RoR: Forum

I remember arguing to some friends in junior high that a lot of societal problems would be solved if we just did away with money ... gives me a headache just to think about it.

Post 1

Thursday, August 25, 2005 - 9:48pm

Hell, no. Mostly.

One funny exception. I can remember about age nine, in a McDonald�s, asking my Dad why we couldn�t get the tax man off all our backs by letting the government have a business, �Kawasaki, for example. The profits will obviate the need to tax everyone.�

Post 2

Thursday, August 25, 2005 - 11:34pm

(0) Around the middle of the third grade in Communist Poland, I was expelled from the Pioneers for saying that a teacher was lying (which he was.) Now that I think about it, I don't think anyone there actually believed the lies, not even the lier - only the "better socialized" were more easily intimidated. Of course, that would have been the end of my prospects had we stayed in Poland. The result was that my parents, who had almost made their peace with the regime at that point, got back to work on getting out. I even envied them - few people get to be heroes not just once, but twice in their lives.

Post 3

Thursday, August 25, 2005 - 11:36pm

I asked my dad why we needed money. Why couldn't everyone simply take what they felt like, while producing things for others to take at will? Then I came to my senses just in time to reject "from each according to his ability, etc."

I was about 10 years old when I made my naive error. What was Marx's excuse? (*snicker*)

Post 4

Thursday, August 25, 2005 - 11:52pm

Politically speaking, I can't think of a single liberal idea that has ever impressed me in the least. My dear and wonderful brother once threw the ol' "communism is a great idea on paper but it doesn't work with people" routine on me and though I couldn't denounce it exactly (as an 11 year-old) I remember continually asking "Why?!!" until he gave up. Politics has always been relatively easy for me.

I did give religion a serious chance. In fact, I fought off and on with myself over religion for at least 10 years. And I still have too many altruistic habits from accepting some of that nonsense as a young person. I rarely attended church but my family were members of the Christian-Lite wing of protestantism. It was in the environment; in the air. It could have been much worse. But it might have been so much better.

Post 5

Friday, August 26, 2005 - 12:19am

My grandfather was leader of the NZ Communist Party during the Depression. The ideas were passed down of course. In my teens I was a vocal Marxist, the toast of my extended family, beloved of my grandmother, widow of afore-mentioned grandfather. She always touted me as "New Zealand's first Bolshevik Prime Minister." Hahahaha! You can imagine what a black sheep I am now! :-) Still, one of my big regrets is that my grandfather died when I was too young to remember him, apart from one fleeting recollection. I've seen enough of his marginalia in the heavy-duty Marxist texts that were also passed on to know that I would love to have engaged him.

He ended up in jail for his beliefs. Thus far, I have avoided a similar fate for mine, though I've been the object of an "Off with his head!" demand in Parliament from the man who is currently NZ's Deputy-Prime Minister. And the current Prime Minister successfully took a case against me for calling her an "evil bitch" on my radio show. The penalty was not jail, just an apology. Which took the form of my retracting one half of my description, without specifying *which* half. We had to submit this to the Prime Minister's office for approval (can you imagine?!) & for some reason they approved. They clearly weren't paying attention!

Anyway, I think I've atoned for youthful follies. :-)

Linz

Post 6

Friday, August 26, 2005 - 12:37am

I was always politically "conservative" but did believe in God when I was a kid, or tried to. I went through a phase of playing "God, give me a sign" in junior high... never got a sign.

Post 7

Friday, August 26, 2005 - 1:47am

I had a phase in high school when I believed that the best thing to help an impoverished country is if it would first become communist, then eventually develop into a capitalist democratic country over time.

I must have concluded that by observing the changes that were happening in China and wondering how to solve third world poverty.

Post 8

Friday, August 26, 2005 - 2:43am

Marcus!! Confess to all those e-mails to me!! :-)

Linz

Post 9

Friday, August 26, 2005 - 3:41am

I was never a liberal (except of course in the old fashioned, classical sense), but I guess I was once a conservative/libertarian "semi-altruist"! By which I mean that I went through a brief period of believing in the free market simply because it actually does a MUCH better job than socialism of achieving the "altruist" goal of making people better off.

Today, I recognise that while the above is broadly correct, it's only one small part of the justification for liberty, and really happens only as a consequence of other more important factors.

Edit: I'm now scratching my head wondering if that post actually makes sense to anyone else!

(Edited by Matthew Humphreys on 8/26, 3:42am)

Post 10

Friday, August 26, 2005 - 4:12am

If you're not a collectivist when young, you have no heart.
If you're not a libertarian when older, you have no brain.

Post 11

Friday, August 26, 2005 - 4:16am

If you're not a collectivist when young, you have no heart.
If you're not a libertarian when older, you have no brain

Winston Churchill? (although I think he said liberal and conservative).

Post 12

Friday, August 26, 2005 - 5:57am

'Hell no' with one small qualification. In junior high I was briefly enamored with socialism as an elegant and appealing system. I rejected it within days after thinking about it since individuals can only truly know or act on their own desires. I've long since seen a nice summary of my conclusions on socialism, stated by a biologist who studies ants: "Nice theory, wrong species."

Post 13

Friday, August 26, 2005 - 6:08am

Laure Chipman's post #6 summarizes my past almost exactly.

Post 14

Friday, August 26, 2005 - 6:44am

If you're not a collectivist when young, you have no heart.
If you're not a libertarian when older, you have no brain.

Bullshit. I was not a collectivist when I was younger (I was more of a nihilist who believed only in himself), but I was not heartless.

I was neither a collectivist nor a religious altruist in my youth. It's hard to be either when you're the one who gets to be the target of bullies in public school.

Post 15

Friday, August 26, 2005 - 7:11am

Winston Churchill? (although I think he said liberal and conservative)

Some claimed it the words of Churchill, but it wasn't, and if comparing both his life and the meaning of the words, it couldn't be.

Post 16

Friday, August 26, 2005 - 7:15am

I'm in a category not listed.

Philosophy and Political Science were not on the radar in high school. Our History professor was elderly and did not teach anything other than ancient through early American History.

I went to a very liberal college was was beset on all sides. Communists, liberal professors, Socialists. The one truism was that there were positively no conservatives, libertarians, or Republicans that I could find on campus. I lacked the information and intellectual foundation to refute what these folks spouted, but I knew what they espoused was wrong, just as I disagreed with the obnoxious means they used to spread their messages.

My sense of life included a belief that hard work pays off, that a man can better himself through education and hard work, that no one was going to hand me a good life, so my only choice was to earn it, that America was the best and fairest and freeest country in the world, and that not everything white men did was wrong.

It got me through 'til I found a moral and intellectual foundation for beliefs in self-determination, capitalism, freedom, individualism: namely, Objectivism.

Post 17

Friday, August 26, 2005 - 8:27am

I am surely the most pitiable example of naivety in this discussion and my only excuse is that I didn't have any intellectual tools available to me at the time to see the contradictions. At one time I argued that everyone should be paid the same, after all, aren't garbagemen and brain surgeons equally necessary for society to function?

I flirted with 'Technocracy, Inc.' for a while in the '50's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy%2C_Inc.

So, when I hear some equally stupid things come out of people's mouths there's the possibility that they just haven't had the opportunity to see the other side or they haven't acquired enough life experience. On the other hand, they may really be my moral enemies.

Sam.

Post 18

Friday, August 26, 2005 - 8:40am

Sam Erica, your link doesn't quite work. A quick search on Wikipedia turned up Technocracy Incorporated.

Post 19

Friday, August 26, 2005 - 8:47am