Reply #167: Waste of time [View All]

[mosin]

I read everything you posted. I described our background, not as a strawman, but in response to your reference to the "sperm lottery."

Otherwise, it was clear that we have no basis for a worthwhile dialogue. Despite your claim that you are not a Marxist, it sounded like so much Marxist nonsense to me: Wrestling with questions of how much "owners" (your scare-quotes) can take from "workers" before it becomes the "ethical equivalent of slavery." Whenever anyone introduces the concept of "wage slavery" into a discussion, I tend to move on.

Does anyone really and truly think the Communist ideal's only shortfall was that the "ownership society" was manifested in government rather than some cabal of private organizations?

And in response to your original question, I believe that neither the Communist ideal nor the Communist reality has anything resembling real ownership.

For example, you say "If you think it makes us 'rich' ..." and ignore the fact that I make no such simplistic, irrelevant assertions. Mind-reading? Yeah. Right. :eyes:

I didn't say you did. It was an reference to the overall tendency in the thread to support a broad estate tax in order to soak the rich or even (in the words of yorgatron) to "Eat the Rich!" The current estate tax hits many Americans who are not what most people would consider "rich" (especially if the higher unified credit goes away after 2010).

There's not a hair's breadth of difference between that claim and the claims of Lenin and Stalin. I guess there've been Greater Fools throughout history.

I was thinking that about your philosophy. I'm an unapologetic supporter of capitalism, albeit with a modest safety net. My philosophy has nothing in common with that of Lenin and Stalin, while you apparently deny any belief in the American Dream or, worse, associate it with Shrub, Jr.