On April 15, 2026 at the University of Texas at Austin, Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gave a speech, “Remarks on the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.” He didn’t pull any punches. I urge you to watch the entire thing on YouTube or read the full transcript linked above. For the purpose of this Überpost, however, I want to concentrate on just this excerpt:
European thinkers have long criticized America for remaining trapped in a Lockean world, with its weak decentralized government and strong individual rights. They say our 18th century Declaration has prevented us from progressing to higher forms of government. Why has America never had a socialist party, one German sociologist famously asked. But we were fortunate not to trade our Lockean bounds for the supposedly enlightened world of Hegel, Marx, and their followers. Fascism – which, after all, was a national socialism – triggered wars in Europe and Asia that killed tens of millions. The socialism of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China proceeded to kill more tens of millions of their own people. This is what happens when natural rights give way to the higher good of notions of history, progress, or, as Thomas Sowell has written, the “vision of the anointed.”
None of this, of course, was an improvement on the principles of the Declaration. Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is largely about how America owed its superiority over Europe to its conscious decision to reject central planning and administrative rule root and branch. Progressivism, in other words, is retrogressive.
Tech Bro Peter Thiel recently predicted:
I think there’s going to be a democratic-socialist takeover of the Democratic Party.
The Republican Party doesn’t matter that much. It’s the less important one. When the Democratic Party goes, this country is over.
One thing that Muslims and Socialists have in common: Their goals are absolute power, and their plans are very long-term.
The point of Justice Thomas’s lecture was that it is up to We, the People, to stand in the way, say “NO!” And make it stick. Regardless of the cost. Our lives, fortunes and sacred honor are at stake whether we do or not.
But to do so effectively, first we must understand what we’re up against. We’re up against millions of carefully created “useful idiots,” the Left’s “True Believers” Eric Hoffer warned us about. I wrote about Hoffer’s warning in 2005, if you’re interested. Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov explained it in 1984. It’s a four-step process:
- De-moralization. In all meanings of the word. Bezmenov said it required about 20 years, long enough to brainwash one generation of your enemy. At the time he was recorded it had been going on since at least the 1950’s.
- Destabilization. Screw with the social cohesion of your enemy. Financial, social, cultural, criminal, etc. Make everyone uncertain, hesitant, unconfident, pessimistic. In a word, enervated.
- Crisis. Self-explanatory. This is when “new leadership” steps in promising “solutions” if you’ll just give them unprecedented power to create…
- Re-normalization. Only things don’t go back to “normal.” You get a new “normal” that’s very different from what you thought you were promised.
Meet your new Overlords, who will shortly be busy putting the Useful Idiots against the wall pour encourager les autres. After all, they will be the ones most upset about not getting that utopia they were promised.
Four years ago over at Quora I answered a simple question: “Why does the idea of socialism and the distribution of wealth displease the majority?” I answered the question with one of my own: “Why is my desire to keep what I have earned considered ‘greed,’ but your desire to take what I have earned not ‘greed’?” What followed was a comment exchange almost 60 posts long where “Alan Dumont” and I debated socialism vs capitalism.
No, that’s not correct. We talked right past each other. I tried to engage, but his ideological blinders were on tight. But what “Alan Dumont” did was provide a perfect example of type. And there are a lot of his type in the world today. Western Public Education has ensured it.
For the purposes of this post, I’m going to repost that entire exchange for your edification. In hindsight, I left a lot out of the discussion I wish I’d included, but I will address this in Part II of this epic-length Überpost. I will also post Part II physically after Part I, and comments will be turned off for Part I. So, if you’re ready, willing and able, click to open below.
So here’s that Quora exchange. I answered the question “Why does the idea of socialism and the distribution of wealth displease the majority?” with a question of my own:
Why is my desire to keep what I have earned considered “greed,” but your desire to take what I have earned not “greed”?
This triggered a True Believer, one “Alan DuMont,” and sparked an epic comment exchange I think needs to be seen. This is the complete exchange. I will comment on it in Part 2. So here we go:
Alan DuMont:
That’s an interesting way of putting it. Why is my desire to keep the value I’ve created called greed, but my bosses desire to keep a good portion of the value I create is not considered greed.
Sorry, but socialism is literally a method to stop people (the capital holders) from taking value that they themselves have not earned.
Your Humble Author:
But value they have paid you to produce, provided the raw materials, the necessary equipment, and the location. Let’s say you park cars for a high-end hotel. You’re paid $10/hr. and on a busy night you can park 100 cars. The hotel gets $35 per car. That’s $3500 in one evening. You work 8 hours and get paid $80! (Plus tips.) Those greedy capitalists are taking $3,420 that you earned! That’s not fair!
Go into business for yourself parking cars. See how much money you make without owning the hotel, AND the parking lot that people want to park at. And note, the hotel had no problem replacing you with someone else happy to park cars for $10/hr plus tips.
ADM:
And where did they get the wealth they spent on those things? Accumulated capital is always the result of exploitation. Again, that’s literally how the system we have works.
