GreenEarthAl
02-11-2008, 08:31 AM
So, I'm not really a socialist. I have a lot of friends that are. Socialists. Or communists. I'm more inclined to side with Ferris Beuller, who stated famously, "-Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself."
Sounds good to me. The friends of mine who are into socialism and/or communism all seem to be of a mind to believe "If we can only change the rules to mandate sharing, the world will automatically become egalitarian and fair."
Me. I doubt it. I tend to believe that there are no rules you can dream up, that can not be subverted by those with a different end in mind. I've come to believe this, mainly because of capitalism. When I real bits and pieces of Adam Smith --often credited with being the father of capitalism-- it seems quite clear to me that he had very egalitarian ideas in mind when he was doing all of that lofty thinking. And it seems fairly well substantiated too, that the engineers of this great libertarian capitalistic experiment called the USA felt that capitalism could not help but provide an ever-more egalitarian society that would drive itself toward a just existence for all. The people who were perfectly happy controlling everything and everyone in feudal times (and probably before) have proven quite capably that they can subvert capitalism without much difficulty and make it so that the very few control everything and everyone again for most practical intents and purposes.
Just as a lot of the ideas behind socialism and communism are pretty sound, the ideas behind capitalism were pretty sound. If anyone could create a superior product and bring it to market, and market forces could keep prices down to what consumers could afford then maybe society could march ever onward toward a just existence for all, and be some sort of meritocracy. But the powers that were, were able to get around that with trusts and monopolies, and when governments sought to break up their trusts and monopolies they just bounced back with various duopolies and cabals, and then bought the governments so that the governments wouldn't be inclined to regulate them in any meaningful way ever again. And then they bought the media and all of our culture so that they could send us daily messages about how free and just a society we already have, so people would stop even asking the government for any regulations.
So now we have capitalism, after a fashion --it's similar to capitalism-- and so long as people get a constant influx of stories on the news about people who win $25 Million!!! in the lotto, and baseball players who get $12 million or whatever to throw the ball, and the person who spilled coffee on themselves at McDonald's and got 4 Million, and then an occasional story to remind us about Bill Gates in the business pages, we will all continue on believing that America really does have upward mobility and anyone can make it big and nothing could be more fair than capitalism. So never mind the fact that none of it has anything to do with most people's daily reality --hell, get enough people plugged into "reality television" and the internet and there won't even be a such thing as daily reality anymore.
The most ironic thing of all, in my opinion, is that the USA actually already is socialist and always has been. Never mind the fact that nation-states everywhere have had socialist militaries since times immemorial, but the USA has had a remarkable socialist fire fighting system since before its inception. A good socialist fire prevention system is necessary to protect personal property, you can't very well wait around to find out whether a structure is owned by an affluent person or not or whether anyone can afford to put the fire out, you just put it out. So for protection of personal property a little socialism never hurt anybody. Nobody cries about how a huge beurocracy couldn't possibly be efficient at fighting fires on a national scale. And even industries like waste management and mail delivery where they're trying their level best to prove that privatization can work so much better than huge socialist beurocracies, it requires the same (and even greater) large subsidies and tax incentives to enable private interests to deliver these services that were already perfectly adequate (and could have been eternally stable but not for the huge national debt we started running up in the 80s (in order to procure ICBMs of mass destruction)).
For as much as systems like the postal service are villafied in our media and culture, it's hard to make the case that the USA did not have a fast, effective and efficient AND affordable postal service that was the envy of many nations for at least two centuries. Can be done when the will is there to do it. But then so can it be undone when the will is there to destroy it. And so the Fed-Ex + UPS duopoly probably will eventually overcome the sentimentality that people have for the USPS; when enough old people die and the email generation comes to prominence.
So the point (finally) is this. I highly doubt the world can be made fair through any adjusting of the rules. And I should think that Joe Stalin's USSR should be proof enough that just because a ruler of a system calls themself a communist, does not make them Mr. Rogers. There is no magical set of rules --not socialism, not communism and certainly not capitalism-- that will automatically make a society just and equitable. If your goal really is to make a just and equitable society basic rules of conduct can be a good start, but you need to work systemically, on all aspects. You need to EFFECTIVELY stop those who would subvert those rules, and you need the rules to be flexible enough to change when they can be demonstrated to be unfair. Fair play or else.
