Quote from: general lee on April 22, 2014, 01:36:07 PM

Socializm for weak people....

It's also for strong people.

Some people are just naturally better at things than other people. On an evolutionary time scale humans are more adapted to hunter/gatherer modes of existence. In this case, individual variation in abilities was 'buffered' since the small social groupings lived under fairly egalitarian systems generally.

In the modern world slight variations in abilities quickly lead to huge differences in competitiveness. If that is not 'bad' enough, other structures are perpetuated which result in structural imbalances which favor skills in generally counter-productive areas (e.g., violence and/or theft/fraud), and they take on a multi-generational component leading to dynastic wealth accumulations.

I was lucky enough to have some skillz which produced a competitive advantage in my society. I favor 'distribution of wealth' as a means of promoting more stable social systems and discouraging periodic violent revolutions and such. Revolutionary events inevitably involve much suffering, and rarely achieve the initial goals...they tend to just shuffle the chips to a different set of power holders. I define 'socialism' as a system which distributes wealth from people like me across society in order to promote a better quality of life for society in general. Like making sure that old people are taken care of and everyone can have a decent level of health care for instance.

I also put my money where my mouth is in that I sometimes pay more in taxes than the average person earns. I mainly bitch about taxes when the rules are rigged for people in my situation and I don't feel that I pay enough via various carefully engineered tax loopholes and the like. The 'reward' that I get for pulling slightly harder on the wagon is that I don't have to fund death squads to help me preserve what I've got and trip over teaming masses of angry peasants ever time I go out in public.

I don't feel that a deadbeat deserves a high quality of life, and I don't know anyone who does. 'Socialism' offering a deadbeat a decent existence on the backs of people who are willing to work is a myth perpetuated by right winger Koch brother types in order to herd people into supporting political structures which facilitate an increase in their own dynastic wealth pools.