| the2real4mafol said: Applying anything with the term 'anti-American' (or any nationality) is used by nationalists to control and seek consent from people and stop them questioning anything that is wrong with the current system. The right have since McCarthy (probably before) seen socialism as 'anti-American' but to be honest does this term mean anything? Not really. Think about the North American land for example, that has always been there but not until 1776 was it ever a country (something that also could be as easily made up) And even then how can people be patriotic about a place where the natives are essentially foreigners in their own lands. You're all descendants of Europeans pretty much. Back to the topic but still how can socialism be any more 'anti-American' than what you're corporatist governments have done? Liberty? What liberty in a country with mass spying, wasteful armies and bureaucracies. No liberty for your people, no liberty for the world since you're superpower status. Life? How so in a country that still practices the death penalty in over half of it's regions? Not to mention all the wars you've your citizens to fight unnecessarily And Happiness? That depends on perspective. If you define happiness by ignorance, selfishness, greed, overconsumption (the stuff that makes crony capitalism work as it does) as happiness then i'm on a different planet. The right to happiness is certainly denied to the poor that's for sure. A comfortable life is needed for happiness among other things |
I don't disagree with the bolded. They're just as much problems that must be dealt with as socialism is. They're the side-effects of another form of collectivism, nationalism.
How to achieve happiness is for the individual to decide, based on his/her slight variation in his/her nature from others. There is no objective happiness. That is why having the freedom to not have others impose their views of what happiness is, tends to correlate with a happier population. And no, growing up the poorest kid in the class, I was more happy than many of my middle-class peers, having other things than money to derive happiness from. There might be a correlation, based on materialism being one value some individuals choose to analog with happiness, and of course the slightly greater freedom to become successful, but that doesn't mean being poorer than others => being not as happy as others. Now if we speak of destitution, poverty at which basic sustanence is impossible, yes that is highly correlative with unhappiness, but luckily destitution exists at such a microscopic level in the first world, including the United States. Why? Because of high productivity induced by free-markets. I've grown up poor, known quite many other poor people, not a single one of them grew up hungry, without shelter, or even recreational devices. Why? Because the American poor today have just as much as the American middle-class 30 years ago. Why? Because of productivity, technological progression, the reduction of prices through competition, and the free-market. Sorry, people are becoming richer all around, despite the inequality.
