[ExI] Savings and wealth

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2009/5/31 painlord2k at libero.it <painlord2k at libero.it>:
> Il 31/05/2009 4.53, Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto:
>
>> Where do you get the relationship between a desire to be wealthier and
>> voting against socialist policies? If poor people were content to
>> remain poor, they wouldn't care how unfairly their country's resources
>> were distributed.
>
> This is true only if economy is a zero sum game.
> It is not.
> But you think so, so it is understandable that you don't understand because
> wealth creation is more important than redistribution and that
> redistribution will happen naturally if you give time and freedom to the
> people.

I was talking about peoples' motivations in choosing the form of
government. Spike implied that if they have a desire to be wealthy,
they would not choose socialism. But then for what other reason would
they choose socialism? (I understand that you believe they are
misguided in choosing socialism, since they believe it will make them
better off but actually it will make them worse off, but that is a
different question).

>> The commies have always been extremely proud of actual physical work
>> that produces stuff. That's where the hammer and sickle comes from.
>
> They were so proud of their physical works that their technology sucked then
> and suck now.
> Capitalists (well sane people) are more interested in the end results not in
> the inputs.

Again, I was responding to spike's post about pride in physical work.
It is true that the Soviet Union fell behind technologically and
economically and this must be put down to a failure of their economic
system. However, this was not the case at every point: they went
through a period of rapid economic growth and modernisation in the
1920's and 1930's, matched the Germans militarily in WWII, and gave
the Americans a fright with their space program after the war, even
though the Soviet Union had been devastated and did not have the
benefits of the Marshall Plan that the Western Europeans had. In fact,
it was the Soviet space program that spurred the Americans to increase
spending on science education and research, with ultimately great
rewards.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou