:
: Darcy, you don't understand. Your dealing here with socialists who insist that real socialism has yet to be implemented. Castro's brand of socialism was flawed, so was Mao's, so was Stalin's, so was Ortega's, ad infinitum. Frenchy, you could say exactly the same about capitalism.
"...well, OK, there's a million under-fives dying every month from poverty-related malnutrition, the environment is fucked, the gap between rich and poor has never been wider and this society is untenable in the long term, but...it's not real capitalism..."
(All the above remarks are rephrasings of UN conclusions, by the way; the statistic is from the 1997 Human Developmment Report, the gap statement is one of the major findings of the 1999 Human Development Report.)
: On the other hand present day socialists, especially those who are scholars, do have the solution to bring the worlds miseries to an end.
No they don't. No-one has a perfect solution. The socialist view is that utility is maximised by equality as far as is possible; especially in the division of resources.
After all, there is nothing per se that makes a U.S. citizen 33 times as valuable as an Indian, or 10 times as valuable as a Chinese person; so why does the U.S. citizen consume 33 times as many of the world's resources as the average Indian? It's not fair and it's not sustainable.
Fact remains; the West is living an unsustainable lifestyle, as it has been for the last 50 years. It is unlikely that such a lifestyle is sustainable over the next 50.
(Check out the 1998 Red Cross Human Disaster Report; the #1 cause of refugees in 1998 was environmental destruction resulting from exploitation of the environment.)
: It is no use debating with them, although you are more than welcome, because their definitions change minute by minute.
OK, what do you want to define?
: I have a theory that the real deal is that these socialists are just envious of successful people and can't stand it.
Please don't ascribe the pettiness that drives you to the motives of everyone else.
By your yardstick, I'm "successful". However, I don't believe success is morally sound if it achieved by grinding someone else into the ground; I do not support the First World's continuing exploitation of the Third in the name of maximised profit; neither do I support the efforts of the First World to plunder natural resources throughout the world. My ethics do not square with thoughtlessly allowing my fellow humans to suffer as a result of my actions.
: Success to them is everyone grows his own food and and make their own clothes.
Success to me would be people being assured of a basic standard of living. As per the UN Declaration of Human Rights...if that's not too radical a document for you.
: An improvement to them would be that everybody live in a shack in the woods, sort of like Ted Kozinsky, another leftist/greeie/utopian.
I think you'll find that's spelt Theodore Kaczynkci a.k.a. the Unabomber. Of course, since he was paranoid and afraid of computers, you'd hardly find Ted here...
So, are you really in complete agreement with Pinochet, Suharto, Hitler, Mussolini, Pat Buchanan, Ronald Reagan and various other famous right-wing loonies *ahem*...thinkers?
Or will you admit that trying to describe an entire slew of political beliefs by one of the madder individuals is gross misrepresentation of an idea? - and one that bespeaks a lack of any substantial arguments...
: Anyways, that's my opinion.
Well, I didn't think anyone else was liable to lay to claim to it...
Farinata.
(who isn't a socialist, actually. I'm an anarchist. In the mould of Morris, Kropotkin, Russell and Chomsky)
