# To what extent, if at all, can economic forces be tamed to the collective human will? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 12, 2011, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714 "2011-07-12T04:44:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/1 "2011-07-12T04:44:09Z")
Wiki’s [Economy of Nazi Germany](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany) article is a good source to use whenever someone starts the “Nazism = socialism” line, but one passage is particularly telling: > [@](#): > > Early in his political career, Adolf Hitler regarded economic issues as relatively unimportant. In 1922, Hitler proclaimed that “world history teaches us that no people has become great through its economy but that a people can very well perish thereby”, and later concluded that “the economy is something of secondary importance”.[4] **Hitler and the Nazis held a very strong idealist conception of history, which held that human events are guided by small numbers of exceptional individuals following a higher ideal. They believed that all economic concerns, being purely material, were unworthy of their consideration.** Hitler went as far as to blame all previous German governments since Bismarck of having “subjugated the nation to materialism” by relying more on peaceful economic development instead of expansion through war.[5] Seems as far as you can get from socialism, where the theory is all **about** the operation of those impersonal, ineluctable economic forces. OTOH, ISTM a core **goal** of socialism is to **transcend** those forces, to change how the economy operates by changing the arrangement of economic players – for capitalists and private businesscritters, substituting (depending on the school of socialism) the state, or the party, or the local collective or co-op, or just the people voting like they vote on anything else, producing an economy with, somehow, fundamentally different laws than an economist would find in operation in a capitalist economy. As with the Nazis, there is an assumption that the human will, operating in the economic sphere, can overcome or circumvent or marginalize the laws of the Dismal Science. Well, looking at the history of both socialism and social democracy IRL, we see a lot of failures but also a lot of successes; I don’t think we can completely reject, based on all that, the idea that some degree of conscious control over the economy can actually work, to some extent, for some purposes. But is that the same as proving the laws of economics false, or negotiable, even in small part around the edges? Then we have schools like Keynesianism, which, in a nutshell, purport to accept the laws of supply and demand, etc., as being as fixed as the laws of physics, but don’t stop there – if you know the relevant laws of physics you don’t need to change them, you can **use** them to sail a ship or whatever, and with Keynesian economics, a state can tweak its economy to make functional corrections when the market stumbles. Is that different from the socialist idea in kind or in degree? (It does **work,** at any rate.) Have any economists dealt with this, tried to tease out exactly what applied will can or cannot accomplish in this sphere? ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/2 "2011-07-12T12:12:57Z")
I can’t tell what your economic question is here. But as we live in a physical world with actual physical constraints on supplies and resources, and with actual human beings with actual wants, Supply and Demand are in many ways pretty close to physical laws for most goods. You seem to be wishing for an ability to master plan -as far as I can understand the political verbiage above- and I think the great lesson out of the 20th century is that economic systems are too complex as networks and too dynamic to master plan. Period. Modern \*\*\*prescriptive \*\*\*economic theory is about trying to know how to sail well into the buffeting winds, knowing you can’t control the winds. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/3 "2011-07-12T14:20:25Z")
> [@wmfellows](#): > > You seem to be wishing for an ability to master plan -as far as I can understand the political verbiage above- and I think the great lesson out of the 20th century is that economic systems are too complex as networks and too dynamic to master plan. Period. No, another great lesson of the 20th Century is that central planning, even Stalinism, **works** – at least for limited purposes, such as heavy capital formation. In 1924 Stalin took control of a backward, agrarian country, marginally industrialized by the onset of WWI and that little industry devastated by that war and the Russian Civil War, and – by methods which were bloody, brutal, repressive, wasteful, but **effective** – by 1939 had turned it into an industrial power capable of going head-to-head with Hitler’s Germany; and Germany had always been at the leading edge of the Industrial Revolution. **No way** could that have happened, if Russia had had a free-market system during that period. OTOH, central economic planning, lacking the constant corrective feedback of competitive market performance, is spectacularly inept at any kind of fine-tuning. Moreover, it does not encourage innovation very well. No state planner would ever have thought of something like the Sony Walkman, or the Pet Rock, or fabric softener. (Whether that is an argument for or against Stalinism is open to debate.) Also, if the government carrying out the planning is an unaccountable one, then in its hubris it is capable of astonishing economic blunders of which even sympathizers the whole world over can only ask, "What were you **thinking?!"