[grassroots1]

But that's only one conception of what life could be like without private property. Just because society doesn't recognize property doesn't mean that everyone will be taking each others shit all the time. It could mean that people would cooperate with each other and share the goods that they happen to control at the time. You see, in this system, I would obviously still become angry if someone was harassing me for some resource that I was utilizing, but I wouldn't use the argument that this piece of matter is my property, I would instead inform them that they are acting unreasonably in a different way.

Human society can maintain all of the complex productive capacities that it has now, but merely do away with their private ownership. This is the definition of communism. In socialism, the means of production are owned and controlled by the working class, democratically, and then, over time, class barriers disappear, as does the need for private ownership, and then society achieves the state that I'm talking about. This doesn't mean that all of a sudden everyone lives in caves again, it means that the psychology of individuals has developed to fit the circumstances.

[Holding]

What it would likely mean is a mixed bag. The people who would organise and declare/enforce property rights (ie - me) would screw over people that didn't (ie - you). Those with property rights would build arms factories and have defense, being motivated by individual consumption. I really don't see a purely communist society becoming anything more than amish and so they wouldn't have the means of production to defend themselves. Their resources would be taken and their society would fall.

[Rojik of the Arctic]

What gives you the right to services that you did nothing to earn, paid for with money that I DID earn, but was taken from me?

Better you that me. Try tax avoidance if you don't like it.

[grassroots1]

What it would likely mean is a mixed bag. The people who would organise and declare/enforce property rights (ie - me) would screw over people that didn't (ie - you). Those with property rights would build arms factories and have defense, being motivated by individual consumption. I really don't see a purely communist society becoming anything more than amish and so they wouldn't have the means of production to defend themselves. Their resources would be taken and their society would fall.

I don't mean to offend but this is a simplistic conception of the state that society would be in after a social revolution, and I don't think it can be simplified to 'those who believe in property rights win, and those who don't lose' because we just don't know the situation. Surely there will be people, capitalists, who are committed to the defense of property, and this is because they benefit greatly from its existence, but its hard to say that one party will inevitably come out ahead.

[Holding]

Those that do not recognise ownership or property would have a lack of intermediate goods required for the production of arms and defense. Simply having the resources for production in a society does not guarantee production, consider Africa. The means need to be in place. If people in this society are altruistic, that means they'll be motivated, at best, to produce toward altruism. If they're warlike, they'll produce for war. The other group, being for consumption, will produce what it needs in order to maximize that, not limited to arms for war.

[grassroots1]

There can still be complex systems of production, including many intermediate stages, without the existence of money as an indicator. In the '70s, during Allende's term, they were already starting to utilize computer technology to assist with resource allocation, and I imagine they are much further along with that technology nowadays. I can't see why the entire economic system could not be reproduced electronically and function just as efficiently, if not more so.

I'm not trying to make altruists here, I'm trying to give people a greater conception of what 'self-interest' means. It is in your best interest to participate with your society, with your community for everyone's benefit. I don't think a society could function off altruism alone, but it could function off of a greater conception of the 'self.'

And military involvement certainly did damage to the russian revolution in terms of staying genuine to the theory, so it is something I'm concerned about.

[Holding]

I guess it's just a matter of disagreeing. Thank you for discussing this with me, I don't think we can further the discussion much more beyond this point.

[grassroots1]

For sure, we can discuss how these theories apply to the future, but there's also a lot that needs to be done in the short-term that many of us probably can agree on. The oligarchical control that business and certain parts of government have on decision-making right now is frightening, and there is a common interest among the american people and the people of the world to turn that control over to the people.

[Holding]

If you were to expand upon that so that I more clearly knew what you meant, I might infact disagree with you again there. Not only do I not like democracy, but I favour, to a degree, corporations replacing existing governments.

[grassroots1]

In that case, this is probably a discussion for a different thread.

[Karl_Bonner_1982]

Redistribution is usually demonized as "taxing the productive to subsidize the lazy" when in fact, many advocates of redistribution want most of it to take place AMONG hard-working people, not from worker to loafer.

Why do they (and I am one of the "they") advocate redistributing income among working people? Basically to correct any instances where the free-market distribution of pay does a spectacularly poor job of reflecting the distribution of effort and self-sacrifice among the workforce. Also redistribution is a valuable tool if the labor market produces a large number of jobs whose equilibrium wages lie below subsistence levels at a 40-hour workweek.

And most redistributive taxation would not be directed at highly educated professionals like doctors, but rather at the ultra-wealthy class of financiers and speculators whose pay tends to soar far in excess of the level of training and effort, at least relative to other skilled careers.