Easy enough to say I guess.
Sounds good to me. The friends of mine who are into socialism and/or communism all seem to be of a mind to believe "If we can only change the rules to mandate sharing, the world will automatically become egalitarian and fair."
Me. I doubt it. I tend to believe that there are no rules you can dream up, that can not be subverted by those with a different end in mind. I've come to believe this, mainly because of capitalism. When I real bits and pieces of Adam Smith --often credited with being the father of capitalism-- it seems quite clear to me that he had very egalitarian ideas in mind when he was doing all of that lofty thinking. And it seems fairly well substantiated too, that the engineers of this great libertarian capitalistic experiment called the USA felt that capitalism could not help but provide an ever-more egalitarian society that would drive itself toward a just existence for all. The people who were perfectly happy controlling everything and everyone in feudal times (and probably before) have proven quite capably that they can subvert capitalism without much difficulty and make it so that the very few control everything and everyone again for most practical intents and purposes.
Just as a lot of the ideas behind socialism and communism are pretty sound, the ideas behind capitalism were pretty sound. If anyone could create a superior product and bring it to market, and market forces could keep prices down to what consumers could afford then maybe society could march ever onward toward a just existence for all, and be some sort of meritocracy. But the powers that were, were able to get around that with trusts and monopolies, and when governments sought to break up their trusts and monopolies they just bounced back with various duopolies and cabals, and then bought the governments so that the governments wouldn't be inclined to regulate them in any meaningful way ever again. And then they bought the media and all of our culture so that they could send us daily messages about how free and just a society we already have, so people would stop even asking the government for any regulations.
So now we have capitalism, after a fashion --it's similar to capitalism-- and so long as people get a constant influx of stories on the news about people who win $25 Million!!! in the lotto, and baseball players who get $12 million or whatever to throw the ball, and the person who spilled coffee on themselves at McDonald's and got 4 Million, and then an occasional story to remind us about Bill Gates in the business pages, we will all continue on believing that America really does have upward mobility and anyone can make it big and nothing could be more fair than capitalism. So never mind the fact that none of it has anything to do with most people's daily reality --hell, get enough people plugged into "reality television" and the internet and there won't even be a such thing as daily reality anymore.
The most ironic thing of all, in my opinion, is that the USA actually already is socialist and always has been. Never mind the fact that nation-states everywhere have had socialist militaries since times immemorial, but the USA has had a remarkable socialist fire fighting system since before its inception. A good socialist fire prevention system is necessary to protect personal property, you can't very well wait around to find out whether a structure is owned by an affluent person or not or whether anyone can afford to put the fire out, you just put it out. So for protection of personal property a little socialism never hurt anybody. Nobody cries about how a huge beurocracy couldn't possibly be efficient at fighting fires on a national scale. And even industries like waste management and mail delivery where they're trying their level best to prove that privatization can work so much better than huge socialist beurocracies, it requires the same (and even greater) large subsidies and tax incentives to enable private interests to deliver these services that were already perfectly adequate (and could have been eternally stable but not for the huge national debt we started running up in the 80s (in order to procure ICBMs of mass destruction)).
For as much as systems like the postal service are villafied in our media and culture, it's hard to make the case that the USA did not have a fast, effective and efficient AND affordable postal service that was the envy of many nations for at least two centuries. Can be done when the will is there to do it. But then so can it be undone when the will is there to destroy it. And so the Fed-Ex + UPS duopoly probably will eventually overcome the sentimentality that people have for the USPS; when enough old people die and the email generation comes to prominence.
So the point (finally) is this. I highly doubt the world can be made fair through any adjusting of the rules. And I should think that Joe Stalin's USSR should be proof enough that just because a ruler of a system calls themself a communist, does not make them Mr. Rogers. There is no magical set of rules --not socialism, not communism and certainly not capitalism-- that will automatically make a society just and equitable. If your goal really is to make a just and equitable society basic rules of conduct can be a good start, but you need to work systemically, on all aspects. You need to EFFECTIVELY stop those who would subvert those rules, and you need the rules to be flexible enough to change when they can be demonstrated to be unfair. Fair play or else.
Easy enough to say I guess.