Let's debate Socialism and its degrees

[Meadowchik]

A policeman on patrol spots a toddler walking on the road alone.

For this example, we pretend that there are no government owned or regulated social services.

He helps the little guy. At want point does helping this child become socialism? At what point is it wrong for this on-duty officer to help? At what point does this represent the evils of wealth redistribution that President Benson preached against?

1. Taking the child off the road.

2. Trying to find the child's caregiver.

3. When no known caregiver can be found, trying to find a temporary replacement until they can be found.

4. When no temp can be found, becoming the temp himself at all hours using state funds to care for the child.

5. When it is known the child is orphaned and abandoned, seeking a permanent replacement.

6. When adoptive parents cannot be found, adopting the child himself and caring for the child when on and off duty, using state funds to care for the child.

All these steps are moral. Yet with steps 4 and 6, the police officer has effectively become a state-sponsored orphanage. Whatever time the officer uses for the child takes away from his regular duties. Whatever state funds he uses are essentially a redistribution of wealth to this poor abandoned toddler.

If you oppose socialism, what are the moral alternatives to all these scenarios?

This is just one child, but as we know there are more abandoned, orphaned children in any state in America, and we know that there are at least as many who live in dangerous abusive or neglectful circumstances, innocent victims of crime who have the right to not be victimized again.

As a conservative,  this is something I haven't figured out yet. I realise that the scenarios above can be mostly avoided by righteous parents and a righteous community. So what happens to the child without either?

Edited February 27, 2016 by Meadowchik

[thesometimesaint]

Without getting too political I believe neither Socialism nor Conservatism fits here. But Christianity does "In as much as you have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, you have done it unto me".  

[Meadowchik]

12 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

Without getting too political I believe neither Socialism nor Conservatism fits here. But Christianity does "In as much as you have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, you have done it unto me".  

So you do not believe that a police force using police funds to enrich another person to be socialism? Is it because the person is a child?  What if the person was a homeless adult unable to care for himself, would that be socialism?

[thesometimesaint]

3 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

So you do not believe that a police force using police funds to enrich another person to be socialism? Is it because the person is a child?  What if the person was a homeless adult unable to care for himself, would that be socialism?

Broadly speaking yes it is socialism. We can't have a civilized society without some degree of socialism.

[Meadowchik]

BTW, President Benson addressed communism in General Conference, and elsewhere said, "Communism in practice is socialism," which is why I believe this is fair game as a doctrinal and spiritual, Church-related topic.

[Meadowchik]

8 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

Broadly speaking yes it is socialism. We can't have a civilized society without some degree of socialism.

I agree.  So at what degree does it become unacceptable? Do we stop before using government to help able-bodied adults? Or somewhere else?

Edited February 27, 2016 by Meadowchik

[thesometimesaint]

3 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

BTW, President Benson addressed communism in General Conference, and elsewhere said, "Communism in practice is socialism," which is why I believe this is fair game as a doctrinal and spiritual, Church-related topic.

While I respected and honored President Benson in his role as President of the Church. His conflation of his politics with my religion didn't set well with me, and apparently with other GA's

[Meadowchik]

3 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

While I respected and honored President Benson in his role as President of the Church. His conflation of his politics with my religion didn't set well with me, and apparently with other GA's

One point that still gets repeated today is that of free agency, and how that is violated by collectivised socialism, because once the law is passed, individuals no longer have the choice of whether to contribute to the aid of the needy, nor of whom gets the help or exactly how.

[thesometimesaint]

Lets take that idea out to its logical conclusion. No society can long exist that can't protect itself from the bad guy's. So for a long time we built walls to keep them out. No one really likes to protect walls. They just wanted to be safe inside them from the bad guy's.  So they either collected taxes, and paid some good guy's to protect the walls or they did it themselves and got paid to do it. That at its very basic level is socialism.

[Meadowchik]

12 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

Lets take that idea out to its logical conclusion. No society can long exist that can't protect itself from the bad guy's. So for a long time we built walls to keep them out. No one really likes to protect walls. They just wanted to be safe inside them from the bad guy's.  So they either collected taxes, and paid some good guy's to protect the walls or they did it themselves and got paid to do it. That at its very basic level is socialism.

That's not socialism, it's just government. Socialism is essentially the redistribution of wealth. So how much redistributing is okay?  Do we stop at the parentless and helpless, or somewhere else?

[Monster]

Not sure I think the OP was a good example. Taking care of a child is not socialism. It is a moral imperative of any society. The real question is do we continue feeding and clothing the child when they become an adult?

