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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SilentZ who wrote (239592)	7/1/2005 3:46:15 PM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572107

What dictatorships have lasted longer than Democracies? Socialism is a good ideal and in its proper measure it can be a good thing for societies. However, to truly be able to afford some socialist programs like an economic safety net or healthcare or schools for those who can't afford it, you need the wealth that capitalism and free markets bring. Don't believe me? Take a look at France and Germany. Then compare them to Ireland. France and Germany want to work less, make it very difficult to fire people, and keep huge pensions. It is killing their economies. Ireland has embraced competition, made it easy to fire people, educated their workforce, and they are prospering. Take a look at this article from Friedman. He points out the discrepancies quite nicely: nytimes.com nytimes.com So the point is that you can't afford socialism of any kind until you have a good measure of capitalism. And any economic system that you follow is doomed to inferior performance if you have a autocratic state, as compared to one that embraces freedom of thought and participatory gov't, as in a Democratic state. Some people are not competitive, that's true, but they are in the minority. Take a look at history. You can't tell me that the history of humankind doesn't scream Darwinism and competitiveness. So there are two ways you can go: Autocratic and try to oppress people enough that they lose their competitive spirit, but then you are acting in a violent way to achieve your ends. Or you can harness the good in competitiveness: innovation, creativity, brilliance out of the miasmic churn of a dynamic and free economy. There's nothing wrong with competitiveness, as long as it is harnessed within a society's mutually acceptable set of rules. Just like in playing a board game, it can be fun even when you lose, as long as there is an agreed upon and fair playing field.