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On June 26 2020 13:36 Salazarz wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2020 11:23 Mohdoo wrote:On June 26 2020 11:17 Erasme wrote:
Is state taking care of its citizen the difference between capitalism and socialism ? As I see it: Capitalism is a natural result of human development. It isn't really something special, it is a natural result of competing for resources. That competition ended up being called capitalism. When people compete, we pull from human instinct and a desire for survival, and as such, we "do well" and thus contribute value to a society incidentally. Socialism is an idea where once we have already got this whole civilization thing going, we realize we have the ability to focus on human wellness and then figure out how to get there. We can decide on things like old people don't rot when they are no longer able to work (social security), people shouldn't be denied healthcare based on their ability to create capital (socialized medicine), children have the right to education (public schools) and other such ideas. In my eyes, socialism wasn't possible 4000 years ago. We needed to have an actual society first. We needed people to be educated and mostly fine. Now that we are here, we are in a position to start working on adding to the socialism pile and guaranteeing more wellness to more people. This is rather inaccurate. Prehistoric societies were 'socialist'. Greek citystates were far closer to socialism than any modern country is, as was the Roman empire. Show nested quote +Perhaps it is just nuance at this point, but societies that value the things you are describing have a long history of being conquered by militaristic, selfish cultures. The cultures you are describing, according to my understanding of history, tended to be destroyed by less ethical cultures. Nowadays, the US is not likely to invade Denmark. But that isn't because Denmark has bigger or more numerous guns. Denmark is able to survive due to modern culture, not brute strength. Roman Empire is a clear example of how wrong this idea is. Incidentally, Viking age Denmark (and other Scandinavian tribes) also had a culture of ensuring that the elderly, widows, and orphans would be taken care of.
Didn't Persians take out the Roman empire? Sorry if my history is rough at this point but if I remember correctly the Persian empire were not scholars when held next to Rome. To be clear, I am far from a history buff. But I remember taking an ancient history course that talked about how plenty of honorable cultures were destroyed by less ethical, more powerful ones
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We know "socialism" works. But only at the small scale where people have aligned interests. The greatest example is the family. Families care for their weak and those unable to provide for themselves. The problem with expanding this idea beyond the family is that human psychology means there is always an outgroup. There is a probably apocryphal Arab phrase that states, "I, against my brothers. I and my brothers against my cousins. I and my brothers and my cousins against the world." Its crude, but does generally describe one core part of human psychology.
Indeed, America had a robust and dynamic welfare system centered around these values at the turn of the century ~1880-1920. Irish Catholics in a town would have their own welfare system, and so would Jews, and German Lutherans, longshoremen, etc etc. They were private, and thus not universal (sucks to be the only Catholic in a town of Protestants, for example), but it was a system that took very good care of the "deserving poor" like widowers, orphans, people crippled on the job. But the did kick out drunks and other people with social pathologies.
What capitalism does is give people a reason to transact with their outgroup (I really wish right now SSC hadn't deleted himself so I could easily link to some of his articles). It plays on another inherent trait of humans (desire to be better off) so not only do they not kill and attack their outgroup, they can even actively cooperate with them. Because cooperation is highly rewarded.
This is the principle problem large scale socialism still hasn't solved, how to encourage cooperation with the outgroup without very strong economic incentives.
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On June 26 2020 14:38 cLutZ wrote:
We know "socialism" works. But only at the small scale where people have aligned interests. The greatest example is the family. Families care for their weak and those unable to provide for themselves. The problem with expanding this idea beyond the family is that human psychology means there is always an outgroup. There is a probably apocryphal Arab phrase that states, "I, against my brothers. I and my brothers against my cousins. I and my brothers and my cousins against the world." Its crude, but does generally describe one core part of human psychology.
