Comments by "Jack Haveman" (@JackHaveman52) on "Auckland Clip 3: The Dawning of the Moral Sense" video.

  1.  @viktorkc1154  Orwell was a socialist until he fought in the Spanish Civil War. Right after that he wrote "Animal Farm" which was a strong voice against socialism. 8 year later, he wrote 1984. This is one of the most powerful works on the dangerous aspects of socialist thought. His take on the idea of Newspeak, is brilliant and is now being demonstrated by modern universities who actually have guidelines for what is acceptable to say and what isn't. Control of the individual by control of speech. The more verbal infractions that are introduced the more control they have over you. Not just in the way they speak but the way they think. Orwell realised this about socialist thought. Socialism can't work unless everyone is onboard with the idea. If not, they must be re-educated or rejected outright and the methods of rejection become more strident the more control the socialists gain.
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  2.  @viktorkc1154  You can't have socialism without authoritarianism. He may have believed in socialism but he didn't have the political experience to see that socialism will always end in tyranny. Stalin himself declared the Soviet Union as socialist and that it was an intermediary to a full communist state. Capitalism is defined as " an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state". Online dictionary. This will be verified by any other source that you could name. There is no way the Soviet Union's economy way held and controlled by the private sector. The economy was centrally planned and the goal was to abolish all private property. Socialism requires the co-operation of all. It is the rule of tyranny as every citizen is compelled to make sure no other citizen isn't taking advantage of the system. Capitalism allows the individual to make his own decision on his economic life and financial future. Socialism doesn't. This is Socialism as defined by the online dictionary. "a political and economic theory of social organisation which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole." The community being the state. No private sector. The community controls the economic system and is regulated by the state. An individual cannot build his own business or make decisions on how that business should grow. That is authoritarianism and it is the default position for socialism.
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  3.  @viktorkc1154  He supported democratic socialism and at the time there was no real example on how that would actually fare if applied. What history has shown is that if the economy is controlled by the state in a democracy, political candidates will use the revenue garnered by the state run enterprises as a carrot to get votes. Businesses need that revenue to maintain equipment, train employees, invest in research and innovation. Without it, they stagnate and the economy runs into difficulty and eventually the state will be forced into tyranny in their attempt to stop the bleeding or their economy. No true socialist state has avoided it and when reading Orwell, the signs that this is inevitable are all there and that's how Peterson came to his conclusions on Socialism. Orwell showed him, inadvertently, that it couldn't work. Orwell said he was a democratic socialist but his books told a different story. In fact, he was a great supporter of British traditions and those traditions don't reflect socialism, either. Yes....the owner or CEO of a company can move his business elsewhere and dismiss his employees if he chooses. It's his company. It's my choice, as an individual to work for him and I can leave if I want, as well. That's freedom of the economy. If I force him to hire me and tell him that he can never fire me, I'm placing my authority over his. The owner of a business's first priority is to the survival of his business. If he doesn't do that, he's given up his responsibility to the company, his buyers, suppliers and his employees. If I build a better mousetrap, I have every right to profit from that mousetrap. It was my idea, my effort, my money and my risk to go into business. Any employee I hire, doesn't take the risks that I did and he has no right to the things that I purchased with my money in order to produce my product. There is no way that anyone would allow a person to walk in off the street and then claim that property as his own and that the owner is now subservient to him. That's theft and if you'd ever owned a business, you'd see that right away. What entrepreneur, in his right mind, would ever start a business under those conditions. A healthy economy depends on the freedom of it's entrepreneurs to have full autonomy of their own enterprise. If not, I might as well walk into your house right now and take what I want. You've just claimed that ownership is irrelevant and you have no right to ownership of anything. That takes us to the authority of the law. That's NOT authoritarianism. That's a societal agreement that we will abide by certain rules and laws which are limited by a Constitution which specifically lay out the rights of all citizens as individual, autonomous beings. You either stop me from taking your stuff, by force or authority, or we devise a civilised way to handle it through a system of laws and protection. The rule of anarchy will only result in the rule of the guy with the biggest fist, club or gun. It's still authority driven but rather uncivilised.
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  4.  @seanaaron94  What amazes me is how people don't see that. You've simplified it a lot but it's what's at the very heart of the problem with socialism. What's disturbing is how people don't understand what socialism actually is. Free health care isn't socialism. Nationalisation and government control of business, that's socialism and it leads to tyranny, EVERY time. The US is facing the biggest internal threat to its existence since the Civil war.
