You completely missed my point. I was taking his argument and turning it around to show how silly it is.
And again, socialism isn’t communism. In a strict communist system people can’t choose their jobs (I think?), but socialism is something else.
The key issue with any Socialized anything here in the US (I don’t know about Europe, its a different situation), is that our government is legendarily inefficient. Want to get a pass port as a minor? Go wait outside the post office for three hours before they tell you to come back six hours later. Or wait for an appointment. For at least 2 weeks.
It just doesn’t work here.
Since the dawn of man, people have worked to provide for themselves, their family, their tribe, whatever. Whether it’s going out to kill a buffalo to provide food or whether it’s weaving a basket to hold fruit. Go to deepest Africa where modernity has not taken root and you’ll see that each tribesmember has a “job”, from the person that does the rites of passage for boys-to-men, girls-to-women to the keeper of the history of the tribe.
The advent of compensation (that is, you do “X”, we’ll give you “Y”) introduces selfishness; an “I got mine, screw you” mentality. You see it today with the Tea Party movement. “Why should I have to pay for people that don’t want to work?”
I have never met a person that didn’t want to do something. Even sitting on your ass watching TV is doing something (you could be monitoring show quality and such). Hell, go on any website for any piece of entertainment and you could find actions that could be construed as “work”. Even if you read the crap that’s posted on Youtube comments, it is essentially a commentator position that you see at many news networks or a movie critic (if you go on the message boards at IMDb).
This “doing nothing” is a misnomer, in my humble opinion.
As for the government not working/being inefficient, the passport issue was raised. This is largely due to being underfunded and messily handled due to it. Once again, I go to my supermarket analogy. If you’ve got 3 people running a supermarket and, to run it well, you need at least 20, you’re going to have inefficiencies. Long lines at cash registers, empty shelves. This is not due to poor service on any of the actual employees; they’re working DAMNED hard and doing their level best. It’s the system that created the inefficiences in the first place…created largely by the “Government Can’t Work” mentality…which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when combined with the “I got mine” mentality.
If they underfund the passport system, who says they will properly fund any other systems?
They’re underfunding it because there is a contingent in this country that wants to ensure that government will fail under the guise of “helping the people keep more of their money”.
Socialism is something that we’re so far from that we can’t even see it on the horizon.
If such forces exist, it means that even under your views of the joys of a more socialist system, all programs will fail and hurt the country because of this contingent.
To me, it’s not an either-or. If you’re not for full unfettered capitalism, that doesn’t mean you’re for full fettered socialism. To me, capitalism is like fire. Controlled, it is an extraordinary tool that does many wondrous things. Uncontrolled and it becomes dangerous and unpredictable.
Regulated capitalism != Socialism…no matter how many times Sarah Palin tries to say otherwise.
But, yes, such forces exist and we’ve seen the reaction throughout the last 20+ years. Programs that would’ve been going indefinitely are starting to fail…and things that rely on government such as private business and banks are failing…due to the virtual lack of regulation. The flames are burning the forest down…and that’s apparently a good thing according to many…
It just occurred to me that a society which pays its employees according to their service’s essentiality is likely to fare better in a disaster scenario.
Let’s take some bogus scenario, zombies for instance. A man who works at a water treatment facility and gets paid 20k a year… he’s going to look out his window, see some zombies, and say “Fuck that shit, I’m calling in sick today.” Whereas, if his essential job paid more substantially, he might think “I’d like to keep my job for when this all blows over…it’s not terribly stressful and it pays pretty well. Honey, fetch me the cricket bat. I’m going to work.”
So, as people working at marketing firms stay inside since creating a commercial for Zombie-Off™ doesn’t pay very well, the real necessary jobs remain more stable, and the food, water, and electricity sectors continue to churn a little more than they would if they paid less.
Janitors are still unessential though. Which is fine, since they make for pretty skilled zombie-hunters.
Has anyone done a zombie-flick within a prison setting? That might be interesting…
Thats why Medicare/Medicaid are so unpopular, and Senior Citizens are queuing up for miles to buy back into privatized Health Care, right?
Actually, from the dawn of man, people tried to provide for themselves and those who depend on them with as little effort as possible. That’s why they moved to caves, which provide shelter, instead of trying to survive in the open plains. That’s why they later invented “stick and stone”, then later bronzework and silverwork and ironwork, why wheel was invented, why they domesticated animals. The urge to make life easier is the power source behind all human inventions. It is this urge to make life easier that lead to today’s society. Even in the 20th century, we saw many inventions, which make life so much easier and comfortable – be it the “Iron”, Microwave oven, remote control, escalator, cars…
But there is no such thing as “desire to work” or “wanting to work”.
Yes, they can do it right. But they can’t do it fast. I got my passport, but it took over a month.
which naturally means that everyone else also had an identical experience - oh wait my passport was provided in a timely manner.
So my desire to work doesn’t exist?
You can win debates!
Your age?
…is irrelevant to the claim made.
Actually, at a certain age you are able to mail in the Passport form, meaning you don’t have to directly deal with the any officials, and speeding up the process. My point is that if you ever have to directly deal with the government in a non-routine issue (i.e. having to actually set up a passport meeting) they become even slower, and the more government does the more they will have to deal with non-routine issues.
But this isn’t limited to government. If you didn’t get paid, for example, and you worked for a two-person company, you would get paid right away. In a 100,000±person company (like the one I work for), if you didn’t get paid, it’d be anywhere between 3-5 business days to 2 weeks to get your pay.
There’s a reason that passports take a long time and it has nothing to do with the speed and efficiency of our government. The necessity for passports to visit Canada and return, however…
