Comment by classicsnoot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by classicsnoot | Hacker News Reader

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Democratic Socialism is socialism, and socialism always finds a way to murder people and increase poverty in the name of equality.

Socialism is a deeply religious belief. It has its priests (professors, journalists, entertainers), its churches (campuses, museums, protests and benefit rallies as outdoor/big tent revival analog), its core beliefs predicated on faith that unite the fervent and ostracize the skeptical (diversity is always beneficial, climate change is the fault of the successful, racism is original sin, privilege creates winners and losers in spite of actual value, religions of the oppressed are blameless, etc.), and its intangible and perpetually just beyond The horizon utopia. In every important way, socialism is a religion. It has a general hate for "gods" which functions as a smoke screen for the incorporation of American Protestantism into its modern day Progressive skin suit.

You can see the energy of the faithful when technical questions are provided emotional responses, when differing opinions about generalities are met with personal assertions regarding psychological well being ('burn the hetetic' transmogrified into 'you need medical attention because you have (x)-pathy), and, always everpresent in Leftward arguments,appeals to authority that the one appealing doesn't recognize.

> Democratic Socialism is socialism

US-style “democratic socialism” isn't consistently, except perhaps from a cladistic viewpoint; a lot of it is substantively social democracy which is more of an ideological commitment to the modern mixed economy then an actual socialism.

> and socialism always finds a way to murder people and increase poverty in the name of equality.

I think (assuming you are arguing in good faith) you are falsely generalizing from Leninism and it's descendants with socialism. While at least cladistically a subset of socialism, Leninism and it's offshoots is a narrower and particular subset from which generalizations about the broader set cannot validly be drawn.

> Socialism is a deeply religious belief

No more or less than capitalism is.

Thank you for the well worded responses. I was responding in good faith, and herein also.

>isn't consistently This is the beautiful thing about socialism. It need not be perfect, or even dominant. It just needs a foothold. From there, it is purely a game of time. Put another way, socialists wait for other viewpoints to come around to theirs (Christianity, Academe, Business) or disappear. They do not become Less Left.

>cladistic Ah. See you too are a person of depth. Yarvin's work on the neo-Protestant clade is exceptional but not for the faint of heart. I recommend Spandrell's Bioleninism piece.

>falsely generalizing A salient point. Where are the gulags of the social democrats? Where are the legions of thought police? Where are the desperate informers turning in their neighbors? I know this will be an ugly statement, but I believe the mass murder inclination of socialists is more than saitiated by rampant abortion. It fulfills the same methods and motivations of Holdomer and any other incident of mass death from Lenin or Stalin or Pot or Mao; the greater good. People often forget that the motivations behind the mass death perpetrated by these men and, more importantly, their regimes always had a logical source, for some definition of logic. Socialism doesn't cause mass murder; it justifies it. And to the socialist society, the justification is always good.

>socialist religiosity So what? Capitalism is faith in the selfishness of man. Socialism is faith in the rightness of good. Cargo Cults use the same parts of their brains for reasoning as Catholics. The question, for me, is not the How, but the What. More directly, To What End and For What Purpose. Objectively, the merit of capitalism vs. the merits of socialism a matter of historical record. Put another way, the same god concept that causes a genocide can also cause, quite literally, science. Equivocation has its value, but in the frame of your chosen context it is relatively valueless.

I point out the religiosity of socialism not to say it is singular, rather to demonstrate that it is typical.

> Capitalism is faith in the selfishness of man.

Disagree. Capitalism is faith in the fairness of man. Each person in a capitalistic society has the same opportunity to take advantage of the free market and create their own wealth in a way that doesn't infringe upon the rights of the rest of the people in that society. These rights are guaranteed by the society, regardless of person.

Socialism (such as that in China) does not afford its citizens such equal rights. In fact, the Chinese government has very recently instituted controls which allow them to have a high degree of control over the rights a particular Chinese citizen can exercise. These rights are allowed, regarding person.

That fairness effect is downstream from the expectation of self-interest being the primary motivator behind market decisions.

...okay, bud. I don't think I'm the one acting like a zealot right now.

Why would you? The zealous are continually perplexed by the lack of natural conviction they witness. I am adamant in my interpretation, but I am very aware of how much of an edge case my perspective seems to be.

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