The Joyous Hedonist

How cynical isn't that? Do they not understand that the majority of them want to be productive but currently do not have the opportunity to do so? And no, just slashing the welfare system and throwing them out on the street to put pressure on them (which is even more cynical) is hardly going to work either. Often people need a carrot, not a whip; of which the latter already exists in abundance in our society.

In Scandinavian countries (as for me, I live in Sweden) we tend to look at it as a threat against equal opportunity (and therefore freedom) if we do not pay for it together. So why don't the rest of the world do the same?

Oh, and please do not call it socialism. If you do, then you will sound ignorant as we are very capitalistic.

The most natural would be small anarcho-communist communities that reflect those in which that humans and our predecessors have lived and evolved for hundreds of thousands of years. But no, human nature is suddenly considered to be incongruous with this, as we refuse to use a proper understanding of human psychology in economics and politics. And for some reason we consider mass-consumption, excessive pursuit of material wealth and extreme individualism to be the normal circumstances for humans to thrive in. It is no wonder that criminality and mental illnesses are thriving the most in Western rich countries where capitalism is at its worst (England and the USA being at the top, with the US being far worse off than England.) Why is it that we humans are unable to find and construct a system that is in better accordance with human nature and psychology?

"If you can't provide for yourself then your degenerate genes deserve to die out. Not to mention that most 3rd world people comprise the criminals dregs of society, are anti-Western Marxists or anti-Western Muslims. How dare you lecture us about how we're spoiled scumbags because we won't send you more money. Nobody sent us money. We developed our own countries. That's because we have IQs over 100..."

Filmed today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedd...

Do you ever have clashes between right-wing and left-wing extremists in the USA?

8 million people participated in this anarcho-socialist experiment for 3 years between 1936 and 1939. Despite war with the fascists and despite opposition from various political parties (not to mention the Soviet-backed Communists), they prospered during this period. And this was without money, capitalists, bosses, landlords and government. In fact, industries, factories, mills, workshops, transportation services, public services and utilities were run by the workers themselves. They —through unions and various low-level committees — managed to successfully reorganize society so that they could eliminate poverty, reach a level of freedom that has rarely been seen before and yet maintain a higher pace of economic progress than they had before.

Eventually they were crushed by the fascists, who were supported by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, but nothing points to that socialism in Spain would have been a failure if the socialists had won the war.

Now that there clearly is an example of how socialism can be successful and yet maximize freedom, why do people say that socialism has failed?

Finally, to quote the socialist author George Orwell (author of 1984 and Animal Farm) who volunteered in the Spanish Revolution against the fascists. said that it "shows you what human beings are like when they are trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine."

Do they really think that fear is such a grand solution to get people out to work, be productive and escape poverty?

Our brain is biological and biology is governed by the laws of physics. This means that all of our experiences, our thoughts, our decisions, our emotions — all of which derive from processes within our brains — are just as deterministic as the orbits of the planet. There are few physicists and biologists today who still believe in free will and it is becoming increasingly taboo to do so. Some may claim that quantum mechanics implies a degree of uncertainty and randomness, but randomness does not imply free will. (If your thoughts and actions occur randomly, where is the freedom in that?)

So no, free will is an illusion that exists among the masses and yet people cling to it so fiercely. What are they so scared of? Do they think our moral fabric will be disintegrated? That life suddenly will be meaningless? Why do people insist on believing in something that the scientific community is discarding as an illusion?