From: pelton@ecf.toronto.edu (PELTON MATTHEW ALAN)
Subject: Re: NDP "communism?" (was Re: A vote for Reform...)
Organization: University of Toronto, Engineering Computing Facility
Distribution: can.politics
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 19:54:55 GMT

In article <1993Jan12.101456.7418@ee.ubc.ca> jmorriso@ee.ubc.ca (John Paul Morrison) writes:


>>
>> I thought the way you went about something made a difference.
>>
>Not if you end up with the same result.

  You're just rephrasing.  The way you go about something (means) is
important, even if they do end up with the same result (ends).  Machiavellian?


>
>Socialism distorts the free market, therefore it will fail; perhaps
>not as quickly or as brutally as communism, but it'll fail.
>Since both systems fail, mostly in the same way, they are equivalent.

   Proof?
>
>>  Ask a Biblical scholar.  When Jesus said the poor will always be with you,
>> he was making a joke.  Things always sound better out of context.
>>  And I wonder where you've been living, or if you've ever actually seen a
>> poor person.  The hundreds of people that come into the Scott Mission daily
>> don't own a change of clothes, let alone a fucking colour TV.  If you live
>> below the poverty line and have a spouse and a kid, you're lucky if you can
>> affor rent, heating, and food.  Luxuries are pipe dreams to these people.  
>> I'd advise a reality check.
>
>Your personal experience is interesting, but isn't woth shit for proving 
>anything. Stats Canada figures show that standard of living for everyone
>has increased in the past 50 odd years; there may be a lot of RELATIVE

  And we've had social programs in place for the last 50 years.  It sounds like
you're arguing against yourself.  If social ideals were so flawed, and if the
welfare state was so doomed, and if social aid was so ruinous for the economy,
wouldn't we be worse off than we were 50 years ago?
    
>poverty, but many feel poor only because they aren't doing as hot as
>others, not that they are in abject poverty. You should read the Globe&Mail

  Not that I'm a supporter of Marx (far from it), but he was the one who
originated the idea of relative desires.  One of his main arguments *for*
Communism was that what you want is realative to what you see in the hands
of others.  Just thought you might like to know.

>article a few days ago that quoted how many defined as 'poor' by StatsCan
>own TVs, one car, two cars, three cars, appliances, their own home etc.
>If you read the percentages of what many under the poverty line
>possess, you would be surprised, and you would think that they may have
>it tough, but that life is still pretty good, especially compared to
>how they;d live in other parts of the world.

  When I talk about helping the poor, I'm not talking about the three-car
families.  (nice heperbole, by the way.  I read the article.)  The programs
we have today may be flawed, and they mey help those that don't need it. 
But, like I said in my last post, that doesn't mean the system's flawed. 
(You don't fix a leak with a sledgehammer.)  There are still plenty abject poor
around, plenty who need help.  You're living in a dream world if you don't
believe it.
>
>(1. hundreds come to your mission because it is free. free = inifinite demand
> in any supply - demand system. 2. They get 500+ per months, with which one
> can feed themselves with )

   As my friend, who worked in a food bank, put it, you wouldn't eat there unlesunless you absolutely have to.  Anybody who can afford Kraft dinner, or the
$5 bag of rice (according to you, anybody on UIC) would find that infinitely
preferable to a soup kitchen.  Visit one, if you don't believe me.>
>> 
>Never recieved an education? Well, we shouldn't be too hard on what passes
>for 'education' these days, but at least they sat in class for 10-12 years.

  What's your next fantasy?
  Besides, an elementary school education is hardly enough to make somebody
a productive member in today's society.  And people *aren't* finishing
high school.  (Dropout rate in *Canada* around 30%)
>
>Stop deluding yourself: minimum wage laws CREATE and INCREASE unemployment,
>you have to be comatose not to be able to comprehend that. SImple:
>raise the price and demand falls. Raise the price of labor, and demand
>falls, so unemployment goes up. The typical socialist economic tinkering
>always fails, and the stats back that up. Put in rent controls, and
>the market responds by not building anymroe; result: worse housing
>shortages. Force people to join unions, and you restrict competition,
>driving up wage prices, causing demand for labor to fall, therefore
>increasing unemployment. This is textbook stuff, bud. We capitalists
>can thank the socialists for engineering the massive, painful economics
>experiments, which prove supply&demand and free markets. Maybe you should
>educate yourself about what is wrong, economically. Start by reading
>F. A. von Hayek (an economist ahead of his time; ignored while idiots
>fell overthemselves playing the games Keynes advocated)
>
  More standard textbook stuff:  life after the Industrial Revolution was
hard, because it was the only time in history we've had true unrestrained
capitalism.  People lived in tiny, unheated hovels, if they had a home at
all.  Children as young as 8 worked 14-hour days in coal mines -- descriptions
of their lives, taken at the time, read like Dante's _Inferno_.  An estimated
10% of girls went into prostitution in order to live.  And this all ended --
standard textbook stuff -- when the government finally decided to step in.
>
>
>Biologically, we are programmed to reproduce, and gauranteed welfare 
>encourages females to have offspring earlier, since the state will
>be around to provide, instead of her looking after herself, or with 
>a 2nd parent.

  Most single mothers choose it?  Do you honestly think that 1 out of 
every 11 teenage girls becomes pregnant because she wants to be a mother?

>
>Laroque was talking about people who deliberately worsen the odds
>for disease, accident, etc. That's their right, but then they should
>pay higher premiums, to cover the KNOWN risk. Arguing with tearjerking
>scenarios is really pointless, because the odds for that are ridiculously
>low, and that kind of risk is easiliy insurable. When a KNOWN risk is

  Checked the stats on drunk driving lately?
  And I might support a proposal to have people pay higher taxes if they 
have habits that pose individual or collective health risks.  Not a bad 
idea.  What Loraque was arging for, though, was the abolition of universal
heath care.  (I might be wrong, but I was arguing against that.)
  Only one problem with the idea of taxes being tied to risks.  It's impracti-  cal.  Look how much beaurocracy we have already.  Imagine if we started 
evaluating everybody's health risks.  And don't propose we model our system
after the U.S. health-insurance companies.  Their system might work, but it
isn't fair.  (Yes, fair matters.)  When you get into an accident, your car
insurance goes up, even if it wasn't your fault.  Similar with health insurance.
And people can be in high-risk groups, though no fault of their own.  They
still have to pay higher insurance premiums.  Would somebody pay more if
he/she was old, or worked at a dangerous job (because that's all they could get
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