A European's Perspective on socialism and why Americans reject it

reply to post by TheAnuraOne


Misoir is correct. Never stated he/she speaks for America. But, I will say that what is said is truth.

So instead of responding with a logical retort. Or continuing the discussion, your reply is basically "You are too"?

I am thinking that you were right in stating this will be your first/last post regarding such matter.

Originally posted by TheAnuraOne

AND you have absolutely no right to speak on behalf of your fellow Americans..See? it works both ways

Is that the only reaction I will recieve? From everything I have wrote, which was quite extensive, all you can provide in response is that?

First let me assure you I was not speaking on behalf of any American or any other independent thinking person. Those were my thoughts and analysis.

Second I was not trying to attack you, I agree with a minimal welfare state in the USA administered by the states and local communities.

But seriously man, is that all? :facepalm:

reply to post by TheAnuraOne


Bravo misoir. Thank you. You said everything I was thinking, and articulated it better than I could. As an American I strongly agree with everything misoir said. I am walking out the door, but one other important point. I think there is a strong case that Fabian socialism has been a concerted effort to mix US/USSR systems. The dangers of the state are very real, and it saddens me that many of my European friends have been conditioned into accepting it without any question.

reply to post by Misoir


I was looking for a conversation but then you wanted to state that I speak for no Swede. You lost me there. I will not bait into an argument. As proven, you Americans cannot accept ANY form of criticism and think the world revolves around you. It doesnät and times have changed. Now I see why America is ill. Pompousness and know+it+all attitude is destructive and repels having a decent conversation. Also, I donät know where you got your info on our unemployment rate, that is incorrect. (probably an American site, go figure) also, 25% of our unemployed youths are in school. Too bad I cannot say the same thing about Americans.

Anyways, I donät care. I am not putting anymore energy into negativity. Your friend called on you for backup in the thread, and he was rude as well. Now whatever you say falls on deaf ears, and I donät really care if America sinks into the ocean. If it makes you sleep at night to think you still rule the world, by all means. When reality smacks you in the face in the near future, you will be begging the world for help.

Originally posted by TheAnuraOne
reply to post by Misoir

 

I was looking for a conversation but then you wanted to state that I speak for no Swede. You lost me there. I will not bait into an argument.

I said you speak only for yourself, not anyone else, just as I only speak for myself. I do not see how that is an attack against you, must be a cultural thing…

As proven, you Americans cannot accept ANY form of criticism and think the world revolves around you. It doesnät and times have changed.

Where did I ever once state anything revolved around the United States?

Now I see why America is ill. Pompousness and know+it+all attitude is destructive and repels having a decent conversation.

I do not have a "know it all attitude", I was simply making an observation using my knowledge of the subject at hand.

Also, I donät know where you got your info on our unemployment rate, that is incorrect. (probably an American site, go figure)

I provided you with the link to where I got that statistic.

also, 25% of our unemployed youths are in school. Too bad I cannot say the same thing about Americans.

Why have you begun to attack the United States? Like I said I do not speak on behalf of any other American and I never attacked you or Sweden.

Anyways, I donät care. I am not putting anymore energy into negativity. Your friend called on you for backup in the thread, and he was rude as well. Now whatever you say falls on deaf ears, and I donät really care if America sinks into the ocean.

Someone says something on an internet forum and now you do not care if the entire nation of 308 million people sinks into the ocean? Wow...

If it makes you sleep at night to think you still rule the world, by all means.

I do not think we should be ruling the world, America should rule only America.

When reality smacks you in the face in the near future, you will be begging the world for help.

No... I do not think us Americans will.

What is up with all these stereotyping of Americans by Europeans? It is getting pretty old.

Originally posted by TheAnuraOne
As proven, you Americans cannot accept ANY form of criticism and think the world revolves around you.

While your frustration is understandable, I urge that you be careful of generalizations (and I expect you already are). What you say here is correct, for many Americans (actually, United Statesians, but that is hard to say). But not for all. Many Americans recognize clearly the ills of this country (as well as the strengths), and that the US has been behaving badly for a long time and the Piper's fee is coming due soon.

Many of us welcome input from people who are not quite so close to the problem and may therefore have a different perspective. We may agree or disagree, in whole or in part, but we welcome the input in any case.

While the US has been behaving badly for a long time, it took a major turn for the worse after 9/11. Traditional US courage and resiliance has been replaced by chest-puffery and jingoism. Had we had any pretense of decent leadership at the time, things might have turned out differently, but that is water under the bridge. All we can do now is our best to dig out from the morass in which we now find ourselves. We're working on it. Don't know yet if we'll succeed.

haha, Now I think its funny that Anura is railing on about americans not being able to accept criticism, meanwhile he is all flustered that you criticized him and he wont respond to your reasoned arguments in an appropriate, thought out fashion. Sigh.