Was it inherited? Where did the parents get it? Was it loaned by a bank? How did the bank accumulate it?
The answer always leads back to exploitation. Always.YHA:
I have a basket woven so tight that it will hold water. You have a spear that is very straight with an excellent knapped blade. We trade. Who was exploited?
My tribe is good at making baskets, yours at making spears. Together we trade and both tribes have good baskets and good spears. Who was exploited?
You operate under the mistaken belief that wealth is a zero-sum game, where in order for one person to get ahead, another has to lose. Tell me, who did J.K. Rowling exploit when she created Harry Potter? People VOLUNTARILY gave her money for the books and movies she created. We traded our labor in the form of money for the entertainment she produced, and that entertainment employed thousands of people. She could use just a fraction of that money to build a hotel and parking lot. WHO DID SHE EXPLOIT?
Let’s further say I have a new Corvette. You walk up to me and ask “How many people could the money you spent on that car have fed?”
My response is, it fed the people who built it, the people who made the parts, the people who produced the raw materials, the trucker that delivered it to the dealership, the employees at the dealership that sold it. Not sure how many that is, but they worked – for agreed-upon compensation – to produce that vehicle that I spent my own hard-earned money on. We’re all better off than we would have been without it. But you cannot see that. You believe you’re entitled to my money because you can spend it better than I can. I reject that idea.
As I said above, why is it morally superior for you to take my money than to let me spend it as I see fit?
ADM:
I cannot express enough that a) money was NOT created to facilitate barter. No society has ever actually functioned on a barter system, that’s a myth.
When two people exchange goods, they exchange goods.
B) When my work generates 40 dollars of value in an hour, and my boss pays me 15 dollars for that hour, that is not the voluntary exchange that capitalists like to pretend it is. It is exploitation, intentionally taking advantage of the fact that those workers either don’t know how much value they create, or are desperate enough to accept exploitative conditions, which doesn’t stop them from being exploitative.
YHA:
Did someone force you to take the job, or did you voluntarily agree to do it for the $15/hr? Why should you be entitled to more than the $15/hr you’re paid? This is a serious question.
Oh, and you completely avoided the non-barter examples – J.K. Rowling and the Corvette.
ADM:
Yes. So long as we live in a system where basic living has costs, everyone is coerced into participating, and it isn’t voluntary.
Business owners do not create jobs. Consumers create jobs. Business owners leverage their capital against people’s needs and desperation to get that labor done in such a way that they, the capital holder, get the majority of the value created without even doing a minor portion of the work.
Similarly, landlords do not provide housing. They HOARDE housing.
I find it amazing that people who argue “it’s wrong to take what you haven’t earned” will also argue “its okay to take what you haven’t earned so long as the other person is in such a desperate position that they’ll agree to uneven terms.”
Only an idiot believes something is voluntary if one of the parties is also telling you they wouldn’t accept those terms unless they had no other choice. Which is what nearly every wage worker will tell you.
YHA:
“So long as we live in a system where basic living has costs, everyone is coerced into participating, and it isn’t voluntary.” And yet here we are, having advanced from hunter-gatherers to agronomy to the industrial revolution to the Information Age, and still you have to do something for a living if you want to eat. Basic. Living. Has. Costs. No one owes you food, shelter or medical care. No one ever will.
I’m reminded (once again) of Kipling’s “Gods of the Copybook Headings” –
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selective Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘If you don’t work you die.’
You’re objecting to reality. “If you don’t work, you die.” If you want to go live off the land as a nomad, feel free. But don’t tell me that working a job with wages and benefits is slavery, because that’s bullshit. And don’t tell me that people who risk everything they have to build a business (and hire workers) are slave-owners.
ADM:
It isn’t about anyone owing anyone anything. It’s about the fact that taking more than you need is literally unnatural and counterintuitive to the furtherance of the human race.
Here he inserted this YouTube short:
YHA:
Ah! There it is!
“It’s about the fact that taking more than you need is literally unnatural and counterintuitive to the furtherance of the human race.”
This is known as a Zeroth-Order error, and it is the axiom of Socialism. It is why Socialism does not work outside of groups of a size equal to or smaller than Dunbar’s Number, and generally not even then.
It’s wrong. It’s perfectly natural for humans to take more than they need, to want more than they have. And it’s also perfectly natural to envy others who have more than you. It isn’t a nice thing to say about humanity, but often the truth isn’t pleasant.
Even the Communist philosophers in Russia after the Revolution recognized it, and realized that in order for Communism/Socialism to “work” they would need a “New Soviet Person.” And those people would have to be CREATED, because they did not occur naturally. The fundamental characteristic of the NSP? The ability to care more about others than you care about yourself.
Good luck with that.
Example A: The Soviets decided it would be a good idea to screen “The Grapes of Wrath” to Russian audiences to prove to them that Capitalism is a failed system. That’s not what the audience took away. What they took away was that in America, even poor people had cars.
