Re: God made no masters and no servants

In article <20110209011310.87D911A2503A@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Andrew Usher <03391618@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

- Neither I nor the founders ever intended the concept of
equality to mean that men are equal in all abilities, and you
have to know this.

On the contrary, I pointed out that the most alluring aspect of
socialism is the notion of those with needs being able to enjoy
"equality" with those with abilities hence my observation that everyone
would get a gold medal for each Olympic event irregardless of ability.

Straw man. Also how is that contrary to what I just said?
Equality between men applies to some things and not to others
and that shouln't be difficult to understand.

You brought up the notion of equality justifying socialist policies so
naturally it is difficult to understand or limit where equality applies
in some cases and not in others. It's not the worms' fault that the can
is opened!

- Everyone's career path is different, and you can't generalise
from your own experiences (which I know nothing of).

So how is this different than evil capitalism which doesn't care about
my personal experiences either?

That's just the point!

And... what? An argument of equivalency doesn't influence me to change
my mind especially when there are other factors leading me to not do so.

I might consider joining the socialist cult if I wasn't constantly being
reminded that there's nothing in it for me.

Bald-faced selfishness!

Versus the hypocritical kind. Why not ask the political beneficiaries of
socialism to put something in the kitty and then get back to me? Sorry
if I'm selfish and refuse to be your doormat. I can live with that
decision.

Hint: People join cults during the "Wow! This is fun and everyone's
love bombing me!" period, not the "Time to drink cool aid so that the
cult leader doesn't look bad!" phase.

There's no reason to call socialism a cult. For one, it has no
official organisation, as all cults (in the modern meaning) do.

Just the opposite: Cults are often regarded as such because they aren't
in the mainstream and lack official recognition hence they are
stereotypically viewed as a bunch of guys living in the desert somewhere.

In addition, a primary tenet of socialism is that it's a theocracy. It
would be like saying that Christianity in the middle ages had no
official organization since it was a mere government agency. :-)

And it has all the dogma of a religion: Apocalyptic beliefs, superiority
of their followers as compared to the infidels, higher principles which
are abandoned or even twisted to suit the political agenda of the
leaders. The whole lot.

Medieval Catholicism is far better by comparison. The architecture is
superior to boot! :-)

For most
people changing jobs is not easy, and starting one's own
business can't be practical for everyone - just imagine what
would happen if everyone insisted on doing so!

Whoever said life should be easy?

And here comes the masochism argument. "Dammit, if I had to do
it this way, everyone should, until the end of time!"

Does socialism promise that getting a gold medal is going to be easy for
everyone? Here we go again with you selling pie-in-the-sky equality and
goodies for the socialist faithful and then when pressed tell us that
God's will is hard to ascertain and we'll just have to have faith.

- The Internet is a good example of socialism working. Remember
that the socialist Internet outcompeted the capitalist private
online services like Compuserve and AOL.

Actually, Compuserve and AOL went under just as the Internet was being
privatized.

This doesn't change the fact that the internet owes its
existence to the big bad government.

Now this is a point appropriate to soc.men: Feminists argue that since
women give birth to children, then they should get all the credit for
the deeds of the children without any of those pesky responsibilities or
blame.

You referred to the internet as an example of government working IN THE
PRESENT TENSE. The internet is currently privatized. So even if you
have a point that the internet was conceived by workers in government
industries, the fact is that the modern system is successful because of
private industry.

In addition, the highest growth of the internet occurred as it was being
privitized.

Do you want to go back to the internet in 1987? Oh, wait, that's what
we're on right now. :-)

Nor that the private
services, despite their greater concentration on serving their
customers, ultimately lost their customers.

Wrongo. They were just transferred to other private industries. In
addition, I pay a lot less today for these services then I did back in
the days of socialist utopia.

Back in socialist internet utopia, I paid $5 AN HOUR for 2400 baud
dialup access. In modern unequal capitalist internet, I pay $20 a month
to comcast for 8 Mb/sec. Which do you think is better?

In addition, with the private internet the jobs are based much more upon
merit than the government and academic institutions which are slow to
hire guys like me. So again, you really aren't selling this to me here.
I'm not shaving my head just yet!

How does free market
theory explain that? Oh, and the medium we're posting on,
Usenet, is an even better example of my socialist ideal as
everyone really has equal free speech.

I don't know about you, but I had to pay for my usenet access.

I don't - as long as I can get on the Internet to start with,
and Google is also free.

Is google a government agency?

In fact, in this one respect, Google is
taking a government-like role (not capitalist) in providing a
public service. Since I really believe in free speech, that lone
is enough to convince me that Usenet is superior without
bothering with technical details.

Indeed! Citing google shows that capitalism can work for public good.

Moving on:

- Your assertion that socialism hurts men, and by implication
that capitalism benefits them (relative to women) is just an
unsupported assertion.

I have explained why I claim that is so in previous posts but the basic
gist of it in a sentence is that men overall pay into the welfare state
while women overall collect from it. Do you deny this?

I do not deny it;

So clearly I wasn't making an unsupported assertion.

