Socialism

[Berkut]

You need to define your terms is we are going to have a sensible discussion about anything. If one of us defines socialism as state intervention, the next as a welfare state, the next as control of the means of production and the last as full central planning and distribution where each gets according to needs then we are not going to have a remotely sensible discussion.

Define your terms and we can have a discussion. Just be grateful that we are not defining your terms for you.

Edit: I mean just be grateful that everybody except me is not defining your terms for you.

He defined his terms, and then the lot of you started quibbling over how he defined them.

Yes he defined them.  But in a really quite meaningless way as his definition incorporates most every political stripe I can think of in the modern age and perhaps most forms of government in all other ages.

So what? I am specifically NOT trying to contrast various forms of government, hence my definition makes perfect sense for what I AM trying to discuss.

Hell, the fact that what I am talking about is intrinsic to humans as tribal animals is pretty much my point, if my definition did NOT include pretty much every form of government over all ages, the point would not even make any sense.

The fact that my definition includes just about every human society ever is the point!

[crazy canuck]

Berk, then all you are really doing is describing in very general terms the political process by which each society decides how best to allocate its resources.  Again I am not sure where we go from here.

[Razgovory]

The fact that my definition includes just about every human society ever is the point!

I believe in anthropology that's called a "Empty Universal".

[The Brain]

Besides the empty definition of Socialism, was there some kind of point?

[Berkut]

Berk, then all you are really doing is describing in very general terms the political process by which each society decides how best to allocate its resources.  Again I am not sure where we go from here.

Well, that is what I described. My point is that I think the US does a piss poor job of this allocation  because we basically have two sides that are fighting over it, and they are both idiots about it.

One side thinks it is all bad, and the state should not be involved in it at all, and equates what every single society has done for all time as some kind of aberration to be avoided. Moreover, there is this idea that the level of "socialism" that the state should be engaged in should be no more than (at most) what it does right now, or even better yet, less. This is foolish, and that is my primary point. Human history has been a basically uninterrupted increase in the amount that we as human societies allocate towards social redistribution (still want a better word/phrase for this) for the standpoint of what actually is included in the social goods. Meaning we consistently provide more and more over time.

But the other side is screwed because they seem to think that since we provide more and more, we should decide how much more based strictly on what is desired. So we see posts like Marty's, where he lists all the things that society ought to provide, without even bothering to mention what we can afford, and what is a reasonable way to decide what the right amount is. So they focus only on what they want, but not how to actually get it in a sustainable manner. Their argument is based on emotion only, as if the issue is just a matter of convincing others what "ought to be".

My point is that both of them get it wrong, IMO, for different reasons. One refuses to acknowledge that "socialism" is a basic part of the human psyche and society, and the other thinks that just because something ought to be true, it therefore must be true, and couches the entire debate in terms of emotion.

[garbon]

Defining Socialism as having welfare policies is silly. The modern welfare state was NOT invented by socialists, it was invented by the paleo-conservatives of Bismarck's Prussia to prevent the pressure among the dis-enfranchised working classes of Germany to cause them to revolt and create a communist state. It worked. It worked so well that the Bismarckian welfare state was adopted by the SPD creating what today is known as Social Democracy. Since then all the world's Labour and Social Democratic parties have pretended the welfare state was their idea.

I think this also highlights want I think is wrong with Berk's want vs. can afford dichotomy.  It is true that general societies are not enacting these social changes out of kindness,there is still a want there...and that want can be as simple as it is better for the state to provide those services than have people agitated because they don't have them. On the flipside, I think it'd be inaccurate to say that we couldn't afford universal healthcare in the mid-90s - but rather the driving factor in not adopting was a lack of significant "want".

And I didn't even focus on the definition.

[The Brain]

My point is that both of them get it wrong, IMO, for different reasons. One refuses to acknowledge that "socialism" is a basic part of the human psyche and society, and the other thinks that just because something ought to be true, it therefore must be true, and couches the entire debate in terms of emotion.

Fecal matter is a basic part of the human experience. We still expel it at the first convenient opportunity.

[Martinus]

The thing is, I think what I listed is the minimum of what we should be able to afford - and if we can't, we should raise taxes or reduce spending on other things, such as, say, military or business subsidies. I don't think anything I listed is extraordinary or unusual - I just don't think that, outside of extraordinary circumstances (e.g. a country devastated by a recent war, Poland-in-1945-style) we can call ourselves civilized and fail to provide any of these things (e.g. live in a society where children are routinely dying of diseases we could cure, only because their parents cannot afford the cure).

[Eddie Teach]

So we see posts like Marty's, where he lists all the things that society ought to provide, without even bothering to mention what we can afford, and what is a reasonable way to decide what the right amount is.

We can afford all the things on his list. Well, maybe not "dignity" as that is priceless.

[Berkut]

I think the "social minimum" in the "civilized West" is this:

1. We should prevent people from dying from starvation, exposure or other form of failure to meet their basic biological needs.
2. We should prevent people from dying (including through health deterioration) of commonly curable diseases.
3. We should prevent minors from dying or suffering health deterioration from curable diseases or deprivation, irrespective of the financial position of their parents.
4. We should allow minors to get education that would allow them, subject to their personal talents, to perform any type of job they would like, irrespective of the financial position of their parents.
5. We should allow minors, to the extent possible, and subject to the overriding principle of minor's interest, to benefit from the above while raised by their biological parents.
6. We should allow people after their productive age to live their autumn years in dignity.