** Such as Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture or China’s Great Leap Forward. Or, worse, the current intractable status quo in North Korea. From [_Economics Explained,_](http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Explained-Everything-About-Economy/dp/0684846411/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-0323301-0796122?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182793941&sr=8-1) by Robert Heilbroner and Lester Thurow: > [@](#): > > The reason it [the Soviet system] did last [as long as it did] is that in the beginning the system very much resembled a military operation. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Lenin confronted an almost totally disorganized society, and tried at first to build a “socialism” that was partly capitalist – private farming and private small enterprise – and partly socialist, in the form of state-owned banks and large centers of production. Russia staggered along under this mixed system for a few years, without either great success or great failure, but after Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin took command and rapidly instituted the highly centralized system we have sketched in. > > Stalin’s methods were ferocious and bloody, but they were successful in bringing about an immense accumulation of wealth, much as did the ruthless ways of the ancient pharoahs of Egypt and emperors of Rome or China. The difference was that whereas the latter built palaces and cities, Stalin built factories, steel mills, hydroelectric plants, and railway systems – the ingredients of an industrial economy. The fact that Stalin’s Russia was strong enough to resist Hitler’s armies – and efficient enough, after its reconstruction following World War II, to impress the world with its industrial and military capabilities – shows that Soviet central planning was by no means a failure in its initial years. That is why “military socialism” may yet be a model for development efforts in the future. China is today a semi-military socialism which appears to be successfully negotiating the early stages of industrialization, much aided by a carefully supervised free market sector attached to the planned core. **Hence the collapse of the Soviet system should not lead us to the snap judgment that centralized socialism is no longer on the agenda of the coming century. That is indeed likely to be the case with the North, but it is not a foregone conclusion in the troubled countries of the South.** > > THE COLLAPSE > > But we are ahead of ourselves. After so successful a beginning, why did Soviet socialism finally break down? The answer is that **it is a great deal easier to design and build the skeleton of a mighty economy than to run it.** Building a steel plant requires good industrial draftsmanship, but running a steel plant requires good industrial management. Management, in turn, depends on the ability to adapt flows of production to ever-changing conditions – the unforeseen contingencies, mistakes, mismatches, shortages, and overruns that are inescapable in any complex undertaking. > > In a market system, these mistakes are repaired and remedied as soon as possible because they cost the factory or store money. Hence suppliers are told to hurry up, or to hold back on shipments, unprofitable items are canceled and profitable ones run overtime, the Yellow Pages are searched for last-minute necessities. None of this can happen in a society planned from top to bottom. When mistakes are made, they bring about a kind of gridlock in the flow of production, so that the pace of Soviet economic production was a never-ending sequence of feast or famine, too much or too little, with no way of remedying the errors other than recasting next year’s plan or seeking the semi-illegal channels of “tolkachi” – fixers. ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/4 "2011-07-12T14:37:16Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > No, another great lesson of the 20th Century is that central planning, even Stalinism, **works** – at least for limited purposes, such as heavy capital formation. \*\*\*Uhhhhh riiiiight. \*\*\*Well if you believe so, I don’t see a rational conversation. My definition of “works” in an economically rationale sense does not include massive waste, millions liquidated, etc. Enjoy your Communist glories. ---
**Author:** ![sleestak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@sleestak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleestak)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/5 "2011-07-12T15:06:23Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > No, another great lesson of the 20th Century is that central planning, even Stalinism, **works** – at least for limited purposes, such as heavy capital formation. It works if you find slave labor (or, as they were known, ‘work camps’), famines and gulags acceptable, then it works. For a short while. Slee ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/6 "2011-07-12T17:11:58Z")
If “works” is defined as “enslave an entire population in order to create a powerful military”, then I yes it “worked”. But an economy is generally thought of as providing more than a powerful military. The usual definition of “economy” is something that produces a certain quality of life for the populace. With “life” being as operative a word here as “quality”. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/7 "2011-07-12T17:36:51Z")
