Where do you live? (State, province, or even nation will suffice.)
I think it shouldn’t be controversial to say that Jesus was closer to Marxism than he was to objectivism.
I assume that the principle you stated doesn’t include the government forcing people into doing this. Am I correct?
Well then, it’s hardly surprising that D_Anconia got confused. A great many conservatives get alarmed on encountering actual Christian principles, because they think it sounds like Marxism.
Sam_Stone’s a self-professed Canadian. From Alberta, IIRC.
The government has a role. If the powerful Polutto Corporation wants to make extra profits by dumping toxins in the river, then the government has a role to prevent them from doing this. If I decide my share includes my neighbor property, the government has a role to rein me in. The question for citizens, it seems to me, is to determine where we draw those lines. That’s why we all vote while remembering we have a Bill of Rights to protect the minority.
I guess Luke the Apostle must have stolen it from him, then.
"The principle of Buddhism is not “every man for himself”!
-A Fish Called Wanda
Oh and by the way, “capitalism” doesn’t seem to have “worked out well” for a lot of people either. Although I suppose the main difference is that a capitalist system lets people believe in the fiction that they live in a pure meritocracy where everyone is at the exact station they deserve.
The fact of the matter is that in any society, there will always be people who cannot contribute enough economically to match what they need to survive. Even if there were some way to ensure that everyone receive whatever resources and training they might need to maximize their contribution.
The capitalist society we have created in the United States seems very one sided. Companies are very capitalist when it comes to profits but are quick to socialize risk and other costs.
A lot of conservatives look at anyone a micrometer to their left and freak out, screaming SOCIALIST! and COMMUNIST!
If Jesus Christ walked the Earth today he’d be condemned as a socialist by a lot of people. Among other things they don’t like. And a threat. Sort of like the first time around…
Nobody Wants To Work Anymore
“You people need to stop finding better paying jobs and come back to where I eat!”
Also him: “What do I do for work? I took an early retirement.”
(probably from a fast food job lol)
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs - Wikipedia
Do you agree with his quoted statement?
Is that Poe’s law in action? Or has it rather to do with this attitude?
A safety net is not socialism! It’s social decency! (I think I know how you mean that, no personal criticism meant. But your country and mine are very different indeed)
No, I don’t think so. I believe in doing my part to help others and not being gluttonous myself. Is that the same thing?
Yes, I do.
In other words, in some post-scarcity society where all material needs are abundantly supplied by the overflow of exponentially increasing productivity, and people are free to concentrate on working for the sheer enjoyment of interesting work, rather than for the sake of earning a living.
That’s when Marx thinks it will be practicable to allocate society’s goods “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
Hell, according to this quote, even Marx wasn’t a Marxist in the sense that conservatives typically define Marxism. Conservatives think that Marxism means that everybody’s supposed to go full abdication-of-individual-property rights today. But we’re still very far from Marx’s criterion of successfully implementing a true post-scarcity society where everybody can just take what they need from the overwhelming productivity abundance, like ordering from a replicator on Star Trek.
Was Angola a post-scarcity society when they adopted a Marxist government in 1975?
Perhaps in your haste you missed this part of the post you quoted:
No, and nobody’s saying that Angola’s version of Marxist political ideology worked out well for them. What numerous posters are trying to explain to you here is that the principle expressed by “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” is an abstract goal for post-scarcity societies that even Marx himself didn’t think was practically applicable to modern economies as we know them.
So when people say, as Biotop said, that “in an ideal world people contribute what they are able and take only what they need”, they are not thereby expressing support for an Angola-style “Marxist” system of governance. Even Marx himself wasn’t advocating that.
So your obstinate futile attempts to play “gotcha” with this particular sentiment are nothing but a headdesking waste of everybody’s time.
Amazing how in America if you want to incentivize the rich, you need to give them money, but if you want to incentivize the poor, you must take it away.