A Simple Bit of Advice

Poll - Total Votes: 8

I agree. Socialism is just awful, absolutely terrible.

"But, but... it hasn't been tried yet", and "That wasn't real socialism!"

Socialism is the work of Satan.

But I love bureaucracy, red tape and useless laws that hamper prosperity and happiness.

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You can only vote on one answer.

Advice for those who actually believe that socialism can still work, or has "never been tried yet".
I live in the state of Victoria, a socialist hellhole run by a virtual dictator called Daniel Andrews (he's the premier of the state).
During the so-called lockdowns his regime was vindictive and punitive, and the ordinary citizenry was basically under house arrest for more than a year. Melbourne, the capital, became THE most "locked-down" city in the entire world, and it is still an awful place to live.
Businesses have fled the state or gone bankrupt, the bureaucracy has expanded like a balloon, and government secrecy is at an all-time high. "Woke" agendas have been promoted, and [i]parents[/i] who try to dissuade their own children from indulging in gender fluidity fantasies can actually be sent to prison. Abortions are on demand and up to and including the TWELFTH month! Taxes have skyrocketed in order to pay for the horrendous debt the state is in (it's effectively bankrupt).
Prior to the epidemic, he tried to sell out the state to the Chinese government, by embracing the "belt-and-road" initiative that has seen many small nations effectively become controlled by the CCP.

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therighttothink50 · 56-60, M Best Comment

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." -C.S. Lewis-

“The Communists’ chief purpose is to destroy every form of independence—independent work, independent action, independent property, independent thought, an independent mind, or an independent man. Conformity, alikeness, servility, submission and obedience are necessary to establish a Communist slave-state.” -Ayn Rand-

"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." -Margaret Thatcher-

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the party is always right.” -George Orwell-

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution” -Aldous Huxley-

“Socialists ignore the side of man that is the spirit. They can provide you shelter, fill your belly with bacon and beans, treat you when you're ill, all the things guaranteed to a prisoner or a slave. They don't understand that we also dream.” -Ronald Reagan-

"How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.” -Ronald Reagan-

Cassie2083

@therighttothink50 Yes, exactly! Spot on!

SW-User

@therighttothink50 A typical list of bogey words, identifying bogey systems and formulas. Then we can disassociate ourselves from them and thus feel "justified", even "free". Job done.

It is never that easy.

SW-User

@therighttothink50 David Bentley Hart wrote an essay on Ayn Rand. I think Cassie expressed a liking for him.

Excerpt from"The Trouble with Ayn Rand"

[i]I like the Sermon on the Mount. She regarded its prescriptions as among the vilest ever uttered. I suspect that charity really is the only way to avoid wasting one’s life in a desert of sterile egoism. She regarded Christian morality as a poison that had polluted the will of Western man with its ethos of parasitism and orgiastic self-oblation. And, simply said, I cannot find much common ground with someone who believed that the principal source of human woe over the last twenty centuries has been a tragic shortage of selfishness.[/i]

SW-User

What actually does work? For anything to "work" would require a complete revamp of human nature. Meanwhile we have various systems that just seem to create different winners and losers.

Of course, some would claim that their own allegiance is to a purely non-ideological, totally pragmatic political outlook and who condemn all the ideologies, especially of the "left". Yet they too, if you look closely, are driven by their own formulaes and presumptions, even by their own (often unseen or unacknowledged) greed and need to look after particularly already well heeled members of society. So it goes on.

In the UK a fairly efficient state run rail network was handed over to privatisation in 1997. Since, fares have risen 50% in real terms, and polls show that two thirds of passengers no longer trust their trains to run on time. Again, some economists say that the actual cost of running the various networks is now £64 billion more.

And Water? Once again, now privatised, since when £66 billion has been handed over in share dividends, while on average raw sewage is now pumped into our seas and rivers about 800 times every day.

Policy catastrophies.

So keep kicking what is only a word.

Cassie2083

@SW-User It's true that if someone wants perfection they're not going to find it, because every conceivable political system that one could dream up would have serious flaws, but you have to admit that some systems really are better than others. A political regime that persecutes and locks up dissenters isn't one that I want to live under, and that's what socialist regimes consistently do.

SW-User

@Cassie2083 I would use the words "Authoritarian regimes" rather than "Socialist". Authoritarian regimes are of the left and right.

DeWayfarer · 61-69, M

I there is evil in all systems. Some are less evil than others. Yet one of the greater evils is capitalism.

I'm not a believer yet this states idea quite distinctly if any believe in such:

Math 19:24 KJV
[quote]It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.[/quote]

The ultimate socialist if any could think of one I believe. He never asked for payment, at least by any of bible the stories.

Everything else you have described really isn't social, in the slightest, by comparison.

Cassie2083

@DeWayfarer Yes, true, there is evil in all political systems, but as I pointed out to TelegramSam, some systems are much better than others.
As for the Bible and Christianity being "socialist", well... not really. That KJV passage you quote, for example, is true, but what Christ condemned was the obsession with the accumulation of wealth at the expense of all else, the obsession that many have with its acquisition at the expense of their spiritual development.

DeWayfarer · 61-69, M

@Cassie2083 not going to fight over the interpretation of something I don't believe.

Yet both the verse and the context doesn't need further interpretation.

That's is why there is so many different interpretations. To fit the beliefs of their own.

I would debate this even with the Koran.

Yet by his own deeds, according to the stories, he had to have been a social person. Not interested in possessions or money.

RoxClymer · 41-45, M

Russia and Germany proved that Socialism doesn't work, a century ago.

BUT, things like universal healthcare and universal education are not Socialism.

therighttothink50 · 56-60, M

therighttothink50 · 56-60, M

America is Fallen – What Do You Do? | Jonathan Cahn Sermon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmW4MtHM1ys&t=223s&pp=2AHfAZACAQ%3D%3D

TruthGate

The last option on the poll though.. 🤣🤣🤣🥰🥰🥰

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