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Jtur wrote "You espouse a system in which everyone is forced to live a life that they may not want---a life of externally imposed toil..."
Not everyone. Not me. I have a talent that is of value to others, who pay me to exercise it on their behalf. They are grateful for the arrangement, and so am I. I chose my field, I built the human capital it required, I choose my customers, and I enjoy every day of "toil." It is a free country--anyone can plan and choose and act and prosper. Of course, if I was of absolutely no value to the rest of society, I'd probably love socialism too.
Jtur wrote "You espouse a system in which everyone is forced to live a life that they may not want---a life of externally imposed toil..."
Not everyone. Not me. I have a talent that is of value to others, who pay me to exercise it on their behalf. They are grateful for the arrangement, and so am I. I chose my field, I built the human capital it required, I choose my customers, and I enjoy every day of "toil." It is a free country--anyone can plan and choose and act and prosper. Of course, if I was of absolutely no value to the rest of society, I'd probably love socialism too.
You do what people pay you to do, without which you could not survive. Just because you are among the lucky few who enjoys doing what you get paid for does not diminish the grinding toil that wastes hours and days and years of the lives of the vast majority of people who are enslaved by the system that denies even the simplest needs to those who would wish to pursue happiness in their own way. In a way different from your own---a concept for which you have nothing but blind contempt. What's to fulfill the lives of those whose pleasures are not of value to customers?
"Not me". The final refuge of the selfish, unconcerned with the rest of mankind.
You think I'm selfish because I believe in a system that requires me to be of service to my fellow man.
You think a system that would allow one to be of no value to one's fellow man is somehow superior.
And I should worry about how the worthless (literally, of no value or service to their fellow man), how the worthless are to "fulfill" their lives? Sheesh.
Nobody works 24/7--even all those poor wretches "forced" to do something worthwhile have time in which to seek fulfillment.
By the way, being of service and value to others can be quite fulfilling. It's the hidden secret of successful capitalists.
You think I'm selfish because I believe in a system that requires me to be of service to my fellow man.
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No, I think you're selfish because you believe in closing the system, so only people with your beliefs have a chance to be fulfilled, to pursue happiness according not to their own values, but yours.
Believing in a system that suits your style best, is one thing. Believing in locking the system to exclude all heretics is quite another. And there, indeed, we have gotten to the root of the matter.
The heretics are free to live however they choose. The system is open, it isn't locked. Your problem is that you want to run your system on my dime--it requires that virtue be punished and vice rewarded. Not a good plan for long term sustainability.
Your problem is that you want to run your system on my dime--
And you want The Dime to be the only game in town, and anyone who is unsuited or disinclined to excel at the Dime Racket (which happens to suit you so well) is pushed off the field. It is you that insists on squeezing the rules into exactly one tiny inflexible compartment, which you have already acknowledged just happens to suit your own personality in a way that allows you to find both happiness and success within congruent parameters.
In my world, you are guaranteed dignity and a basic means of life, which you are free to enhance, if you can and if you wish, by contributing labor to the system (and most people would choose to). In your world, however, a person is forced, under threat of starvation, to use a lifetime of either labor or guile in order to have dignity or a basic means of life, which allows for no freedom at all to be an individual in pursuit of his own happiness. (Remember, even our own Constitution says "pursuit of happiness", not "pursuit of work"or "pursuit of dime".)
You are one of those hung up on the absurd notion that work, however pointless and counterproductive, is the only human virtue, the only one to be rewarded. That man exists to work, and without work, life has no meaning. Those who do not work shall be denied life, for there is nothing else under the sun. Tempered only by an allowance for guile as a substitute for work.
What I said--you knock the Dime Racket, you disparage the Dime, you criticize the values and behavior by which I get my Dime, and at the end of the day, you want me to work to provide you with the Dime. News flash! The Dime does not grow on trees.
What world is that, where you are guaranteed dignity and a basic means of life? I'm with you, to the extent that nobody should starve to death (so we have food stamps) and nobody should freeze to death (so we have government housing) and nobody should die for lack of simple medical care. There is virtue in art, and pleasure for pleasure's sake, and contemplation of philosophy--but there is no dignity in being a parasite. Maybe you haven't noticed, but it takes some effort to procure the needs of life for every life form in every environment on the planet. Do what you want, but keep your hand out of my pocket--except to fund food stamps, and government housing, and help for the helpless, and similar societal needs. Dignity? That's to be 'earned' (another word you seem to dislike.)
I always thought the socially-minded characters in Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" were caricatures and extrapolations, with no close counterparts in the real world. Then I met you. You are a dead ringer for Phillip Reardon.
What world is that, where you are guaranteed dignity and a basic means of life?
You were born with that guarantee, and it is up to me to defend and honor it. I would never do anything to deprive you of it, nor encourage others to do so. It's my world, the one I live in every day of my life, the one I try to foster by example. If you don't like my world, that's OK. There is room for both of us.
So do you. You espouse a system in which everyone is forced to live a life that they may not want---a life of externally imposed toil in exchange for a currency that is impossible to live without. When they might prefer to live their life in pursuit of a happiness not denominated in money.
Big difference here though. You can pick up your things and move to a socialist country like China and you won't be shot when you try to jump over to leave. Can people freely live Cuba? How about China?
In the end you can tell me of all the greatness of socialism but in the end when people are forced to stay there, that is not freedom. Here in the U.S. and in most of capitalist countries you can do so. That is what I call freedom. However, freedom is not without limits. There is no limitless freedom unless you live in som jungle on your own decide what to do without any interference.
The same reason children migrate to candy.
Bad comparison. Most people in the world do move for candy. They move where they feel and think there are more opportunities to provide a better life in some ways whether it is to have a better job, education, food, etc. Do people risk life to live a country for candy? It must be that important to be wiliing to die when they look somewhere else to live life. Many people do die in the dessert after they cross the U.S./Mexico border looking to a job. That is freedom. Sure there may be no complete economic freedom in the U.S. because there are people that do abuse the system as people do in socialist systems.
By the way, socialism is a great deal more complicated than your simplistic gun that keeps people from leaving.
Explain that one. In the end it does not matter what system it is. People do live because of the reasons I stated above because in the end their system may not satisfy their needs as most humans like.
Tell me all you want but in the end those things speak louder than all the philosophical rethoric you and I say about which system is better. Human basic needs is what drive people to better areas where they think they have a better chance to satisfy them. This has been going on since the dawn of time. All your philosophical logic can't refute that.
You have a great day.
El Amigo
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