I’m currently attempting to do that and they display no capacity to understand where I’m coming from. They even said that welfare is socialism, but not warfare. All I’ve done is try to show that they are funded the same way, I’ve tried to explain military Keynesianism, I’ve tried to show how it suffers from central planning, but it’s not working.
Any suggestions?
1984 make some compelling arguments
I would recommend shifting gears a bit. Try suggesting that interventionism and warfare go hand in hand. Shortly after the Federal Reserve Act and the income tax, the U.S. entered World War I. The result of the failed New Deal measures resulted in FDR itching to get involved World War II. The Great Society programs of the sixties were followed by Vietnam. These are not mere coincidences.
It’s less of a point than “warfare causes socialism,” but I think your objective might be to show that you can’t have limited government at home without limited government abroad, and vice versa.
Tell them that neocons idolize Neo-Republicans like LIncoln and Democrats like FDR while true conservatives (paleocons) hate lincoln and FDR.
He even posted this picture…:
…Without recognizing the irony.
Yeah, the military is one of the toughest nuts to crack. I recommend that you try scaling back your ambitions and deal with police security first and show how the police are socialized and centrally-planned and how this leads to the shortages (gang neighborhoods) and surpluses (excessive police presence and enforcement of nanny laws) predicted by economic theory. Some people can kind of comprehend the idea of privatized security doing things more efficiently than public police. Then, once you’ve shoe-horned in on the police, simply increase the scale out to national defense and show how the same problems exist in national defense (shortages: national border, 9/11 (they didn’t prevent it, now, did they?) etc., suprluses: hemorrhaging military budget, Pentagon can “lose track of” $2.3 trillion, B2’s cost $2 billion each, the F35 program has run into the hundreds of billions, etc.)
The knee-jerk reaction is “what, you’re proposing that we use mercenary forces??” to which the reply is no, I’m not. Mercenaries are in the employ of a central-planning government, so they don’t solve the problem. Instead, I’m proposing that “we” restrict the public military budget to strictly defensive measures because all these huge expenditures on offensive weaponry make us weaker by sapping our economic strength and by squeezing out spending on much more cost-effective defensive measures. Look what the machine gun did in WWI… defense was king. The military calls itself the Department of Defense, so let’s see if they can shut down a few of those 700 overseas military installations spread throughout 170 countries and maybe spend a little more on defensive measures calculated to make the residents of the territory of the United States hard to kill and our capital hard to destroy.
When the military is restricted to purely defensive measures, it’s grandiosity starts to dwindle and the private alternative can begin to be comprehensible to people. Why should Joe Six-Pack be taxed to pay for the US Navy to run patrols off the coast of Somalia in case pirates attack a ship owned by a United States-based shipping company? Shouldn’t the shipping company be responsible to insure their own stuff and pay private protection patrols, if needed? Those incurring the costs should be responsible to pay the costs. Why should people living on the West Coast be saddled with the defense costs for nuclear reactors on the East Coast? And so on. Those who benefit should pay because decision-making is rationalized when this is the case. This is ECON 101.
Clayton -
All government is socialism, derp…
The Punic wars were socialism? The AMerican Revolution? War of 1812?
Are you telling me there were no capitalist wars?
Blind idealism at its finest. Or as I succinctly put it earlier… “derp”
Find a quote from Obama on healthcare about how its a universal right. Then replace “health care” with “security” and “national defense”, and ask them if they agree. Then show them the original quote.
You need to understand that most people start drooling when they see a uniform. They are trained that way when they are still at school and they see Mr Nice Policeman coming around to indoctrinate them (perhaps he even let them pet his dog, which cost more than a winner at the Westminster Dog Show) and they are taught how that national hero killed hordes of enemies with nothing more than a knife (Samson has nothing on these guys). They turn on the TV and all they see are the young men (at least the ones with all the limbs still attached to the body or who haven’t been turned into sociopaths) being shown as the thin red line of heroes standing beneath civilization and hordes of terrible foes: ragheads, drug lords, whatever. They see how anyone talking ill of armed forces (and I include the police in this) is shredded to pieces even by former “revolutionaries” who used to shout “pigs!” at the riot squad.
When people allow themselves to be programmed that way, when they fail to see the cops beating some teenager within an inch of his life for an ounce of pot, when they fail to see NATO troops blowing up whole families in Afghanistan just to keep up the body count, when they fail to see all of this without questioning, they are well beyond redemption. Whatever they do this out of fear, out of belief or out of sheer laziness (thinking for yourself makes your brain hurt), they aren’t just worth your time.
There’s an old saying “the worst blindman is he who doesn’t want to see”. Indeed he is.
A buddy of mine that’s a Marine admits that the military is socialist and that it’s inefficient. He says it’s the only way for it to operate. So pointing out that fact doesn’t do you a lot of good. Almost every American alive supports socialism in some form. I’m the only person I know that is 100% against socialism.
@Epicurus, that’s not really the point I’m making. I’m just saying that he was seriously arguing me on the point about what socialism is defined as. He rejects the label of being a socialist and I’m trying to point out that he is very socialist. The efficacy of socialism is another topic, of which this is a subset.
WHy becuase he believes in a national security state? I’m a socialist and I believe in self- governing communities protected by local militias. Your argument is bogus to begin with, because you are just trying to use socialism as some boogeyman.
Socialism, to the right libertarian community, is anything they don’t agree with. Keynes is a *****in socialist to some people!!!