Indeed, America had a robust and dynamic welfare system centered around these values at the turn of the century ~1880-1920. Irish Catholics in a town would have their own welfare system, and so would Jews, and German Lutherans, longshoremen, etc etc. They were private, and thus not universal (sucks to be the only Catholic in a town of Protestants, for example), but it was a system that took very good care of the "deserving poor" like widowers, orphans, people crippled on the job. But the did kick out drunks and other people with social pathologies.
What capitalism does is give people a reason to transact with their outgroup (I really wish right now SSC hadn't deleted himself so I could easily link to some of his articles). It plays on another inherent trait of humans (desire to be better off) so not only do they not kill and attack their outgroup, they can even actively cooperate with them. Because cooperation is highly rewarded.
This is the principle problem large scale socialism still hasn't solved, how to encourage cooperation with the outgroup without very strong economic incentives.
Personally, I am not looking for full on socialism right now. How about just Denmark? Denmark has solved the problem you described. The idea of absolute socialism and absolute capitalism seem utterly stupid to discuss. We may as well talk about cities build from black holes. Its just so non-real I don't see the point. Healthcare is the most obvious example from a US perspective. I don't need to socialize the means of production, yet, but fighting against socialized healthcare feels super crazy at this point. Not saying you are fighting it in your post, just saying I think people are thinking in too many absolutes. We shouldn't ask ourselves if healthcare would be better socialized, then bring up Venezuela or the USSR.
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Netherlands45349 Posts
No, but bringing up Denmark also seems wrong, The US is vastly different then Denmark. You have over 330 million people spanning a country that is 230 the size of Demark.
My country is more similar then Denmark (Netherlands) and we can have world class care within reach of driving distance of 10-20 minutes. Such a thing is not possible in the United States. The financial & human resources & the benefits of scale needed to provide those kinds of things that make it work are fucking impossible in the US. Perhaps in certain areas of certain states sure. We have 1.5h drive distance from our capital to the outskirts of our country and even those outskirts are already having trouble finding the money, resources & people who can provide healthcare there.
Most of the funding, votes, personnel already is in the cities here, this problem is like 1000x bigger in the United States.
Also a challenge that currently resides in the NHS in UK is that it has been chronically underfunded for the past decade or so. You are reliant on other people voting for parties/people to fund the system, because if it doesn't get the adequate funding then it all falls apart (my friend has been waiting for over a year to get her surgery, and now she is basically going private because she has no other choice, she can't wait another half a year, the NHS doesn't have the resources to help her). That is something I am not sure the United States is prepared for either.
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On June 26 2020 14:48 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2020 14:38 cLutZ wrote:
We know "socialism" works. But only at the small scale where people have aligned interests. The greatest example is the family. Families care for their weak and those unable to provide for themselves. The problem with expanding this idea beyond the family is that human psychology means there is always an outgroup. There is a probably apocryphal Arab phrase that states, "I, against my brothers. I and my brothers against my cousins. I and my brothers and my cousins against the world." Its crude, but does generally describe one core part of human psychology.
Indeed, America had a robust and dynamic welfare system centered around these values at the turn of the century ~1880-1920. Irish Catholics in a town would have their own welfare system, and so would Jews, and German Lutherans, longshoremen, etc etc. They were private, and thus not universal (sucks to be the only Catholic in a town of Protestants, for example), but it was a system that took very good care of the "deserving poor" like widowers, orphans, people crippled on the job. But the did kick out drunks and other people with social pathologies.
What capitalism does is give people a reason to transact with their outgroup (I really wish right now SSC hadn't deleted himself so I could easily link to some of his articles). It plays on another inherent trait of humans (desire to be better off) so not only do they not kill and attack their outgroup, they can even actively cooperate with them. Because cooperation is highly rewarded.
