: Nonsense. People are warped by society into selfish,
: cynical, egotistical habits which taint their spirits
: and prevent them from understanding their true,
: virtuous, human nature, and bring them to sophistry,
: nihilism, and other illogic which lacks both reason
: and heart.
: Despite their inherent goodness, people aren't aware of
: what they are capable of, and have been forced into a
: vicious cycle of obsolete primal instincts that
: contravene and preponderate high-minded human nature,
: bringing them to cunning, cleverness, trickery,
: malice, and apathy.
This reminds me of a thought I had the other day at lunch. Both capitalist and socialist ideals are based on one true assumption about human nature, while ignoring the assumption of the other.
Capitalism assumed that all humans are by nature greedy and short sighted, but that if you throw a bunch of people like that together their short-sighted greeds will all cancel each other out and you should get roughly equality, or at least equal opportunity.
Socialism assumes that a system such as the above is doomed to fail, and that regulation and redistribution of wealth is the only way to assure equality. However, it makes the assumption that people are at heart good and altruistic, or at least far-sighted enough in their greed to realize the long-term benefits to themselves of helping the whole.
Both of these, as history has clearly demonstrated, have some fundamental flaw in their assumption. Capitalism makes a true assumption about the individual but a false one about the collective - true, people are all greedy, but no, not all greedy acts are evenly dispursed and cancel each other out. Socialism on the other hand makes the true observation that people need to be regulated in order to keep them economically equal, however it assumes that people are smart or kind enough to realize what they need to do to make the regulation functional.
That's why in my semisocialist system I assume both things: that people are inherantly greedy and short-sighted, and that they need to be regulated to keep them from trampling all over one another, but that that regulation must account for the greed and short-sightedness of people by allowing them the freedom to succeed or fail on their own, while still allowing everybody an equal opportunity to succeed or fail on their own.
Anyway.... good morning! This is what I start thinking about first thing out of bed...