Example B: Under Communism, everyone is equal. But Party apparatchiks had lakeside dachas and got to shop in the special stores where they could get things denied to the general populace. And that were inferior to what a middle-class American could get at any store in the U.S.
Your entire philosophy is based on an idea that is obviously, provably wrong. Anything that follows from that flawed axiom is, by definition, also flawed.
Not that I expect any of that to penetrate the iron shield you’ve built around your worldview. But remember this: The overwhelming result of the implementation of Socialism/Communism is misery and death, because that axiom is wrong, but the True Believers won’t understand that. Anyone who behaves “naturally” is therefore an Enemy of the Revolution.
ADM:
Wow. Talk about completely and just WILDLY misunderstanding the point.
Human nature tends to act contrary to actual nature. I’m not saying that humans inherently have some tendency toward egalitarian behavior. The exact opposite. Humans are selfish and self-destructive.
Nature, on the other hand… the natural world… is exceptionally balanced. Each part of nature gives what it can, and takes what it needs, except for humans.
Humanity is best served by fighting against their selfish tendencies.
YHA:
Again: Good luck with that.
This brings up another memory. Have you ever seen the Science Fiction movie “Time After Time”? It’s a different take on H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine,” in which Wells actually builds the machine. In it, he and a friend of his, John Leslie Stevenson have a discussion on Socialism and the future. I found it interesting enough to transcribe:
H.G. Wells: “Socialism is the path man must tread on the way to a utopian society.
—
Wells: “In three generations, social utopia will have come to pass. There’ll be no war, crime or poverty. And no disease either, John. Men will live like brothers, and in equality with women as well.
John Leslie Stevenson: “I can’t agree with you. You astonish me. In the midst of all your theorizing, you ignore the facts. We live in a cosmic charnel house. Mankind has not changed in two thousand years. We hunt, we’re hunted. That’s how it is. How it will always be.”
Stevenson, of course, was the bad guy. But that didn’t make him wrong. In order for Socialism to work, HUMAN NATURE MUST BE CHANGED.
Here’s a YouTube clip for you:
Somebody has to speak for these people:
ADM:
How unfortunate that the author so completely misunderstood human nature… assuming he agrees with Wells’ friend.
What separates humans from animals… the ONLY thing that actually separates humans from animals… is humankind’s inclination to strive to be more than their nature dictates.
Humans spent tens of thousands of years as hunter/ gatherers. Now, almost no one hunts or gathers food for survival. The creation of civilization itself is proof that humans recognize the value of collectivism.
Don’t get me wrong… I fully acknowledge that many human beings are less evolved and prefer the short term gains of a capitalist, self- preservation worldview. But that’s defeatist, backwards thinking.
We CAN create a better, more egalitarian society, and most humans want that. The most hilarious thing about conservativism is the distinct lack of self-awareness. They’re fighting against CHANGE. They lost before they started.
YHA:
Cooperation is not “collectivism.” Civilization requires cooperation. Collectivism requires ideological conformity.
“I fully acknowledge that many human beings are less evolved and prefer the short term gains of a capitalist, self- preservation worldview. But that’s defeatist, backwards thinking.”
No, that’s NATURE. Human behavior fits a Bell curve, and you (like all Socialists) think you can make everyone the same. Tagging people as “Less evolved” is the first step in “Othering” them, which the Socialists always – always – do, prior to “purging” them for being “Counterrevolutionary” or whatever. Some people will never fit into your ideal box, and that is why Socialism is always just one more purge away from being successful. Always.
I’m what used to be known as a liberal – I’m for maximizing personal liberty, and change is part and parcel of that. What I oppose is change that LIMITS personal liberty, and “Progressivism” does that. It’s every bit as much a religion as Catholicism, with an Eden (pre-civilization Earth), a Deity (Gaia), Original Sin (Capitalism), and Heaven (Socialist society), and woe unto the heathen and apostates.
I have no problem with people wanting to make things better. I object when they insist I must believe as they believe – or else.
ADM:
First off, there has been a clear evolution of social thinking that follows a timeliness.
There was a point when the average peasant couldn’t imagine how a system could work without a king.
Then civilization evolved, and it was less about kings, and more about local lords. We reached a point where the average serf couldn’t understand a system without feudal lords.
Then civilization evolved, and it was less about aristocracy and more about sheer wealth. We reached a point where the average citizen couldn’t understand a system without capital holders “creating jobs” and paying wages. Hint: this is you.
But each time, as civilization evolved, those people were shown to be shortsighted and misunderstanding the way things actually work outside of their old-fashioned ideas.
Civilization is evolving again. Capital holders won’t be allowed to continue running things. This won’t cause the world to collapse, or everyone to live in poverty. There’s no actual reason to think it would.
YHA:
Something’s coming, but it won’t be your Socialist Utopia. That will, once again, be usurped by the power-hungry under the guise of “making you safer.”
ADM:
I don’t even disagree with that. Same in socialism as in capitalism.