This is the principle problem large scale socialism still hasn't solved, how to encourage cooperation with the outgroup without very strong economic incentives. Personally, I am not looking for full on socialism right now. How about just Denmark? Denmark has solved the problem you described. The idea of absolute socialism and absolute capitalism seem utterly stupid to discuss. We may as well talk about cities build from black holes. Its just so non-real I don't see the point. Healthcare is the most obvious example from a US perspective. I don't need to socialize the means of production, yet, but fighting against socialized healthcare feels super crazy at this point. Not saying you are fighting it in your post, just saying I think people are thinking in too many absolutes. We shouldn't ask ourselves if healthcare would be better socialized, then bring up Venezuela or the USSR.
Looking for full socialism/communism will have a Denmark like phase. Just so you know they aren't completely exclusive. It is however important to know there is a critical and foundational difference between more equally distributing ill gotten spoils and forming a more equitable and just society that allows the most of us to become more human.
I don't want a society that I'm comfortable in because we're locally/nationally equitably distributing resources stolen at the tip of a gun from the rest of the world.
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On June 26 2020 14:01 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2020 13:36 Salazarz wrote:On June 26 2020 11:23 Mohdoo wrote:On June 26 2020 11:17 Erasme wrote:
Is state taking care of its citizen the difference between capitalism and socialism ? As I see it: Capitalism is a natural result of human development. It isn't really something special, it is a natural result of competing for resources. That competition ended up being called capitalism. When people compete, we pull from human instinct and a desire for survival, and as such, we "do well" and thus contribute value to a society incidentally. Socialism is an idea where once we have already got this whole civilization thing going, we realize we have the ability to focus on human wellness and then figure out how to get there. We can decide on things like old people don't rot when they are no longer able to work (social security), people shouldn't be denied healthcare based on their ability to create capital (socialized medicine), children have the right to education (public schools) and other such ideas. In my eyes, socialism wasn't possible 4000 years ago. We needed to have an actual society first. We needed people to be educated and mostly fine. Now that we are here, we are in a position to start working on adding to the socialism pile and guaranteeing more wellness to more people. This is rather inaccurate. Prehistoric societies were 'socialist'. Greek citystates were far closer to socialism than any modern country is, as was the Roman empire. Perhaps it is just nuance at this point, but societies that value the things you are describing have a long history of being conquered by militaristic, selfish cultures. The cultures you are describing, according to my understanding of history, tended to be destroyed by less ethical cultures. Nowadays, the US is not likely to invade Denmark. But that isn't because Denmark has bigger or more numerous guns. Denmark is able to survive due to modern culture, not brute strength. Roman Empire is a clear example of how wrong this idea is. Incidentally, Viking age Denmark (and other Scandinavian tribes) also had a culture of ensuring that the elderly, widows, and orphans would be taken care of. Didn't Persians take out the Roman empire? Sorry if my history is rough at this point but if I remember correctly the Persian empire were not scholars when held next to Rome. To be clear, I am far from a history buff. But I remember taking an ancient history course that talked about how plenty of honorable cultures were destroyed by less ethical, more powerful ones
There were multiple factors contributing to fall of Roman Empire. The major one was indeed 'barbarians' not persians though but germanic tribes. The continiuing cultural change --> erosion of republican military etos and mindset trasition from empire builder to empire ruler is also mentioned, as is rise of christianity, plagues, change of climate and many other.
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On June 26 2020 14:48 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2020 14:38 cLutZ wrote:
We know "socialism" works. But only at the small scale where people have aligned interests. The greatest example is the family. Families care for their weak and those unable to provide for themselves. The problem with expanding this idea beyond the family is that human psychology means there is always an outgroup. There is a probably apocryphal Arab phrase that states, "I, against my brothers. I and my brothers against my cousins. I and my brothers and my cousins against the world." Its crude, but does generally describe one core part of human psychology.
Indeed, America had a robust and dynamic welfare system centered around these values at the turn of the century ~1880-1920. Irish Catholics in a town would have their own welfare system, and so would Jews, and German Lutherans, longshoremen, etc etc. They were private, and thus not universal (sucks to be the only Catholic in a town of Protestants, for example), but it was a system that took very good care of the "deserving poor" like widowers, orphans, people crippled on the job. But the did kick out drunks and other people with social pathologies.
