Where Socialism wins out

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Just like state owned enterprises.



Correct.



The oil in the North Sea will run out in 2060. There's natural gas in Scandinavia and Russia at least until 2200.

Coal is as outdated as Betamax and more expensive than nuclear power, but it's still being used. Read the story about Tiberius Caesar and the unbreakable glass if you want to know why.

If you add in the regulatory and insurance costs for siting, building and operating a fission generator, the cost per kwh produced by burning coal is lower than the cost per kwh for electricity generation by fissioning uranium. This could change. Regulations could change. The newer reactor designs are safer and may low insurance costs.

Hydrocarbons are used to power vehicles and generate electricity as much as they are because their costs are lower, particularly if environmental impact is factored -out- as governments have been inclined to do. Governments give the oil and gas guys free gifts. Easy regulations and what is worse, tax breaks and subsidies. They really should not do that.

ruveyn

I have already posted evidence that it exists (in animals in general), but once again, the word "reciprocal" creeps in.

And as pointed out by the last political philosopher David Hume (provocation intended), human altruism seems to decrease with distance; the closer a person is to you, the more likely are you to be kind to them (less relevant when it comes to relatives, however, as kin selection is likely the dominant force here).

This creates a serious problem for socialism. Getting people to be altruistic towards family and neighbours might be one thing, but altruism towards millions of people you will never even meet?

Another problem is the "sufficiency principle". Human nature is a product of evolution in a niche where the 3 components of evolution were present: Variance, inheritance and selection. Then some wise ass invented fire, and that pretty much did away with the selection part. As a result, we all carry around physical and mental characteristics which are sufficient to survive in some (more or less unknown) stone age setting.

In order words, our moral convictions are hopelessly outdated. This isn't so bad when is comes to being selfish, as the evolutionary relevant categories of wealth, security and sexual access seem to satisfy selfish needs just fine across time and borders.

But if altruism is concerned with the common good, then it becomes obvious that the common good might not be the same in a 100 people homogeneous tribe living at substinence level in an almost empty world as in a X million/billion people wealthy nation of several different races, religions, political convictions and economic conditions living in a full world.

Summary (v.2.0): Socialism might have a problom with human nature, since self-interest works directly against it, and since altruism isn't wired for it.



... but human beings are still part of the real world. Human "consciousness" does not exist in some seperate reality, where the laws of physics do not apply. Unless some sort of quantum effect can be demonstrated to be uniquely present within the confines of the human brain, our actions are as determined by physical laws as a .338 leaving the barrel of a sniper rifle.

... Oh, and free-riding is an adjustment to our sorroundings, and often a clever one at that. So it is a non sequitur to assume, that the mental flexibility of homo sapiens makes socialism a more viable economic system (straw man alert). It may indeed be the opposite.



... shhh! I agree, but if a lot of people read your statement, it could be the end of the PPR forum (nothing left to discuss...⸮). This is an AS site, so someone might actually *listen* to valid points... Be careful...

there really isnt much to discuss here

i agree and i may have formualted myself a bit poorly on this side of my sleep cycle(or lack thereof)

one point though, when i say human consciousness it is not to say a seperate entity, but that our abstraction allows us to have another view and therefore another chance of changing.

all of that would still be the same coping strategy used by any human in unfamiliar surrounding(social, intelectual or physical)

other than that i think we are learning from our mistakes of altruism, but it is largely being done by grassroots movements, some of the urban farming experiments are truly altruistic in nautre, but they are so because they use the inherent selfishness of humans, almost free vegetables and fruit for most of the year? well that will save me a couple of hundred bucks.

This is actually taken into consideration in most statistics and so is the cost of the disposal of nuclear waste. Coal is cheaper in the US because the US has a lot of coal per capita.



Powering a car is different from making electricity. You can't prevent radioactive polution the same way with a Ford Nuclean as you could with a nuclear power plant, nor can you generate power for a car with renewable sources.



You've gotta spend money to make money.

No, they weren't. The soviets were not "tools" led by oligarchs. Far from it. I highly recommend the book The Bolsheviks In Power by Alexander Rabinowitch. Why?

It goes through in great detail and accurately explains the soviets function in relation to the Bolshevik Party (and for that matter all other socialist parties operating in Russia around the time of the October Revolution)

Political propaganda by the Bolshevik Party was kept to simple agitation for the most part, with soviets themselves jealously defending their independence (esp. on a local district-by-district basis) from parties and the overarching Petrograd Soviet. The Petrograd Soviet tended to oscillate between Left SR and Bolshevik control/support (meaning that it was more fluid then anything else). Other parties would be ejected from the soviets (the Right SRs and Mensheviks had been trying to usurp control in revolutionary Petrograd from the Bolshevik-Left government), but then only on a voluntary, soviet-by-soviet basis. (i.e. The Bolsheviks did not force their will onto the soviets)

The workers' councils did work, but due to the lack of general education in revolutionary Russia (a problem that the Bolsheviks would later try to address), workers sometimes mismanaged their factories/production centers.

Otherwise, they worked to a certain, limited extent (owing to the backwards state of Russia at the time)

Lenin himself did develop-sort of-a cult of personality but privately and publicly shunned it.

Under Lenin's leadership the soviets were alive and well, and were in no way dissolved simply "when not needed" anymore by the party leadership. To say so represents a severe lack of historical knowledge on the subject.

The new revolutionary state could rightfully be called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during Lenin's leadership period.

So how did everything in Russia end up under the heel of that monster, Stalin?

ruveyn

So let me ask you this question. Where there has been a truly Socialist system win out in the long run. The answer is ZERO because socialism is too focused on the materialistic side of life. Besides where the fun in Socialism if there's no Free Market? No free market=slavery to the government/ the man.