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« Feeling Sick (Election Results) | Is it Good? »

A Question for the Socialists

Victor Davis Hanson says it well.  It’s a fair question: “After running up the annual deficit to a near half-a-trillion dollars in stimuli rebates and bailouts, now we are to send checks out again for subsidies for food, housing, and power? And how to pay for it? And the consequences of looking for others to channel money to be redistributed? At some point, there should be some overarching exegesis to explain all this. Something like: ‘Compensation is arbitrary and not based on either fairness or logic. So government is necessary to make the needed corrections and to redistribute in the way a flawed market cannot.’ At least then we could learn the logic involved.”

This entry was posted on 6 November 2008 at 10:53 pm and is filed under Community, Abortion, Humanism, Politics, Social Medicine, Leadership, Environmentalism, Taxes, Social Injustice, Social Justice, Contemporary Christianity, Relativism, Sanctity of Life, Biblical Worldview, Morality, Radicals, Radicalism, Secularism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “A Question for the Socialists”

  1. Daniel says:
    12 November 2008 at 10:35 am

    I don´t get it…should´nt the question be how it the open market came to be dependent on tax money (redistribution) to survive?..capitalism needs socialism to work…apparently.

  2. Brian says:
    13 November 2008 at 1:20 am

    No, capitalism requires government to protect property rights and create a stable society in which people have the freedom and opportunity to create wealth, but that doesn’t necessitate socialism. I can’t think of an economic system (unless you consider theft and plunder an economic system) that doesn’t require some level of government.
    ‘
    I wouldn’t expect my European friends to be able to see the distinction between the government and the economic sectors, though. :^)
    ‘
    Sadly, we are drifting toward socialism, not because capitalism has failed, but because we don’t like it when it works and brings us the bad fruit of our own poor choices.

  3. Daniel says:
    13 November 2008 at 4:27 am

    lol…I guess they teach that socialism is equal to theft and plunder on your side of the big water:)…over here they teach that the goverment sets the legal framework for how the economic sectors…but as it seems that the idea of keeping all for myself when times are good while heavily depend on others when they aren´t is a very capitalistic idea, don´t you think?

    personally I like the idea of doing it my way with as little intervention as possible…but I acknowlede that if I want the system to be around if I fail I have to invest something into the system along the way…and that would be what most people over here mean when they say socialism:))

  4. Brian says:
    18 November 2008 at 12:45 am

    Touche’. I was actually referring to anarchy with the “theft and plunder” comment. Actually, “depend heavily on others” when times are bad isn’t capitalistic, it’s warped capitalism.
    ‘
    There is a safety net in the US system and the rich pay into it, too. The problem with socialism is that the safety net isn’t a safety net. It’s a very comfortable hammock, which drains the motivation and encourages rest rather than industry. In the long run, that’s bad for everyone - industrious and lazy, alike.

  5. Daniel says:
    19 November 2008 at 4:35 am

    It´s a thin red line I suppose, when does it drain the motivation and when does it actually do good? When does taking care of the less fortunate become socialism in the economic sense and when is it simply the responsibility that God has given us. To organize this “caretaking” on a larger scale does in itself no lead to demotivation but helps us remember how we as a society decided on how to live our lives as a community. At least in Austria, as well as in Sweden, socialism has largely turned into a word that describes this “caretaking” rather than socialism as Mao, Stalin or Castro proclaim(ed) it. But one of the greatest flaws of socialism (besides what you already mentioned) is the idea of equals above equals. Some get much more for the same effort, which is the same in capitalism. And that certainly drains the motivation. So when you come to the roots of it all it appears to be the person behind the idea that is flawed. However good or bad the idea in itself might be.

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