Anyway, just wanted to add....please stop associating Obama with the left. He's not much further left than bush. Left is for the working and middle class, Right is for the corporate and business class. Obama does nothing that does not support corporations ergo he is plenty right.

Secondly, this guy (OP) is massively deluded if he ever believed a word that came out of Obama or Palins mouth. I dont understand why anyone thought Obama would be any different than Bush or Mccain, after it has been demonstrated, time and again, that the US has one political party, the Corporate party, and that all our politicians are loyal members of that party. They can mouth whatever nice words they want about "change" and "yes we can" and "no new taxes" or whatnot, but soon as they get into office they chuck all that out the door, and continue on with more new taxes, more illegal wars, more restrictions on our freedoms.

reply to post by TheAnuraOne


First of all welcome to ATS. I know you've been here for a couple of days already but good to have ya aboard, and good OP. I do disagree and agree with your OP on certain points.

I do believe Obama had an idea of implementing a form of public coverage in healthcare for people, but beyond that I did not see any other public programmes. People claim that Obama is trying to implement "socialism programmes" so the first thing I will ask is what programmes? There was only one, the public option. Aside from that, I never saw any other government programmes he tried to implement or introduce.

Now, as for your argument here that there have been attempts to convert this country into a capitalist-socialist economy, it already is. We already have programmes such as medicare and medicaid in place that are socialist in nature along with welfare and other minor state by state programmes. We already live in a capitalist-hybradized socialist economic structure so I really question when people come over here an argue that this president is "trying to add socialism to the economy" because we already do and have been living in such a society for decades.

I think the key question is not whether we can have a socialist-capitalist hybrid country, the question should be whether we can live in a society without any public distribution of wealth and coverage at all, and the answer I believe is no. Such a society has never been implemented in modern times, contrary to the arguments of libertarians and "leave my medicare" tea partiers.

You mentioned that Sweden has a small population and this is part why we cannot compare both the US and Sweden. Well, I understand you tried to differentiate Britain from your current system but in the end Britain has a more socialist structure than we do. They have a population of around 60 million as does France, about 20% of the US population. The US however is more than 30 times the size of the United Kingdom and 15 times that of France. US population density is far less, there are more resources, and then you have states that have the ability to implement these programmes themselves (some states already have their own socialist programmes in place) so the idea of implementing further socialist programmes is not unrealistic at all.

reply to post by subject x


Ours pays for their bombs too - ala NATO.

second line

I think you hit the nail on the head as to why socialist-style programs tend to not work and fail in the US:

1. Sweden has nowhere near the population as America does. Our form of government will only work for much smaller populated countries.

reply to post by loagun

what the hell is socialism anyways?

It is collectivism. The USA has been a collectivist nation for close to 100 years.

1. Rights are derived from the state;
2. The group is more important than the individual;
3. Coercion is the preferred method to bring about reform;
4. Laws should be applied differently to different classes; (Affirmative Action)
5. Providing benefits (redistributing wealth) is the proper role of government.

Most if not all nations on earth are now some form of Collectivism. The US republic started out based on the rights of the individual but has been transformed into a nation where the rights of the group supercede that of the individual.

crimvelvet....yes and no. Your statement is somewhat off in its interperetation. In the US, the reality is that the rights of a small group (corporate wealth) supersede the rights of all the rest. As long as there is money in politics and lobbying is allowed, this will be the case. Anytime a congressman (or president) has a choice between serving his constituents....or serving a lobbyists holding out a few million dollars, they will pick the money.

reply to post by pexx421


I don't believe I am deluded in my judgement of why Palin AND Obama are unique. I just go by what I hear on television, the internet, etc. There is a masive cultural difference between here and the States. What is accepted there, isn't here and vice versa. I just saw a person, such as Palin, as a person who spoke about empowering the people of the States again. I see/saw Obama trying to do the same thing, but from another angle. I also do see racism. It is all over your news and internet sites, so one can safely assume the distrust and distaste has to be somewhat derived from this, no? Anyways, I felt attacked earlier and the reptilian part of my brain came out.
I acted out of my character, but, we all do sometimes. Furthermore, I meant no disrespect towards anyone. Usually I am so level headed. I only wanted to post a thread as to shine some light on this subject *sigh*.

Originally posted by loagun
what the hell is socialism anyways?

Socialism is simply put wealth redistribution.