What capitalism does is give people a reason to transact with their outgroup (I really wish right now SSC hadn't deleted himself so I could easily link to some of his articles). It plays on another inherent trait of humans (desire to be better off) so not only do they not kill and attack their outgroup, they can even actively cooperate with them. Because cooperation is highly rewarded.
This is the principle problem large scale socialism still hasn't solved, how to encourage cooperation with the outgroup without very strong economic incentives. Personally, I am not looking for full on socialism right now. How about just Denmark? Denmark has solved the problem you described. The idea of absolute socialism and absolute capitalism seem utterly stupid to discuss. We may as well talk about cities build from black holes. Its just so non-real I don't see the point. Healthcare is the most obvious example from a US perspective. I don't need to socialize the means of production, yet, but fighting against socialized healthcare feels super crazy at this point. Not saying you are fighting it in your post, just saying I think people are thinking in too many absolutes. We shouldn't ask ourselves if healthcare would be better socialized, then bring up Venezuela or the USSR.
The thing about Denmark (and not to be flippant) is that it is full of Danes. And we are not. I'm not an expert on Denmark, but if they follow Scandinavian trends, American-Danes are way better off than those in the home country. Someone once said to Milton Friedman (and I paraphrase) "There is no poverty in Sweden" to which he replied, "there is no poverty among Swedes in America" which is statistically supported. Another wrinkle is that those countries generally beat the USA on scores of economic freedom for every measure aside from taxes. They have less corruption, their regulatory states are much much better than ours for business. If we implemented their welfare, we'd be closer to a Latin American economy than a Scandinavian economy, because our regulators are already there.
Also, getting back to my initial point, Those states all implemented their welfare systems when, quite frankly, they were more homogeneous than your average American church. Also they have largely walked back a lot of their programs over the last 25 years. Demographically, the US looks more like Brazil than we do Sweden.
America is an outlier. Not just currently, but historically. The success rate of large multiethnic states is quite poor. If you dive down at American cities, unfortunately they often break down into a racial spoils system type government. Our principle of federalism has, probably, kept us going for this long. But, if we continue to elevate almost all issues to the national level, it will become an untenable situation, unless we can fix the mentality I talked about. Which I'm not sure is even desirable. I love my Fiance, Mom, Dad, Brother, and Sister. I have affection for my grandparents. I don't have similar feelings for anyone else and it is not close.
In my neighborhood I often feel alienated by the people around me who have wildly different norms than I do. A SE Asian recently hit my parked car and drove away without any remorse. My social norm is to leave a note of apology and taking responsibility. His norm was, apparently, to flee the scene and hope I hadn't taken down his plate. I did because I was fortunately on a walk. What sort of society is that? Why would I even consider that person a fellow citizen? This isn't an isolated incident.
How can you build a government, let alone a society, in those conditions? You can't. Its like creating a lung cancer insurance agency that treats smokers as well as nonsmokers.
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As an aside, I don’t think the person left you hanging because he’s South East Asian. He left because he most likely doesn’t have valid insurance, doesn’t want to pay and doesn’t want to get in trouble. That’s not an ethnic or cultural background thing, I don’t know why that’s even relevant since people of all ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds do shitty things like that no matter which country you live in.
The civil responsibility in a lot of societies is instilled via governments providing services and properly designed urban environments. In a lot of cases, American cities are designed to isolate people from each other. Is there any surprise that there’s a breakdown in civic responsibility when the urban planning and provision of services in America is like what it is?
