[quote]Spry wrote:
Now, communism is very bad. Governing by force won’t work.
But Socialism? Providing for everyone’s needs?
If it works for Starfleet than why not in the real world?
Is it just lack of technology to provide everyone with their needs?
If we had the technology, would it work?
Rather than strive for money we might strive for rank, power, knowledge but always have food, shelther and a holodeck for some fun?
I am very curious as to why Socialism is considered evil.
The lack of motivation will destroy a society but what if we could focus on only striving for our wants and not our needs?
Cheers,
Spry.
[/quote]
Socialism pretty much has it’s own built-in failure modes. A great place to read up on this is from Robert Conquest who was the first to chronicle the abuses of the Soviet system. He makes a very cogent argument that there is no such thing as “scientific socialism”, that in point of fact it has never been much above the level of Utopian dreaming and every place that socialists have come to power unopposed has ended in systemic failure. They are useful as an opposition party, but not as absolute rulers. Since the actual mandate is amorphous, we run into the same thing over and over again: the socialists screw it up (e.g. Algeria) and everyone falls all over themselves to say they weren’t really socialists after all.
One last little thought about “from each according to his needs” type of thinking. In this day and age we have made vast progress in health, safety, comfort and standards of living. Do people take this time to better themselves? Generally not. What’s keeping you from being better read or learning some wicked kewl skill? Nix. People tend sit around in their undershorts watching Superbowl reruns. If they fell bad about themselves they are apt to blame the system. People are, as Tolstoy quipped, all for changing the world but rarely mention changing themselves.
As a long time Trekker, BTW (I started with the original series), the biggest part of the entire series is that it is in many ways uptopian. That there is a bright future that we want to live in. For us it makes sense that all our contentious issues (race, poverty etc.) would be fixed – this is the reason for all the touchy-feely PC stuff. Of course, the problem is that it makes for boring TV, so then Klingons, the Borg and others show up. Oh and might I point out that it’s still easier to kiss a Romulan on the show than someone from a different human race? Hmmmmm
And as always, I might just be full of shit…
– jj