You say you respect free speech but at the same time you aren't a free
listener. If you regard people who disagree with you as wrong by
default, free speech isn't going to help you much and it won't help sell
your cause to the naive and future faithful reading our exchange. You'd
be much better off just ignoring me and preaching your message but I
have found that true believer types just aren't self-aware enough to do
that.

I do deny that the alternative would be
better.

And that's an example of an unsupported assertion.

Simply denying something doesn't work to disprove it, outside of church
that is.

You have to show that there's something in it for men to MAKE UP FOR
what you have JUST ADMITTED ABOVE is a net financial loss of power for
men. I'm ahead in this game. You can't wave the flag of victory simply
by declaring yourself the winner.

Right now we have to contend with feminist ideology and
that wouldn't go away if you could magically abolish 'welfare'.

I'll explain my position, again, about how it would magically go away.
It's also known as the invisible hand of the free market:

If women realize that the state won't rescue them from becoming an unwed
mother without financial support, then they will have to treat men
better in order to get support from the patriarchy they crave.
Socialism provides women with the benefits of the patriarchy without
respecting it.

You have yet to explain how you will be able to practically divorce, so
to speak, feminism and socialism. It's obvious to the reader, even
yourself, that feminism and socialism are joined at the hip. Don't
blame me, I'm just the messenger!

For example, you mention Social Security, which is (we both
agree) a socialist redistribution program. Yes, it does give a
small net transfer from men to women

"small net transfer?" This is from the SSA itself!

<snipped> This doesn't show the actual magnitude of the net
transfer. I'd bet it's not more than a third of the total
benefits paid out.

A third of the net benefits of SSA is a pretty big chunk of money. :-)

Let's try it this way: if you could go to work for a company that paid
you 33% more per year, all other things equal, would you say that's a
good deal?

- but the alternative was
expecting working men to support their own elderly relatives,
which is a bigger net transfer, and the fact that it's your own
mother (etc.) makes no difference economically.

EXACTLY (except not in the way you think!)

Indeed, men providing for women via a welfare state as substitute
husband vs doing it himself directly is different in one respect: In the
latter, where the man is married or provides for his relatives, he gets
the respect of the women.

LOL!!! You obviously don't understand normal marriage nor human
psychology if you think that providing for someone causes them
to respect you.

If that support is truly unconditional, and in a bad way where the
person can bite the hand that feeds them, certainly.

While many men fail to get the respect they deserve in "normal
marriage", do you deny that the treatment unwed mothers give their
boyfriends is even worse?

Even if it did, it wouldn't justify capitalism except to the
troglodyte mentality

Ah, the most important thing for the believer of the leftist religion:
You get to be one of the superior faithful.

Simply because a truth is obvious even to a stupid person is not an
indictment of it's value but just the opposite. I believe that the
burden of communication lies with me, not with the listener. If I fail
to communicate with them, that's all me. It just means sometimes that I
have to be creative in how I communicate the concept. :-)

And keep in mind that socialism is ALL ABOUT funding for the
troglodytes. It's not about empowering the skilled worker but rather
the dumb schmucks who are on welfare and will vote to rob from those
with abilities. Just as post feminism has shown women's equality to be
a total lie, post socialism has shown that the socialist elites target
the skilled workers of their countries INCLUDING in western Europe.

that says it doesn't matter how much shit
you take from the rest of the world as long as you're master of
your own house - of course, those people generally are masters
of their house to a far less degree than they pretend, making it
hypocritical as well.

More elitism. Keep in mind that the masters of their own homes have
produced the world we live in today. What do you think the world will
look like a few decades from now with the masters of the welfare state
in charge?

It's interesting how you compared capitalism to slavery when the SSA and
welfare state does the same thing to men: Takes away their wages and
gives them to women "masters" Fiddle dee dee! Why bother paying the
slaves when you just give it to the master anyway! Don't forget to say
thank you, slave!

All governments collect taxes, it's only a matter of what
they're spent on.

And this disproves my point, how? Non-sequitur!

Personally I object far more to my wages going
to the bloated, wasteful defense establishment than to people
that could really use it, even if they are women.

Er, you do realize that it was the bloated, wasteful, defense
establishment that created the internet, don't you? :-)

The total Defense Department budget is about 700 billion dollars about
of 3.5 trillion meaning that the military is about 20% of the overall
budget:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2007.png

Leftist dogma against the US military has been around for some time
since they were anti-American commie sympathizers and their reactionary
stance against the USA as a capitalist nation has remained since that
time. Also, it was said that if only the defense department budget
could be eliminated on the money spent on the welfare queens, why, we'd
have a utopia in no time!

As you can plainly see, converting all the missiles and aircraft
launchers into welfare checks and crack babies wouldn't cause much of a
bump. Social insecurity and socialized "single payer" medicine in the
form of medicare/medicaid would suck that up in a matter of a few years
and you know it.

Yeah, keep trying with that. And you can't criticize feminism because
that's a label YOU deemed upon them. Isn't that trick neat?

