So, one of my Facebook pals is pushing the "social justice = communism" meme

[LuckyTheDog]

Is is one of my responses...

The idea of social justice starts from the premise that while the free market is a great tool for creating a dynamic economy, it has its limitations.

You can't just rely on mystical forces like the "invisible hand" to automatically create a just and sound society. People actually have to do the work of creating a just and sound society That means facing up to the idea that capitalism is not perfect. And, if we want to enjoy the benefits of a capitalist economy, we also have an obligation to compensate for the shortcomings inherent in that kind of economy.

Capitalist economies are (and always have been) vulnerable to panics, crashes, depressions, and fundamental restructurings that devastate people in ways that are not their fault.

Even when capitalism is working well, every free-market nation includes an underclass of people who just don't make it. People climb out of that class all the time. Others sometimes fall into it. Some people move in and out of it several times in their lives. The population of poor people is not static in any way. And poverty in the U.S. is a curable disease for lots of people. But the existence of a permanent underclass is a natural consequence of capitalism. We’ve always had one and probably always will.

The solution? Well, we could scrap capitalism and go to a command-and-control economy. But that has never worked out well. The better idea is to smooth over the problems inherent in capitalism with a robust social safety net, regulations on business, unionization of workers and other tools.

Laissez-faire sounds great around conference tables at the Heritage Foundation. In the real world, it does not work. Roosevelt was called a communist. But in reality, he saved capitalism.

[Deep13]

1. I usually ask, "So what's your solution, then?...

...keeping in mind that homelessness, starvation and denial of health care are not acceptable options."

I also sometimes point out that such people are merely trying to justify their own selfishness and solipsism. Then I have to explain what "solipsism" means.

I like your answer too. Confuse them with reality. Works every time.

[gater]

9. Try a tire iron!

You know... just to scare 'em a little.

[CurtEastPoint]

2. If they profess to be Christian...

hit them with this commandment from JC himself and ask them how this squares with their political philosophy. I am sick to death of these pompous pricks:

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

[DirkGently]

3. Well said

With everything that's happened, you have to wonder, though, what it will actually TAKE to explode these beloved fallacies. In the span of a couple of years, we've seen the proverbial chickens come home to roost on de-regulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, de-regulation again, expansionist wars and bloated military spending and ... oh yeah -- de-regulation.

This is becoming a religious war, where no level of factual information is relevant to the other side. We outspend the world combined for a military which has become solely a tool for attempting to control the political dynamics in oil producing companies, but only progressive taxation is "redistribution of wealth." We have shorter lives and double the per-capita healthcare costs of single-payer / government-run healthcare systems, which in operation are little different from the police and fire departments, and yet this is out of the question for us because it's called "socialized medicine" by people who wouldn't know socialism if it bit off their nethers.

We spent trillions keeping dishonest financial companies and bloated auto manufacturers out of the trash pile, but the complaint is that the "free market" would have fixed these things on its own, and the government was tyrannical to even put strings on the loans of OUR money?

I keep thing we need some real socialists and real communists to make some noise. Talk about nationalizing everything. Talk about a 95% upper income tax bracket. Make it a harder to label to slightest attempt at reigning in the complete ownership of our society by an incresingly smaller handful of dishonest individuals and companies as being the equivalent of Stalinist Russia.

For cripe's sake.

Anyway ... well done.

[patrice]

4. I like the fact that you stayed so focused on the issue at hand: so-called Free Market Capitalism.

I especially like: Capitalist economies are (and always have been) vulnerable to panics, crashes, depressions, and fundamental restructurings that devastate people in ways that are not their fault.

The reason I think this is a powerful statement is as follows:

If "free market" Capitalism is good, because it allows ANYONE opportunities to develop to their fullest potential and, thus, prosper, this value assumes the any/each person has a unique worth that should be conserved and developed, not only for themselves as individuals, but also for the good of the group, i.e. for what resources that individual development brings to the group.

