Socialism sounds good because it is posited as a system where people share more.
But what socialism actually is, is Peter forcing Paul at the barrel of a gun to share according to how Peter thinks he should.
You cannot have “forced sharing,” it’s a direct contradiction. The only reason sharing is good is because it’s a choice.
The worst parts of us always seem to hide behind niceties.
Socialism is compensation for not being a decent human being to the people in your personal orbit
Sharing is an act of charity. Charity is a form of love. Forced love is called rape.
Forced sharing is theft...also...greed
It is built on covetousness (ie: strong inordinate desire of what someone else has without regard to law/justice )
It’s an old meme, but it checks out. Remember when tax collectors were sinners?
#mainvolume
🎚️ 
Socialism sounds good to people who never experienced it. Take it from the person who has.
Let me give you some pushback on this. What about “forced sharing” for the common defense? If it were a choice as to whether or not, or how much, to fund the common defense, that may lead to not having a sufficient defense.
Altruism is, by definition, no longer altruistic when forced.
Seriously? Building roads and libraries and schools and hospitals and public pools is “forced sharing at gunpoint”?
I would recommend taking an information diet a little less heavy in people streaming while driving their car.
Dont pay your income taxes or property taxes and you get a warrant for your arrest.
Resist arrest and receive state violence
The post describes sharing as a choice
Are you saying that taxes are voluntary?
Sounds like it to me. I’m curious where this place is that one can choose government services a la carte. He has my sincere interest.
At the city level, taxes can be viewed like resort fees.
Taxes can be considered to be voluntary because if you don’t like the value or services provided, you don’t have to move to that city. You can choose another city to live in.
The problem is when taxes are imposed nationally. You do not have the right to choose or move. In that case those taxes are not voluntary.
Of course not - that’s precisely the point. Your original argument suggests that in order for whatever bizarre definition of “socialism” you’re taking about to work everyone needs to share voluntarily. Somehow along the way “socialism” became confused with a commune. It’s not a commune it’s a form of government.
I suppose I’m reacting to “Socialism sounds good because it is posited as a system where people share more.”
Nobody posits it as a system where people voluntarily share more. I don’t want socialism because I believe that Elon will share more and throw me a few scraps. Socialism sounds good because we will never have to rely on Elon voluntary sharing so that my kids have public schools etc. and yes of course to build the roads.
Sometimes I’m still amazed at how easy it is for us to believe that because the government has monopolized something, that it would be impossible to have it without them, even if we did before government monopolized it.
Guilty as charged. I look at Sweden’s healthcare system, and really find it hard to believe that this would just happen organically if you took the government away.
check your premises
People seem to blur the lines between socialism and communism to fit their arguments
Socialism only sounds good to bitter, jealous people with no ethics or morals.
I remember when politicians said: We are building socialism, this is not it, but one day. Farmers had to gave up land, and ownership of animals was transferred to local co-operatives, a Stalinist collectivization. That shit brought Stasi to life, 5 year plan and central planning.
Any economic system is based on the concept of «ownership» … possession of, and control over resources.
Any system of government must define what ownership or authority means for purposes of its governance (laws) and must also engage in law enforcement.
Force (up to and including the actual, not merely metaphoric, barrel of a gun) is at the literal root of the concept of law enforcement.
ANY SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT IS ULTIMATELY MAINTAINED BY FORCE.
Thus, it is disingenuous to argue that this characteristic somehow makes any attempt at socialism inherently any less just than any other.
It is also the case that every significant political movement in modern history which has claimed to be "socialist" has either been a pretext by authoritarians (fascists, demagogues, tyrants) or been co-opted by such factions.
So we must take any claims of socialist revolution with all due skepticism.
Meanwhile it's equally true that every effort towards democratic and legitimately populist reform has been decried as a headlong leap down the icy slopes of "socialism" or "communism" (usually promulgated by people who are ignorant of any nuances in their terminology — often willfully so).
Posts such as the one to which I'm responding here generally do far more to forestall any social, economic, and political progress than benefit they claim to be striving towards.
The "taxation is theft" mantra exclusively serves the status quo — especially plutocrats and oligarchs.
That’s a really convoluted way of arguing that stealing value from someone is no different than creating value or trading it.
Which is the same as arguing cooperation is no different than coercion. Rape is no different than love.
If you can’t distinguish between these things then you have a much bigger moral problem than I can address here.
What the heck Peter!?!?! Chill!!!
preach it
I am coming from a socialistic state in Europe. I think that we need an institution like a city or a state which provides something like roads. These are big projects with big budgets and they serve a lot of the nation. It would be prety hard to manage and get individuals to settle on a solution and gather all the money.
Then the eu forced the gsm operators, that in all europe we shall have same prices, no matter from which country to which country you call inside eu. That on the other hand is a convinience and not a neccesety.
I think that socialism in europe needs to be rethinked.
Since 2018 i am learning about bitcoin, and thus also learning about open market.
I think that socialism is the scaling solution for labor specialization. If we did not have socialism, we could not have so much specialization. Every country needs a bit of socialism, a bit of money put into the necesities that small groups of people would have a hard time to manage.
At the same time i think, that with the advancement of automatization, we would need to consider some form of UBI.
The balance of socialism(ubi) and free market will be a global debate in the coming years with the rise of AI use. It seems like the AI era will be shaking the labor market a lot.