I criticise feminism because of their ideas, not because of the
label

As THEY define it, feminism is about equal rights and opportunities and
outlawing spousal abuse against women. Are you against those things as
THEY define it?

nor the personal characteristics of feminists. You seem
unable to criticise socialism (as I define it) on the same basis.

You have a point that I can't criticize your beliefs when you define the
rules to win by default.

What's neat about big government is that the feminists are in power as
much as the socialists and even the powerful wealthy elites. So if you
love those things, guess what, you're pitching for the "church" or state
that's keeping them going!

I've made some pretty bizarre typos at times, but I don't recall making
that claim. I have said that there are many rich socialists who profit
from big government rather than suffer from it in order to attack the
notion that socialism is against the 'rich' and for the worker.

Then they're not really socialist.

See "real feminists" above.

Besides, almost 100% of the
people meeting this description are Jews and they are always for
Jewish power first.

You need to rent a copy of Borat. :-)

If that's your stance then consider that Jews vote in the 80 to 90
percentile range for socialists. So either you think they're really
really dumb or you're the dupe. Pick one and especially the one that
makes the most sense.

One thing is for sure, most people would agree that Jews are NOT stupid!

Actually, I know personally people who did just that. It didn't happen
overnight but they made friends with socialist buddies who became
politically powerful and connected and later scored a high paying
government gig as part of a good-ol-boy network.

This is just ordinary corruption and has nothing to do with
socialism in particular.

If this is ordinary corruption and it's a natural part of a large,
politicized state then that's the way that socialism is going to work.

Let's say that socialism is pork. If you like pork then you can't get
away from the fact that pork involves pig farming. You're married to a
pig. Don't blame those of us who refuse to let you define pork as not
being made out of pigs.

"There's three types of animals Lisa. Ham, bacon, and pork chops"
"Dad! That's the same animal!"
"Yeah, right Lisa. One MAGIC animal!"

The
illusion is that capitalism leads to freedom. Closely related as
the illusion that freedom is an absolute concept, which leads to
bizarre definitions of it such as libertarians use.

How very real as a concept is freedom until it's not absolute?

I guess I slightly misspoke. I do think the concept is absolute,
the idea I disagree with is that people in the real world are
either free or unfree with nothing in between (or less extreme
variants).

You chose to demand that capitalism meet some extreme standard where
unless it worked perfectly and people were equal and could do what they
wanted, they were slaves.

Then when I subjected socialism to that same standard you basically
tried to change the subject or redefine the terms.

Nice try, but I don't buy it. Literally. I'm "selfish" that way.

- Homelessness ought to be taken as an indicator of social
dysfunction, and the fact that it's so common in the USA shows
the failure of capitalism - as it's always socialist programs
that address it, private business doesn't care.

So let me see if I understand your logic here: It's socialist programs
that address homelessness and should get credit for solving it but when
homelessness happens, it must be capitalism's fault.

That's quite logical. The fact that it's unflattering to
capitalism is not my fault!

It's hardly unflattering to capitalism when you're admitting that
socialism promises nothing and then blames capitalism for the failure of
it's own policies.

It reminds me of feminism which hates the evil patriarchy and then turns
around and declares that the patriarchy needs to continue to provide and
protect them.

Just as the more money pumped into the welfare state and public
education and worsening homelessness and illiteracy is due to capitalism
which doesn't do anything to solve these problems.

Huh? I'm sorry, I can't parse this sentence.

It's parsable. The problem is your own logic that I should want to buy
into socialism when it promises me nothing and blames capitalism for
it's socialism's failures.

- It's not just that bosses can fire you if you personally
criticise them. They can fire you for pretty much anything,

Wrongo.

The left has created a number of laws prohibiting employers from firing
employees for a variety of reasons including if they are women. Oh,
wait, how does that benefit men?

You oppose those laws! That's means you can't use them to defend
your position, that is contradictory.

I was using them as a rebuttal to your claim that employers could fire
you for pretty much anything.

In addition, it's also a good example of how these leftist laws are not
helping men which is a key point to my thesis.

In any case, if bosses
only have that power over white men, it makes it no more
tolerable - especially as I am a white man.

And this helps your case that socialism helps men more than it hurts,
how?

I'm reminded of a case where a state employee of NJ burned a Koran as a
protest of the leftist supported Mosque near Ground Zero. He was fired
by the state for expressing his opinion.

Even if this is accurate (I can't be sure), many if not most
large private companies would have fired him as well.

So you can't be sure it's accurate yet you make claims about the firing
policies of "most" companies out of thin air.

How does socialism defend greater free speech than capitalism, again?

By putting it under law rather than subject purely to the whims
of private masters.

Er, it was the government that fired the guy. You're bragging about
socialism's support for free speech by ignoring the state firing a guy
for burning a Koran and then making specious claims about private
industry.

In addition, free speech rights in the states are created by LIMITATIONS
upon government power which is the opposite of socialism which seeks to
create more limitations upon private speech EVERYWHERE socialism is
practiced.

Which is a good close. Please show me a socialist state that does more
to protect free speech than the USA's LIMITS on the government's power
to control free speech thereby putting it in the free market,
capitalist, market.

regards,
PolishKnight
.

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