• American High School Band Marches with Hammer & Sickle
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[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;37799469]Well, actually ... yes. Not specifically for capitalism because I think its gains outweigh its costs, but say if we have Ideology X: X has all these ideas that sound great and will promise Truth, Justice and the American Way for everyone, and as such it's very attractive to people, and it's also simple to understand. But the first few times people rose up and established X in their country, it all went to pot and loads of people starved to death or perished in prison camps. So people think "okay maybe it's not all it's cracked up to be when you do it like that, but we can still give it the benefit of the doubt right?" at which point I would agree. People are after all stupid, so one or two failings shouldn't fail the whole of X. However, the next few times revolutionaries institute X, the same sort of thing keeps happening, even when they try to fix some of the failings of X by developing variants like X+ or X: Reloaded. Now were I to point out to one of these people that X might not be such a good thing, they'll respond with "but it wasn't [I]true[/I] X! Just wait and see, our X: Revengeance will do the job properly!" And of course it keeps happening. When someone tells me that they think it would be a good idea to put X in Mongolia, I will have to say that my patience with X has completely run out, that no matter how it is formulated it has led to catastrophe, so I create a general rule that says "no matter how good you think your X idea is, it isn't, so you should stop it, because the 30 or so other people that tried it said the same thing and look what happened." in the same vein as "no matter how much you think you've squared the circle, you haven't" Yeah it's evidential decision theory but it works.[/QUOTE] Could it not also be argued that ideology X has not had nearly the same amount of leeway to destroy/fail or succeed as the more popular, older and more widespread ideology Z, and therefore should be allowed another 'try'? Ideology Z perhaps, had time to develop from ideology A as a starting point, over many hundreds of years, whereas ideology X sprang up as an actual governing system in the midst of an ideology Z that it was in stark contrast to, and due to the circumstances of ideology X's management, was led astray, and each subsequent attempt took guidance from that original mismanagement in one way or another.
[QUOTE=Blitzkrieg Zero;37800619]I'm homeschooled... [IMG]http://forums.massassi.net/html/emot-saddowns.gif[/IMG][/QUOTE] I... I'm sorry son but the damage has already been done.
[QUOTE=Megafan;37803927]Could it not also be argued that ideology X has not had nearly the same amount of leeway to destroy/fail or succeed as the more popular, older and more widespread ideology Z, and therefore should be allowed another 'try'? Ideology Z perhaps, had time to develop from ideology A as a starting point, over many hundreds of years, whereas ideology X sprang up as an actual governing system in the midst of an ideology Z that it was in stark contrast to, and due to the circumstances of ideology X's management, was led astray, and each subsequent attempt took guidance from that original mismanagement in one way or another.[/QUOTE] Yes, I'd give the benefit of the doubt for X longer than I might for a longer established Z, but not too much longer, especially when Z proves it is able to flourish quickly and relatively bloodlessly in places where it does not have a long history, across a variety of development levels. You should also not lose sight of the fact that success is being measured in megadeaths or the lack thereof; when you sum over previous instances of X and work out that implementing X will have an expected deathcount of so-and-so millions of people, it might not be a good experiment to repeat.
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;37805620]Yes, I'd give the benefit of the doubt for X longer than I might for a longer established Z, but not too much longer, especially when Z proves it is able to flourish quickly and relatively bloodlessly in places where it does not have a long history, across a variety of development levels. You should also not lose sight of the fact that success is being measured in megadeaths or the lack thereof; when you sum over previous instances of X and work out that implementing X will have an expected deathcount of so-and-so millions of people, it might not be a good experiment to repeat.[/QUOTE] To which I would say that the argument of 'it has produced a large amount of deaths whenever it has been tried' is flawed, as each "try" derives itself from one original case of grave mismanagement, even though there did exist forces which could have governed bloodlessly. In the case of Marxism, the mismanaged was Lenin and Stalin, and the more peaceful would be the Mensheviks. To make an analogy with a bit less death in it, imagine you bake a cake, and have to feed it to a party of people. The recipe set out to you should have worked just fine, but the chef botched the ingredients along the way, causing the cake to turn out terrible and give everyone food poisoning. Now, every subsequent attempt (so far) at making this cake 'correctly' has followed the same recipe the first chef used, with little or no understanding of what was wrong in the first place. You could still quite easily argue that the cake, if made according to the original recipe, would be a great cake, but just needs to be done correctly. This is of course not to devalue the lives lost as the result of actions committed in the name of Capitalism or Marxism.