Socialism may we a grand way to live for the the perfect society. But we are not perfect. There is just no way it will work given human nature. Capitalism grinds some people up, and I really do not like it, but it has worked for a long time. Even socialist countries like Sweden were not always so. Their current socialism was built on a history of capitalism. It was only after they reached a certain point they had the luxury of becoming socialist.

I have pondered what the best way for a society to exist is, and I just am not sure. Perhaps the United States and it's attempt to balance the two is best. But our problem is we have 20% of the population that is so vocal and is trying to pull it to the one extreme or the other. It makes it difficult when we are being pulled apart from concensus by the minority of extremists.

[Meadowchik]

2 minutes ago, Monster said:

Not sure I think the OP was a good example. Taking care of a child is not socialism. It is a moral imperative of any society. The real question is do we continue feeding and clothing the child when they become an adult?

Socialism may we a grand way to live for the the perfect society. But we are not perfect. There is just no way it will work given human nature. Capitalism grinds some people up, and I really do not like it, but it has worked for a long time. Even socialist countries like Sweden were not always so. Their current socialism was built on a history of capitalism. It was only after they reached a certain point they had the luxury of becoming socialist.

I have pondered what the best way for a society to exist is, and I just am not sure. Perhaps the United States and it's attempt to balance the two is best. But our problem is we have 20% of the population that is so vocal and is trying to pull it to the one extreme or the other. It makes it difficult when we are being pulled apart from concensus by the minority of extremists.

The OP example is an exercise intended to draw out reasonable degrees of socialism, if any exist.  Play along, answer the questions If they're all fine, to whom would such help apply?  Children only?  Adults unable to care for themselves?  The unemployed?  The elderly?

Edited February 27, 2016 by Meadowchik

[CV75]

3 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

For this example, we pretend that there are no government owned or regulated social services.

---

As a conservative,  this is something I haven't figured out yet. I realise that the scenarios above can be mostly avoided by righteous parents and a righteous community. So what happens to the child without either?

I don’t think state funds can be used for promoting the welfare of the needy without some form of government regulation, but none of these (use of state funds, helping the needy and regulation) necessarily constitute socialism (either in the sense of Marxist theory or in the sense that production, distribution, and exchange are owned or regulated by the government). Such a child and his community would obviously benefit from 4 and 6 irrespective of the political or economic system in which they take place.

[Bobbieaware]

3 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

A policeman on patrol spots a toddler walking on the road alone.

For this example, we pretend that there are no government owned or regulated social services.

He helps the little guy. At want point does helping this child become socialism? At what point is it wrong for this on-duty officer to help? At what point does this represent the evils of wealth redistribution that President Benson preached against?

1. Taking the child off the road.

2. Trying to find the child's caregiver.

3. When no known caregiver can be found, trying to find a temporary replacement until they can be found.

4. When no temp can be found, becoming the temp himself at all hours using state funds to care for the child.

5. When it is known the child is orphaned and abandoned, seeking a permanent replacement.

6. When adoptive parents cannot be found, adopting the child himself and caring for the child when on and off duty, using state funds to care for the child.

All these steps are moral. Yet with steps 4 and 6, the police officer has effectively become a state-sponsored orphanage. Whatever time the officer uses for the child takes away from his regular duties. Whatever state funds he uses are essentially a redistribution of wealth to this poor abandoned toddler.

If you oppose socialism, what are the moral alternatives to all these scenarios?

This is just one child, but as we know there are more abandoned, orphaned children in any state in America, and we know that there are at least as many who live in dangerous abusive or neglectful circumstances, innocent victims of crime who have the right to not be victimized again.

As a conservative,  this is something I haven't figured out yet. I realise that the scenarios above can be mostly avoided by righteous parents and a righteous community. So what happens to the child without either?

In an ideal society, the people would be largely self-governing. The people in such a society would be moral enough, hard working enough, knowledgeable enough and wise enough to be able to fulfill the dictum of the prophet Joseph Smith when he said,  "we  teach the people correct principles and they govern themselves." Interestingly enough, the scriptures prophesy there eventually will be an ideal society on the earth in the last days -- a people much like those who once inhabited the holy city of Enoch. But when that ideal society is finally formed, it will be achieved by private citizens acting voluntarily, without any compulsorily action or restraint from secular earthly governments. Zion with be created in spite if secular governments, not because of them. A truly righteous and holy people can govern themselves without the need for coercion or restraint. Socialism is a wicked world's attempt to establish Zion, but because of wickedness such attempts will always be doomed to failure.

[Rajah Manchou]

Interesting. I don't think any of the cases above are socialism.

