Quote from: billyjoeallen on January 22, 2016, 02:57:35 AM

Quote from: JorgeStolfi on January 22, 2016, 02:26:49 AM

But in that case the laws and contracts are useless, because the dispute will be decided by the expected costs and benefits of each action (e.g., the party with the machine guns gets his way), and not by any laws or contracts.

as opposed to being decided by who has the best political connections or the most expensive lawyers?

Throughout history, societies have found that method much better than the alternative of "who has the biggest guns". In fact, societies often opted for very stupid divination methods to decide disputes, because even a judicial system with 50% error rate is better than the Far West system.

Quote from: billyjoeallen on January 22, 2016, 03:37:13 AM

Only a minority of voters are socially intelligent, and I include you in that group and you know almost nothing about economics.

Well, thanks for the first part, but I would quite dispute the second one. I admit that, like most computer nerds, my knowledge of economics was actally negative, only two years ago; but I think that I learned quite a bit watching bitcoin.

And I have also lived under a right-wing military dictatorship, various populist presidents, an earnestly neo-con president, a Keynesian-socialist president, not to mention 13 years of neo-con goverments in the US. I think that those experiences entitle me to have my own opinion on such things...

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Maybe power shouldn't be concentrated in the minority OR the majority. Maybe power shouldn't be concentrated. Such a society would still have poverty, crime, and violence, but it wouldn't be locked into some zero-sum winner-loser one-size-fits-all solution to every problem. If you want to get out of a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging. If you want a prosperous peaceful society, perhaps eliminating the wealth-consuming violence monolopoly in the middle of it is a good start.

I would love to live in a society that gets the good things that governments are supposed to offer, but without a government.

I just think that it is not a real possibility, and dreaming about it is a waste of time. So I prefer to think of what we can do to make governments work better.

Quote from: CuntChocula on January 22, 2016, 03:38:28 AM

Again, you're dead wrong. cite your sources. I'll cite mine: Socialism is a political ideology and movement[1] which has proposed a set of social and economic measures, policies[2] and systems characterised by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production

That is from the English Wikipedia. Since your quote comes from a bitcoin site, I suppose that both were written by Libertarians, who obviously thought that they knew all about politics and economics. Wink

Until I get around to fixing that Wikipedia article, let me quote another paragraph from it, that is somewhat less wrong:

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The socialist political movement includes a diverse array of political philosophies that originated amid the revolutionary movements of the mid-to-late 1700s out of general concern for the social problems that were associated with capitalism.[10] In addition to the debate over the degree to which to rely on markets versus planning, the varieties of socialism differ in the type of social ownership they advocate, how management is to be organized within productive institutions, and the role of the state in constructing socialism.[4][10]

But the Frenck Wikipedia has a better explanation:

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Le mot socialisme recouvre un ensemble très divers de courants de pensée et de mouvances politiques1, dont le point commun est de rechercher une organisation sociale et économique plus juste. Le but originel du socialisme est d'obtenir l'égalité sociale, ou du moins une réduction des inégalités2. Plus largement, le socialisme peut être défini comme une tendance politique, historiquement marquée à gauche, dont le principe de base est l'aspiration à un monde meilleur, fondé sur une organisation sociale harmonieuse et sur la lutte contre les injustices. Selon les contextes, le mot socialisme ou l'adjectif socialiste peuvent qualifier une idéologie, un parti politique, un régime politique ou une organisation sociale. Le mot socialisme lui-même entre dans le langage courant à partir des années 1820, dans le contexte de la révolution industrielle et de l'urbanisation qui l'accompagne : il désigne alors un ensemble de revendications et d'idées visant à améliorer le sort des ouvriers, et plus largement de la population, via le remplacement du capitalisme par une société supposée plus juste. L'idée socialiste, sous de multiples formes, se développe au long du XIXe siècle et donne naissance dans le monde entier à des partis politiques s'en réclamant sous diverses dénominations (socialiste, mais également social-démocrate, travailliste, etc.)3.

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The word socialism covers a very diverse set of intellectual currents and political movements, whose common point is to seek a more just social and economic organization. The original goal of socialism was to obtain social equality, or at least a reduction of inequalities. More broadly, socialism can be defined as a political tendency, historically labeled leftist, whose basic principle is the desire for a better world, founded on a harmonious social organization and the fight against injustices. Depending on the context, the word socialism or the adjective socialist may designate an ideology, a political party, or a social organization. The word itself became current in the [ French ] language starting in the 1820s, in the context of the industrial revolution and of the urbanization that it entailed: at the time, in signified a collection of revindications and ideas directed towards improving the life of workers, and more broadly of the population, through the replacement of capitalism by a societly supposedly more just. The idea of socialism, in multiple forms, was developed through the 19th century, and gave birth through the world to political parties that claimed to share it under various names (socialist, but also social-democratic, labor, etc.)

By the way, in the English Wikipedia it also says that anarchism and Libertarianism are flavors of Socialism! So Anarchists are in favor of "social democratic ownership and control of the means of production"? Cheesy

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Original research: Brought up in USSR. The second S is for "SOCIALIST."

Yes, communism is a sub-species of socialism, like Mussolini's fascism and Hitler's version. But socialism is a much wider term than those cases. Sweden, for example, was widely called a socialist country until some decades ago.

(Another socialist idea that capitalists and neocons hate is the progressive income tax, that in Sweden, IIRC, reched 60% or more for the upper brackets.)

Moreover, just because a country puts "Socialist" in its name, it does not mean that they are really socialist. Ditto for "Democratic", "Free", etc.