even treated with civility for that matter.

What you are talking about requires compassion, and its easy to have compassion for members within your family unit (and I would venture to say that most families function this way) they do what they can to help and support each other when necessary.

[Marsc92]

But those aren't ideals of socialism and yes the problem with Venezuela and every other socialist country has been corruption, but that's because the nature of socialism requires the government to grow in order to distribute things, socialism's primary principle is that property rights don't exist, so it actually is just normalising stealing.

Socialism destroys every country it ever touches even remotely.

Ideals such as liberty and freedom are libertarian ideals and all the libertarians in the world support Trump right now, honestly I don't think anyone here actually wants freedom and liberty however.

Realistically, no one here wants me to have the freedom to critically discuss a certain religion or a certain military ban, you guys don't want freedom, you want the state to provide you with emotional safety at the expense of others freedoms, this is basically the opposite of freedom.

The google employee got a lot right, I'm a former lifelong SJW and reading that document I just couldn't agree more with it, it's dangerous to conflate ideals such as liberty/freedom with socialism because the two are extremely incompatible. The left likes to call people nazis and make hitler comparisons but we never considered that socialism produced 100 million human corpses in less than a hundred years, that's like, 17 hitlers? Socialism simply never has worked, people have always had good intentions but ultimately the system cannot work long term for a large number of reasons, it is an evil ideology that encourages people not to work hard because there is no reason to try when you'll end up the same as everyone else. Speak to a Venezuelan about what went wrong and what can be done to avoid it, they will advise you to stop advocating larger government like they did for so long.

[Revi]

Last time I checked, cavemen didn't speculate on the market value of silex or contracted student loans to learn how to make fire and hunt dinausaurs

Everyone was assigned a task and then they pooled their ressources together to share food and endure cold winters. That's how we survived and evolved.
If someone was injured, you treated her/him. If someone was sick you looked after her/him.

Studies have shown the acts of giving/caring for others triggered the brain's reward system.


We need to get rid of the ridiculous idea that socialism is against human nature and capitalism somehow was the natural way to go.

And it starts right now on mmo champion

I'm curious why you think human tribal nature naturally expands thousands of miles to millions of individuals with whom we share no familial ties and have never met?

I get the whole "humans are tribal by nature" argument, but simply claiming that it translates to modern scales of government isn't sensible to me. I'm not saying your wrong or right, but your argument doesn't seem very solid.

And I'm thinking you don't want the brutal succeed-or-die kind of lifestyle that cavemen enjoyed. Cavemen just aren't a good inspiration for comfortable societies.

[Deleted]

I'm curious why you think human tribal nature naturally expands thousands of miles to millions of individuals with whom we share no familial ties and have never met?

I get the whole "humans are tribal by nature" argument, but simply claiming that it translates to modern scales of government isn't sensible to me. I'm not saying your wrong or right, but your argument doesn't seem very solid.

In the end it's not even supposed to be an emotional/natural thing. Cooperation is simply more efficient when we're talking societal advancement.

Giving everyone a roughly equal material condition (with reasonable room for ascension by work and talent) will always be better civilization wise than having 8 people owning half the wealth and 90% scrounging for scraps.

But that supposes finally coming to term with our compulsive behavior towards wealth acquisition (which i absolutely dont think is inherent to our nature rather than learned behavior)

[Kraenen]

Yes, an argument for socialism based on going backwards to caveman economies...

Really?

[minteK917]

What if humans are both greedy and empathic for other humans needs?

What if a mix out of socialism and capitalism was the solution?

Madness! Next youll tell me you can have public and private health clinics in the same country. Dont lie to me son, its not possible!

[Cthulhu 2020]

Yes, an argument for socialism based on going backwards to caveman economies...

Really?

More like the other way around. Before humans or even animals lived in social groups, it was (and in many cases still is) a case where those with the best independent ability to survive, survives. It's the most primitive of primitive behaviors - self preservation without regard for anyone else.

Societies began to form once cooperation became a thing. Those who formed communities and split the work loads survived. Those who lived on their own didn't fare so well.

Also, the ideas of items having a worth, a value, even a value in liquid capital, is entirely dependent upon a cooperative society existing. Same idea with power. Wealth and power, the things the most greedy of people like to hoard masses of as a testament to their greed. But neither of these things have any value or meaning if there is no cooperative society in which to use them.

Greed is the natural state of the most primitive of human emotions. Cooperation is what separates us from animals.

[nycnyc88]

So instead of arguing for it you're linking two opinionated website articles with clear right-wing bias, and telling us to read a book? The articles seem to happily ignore the entirity of Scandinavia and just go "OH! BUT VENEZUELA!" without actually knowing crap about Venezuela.

Whats there to argue? I left USSR in 1992 right when it fell apart, so i am intimately familiar with socialism, enough to argue that socialism always fails (Cuba, USSR, Venezuela, Eastern Block, etc). The counterargument by the left is that "that socialism wasnt the right socialism" proves exact point - socialism is unattainable as long as 2 human constants exist - greed and jealousy (and they will always exist).
Every single socialism experiment fell apart when they ran out of other people's money.

