Socialism equals Selfish

Those selfish Tea Partiers want you to keep your government hands off of their medicare!!!!

LICcomm, will you please record Margaret Dumont reading this, and then post the audio?

I love that LICcomm takes National Lampoon seriously, btw!!!

@LICcomm Are you criminally insane? There are few instances when such putrid ignorance has splashed across StreetEasy and this is the home to a poster maniacally obsessed with denigrating Long Island City.

You talk of "demonizing" conservatives, but you do no less than dehumanize those less fortunate or in need- elderly, sick, impoverished. What do you know of gratitude? When I volunteer to play piano at nursing homes, the residents I meet are gracious and grateful for the music and company. Seldom can you find SUCH grateful, warm people. Under the tenets of capitalism, they would be left to die since they no longer produce. Abandoned children, orphans are wards of a welfare state. Should they be executed and mulched as fertilizer?

You espouse capitalism as a "less-selfish" state. What malarkey. Do you know what capitalism means? Do you know what socialism means? The pursuit of profit, in of itself, is the quintessence of capitalism. In EVERY major religion, greater minds than yours or mine have recognized the evils of avarice. Wherefore, capitalism at its root is a flawed system, since profit pursued in exclusion is the root of evil. So please refrain from commenting on morality when your own understanding and compass is so demented as to offend goodsense. Morality and capitalism are ANTIPODAL.

PPlayer sums up the ludicrous nonsense that is socialism. Your whole comment is delusional lunacy.

When I volunteer at nursing homes, I find what I find in most groups of people- some very nice, high quality people, some nasty, bad people, and lots in between.

Religion? You are basing your views of capitalism on religion? Wow.

Socialism dehumanizes people by taking their freedom and individuality. The ideals of capitalism, the private ownership of the means of production, with equal opportunity and equal protection under the law, rewards hard work, fosters achievement, takes care of those unable to take care of themselves, and has a greater moral foundation that redistributing the hard work of others to those looking for handouts.

Beggars looking to leech off the productivity of other people don't like capitalism, which is why some of the posters here attack it so much.

The only purpose for an avowed CAPITALIST such as yourself to visit a nursing home is to sell drugs, cajole a testator or hasten the death of one.

I made my points and you failed to refute them with any cogency. You conflate discrete arguments and simplistically generalize "hardworkers" and "beggars". You have a flawed world view and no amount of debate will correct that.

You needn't be a beggar to argue against capitalism, the urge to do so is called having empathy for others. I will not waste time feeding this thread more. Bathe in the filth of your greed all you want and applaud yourself for being "right".

Isn't it rich that LICcomm follows this sentence:
"Religion? You are basing your views of capitalism on religion? Wow."
with dogmatic points from his religion?

"When I volunteer to play piano at nursing homes,"

PPlayer.. On top of volunteering, what percentage of your yearly take home do you donate to nursing homes...

What percentage, thanks

if socialism=selfish
Does that make socialists followers of Ayn Rand?

PPlayer,
you sound lovely and disoriented old people really are the best. you can steal their meds when they're not looking. and when are they ever looking? their one good eye has glaucoma.

if i may use the example of the time you generously volunteer to somewhat condense the terms of the debate. the difference, in the most general terms, is VOLUNTEERING the time to causes you feel are important vs. BEING FORCED to spend a your time on causes someone else decided are important, over which you have no control. the result is pretty much the same - old people have someone to stare at.
it's not that conservatives are bad and you're good, it's just that maybe they want to donate their time to another cause.

Is columbiacounty in the nursing home? That would impact my decision about donating my time playing the jazz saxaphone at the local nursing home up here.

I was struck by an article about David Mamet, an influential left wing playright who has undergone somewhat of an epiphany questioning some of his earlier beliefs. He writes...

“The great wickedness of Liberalism,” Mamet discovered, “was that those who devise the ever-new state Utopias … set out to bankrupt and restrict not themselves, but others.”

The liberal illusion is that there will always be resources if we need to do something good. Another illusion is that we can know what is good. In the real world, someone will have to work to create the resources that government can tap into to do good things. Good intentions which are not grounded in real world experiences often leads to unintended consequences.

"As my generation did not live through the Depression, World War II and the agony of the immigrants who are our grandparents or great-grandparents; as we were raised in the greatest plenty the world has ever known and in the most just of societies," he writes, "we have grown lazy and entitled (not unlike Marx, who lived as a parasite upon Engels, and never worked a day in his life)."

In this scenario, liberals replace the Judeo-Christian roots of democracy with wishful Utopian thinking, belief in man in the abstract rather than the flawed human being he is: "We are told we need not produce, but may merely hope, we need not defend, but may hope, we must not consume, but are allowed, somehow, to hope for sustenance, magically, deriving from some unspecified actions of a government, which, all observe, is at best competent, and, more usually, self-serving and corrupt, whoever is in power."

"Judeo-Christian roots of democracy"? That is claptrap you get from idiotic conservatives like Palin. Democracy (both the concept and word) came from the Greeks, you dumbass. Here is what the oracle (aka Wikipedia) says:

"The term comes from the Greek: δημοκρατία – (dēmokratía) "rule of the people",[1] which was coined from δῆμος (dêmos) "people" and κράτος (Kratos) "power", in the middle of the 5th-4th century BC to denote the political systems then existing in some Greek city-states, notably Athens following a popular uprising in 508 BC."

Why don't you conservatives just be honest? You like capitalism because it is based on taking as much as you can from your fellow man. It is inherently selfish and you like it so much because you believe that you are somehow better, more talented, etc. and will get a greater share. To paraphrase Monty Python, what sort of basis for a government is that?

MidtownerVirgin, you are so charitable. Such a nice guy. Too bad all that education couldn't get you past 3 years as an associate at a big law firm and finally having to settle on being a paralegal.

I love how the left always is so sure the right is destroying America. Truth is both parties think the other side is wrong, always have, always will. I just don't get this pure hatred of Capitalists who produce the goods and services we all need. Redistributing from one group to another implies that one knows the greater good, which smacks of arrogance.

Nobody said Capitalism is Evil, RS. But what this country has come to is a Capitalism that privatize gains and socialized losses. That happened because of the lack of regulations Big banks and corporates heavily lobbied for.

Well, I agree that Corporatocracy is running rampant and is a huge problem. In my mind it's less about regulations, which are necessary to a point, and more about government not enforcing rule of law, promoting transparency and allowing Monopolies and Oligopolies to grow. The privatizing gains and socialized losses is mostly banking related. I don't see how we end that, until we limit gov't insurance of money and all the Fed programs that give incentivize asymmetric risk raking by our financial institutions.

Enron was not a bank!

Enron was fraud! not Corporatocracy. Very different issues which could go on for pages about the failure of boards to protect shareholders and the reasons why, along with Auditors not doing their jobs. Sarbanes Oxley had some good ideas on remedies but even this has not been entirely successful. And of course the gov't has not been prosecuting white collar crime.

RS -- You wrote the following: "The privatizing gains and socialized losses is mostly banking related. I don't see how we end that, until we limit gov't insurance of money and all the Fed programs that give incentivize asymmetric risk raking by our financial institutions." Even being charitable and allowing for multiple typos, what you wrote is pure gibberish. Mutombo makes more sense on a bad day. If you are going to insist on these political rants, at least write something halfway cogent.

Very helpful posting MidtownerVirgin. No go scurry off to your paralegal job on 3rd avenue.

No->now