Why do people in USA fear socialism so much?

[kokjo]

china is more capitalistic then USA, its run by a strong government supporting big corporations. 

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[anu]

Every country is an experiment, but it cannot be replicated, making it unscientific

Popper is spinning in his grave. Most, if not all of science is unscientific, then, because nothing can be replicated *exactly*. Any historical science such as Paleontilogy and Darwinian evolution would definitelly be unscientific.

[kokjo]

Every country is an experiment, but it cannot be replicated, making it unscientific

Popper is spinning in his grave. Most, if not all of science is unscientific, then, because nothing can be replicated *exactly*. Any historical science such as Paleontilogy and Darwinian evolution would definitelly be unscientific.

and evolution impossible to falsify, so according to popper, evolution is unscientific.

[anu]

and evolution impossible to falsify, so according to popper, evolution is unscientific.

How about a theory that can't be falsified, only verified? For example:

Hypothesis H: Building a machine that performs X is possible.

If X is no violation of physical law or logic, how can you propose an experiment to falsify H?

For example:

Hypothesis I: Building a heavier than air flying machine is possible.
Hypothesis II: Building a conscious AI is possible.

[bb113]

Every country is an experiment, but it cannot be replicated, making it unscientific and not of significant worth to other countries. Look at the USSR and look at China. China is doing much better than the USSR even with a similar form of government.

This is true. There will (almost) always be outliers due to confounding variables. Human society is really, really complex and responds to theories about itself so there are a lot of factors going on, many are not constant. However, that should not stop us from trying to discover what is most likely to occur.

For example, looking for a correlation between
A) How "corrupt" is a country?
B) How "Socialist" is a country?

Of course it is also difficult (I think not impossible) to define and measure "corruption" and "socialist" to some practical degree of precision. But if this hurdle is overcome, and these measurements are taken year after year, and we see that as a country becomes more socialist it becomes more corrupt (and/or vice versa), this would be scientific evidence that the amount of socialism is related somehow to the amount of corruption. Note that I am not using historical examples here. In other words, the hypothesis that degree of socialism is unrelated to corruption (during the period of time measured) will have been falsified. This seems to be pretty clear cut science to me.

Note that whether or not this finding will still apply 100 years later after various cultural, geopolitical, and technological changes have occurred would still be an open question. To get good enough data to answer that, these types of experiments would probably need to be done on the scale of millenia.

[NASDAQEnema]

I don't understand, maybe I'm just too young with whole cold-war mentality born just around collapse. Sure communism didn't work out very well.

But, I do prefer some socialism to pure capitalism. So I don't realy get this whole fear of it in USA, it can't be all bad or is it? Can someone explain it to me?

I don't believe in systems. Systems sabotage culture. Culture prioritizes participation. Systems prioritize organization.

An organization cannot produce without participants. On the other hand it only takes one clever person to organize. Participants are the substance. Organizations and therefore systems are dependent, lacking in foundation in and of themselves.

[NASDAQEnema]

Socialism destroys any natural incentive that comes from human desire and puts it in the hands of elected bureaucrats that are incapable of true failure. They get paid no matter how well their mandates work and can only be fired every term or so. That's assuming they are held accountable. There's no competition to do that.

In conclusion, due to little true accountability and the inability to fail, socialist services are inherently inferior in terms of product output and the vast amount of inefficiency required to generate said product.

It's not the incentive. Socialism doesn't make people lazy or less creative. It makes them more afraid to override authority. That why quality suffers. Classical incentive theory is for mass production systems which are corporate socialist anyways.

Individuals can be motivated by their values (inspired) rather than reward and threat.

[neptop]

Socialism is one of these terms that can be defined in various ways. See for example socialist parties in various countries.

I agree countries can be compared. There are a number of reasons. Natural resources and history are just two things that have a lot of influence. There are just to many variables that can have a huge influence. In fact every individual that ever existed in a country has a lot of history.

And then take the Cuba example. Americas favorite example of communism. They manage to give education to US American citizens and are doing pretty well compared to other countries of the region, while there have been military (and covert) attacks from the only super power of the planet. Oh and there are still sanctions from the US. I don't think a country in Europe would be able to survive just one of these things. All these things can be read up on Wikipedia or more trust able sources. From that perspective Communism must be awesome.

Still it is most likely not what Marx or Engels ever had in mind. Communist countries have always been dictatorships and bureaucrats usually have a lot of power, while Marx wanted it to be a way to make people more equal.

Even though they are in relation to other countries doing pretty well and I guess the removal of US sanctions is the main reason for it to stay on development country level (and also why they pretty much have to hate the US) I think none of us would want to live in Cuba, because of being authoritarian, doing censorship, limiting lots of freedoms and well.. being a development country.

What I want to say with this is that some countries are doomed to fail. Some European countries, like Germany for example also had a number of doomed to fail democracies. This led to to Hitler, WW2 and also caused a lot of step backs in the democratic/political development of the country.

About China. When we let aside the fact that Communist and Socialist countries usually practice a reduction of many freedoms and that their only party calls itself communist. When we have a look on the stuff Marx or Engels wrote when they had their "ideas" then China really is the complete opposite of that. They could call themselves Chinese Capitalist Party, as in "Money is the only thing important to us" (which of course not talking about capitalism in economic way, but that capital is the highest good).

This all leads to a lot of misunderstandings. I therefor agree with "I don't believe in systems". They just force people into something.

Also it's hard to measure success. I mean if you literally enslave a country, like say North Korea or simply make everyone a mindless robot (a bit like in 1984) you can of course achieve certain things, make sure everyone has enough food, nobody dares to do anything criminal, etc. If you just measure something like production or GNP than in my opinion one does a huge mistake. Economy and political science like every other science should be used to enhance our lives, not dominate them. I think this is someone a lot of people from various views can agree upon.

