Hmm, it appears you were right about Sweden not being socialist, if I am to go by this source.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2009/0514/sweden-hardly-a-socialist-nightmare

Norway, on the other hand, seems to be accepted as socialist.
http://theimpudentobserver.com/world-news/is-socialist-norway-a-shining-example-marx-was-right/


I'm guessing that there will be conflicting data in this area.
Regardless, I think we can agree that capitalist America is not a great place (or shall I elaborate on why America is a terrible place?).


Now, I think I'm going to take a break from SEN. I bet by the time I finish typing this, there will be another half a page added to the thread >_<. You people type fast.

You would make tens or hundreds of times more than the vast majority of the Earth's population. What did you do to deserve such preferential treatment?

I'd give him a C for being Obama. He did some nice things in the Middle East, and Europe loves him - domestically, very little was done. He graded himself B+ because it's the perfect mark - it shows competence in the subject while leaving room for improvement, minimizing criticism for his self-appointed grade.
Communism is nonexistent. Socialism is a framework that allows for greater equality and regulation of the economy, and a socialist world government would strive to increase the living standards of third-world countries, while a capitalist one would develop similarly to how we are now. In fact, public education, health care, police and all that, being government-driven, aren't capitalist institutions. At the very least, significant socialist elements can improve living standards, as done in, yes, Denmark and Sweden (they have a free market and everything, but significantly higher taxes and social support systems). Norway is another fish altogether, as it's a very large gas exporter relative to its population of five million.

I'm not trying to say that the world is fair, I'm trying to say that I was hypothetically a software developer, and hypothetically I had a lazy and stupid coworker who wrote shitty code, I would hypothetically deserve more than what he deserves.

Will there be poor people who are more deserving of what I have than I am? Sure. But my point that it is silly for everyone to get an equal share still stands.

Under socialism, there's nothing to stop wages from being set depending on how much you work. From wikipedia's first two lines on the subject: 'access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on the amount of labor expended.'

Hence why I was only using it as an argument directed against communism.

Some would call this well meaning socialism imperialism, the idea that we know how to increase the livings standards of the third-world better than they do.

imo a simple and non imperialistic solution to the problem of third world countries is to open the borders to the west. The tired poor and huddled masses will pour in on ships.

Those who would call it that are wrong. The point isn't that we know how to increase their living standards better than they do (even though that could easily be true, and probably is), but that we have the tools to do. The US pays its farmers to farm less to keep the market more under control, though for a slightly larger government fee to compensate for losses of farmers you can greatly increase food produced within the US, lower world prices and increase living standards worldwide. The US has a yearly 'defense' budget of $700,000,000,000, which could easily be used to greatly increase living standards as well.

Your solution is bad and will lead to unrest in Europe, overpopulation of the west and decline of living standards without too large in increase, the creation of violent slums and such and the collapse of social welfare.

As for the imperialism thing - there's a large difference. English imperialists did it all for the sake of making money. They didn't do it to improve living standards, despite what they may have told themselves at night. A better example than that would probably be Russian conquest of Siberia, which, though I don't have a source for this, almost definitely did increase living standards there in the long term as the government continually tried to Russify the entire population. Imagine what could be done with current resources of the West.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 14 2009, 8:36 pm by Centreri.

You're assuming the same imperialist line of thinking.
You're assuming that the solution to hunger in the third world, is for the US to export food to them. You're saying "this is a problem, and it's a problem that the US will solve on its terms"

Is welfare necessarily the solution to poverty? I'd say it certainly isn't. I don't know what the solution is, but why should the west get to decide?

I'm going to preempt a "you have a choice between accepting and refusing welfare, so it's not something imposed, and therefore not imperialism" counter argument.
Saying "here's a bunch of free shit, do you want it" isn't a choice, as human nature means that the reviver is going to say "yes please" for sure. Now if they grow dependent on that free shit, you haven't exactly done something good have you.

That doesn't even get into the cultural force free stuff has. Take for example giving out free condoms, that sends a clear cultural message, it isn't just a matter of resources.

Assuming this is true, this is bad because..?
I'm saying that this is one simple thing that the West can do to go a long way towards solving the problem. Can the US fix all the problems? No. But it can do a lot.
You're right. Instead, lets do nothing and let them starve. Also, let's disband the government and cease all regulation; why should the government decide who protects you? Who treats you? Who teaches you?

Here, I'll put it this way: Welfare is a solution to poverty. You have no solution to poverty. I win.
I'm much more annoying than that. I'm asking you what makes imperialism a bad thing if it yields results.
Oh dear, we're infringing on their poor, delicate cultures by giving condoms to stop the spread of HIV and reduce overpopulation, however will I sleep with myself!

