Socialism IS human nature

[Zuben]

The way I see it, socialism may be the best way to go once we've automated everything, but it doesn't work as long as commodities are funded with human labor, because humans want fair or better compensation for their work and there's no way to make a society where everyone does the exact same amount of work with the same amount of risk and stress level.

I live in Finland and it already feels unfair that those who pay most of the nation's taxes benefit the least from it, while those who pay the least taxes benefit the most. I wouldn't trash the system we have, since it is good to have a safety net and even for the poor to have access to health care and education, but the point was that humans want what's theirs and the socialist system doesn't cater to it. The example of tribal people taking care of each other is more akin to how families work rather than a socialist society. A nation of millions can't be one big happy family, strangers will always be less relevant to you than your family members.

Transition to a fully automated society is the biggest hurdle and I for one don't know how it will go. Even if everything is fully automated and the manufacture no longer require human input, someone still created those machines and owns them, intending for the profits to go their way. Does the nation just steal them in the name of greater good? That can become very ugly, especially if big companies foresee it and prepare countermeasures.

[Endus]

Yep, everyone was assigned a task. Males were trained to hunt and defend the village, and the females were trained to breed. Its called patriarchy, and you're on the wrong side of this argument, my friend.

If you think that's remotely a human universal, you know very little about the diversity of ancient human cultures.

Sorry, but this is naive, and contrary to natural selection. Most wild mammals do, in some form, discard the sick and injured.

And this is completely incorrect, in terms of both whether this is how animals behave (in a huge number of cases, it isn't), and in evolutionary theory (social behaviour, including altruistic sacrifice and such, is a survival trait that's been selected for in a great many species).

Socialism has been tried and failed far too many times now. Its time to move on. Capitalism, with socialist systems (public healthcare, education, welfare, etc) is objectively better. Utopia is an illusion.

Again, straight-up ignoring the successes, because they don't fit your prejudices.

[Deletedaccount1]

Marx didn't believe in the concept of human nature.

But here I have to give conservatives their due. As far as I can tell, Marx literally, so strongly as to be unstrawmannable, believed there was no such thing as human nature and everything was completely malleable.

Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man. But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations.

And:

It is evidence that economics establishes an alienated form of social intercourse as the essential, original, and natural form

Which Singer glosses with:

This is the gist of Marx’s objection to classical economics. Marx does not challenge the classical economists within the presuppositions of their science. Instead, he takes a viewpoint outside those presuppositions and argues that private property, competition, greed, and so on are to be found only in a particular condition of human existence, a condition of alienation.

[Dmitro]

Raping women is also very basic human nature, but we dont do that normally, you know, arent animals and stuff.

The OP trolled himself quite heavily

[Deleted]

The first thing humans did was trade food and services (hunters and gatherers) and putting a value on them.

Life is all about value.

[Vash The Stampede]

I live in Finland and it already feels unfair that those who pay most of the nation's taxes benefit the least from it, while those who pay the least taxes benefit the most. I wouldn't trash the system we have, since it is good to have a safety net and even for the poor to have access to health care and education, but the point was that humans want what's theirs and the socialist system doesn't cater to it. The example of tribal people taking care of each other is more akin to how families work rather than a socialist society. A nation of millions can't be one big happy family, strangers will always be less relevant to you than your family members.

It's a society, not a clique. No one person operates in a vacuum in society, including the wealthy. You make more then you pay more in taxes, it's that simple. If you made your wealth by selling keychains in stores, then you owe society at least taxes. Without the people buying keychains, you wouldn't have much wealth. Also if everyone stopped buying goods then the financial system would collapse. And unlike the past where you'd take your money in gold and go to another country, if the financial system collapsed in Finland then the Euro would devalue massively. If enough European country failed then the Euro is useless. Money is tied to the people, so it is literally the peoples money. The wealthy just so happen to be holding onto it for us.

Transition to a fully automated society is the biggest hurdle and I for one don't know how it will go. Even if everything is fully automated and the manufacture no longer require human input, someone still created those machines and owns them, intending for the profits to go their way. Does the nation just steal them in the name of greater good? That can become very ugly, especially if big companies foresee it and prepare countermeasures.

Did you know during WW2 the American government went to the factories and just took them away from companies? So until the war was over, a lot of companies were shit out of luck. But it was for the greater good.

