Socialism ends in failure 100% of the time… just like democracy.

A thoughtful post. I appreciate it.

 

Those definitions make no sense to me. There is nothing political about socialism. It is an economic system that affects who owns what. Theoretically it should work under any political system. In practice, though, it can only exist under authoritarian types of political systems.

 

Now? They have been disappearing for long time now. Stores like Wallmart open their doors, and small businesses around them die off, and others are bought off to steer customers to the big corp. Its not about AI, and its not new.

 

It is not AI. It isn't giant corporations either. It is the internet. The truth is that there are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of small businesses on the internet. It isn't so much that small business is dying as it is that small business is changing venue.

 

Giant corp has driven countless small businesses out of business. I should have added "brick and mortar small businesses".

Yes, there is truth in that, and it's like saying the internet saved small business.

 

yep, Corporatism is killing Capitalism.... have been for a while now

 

Capitalism is not dying. Like poster fmw mentioned, its alive and well, especially in the internet.

 

sadly it is.... your example of Walmart killing of local stores and now Amazon are good examples

we will go the way of the Horse, less of us will be needed to do actual work, that is when capitalism dies

 

WallMart is an example of Capitalism. They started small, made money, invested it in expanding the company, and now they are making tons of money. "More for them, less for others" doesn't mean its not capitalism.

 

they are also an example of Corporatism....

 

Only if they influence policy-making.

 

"Wal-Mart Memo Suggests Ways to Cut Employee Benefit Costs " 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/26/business/26walmart.ready.html?pagewanted=all

"Wal-Mart executives said the memo was part of an effort to rein in benefit costs, which to Wall Street's dismay have soared by 15 percent a year on average since 2002. Like much of corporate America, Wal-Mart has been squeezed by soaring health costs. The proposed plan, if approved, would save the company more than $1 billion a year by 2011."

"Ms. Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid."

an interesting Article, Walmart claims Healthcare raising by 15% a year back in 2005 under complete republican control...

 

Well I do see that a course on why democracies fail, using examples from history, could be enlightening, but would be too hot potato to ever happen, for example:



So although having a class in why democracies fail seems like a good idea, it won't happen for obvious reasons.

And yes, democracy requires shared values, but as I previously stated, that's the anthesis of diversity, which you also claimed was required for democracy. Historically, you can only have one, democracy or diversity. Choose wisely.

As for psychology, I don't think you can in any way compare psychology to a class in biology or even a health class in high school. That's based on science, and psychology is at best a soft science. I took a basic psychology course in college and it presented several theories of the mind that all seemed plausible and were all contradictory. I just don't see what you expect to be gained from that.

 

For the most part I agree with you… the exception being on the topic of psychology. I agree that there are many competing theories and take them for what they are… best guesses. Yet there are also easy to conduct social experiments that reveal our baser nature. I unwittingly took part in one in high school revealing the subjectivity of observation based perspective.

There are many experiments that reveal our nature. The problem as I see it is that causality remains hidden. In essence we can see the effect but the cause remains hidden… which is where theory comes in. I take theory for what it is… a best guess. Yet this does not diminish the importance of social experiments that reveal our subconscious behavior. I think a society that is educated on how destructive biases can be, would be a society better at mitigating them.

At the end of the day I would rather trust in those trying to understand human nature just as I trust my doctors advice. Doctors are not always right, but they have been enough times in my life to have earned my trust. Same with psychology.

 

Hmmm well I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree on psychology. Unlike medicine, psychology just isn't there as a science. I would think it's closer to where medicine was 2000 years ago. We already have all of human history to reveal human nature. We (well some of us) just don't like what its revealed.

 

I'm with you on this. Psychology is a social science. Social sciences don't do science. They analyze human behavior which is about as easy to do as herding cats.