Comments by "Digital Nomad" (@digitalnomad9985) on "USHANKA SHOW"
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@kucingcat8687
I won't defend "capitalism" because "capitalism" is Marx' theoretical caricature of economic freedom. The reason why economic freedom doesn't work for impoverished third world countries is because they don't have it. You can claim that economic freedom exists in the realm of international trade because there is no overarching regulatory authority. But that doesn't do an individual any good if he lives in a dictatorship.
"an example of how socialism works, it's Cuba."
Cuba is hell. The prosecution rests.
Freedom of opportunity and property rights have created the wealthiest societies in the world. Have created societies where the "poor" have a material position far more advantageous than the kings under former systems. That is where wealth and opportunity are made. If your ideology is actually better then "improve" some 3rd world country and out-compete the rest of the world. That is how freedom proved itself, by providing the greatest benefit to all, and to the least gifted in particular. It is irrelevant to say that this or that communism isn't "real". If communism were practical, and any of those who advocate it had any sort of clue how to implement it, then by now, almost 200 year after Marx published his ideas, SOMEBODY would have implemented and established the communist utopia which would be the wonder of the world. At any rate, until you do you have no empirical case, obviously.
If you are really concerned with human suffering and oppression, why do you always seek to "improve" the freest, most prosperous, and most equitable societies, rather than liberating the actually oppressed? It is almost as if you are more concerned with pulling down the rich than lifting up the poor.
In fact, and historically in practice, despotism results, and the reason why IS AN INHERENT FLAW OF THE THEORY. You seek to replace the free market with an arbitrary distribution of stuff. To do this you need an arbiter. The arbiter does not BECOME, he IS by nature of his function, the dictator. In fact, this is recognized in the theory, "the dictatorship of the proletariat". You, first, remove all the protections, restraints, checks and balances of the civic society, (often accompanied by the removal of checks on the conscience from religion,) give absolute power (in a sense greater even than the kings and emperors of old) to a person or a group, already acclimated to a free hand in the use of force when they steal everybody's stuff. Then you wonder why so many get murdered by your just and equitable and scientific government, and why life in your utopia is so similar to slavery.
In fact this similarity was recognized, and embraced by George Fitzhugh,19th century leftist and southern slavery advocate of the "positive good" school, that is, of those who insisted that slavery was good for the slave. (source, Dinesh D'Sousa "Death of a Nation") Like Wolff, of course, Fitzhugh characterizes the relationship between the wage worker and capital as oppressive. He goes further in comparing it unfavorably with slavery, claiming that the supposed freedom of choice of the wage worker is illusory and the wage worker is a "slave without a master", that is, in his construction, without a person obligated and motivated to "take care" of him. "The maxim, every man for himself embraces the whole moral code of a free society. The rich are continually growing richer and the poor poorer." Freedom is a "war of the rich, with the poor, and the poor with one another."
By way of contrast, he finds in slavery a sort of commune "in which the master furnishes the capital and skill, and the slaves the labor, and divide the profits, not according to each one's in-put, but according to each one's wants and necessities." He called the contemporary socialist theory "an ever receding and illusory Utopia." Slavery, he insists, is an existing and the only practical form of socialism, achieving "the ends all Communists and Socialists desire."
The common thread, is that to the libertarian sensibility essential freedom is freedom TO (to act), and to the socialist is freedom FROM (from responsibilities, uncertainties).
James Madison in Federalist 51, states the obvious that eludes these ivory tower theorists:
"The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."
A common fallacy of utopian ideologues is that human nature is inherently good, but is being held back by some flaw in the social contract. In fact, the same flawed, imperfect, selfish, stupid nature that infests the lord, or the "capitalist", infests the revolutionary. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The "capitalist" AS SUCH, can only hire or bribe. An unchecked authoritarian government can do that (with other people's money), plus arrest, torture, and kill you or your family. It is incoherent to fear the former and not fear the latter. No "angel" is available to bear this power benignly.
The socialist disconnect between productivity and incentives has been elaborated on. It is the aspect of socialism which impoverishes the society, and gives the lie to the altruistic pretensions of its advocates. The common folk of a socialist society are uniformly poorer than their counterparts in a free one, in addition to being sorely oppressed and hampered and proscribed at every turn.
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