Agree/disagree?

This is exactly what I mean by the mistake of the left.

They base their argument on what ought to be, and completely ignore what out economic reality can sustain.

We should not be making decisions starting from what we emotionally think everyone has some kind of fundamental right to. Humans have no fundamtental right to retire "after their productive age to live their autumn years in dignity.", for example, so saying we should provide that without the context of how we can pay for it is largely meaningless.

If we can in fact afford to allow people to do so, then I am all for it. If we can wave a magic wand and make humans twice as productive tomorrow as they are today, then I would be very interested in a plan to allocate some of that increase in gross productivity to increasing the basic amount of retirement sustenance we can provide everyone, as an example.

But I don't buy the idea that this is something that we MUST provide. If we can do so without harming our overall economy to the extent that we retard long term growth, AND we decide that this is more desirable than other alternatives, then great.

Note that my stance is basically humanist in nature - I think it is better to let some people NOT be able to "retire in dignity" today if it means we can provide for many more people able to do so at some point in the future. Of course finding the right allocation is the hard part.

[Martinus]

I disagree. Besides "afford to" is a red herring - it's a matter of prioritizing your spending and redistribution of your resources. If you can't "afford" such basic things while being a developed country, this means something is fundamentally wrong with your budget - either you are spending too much on less important things or your income is fucked up, e.g. because your taxes are too low due to your law makers being hostages to special interest groups.

[frunk]

I disagree. Besides "afford to" is a red herring - it's a matter of prioritizing your spending and redistribution of your resources. If you can't "afford" such basic things while being a developed country, this means something is fundamentally wrong with your budget - either you are spending too much on less important things or your income is fucked up, e.g. because your taxes are too low due to your law makers being hostages to special interest groups.

I think Berkut is arguing that "affording it" isn't a function of government tax policy, but the overall productive ability of society itself.  200 years ago the productivity of society as a whole was lower, so attempting to provide a comfortable retirement and health care for everyone wasn't possible without crippling society as a whole, not just a particular government.  At the present time some of this is achievable, but it shouldn't by default be assumed that we can or that it is some fundamental right.

[crazy canuck]

Berk, I understand your point now. 

As an outsider looking in it seems to me there is broad support within the US for certain spending priorities.  Take for example the military.  The disputes in your country relate to social programs over which there is much disagreement.

Where our two countries differ is that in Canada the broad agreement is that certain social policies should be given priority. For example most all Canadians firmly support a single payor health system.  We recognize that it takes a lot of resources to fund it but as a society we are deeply committed to it and we are willing to make other sacrifices to fund it in the form of higher taxation and lower spending in other areas.

Doesnt it all come back to the values each society has as reflected in the priorities it sets for itself through the political process?

[Berkut]

I disagree. Besides "afford to" is a red herring - it's a matter of prioritizing your spending and redistribution of your resources. If you can't "afford" such basic things while being a developed country, this means something is fundamentally wrong with your budget - either you are spending too much on less important things or your income is fucked up, e.g. because your taxes are too low due to your law makers being hostages to special interest groups.

I very much disagree.

You cannot say that by definition we can afford these things - that is exactly the problem with the left. You demand that we be able to afford them not based on any actual evaluation, but because you insist that we are "not civilized" if we cannot.

I don't define "afford" in the sense of whether we can raise taxes enough to cover the cost. Of course we can "afford" almost anything if you take such a narrow view.

I define "afford" as "can we, as a society, set aside the amount of production necessary to meet this desire without a strain on our system of production that will result in long term harm to our ability to continue increasing our overall productivity".

Now, you can certainly argue that in fact we currently can and should be able to do just that for this particular item. But you are not making that claim, you are making the claim that we should not even do any such evaluation, but simply keep raising taxes until we can pay for it, because there is some kind of fundamental principle involved that demands that we do this irrespective of our ability to actually support it. This is what is just as frustrating as the Libertarian bullshit that embraces the idea of humans as strictly individual creatures without any need for social conscience. It is trying to define your answer as the only possible answer by ignoring the true question.

That is patently false. Human being have existed for hundreds of thousands of years without guaranteeing 99% of the things we currently consider as "absolute bare minimums of required social outlays to support a 'civilized' society". But the reality is that most human societies were and are perfectly civilized for their times. the question is not one of "what MUST we do to convince ourselves we are civilized" it is rather "what is next on the list of things that we as a society value that perhaps we could not afford before, but we can now?"

Maybe that is more retirement security. Or maybe it is greater amounts of basic healthcare for the poor. Or maybe it is more access to higher education for the middle class. Or maybe it is more research into why quasars are so damn weird. But it cannot be all of those, almost certainly, even though perfectly good arguments can be made by various people that each of them is more important in some fashion or another than the others.

[Berkut]

I disagree. Besides "afford to" is a red herring - it's a matter of prioritizing your spending and redistribution of your resources. If you can't "afford" such basic things while being a developed country, this means something is fundamentally wrong with your budget - either you are spending too much on less important things or your income is fucked up, e.g. because your taxes are too low due to your law makers being hostages to special interest groups.

I think Berkut is arguing that "affording it" isn't a function of government tax policy, but the overall productive ability of society itself.  200 years ago the productivity of society as a whole was lower, so attempting to provide a comfortable retirement and health care for everyone wasn't possible without crippling society as a whole, not just a particular government.  At the present time some of this is achievable, but it shouldn't by default be assumed that we can or that it is some fundamental right.

Bingo.