Is maximum economic efficiency always desirable?
29 May 2009, 11:13 pm
TitusLucretiusCarus wrote:
because those aren't example of social instability? I think the civil rights movement was a hell of a lot more than whining, seeing as there was so much violence before, during and after it all, including the whitewash of the Rodney King beating. Of course city wide riots aren't an example of societal instability in your opinion, there just a few people whining and nothing serious, right? I distinctly recall a picture at the Liverpool Maritime Museum Slavery Exhibit. It's a group of about a dozen white men smiling form ear to ear over a fire. On the fire is the very identifiable corpse of an African-American man.
OK, the US isn't a perfect land with magical ponies. Still, the original point of contention here was about social/governmental stability, and on those measures the US very strongly outperforms most of the rest of the world.
As far as riots, their impact is exaggerated. It's called the availability heuristic, and is a well-documented cognitive flaw in human reasoning. My hometown had race riots a few years ago, but really most people were completely unaffected by it.
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So freedom of association seems to be a binary condition. Have it all or nothing.
Aspies commonly see the world only in black and white. Reality is not always black and white.
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So far as the Op is concerned, it is a trap.
No, it's just a question. I was interested in seeing both responses.
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The question in the OP is posed in such a way that the question calls forth a predetermined answer.
If any answer is predetermined, the OP would seem to bias towards the second answer.
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You erroneously conflate absolute wage inequality with socialism in order, i would argue, for you to justify discrediting it on these terms.
I've already expressed regret over using the term "socialist" because that elicited off-topic and idiotic responses such as your own. The question was, as AG noted, more of an ethical question than an economical one. It is essentially a question of whether we should value egalitarianism over total wealth if we are faced with a choice between the two.
Anyways, I made clear that both my hypothetical situations were caricatures and oversimplifications, and if you read the first page you can see that I explicitly deny that socialism necessitates absolute equality. For you to deny that only betrays your inability to read. You've repeatedly claimed that I "erroneously conflate socialism with absolute wage equality" and yet have not even bothered to read my posts in which I make it quite clear that I do no such thing.
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The only answer which it is possible to give is the first, which serves only to confirm Orwell's ideological position (for it is only empty ideology if it is not subject to full critique), making the pretence of 'questioning' it in order to have it validated by others.
If you continue down this line, I'm just going to end up insulting your intelligence as the OP seemed to actually favor the answer that goes against my capitalist views. For the first part of the thread, I was mostly defending socialism against attacks on it, because I saw some of those attacks as unfair.
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If you go back over the thread you will see I am first ignored.
Because you were off-topic.
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Pressing the point yourself and Orwell resort to attacking Marxism and Socialism as irrelevant,
Because Marxism is f*****g stupid and socialism would almost certainly result in societal collapse.
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completely bypassing the absolutely correct point that you have made a clear error
I just posed a hypothetical question.
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(and do not demonstrate how efficiency and equality are necessarily mutually exclusive, which is a founding assumption of the question asked),
I don't have to, as that is not an assumption made. I didn't say they are necessarily mutually exclusive. I asked a question of which of two hypothetical situations would be preferred to gauge whether people valued efficiency or equality more highly.
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finally swinging very close to personal attacks and foul language (I quote: "BS, complete and utter BS")which only seems to confirm that you were seeking a specific answer.
Actually, it just confirms that I find you obnoxious, unintelligent, and mostly irrelevant to the topic being discussed. What other response would you have wanted to the obviously false claim that Marxism seeks its ends by peaceful means?
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I didn't play your game the way you wanted it to be played, hence your sustained attack.
No, just AG and I are both rather stubborn (he moreso than I) and will usually express disagreement with things that seem wrong.
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It was categorically not me who hijacked the thread.
Well, the thread was already off-topic before you showed up, but you've been worse than other posters.
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You tried to dismiss my opinion which I feel I have every right to both offer and have considered without having to face the attack you mounted.
I've basically dismissed your opinion on two grounds:
1) It's not relevant to the thread topic at all. I was interested in an ethical judgment, not a treatise on socialist theory or linkspam to propaganda sites.
2) Your opinion is wrong.
Sure, you have every right to offer your opinion, even though it is not welcome. But if you say things that are wrong, you are likely to be attacked as PPR is a debate forum, so you certainly have no right to not have "to face the attack [I] mounted."
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It wasn't a question of the relevancy or otherwise of socialism until you made it so.
It wasn't a thread until I made it so.
_________________
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
30 May 2009, 11:12 am
Orwell wrote:
Because Marxism is f***ing stupid and socialism would almost certainly result in societal collapse.
Well, to be fair, it has to be admitted that such a thing is difficult to absolutely prove, so it ends up partially being a matter of induction.
I will admit that Marxism is often a whipping boy in talks about the philosophy of science given accusations of being unfalsifiable, and continuing with increasingly ad hoc hypotheses, both of which are things I remember reading on the matter.
As for socialism, it is also true that in non-polemical economic texts, a dismissal of socialism is sometimes straightforwardly given. This isn't even just speaking about right-wing texts, but even in a book that was seeking to make economics work for social justice and things like that, a dismissal was found.
I think your point does fit into my stand that Marxism and socialism both appear to be in the set of ideas not usually worth the effort to figure out though.
