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Old 07-07-2007, 11:09 AM
mosdef mosdef is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Toronto
Posts: 3,414
Default Re: Are Socialists Really Collectivistic?

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The point of modern liberalism is not to keep people alive regardless of their contribution to society, it is to make as many people as possible productive.

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*stare*

I have no idea how I am supposed to respond to this one.

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That's because it runs against your fundamental view of maximizing social utility. As you've shown in many of your posts, you believe that society is most efficiently run when people are most highly incentivized to work hard and produce value. To the modern liberal, the perspective is that all the incentive in the world to generate value for society is irrelevant when the opportunity to contribute is not there. Social programs are not intended to "pay off" people who are lazy or crazy. Redistribution of wealth is not intended to reward people who set piles of money on fire and therefore end up poor. The intent of social programs is to provide ample opportunity for everyone to contribute to the society/economy in the future.

You can argue that the programs are not designed properly.

You can argue that the natural competitive forces will create opportunity without the guiding hand of a liberal government.

You can argue that the rewards to the voluntarily unproductive exceed the value created by making more opportunities.

But you can't say modern liberals want what is worse for the collective because they prop up the least productive individuals in the collective. You may be able to convince yourself that the net effect of the social programs is to reduce productivity. But you are completely ignoring that social programs create opportunities for productivity where they otherwise may not exist.
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