[Holding]

Since when is pay supposed to be determined by "effort and self-sacrifice among the workforce"?

[Infidelis]

Again, hasn't anyone been paying any fucking attention to the fucking thread? I'm talking about the WELFARE STATE.

A) By getting a legitimate job and not overspending. Duh.
B) They do it because those sectors pay well. The best way to fix that is to end the War on Drugs, legalize prostitution, and repeal most gun laws.

My bad...I thought this was a thread about bitching about taxes in general...no, I didn't read it all the way through. I try not to pay too much attention to children's hissy fits. It only encourages them.

The long and the short of it is that a welfare state has to exist in order to keep a degree of social order in tact. Without throwing a minimal amount of money at those who are down on their luck, a door is left open for robberies, murder, assault and other personal crimes because of a exceeding amount of social strain in those populations.

Your willingness to make women more susceptible to abuse, degradation, coercion and exploitation and add a few more junkies into society in order to save a buck is not only a complete mind-maze of twisted logic, but selfish to a fault.

[Zerogouki]

Skipping past all the Holding/grassroots nonsense...

The long and the short of it is that a welfare state has to exist in order to keep a degree of social order in tact. Without throwing a minimal amount of money at those who are down on their luck, a door is left open for robberies, murder, assault and other personal crimes because of a exceeding amount of social strain in those populations.

What? How in the hell does that make the slightest bit of sense? Britain is a paragon welfare state, and has one of the worst crime rates in the world. Texas has relatively little welfare spending, and has relatively little violent crime.

[Colonel Angus]

What gives you the right to services that you did nothing to earn, paid for with money that I DID earn, but was taken from me?

I want a serious, rational answer.

It's because they ENVY your money.
That's what Liberals do... they envy and see their envy as inherently wrong and push for reforms that punish the rich so they no longer have to have that envy!

[Dave]

My bad...I thought this was a thread about bitching about taxes in general...no, I didn't read it all the way through. I try not to pay too much attention to children's hissy fits. It only encourages them.

The long and the short of it is that a welfare state has to exist in order to keep a degree of social order in tact. Without throwing a minimal amount of money at those who are down on their luck, a door is left open for robberies, murder, assault and other personal crimes because of a exceeding amount of social strain in those populations.

Your willingness to make women more susceptible to abuse, degradation, coercion and exploitation and add a few more junkies into society in order to save a buck is not only a complete mind-maze of twisted logic, but selfish to a fault.

So according to you...

Poor people: give us money or we'll commit crimes

That's quite insulting to the poor, and if true, we might as well liquidate them. Paying someone to not commit crime is disgusting.

[grassroots1]

When I think of real welfare, I imagine systems whose purpose it is to benefit society in the long-term by protecting people from violent shifts in the state of the market. People want welfare for a variety of reasons, maybe because of a knee-jerk reaction to a negative change in their circumstances, or maybe because of some other vision of a more egalitarian world. Either way, there is a reason that even the ineffective, business-influenced version of welfare that we have in the United States exists, and it's because there is a social demand for it, more, a social need for it.

And Dave, Infidelis actually said it well when he referred to the 'strain' on those communities. People obviously don't haphazardly rob and steal, they do so because they are in a bad state and need to find a means of getting what they actually need: food, shelter, etc. Of course some take it further than others.

Colonel Angus, you say I envy the wealth of others, but I can tell you for a fact that the feeling i have is not envy. I don't want the wealth of others for myself, I want to see the wealth organized in a different way throughout society. And the reason I want to see that is because I think the way resources are organized currently is unjust and immoral, and I also aspire to witness the potential of human productivity when people don't have to kill each other to secure their next meal.

[Dave]

And Dave, Infidelis actually said it well when he referred to the 'strain' on those communities. People obviously don't haphazardly rob and steal, they do so because they are in a bad state and need to find a means of getting what they actually need: food, shelter, etc. Of course some take it further than others.

The problem with this is that in industrialized countries the poor have food and shelter. Yet crime continues...

Obviously if someone doesn't have enough to eat he's going to steal food.

[Holding]

Grassroots, I don't think envy was the right word. I think entitlement, however, is.

Also, I like the way this Dave thinks.

[grassroots1]

I don't think I'm entitled to their property either, in fact, it's just the opposite. It is not 'my' matter to use, it is merely matter, and if I choose to manipulate it, so be it.

Dave I'm not trying to stop crime specifically, so I'm not sure what that proves.