It has nothing to do with the “efficacy” of socialism, it has to do with you redefining socialism to suit your means to scare some conservative into your views.
War is generally socialist because it is so costly and wasteful that the only way to fund it is to use the force of the state to broadly diffuse the costs. Private entities that have to bear the costs of their own actions almost always find trade to be more profittable than war, and act accordingly.
As I understand it socialism is government ownership of the means of production. The means of production for security are controlled by the state. So I’d say the military is socialist.
Where am I going wrong?
There’s State-socialism, which is a subset of general Socialism. It’s still socialism though, in that it rejects the concept of private property over the means of production. Libertarian socialism would have no state but also not recognize individual private property.
I can see how Epicurious could get a bit miffed with Conza’s conflating of socialism with Keynesianism in the OP. He’s also correct in stating that not all wars are “socialist”, as there can definitely be “private” wars. For example, a medieval prince contracting a bunch of mercenaries to go on a raid. However, in the modern sense of “war” being between two nation-states, where there’s an absolute monopoly on military-security, it’s close enough to state-socialism that you can make the arguement it’s “socialist”.
Really though a better term would be “statist” rather than “socialist”.
Stateless Socialism is like aerodynamics without air (“aero”).
I can also talk about aerodynamics in a vacuum. Then you’ll accuse me of conflating aerodynamics with air and without air.
Yeah it’s still kind of a hairy issue, but the way I think of it would be anarcho-capitalism with very weak individual property rights (personal property), but a system of common law that respects “communal” property rights based around use and occupation of the work force. Don’t tell me exactly how that’ supposed to work. I’m just trying to sum up left-libertarian economics in a few sentences, ha. Personally I’m an-cap/minarchist.
@Epircurus Well, I am kind of using socialism against him because he rails against socialism. He doesn’t have to adopt my views, he either has to relent and say that socialism isn’t necessarily the problem or, for the sake of consistency, has to apply his arguments about the inefficiency of welfare to the military. He can’t have his cake and eat it to in this regard and there’s nothing sneaky or sinister about that.
I’m only making that case that socialism works with this definition (a definition I provided in the discussion):
- Compare capitalism an economic theory or system in which the means of production, distribution, and exchange are owned by the community collectively, usually through the state. It is characterized by production for use rather than profit, by equality of individual wealth, by the absence of competitive economic activity, and, usually, by government determination of investment, prices, and production levels
War is generally statist because it is so costly and wasteful that the only way to fund it is to use the force of the state to broadly diffuse the costs. Private entities that have to bear the costs of their own actions almost always find the state to be more profittable than the market, and act accordingly.
Fixed that for you
As I understand it socialism is government ownership of the means of production. The means of production for security are controlled by the state. So I’d say the military is socialist.
Where am I going wrong?
Everywhere. “Socialism is government” is wrong for one. “Government ownership” is another. “Ownership of the means of production” is another.
The means of production for security being controlled by the state is statism, not socialism. Unless you are calling feudalism AND capitalism as socialism… that’s pretty incoherent if you ask me.
The only problem I have with Logistic’s posts are saying that only a “private” war can be a capitalist war. For real, Vietnam was a capitalist war, at least as far as the US is concerned. Just because a group of capitalists employ the state to open markets for them militarily, doesn’t mean the war suddenly became socialist (just because the state is involved). Other than that, you seem very reasonable in your views.
@Epircurus Well, I am kind of using socialism against him because he rails against socialism. He doesn’t have to adopt my views, he either has to relent and say that socialism isn’t necessarily the problem or, for the sake of consistency, has to apply his arguments about the inefficiency of welfare to the military. He can’t have his cake and eat it to in this regard and there’s nothing sneaky or sinister about that.
Welfare is socialism? Are you sure the welfare state is not capitalist concessions to an agitated workforce?
Perhaps I was mistaken. You may not have had sinister intentions. But this would only suggest to me that you too believe statism = socialism, and have bought into the boogeyman as well. Eh, to each his own. I prefer a historical view of the world, not a theoretical.
- Compare capitalism an economic theory or system in which the means of production, distribution, and exchange are owned by the community collectively, usually through the state. It is characterized by production for use rather than profit, by equality of individual wealth, by the absence of competitive economic activity, and, usually, by government determination of investment, prices, and production levels
I think this is a relatively accurate representation, tho its word-choice leaves it open to be eschewed. I would put it like:
An political-economic theory or system in which the means and mode of production, distribution, and exchange are controlled democratically; either through the state, community, union/s, or private actors (market socialism). It is characterized by production for utility, rather than expropriation of surplus value (profit), and ambiguity of individual wealth*.
Not many socialists are inherently anti-competition, so I would throw that right out. And I disagree with their use of the word “usually.” Not because it is anti-historical, it isn’t. But because it allows one to only see what they wanted to see in the first place.
*I couldn’t think of a better way to put this. It is hard for socialists and capitalists to debate wealth, because we both define it differently. Most socialists fully believe in meritocracy… especially one’s who follow Leninist schools of thought. One who works well would be rewarded well (to each according to his contribution). We just wouldn’t see this reward as something that should be translated into political control (as monetary wealth always does).
When I type “Define: socialism” on google I get the following definitions:
a political theory advocating state ownership of industry
an economic system based on state ownership of capital
Any of various political philosophies that support social and economic equality, collective decision-making, and public control of productive capital and natural resources
The view that the government should own and control major industries
Socialism refers to the various theories of economic organization which advocate either public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources
Your definition doesn’t seem to jibe with the standard definitions I see.