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On June 26 2020 14:01 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2020 13:36 Salazarz wrote:On June 26 2020 11:23 Mohdoo wrote:On June 26 2020 11:17 Erasme wrote:
Is state taking care of its citizen the difference between capitalism and socialism ? As I see it: Capitalism is a natural result of human development. It isn't really something special, it is a natural result of competing for resources. That competition ended up being called capitalism. When people compete, we pull from human instinct and a desire for survival, and as such, we "do well" and thus contribute value to a society incidentally. Socialism is an idea where once we have already got this whole civilization thing going, we realize we have the ability to focus on human wellness and then figure out how to get there. We can decide on things like old people don't rot when they are no longer able to work (social security), people shouldn't be denied healthcare based on their ability to create capital (socialized medicine), children have the right to education (public schools) and other such ideas. In my eyes, socialism wasn't possible 4000 years ago. We needed to have an actual society first. We needed people to be educated and mostly fine. Now that we are here, we are in a position to start working on adding to the socialism pile and guaranteeing more wellness to more people. This is rather inaccurate. Prehistoric societies were 'socialist'. Greek citystates were far closer to socialism than any modern country is, as was the Roman empire. Perhaps it is just nuance at this point, but societies that value the things you are describing have a long history of being conquered by militaristic, selfish cultures. The cultures you are describing, according to my understanding of history, tended to be destroyed by less ethical cultures. Nowadays, the US is not likely to invade Denmark. But that isn't because Denmark has bigger or more numerous guns. Denmark is able to survive due to modern culture, not brute strength. Roman Empire is a clear example of how wrong this idea is. Incidentally, Viking age Denmark (and other Scandinavian tribes) also had a culture of ensuring that the elderly, widows, and orphans would be taken care of. Didn't Persians take out the Roman empire? Sorry if my history is rough at this point but if I remember correctly the Persian empire were not scholars when held next to Rome. To be clear, I am far from a history buff. But I remember taking an ancient history course that talked about how plenty of honorable cultures were destroyed by less ethical, more powerful ones
Wow, there's a lot to unpack here.
(1) No. Was a variety of different neighbors who nibbled away at the empire, which eventually split into two. Then the Roman Empire declined further while the Byzantine Empire continued to flourish. Eventually Rome itself was conquered and sacked by the Visigoths, although it wasn't even the capital of the western Roman empire either by then anymore. Not that it matters much as that is generally considered the final nail in the coffin of the western Roman empire. Persians predated Rome (they were a contemporary of the Greek golden age).
(2) The Visigoths sacking Rome is not because they were filthy socialists and Visigoths glorious capitalists. It was because eventually Rome stagnated and was managed extremely badly. It just didn't have the armies or money anymore to hold onto all its territory, and opportunistic local powers took advantage of that. Doesn't mean local powers were more capitalist. In fact these concepts themselves are meaningless until approximately enlightenment or even the industrial revolution as capital wasn't recognized as a thing.
(3) Ethical cultures? Why is Rome in 410 more ethical than Visigoths or Gauls? In general, most of history was decided without a fig of thought for ethics. And was decided mostly by invention of bigger and better sticks (Greece, Rome, China, Mongols, Conquistadors), or the organization to use it (Arabian conquest, and the eventual reconquest, Alexander the Great, Napoleon). In general, at the center of large empires, arts and science flourished. This doesn't make Rome, Damascus, Constantinople, Sevilla or London "ethical", it makes them so rich they didn't have to worry about where their next meal was coming from or what the neighbor was up to with that big stick.
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On June 26 2020 16:18 StalkerTL wrote:
As an aside, I don’t think the person left you hanging because he’s South East Asian. He left because he most likely doesn’t have valid insurance, doesn’t want to pay and doesn’t want to get in trouble. That’s not an ethnic or cultural background thing, I don’t know why that’s even relevant since people of all ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds do shitty things like that no matter which country you live in.
The civil responsibility in a lot of societies is instilled via governments providing services and properly designed urban environments. In a lot of cases, American cities are designed to isolate people from each other. Is there any surprise that there’s a breakdown in civic responsibility when the urban planning and provision of services in America is like what it is?
The person who hit me is a professor. It is a cultural thing. He is a sociopath as far as I am concerned.