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  5.  @motoxray  There is no such thing as a Nirvana. Not in this universe, anyway. Nothing is perfect and every system is due to failure as it inevitably leads to stagnation, tyranny and failure. This idea that capitalism is harmful to the average person just isn't true. Every TRUE capitalist state that is based on the rule of law has the most affluent citizens on the planet. The US, Canada, western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand.....these are the countries that the people of 3rd world, and even developing countries, aspire to migrate to. There has NEVER been a more affluent average citizen in the history of the humanity, than those who live in those Capitalist countries. NEVER. These are the countries that practise a capitalist economy and have strong social programs. That doesn't make them socialist. Social programs are the result of a strong economy and the revenue gathered through tax programs pay for health, education, the military and police protection, transportation and safety nets for the more vulnerable of the citizens. It is an expense of human survival and the more wealth that a nation accrues as a whole, the better the social programs. It's why I, as a retired person and living below the poverty line, as set for my Capitalist country, has still been able to travel to the Dominican Republic, Mexico, the Netherlands and am planning a trip to Costa Rica in a couple of months over the last 2 years and still have more money in the bank than I did 2 years ago. All the countries that I've mentioned all have economies that are overwhelmingly driven through market forces and the private sector. It's why these countries are the primary destinations for migrants and asylum seekers. Hardly any other country has huge issues with people trying to enter legally and illegally...especially 3rd world countries. All of their governments are corrupt and led by tyrannical leaders who keep power by enforcement of the military. The people there live a dystopian life, deep in REAL poverty, where the basics of life, food, clean water and shelter are basic struggle to find every day. That isn't capitalism.
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  6. @Salamanda Wilde Another person that doesn't understand the moral of the story of the Garden of Eden. Others are evil, in your mind, and you're going to point out exactly who those evil doers are. Nice to finally meet that perfect human being. (high brow sarcasm)
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  7. That's something that I asked myself when I was much younger. I still don't have the answer to that question partially because I'd like to think myself better than that. I do have an ego. lol. I engaged others with that question except I would ask them if they were adolescent boys in 1935 Germany, would they willingly and proudly join the Hitler Youth. I'm saying that most of us would. You'd be surprised at the number of people that say "No way", even have become extremely angry at the suggestion that they likely would have. Self examination isn't as easy as it would seem.
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  8.  @VioletDeathRei  The thing is, my family suffered as a result of the Nazi ideology. My parents grew up in wartime Netherlands and my mother nearly starved to death because of the callousness of the Nazi occupation. My uncle spent time at the Jewish detention camp in Westerbork and then was sent to a POW camp to sit out the war. The only reason he was sent there is because he lived a few kilometres away and was spared the fate of the Jewish detainees that were there because he wasn't Jewish. However, he saw them being packed into tiny railway cars so they couldn't even sit. It bothered him all his life. However, that was from the perspective of growing up in Holland. What if my dad had been born 100 kilometres to the west in Germany. Then he'd have been old enough to be in the Hitler youth. One could say that his righteousness was just a luck of geography. Without a doubt, the Nazis did some horrific things. That's not what I've been contemplating. It's my contention that the wrong things done is not a German thing but part of the human condition. That if we don't understand that about ourselves, that we will repeat the atrocities in the future. You don't stop evil by pointing fingers. You stop it by knowing yourself and what you're capable of under the right circumstances. That's why I'm against the posturing of the left that accuses everyone of fascism and evil even while they're quite enthusiastically committing their own violence and excusing it in the name of the common good. Nazis did that. They believed that what they were doing was the right thing for their people and that they stood above the rest. Antifa believes the same of themselves and in so doing are quite willing to commit violence for the "good" cause. No self reflection on what they're doing. In fact, they refuse to talk to anyone that might point out the flaws in their behaviour and will only live within their own little bubble or echo chamber.
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  9.  @blindseher3634  It's why humanity has kept slaves for thousands of years. Why we had the Inquisitions, the witch hunts, the Cultural Revolution in China, the killing fields in Cambodia, the human sacrifices of the Mayans and the Aztecs, the slaughters by the Mongols and the followers of Mohammed. I could go on and on. It's a manifestation of the what we're all capable of under the right circumstances. We're just as capable of good and that's promising, but as long as the overwhelming majority sees themselves as the moral and ethical creatures and others as the evil ones, we will be doomed to repeat the atrocities of history, again and again.
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  10.  @joelfry4982  Then you don't get it. It's not that "Humans can be evil because of wilful agency." It's "I can be evil because of wilful agency". When you really understand that, then you will understand the moral of that story.
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