We recently used communism as a pinata, but I was wondering about socialism. Partly from reading the feminism thread and thinking about how capitalism has not taken the opportunity it has been granted to reward women fairly for equal work.
Of course, I tend to think that society has an implicit contract by which we allow sub-par men to survive in exchange for patriarchy. Religion aside. Is capitalism inherently more patriarchal? Is socialism likewise matriarchal?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
No.
Posted by Amanecer (Member # 4068) on :
Is Socialism less fair than Capitalism?
Yes. In the first, the government rewards you for not being successful in the market and punishes you for being succesful. In the second, the government neither rewards nor punishes you; it allows you to bring whatever skills you have into the market and succeed or fail based on your own merit.
Is capitalism inherently more patriarchal? Is socialism likewise matriarchal?
I'm tempted to say no, but I don't think that I completely understand what you mean. Could you explain?
Edit: grammar oops
[ April 27, 2004, 11:13 PM: Message edited by: Amanecer ]
Posted by Danzig (Member # 4704) on :
Depends on whether I am one of the ones who would benefit from a more socialist system.
Seriously, there is really no system that is fair to everyone, so why worry about it? For that matter, different people think different things are fair and unfair.
Posted by Richard Berg (Member # 133) on :
In a perfectly competitive market, companies that discriminated unfairly in hiring and payroll would go under as a natural consequence.
^^ is a claim that it's simply impossible to argue about beyond the theoretical boundary because there's no such thing. Same with your claims about matriarchy etc.
Posted by Ryan Hart (Member # 5513) on :
The difference (socially and economically) is that in American society we try to bring up the bottom line. In other words we try to help people of a lower class help themselves. In socialism we would bring down the higher classes to "water down" the lower classes. "cut off any head of grass that rises above the rest"