I don’t know if you think that’s something capitalist societies are immune from, but it’s definitely not. The United States government has homeland security, the nsa, degrading 4th amendment rights, expanded search powers for police (and immunities for oppressive police behaviors).
People in power are going to pull that shit. That’s NOT an argument against socialism on any level.
I don’t get why capitalists point out that people in power under communist-adjacent regimes are often corrupt and live lavish lifestyles, when they are simultaneously arguing in favor of a system that does the same thing except that behavior is considered totally acceptable.
No one in a capitalist society has a leg to stand on when criticizing corruption in other systems.
YHA:
We’re pointing out to you that your ideal system NEVER WORKS. It’s taken over by corrupt people EVERY SINGLE TIME. You can be the most pure-as-the-driven-snow Socialist intent on doing good for everyone, but behind you will be a manipulative power-seeking asshole who will gladly put you in the ground in order to seize power, and there will be more lined up behind them to do the same.
IT’S HUMAN NATURE. And no matter how much you try, you CAN’T CHANGE THAT.
Friedrich von Hayek explained Adam Smith’s individualism vs. collectivism well:
“Perhaps the best illustration of the current misconceptions of the individualism of Adam Smith and his group is the common belief that they have invented the bogey of the ‘economic man’ and that their conclusions are vitiated by their assumption of a strictly rational behavior or generally by a false rationalistic psychology. They were, of course, very far from assuming anything of the kind. It would be nearer the truth to say that in their view man was by nature lazy and indolent, improvident and wasteful, and that it was only by the force of circumstances that he could be made to behave economically or carefully to adjust his means to his ends. But even this would be unjust to the very complex and realistic view which these men took of human nature. Since it has become fashionable to deride Smith and his contemporaries for their supposedly erroneous psychology, I may perhaps venture the opinion that for all practical purposes we can still learn more about the behavior of men from the Wealth of Nations than from most of the more pretentious modern treatises on ‘social psychology.’
“However that may be, the main point about which there can be little doubt is that Smith’s chief concern was not so much with what man might occasionally achieve when he was at his best but that he should have as little opportunity as possible to do harm when he was at his worst. It would scarcely be too much to claim that the main merit of the individualism which he and his contemporaries advocated is that it is a system under which bad men can do least harm. It is a social system which does not depend for its functioning on our finding good men for running it, or on all men becoming better than they now are, but which makes use of men in all their given variety and complexity, sometimes good and sometimes bad, sometimes intelligent and more often stupid. Their aim was a system under which it should be possible to grant freedom to all, instead of restricting it, as their French contemporaries wish, to ‘the good and wise.’ “
You are Thomas Sowell’s archetypical Unconstrained Vision practitioner. I’m saving this comment thread for use in similar discussions in the future. Thanks!
ADM:
Capitalism never works. It’s taken over by corruption every time.
We live in a country that throws away 40% of the food it produces while children are going hungry because it isn’t profitable to feed them.
We have 6 unlived in homes for every homeless person in America because it’s more profitable to let people hoard necessary resources like housing.
Don’t tell me about other systems failing. OUR system is failing right around us, and it isn’t because of socialism, it’s because of constant deregulation of industries through agency capture. A need for infinite profit growth pushing corporations to buy control of the government.
YHA:
“Capitalism never works. It’s taken over by corruption every time.”
This isn’t exactly an indictment. Every system is eventually overtaken by corruption. Remember: Human Nature.
“We live in a country that throws away 40% of the food it produces while children are going hungry because it isn’t profitable to feed them.”
Great! You’ve identified a problem! You are free to now try to find a way to solve it. But you live in a society where one of the biggest health threats to poor people isn’t starvation, but obesity. You can thank (or blame) capitalism for that.
“We have 6 unlived in homes for every homeless person in America because it’s more profitable to let people hoard necessary resources like housing.”
Pardon me if I take that with a big grain of skepticism. Do you have a source for this claim? And when it comes to the “homeless,” the overwhelming majority aren’t individuals and families just down on their luck, thrown out of their homes by heartless landlords. They’re mentally ill and/or addicted to drugs, and need medical and psychological care that simply putting them in an apartment won’t cure. Ask California.
“Don’t tell me about other systems failing.” Why not? They do.
“OUR system is failing right around us, and it isn’t because of socialism, it’s because of constant deregulation of industries through agency capture.”
Now here we stand on common ground. Give government the power to regulate, then first thing that gets bought is the regulators. It happens in every society. I don’t know why you believe that Socialists are somehow immune to this.
“A need for infinite profit growth pushing corporations to buy control of the government.”
BZZZT! I’m sorry, but this is incorrect. Human nature causes that. There’s always a small contingent of humanity that wants to control the rest. Always. And they will use whatever tools are available to do so.
The philosophy of Socialism is based on the premise of “If everyone would just….”
Capitalism has raised more people out of poverty than any other economic system ever tried. When properly regulated, it results in an incredible growth in wealth – for everyone. That wealth is just not evenly distributed. Even the People’s Republic of China recognized its necessity.