Let's take a real life, recent case, as an example:

During LaVoy Finicum's involvement with the Oregon Occupation, Child Protection Services removed the foster children residing on his ranch. According to Finicum, the state funds he received for taking care of over 50 children were his main source of income. Estimates are that he was paid over $100K per year from the State of Arizona. In 2009, Finicum cared for eight foster children at a rate of around $30 pre day, per child. So about $240 per day, from the government. 

Is this socialism? Not in my opinion.

Edited February 27, 2016 by Rajah Manchou

[Jude2]

5 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

A policeman on patrol spots a toddler walking on the road alone.

For this example, we pretend that there are no government owned or regulated social services.

He helps the little guy. At want point does helping this child become socialism? At what point is it wrong for this on-duty officer to help? At what point does this represent the evils of wealth redistribution that President Benson preached against?

1. Taking the child off the road.

2. Trying to find the child's caregiver.

3. When no known caregiver can be found, trying to find a temporary replacement until they can be found.

4. When no temp can be found, becoming the temp himself at all hours using state funds to care for the child.

5. When it is known the child is orphaned and abandoned, seeking a permanent replacement.

6. When adoptive parents cannot be found, adopting the child himself and caring for the child when on and off duty, using state funds to care for the child.

All these steps are moral. Yet with steps 4 and 6, the police officer has effectively become a state-sponsored orphanage. Whatever time the officer uses for the child takes away from his regular duties. Whatever state funds he uses are essentially a redistribution of wealth to this poor abandoned toddler.

If you oppose socialism, what are the moral alternatives to all these scenarios?

This is just one child, but as we know there are more abandoned, orphaned children in any state in America, and we know that there are at least as many who live in dangerous abusive or neglectful circumstances, innocent victims of crime who have the right to not be victimized again.

As a conservative,  this is something I haven't figured out yet. I realise that the scenarios above can be mostly avoided by righteous parents and a righteous community. So what happens to the child without either?

You’re missing something and this happened to my grandmother and her sister. There were no parents so they were taken to a privately run Catholic orphanage.  They were given an education and during the summers and holidays they were farmed out to ranchers around to 'help earn their keep', what a novel idea. Grandma learn to cook a lot of good food, put up jellies, set fancy table, garden and just do a lot of hard work. She was taught to be a nurse’s aid and her sister became a teacher. Great Aunt Elise became Sis. Mary Regina choosing to stay at the orphanage helping many other children in her same situation. Grandma, well she left and pursued a rather wild and wooly life but she was a good women. She married and had my mom, she never took a dime of anyone’s “redistribution of wealth”. 

[Monster]

2 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

The OP example is an exercise intended to draw out reasonable degrees of socialism, if any exist.  Play along, answer the questions If they're all fine, to whom would such help apply?  Children only?  Adults unable to care for themselves?  The unemployed?  The elderly?

A simple answer would be to help those who can not reasonably help themselves.

[Monster]

29 minutes ago, Rajah Manchou said:

Interesting. I don't think any of the cases above are socialism.

Let's take a real life, recent case, as an example:

During LaVoy Finicum's involvement with the Oregon Occupation, Child Protection Services removed the foster children residing on his ranch. According to Finicum, the state funds he received for taking care of over 50 children were his main source of income. Estimates are that he was paid over $100K per year from the State of Arizona. In 2009, Finicum cared for eight foster children at a rate of around $30 pre day, per child. So about $240 per day, from the government. 

Is this socialism? Not in my opinion.

Sounds more like capitalism. Someone exploiting a resource for gain.

[thesometimesaint]

5 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

That's not socialism, it's just government. Socialism is essentially the redistribution of wealth. So how much redistributing is okay?  Do we stop at the parentless and helpless, or somewhere else?

That is socialism. All government is a type of socialism. We are redistributing wealth. All we are really talking about is how much of our own welfare do we want to turn over to our government? I can't build and protect walls by myself. So I pay taxes to those that can and will do it for me. Apparently some in the US want to pay no taxes, but get all the benefits of them. I start collecting Social Security Insurance this year. I paid into it for almost 50 years. Social Security Insurance is by its very definition is socialism. Should I collect my Social Security that I paid into?  We live in a highly complex, technologically advanced, civilization. No one person or small group of people can provide all the necessities that they all need. So we institute social programs to do it for us. My parents died many years ago, and while disabled now wasn't always so. My wife and I made pretty good money. We saved and invested to provide a middle class lifestyle for ourselves and our family. We paid taxes to help not only ourselves, but also those that couldn't.