Well the goal of my line of argument was to get you to admit to your imperialist ways so I win

imo the difference between socialism and capitalism is:
Socialism: somebody else has a problem, this is your problem as well as everyone's problem
Capitalism: somebody else has a problem, that's their problem man

You defined imperialism to be helping someone. By that definition, any solution I throw out is imperialist.

Man, with the reversal >_>

Fine fine fine, it's not imperialist if they ask for the help. And given that third world nations regularly do ask for help at UN conferences I guess you win.

A good example of giving "help" when they didn't ask for it is bringing democracy to the middle east lol. Now that's some imperialist shit.

Fine, that was imperialist. However, as I've yet to hear a good argument for imperialism being inherently bad, I'll also consider it to be a good thing.

Imperialism is inherently bad, because there is strong empirical evidence that if someone doesn't want your help, you can't fucking help them.

I mean try it sometime. It doesn't work son.

In my opinion, all forms of government are imperfect. Flawed humans create a flawed world.
But at least in a capitalist system it's not impossible for the poor to improve themselves. In Communist Russia you were either born with wealth or you were mediocre.

Do you have a different definition of imperialism?


Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 15 2009, 12:20 am by rayNimagi.

I haven't stopped laughing at this. Look up the definitions of these two things.

Capitalism has good social mobility. You want to to be successful and lazy? You gotta work for that by going through school and getting good grades, which many hardworking people fail at, which is why they deserve to work at blue collar jobs.

Communism will never happen, or the description that you are giving. 2nd phase communism will never happen because human beings are greedy, socialism hardly works because Human beings are lazy and greedy. Just look at one cause of the downfall of the soviet union, cheap produced factory goods made by workers that get the same salary as everyone else, no motivation for money/raises = total fail in production. 100% of people are willing to fight for something, any kind of cause, therefore this stage will never happen.

I'm confused....
Communism doesn't have presidents....
Socialism is a total dictatorship...
Can you like explain this to me?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 15 2009, 12:48 am by Chubacca.

Whilst discussing politics in general, I find the U.S.A to be fucking confusing.

We have a prime minister and his cabinet who argue to get shit signed. I think the UK is perfect in that sense, but a few fixes need to be made. Strict immigration, deport foreign criminals to their home despite what the home country wants. They aren't ours, we don't want to pay. Our expense scandal has gone on long enough. BBC needs to fuck off and this violence needs to stop now.

I love NHS.

USA can be confusing, but our government's ability is so that power can be transferred & altered between different political parties with no physical conflicts or wars. Our government was first to achieve that goal in such a short time, as shown in jefferson administration for first time. Pretty much it is just checks and balances.

I agree on immigration, but it is very hard to control that, I think that since our economy is so low and unemployment rates are so high, that we should explicit immigration majorly except to the entrepreneurs wanting to start businesses in the US.

Communism can't exist. It doesn't now, it won't ever unless people can be brainwashed. In order to have true communism, everyone must be equal, but that's not possible because someone has ambition, someone will have the leadership ability and the charisma to take power, someone will be greedy and take power. We have tried communism several times; USSR, China, Vietnam, North Korea, etc. They FAIL at being communist. They all end up being quasi-communists because they ALL HAVE A LEADER AND RICH PEOPLE AND POOR PEOPLE.

Communist Russia was Socialist, not communist. And I never said that the USSR implemented socialism particularly well. However, it must be noted, that despite having an emphasis on equality (which can breed happiness, but also breeds inefficiency), Soviet socialism also managed to keep pace with the entire Western bloc (France, West Germany, Britain and the US) in a many of high-tech spheres while keeping living standards decent throughout the country. However, when this system had to start competing with capitalist-hardened Western industry, it failed, because of the relative inefficiency of Soviet industry. I think that given a better system of checks and balances within the socialist Soviet government (unlike the US, the lack of democratic elections stopped the system from settling into an equilibrium), the liberalization of several industries, such as agriculture, and a lessened emphasis on conventional military superiority, while wouldn't necessarily make up for the other inefficiencies if the two systems collided, would have allowed the USSR to keep much closer to the West in terms of living standards.
Scwizard essentially defined it as helping. I do not believe financial assistance qualifies - in any case, that definition of imperialism is very iffy, because under the economic and cultural clauses, the world is still rife with Empires.

I want to emphasize to everyone feeling smart as they bash communism that it is an ideal, and probably not attainable (despite what Jesusfreak says), but socialism, or even a mixing of socialist and capitalist ideas (like in Sweden) is very possible and possibly beneficial. I also want to emphasize that your current lifestyles aren't going to stay like this. You get your stuff cheap because workers in 3rd world countries work for pennies (or the local equivalent) - theoretically, slowly, the world's living standards will converge, which will most likely result in yours decreasing while there's increases. Socialism can probably bring this change around quicker and less painfully.