“Proper regulation” is – everywhere and always – corrupted over time, regardless of the system. Power attracts the corrupt and the corruptible, and you cannot get rid of them, no matter how many people you massacre. They tend to be the ones doing the massacres, anyway.
It’s far from perfect, but every time Socialism is attempted it results in disaster because it’s based on a flawed foundation – that at some magical point in the future, “everyone will just….”
ADM:
See, I’m not a communist. Communism is a system that only works when people do the right thing, despite there being plenty of incentive to do the wrong thing. This is the same problem with capitalism, BTW.
While Karl Marx (and Abraham Lincoln, incidentally) saw communism as the ideal goal, and socialism as a step towards it, that does not mean that is the only kind of socialist or socialism.
What I like about market socialism is that it actually rewards doing the right thing, and so provides incentive to do it. It’s not authoritarian. It simply makes it illegal to exploit the people who actually make a business run. Taking away the right to exploit people is not oppressive.
YHA:
Explain to me – using small words – how “market socialism” differs from what we have right now, which I assure you isn’t capitalism. It’s barely “capitalism-adjacent.”
ADM:
That’s easy. In market socialism, there are no capital holders. Every company is owned by its workers, like a workers co-op, eliminating a source of inefficiency and exploitation all at once.
And yes, any system with capital holders that run the companies and make the decisions is capitalist. We may not be laissez faire capitalism (thank God) but we are certainly capitalist. We aren’t even a little bit socialist. We have some social programs, but that’s not socialism.
Socialism is when the workers own the means of production, and that’s not a thing in America.
YHA:
Who decides what labor is worth? What products are worth? Who enforces “fairness”?
ADM:
You act like these questions have amorphous, subjective answers, because that’s what capitalism teaches in order to hide their exploitation.
But it’s actually a lot less subjective than you think.
I’ll use simple numbers to illustrate an example.
Four people work together in a landscaping company. One of them functions in an administrative capacity, answering the phone, taking orders, and dispatching the landscapers.
The other three landscape.
At the end of the month the company has brought in a total of 2 million dollars. There are 3 landscapers and 1 administrator who, combined, created 2 million dollars worth of value. Do they divide it evenly? No. You have to divide up by hours worked, and obviously you have to decide whether the administrator makes the same as the landscapers. Those decisions would be made as a group. (In a larger company, you might have a board of directors-esque arrangement, but they’d all be just normal employees.
But the company has costs first. So the employees get together, and vote on how much needs to be set aside for property rent, maintenence, equipment, resource purchases, etc.
Like… you don’t need to keep asking how would this work, or how would that work. The answer is always the same.
The only difference between the two systems is who makes the decisions (including who decides who gets what pay). Under capitalism, those decisions are made by a capital class, under socialism those decisions are made by the workers themselves, most likely using some form of democratic system.
It’s not actually more complicated than our current system. Our current system is complicated, too.
The difference in the end, though, is that if that company spends 200,000 a month on maintenance and other resources, those four workers are dividing up 1.8 million dollars.
In a capitalist system, the maintenance is still 200,000, and the revenue is still 2 mil, and 4 workers were still required to get the work done, but now there’s a 5th person taking 1.75 mil as “profits”, leaving 50,000 to split between the 4 employees as wages.
YHA:
Landscape Company A has a competitor, Landscape Company B. Landscape company B is hungry to get into the landscaping business, but it can’t hire anyone because they can’t earn what they could get at Landscape Company A, if they could get hired. Four guys decide they’re just going to go into partnership and be the budget-leaders, undercutting Landscape Company A. They take $500,000 worth of Company A’s business by doing the work for $400,000. They spend $50K on maintenance, and split $350k. Each worker brings home not $1.8 million, but $87,500.
Why would Company A want to add employees? They each get an equal share, right? Let’s say they pick up two more guys but revenue doesn’t increase for a couple of months, they just divide up the hours so they aren’t all working 60+ hours a week. Their individual net income drops to $300k. Can they fire the new guys? Why would they add partners who brought nothing but warm bodies to the game? Do the new guys bring capital to the business and buy in, or do you just expect the four guys to hire someone and make them a partner? The first four guys bought all the equipment, the building, the trucks. They took the risk of building a business. It’s not like landscaping requires a master’s degree, you can train anyone willing. Who does the books? Who makes the schedule? Who handles customer complaints? Who books the appointments?
I watched a lecture by Marxist Professor of Economics (there’s an oxymoron for you) Richard Wolff who described a socialist restaurant along the same lines as you have described, where the employees rotated through the different jobs – cooking, dishwashing, waiting tables, bussing, janitorial, buying the food, etc. It was all so simple.
Question: Why are there no large, popular restaurants built on this model?
ADM:
But… that’s easily answered with another question.
Why would ANYONE start a business using that model if they have the option to just let others do the work while they collect returns on investment?
