Philosophical Vegan Forum

PsYcHo wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 4:11 am the far right pretends to support smaller government, but they increase the size of government every election cycle that they win.

That is the authoritarian far-right. The libertarian far-right has yet to win any election to my knowledge.

Decided to take it again. Pretty sure I'm able to appeal to most blokes.

In theory, I love the socialist ideology. Everyone shares and gets along.

In reality, I watch how people react waiting in line at the grocery store. If a new register opens and the clerk announces "I can take the next person in line", you see everyone from the back of the original line and the actual "next customer" compete in a death-race to reach the new cashier.

I'd gladly be a socialist if I didn't believe that assholes (not like the asshole I am; the kind that are assholes without provocation) would fuck it up for everyone else. Like they have every time people have tried to make a society based upon each person sharing in the spoils, regardless of individual effort.

PsYcHo wrote: ↑Mon May 14, 2018 11:59 pm In theory, I love the socialist ideology. Everyone shares and gets along.

In reality, I watch how people react waiting in line at the grocery store. If a new register opens and the clerk announces "I can take the next person in line", you see everyone from the back of the original line and the actual "next customer" compete in a death-race to reach the new cashier.

I'd gladly be a socialist if I didn't believe that assholes (not like the asshole I am; the kind that are assholes without provocation) would fuck it up for everyone else. Like they have every time people have tried to make a society based upon each person sharing in the spoils, regardless of individual effort.

How would you define socialism?

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz wrote: ↑Tue May 15, 2018 2:43 am How would you define socialism?

To put it simply (and this is just my interpretation),

A group of honorable persons, who wish to share in both the work necessary to achieve a society that benefits everyone, and also are willing to help the those that are unable to contribute through no fault of their own.

Honestly, I'd love to live in the ideal socialist world.

The problem is the many variables that exist. (Assholes that take advantage. And they are legion.)

Much like my ideal Libertarian utopia, we would both have to have persons willing to .....deal with... the undesirables.. (Those who don't contribute or are willing take advantage of the weak.)

Libertarians and Socialist are quite similar in the end goal. The main difference is how we get there.

Socialist believe a large government will pave the way to utopia. Libertarian believe "no" government will pave the way to utopia.

They both have the same goal, and they are both majorly flawed. (But there have never been Libertarian Gulags...)

PsYcHo wrote: ↑Tue May 15, 2018 3:16 am A group of honorable persons, who wish to share in both the work necessary to achieve a society that benefits everyone, and also are willing to help the those that are unable to contribute through no fault of their own.

This is more a description of the sorts of people who would be attracted to socialism and the reasons why for it. I was more looking for how you would define socialism itself in order to understand how you think assholes could potentially take advantage of it.

Much like my ideal Libertarian utopia, we would both have to have persons willing to .....deal with... the undesirables.. (Those who don't contribute or are willing take advantage of the weak.)

I would like to know how in a Libertarian society, you would deal with capitalists who exploit the workers for their labour (taking advantage of the weak without contributing). In my discussions with you in the past, it appears to me like you viewed this as voluntary, and so okay. Is this still how you view this?

As well as that, could you give an example of somebody who could take advantage of the weak without contributing, which is peculiar to socialist societies?

Socialist believe a large government will pave the way to utopia.

Not true. There are many libertarian socialists and anarchist socialists. See Anarchist Spain for instance. I personally am a socialist who believes in a large government but I am not representative of all socialists.

They both have the same goal, and they are both majorly flawed. (But there have never been Libertarian Gulags...)

Sure, but there have never been any successful Libertarian societies (a prerequisite for Libertarian gulags) to my knowledge. There have never been any Social Democratic gulags, when there have been plenty of successful Social Democratic societies.

Took it too. Guess I expected it