The Soul of Man under Socialism | Hacker News Reader

The Soul of Man under Socialism

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22 pointskwhitefoot18 comments

My goodness, these comments aren't what I was expecting. I posted it because it resonated with me while reading Charlie Stross's rant about George Osborne, A Nation of Slaves: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/04/a-nation....

Not sure if I can articulate the connection it certainly had nothing to do directly with taxation, economics, or libertarian 'philosophy'.

But on the other hand I think Wilde would at least approve of you on the grounds that some of you at least seem to be thinking for yourselves. :-)

People who don't understand the benefits of socialism are stuck in a fear-driven scarcity-mind, and so it's difficult for a mind shaped one way to grasp another way - though I believe it's possible with the right exposure and education. I've been exploring ideas relating to abundance on my blog occasionally - http://mattamyers.tumblr.com/ - latest post is "Profit Has No Inherent Value" at http://mattamyers.tumblr.com/post/78764544562/profit-has-no-...

Socialism always works by over taxing people to pay for the social programs. It can be soul crushing and job destroying.

Socialism is like the diet version of communism.

Crony Capitalism or Corporatism is what we currently have in the USA. It uses Socialism to make organizations that lobby the government very rich at the expense of the people who are tax payers. Both Democrats and Republicans use that system to get rich. Both should be hanged for doing that at the expense of the tax payers.

Have you even read the first paragraph? This text describes a libertarian socialist society which is presumably devoid of taxation: "What is needed is Individualism. If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first.". I personally found the text interesting apart from all those references to Jesus Christ and not really addressing the "free rider problem" (which is not surprising given it was written pre-1900).

I find it hard to believe you can have socialism without taxation.

This text doesn't describe socialism (or at least, not the socialism you are referring to).

Unfortunately, "socialism" belongs to that category of words which have so many definitions in common use (along with "god", "capitalism", etc.) that you can't generally use them without explaining what you are referring to (and this is kind of what this text is all about).

My problem is that I don't understand the article. It violates everything I learned at the university I attended.

Apparently it uses a form of socialism that really isn't socialism but uses that name because they cannot think of a better one.

But I have to really ask this very important question, what does socialism have to do with hacking or startups? It is more to do with liberal politics than hacking and startups. It is almost as if Hacker News got over taken by politicians pushing political articles and agendas now.

That is part of my anger and frustration, I want to read articles about hacking and startups, not politics. Politics has ruined the STEM industry! Politics has caused 90% of startups to fail! Politics ruins almost any technical news site that I frequent. On Hacker News here, I see nothing but political themed submissions making the front page that have nothing to do with hacking or startups. Is this MSNBC now? Is this Huffington Post now? Slashdot and Cnet did the very same things, and I ended up leaving them for that. Politics ruins everything!

It makes me so sad I want to just kill myself in a shotgun suicide!

I find it hard to believe you've given your opinions on it much thought or research. Oscar Wilde nor any actual socialist advocates for crony capitalism/corporatism.

I studied economics. There is no such thing as a free lunch. You cannot make something out of nothing, that money has to come from somewhere.

Just like in physics, the laws of thermodynamics, energy and matter cannot be created nor destroyed, but converted from one form to another. Socialism is the same way, you cannot create social programs without funding them in some way. How does a government get funds? By taxation.

This article violates economics, it violates logic, it violates physics, it violates so many things on so many levels.

I am not one to just read something and automatically believe it is true. You are going to have to prove to me that it is true. Unless I see some sort of evidence, I remain a skeptic.

Down-vote me if you want, it only validates that I am correct, and you are all covering up something.

I down voted your original comment and I'm a libertarian (the kind that believes in private property). Your regurgitated comment with complete disregard for the context is exactly what makes us libertarian look like a bunch of dogmatics and hurts our cause.

Sorry I did not want to hurt anyone's cause.

I just didn't understand how you can have socialism without taxes.

Eliminating private property is basically communism as far as I know.

Sorry again if I got anything wrong.

I agree with olalonde - you haven't even read the essay. It argues for the abolition of private property. It's hard to have taxation if no one owns anything.

I agree with brvs - you don't know what you're talking about. A picture of Wilde and information about this essay are even mentioned on WP's libertarian socialism page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism - Wilde

Please don't say personally aggressive things such as "you haven't even read the essay" and "you don't know what you're talking about" in HN comments. It's bad for both signal/noise ratio and personal civility, the two things we care about most here.

It's striking how informative and polite your comment suddenly becomes if one simply deletes those phrases and nothing else.

Understood. You're right, and I will bear that in mind.

Thank you. And thank you also for saying so.

I forgive you. Apologies from me for my misunderstanding of the article and subject.

I took a big karma hit from it, but I'm a big boy. One of Odin's chosen warriors to fight Frost Giants, so it didn't hurt very much.

You can temporarily - Norway is funding a large part of it's socialist programs by exporting oil and other land resources.

Money is a human construct. We all use resources. We all can be productive, neutral, or counter-productive. War is counter-productive, as an example. Crime is counter-productive for example. It is best to shape our societies to reduce counter-productivity.

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