Yeah, and eating hot dogs also goes against human nature. That shit didn't exist in 3,500 BCE.
Considering Ayn Rand's novels as literature was a mistake.
Considering Ayn Rand’s novels ~~as literature~~ was a mistake.
We're always going to end up with people who can manipulate a crowd being in charge. We're stupid like that.
This is what I always find amusing about the Communist argument.
Like, the elected politicians and bureaucracy can't be trusted enough to regulate industry under capitalism so we'll centralize things and then trust them to regulate industry under Communism?
Like, the elected politicians and bureaucracy can't be trusted enough to regulate industry under capitalism so we'll centralize things and then trust them to regulate industry under Communism?
If that's your understanding of Communism, then you need to read The State and Revolution. Quite a lot of Communist theory is concerned with eliminating the concept of beauracracy.
In theory, democracy produces satisfactory outcomes...
Democracy does produce satisfactory outcomes, what changes reality is the structure of said democracy. Very few systems are direct democracies, and direct democracies themselves are flawed even in theory.
You should read the text.
To be fair, I don't have to trust elected politicians to distrust unelected CEOs and other upper management more
But it's not like companies or business entities won't have folks in charge of them under communism... Someone has to run the whatevers...
But it's also not like the person who runs the whatevers has to be beholden to shareholders and profits. They could instead be incentivized to prioritize the collective well being of the workers.
And for that matter, politicians and the bureaucracy also live in a system that incentivizes (to the tune of millions in bribes) them to prioritize the interests of businesses owners, and thusly shareholders and profits, at the cost of the common good. Which is a major reason they can't be trusted.
Or, as has happened in capitalism, people will find ways to bend the system to benefit themselves. Except this time without boards so much as bribable officials and whatnot.
Ideally, supervision over most non critical sectors would fall to randomly drafted, single term committees of the people, think jury duty except better compensated and obviously with bureaucratic resources available to enable these committees to fulfil their role adequately.
Now this isn't suited for everything, but in either system any true oversight is done by the people, not the state.
Half of America wants to vote for trump and you want to trust in random people? That seems like a wild leap of faith.
People are neither inherently selfish or inherently generous. People are survivors regardless of what is necessary to do so. A human will give the shirt off his back to his neighbor but will spite a customer service worker because they're in a bad mood or feel slighted. Your tribe is your most important social aspect
But it is that selfishness that communism can't control for and that capitalism only dampens the effect of. You need a system that counteracts those selfish tendencies in order to reach lasting stability.
In what way does capitalism "dampen" selfishness?
it rewards it in my view. it conditions us to be selfish
It reserves selfishness for a handful of weirdos, and allows every worker to be selfless.
the initial argument only applies to Utopian Socialism anyway – fighting for your personal interest is exactly the point of communism, destroying all the enemies of the working class