Edit:
If it was not clear. He has presented his actions as normal in court.
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On June 26 2020 16:35 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2020 16:18 StalkerTL wrote:
As an aside, I don’t think the person left you hanging because he’s South East Asian. He left because he most likely doesn’t have valid insurance, doesn’t want to pay and doesn’t want to get in trouble. That’s not an ethnic or cultural background thing, I don’t know why that’s even relevant since people of all ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds do shitty things like that no matter which country you live in.
The civil responsibility in a lot of societies is instilled via governments providing services and properly designed urban environments. In a lot of cases, American cities are designed to isolate people from each other. Is there any surprise that there’s a breakdown in civic responsibility when the urban planning and provision of services in America is like what it is? The person who hit me is a professor. It is a cultural thing. He is a sociopath as far as I am concerned. Edit: If it was not clear. He has presented his actions as normal in court.
Have you considered he doesn't value private property as equivalent to human life like you have with your armchair sociopath diagnosis?
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On June 26 2020 16:35 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2020 16:18 StalkerTL wrote:
As an aside, I don’t think the person left you hanging because he’s South East Asian. He left because he most likely doesn’t have valid insurance, doesn’t want to pay and doesn’t want to get in trouble. That’s not an ethnic or cultural background thing, I don’t know why that’s even relevant since people of all ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds do shitty things like that no matter which country you live in.
The civil responsibility in a lot of societies is instilled via governments providing services and properly designed urban environments. In a lot of cases, American cities are designed to isolate people from each other. Is there any surprise that there’s a breakdown in civic responsibility when the urban planning and provision of services in America is like what it is? The person who hit me is a professor. It is a cultural thing. He is a sociopath as far as I am concerned. Edit: If it was not clear. He has presented his actions as normal in court.
How do you know that it's a 'cultural thing'? It's a single negative interaction with one individual. Seems rather hasty to make a judgment over a group of people comprised of multiple different nationalities and vastly different cultures based on that.
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On June 26 2020 16:48 Salazarz wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2020 16:35 cLutZ wrote:On June 26 2020 16:18 StalkerTL wrote:
As an aside, I don’t think the person left you hanging because he’s South East Asian. He left because he most likely doesn’t have valid insurance, doesn’t want to pay and doesn’t want to get in trouble. That’s not an ethnic or cultural background thing, I don’t know why that’s even relevant since people of all ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds do shitty things like that no matter which country you live in.
The civil responsibility in a lot of societies is instilled via governments providing services and properly designed urban environments. In a lot of cases, American cities are designed to isolate people from each other. Is there any surprise that there’s a breakdown in civic responsibility when the urban planning and provision of services in America is like what it is? The person who hit me is a professor. It is a cultural thing. He is a sociopath as far as I am concerned. Edit: If it was not clear. He has presented his actions as normal in court. How do you know that it's a 'cultural thing'? It's a single negative interaction with one individual. Seems rather hasty to make a judgment over a group of people comprised of multiple different nationalities and vastly different cultures based on that.
That's racism for ya
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If you want a more social democracy like the countries in Scandinavia, you need to be aware that there are three pillars that enables us to have a such system. It is what makes it hard for other countries to imitate our system and in my opinion, US is probably one of the countries that would struggle the most of acquiring said pillars. The pillars that our system stands on are:
Strong trust in everyone else: Knowing that other's will not abuse the system, makes you not abuse the system.
Strong trust in the state: Knowing that no matter who you are, you will be treated equally by the government/bureaucrats within our strong social bureaucracy. Do not mistake strong bureaucracy for being inefficient btw, Norway has some of the strongest bureaucracies in the world while at the same time being one of the most efficient.
