Anti-Capitalist Sentiment (with some morality)

[BorisTheSpider]

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.

Meh, I think this is kind of a fine distinction - if you're organising production for the benefit of everyone, that implies that the group is the highest priority, that the individual must put themselves second to that.

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.

Democracy is not at all about the individual, and I think we have altogether too much of it in many parts of the world - what I mean by that is, that democracy when taken to its endpoint is just mob rule, on the other hand, if a system of law fundamentally recognises certain inalienable rights that even a large majority can't take away, then democracy serves very well indeed in deciding public/civic matters.

The ideology focuses too much on what the individual is entitled to have and not enough on what the individual is entitled to give.

Yeah, just because someone should have the right to keep their wealth entirely for themselves doesn't mean I believe they should. Socialism and welfarism seek to redistribute that wealth according to "need" though, as such the individual is forced to be charitable indiscriminately with no regard to who his/her money is going to and what projects/aims/ideas it is supporting.

How can an act of charity/philanthropy be moral? If it is compelled, it can never be - it has also long been my intuition that in socialism/welfarism there is a lack of faith in the human capacity for decency - if people must be compelled to do things for others, that implies that without that compulsion we'd live in a fundamentally selfish world where no-one would give a shit about anyone but themselves, I'm more optimistic than that about people on the whole.

[wufwugy]

if people must be compelled to do things for others, that implies that without that compulsion we'd live in a fundamentally selfish world where no-one would give a shit about anyone but themselves, I'm more optimistic than that about people on the whole.

I think there is another option: what people don't understand, they don't change. Humans could be the most naturally charitable organisms there ever was (which I believe we largely are), but the more disconnected a circumstance is, the less able to empathize we are. This is why most of us would physically do something to stop an animal get tortured in front of us, but will think little of eating an animal that may or may not have been abused someplace else during its life.

We have very strong tribal instincts, not to be confused with objectively moral instincts. The ability to do good beyond what our tribal instincts provide is how welfarism can work in ways charity can't.

Do you see my point? It's about how the more disconnected a group is from another group, the less appeal there is for charity. People can suffer but if it's not right before us, we tend to not have strong enough empathy to do something about it. Welfarism tries to fix that

[BorisTheSpider]

We have very strong tribal instincts, not to be confused with objectively moral instincts. The ability to do good beyond what our tribal instincts provide is how welfarism can work in ways charity can't.

Do you see my point? It's about how the more disconnected a group is from another group, the less appeal there is for charity. People can suffer but if it's not right before us, we tend to not have strong enough empathy to do something about it. Welfarism tries to fix that

I do see your point, but I also have issues with welfarism in this sense - the disconnectedness or distance you talk about is sometimes a complete disconnectedness at the level of world-view, morals/virtues and values. There are some people/groups I don't want to help. I think that, rather than seeing that as a mean or insular way of viewing the world like some people would portray it, it's actually an entirely moral way of thinking - if charity is given indiscriminately it doesn't really mean much, because it's not then being given because the giver sees something worthwhile or deserving in the recipient but simply because they can't stand to watch something suffer, ultimately I think charity/philanthropy is a selfish act in a sense - we help the people we want to help because it gives us pleasure to do so, it's not a burden, it's a pleasure. When people are compelled to help everyone who "needs" help indiscriminately, for me, that sucks all the moral decency out of the act of giving.

[wufwugy]

I do see your point, but I also have issues with welfarism in this sense - the disconnectedness or distance you talk about is sometimes a complete disconnectedness at the level of world-view, morals/virtues and values. There are some people/groups I don't want to help. I think that, rather than seeing that as a mean or insular way of viewing the world like some people would portray it, it's actually an entirely moral way of thinking - if charity is given indiscriminately it doesn't really mean much, because it's not then being given because the giver sees something worthwhile or deserving in the recipient but simply because they can't stand to watch something suffer, ultimately I think charity/philanthropy is a selfish act in a sense - we help the people we want to help because it gives us pleasure to do so, it's not a burden, it's a pleasure. When people are compelled to help everyone who "needs" help indiscriminately, for me, that sucks all the moral decency out of the act of giving.

I don't believe in indiscriminate welfare. Probably only a handful of people do

[BorisTheSpider]

I don't believe in indiscriminate welfare. Probably only a handful of people do

Yeah but that's the whole thing about collectivising things like this - what's indiscriminate to you or me is not to someone else. Everyone has their own individual feelings about who deserves and doesn't deserve help. Trying to arrive at some average set of values that everyone could largely agree with in terms of deciding who/what should receive help seems a pretty fruitless task to me given the great variety of cultures and values even in relatively similar groups of people.

[wufwugy]

Yeah but that's the whole thing about collectivising things like this - what's indiscriminate to you or me is not to someone else. Everyone has their own individual feelings about who deserves and doesn't deserve help. Trying to arrive at some average set of values that everyone could largely agree with in terms of deciding who/what should receive help seems a pretty fruitless task to me given the great variety of cultures and values even in relatively similar groups of people.

I see the problem, but I don't think it's insurmountable. The US Constitution, for example, is a bunch of liberties that we have all effectively agreed upon, and even if some disagree, because we're all one society, we can overrule them and be right about it

It will always involve compromise. We tend to view things as black and white, but the truth is that all the things we take for granted as true are really just compromises.

[d0zer]

ultimately I think charity/philanthropy is a selfish act in a sense - we help the people we want to help because it gives us pleasure to do so, it's not a burden, it's a pleasure. When people are compelled to help everyone who "needs" help indiscriminately, for me, that sucks all the moral decency out of the act of giving.

Human philanthropy is just a biproduct of the benefit that cooperation provided humans over mutations that didn't want to cooperate. Strength in numbers etc. So yeah it's selfish in the sense that I feel better, but I also become stronger for helping you. In a modern sense this plays out in more complicated ways than it did in tribal humans where this evolved from. But it doesn't matter if it's selfish because that's just the way we are, it's the basis for all our common morality.

A selfish motive for welfarism is a safer society for me. Desperate people do scary things, so if a reasonable baseline standard of living can be maintained for everyone, there will be less desperate people, less scary neighborhoods etc.

[d0zer]

I agree with wuggy. All these years I thought I lived in a socialist country and thus was a socialist, but it turns out I'm a firm believer in somewhat regulated capitalism with some welfarism mixed in.