Eventually we'll have to do that when we reach a highly automated society. And it's not like companies will make cheaper products when they pay for zero workers. Price gouging is inevitable. But I see this effecting things like food, apartments, and energy. Not for things like buying an Xbox or a TV. That will largely be privatized even in a socialist society.

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Yep, everyone was assigned a task. Males were trained to hunt and defend the village, and the females were trained to breed. Its called patriarchy, and you're on the wrong side of this argument, my friend.

Actually we men are responsible for women being what they are. We literally breed them to be shorter on average, weaker on average, and having boobs which serve no purpose other than to amuse men. No other mammal has breasts before a pregnancy. There is no benefit evolutionary to have women like this.

Sorry, but this is naive, and contrary to natural selection. Most wild mammals do, in some form, discard the sick and injured.

Good thing we're human. That is one of the characteristics of being human.

Studies have also shown that selfishness is its own reward. Studies show coffee is good for your heart. Studies show coffee is bad for your heart. Studies show people tend to pick their 'studies', and thus, 'facts'.

But yea, doing good things does reward the brain. Smoking cigarettes also gives the same response, but that may also mean people who smoke are desensitized to wanting to do good things.

Socialism has been tried and failed far too many times now. Its time to move on. Capitalism, with socialist systems (public healthcare, education, welfare, etc) is objectively better. Utopia is an illusion.

What societies have failed due to socialism and don't say Venezuela? How do you feel about communism, cause China might wanna have a talk with you about that.

[zenkai]

Actually we men are responsible for women being what they are. We literally breed them to be shorter on average, weaker on average, and having boobs which serve no purpose other than to amuse men. No other mammal has breasts before a pregnancy. There is no benefit evolutionary to have women like this.

Do you write for The Onion? Because this is some ignorant view points right there.

What societies have failed due to socialism and don't say Venezuela? How do you feel about communism, cause China might wanna have a talk with you about that.

China's success is on the backs of western society. No sane person I know would want to live in China, if you do, you must not know how they treat their citizens.

[Irian]

It's hard to define anything as "human nature" because cavemen did it. Cavemen did it because making friends and sharing with the caveman that figured out how to spear fish effectively was better than killing him and taking his spear.

Sadly this isn't really the case anymore. People are too common to have any value to another person and if there's no value then there are going to be people who detest them. If another person and their individual talents are valuable then they're going to be much more valuable as a result.

That isn't to say that I agree with the people who have the believe that socialism goes against human nature. I actually believe people are strongly inclined towards a "socialist" attitude when put into smaller and smaller groups.

[Allenseiei]

When you can give people incentives in a hard ridden socialist/communist society so that people still strive to make new and better things, then you will have something.
Humans are selfish and will only look for themselves unless there's more to gain than to lose. Socialism, by ideal is good, but in practice people only abuse it and make others work while they do nothing.

A mix of socialism and capitalism is the best way to go, which is what Keynes thought out through goverment intervention to soothe to a degree the differences in income. However, too much socialism(when unemployed monetary help is enough to sustain a family to a degree) will remove incentives in productivity and work which makes this very system unsustainable. While too much capitalism breaches the gap between people, reducing the money that flows in the markets and reducing consumtion which later leads to less sales, more people fired, and the cycle repeats untill it colapses.

So its neither socialism nor capitalism, its to make a balance between the two, which is unfortunately not easy.

Soviet Russia was a dictatorship of the party who made the people believe they actually had freedom. People lived in misery while the party lived in luxury.
China was similar to russia. Government intervention was so high that they even decided who lived and who died without a care in the world.
Precedent communist countries were just totatlitarian hidden under the lie of "its for the people", even though it was without the people.

[nycnyc88]

You're familiar with totalitarianism and the personal cult politics of Soviet Russia. But it's a true argument, socialism has yet to properly exist. I would agree, true socialism is very difficult to achieve.
We see tons of nations fail over the history of the world, but we never stop to say which political system or economical system they had until it can somehow be blamed on Socialism or other leftwing political ideals. Capitalism is hardly a good nor permanent solution either and I'm assuming you understand why.
You speak of critical thinking but I think you mean "Agree with my point of view".

