Whats wrong with socialism?

liberationn15
Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:26:59 +0000

proletariat2, after reading your post, I fear that our disagreement may be more linguistic than substantive. Why don’t you define exactly what you mean by socialism (or Marxism, if that’s the case)?

Firstly, when I said “rational people” I meant economically rational people. Economically rational people only choose a course of action if the benefit outweighs the cost – i.e. no economically rational person would endure 13 years of hell to get a Med degree if he could make the same salary by becoming a janitor (or some other occupation that required as little work on his part as possible). While it’s a nice notion on the surface, any society which rewards brilliance and mediocrity, hard work and laziness, with the exact same payoffs will collapse. This is why socialism (as I understand the term) simply doesn’t work.

Secondly, when I said “individuals need to fail” I certainly didn’t mean that children should be left to starve in the streets. I meant it in a Darwinian sense. If each creature that ever lived were given an equal chance to reproduce regardless of genetic deficiencies, what sort of world would we live in? My bet is, not a very good one. The analogy also holds true for businesses and even ideas.