I posted the link to the book that should be a required reading as early as high school, who just happen (along with colleges) instead of critical thinking teach you to be an obedient consumer debt slave. The book does a great job to explain all the myths associated with socialism that is ever more prevalent with younger people these days.

Seeing the USSR fall apart its is really sad to see USA turn into USSA.

Scandinavia is very well explained in the book (and mentioned in the article). You are from Sweden, you (and the rest of Scandinavia) is now living on borrowed time, thanks to what you were able to achieve by escaping direct involvement in WW2 and capitalizing on a relatively long period of true free market in your history. With a larger and larger percent of your population living off welfare (and the influx of illegal immigrants) it is already mathematically impossible to continue as is - and just like the rest of the world is now living on borrowed debt time. Eventually it will collapse. (Looking back, if someone told anyone in 1988 that USSR would collapse in 1992, people would laugh in your face)

Either way, read the book, educate yourself. Maybe if young people do so today we can avoid another "socialism" genocide experiment that the 20th century is so full of. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Socialist elite, such as Sanders and many others, love "useful idiots (google the term). Its not suprising that elite in every socialist paradise live large at expense of large poor masses with no hopes (In socialism everyone is equal but some are more equal than others - the running joke in the USSR)

This is just one article that dispells the nordic socialism myth, there are many others, just google them
http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...ing-lefts-myth

[THE Bigzoman]

Last time I checked, cavemen didn't speculate on the market value of silex or contracted student loans to learn how to make fire and hunt dinausaurs

Everyone was assigned a task and then they pooled their ressources together to share food and endure cold winters. That's how we survived and evolved.
If someone was injured, you treated her/him. If someone was sick you looked after her/him.

Studies have shown the acts of giving/caring for others triggered the brain's reward system.


We need to get rid of the ridiculous idea that socialism is against human nature and capitalism somehow was the natural way to go.

And it starts right now on mmo champion

Totes.


Never mind the competitive aspect of human nature, of self preseversation.

[Theinquisition]

Totes.


Never mind the competitive aspect of human nature, of self preseversation.

Why you wasting your time? We aren't going to convince a admitted communist that their ideology is failed in every aspect.

[Independent voter]

Which is a major point. People are more charitable for smaller circles where they know each other and largely share in ideas or values. The wider you cast the net, the less people (and even some animals if I'm not mistaken) care about others in the sense of sacrificing themselves for the other's well being.

That's a large reason family helps first, small communities help next, large citites starts to decline, entire countries don't work on the same principle, and then an entire planet? The larger the social "tribe" gets, the more differences and the less helping out of pure good will.

I think you're right, in the socialist countries of Europe most everyone looks alike and you don't mind helping out someone who looks like you. You can even see this in some US states like Minnesota and Idaho where the state is 80-90% white. Once you get a lot of diversity people are reluctant to help.

[Jaylock]

Last time I checked, cavemen didn't speculate on the market value of silex or contracted student loans to learn how to make fire and hunt dinausaurs

Everyone was assigned a task and then they pooled their ressources together to share food and endure cold winters. That's how we survived and evolved.
If someone was injured, you treated her/him. If someone was sick you looked after her/him.

Studies have shown the acts of giving/caring for others triggered the brain's reward system.


We need to get rid of the ridiculous idea that socialism is against human nature and capitalism somehow was the natural way to go.

And it starts right now on mmo champion

This is fucking non-sense to the highest degree.

I will cede to you that its human nature to desire to be lazy and thus not contribute to a society if given the opportunity to do so.

Socialism boils down to: "Hey look at me, i exist so give me crap".

Stealing from other people is still stealing even if you vote to do so. It doesn't make it any more morally right to take someone's money/time/effort/work and give it to someone else even if people voted to do so.

I am not obligated to build you a house just because you demand it, you have no right to my labor, my skill, my expertise without giving me something good in return (aka CAPITALISM).

[minteK917]

More like the other way around. Before humans or even animals lived in social groups, it was (and in many cases still is) a case where those with the best independent ability to survive, survives. It's the most primitive of primitive behaviors - self preservation without regard for anyone else.

Human never existed in such a state however. Because humans are terrible as an animal at living without a group. There is no evidence that humans were ever anything but social animals that lived in groups of multiple families. Cooperation is not what separates us from animals, infact many, many mammals live in large groups that help each other fends off predator and find food as a group. Even some predator cooperates for their entire lives, Wolves, Lions, etc. All our most direct primate cousins are the same as us, absolutely terrible at living without a large group and they all cooperate to fend off predators and find food.

Even in non mammals cooperation exist. Many type of migrating birds create an air conduit togheter to help others conserve energy for the travel and switch sides making the effort so that everyone can make the trip. Small fish that stays in huge groups to look like a single large entity to scare off predators. Cooperation is not new and not human. Cooperation is infact probably the best survival trait, its the reason we are where we are. Because we live in groups and share knowledge with the group. If humans were any good at survival of the fitess wed still be naked in caves killing stuff with our claws.