[QUOTE=Megafan;37808738]To which I would say that the argument of 'it has produced a large amount of deaths whenever it has been tried' is flawed, as each "try" derives itself from one original case of grave mismanagement, even though there did exist forces which could have governed bloodlessly. In the case of Marxism, the mismanaged was Lenin and Stalin, and the more peaceful would be the Mensheviks. To make an analogy with a bit less death in it, imagine you bake a cake, and have to feed it to a party of people. The recipe set out to you should have worked just fine, but the chef botched the ingredients along the way, causing the cake to turn out terrible and give everyone food poisoning. Now, every subsequent attempt (so far) at making this cake 'correctly' has followed the same recipe the first chef used, with little or no understanding of what was wrong in the first place. You could still quite easily argue that the cake, if made according to the original recipe, would be a great cake, but just needs to be done correctly. This is of course not to devalue the lives lost as the result of actions committed in the name of Capitalism or Marxism.[/QUOTE] The analogy doesn't really hold because there were a wave of revolutionaries that explicitly rejected Leninism and Stalinism and tried to return to Marxist roots, which also failed. Besides, if the ideology seems to have so little margin for error, the onus is on the revolutionaries to explain such an odd spike in the fitness landscape of possible political systems, and even given that it could be demonstrated that it could work in principle, [I]attempting[/I] to implement it would still be a bad idea for the same reason that driving at 150 miles per hour along a freeway is a bad idea.
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;37808794]The analogy doesn't really hold because there were a wave of revolutionaries that explicitly rejected Leninism and Stalinism and tried to return to Marxist roots, which also failed. Besides, if the ideology seems to have so little margin for error, the onus is on the revolutionaries to explain such an odd spike in the fitness landscape of possible political systems, and even given that it could be demonstrated that it could work in principle, [I]attempting[/I] to implement it would still be a bad idea for the same reason that driving at 150 miles per hour along a freeway is a bad idea.[/QUOTE] Well, Marxism has never actually been implemented. The core of Marxist belief is that once conditions are right, society will revolt naturally, and that if revolution is forced, bad things happen and the resulting society collapses into a dictatorship (as is what pretty much happened). So a return to Marxist roots would basically be to revert back to pre-Lenin capitalism, and wait until the people get so pissed off at the bourgeoisie that they revolt on their own. Not exactly exciting or inspirational stuff.
My school's ultimate Frisbee team hid a Hammer and Sickle into their logo. Actually, not hid, it's pretty blatant.
Oh my god those comments... Someone end their lives. [editline]26th September 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=Novangel;37800203]Oh my god my sides[/QUOTE] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuR_ALpzG9s[/media]
[QUOTE=catbarf;37813680]Well, Marxism has never actually been implemented. The core of Marxist belief is that once conditions are right, society will revolt naturally, and that if revolution is forced, bad things happen and the resulting society collapses into a dictatorship (as is what pretty much happened). So a return to Marxist roots would basically be to revert back to pre-Lenin capitalism, and wait until the people get so pissed off at the bourgeoisie that they revolt on their own. Not exactly exciting or inspirational stuff.[/QUOTE] which conveniently means marxism can never be falsified
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;37818144]which conveniently means marxism can never be falsified[/QUOTE] An easy way to falsify it would be to track the development of societies. If a society progresses from capitalism, to socialism, then to feudalism (without some destructive influence like all-out war), then Marxism would be effectively falsified for that specific case. But only for that specific case, just as the economic failure of Zimbabwe doesn't falsify capitalism. It's a sociopolitical theory, not a mathematical proof. You don't just demonstrate it to be right or wrong and that's that.
[QUOTE=catbarf;37818970]An easy way to falsify it would be to track the development of societies. If a society progresses from capitalism, to socialism, then to feudalism (without some destructive influence like all-out war), then Marxism would be effectively falsified for that specific case. But only for that specific case, just as the economic failure of Zimbabwe doesn't falsify capitalism. It's a sociopolitical theory, not a mathematical proof. You don't just demonstrate it to be right or wrong and that's that.[/QUOTE] Fair enough. I don't think it would be that extraordinary to go from socialism to feudalism, even barring a war. Let's hope we don't get that particular experimental result though.
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