Quote Originally Posted by BorisTheSpider View Post
Well, let's not get to discussing what's real or not. That wasn't the point, the point was, that at the heart of socialism is the idea that the individual must sacrifice for the sake of others - I mean, for example, that they must work some proportion of their time for the sake of others, that they must give some proportion of their wealth to others, or, to put it another way that an individual is not entitled to their own life/wealth but that others are entitled to a piece of them. This idea that the individual is subordinate to the group is the root of the various other abuses of the individuals right to their own mind, views, freedom of expression and association etc that various incarnations of socialism have been responsible for.

It's this idea which underlies some of the attitudes Renton alluded to in the OP - that some people consider that there can be such a thing as "too much profit", or that it can be wrong to pay someone $1 an hour.
This is mainly a critique of welfarism, not socialism. Socialism doesn't really take your wealth and give it to others; instead, it organizes production in such a way that what you (and others) make are for direct use by others (and you). Almost every time westerners discuss socialism, however, it's not viewed like this. Probably because westerners don't know what socialism is.

What you said is also a critique of democracy and the US Constitution. People like thinking that those two things are all about the individual, but they're not. You could probably say they're mostly about the individual but the collective has to be addressed in order to maintain the individualism.

And the answer is, yes, as a member of society, you are entitled to give up some of what you have to that society. Exactly zero societies in human history have successfully operated otherwise. Many Americans tend to not wanna acknowledge that welfarism is a fact of life. This is probably the main thing that keeps libertarianism from exiting the fringe. The ideology focuses too much on what the individual is entitled to have and not enough on what the individual is entitled to give. They would probably say that the individual is entitled to give nothing, but there is absolutely zero evidence any society can function that way