Hence, if it is good that ANYONE can and does become "successful", it is also bad if ANYONE can/does fail and, if this is not the case, i.e. if it is not true that it is bad that ANYONE can/does fail, then it is also not true that it is good that ANYONE can/does become "successful".

And if it is not true that it is good that ANYONE can/does become "successful", it must be true, therefore, that it is good only if certain people become successful, and others don't matter, and if that's the case, then we need to admit it up front, so that the killing can begin, because anything else, anything other than genocide and euthanasia, would be bad for a system that is predicated upon the success of only certain persons.

[patrice]

7. P.S. I know, I know, I need to get out a college logic textbook and translate the foregoing

into symbolic logic, to make it a little more manageable.

[fatbuckel]

8. The Failers must be allowed to fail.

[patrice]

11. That would be true if they had appropriate alternatives, but there are no alternatives,

let along appropriate ones, so they are dragging the rest of us down with them and the REALLY unfortunate thing about that is that some of the Failers are so-called "cream" that got brought along and advanced by a dishonest system (Shrub and SP are two obvious examples that come to mind, but in truth Failers are throughout all systems, artificially sustained by the inertia of a phony system at all levels) so their failing now is magnified geometrically by where they're falling from, more justification for appropriate alternatives for them and for those whom they cause to fail on their way down.

Not only do we do not live in a meritocracy, the whole concept of "success" is skewed by that fact, so the definition of "failure" is also skewed, something I thought about as I wrote my previous post, but neglected to go back and add the " " to indicate a question about the conventional definitions for the words "success" and "failure". Just because those words are bandied about so much does not mean that there is anykind of significant majority about what they mean, nor, whatever they do mean to people, that that meaning is in fact a valid representation of the empirical world.

[patrice]

12. As it is, failers without appropriate alternatives make it that much harder on everyone else.

Even with appropriate alternatives, there are still going to be failers, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't provide effectively enough to make their numbers as few as possible.

Or, we could just kill them.

...................................................

All Americans should have a basic level of survival, life-long educational opportunities, comprehensive health care, decent places to live, functional employment opportunities, not only for whatever value they have as individual persons, but also to keep as many of them as possible from dragging current and future generations down with them. If there is nothing like this that unites us as a nation, then there just must not be anything called America, no matter how often people use that word or others like it.

[patrice]

13. P.S. No one is saying to lie about what Failure is, in fact, I'm proposing that we be more honest

about it and about "success".

[leftygolfer]

5. there is that "remove from friends" button

I've had to use it quite a bit lately

[patrice]

6. That's probably wise of you. nt

[sui generis]

10. the thing is

these memes, "social justice" and "communism" and "capitalism" are bingo buzzword bullshit when used to describe CAUSES of social ills and their proposed solutions.

Confusing a political system with an economic system is another glaring foxpaw in the mix. The thing about using the phrase "social justice" is everything negative it implies to people who don't believe that they are personally culpable for meting out any "injustice", and that is not millionaires and captains of industry but Mom & Pop next door neighbor, both political parties.

Social justice. Define it without some context. Economic justice? Like equal pay in a private company for the owner and for his administrative assistant? What would be the point of having a private company if the government tells me I need to reduce my own income without being willing to reduce my exposure to risk in the event of failure? My administrative assistant didn't put her personal assets up to cover the funding of the company, and won't lose them if the company fails. Raising everyone's salaries to some mythical equality means less money to hire more people or worse, less money to pay down company debts & bills and build the balance sheet.

Social justice in education? I'm fine with that - let's set some caps on tuition and accredit more educational bodies so more people have a chance to get a degree. Social justice in reparations? I can't tell you which half of me would do the paying and which half the receiving. I don't even like the term "justice" - it's too judeo-christian eye-for-an-eye to be used to address social and economic inequality.

I'm still thinking on this but my gut says that addressing the limitations in a capitalist economy has to start by granting access to education, managing shared resources more effectively, and working through our political system to keep JOBS and manufacturing in America so that we're not a white collar 3rd party B2B service economy. How do you 'measure' and qualify social injustice? Curious.