At 11:01 PM +0200 on 7/10/99, M. Uli Kusterer wrote:
>>Of course people did not work to the best of their ability. The harder you
>>worked, the more you are robbed -- in theoretical communism. The less you
>>work, the greater the percentage of what you earn that you keep. THat is,
>>the less you are robbed. The only _logical_ conclusion one cna come to is
>>to be a lazy bum, unless one has managed to convince onself that slavery
>>and serfdom to the state is right. Which it's not, and never will be.
>
>Anthony,
>
> this is the only logical conclusion for a capitalist because capitalism
>means acquiring more and more for less and less. Communism doesn't care
>about that, it wants to have everybody live equally good. That this turned
>out to mean "everybody lives equally bad" was a flaw in execution.
No, it's a flaw in the theory: the two are logically equivelant, just
different ways of measuring.
With communism, since all live equally bad/good, there is no incentive at
all to try and live better -- because you can't, at the point of a gun --
that is, there is no reason to innovate.
>
> I think if you're really interested in continuing this discussion, we
>should do this off-list so we don't annoy people interested in OC, and you
>might want to recapture the differences between Marxism and Leninism.
We might want to take it off list :)
>
>>What happened to the soviet union is the only thing that can happen when
>>one tries to implement Marx's concepts: Starvation. Death. Destruction.
>>Downfall.
>
> Nice to see the McCarthy's words didn't fall on deaf ears.
A lot of them did. I don't agree with putting people to death and/or
imprisoning for their beliefs.
>
>>Marx takes resources from the able, the people who do innovate, and gives
>>it to the unable (or unwilling) who sit around and do nothing. Marx would
>>have Einstein invent relativity without paper, Eddison, the lightbulb,
>>phonograph, etc., without a lab, and Ford build a car without a factory.
>>After all, it is not "fair" if those people get those things and others
>>don't!
>
> Why is it unfair to help the unable? If you were not able to care for
>yourself, wouldn't you want someone to care for you? The unwilling are the
>thing that Marx didn't account for (which was his biggest fault), but
>besides that he understood the "things that be" pretty well.
It is not fair that Eddison gets no lab -- despite the fact which he earned
it -- because there are not enough labs for all.
Marx and I will never agree because we believe in different axioms; one of
mine is the unalienable right to life, liberty, and property. Anything that
abridges those is, by my definition, is wrong; is unfair. One of Marx's is
(apparently) the "right of need."
WHile Marx ideas would of worked if his assumptions about people were
correct, and if everything went exactly as he wanted, I argue that such can
not be the case, and that Marx's ideas are thus doomed to failure.
>
>> Altruism is bad. Altruism is evil. Altruism is the end of
>> civilization. Altruism is starvation. Altruism is the philosophy
>> of death.
>
> You're repeating yourself. This is basically the same as you said on
>implementing Marx' concepts a while earlier.
Correct. I just said it because you wouldn't :) Let me add in "Altruism
causes war" to the list, too.
