Quote (thundercock @ May 18 2020 01:20am)

That reddit skews young and white.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ May 18 2020 10:04am)

Despite the obvious demographic slant of reddit, I think that this is a pattern which holds generally: the most vocal proponents of socialism being relatively privileged white college kids who are attracted to the idea on an intellectual level. This pattern has held true since the 60s...

Quote (thundercock @ 18 May 2020 01:20)

That reddit skews young and white.

Quote (InsaneBobb @ May 18 2020 06:10am)

I love how the highest count of self-descriptions in that poll are "Libertarian Socialist". You can't be both. Socialism requires the forceful redistribution of wealth from one person to other people. AKA using the threat of imprisonment or death to take the product of one person's labor to provide for the well-being of others. Socialized healthcare requires that people who are healthy pay for those who are sick, and if funds are low, that the labor of medical workers be paid at a lower wage than the work deserves, which lends to a good portion of the reasons many foreign doctors come to the US, where they can be paid their worth.

Libertarianism is all about individual choice and freedom, the individual's autonomy. Forced labor, government-dictated pay, high taxes for social and political reasons, rather than basic infrastructure and peace-keeping services (yes, firefighting is included in peacekeeping), etc. are all antithetical to the basic ideals of libertarianism. I would suggest that "Socialist Libertarian" is another term for, "I believe borders and individual nations' laws to be a fiction. It should be one government dictating the rules for the entire world, and so I believe in the liberty of freedom of movement and utilization of social programs without necessarily paying into them, regardless of a sovereign nation's laws, because their laws are meaningless."

I also note the resounding "yes" to the question whether market economies are innately harmful. Seems these people should leave the comfort of their own homes and go to "nations" where the market economies are no longer existent, such as Venezuela or Somalia, and see how it works out for them.

Quote (Thor123422 @ May 18 2020 07:24am)

Can you give me the definition of socialism you are using in this post?

Quote (InsaneBobb @ May 18 2020 09:55am)

It should be easily inferred, given the context. That same question in the poll has several options for communist. So I would refer to the more standardized Marxist interpretation of socialism, the go-between from capitalism to communism, where there are private owners of property and business, but the government (aka the people) controls how, if, and why people can do business, what they can or cannot do with or on their property, and the bulk of their incomes are taken away to redistribute to "the people" so "everyone lives better".

If the government owned all the property and means of production, then it's straight up communism, which doesn't work, the "enforcers" of "everyone only gets their share" end up making themselves the government, which is why you end up with every "Communist" nation such as the USSR, China, North Korea, etc. ending up as a military dictatorship.

Quote (Thor123422 @ May 18 2020 11:11am)

You would think it's easy to infer, but I like to ask this question to a lot of people and get very strange answers most of the time.

To know if there is a contradiction you'd have to ask the people who tick "libertarian socialism" mean by that, since the definition of socialism has been in flux since it became a buzzword in America alongside communism. It's easy to imagine they are using "libertarian socialist" to mean the social aspect of libertarianism and market aspect of socialism for example. Without further clarification it's not possible to know. It's also possible they mean "socialism voluntarily enacted at the free will of the participants", which wouldn't contradict either.

Oh look, there's a whole wiki on it. This should be a fun read! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism

Quote (Thor123422 @ May 18 2020 08:11am)

You would think it's easy to infer, but I like to ask this question to a lot of people and get very strange answers most of the time.

To know if there is a contradiction you'd have to ask the people who tick "libertarian socialism" mean by that, since the definition of socialism has been in flux since it became a buzzword in America alongside communism. It's easy to imagine they are using "libertarian socialist" to mean the social aspect of libertarianism and market aspect of socialism for example. Without further clarification it's not possible to know. It's also possible they mean "socialism voluntarily enacted at the free will of the participants", which wouldn't contradict either.

Oh look, there's a whole wiki on it. This should be a fun read! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism

Quote (Skinned @ May 18 2020 08:19am)

Anarchism: for libertarians who don't want a group of henchmen to enforce property rights for the wealthy.

Quote (InsaneBobb @ May 18 2020 10:25am)

Yeah, it's a very self-contradictory worldview, and is incredibly close to what I listed my suspicions as in some respects, while in others it's even worse.

There's no way they're libertarian in any regard. They're closer to anarchosocialists, and it's a philosophy that wouldn't work. Right down to the business model, it's faulty. Who enforces the will of the cooperative, and how? Whoever that is, they will end up taking both control and the lion's share. Every time.

Philosophy and economics don't mix well, and armchair cyber-intellectuals trolling reddit from the comfort of their parent's house while crying about student loans for degrees they're getting without any real view on why they're getting them aren't the greatest authorities on how the world ought to conduct itself to prevent all out warfare and chaos.