I’ve been hearing and reading huge amounts about the Terri Schiavo case. I get mad about a lot of the assertions made, mostly from those trying to keep her in her current pseudo-life state, but also sometimes from those who think she should be left to die. Both of those pale into insignificance, however, compared to the hypocrisy involved. When trying to describe just how hypocritical the people complaining about starving her to death are being, I’m reminded of some lines from a book by Ben Elton called Stark. I don’t have the exact quote, but it went something like this:
How toxic was this substance? Well the word ‘very’ pops into your mind. But then it pops back out again because of its sheer inadequacy. And then it pops back in for lack of anything better. So let’s just say that if the universe is very big, then this substance was very toxic.
What makes me label this as hypocrisy? Well, as I’ve mentioned several times here already, globally a child dies of starvation every 5 seconds. If it is so wrong for Terri Schiavo to be starved to death, what does it say about us, and about the people defending her most of all, that they will let these children die (maybe 20 since you started reading this)? Oh, there goes another one…
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The irony of someone on the left bemoaning children starving around the world is delicious. Socialism kills, Markets feed people.
Markets don’t feed people any more than Socialism kills. Markets make money, Socialism organizes societies. Either one may feed people if it perceives a need or an opportunity. The main difference, as a generalization, is that Socialism tries and fails, whereas markets might try but don’t care either way.
It’s not about caring. It’s about free exchange. Free markets feed because people are free to exchange for their food. Socialism and other authoritarian regimes starve people because of the limits put on free exchange.
Rutherford is one of those “market fundamentalists”, wherein markets are seen as these fetishes which have magical powers to cure all society’s ills. With the fallacy of the conflation of “democracy” with “free markets” thrown in for good measure. Not to mention the fallacy of “socialism == authoritarian”.
While we’re in the sloppy-thinking vien, why not add “The irony of someone on the right bemoaning children starving around the world is delicious. Capitalism kills, anarchism feeds people”. About as true and honest of an assessment as your original comment. Both are jokes.
Markets are no more or less capable of curing societies ills as governments are. Both are human, abstract constructs, able to be perverted and corrupted as each other.
Try again, this time think harder.
What Nick said, mostly. Right now we have the US, which I’d count as perhaps the best example of the sort of free markets I think R is talking about. There are some ‘third world’ countries that probably have freer markets, but they lack the rule of law that I believe R would consider central to the enterprise, so lets discount them.
On the other hand we have a few ‘proper’ socialist countries, i.e. countries where the government tries to take care of the people (rather than those that call themselves socialist as a way of subjugating the masses the better to screw them). The best examples would probably be the Scandinavian countries.
In each example rates of childhood starvation are low, the standard of healthcare is impressively high (though I’d have to give that one to Scandinavia), and life in general is good. We could debate where it is best, of course, but I think these show that a socialist or free market system can feed people very well. And in either case they can be perverted to do whatever those who grab the power want.
Nick, I didn’t say Markets cure all ills. Merely that they feed people. And Socialism must equal authoritarian because you’d have to kill me for my property as Stalin did. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin#Collectivisation
And Nick, I’m not being sloppy, just trying to keep it simple for you.
Sloppy thinking incident #5 for this thread: Stalinism is not even remotely close to socialism. Stalin was a facist dictator in practice who used words like “for the people” and “community” and “democracy” in his press speeches. The only real difference between Hitler and Stalin was they way they trimmed their mustaches. It all comes back to the idea that words are not deeds. Judge people by what they do, not what words they use, and we may start to have a real political conversation.
Until you admit at some point you have some heavy-duty assumption baggage about “free markets” or we aren’t going to get very far on that last front.
SOCIALISM doesn’t kill people. GUNS kill people.
No, no, guns don’t kill people, BULLETS kill people.
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[...] it might be wrong, but there is a case to be made. But, to bang once again on my most quoted statistic, a child starves to death every 5 seconds. It is utterly inconceivable to me that any god worthy of [...]