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Politics : View from the Center and Left
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To: Jeff Hayden who wrote (125383)11/22/2009 4:30:26 PM
From: cosmicforce  Read Replies (1) of 542655
 
Any arm chair philosopher/political scientist would say that China is certainly NOT communist, at least as espoused by Marx. Same is true with the former Soviet Union, or Cuba. These are totalitarian dictatorships at worst, and oligarchies at best. Where is the social safety net and shared sense of common good? Where is the absence of personal recognition? Marxism was a silly, naive Utopian philosophy that can't produce real government. Marx thought that people would just give up power? Had he never worked with real people who exercised power?

Social democracy, OTOH, has lots of examples and in every personal metric the median level of participation in the fruits of society, the individual is better off. Maybe growing billionaires is good business, but it doesn't produce a stable, compassionate, healthy and content society.

I just read Freakonomics and I was fascinated by the analysis of the economics of crack dealers in the section "Why crack dealers live with their mothers". The answer is that most crack dealers actually made less than minimum wage but hoped to be the top of the pyramid eventually. It is a lot like the lotto mindset - you can't win if you don't play. Every year people go on the road to seek their fortunes in pro sports or the movie business. Well under 1% of these hopefuls will every consistently put food on their tables in these professions, let alone make it big.

Equally interesting was the risk of letting your kid play at a house with a pool versus one with a gun. 1 in 11,000 pools has a drowning occur in it. Yikes!!
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