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Comment by lowbloodsugar | Hacker News Reader

Libertarianism is entirely self-serving. I am rich and have property, so my ideal government is one whose only job is to create property registries and allow their enforcement with violence. Ideally, the poor people are taxed (not me of course) to fund a government violence force to enforce the rules on the poor people, as is the case in the USA.

Communism is similarly self-serving. I own no property, and so my ideal government has no concept of property and assigns resources to everyone.

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All politics is self-serving in one way or another. If you disagree you are likely lying to yourself about your motivations.

The important thing is not to ignore your self-serving motivations, but to understand them and think long term rather than short term. Things quickly fall apart when everyone pushes for short term gain.

How is communism self-serving when, you said it yourself, the main concept is assigning resources to everyone?

If "assigning resources to everyone" is a net gain (IE the voter doesn't have resources), then yes it is self serving.

Pretty much everything is self serving using that definition. Clean up trash in a park? Self serving. Donate money to the poor? Self serving.

I think you misunderstand me -- perspective matters. If you have 12 cookies, and I have 2 cookies, and i say "it would be more fair if we each had 7 cookies", then i pretty transparently just want you to give me 5 cookies.

"Clean up trash" and "Donate money to the poor" are not as unevenly beneficial. Also "Donate money to the poor" is a far cry from "Seize money and give that to the poor".

> and i say "it would be more fair if we each had 7 cookies", then i pretty transparently just want you to give me 5 cookies.

But under the context of "government has no concept of property and assigns resources to everyone" it is not you (or any single person) that decides that, it's the contextual Communist government saying and doing that. Just because it benefits random governed person does not make it directly self serving.

The nuance is, in this version of Communism, the Communism itself it is not self serving it trys to equalize -- Libertarianism, in this context, enforces self serving ideals

> But under the context of "government has no concept of property and assigns resources to everyone" it is not you (or any single person) that decides that,

Under every version of Communism, it's "the government" that decides that, and those government officials seem to be much better dressed then everyone else.

What if the voter has lots of resources, but soon they'll likely lose them due to external factors, so they vote for communism?

What if the voter has very few resources, but soon they'll likely gain lots of resources, and still vote for communism?

What if the voter prefers a social safety net to having lots of resources, because they're really afraid of ending up broke?

What if my grandmother was a bicycle? None of these change the fact that voting for a system to move resources from others to yourself is self serving.

You can debate whether it's justifiable or not, but it is self serving by definition.

Oh, I fully agree! Unfortunately many people reduce other people's inner thoughts to the boolean decision "if someone has below-average resources, their decision must be motivated by moving resources from others to themselves", because they assume the "homo economicus" model to apply to most individuals.

As my examples show, such a model breaks down for trivial cases. In the real world, people have much more complicated and layered reasons motivating their vote for any system. Though I'd like to ask anyone subscribing to the homo economicus view - what do you think about the position of people with above-average wealth who would vote for capitalism? Their choice is equally as self-serving, no?

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Btw, it's a bit rude to pattern-match a thought-terminating cliche followed by declaring your point of view to be objectively true.

You seem to be missing the point. The person you originally replied to said that those who vote for communism for their own personal gain are self serving. Let's call those people Group A.

You then listed a bunch of people who might vote for it for some non-self-serving reason, let's call them Group B.

Your comment implies that the existence of Group B makes Group A not-self-serving, when in fact it is as irrelevant to Group A's motives as my grandmother being a bicycle.

> Btw, it's a bit rude to pattern-match a thought-terminating cliche followed by declaring your point of view to be objectively true.

I don't even know what you're trying to say here.

Try reading the comment I replied to once more:

> If "assigning resources to everyone" is a net gain (IE the voter doesn't have resources), then yes it is self serving.

It is not possible to state more clearly that:

Voter has below-average resources -> voting for communism must be self-serving.

I have explained that this is wrong. To stick with your example, when you choose group A based on factor X and then broadly assign motivation Y to everyone in the group, you're creating a false narrative, because group A is a superset of the people you've described.

It's laughably naive to think that any significant number of people who vote for a system they think will personally benefit them are in fact doing so purely out of principle, and not at all because it will benefit them. However, as long as one such person exists, Group A is indeed a superset of self-serving people, and you are therefore correct in the most technical and irrelevant sense. Congratulations.

I am truly sorry for daring to post a comment the great roarcher feels isn't relevant. Please forgive me for the harm I have caused this world.

Man what the hell are you even talking about? Nearly every one of your comments in this thread has been some sort of non-sequitur or is replying to an argument that nobody made. Your only fully coherent comment was the one with the superset idea, which boils down to "you can't say people who vote for communism and stand to gain from it are self-serving, because one of them might happen to be a saint whose only concern is the common good".

I'm getting tired of having to direct the conversation back to the actual topic. It's okay to just bow out when you're wrong, you don't have to continuously derail a conversation with bullshit just because you're out of your depth. You're not fooling anyone with it.

Your only contribution to a conversation you admit to not understanding has been to stick your fingers into your ears and tell me how meaningless my point is. That's not "directing the conversation back to the actual topic" in any way.

It's fine to disagree with my position! But that's not what you're doing, you're declaring my thoughts meaningless and trying to push me out of the conversation. So why don't you just move on?

> you're declaring my thoughts meaningless

I said irrelevant, because your argument does not contradict the point that was being made. Your first comment was a list of scenarios that literally had nothing do with what you were replying to. And your "superset" comment was trying to shoot down a general observation about human behavior by pointing out that it isn't a mathematically rigorous model, as if it was ever intended or claimed to be. It is not my fault that nonsense and pedantry are irrelevant, but I'm sorry to inform you that they are.

> a conversation you admit to not understanding

I understand perfectly what you're saying. The source of my confusion is your insistence that it matters. It's like I told you that apples are edible and you keep insisting that they categorically aren't because some people don't like them, and also occasionally one of them might have a worm in it.

> trying to push me out of the conversation

My brother in Christ, all I want is for you to just stay in the conversation for once.

Anyway, this is pretty firmly in "playing chess with a pigeon" territory now. Have a good one.

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