Quote: (04-29-2017 11:05 PM)Jean Valjean Wrote:
Quote: (04-16-2017 01:15 AM)puckerman Wrote:
Anytime someone talks about the "good of society" or the "good of the whole," it just means they want to initiate violence against someone they don't like. Why did Hitler kill the Jews? It was for the "good of the whole." Why did the Communists kill millions? It was always for the "good of the whole."
In fairness, though, libertarians also talk a lot about the good of the whole. When socialists point out the inequities of capitalism, libertarians respond, "Even the poor in this country have a higher standard of living than the average worker in a socialist country, because the mass production carried out in billionaires' factories enriches everyone. The clothes discarded in the U.S. by the middle class, and thereby made available to the less fortunate, are of higher quality than the clothes typically worn by the proletariat in communist countries."
Here's a good way to explain the differences between capitalists and socialists. For a socialist, a society is moral if everyone lives to the age of 70 and dies at the same age. For a capitalist, a society is moral if life expectancy is constantly increasing. This might have the least healthy dying at the age of 75 and the most healthy living until 100. Of course, the capitalist society is unequal. But it would still mean everyone is living longer in the capitalist society than everyone in the socialist society. It also shows why socialism is always about destruction and not production or creation.