Everyone benefits from tax: No matter if you are rich or poor, you shall get the benefits from the tax you are paying. It doesn't matter if you have a looooooooooooooot of money, you are still getting e.g free school, medical care or financial support as a student. It is a lot easier to get people to agree on paying taxes, when you know that if you need help, you will also benefit from it. It is less likely it will happen, I mean you are rich after all, but if you need it, you will get it. The welfare in the welfare state is not something just for middle/lower class. Everyone benefits and get support. This is what I consider to be a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people who want a social system like the Nordic countries.
This video series from one of our best comedians are going deeper into the science (from a Norwegian perspective) behind it, unfortunately it is only in Norwegian.
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On June 26 2020 16:35 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2020 16:18 StalkerTL wrote:
As an aside, I don’t think the person left you hanging because he’s South East Asian. He left because he most likely doesn’t have valid insurance, doesn’t want to pay and doesn’t want to get in trouble. That’s not an ethnic or cultural background thing, I don’t know why that’s even relevant since people of all ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds do shitty things like that no matter which country you live in.
The civil responsibility in a lot of societies is instilled via governments providing services and properly designed urban environments. In a lot of cases, American cities are designed to isolate people from each other. Is there any surprise that there’s a breakdown in civic responsibility when the urban planning and provision of services in America is like what it is? The person who hit me is a professor. It is a cultural thing. He is a sociopath as far as I am concerned. Edit: If it was not clear. He has presented his actions as normal in court.
Seems like a cultural thing for Americans to consider other races as sociopaths I guess, huh...
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Engel’s loss to Bowman in NY is an extremely promising sign that AIPAC is losing influence, here’s to hoping!
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On June 26 2020 16:06 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2020 14:48 Mohdoo wrote:On June 26 2020 14:38 cLutZ wrote:
We know "socialism" works. But only at the small scale where people have aligned interests. The greatest example is the family. Families care for their weak and those unable to provide for themselves. The problem with expanding this idea beyond the family is that human psychology means there is always an outgroup. There is a probably apocryphal Arab phrase that states, "I, against my brothers. I and my brothers against my cousins. I and my brothers and my cousins against the world." Its crude, but does generally describe one core part of human psychology.
Indeed, America had a robust and dynamic welfare system centered around these values at the turn of the century ~1880-1920. Irish Catholics in a town would have their own welfare system, and so would Jews, and German Lutherans, longshoremen, etc etc. They were private, and thus not universal (sucks to be the only Catholic in a town of Protestants, for example), but it was a system that took very good care of the "deserving poor" like widowers, orphans, people crippled on the job. But the did kick out drunks and other people with social pathologies.
What capitalism does is give people a reason to transact with their outgroup (I really wish right now SSC hadn't deleted himself so I could easily link to some of his articles). It plays on another inherent trait of humans (desire to be better off) so not only do they not kill and attack their outgroup, they can even actively cooperate with them. Because cooperation is highly rewarded.
This is the principle problem large scale socialism still hasn't solved, how to encourage cooperation with the outgroup without very strong economic incentives. Personally, I am not looking for full on socialism right now. How about just Denmark? Denmark has solved the problem you described. The idea of absolute socialism and absolute capitalism seem utterly stupid to discuss. We may as well talk about cities build from black holes. Its just so non-real I don't see the point. Healthcare is the most obvious example from a US perspective. I don't need to socialize the means of production, yet, but fighting against socialized healthcare feels super crazy at this point. Not saying you are fighting it in your post, just saying I think people are thinking in too many absolutes. We shouldn't ask ourselves if healthcare would be better socialized, then bring up Venezuela or the USSR. The thing about Denmark (and not to be flippant) is that it is full of Danes. And we are not. I'm not an expert on Denmark, but if they follow Scandinavian trends, American-Danes are way better off than those in the home country. Someone once said to Milton Friedman (and I paraphrase) "There is no poverty in Sweden" to which he replied, "there is no poverty among Swedes in America" which is statistically supported. Another wrinkle is that those countries generally beat the USA