Anyone else like SOME aspects of socialism/economic leftism?

[BirdUp]

PS waiting on an apology as you've been disastrously wrong about swill milk, the allegations made in The Jungle, and basically ignored everything else I've shown you or made halfassed comments like "oh I'm sure employers would give employees AC" "I'm sure only a few dairies did this" "I'm sure the consumer would reject these products if they made it to market"... and you were incorrect.

i don't care about politics or economics
what you should care about is how self-interest will always have higher incentive than philanthropy or conserving the environment, and how work is so effortless and meaningless that people are stuck in a cycle of leaping from distraction to distraction and getting bored of something after a couple of weeks or months, and create things to get mad at and rally behind

 

[Shidoen]

I like the part where it kills the annoying dissidents

 

[Hepativore]

While I think that the private production of goods should not be nationalized, you should have strong government watchdog groups making sure that various companies "play fair" when it comes to things like labor rights, enforcing antitrust laws, or enforcing pro-consumer standards. This is because the larger a company grows, the more its political power increases as it dominates the market share as well as its ability to hire lobbyists to influence politicians to write laws in its favor.

Off of the top of my head, I think that everybody should be entitled to a certain minimum standard of living be it from a basic income to work guarantees, etc. I am not sure what the optimal combination of social programs should be, but I do think that should include things like healthcare, basic housing, and a livable wage, much like how every citizen is guaranteed free use. of emergency services like police, fire protection, and military security

I realize the latter is rather controversial with some people, but when you have fields or parts of the country that have a limited number of employers, I.e. monopsony, it is much harder for employees to get a decent wage as employers do not have much competition with each other for labor. Also, we will have to have some sort of safety net for all of the people that are going to end up losing their jobs as automation and AI becomes more and more commonplace instead of just letting its owners give most of the populace a giant middle finger in terms of wealth inequality.

As with any system, you will always have people that will abuse it or allow them to be lazy, but I think that is a risk that you will have to accept vs. letting some people fall through the cracks.

 

[Iron Jaguar]

'll bet standards had risen regardless

Wrong. It was precisely because of the work of Upton Sinclair and others that standards were created and enforced.

it says in the wikipedia article that "The law was partly a response to the publication of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, an exposé of the Chicago meat packing industry, as well as to other Progressive Era muckraking publications of the day." The Jungle is a piece of fiction and source [3] doesn't elaborate what these publications were, so you haven't backed this up with anything i can read

I have not only read that book, but I have read about the events behind, around and after its publication. Sinclair did not tell any untruths.

 

[Idiotron]

Thing that people need to remember is that socialism existed long before the word "socialism" was created.
I know a lot of people will dispute that but every time the government takes taxes from citizens and then redistributes those taxes in the form of goods and services that everyone can use, that's socialism.
Public roads are socialism, firefighters and the police are socialism, a welfare safety net for the poor and other victims of circumstances.
Those are good things.

The problems start when socialism becomes the dominant ideology in a nation, that's when shit hits the wall.
As long as we use certain socialist elements to simply supplement a nation, it's fine.

 

[Ewan McGregor]

I do believe a strong welfare state works well in societies that are ethnically homogeneous (white and/or east asian, to be precise) and have a culture that values hard work, duty and sacrifice.

I don't think there is any ideology like this, it doesn't fit neither in the right nor in the left...

 

[Kankichi Ryotsu]

Some aspects of socialism are good. After all, the state has to act as a counterbalance to private interests so as to not kidnap nations. However, when taken to extremes such as communism and stuff, that's when the problem arises. Communism is the destroyer of civilizations, an ideology of death that seeks to erode all human peculiarities such as nation and culture and sacrifice it to some globalist ideal. That part of socialism is the one that needs to face the wall, but capitalism is far from perfect and some aspects of socialist critique of capitalism are spot on.

 

[Harbinger of Kali Yuga]

Thing that people need to remember is that socialism existed long before the word "socialism" was created.
I know a lot of people will dispute that but every time the government takes taxes from citizens and then redistributes those taxes in the form of goods and services that everyone can use, that's socialism.
Public roads are socialism, firefighters and the police are socialism, a welfare safety net for the poor and other victims of circumstances.
Those are good things.

The problems start when socialism becomes the dominant ideology in a nation, that's when shit hits the wall.
As long as we use certain socialist elements to simply supplement a nation, it's fine.

If you claim this, then you're forced to claim that bronze age, ancient Egypt, Greece, Assyria, etc. were all socialists for their palace/centralized economies. Which, if you think about it, is kind of how socialism ends up in practice.