From: utzoo!decvax!yale-com!brunix!gh
Newsgroups: net.politics
Title: Re: The Roots of Socialism are rotted
Article-I.D.: brunix.1674
Posted: Wed Feb 23 10:23:14 1983
Received: Fri Feb 25 03:08:36 1983
References: houti.214

The discussion of socialism is very much like the discussion of the existence
of God a few weeks ago -- everybody has their own definition, different from
everybody else's, and then attacks or defends their own private vision of
socialism.  For example, the socialism I defended earlier has little in common
with Tom Craver's Ayn Rand-inspired nightmare.

At the bottom of this discussion, I think, is the question of *selfishness*.
Capitalist economies, especially America's, are predicated on the assumptions
that
   (1)  People are selfish.
   (2)  You can structure an economy such that if everyone acts selfishly,
	 the result is still the best for all.
Point (1) is undoubtedly true in America, but only because the system has been
in place long enough that people are brought up that way.  I have grave doubts
about point (2).

On the other hand, Socialism (as I see it), assumes people aren't selfish,
and if you allow for that fact you can make an even better economy.  Most of
the flames against Socialism, like Tom Craver's and Mark Terribile's, take
people's selfishness as innate and unchangeable, from which it follows that
Socialism has to be imposed by force and against the will of The People.
Optimists like myself believe that we can slowly but surely change human
nature if we try hard enough.

Not much more than a hundred years ago, a lot of Americans believed it was
okay to possess (to use Tom's favorite word) other people as slaves.  Not even
the Moral Majority believe that any more.  Maybe by the year 2100, people will
look back in amazement at the 20th century and its attitudes to wealth and
possession, just as we look now at the slave-owners of the 19th century!

	Graeme Hirst,  Brown University Computer Science
	!decvax!brunix!gh	gh.brown@udel-relay