It’s DEFINITELY a better system for everyone except the person who started the business. But so long as it isn’t the best system for that one specific person, it’s not going to happen.
Does that mean people wouldn’t start businesses anymore if they HAD to do it that way? Of course not. But there’s a huge difference between “this isn’t worth doing” and “this isn’t as profitable as it was under slavery”, and that difference also extend to “this isn’t as profitable as it was when we were allowed to exploit the workforce”.
By allowing capital holders to run businesses in a capitalist fashion, you create a system where only the elite get to truly profit. Capitalism is the ultimate system of haves and have-nots, despite the fact that’s what capitalists try to fear monger about other systems with.
YHA:
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under socialism, the opposite occurs.
Capitalism allows for unequal wealth creation. Socialism makes everyone equally poor.
Socialism can’t work so long as the Capitalist model exists. And none of the “Communist-adjacent” nations could eliminate their – Capitalist – Black Markets.
You have the basis of an “Ideal System” – Ideal in that it’s theoretically beautiful. And completely incompatible with human nature.
ADM:
The whole idea that socialism makes everyone poor is a baseless assertion. Under capitalism, man oppressed man. Under socialism, man doesn’t oppress man, it just looks like that to people that previously had unfair advantages and no longer do. People can absolutely become rich in a socialist system, the only difference is that they get rich alongside the rest of the people in their company.
YHA:
Give one example. I’ll wait.
You: “So long as we live in a system where basic living has costs, everyone is coerced into participating, and it isn’t voluntary.”
Me: Basic living always has costs. Fundamental flaw. Strike one.
You: “It’s about the fact that taking more than you need is literally unnatural and counterintuitive to the furtherance of the human race.”
Me: Taking “more than you need” is absolutely “natural” for human beings, and the human race is a hell of a lot better off today than it was 10,000 years ago. Fundamental flaw, strike two.
You: “Capitalism never works. It’s taken over by corruption every time.”
Me: “We’re pointing out to you that your ideal system NEVER WORKS. It’s taken over by corrupt people EVERY SINGLE TIME. You can be the most pure-as-the-driven-snow Socialist intent on doing good for everyone, but behind you will be a manipulative power-seeking asshole who will gladly put you in the ground in order to seize power, and there will be more lined up behind them to do the same.” We’ll call that one a foul.
You: “Why would ANYONE start a business using that model if they have the option to just let others do the work while they collect returns on investment?
“It’s DEFINITELY a better system for everyone except the person who started the business. But so long as it isn’t the best system for that one specific person, it’s not going to happen.”
Me: And therefore Socialism cannot happen while Capitalism exists. And not even the major “Communist-adjacent” nations could eliminate the – capitalist – black markets in their countries. Fundamental flaw, strike three, you’re out.
Socialism doesn’t ignore human nature, it REFUTES it outright. In order for it to “work” the behavior of the entire population must be changed, and no matter how many people are murdered to accomplish it, that change does not occur. The unscrupulous and corrupt always end up in charge.
Capitalism at least allows the little guy with a big idea a chance.
Thanks, it’s been fun, but we’re talking past each other.
ADM:
So long as we live in a system where basic living has costs, participation is coerced.
You seem to be misunderstanding my criticism.
All systems have a cost for basic living, with our current level of technology. That’s not unique in capitalism.
My criticism is that people like you forget that it is coerced, and justify conditions by insisting its voluntary. It isn’t voluntary, and those without capital do not generally have the necessary leverage to ensure a potential employer negotiates in good faith.
Capital holders and landlords should be stripped of their capital and any housing they don’t live in.
I’m not really even in favor of them getting paid for it, but i could live with it.
YHA:
We have a first-order philosophical disagreement.
Take the game Monopoly: Each player starts off with exactly the same wealth. After multiple rounds of – voluntary! – play, some have more, some have less. Who was coerced? Who was compelled?
The difference between the game and reality? The size of the pie isn’t fixed. It can be increased.
Your worldview says “Life should be FAIR! Someone should make it FAIR!!!!” Mine says “Life isn’t fair. You can do everything right and still lose, and it isn’t anybody else’s fault. It’s life.” Yours says “everyone should have just enough.” Mine says “You can do better than you are now.”
Human nature leans significantly my way.
ADM:
You know the game of monopoly was originally called the landlords’ game, and had two sets of rules. One of those rule sets was called monopoly, and was designed to show that capitalism has bad results, bankrupting the majority of players by forcing them to INVOLUNTARILY contribute to the eventual monopoly holder.
YHA:
And just how popular is the game, Alan?
How a real-life monopoly made Monopoly the world’s biggest board game – The Hustle
And why is this? Because that’s how humans work. In other words, it failed at its designed intent, and instead made somebody (or several somebodies) bloody rich by separating people voluntarily from their money. Someone created something that other people wanted. And now those creators have capital! That you want to take from them and redistribute in the name of “fairness.” How is that fair? On what planet is it fair?
