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Originally Posted by CAPTAIN CAVEMAN
so you hunted and gathered your own food, taught yourself, made clothes for yourself and built your own computer?
in the society we live in we all rely on one another whether we like it or not
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What I mean is that we are responsible for out own choices and such. We are ultimately responsible for creating our character and achieving what we achieve. Our life is what we are worth.
Socialism does not believe this. I mean socialism as in the absence of private property. Socialism teaches that we all are determined by one another.
The truth is, that generally speaking the Determinism vs. Free Will argument doesn't necessarily have an answer. What do you choose to believe though? Would you choose the idea that gives you self-esteem and worth? Would you choose the idea where no one is responsible for who they are. Determinism is not a healthy belief.
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But you owning property infringes on my right to own property and therefore my own pursuit of happiness no? So doesn't that mean property rights are something only attainable to the people on a certain level of that hierarchy and up? Which would mean that they're better than those below - creating classes. Which means that those with, the upper class, can oppress those without, the lower class. How can the lower class pursue their own happiness then when the upper class has created monopolies, slave wages, and given them the whole laissez-faire package?
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What does it mean to own? This is what I mean by socialism being driven by materialism. You see happiness in the property itself. You see it in what I have. If I have something that you want, you would see me having it and not letting you have it as an infringement on your happiness.
It is not the property that brings happiness. It is the pursuit itself. It is the work that it takes to achieve it. It is found in the passion and drive to succeed.
People in the "lower class" can still earn, work, and put passion into there work. How do you think people were able to live in such a place as a concentration camp? They found something meaningful to do. They found a meaningful task. Viktor Frankl studied the people in the camp.
Now by no means am I saying that the concentration camp was a good place. People were brutally murdered and such. However, people aren't brutally murdered in capitalism if the law is enforced. If the right to life is protected, one can find happiness whether poor or rich. As long as he may see the fruit of his work afterward, the work itself is where one finds his happiness.
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It's not and that's because of wage laws but total free marketeers (see Inuzuka Skysword) think government regulation like that is immoral and wrong. I just don't understand how they can look at sweat shops and the like and think that's a product of morality.
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If you refer to a sweat shop as people working against there will then I am completely against that. If someone agrees to work then the responsibility for that choice is forever found in them. Also, you cannot blame the amount of sweatshops today on the free market. The price for work in some places is artificially high, which necessitates that in some places it will be artificially low.