Economic forces _are_ the collective human will, almost by definition. Economics is the study of how people respond to scarcity, individually or in groups. The OP’s question is essentially asking how to change how people use the resources available to them. The example of Soviet Russia seems perfectly valid for this purpose, since political force is one such method. Material incentives (subsidies, taxes) are another. Social pressure is still another. When each method can be effective and for what purposes is basically the entire study of economic policy. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/8 "2011-07-12T17:42:23Z")
One needs to define what the “collective human will” is and how one determines what it is in the real world. We can vote on certain taxes that will then change the economic decisions people make (tax something, and you get less of it), or we can do the opposite to change the economic decisions people make (subsidize something and you get more of it). However, one can argue that in a free market, the “collective human will” is just the sum of all the economic choices people make every day. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/9 "2011-07-12T18:40:09Z")
The OP looks like an attempt to distance socialism from the Nazis. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/10 "2011-07-12T19:05:33Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > The usual definition of “economy” is something that produces a certain quality of life for the populace. 😕 It **is** that, but that’s no definition. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/11 "2011-07-12T19:06:49Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > Economic forces _are_ the collective human will, almost by definition. Economics is the study of how people respond to scarcity, individually or in groups. > > The OP’s question is essentially asking how to change how people use the resources available to them. The example of Soviet Russia seems perfectly valid for this purpose, since political force is one such method. Material incentives (subsidies, taxes) are another. Social pressure is still another. When each method can be effective and for what purposes is basically the entire study of economic policy. Well, I guess that’s what I’m getting at: Have **economists** found any reliable scientific rules regarding economic **policy?** ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/12 "2011-07-12T19:08:57Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > The OP looks like an attempt to distance socialism from the Nazis. No need, [Hitler did that himself.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany#Political_economy_of_Nazi_Germany) > [@](#): > > Hitler’s views on economics, beyond his early belief that the economy was of secondary importance, are a matter of debate. On the one hand, he proclaimed in one of his speeches that “we are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system”,[9] but he was clear to point out that his interpretation of socialism “has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism,” saying that “Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not.”[10] At a later time, Hitler said: “Socialism! That is an unfortunate word altogether… What does socialism really mean? If people have something to eat and their pleasures, then they have their socialism.”[11] In private, Hitler also said that “I absolutely insist on protecting private property… we must encourage private initiative”.[12] On yet another occasion he qualified that statement by saying that the government should have the power to regulate the use of private property for the good of the nation.[13] Hitler clearly believed that the lack of a precise economic programme was one of the Nazi Party’s strengths, saying: “The basic feature of our economic theory is that we have no theory at all.”[14] While not espousing a specific economic philosophy, Hitler employed anti-semitic themes to attack economic systems in other countries, associating ethnic Jews with both communism (“Jewish Bolsheviks”) and capitalism, both of which he opposed.[15][16] Hitler also believed that individuals within a nation battled with each other for survival, and that such ruthless competition was good for the health of the nation, because it promoted “superior individuals” to higher positions in society.[17] ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/13 "2011-07-12T19:26:02Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Well, I guess that’s what I’m getting at: Have **economists** found any reliable scientific rules regarding economic **policy?** I, personally, am one who’s opposed to the idea that there are “economic laws” at all. I believe that human beings always have the free will to make decisions, including decisions about individual and group economic projects. For example, one common assertion is that there’s always market pressure towards lower prices, leading the market to inevitably seek out the lowest price. Yet we can see numerous instances in which this is not true. For example, what would this make of ‘foodies’ who will spend two or three times more than necessary on a particular food item just to get a classier or snobbier version of it? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/14 "2011-07-12T19:54:36Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > OTOH, ISTM a core **goal** of socialism is to **transcend** those forces, to change how the economy operates by changing the arrangement of economic players… This just makes no sense at all to me. Changing the arrangement of economic players does not “Transcend” sconomic forces. It uses them to achieve a specific end. You’re contradicting yourself entirely. Karl Marx did not believe in transcending economics. He put forth a specific theory of how economics works. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/15 "2011-07-12T20:50:14Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > 😕 It **is** that, but that’s no definition. Yeah, I could have phrased that better. Let’s just say when people talk about the “economy” of a country, they’re usually talking about a system that produces a certain level of quality of life. You were using it in the sense of something that makes lots of guns and bombs. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/16 "2011-07-12T22:12:44Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > Economic forces _are_ the collective human will, almost by definition. Economics is the study of how people respond to scarcity, individually or in groups. But that’s not the same as a conscious collective political or public-policy choice. ---
