Quote from: runpaint on February 09, 2015, 07:00:35 PM

Quote from: Westin Landon Cox on February 09, 2015, 06:46:58 PM

Quote from: Beliathon on February 08, 2015, 11:12:27 PM

What's next, climate change or Holocaust denial?

Ah, that empathy and compassion really bleeds through the screen, doesn't it?

@runpaint: You're right, and thanks for taking up the argument. Unfortunately we're in the minority. One of the big advantages of bitcoin is it helps protect us from people who are too dumb to learn from history what a disaster socialism is.

And if you just read that and thought, "But hey, why is socialism bad?" You could start by counting the dead. It's one metric, and obviously not perfect. But seriously, how many people starved to death or were directly killed during socialist regimes like Stalin or Mao? And those are just of the international socialist variety. You're playing with an ideology that doesn't work, can't work, is anti-individual liberty, and leads to people being suppressed, starved, imprisoned and killed. Over. And over. And over. And over again. And people are still drawn to it.

The only reason millions of Americans haven't starved under Obama is because he's such a failure at implementing his desired policies.

They love power, they love dictators, and they love forcing people to do and say what they're told. In other words, they hate freedom. They fantasize about petty revenge against "the rich" or "the Jews" or "Larry from Pizza Hut who fired me for smoking weed on the clock, he's just a hater cause he's old."

One reason for their destructive policies is that well-adjusted people from functional families don't buy into that hatred so easily. They know that their main demographic is whiny brats whose fathers didn't pay them enough attention, so they use the government's power to leave millions of children fatherless.

But that's mostly beside the point. The main point is that socialism doesn't work.

After the fiery explosion of the Hindenburg, people stopped smoking cigarettes while riding on huge hydrogen-filled balloons. In fact, it kind of put them off the whole idea of hydrogen-filled balloons altogether. But people can see the fiery explosions of China, North Korea, the USSR, East Germany - and they still want to go for another ride. It's hard to understand, but some of them are obviously in it for the explosions.

Aye. I'm one of those old enough to remember the fall of the Warsaw Pact (heck, I changed my major - was aerospace engineering - when it happened because of the job market impact I foresaw). It absolutely astounds me how quickly a new and mis-educated generation has arisen decrying capitalism and proclaiming socialism/communism all over again. You can tell them they are being stupid. You can explain to them how they are being foolish. But I have a feeling they are just going to have to experience it the hard way, all over again. I just wish they wouldn't take the rest of us with them into the economic toilet bowl.

I just hope the demagogues and economic charlatans teaching these kids in the universities and schools get what is coming to them. In the meantime maybe we ought to be air-dropping Thomas Sowell books into American universities like some of the old efforts behind the Iron Curtain to wake up the brainwashed zombies.

If you really had compassion for the poor, you'd help them yourselves. With your own time, effort and money. Not by raging against some imaginary bad guy and demanding that the "system" be fixed while you do little or nothing to help the poor in practical ways right now. Set yourself a target (mine is 15%, plus vacation time for volunteer work each year, etc.) for charity and then try to exceed it.