[Freedom]

Socialism is a political term like cult. It looses its meaning because it has so much baggage. The church practices socialism with it's missionaries. Everyone pays the same amount and the church redistributes the funds so that missionaries in more expensive areas get more money and those in inexpensive areas get less. It is simply more efficient when a larger organization steps in because of economies of scale. 

[The Nehor]

Sanders 2016

[BCSpace]

12 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

A policeman on patrol spots a toddler walking on the road alone.

For this example, we pretend that there are no government owned or regulated social services.

He helps the little guy. At want point does helping this child become socialism? At what point is it wrong for this on-duty officer to help? At what point does this represent the evils of wealth redistribution that President Benson preached against?

1. Taking the child off the road.

2. Trying to find the child's caregiver.

3. When no known caregiver can be found, trying to find a temporary replacement until they can be found.

4. When no temp can be found, becoming the temp himself at all hours using state funds to care for the child.

5. When it is known the child is orphaned and abandoned, seeking a permanent replacement.

6. When adoptive parents cannot be found, adopting the child himself and caring for the child when on and off duty, using state funds to care for the child.

All these steps are moral. Yet with steps 4 and 6, the police officer has effectively become a state-sponsored orphanage. Whatever time the officer uses for the child takes away from his regular duties. Whatever state funds he uses are essentially a redistribution of wealth to this poor abandoned toddler.

If you oppose socialism, what are the moral alternatives to all these scenarios?

This is just one child, but as we know there are more abandoned, orphaned children in any state in America, and we know that there are at least as many who live in dangerous abusive or neglectful circumstances, innocent victims of crime who have the right to not be victimized again.

As a conservative,  this is something I haven't figured out yet. I realise that the scenarios above can be mostly avoided by righteous parents and a righteous community. So what happens to the child without either?

The Church has specific doctrine against Socialism.  See my siggy on the Law of Consecration.

Look at 2 Nephi 2.  In order for the plan of salvation to work and for us to progress, we need the freedom to act and be acted upon.  Socialism is geared to preventing that; even by force even since Socialism is by definition, a dictatorship. Hence the comparison with Satan's plan is apt.

On the other hand, Free Market Capitalism and the profit motive is an apt comparison to the Plan of Salvation.  It is a neutral system as prescribed by 2 Nephi 2 (and the doctrine on the Law of Consecration), and allows one to bring in or be good or evil.  hence the responsibility is on the individual and one is judged for one's own actions (sins) and not those of another.

What was Karl Marx's problem?  Surplus value.  He didn't like the notion that the value of a finished product was greater than the value of the goods and labor that went into it and endeavored, by force (dictatorship), to return the surplus value back to the laborer.  But Karl Marx didn't understand that surplus value, aka the profit motive, is what got things to be produced in the first place.

Coming back to the plan of salvation, the analogy then is that the profit motive is the enticement, for good or evil. Thus, Socialism, in all it's forms, is really an attempt to instantiate Satan's plan on earth; not that it's necessarily the specific thought of the Socialist, but it IS the effect of Socialism that.....

"...righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.

Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God."

2 Nephi 2:11-12

There are indeed some Socialists though, who recognize this and what is at stake eternally.  Hence from them you get sayings like "Religion is the opiate of the masses" etc.

 

[Ahab]

Socialism is all about everyone in a society doing what is best for their society as a whole rather than seeking their own self interests without any regard to how seeking their self interests affects society as a whole.  Or at least that's how I see it.

What President Benson was saying he didn't approve of was an involuntary taking away of people's assets. He fully supported the idea of voluntary giving to others.

[Freedom]

All governments practice socialism. Even the church takes from the wealthy tithe payers and gives to the poor. It it voluntary? Not realy. If you don't pay your tithing you don't get to go to the temple or to hold most callings. Socialism is not a dictatorship and nor is it satan's plan on earth. This is a false notion and frankly ridiculous. I pay income tax, and the government takes that money and distributes a portion of it to the school system throughout our province, giving to all the schools equal amounts based on enrollment, regardless of the tax revenue from the communities the school supports. This way all students get an equal opportunity. 

[Rajah Manchou]

10 hours ago, Monster said:

Sounds more like capitalism. Someone exploiting a resource for gain.

I see what you did there. Interesting. So taxpayer money is a resource to be tapped by government officials and citizens who need higher incomes. Unfortunate.

What it comes down to is socialism is the buffer between what churches don't do and what they are supposed to do. The more churches (and their congregations) fail to take care of the poor, sick and needy, the more the government must tap the resources of the taxpayer to do it for them.

If America was full of true Christians, we would have no socialists.

Edited February 28, 2016 by Rajah Manchou