But they exploited the people they hired to produce the games! No, they got people to voluntarily work for agreed upon wages to do a job that didn’t require a lot of skill or imagination. And those people needed work because existing isn’t free. And never will be. Star Trek is a fantasy. So is Socialism.
ADM:
They exploited the person who came up with the idea, and the workers who actually made the game in factories and workshops. Maggie and those workers created something that people wanted, but Hasbro stole the credit and the money.
They literally brought nothing to the table, and left with capital they could use to exploit more.
The funny thing is that you think “greed is the natural state of man” is actually a GOOD argument in your favor. Yes, greed is the natural state of man. And it’s bad for us both as individuals and as a society, so let’s use the collective force of those who aren’t benefiting from it to break the system and punish greed.
Easy peasy.
YHA:
Thank you for admitting plainly you wish to use coercive force to “make people better.”
“Envy was once considered to be one of the Seven Deadly Sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name – ‘Social Justice.’” – Thomas Sowell.
THAT is why Socialism is always just one mass-murder away from “working.” Always.
And why people like you are always the first against the wall after the Revolution.
ADM:
Yes. I’m more honest than a capitalist, because they do the same thing but won’t admit it.
They say it’s voluntary, because people begrudgingly go along with it. Well, I could say the same thing about socialism. “Of course it’s voluntary, you have the option to leave.”
The truth is that you have this obsession with the idea (and false perception) that capitalism is just people’s natural behavior, and that fighting against that natural behavior is foregone conclusion.
Unfortunately, we have all of human history saying that’s WRONG. It’s literally the evolution of humanity.
We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that humans do better when they are forced to behave certain ways under threat of violence. That’s why we have laws.
The fact that human beings accept laws as a necessary and good aspect of society, rather than some abhorrent stifling of human nature, is actual proof that your insistence on more “natural” systems is bad.
Greed is part of human nature, like violence and hatred. Trying to build a society that uses one of humans worst aspects, and insists it will push people to do good things, is not an intelligent outlook on the world.
It’s absolutely okay and within the normal score of human acceptance to make laws against bad human behavior, whether it’s murder, theft of personal property, or private property greed.
YHA:
And this brings us all the way back to my original answer to this question which you never actually addressed: “Why is my desire to keep what I have earned considered ‘greed,’ but your desire to take what I have earned not ‘greed’?” Because you’re not taking it for yourself! Except in every single society where this is attempted, an unusually large amount of money ends up stuck to the fingers of those responsible for “redistributing” that money. Fidel Castro, hero to millions (who didn’t live under his rule) died with $900,000,000 in the bank. His people? Not so much.
Human. Nature.
You argue that Capitalism doesn’t pay people what they’re worth, but in most cases it pays them what they voluntarily agree to accept. Under Socialism, what you’ve earned is taken at the threat of force, and you claim moral superiority.
Capitalism requires individuals that act freely. Socialism must constrain them. Socialism requires a political system with total control over the lives of its people because its job is the enforcement of “fairness.” You said it yourself.
Capitalism isn’t a system of government. It exists under every kind of government there has ever been, including “almost-Communism.” In fact it’s why China is now a world power and not a backwater.
“We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that humans do better when they are forced to behave certain ways under threat of violence.”
So your answer – and the answer of all “Socialist-adjacent” nations thus far has been “turn our countries into prisons and threaten the inmates with violence for non-conformity.”
Scratch a Socialist and you’ll find a wannabe dictator every time.
Except capitalism – and criminal behavior – still occurs inside the walls of every prison in the world.
And what about the jailers? The ones responsible for enforcing the rules and redistributing the wealth? I’m going to end my participation in this discussion with the words of economist Milton Friedman:
“Do (you) choose (the jailers) on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout? Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? You know, I think you’re taking a lot of things for granted. Just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us. I don’t even trust you with that.”
I’m sure that’s water off a duck’s back to a True Believer like yourself (there’s that “ignoring history” thing again) but he’s right, and you’re not.
It’s been fun. I don’t think we have anything else to discuss that wouldn’t be beating the dead horse to a pulp. Just remember this: You think you can make people better by threatening them with force. I do not hold to that. And if you and your ilk ever acquire enough power to try to implement your fantasy? I will misbehave. And I won’t be alone.
ADM (demonstrating water off the proverbial duck’s back):
Which also brings us back to the answer to your question.
A capital holder hasn’t earned what they have, in fact that wealth was created by the people who would be taking it away.
When the workers seize the means of production and take that wealth, they are taking what was actually theirs all along.
Capital holders are the thieves.
YHA:
J.K. Rowling, billionaire, who made her fortune by entertaining hundreds of millions of people, mostly children, by making up stories that people willingly traded their money for, is a thief and should be living in subsistence housing, her wealth “redistributed” by the State for the benefit of the people who printed and distributed her books, made and distributed the resulting films.
You live in a darker world than I do. Goodbye.
Oh, and I archived this thread. That way I can show others what Socialists are really all about – coercive control of the population and redistribution of wealth “for their own good.”
