Firstly let me say that I'm not someone who believes that the free market is thee solution to all of life's problems, or that there's something divine in Adam Smith's hidden hand. I too am fairly pessimistic about the future and I think that politics across much of the so-called 'West' in the coming years/decades is going to revolve more and more around issues like culture and identity; ground upon which the 'right' will find it much easier to prosper than the 'left'.
So...not exactly a bed of roses.
I think people really have to go back and think about the fundamentals at play here. Has socialism, or at least every attempt at its implementation, failed because the good concepts at the heart of it (which you referenced earlier) were simply perverted by the dictators who got in charge?...leading to the tragic misrepresentation, ridicule and misunderstanding of the system as a whole? And has the free market 'capitalist' system succeeded despite the immoral values and behaviour it can give rise to?
Or...have the results have arisen because each system has been true to the values it encourages, supports and develops in the people who live under that system? The answer is found here imo. You have ask yourself - what are the essential notions behind each system? The essential notion behind a free market 'capitalist' society is voluntary exchange and co-operation; whereas the essential notion behind a socialist society is fundamentally - force. And whenever a society departs from voluntary cooperation and tries to do good by force, the bad moral value of force will always triumph over whatever good intentions lay behind it.
Just examine what the effect on the people is, and think about what happens when a society is run from the centre; with the government/state as the master. Well...ultimately people have to be ordered what to do. This is then taken to the extreme in a communist society. Whenever you’re committed to doing good with other people’s money and other people's property, you are committed to using force. How can you achieve this social good with other people's money/property unless you take it away from them? The only way you can do that is by the threat of force! And I repeat - the bad moral value of force will always triumph over whatever good intentions lay behind it.
The reason is not only that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," but more fundamentally and more profoundly it's because the most harm is done when power is in the hands of people who are absolutely persuaded of the purity of their intentions and untainted instincts.
You're touching on what is actually the essential issue here; namely the nature of man. I find that most of the fundamental divide in politics can be explained not so much by disagreements over systems and so on, but by the two different visions of human nature itself. One holds that man is flawed from day one (history attests to this) and the other that man is somehow perfectible. The latter ties in with the Rousseau notion that 'Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains'; that the essential problem isn't man himself but institutions, those undemocratic turnpikes as Thomas Paine termed them, which prevent man from achieving his rights and, ultimately, his freedom.
Wiser counsel is offered by Edmund Burke however, who said (in reference to man's flawed nature) - “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites…in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” In other words, the more self-control there is, the less need there is for government control.
Pardon the tangent (I just admire his writing), but he also famously said - "Society is indeed a contract … it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."
On reflection, I think much of what has gone wrong in 'Western' society in recent generations has arisen because this partnership he refers to, has become frayed and even fractured. Tangent over.
It can take a long time to get these things right. I'm a strong advocate of increasing foreign aid and putting real substantial investment into infrastructure projects and education (particularly for women). Ultimately though, the people themselves have to both get it right, and do right by themselves.
I'm not in much disagreement with you here. People are increasingly living to work, instead of working to live. I'm volunteering at a soup kitchen and intend to do something with the homeless soon.
It is people who are flawed. Balance is required, but it's important to remember that 'capitalism' isn't wholly unregulated. It's regulated by a system of laws which goes some way in preventing its worst excesses, and also by the values and morality which people have (or at least profess to have) in their private lives and in their interactions and dealings with other people.
When it comes to income tax, those who already earn a lot more do pay a lot more. The real question to be asked is how much more?
Re: lottery winners, c'est la vie. Sadly!
So...not exactly a bed of roses.
I think people really have to go back and think about the fundamentals at play here. Has socialism, or at least every attempt at its implementation, failed because the good concepts at the heart of it (which you referenced earlier) were simply perverted by the dictators who got in charge?...leading to the tragic misrepresentation, ridicule and misunderstanding of the system as a whole? And has the free market 'capitalist' system succeeded despite the immoral values and behaviour it can give rise to?
Or...have the results have arisen because each system has been true to the values it encourages, supports and develops in the people who live under that system? The answer is found here imo. You have ask yourself - what are the essential notions behind each system? The essential notion behind a free market 'capitalist' society is voluntary exchange and co-operation; whereas the essential notion behind a socialist society is fundamentally - force. And whenever a society departs from voluntary cooperation and tries to do good by force, the bad moral value of force will always triumph over whatever good intentions lay behind it.
Just examine what the effect on the people is, and think about what happens when a society is run from the centre; with the government/state as the master. Well...ultimately people have to be ordered what to do. This is then taken to the extreme in a communist society. Whenever you’re committed to doing good with other people’s money and other people's property, you are committed to using force. How can you achieve this social good with other people's money/property unless you take it away from them? The only way you can do that is by the threat of force! And I repeat - the bad moral value of force will always triumph over whatever good intentions lay behind it.
The reason is not only that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," but more fundamentally and more profoundly it's because the most harm is done when power is in the hands of people who are absolutely persuaded of the purity of their intentions and untainted instincts.
You're touching on what is actually the essential issue here; namely the nature of man. I find that most of the fundamental divide in politics can be explained not so much by disagreements over systems and so on, but by the two different visions of human nature itself. One holds that man is flawed from day one (history attests to this) and the other that man is somehow perfectible. The latter ties in with the Rousseau notion that 'Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains'; that the essential problem isn't man himself but institutions, those undemocratic turnpikes as Thomas Paine termed them, which prevent man from achieving his rights and, ultimately, his freedom.
Wiser counsel is offered by Edmund Burke however, who said (in reference to man's flawed nature) - “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites…in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” In other words, the more self-control there is, the less need there is for government control.
Pardon the tangent (I just admire his writing), but he also famously said - "Society is indeed a contract … it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."
On reflection, I think much of what has gone wrong in 'Western' society in recent generations has arisen because this partnership he refers to, has become frayed and even fractured. Tangent over.
It can take a long time to get these things right. I'm a strong advocate of increasing foreign aid and putting real substantial investment into infrastructure projects and education (particularly for women). Ultimately though, the people themselves have to both get it right, and do right by themselves.
I'm not in much disagreement with you here. People are increasingly living to work, instead of working to live. I'm volunteering at a soup kitchen and intend to do something with the homeless soon.
It is people who are flawed. Balance is required, but it's important to remember that 'capitalism' isn't wholly unregulated. It's regulated by a system of laws which goes some way in preventing its worst excesses, and also by the values and morality which people have (or at least profess to have) in their private lives and in their interactions and dealings with other people.
When it comes to income tax, those who already earn a lot more do pay a lot more. The real question to be asked is how much more?
Re: lottery winners, c'est la vie. Sadly!
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That’s not what Sanders is about!
