Whats wrong with socialism?

liberationn15
Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:59:58 +0000

@kwasford, then you aren’t advocating pure socialism. BTW, Economic Darwinism is different than evolutionary Darwinism. Economic Darwinism means that bad corporations die, not bad individuals. Also, I think it is very naive of you to assume that brilliant, talented people would happily work as a doctor to the best of their abilities for no extra money/benifits than they would earn by working as a janitor or waitress. Every “living” example of socialism shows otherwise.

@proletariat2, an organism fails in a Darwinian sense when it fails to reproduce. A company would fail in a capitalist sense when it goes bankrupt. I completely agree that people are not purely economically rational. People do not know their own best interest perfectly rationally. However, people do have a general sense of their own best interest and also have a general sense of how to act in their own gain. Hence, the above argument about doctors and janitors.

Things get interesting when you throw psychology into the mix (and the “feel good” benifit that many people get from communal life). In a society completely composed of people for whom the “feel good” reward outweights the monetary cost, socialism would be good and wonderful. But I can’t imagine such a society arising in the forseeable future.