The US isn't even freaking remotely leftwing. Even the Democrats are rightwing by many European standards. It's such hyperbolic garbage to keep going "OH SOCIALISM IS DESTROYING THE US!" when it's so blatantly capitalism, greed and a corrupt governmental system that's causing the most harm to the country, it's freedoms and it's citizens. This is the country where companies rule the government for crying out loud! COMPANIES BUY THE GOVERNMENT and you want to blame socialistic ideals for a precieved decline? Absolutely absurd.

Borrowed time? This screams of ignorance. Yeah while most countries suffered in the recessions my country managed to weather it pretty good. Scandinavia has the best equality, the most freedom and even contains the happiest populations.
Influx of illegal immigrants? Are you confusing Sweden for the US or what?

Many western nations struggle with population problems and worker problems because of the babyboomers going into pension and there aren't enough people to replace them. Immigration is not the problem, it's the solution to the workforce problem.
Sweden, and Scandinavia as a whole, aren't on the werge of collapse, doomsayer. Throw away that brush you're painting everyone with.

That article misses the point and ignores the actual history of countries such as Sweden. "social cohesion, hard work, and individual responsibility." stems out of a worker revolution in the early 1900's, where the previous class system was dismantled, people became more free and much less oppressed, no longer stuck in miserable lives as slaves. Those were the origins of the Social Democratic party here, with a foundation in socialistic ideals of equalit and the democratic ideals of freedom and liberty.
The article also completely misses how the entire WORLD has changed, economies have changed with it. It seems to not understand how the world works and draws some ridiculous lines between things such as "the longest average life spans among Nordic peoples are found in Iceland — the small Nordic cousin that has the most distinctly Nordic culture, but also the most limited welfare system.", are they seriously implying a correlation between lifespan, being "Nordic" and welfare here?

This garbage pisses me off so much I don't think I can keep responding to everything I see in it. You think you're so well-informed but all you've done is consume information from a single side and from sources that just reaffirm your bias. I think maybe you should take a page from your own book and look at some different sources, because you seem hellbent on finding anything that agree's with you and that dislikes what you dislike.
Yeah maybe young people can read more and educate themselves so we can avoid ending up in poverty as slaves to overlords, no matter what guise or system they try and do so under.

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What's weak then? Whom that lives do you deem is unworthy of living so we know who you want to murder?

In other words, a classic liberal answer of "The socialism that was tried in place zzz was not true socialism", aka socialism is unattainable and will never be attainable as long as humans exist. (Are you willing to share your apartment with others? Your wife? Waiting for the typical socialist response here).

1. Socialism is the Big Lie of the twentieth century. While it promised prosperity, equality, and security, it delivered poverty, misery, and tyranny. Equality was achieved only in the sense that everyone was equal in his or her misery.

In the same way that a Ponzi scheme or chain letter initially succeeds but eventually collapses, socialism may show early signs of success. But any accomplishments quickly fade as the fundamental deficiencies of central planning emerge. It is the initial illusion of success that gives government intervention its pernicious, seductive appeal. In the long run, socialism has always proven to be a formula for tyranny and misery.

A pyramid scheme is ultimately unsustainable because it is based on faulty principles. Likewise, collectivism is unsustainable in the long run because it is a flawed theory. Socialism does not work because it is not consistent with fundamental principles of human behavior. The failure of socialism in countries around the world can be traced to one critical defect: it is a system that ignores incentives.

In a capitalist economy, incentives are of the utmost importance. Market prices, the profit-and-loss system of accounting, and private property rights provide an efficient, interrelated system of incentives to guide and direct economic behavior. Capitalism is based on the theory that incentives matter!

Under socialism, incentives either play a minimal role or are ignored totally. A centrally planned economy without market prices or profits, where property is owned by the state, is a system without an effective incentive mechanism to direct economic activity. By failing to emphasize incentives, socialism is a theory inconsistent with human nature and is therefore doomed to fail. Socialism is based on the theory that incentives don’t matter!



2. The strength of capitalism can be attributed to an incentive structure based upon the three Ps: (1) prices determined by market forces, (2) a profit-and-loss system of accounting and (3) private property rights. The failure of socialism can be traced to its neglect of these three incentive-enhancing components.



3. By their failure to foster, promote, and nurture the potential of their people through incentive-enhancing institutions, centrally planned economies deprive the human spirit of full development. Socialism fails because it kills and destroys the human spirit–just ask the people leaving Cuba in homemade rafts and boats [and those waiting in long lines today in Venezuela struggling, and often failing, to buy food].