[kokjo]

I don't believe in systems. Systems sabotage culture. Culture prioritizes participation. Systems prioritize organization.

have you ever considered that there is system in culture? or culture in the system? seriously dude, YOU ARE WRONG!

[Iyeman]

It's simple, because there are a lot of very rich people in the USA. at least 21-22 million people in the USA have more than 1 million dollar in total assets.

Long live capitalism! death to communism and all other systems

[neptop]

I don't believe in systems. Systems sabotage culture. Culture prioritizes participation. Systems prioritize organization.

have you ever considered that there is system in culture? or culture in the system? seriously dude, YOU ARE WRONG!

Please elaborate. Give an example for these two statements (if they aren't really questions).

[kokjo]

I don't believe in systems. Systems sabotage culture. Culture prioritizes participation. Systems prioritize organization.

have you ever considered that there is system in culture? or culture in the system? seriously dude, YOU ARE WRONG!

Please elaborate. Give an example for these two statements (if they aren't really questions).

system in the culture: religion. many religions often have a huge deal organization behind it, think priest and pope. while still relying heavy on culture, and alot of participation from supporters of that religion.

culture in the system: in my country(denmark), we have democracy, its a system. but there is also a lot of culture build up around it, people say what they want, even politicans that most people don't wants to listen to, but we tolerate them. politics are also a great subject of discussion around the dinner table. Democracy is having a great cultural impact here, and people participation.

[bb113]

I think nasdaqenema was making some kind of claim about entropy being pure. He did not provide enough info to evaluate it, but it's an interesting concept.

[neptop]

I don't believe in systems. Systems sabotage culture. Culture prioritizes participation. Systems prioritize organization.

have you ever considered that there is system in culture? or culture in the system? seriously dude, YOU ARE WRONG!

Please elaborate. Give an example for these two statements (if they aren't really questions).

system in the culture: religion. many religions often have a huge deal organization behind it, think priest and pope. while still relying heavy on culture, and alot of participation from supporters of that religion.

culture in the system: in my country(denmark), we have democracy, its a system. but there is also a lot of culture build up around it, people say what they want, even politicans that most people don't wants to listen to, but we tolerate them. politics are also a great subject of discussion around the dinner table. Democracy is having a great cultural impact here, and people participation.

I think NASDAQEnema's definition of culture is different. First of all I wouldn't call a religion (or a believe in general) a culture. Think about Christianity. Even if you trim it down to Catholicism there are huge differences between the cultures people have in one region or in the other. I am not living in Denmark, but I am sure the culture there isn't the same everywhere.

Of course there are hierarchical systems in some religions, but I think what NASDAQEnema also meant is that these things are maybe parts of a culture but people don't really live in systems. They are too big and too abstract. Of course they influence culture, but at least until now nobody came up with a really working system people, other than a small fraction can really identify with.

People usually see themselves in very small groups. It's far easier to culturally be a member of a family, someone in a district or in an online community than to be something like a European (again, culturally), simply because people in the same cultural space can be very different. Even if you have ideals like Freedom that tends to have a different meaning for different people. See Libertarians who usually don't consider social insurance an incision while others consider it a foundation stone of liberty because it gives you a independence from money and corporations. So even if you consider liberty a an ideal for a system different cultures may have a different view on things. For this reason there tend to be twists inside parties, religions, etc. Of course these also exist in cultures, but cultures are a huge mix of things. I would consider religions, philosophies, political stuff in general to be systems that influence and maybe are part of cultures, which can't really be abstracted, especially because they constantly change and possibly obsolete systems. A culture may be compatible with a system another may not be.

tl;dr: Cultures are chaotic (complex systems), while systems are abstractions or ideals.

[mai77]

answer:

because they know socialism was invented by jews (e.g. like Leo Trotzky asf.)

[ArmoredDragon]

Americans don't fear socialism, rather we just know what it leads to when people discover that they don't actually have to work. See Greece and France.

Personally I don't like it because it's just a ripoff. For example I'm paying into a retirement plan that I'll never actually be able to retire off of. If I could just take that money and put it into a savings account, I'd be much better off. So would everybody else in fact. For those who do support that retirement plan, what do you think when I tell you that the government skims $9 billion dollars per year off of the top of it? If a private entity did that, you'd shit bricks, but when the government does it, it's just for the greater good.

[hawkeye]

Definitely because of the cold war.  Reds under the bed and all that.

The funny thing is most of them actually love the socialism, all the benefits that government give them, they just don't want to admit it because of the aforementioned reason why it has a bad name.

ie.  most Americans don't have a clue.   Most of them like socialism but are afraid to label it as such for fears of being called communist.

My personal opinion is that socialism is bad because it messes up people's incentives and leads to less wealth overall.

[antibanker]

remember Ayn Rand the bitch talked against government all day long - when she was an old fart herself of course she gladly accepted medicare and medic-aid subsidized gov care.

that's your typical McCarthy-ist and chicken-hawk.

US right wingers are a bunch of pathetic hypocrites.

[kokjo]

My personal opinion is that socialism is bad because it messes up people's incentives and leads to less wealth overall.

not true. socialism takes of all the stuff you don't want to do(but other people might want), and there by giving you the opportunity to do what you like.
in a capitalistic/liberal/anarchistic/whatever society i would not be able to study math, because i would not have the money to do so.
in little socialistic Denmark, i am studying math, and im even paid to do so by the government.

was does the capitalistic society get: lazy depressed people.
and denmark gets: enthusiastic and highly educated people.

now tell me which society gets "less wealth overall"?

[ArmoredDragon]

I think you ought to ask the Cubans who live in Florida how great socialism is.