America is a mixed economy, the tax revenue generated from capitalistic sales goes to fund the police, the military and the fire dept. This is one form of wealth redistribution.

Insurance of any kind takes fees from capitalistic activity and pools them in case of a disaster so that a group has a "reserve" to start over. This was started by merchants when each of them would have a ship with 1000 monetary units worth of product per ship. If you had 100 merchants each would pay 10 units into a pool making 1000. So if the weather wrecked a ship the 1000 units would go to the victim so he could start over. This is the origins of insurance.

Social Security and Unemployment are pools of money gained by capitalistic activity to be paid out in case of unemployment or disability or old age.

Jail and the prison systems are another form of wealth redistribution. To keep those engaging in capitalistic activity safe governments take wealth and build prisons to house dangerous people in.

These forms of wealth redistribution are acceptable to most Americans. The thing that gets most Americans irate about wealth re-distribution is when you have people who are perfectly capable of working but they bilk the system for food and medical care while selling and using drugs in government housing. Or when the government would rather "redistrubute" wealth into building more prisons than funding schools. This is what makes Americans irate about socialism.

There is going to be a certain amount of wealth redistribution in any country. The problem is do we minimize it to capitalists only with no social safety net via government contracts and turn America into kleptocracies like China and Mexico ? or Do we go overboard with too much governmental wealth redistribution and turn into a nanny/prison state like "socialist countries" have a reputation of ?

It's a balancing act !!!!

Originally posted by pexx421
haha, Now I think its funny that Anura is railing on about americans not being able to accept criticism, meanwhile he is all flustered that you criticized him and he wont respond to your reasoned arguments in an appropriate, thought out fashion. Sigh.

I don't think so. You say I can't respond to reasoned arguments in an appropriate thought out fashion? No, I see veiled criticism as plainly as open criticism. There was nothing reasoned about it.

There is going to be a certain amount of wealth redistribution in any country. The problem is do we minimize it to capitalists only with no social safety net via government contracts and turn America into kleptocracies like China and Mexico ? or Do we go overboard with too much governmental wealth redistribution and turn into a nanny/prison state like "socialist countries" have a reputation of ?

Wealth redistribution? I see you didn't read my first post. We pay for everything ourselves through our taxes. We don't take from the rich and give to the poor. More lies and myths.

Wow! ATS is really democratic, huh? Telling me I 'quote' too much? Absurd.
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reply to post by pexx421

In the US, the reality is that the rights of a small group (corporate wealth) supersede the rights of all the rest....

Correct but if you look at the beliefs of that small group, The Rockefeller and Rothchild families being sterling examples. They are connected to the collectivist ideology of the Fabian Society and Cecil Rhodes.

You also have the European and American bankers Bankrolling the Bolshevik Revolution


Everyone falls for the red herring that the bankers and corporate CEOs are OBVIOUSLY capitalists when nothing could be further from the truth. They HATE capitalists. That is why the Morgan family who controls the US media makes sure that "Capitalism" and not the bankers always get the blackeye. The bankers and corporate CEOs all want a strong government that THEY control with strict control of people and few if any rights.

The one thing they do NOT want is individual freedom and innovation that can challenge their top positions. All you have to do is look at the consolidation of power into international cartels of about ten corporations that control 80% of the market. They want to use government, wearing the cloak of "for the good of the masses" to use regulation to wipe out their competition. The US new food safety law or the similar food regs in the EU are a great example.

Socialism is wealth distribution from the richest to the poorest a democratic republic is also wealth distibution from the poor to the rich.The top 1% in america currently get 50% of all the income and posses 70% of all the wealth, check and see how Sweden rates the cast your stones.

reply to post by lokdog


Cast my stones? No. More trashing me on my thread. Why are you people even responding if all it is going to be negative? I think it's jealousy. I really do. American patriotism is a farce. You are a land made up of immigrants and foreigners, yet, you hate non-Americans! Hypocrites. Like I said, Sweden isn't perfect but we will see who is standing at the end of the day.

Thank you all for responding. I came into this thread being optimistic and now I dislike America. Now there is no doubt in my mind why the world hates you. Frankly, it doesn't matter what you think of me or my country. I don't represent my whole country, not at all, but I will be sure to tell and show everyone I know exactly how ON A SITE I THOUGHT WAS PROMOTING THINKING OUTSIDE OF THE BOX is just another faux 'we all think outside of the box' BS. When someone from the outside expresses their thoughts, it is automatically shot down and debunked. Or finger pointing. ATS is one negative site. My judgement isnt from this petty thread it's the site itself and almost all the threads are full of negativity. Thanks.