4. The temptress of socialism is constantly luring us with the offer: “give up a little of your freedom and I will give you a little more security.” As the experience of this century has demonstrated, the bargain is tempting but never pays off. We end up losing both our freedom and our security.

Socialism will remain a constant temptation. We must be vigilant in our fight against socialism not only around the globe but also here in the United States.

The failure of socialism inspired a worldwide renaissance of freedom and liberty. For the first time in the history of the world, the day is coming very soon when a majority of the people in the world will live in free societies or societies rapidly moving toward freedom.

Capitalism will play a major role in the global revival of liberty and prosperity because it nurtures the human spirit, inspires human creativity, and promotes the spirit of enterprise. By providing a powerful system of incentives that promote thrift, hard work, and efficiency, capitalism creates wealth.

The main difference between capitalism and socialism is this: Capitalism works.

And before you jump on arguing against capitalism, the world has not had free market capitalism for quite a while, and "socialism for the rich" / "cronyism" that is now everpresent in US, all of Europe, Russia, China, you name it, doesnt count.

[Vash The Stampede]

Do you write for The Onion? Because this is some ignorant view points right there.

Did I find a bible thumper?

China's success is on the backs of western society. No sane person I know would want to live in China, if you do, you must not know how they treat their citizens.

And western societies were more than happy to throw all their manufacturing jobs over to China, and therefore converted western societies into a service nation. So instead of people putting together cars or Xboxs, we have people that ask if you want fries with that. And it's funny cause manufacturing is 100% automated now.

Meanwhile we're now trying to give India all our IT jobs. Soon we'll move our computers to the cloud. BTW, what does that tell you about the corporations we worship?

[Sodia]

Yup Eastern Europe was Sutch paradise for 50 yrs under socialism

[melodramocracy]

Given the preponderance of slavery, war, various class systems and abuse in human history, I'd say socialism runs rather counter to our nature.

That's not to say we shouldn't strive towards it. After all, shitting ourselves is in our nature as well, until we learn that there's a better way to do things.

[Deleted]

I assume you live in the US, cause in europe people don't think theres something wrong with socialism.

And yes, it's a good idea. But good luck convincing the part of the US that was struck with the disease of religion and bad educational systems affected by it. People are brought up like sheep and have no critical thinking of their own nor do they try to inform themselves and think life is all in this fantasy book. It's a whole different sub-worl of lies that i don't know if its possible to rescue all of them from.

Actually... it's alot like the matrix. xD

[zenkai]

Did I find a bible thumper?

Wait, you post something stupid, nothing religious and you got Bible Thumper out of that? I think your deductive reasoning skills are broken.

And western societies were more than happy to throw all their manufacturing jobs over to China,

Of course they are, because of slave labor wages in China, you just argued against your point.

[Linkedblade]

Socialism is good until someone shows up with some weapons and declares everything is theirs. Look at Venezuela.

[Deleted]

I mean, nobody on this planet believes BS like "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", or "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses", and so on. Right? There's no such thing as "Southern hospitality" or people in a city coming together after disaster strikes, or whatever. Because, you know, all those things are socialism, and as such, nobody ascribes to such BS.

Right?

[Vash The Stampede]

Wait, you post something stupid, nothing religious and you got Bible Thumper out of that? I think your deductive reasoning skills are broken.

You sound like someone that is easily disturbed.

Of course they are, because of slave labor wages in China, you just argued against your point.

But you consider slave labor wages a good thing? The people jumping off buildings to build our iPhones is perfectly normal?

So let me get this straight. I said China is a successful country and you said they're successful because of western societies. I said we pay them slave labor and you say I argue against my point. You agree they're successful but I haven't even cared about your opinion that China sucks to live in. As far as I'm concerned the only part of China that sucks is their abusive use of capitalism. Cause once China took in our factories, they also took in some of our capitalism. This is the result of our western influence in China. They work all day and get paid very little. That shit wouldn't fly here in Europe and USA, but it does in China cause our capitalists want some human rights violation cheap labor. We did this. Capitalism did this.

[Synros]

This is probably the dumbest thing I've read all week...

[Jun]

You silly people and your boxes of exclusion.

The majority of things in this world aren't mutually exclusive, and that goes doubly for human beings.