SOCIALISM AHOY!

[meggie7777]

so, i am now an official member of the boston socialist alternative! thom will be proud. before yesterday i never really read all those crazy revolutionary newspapers and had written all those groups off as stupid "we're-more-revolutionary-than-you" bullshit propoganda, but yesterday after the protest i sat down and read the entire socialist

Comments

[meggie7777]

yeah i wholeheartedly agree with its naive perception of human nature, but at the same time capitalism has only been around since what, the 16th century? something like that, so it's not THAT deeply embedded in us. but yeah, i agree that it's close to impossible...but i guess in that sense i'm an idealist. and you also make a good point about how economic diversity gives people something to work for, but in america today it almost seems completely futile to work to get richer because the "ruling class," if you will, keeps amassing more and more of the country's capital and exploiting the workers, so the opportunity of economic prosperity which once made america such an amazing country now is so completely slight, it might as well not exist. so while yeah, socialism would be next to impossible to actually implement, and of course it would have some negative repercussions, what it stands for -- equality of opportunity for everyone, ending oppression of poorer and underdeveloped countries and exploitation of workers both here and abroad, free health care and education for everyone -- are very admirable, and those ideals are what make it such an idealist form of govt. but yeah, humans are huge douchebags for the most part, so some form of capitalistic society would probably emerge from a socialism. but i do still believe in it, for the most part at least.

[grrr_betsy]

i think it's stupid to compare the prosperity and wealth a person has amassed from their past level of poverty to the massive amount of money someone else has. it's really irrelevent. people don't need to be insanely wealthy to live happily and comfortably and i think in politics that tends to be dismissed. what is poverty in comparison to bill gates might be wealthy compared to what my family makes. it's also untrue to say that if one person earns a dollar another person lost a dollar. they merely made an exchange on most accounts, excluding the actual stealing of money. because the fact is that you can take something that you made and cost you no money to make and sell it for money. that's a pretty simple example that can be applied to many things. in order to prosper one does not have to rob another person of what they have. that's simply not how it works out.
as for exploiting workers. well if you're talking about workers abroad, no one is forcing them to work in nike factories. and if they are working in nike factories it's probably because they would either be making less as a farm hand or nothing with the factory altogether. if you're talking about american workers being exploited then the fact of the matter is the workers should empower themselves and make a movement instead of screaming for legislation. the power of a union should lie within the people of that union not within the bed they share with politicians. the government and workers unions should be separate entities because when they become intertwined things just get messy, bureaucratic and, let's face it, fucked up altogether.
let's keep in mind always that no one is forcing anyone to work for anyone else, that's called slavery.
i definately share the values of health care and education for everyone but the fact of the matter is when it's free the quality of it plummets. when other attempts in society on grounds aside from education and health care are being taken (in the are of economics) these things will result in a better economy thus not only empowering people with more money it also raises the quality of the health care. what's the point in free health care and education if there are no good doctors (and no advancing technology, other than government regulated which is nearly always the slowest) and no good teachers.

what i'm saying is that all of these things should lie within the people and the society and not be mandated by the government. people should, instead of kicking and screaming for government regulation and bureaucratic decisions, take some sort of action as independent human beings. the government holds no power without the people - the people are the government in any form of democratic republic.
private universities and schools are more distinguished not only because they are exclusive and expensive but because they are BETTER. i experience daily the strain and idiocy of public education, and if my family wasn't paying for it already in it's HUGE amount of taxes then i'd probably be going somewhere else. but i'm going to a school that is probably going to have to fire its vice principals and stop sports next year and cancel ap classes. public school blows.