ADM:
Jk Rowling is rich, and should be rich. She should not be a billionaire, however, and didn’t earn a billion dollars.
The wealth that she has should be far more evenly distributed between her and the people at the publishing company, the people at the printing company, the marketing teams, the set workers, costume designers, makeup experts, script adapters, extras…
You know… all the people that actually made her idea into billions of dollars worth of entertainment media. She stole that wealth from them.
YHA:
You live in a sad, envious world.
Jeremy Clark once observed that, if he were driving say, a Ferrari in the UK, other drivers wouldn’t let him merge, in America they would. The difference, he said (and he would know) is that in the UK the attitude is “One day we’ll have him out of that car!” and in the U.S. the attitude is “One day I could have a car like that!”
Which explains Socialist Brutalist architecture quite well, I think.
You live your entire lives thinking “HE HAS MORE THAN ME AND DOESN’T DESERVE IT, BUT I DO!” We live our lives thinking “If I work hard, I might be able to achieve the things I want,” whether those things are flashy cars, big houses, a career as a surgeon, or authoring a millions-selling book, writing longhand on legal pads while caring for your child by yourself.
ADM:
Actually, I live in a hopeful, happy world, where everyone should get to enjoy the true fruits of their labor, rather than the portion of fruit dictated by someone with more leverage than them.
I find it interesting that a world where thousands of people get moderately rich because of the work they did getting Harry Potter to the masses is sadder to you than a world where one person gets obscenely rich by coming up with an idea and then making thousands of other people do the actual work to bring it to reality.
YHA:
Last one, I swear:
“…by coming up with an idea and then making thousands of other people do the actual work to bring it to reality.”
Show me how she “made” anyone do anything. (No, don’t try. I’m tired of this.) There are a lot of fundamental flaws in Socialist thinking, but this is one of the biggest.
Someone working at one publisher doesn’t “deserve” higher pay than someone working at another publisher just because Publisher A has a mega-blockbuster on its hands. Marx’s labor theory of value is completely wrong.
ADM:
You’re right. She didn’t force them. She simply depended on them to get her fortune without appropriately compensating them. What compensation would be appropriate?
How much would she have without them?
YHA:
“You’re right.” How nice to hear!
“She didn’t force them.” Isn’t that a fundamental premise of your philosophy? That all labor that is not collective is forced? What changed?
“What compensation would be appropriate?“
What they received for doing the jobs they voluntarily accepted at the rate they were earning. They get paid whether the book they work on was a biography of a politician, a book on butterflies, or a mega-bestseller. Being able to print and bind books does not change its value based on the contents of the book in question. Her intellectual property does not belong to them.
“How much would she have without them?”
Would they have jobs without her? How many people were employed because of what she created? And they were all paid salaries they were not forced to accept by your own admission.
What about the employees of other printers, other movie studios? Why is it fair for workers at publishing house with a mega-blockbuster to get much more money than someone doing exactly the same job at a publishing house that doesn’t have a hit? Should they get a part of her fortune too? Why or why not? Do try to be logically consistent.
ADM:
SHE didn’t force them.
Wealth hoarders that own industry coerced them, and she exploited it.
YHA:
And those other publishing houses that don’t have bestsellers? Do they get part of her wealth? You know, to be fair? Or is there just one National Publisher that everyone works for?
Never mind. I’m really done with this. Go away now.
ADM:
And I should point out that “’it fails everyone because of corruption’ is not an indictment” can be turned right back at you. That’s literally the criticism you were trying to make of socialism.
YHA:
Incorrect. I pointed out that capitalism increases wealth and lifts people out of poverty. Every time Socialism is tried it results in WORSE outcomes. Not one society that has tried to employ Marxist economics has improved the lot of its people by that path. “Socialist adjacent” China had to allow capitalism in order not collapse. And don’t tell me the Scandinavian nations are shining examples. They’re capitalists too.
ADM:
Oh. Well in that case, you’re just making a false assertion. Whether you’re taking about Lula in Brazil, before Bolsenaro took over, Hugo Chavez, or the current Chinese government (which is technically capitalist but rejects all the things you like about capitalism in favor of a centrally planned capitalist economy with socialist goals) more people have actually been brought out of poverty under nationalization measures than under capitalism.
In fact, one could argue that any overall life improvement under capitalism is actually just correlation, not causation, and that the actual cause is improvements in technology.
And capitalism actually has a very bad record when it comes to invention. Most of America’s greatest inventors have been socialists, while capitalists have been the people behind re-marketing the same ideas over and over because they sell.
Capitalists will literally fight against technological progress that doesn’t benefit them. Like pharmaceutical companies that search for ways to fight symptoms, but never cure diseases. Meanwhile in Cuba they’ve beaten lung cancer.
Just an aside, that last sentence? That’s when I completely dismissed him as a serious person.
There was a little bit more, but it didn’t materially contribute anything to the discussion.
I will return with Part 2, in which I discuss how this pathology has spread through our body politic and now threatens Western Civilization.