Does Socialism align with Scripture?

[lilpixieofterror]

Didn't know it was that much.

The US spends $10,000 per capita on health care, yet quality disposable razors are greatly appreciated.

So where is this money, going?

[Watermelon]

[lilpixieofterror]

[RumTumTugger]

Or just didn't care about your craziness.

[Sparko]

Wrong, socialism is not a utopian creed, although some in the past have framed it as such.

Do you think church run soup kitchens, food pantries, or clothing drives are compatible with capitalism?

Yes.

[Sparko]

You seem to think those things are actually free. Someone is paying for them. Should someone who is not working be allowed to demand someone who is working pay for their living expenses? And if so, why shouldn't everyone do it? Then who pays for it?

[Sparko]

Dear socialists (JimL, Starlight, Simplicio, Watermelon, etc) if I end up unemployed because of this coronavirus thing, I expect each of you to give me a goodly portion of your wages so I can afford my basic needs, like food and shelter.

thanks.

[RumTumTugger]

Or just didn't care about your craziness.

I didn't cherry pick a quote, I chose to look at the surrounding text like any True Intellectual would to find out the true meaning and I'm crazy?

if all you have is this false ad hominum after I showed that it is your cherry picking quotes out of the bible shows you aren't taking it seriously, you have like any other Anti Intellectual lost the argument and are to afraid to argue on the merits.

[rogue06]

Craziness Star? Rum clearly showed where you took scripture out of context and poured your own meaning into it. That is dishonest on your part.

And in other news, water is wet and the sun "rose" in the east this morning.

[Watermelon]

Dear socialists (JimL, Starlight, Simplicio, Watermelon, etc) if I end up unemployed because of this coronavirus thing, I expect each of you to give me a goodly portion of your wages so I can afford my basic needs, like food and shelter.

thanks.

[mikewhitney]

The libs in San Francisco seem to like all that crap.

[Sparko]

So I can count on you then? Great!

[Starlight]

It is interesting that you identify morality with altruism in this discussion of altruism and utilitarianism, because you describe selflessness as if it is the goal.

Hmm, I'm not sure I'd say selflessness is the goal. This made me go and look up definitions of 'altruism', and I see that sources vary as to whether selflessness is included in the definition of altruism or not. When I said I identify altruism and morality I was thinking more along the lines of these sort of definitions grabbed from google:

"well-meaning behavior intended to promote the welfare of another"

"motivated by a desire to benefit someone other than oneself for that person's sake"

Those definitions are what I perceive to be definitions of moral acts... Valuing others. Intending to benefit others because you value them.

They don't necessitate selflessness. Though they are not very compatible with excessive selfishness. I would tend to say that because morality is about your positive intentions toward others, any positive or negative intentions concerning yourself aren't part of morality and are amoral in the sense of not being covered by the concept of morality. Though if your intentions concerning yourself are so strong that they start swamping your intentions toward others, that becomes a moral issue. So in general I tend to ignore the self entirely when considering morality, because I consider morality to be about what we do or don't do for others, and having little to nothing to do with our actions concerning self.

Though I am, perhaps, mildly sympathetic toward the idea that a John Rawls Theory of Justice style case could be made to apply to the self - that you ought to treat yourself exactly as if you were just another person in the world and you didn't know which person you were and had the same level of generalized well-meaning desire to promote the welfare of that person just as much as any other, such that it produced the same behavior toward yourself that you would like to see for others. In that case, perhaps, you could extend the concept of morality as being positive intentions toward others, also to the self, by viewing it as just one 'other' among many. This, I guess, would provide practical limits as to when self-sacrifice for others was 'too-much' and provide a moral framework for deciding how much to harm oneself in order to help others.

[Starlight]

The libs in San Francisco seem to like all that crap.

I saw an interesting piece about several red states being in the practice of buying one-way bus tickets for their homeless and mentally ill to send them to California. The people doing it justified it on the grounds that California was putting so much more money into care of the homeless and mentally ill than was their own state, so the most compassionate thing they could do for these people with the (lack of) money in their own state's budget for helping people was to buy them a one way bus ticket and send them to someone who was actually prepared to help them.

Such behavior makes sense, is compassionate, and is deeply disturbing.

[Starlight]

Dear socialists (JimL, Starlight, Simplicio, Watermelon, etc) if I end up unemployed because of this coronavirus thing, I expect each of you to give me a goodly portion of your wages so I can afford my basic needs, like food and shelter.

I think the government should have such a system in place, to ensure that not merely yourself, but everyone in such need receives assistance, yes.

I think that ad hoc requests, where one person on a message board who happens to know some rich people gets money, whilst another who doesn't happen to know rich people and starves, isn't the appropriate solution. That makes me think of the US's give-a-little approach to healthcare, where everyone posts their need on give-a-little and the people who manage to drum up enough funding survive and the others die... which is really really sad as a system. How about the government just ensures everyone gets healthcare if they need it? It's not like it's particularly difficult. My country's been doing it for 75 years.