**Author:** ![RaleighRally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@RaleighRally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaleighRally)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/17 "2011-07-13T00:33:45Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > The OP looks like an attempt to distance socialism from the Nazis. I agree. I will now try to close the gap between socialism and the Nazis. American liberals favourite version of socialism is the one practiced by the Swedish Social Democratic Party. “Folkhemmet” (the people’s home) is a political concept that played an important role in the history of this party and the Swedish welfare state. What you probably didn’t know is this: > [@](#): > > The German equivalent of the interwar period was called **Volksgemeinschaft** , which came to be associated as strongly with the Nazi Party as Folkhemmet to the Swedish Social Democratic Party . > **[Folkhemmet – Wikipedia](https://sv-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Folkhemmet?_x_tr_sl=sv&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en)** > **[Volksgemeinschaft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksgemeinschaft)** > > Volksgemeinschaft (.mw-parser-output .IPA-label-small{font-size:85%}.mw-parser-output .references .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .infobox .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .navbox .IPA-label-small{font-size:100%}German pronunciation: \[ˈfɔlksɡəˌmaɪnʃaft\] ⓘ) is a German expression meaning "people's community", "folk community", "national community", or "racial community", depending on the translation of its component term Volk (cognate with the English word "folk"). This expres After the Nove... Here is another connection between this perfect socialist state and the Nazis: > [@](#): > > “The State Institute for Racial Biology” was a Swedish governmental research institute founded in 1922 with the stated purpose of studying eugenics and human genetics. > [@](#): > > The proposal for establishing this world’s first scientific institute of racial biology was by the Socialists in the Swedish Parliament. > _snip_ > The Institute published in 1922 illustrated charts to describe a “purely Swedish race.” These tables were later used to assess base for forced sterilizations, which were by laws of 1934 and 1941 to become part of the Swedish eugenics. Victims of forced sterilizations were people with intellectual disabilities, “Multiracial, single mothers with restless lifestyle, unemployed, Gypsies and other otherness.” > **[State Institute for Racial Biology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statens_institut_f%C3%B6r_rasbiologi)** > > The State Institute for Racial Biology (SIRB, Swedish: Statens institut för rasbiologi, SIFR) was a Swedish governmental research institute founded in 1922 with the stated purpose of studying eugenics and human genetics. It was the most prominent institution for the study of "racial science" in Sweden. It was located in Uppsala. In 1958, it was renamed to the State Institute for Human Genetics (Institutionen för medicinisk genetik) and is today incorporated as a department of Uppsala Univer The i... [http://translate.google.se/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staatliches\_Institut\_für\_Rassenbiologie](http://translate.google.se/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staatliches_Institut_f%C3%BCr_Rassenbiologie) ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/18 "2011-07-13T00:35:32Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > If “works” is defined as “enslave an entire population in order to create a powerful military”, then I yes it “worked”. But an economy is generally thought of as providing more than a powerful military. The usual definition of “economy” is something that produces a certain quality of life for the populace. With “life” being as operative a word here as “quality”. Would you accept, “repelled an invading force bent on the annihilation of the nation,” as “worked”? ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/19 "2011-07-13T00:41:43Z")
Post 17 looks like some pretty thin associations. Hey, wasn’t W Bush’s grandfather a Nazi sympathizer? ---
**Author:** ![RaleighRally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@RaleighRally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaleighRally)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714/20 "2011-07-13T00:52:08Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Post 17 looks like some pretty thin associations. Hey, wasn’t W Bush’s grandfather a Nazi sympathizer? They both had an idea of “Volksgemeinschaft”. They were both keen on racism. They sterilized “unworthy” races. The only difference was that Sweden with only 7 million people had no reason to acquire more “Lebensraum”, thus no need for a strong “Wehrmacht”. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-if-at-all-can-economic-forces-be-tamed-to-the-collective-human-will/588714.md?page=2)