on scores of economic freedom for every measure aside from taxes. They have less corruption, their regulatory states are much much better than ours for business. If we implemented their welfare, we'd be closer to a Latin American economy than a Scandinavian economy, because our regulators are already there. Also, getting back to my initial point, Those states all implemented their welfare systems when, quite frankly, they were more homogeneous than your average American church. Also they have largely walked back a lot of their programs over the last 25 years. Demographically, the US looks more like Brazil than we do Sweden. America is an outlier. Not just currently, but historically. The success rate of large multiethnic states is quite poor. If you dive down at American cities, unfortunately they often break down into a racial spoils system type government. Our principle of federalism has, probably, kept us going for this long. But, if we continue to elevate almost all issues to the national level, it will become an untenable situation, unless we can fix the mentality I talked about. Which I'm not sure is even desirable. I love my Fiance, Mom, Dad, Brother, and Sister. I have affection for my grandparents. I don't have similar feelings for anyone else and it is not close. In my neighborhood I often feel alienated by the people around me who have wildly different norms than I do. A SE Asian recently hit my parked car and drove away without any remorse. My social norm is to leave a note of apology and taking responsibility. His norm was, apparently, to flee the scene and hope I hadn't taken down his plate. I did because I was fortunately on a walk. What sort of society is that? Why would I even consider that person a fellow citizen? This isn't an isolated incident. How can you build a government, let alone a society, in those conditions? You can't. Its like creating a lung cancer insurance agency that treats smokers as well as nonsmokers.
That's quite rich from Friedman. Sweden is doing well because the country's system and ideology is based on the opposite of what Friedman spent his life advocating : trust in your fellow man, cooperation, collective spirit, and in the detail, strong state control over the economy, strong taxation, strong regulations, small inequalities.
Seems to me that instead of examining why the immense success of the nordic model kinds of disproves his work, he puts it on Sweden having fewer brown people. That's a bit easy really.
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On June 26 2020 16:41 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2020 16:35 cLutZ wrote:On June 26 2020 16:18 StalkerTL wrote:
As an aside, I don’t think the person left you hanging because he’s South East Asian. He left because he most likely doesn’t have valid insurance, doesn’t want to pay and doesn’t want to get in trouble. That’s not an ethnic or cultural background thing, I don’t know why that’s even relevant since people of all ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds do shitty things like that no matter which country you live in.
The civil responsibility in a lot of societies is instilled via governments providing services and properly designed urban environments. In a lot of cases, American cities are designed to isolate people from each other. Is there any surprise that there’s a breakdown in civic responsibility when the urban planning and provision of services in America is like what it is? The person who hit me is a professor. It is a cultural thing. He is a sociopath as far as I am concerned. Edit: If it was not clear. He has presented his actions as normal in court. Have you considered he doesn't value private property as equivalent to human life like you have with your armchair sociopath diagnosis?
So would you not be phased by that behavior at all? You don't mind people breaking your shit?
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On June 26 2020 19:04 Zambrah wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2020 16:35 cLutZ wrote:On June 26 2020 16:18 StalkerTL wrote:
As an aside, I don’t think the person left you hanging because he’s South East Asian. He left because he most likely doesn’t have valid insurance, doesn’t want to pay and doesn’t want to get in trouble. That’s not an ethnic or cultural background thing, I don’t know why that’s even relevant since people of all ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds do shitty things like that no matter which country you live in.
The civil responsibility in a lot of societies is instilled via governments providing services and properly designed urban environments. In a lot of cases, American cities are designed to isolate people from each other. Is there any surprise that there’s a breakdown in civic responsibility when the urban planning and provision of services in America is like what it is? The person who hit me is a professor. It is a cultural thing. He is a sociopath as far as I am concerned. Edit: If it was not clear. He has presented his actions as normal in court. Seems like a cultural thing for Americans to consider other races as sociopaths I guess, huh...
Well, probably more of a cultural thing for Americans to think people who damage one's car and take no responsibility for it are sociopaths.
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EPT
