"An ideology that supports individualism so heavily does not lend itself to compassion."

Individuals are still allowed to have compassion, and usually do. Individualism acknowledges the equal rights and personhood of every individual. Collectivism makes all sorts of nice noises, but generally ends up killing many of the people it pretends to protect. Collectivism refuses to acknowledge fundamental human rights and refuses to acknowledge the personhood of individuals. How is that compassionate? It seems pretty cold-hearted to me.

"No, it's not. It's about the people at the "top" continuing to support policies that does not allocate what those people need, and to continue starting and fighting wars because of how they profit from them. It's not due to "complicated" factors beyond their control."

Allocating resources to people who will waste them does no one any good, and does most people a great deal of harm. After all, those "allocations" have to come from somewhere - and they can only come from those who produce, so ultimately these "allocations" wind up stealing from those who are productive to give to those who are wasteful. It enslaves the good to serve the bad, and if left unchecked ultimately destroys both good and bad. It's a recipe for misery.

I will agree that some wars are fought for the benefit of a tiny elite and their supporters, but even in those wars the leaders of one side may not have desired the war. More generally, wars are fought over resources - when their is plenty there is much to lose and little to gain from war; when there is little there is reason to fight. This is often beyond the control of the leadership.

And mental health issues are not so easily resolved as you seem to think they are. I do agree that we could address the homeless issue much better, but unfortunately the best solutions are opposed by those who presume themselves to be supporting the homeless. I have seen many times such people demanding benefits for the homeless that exceed the living standards of the people being compelled to foot the bill. For those who have lived in harsh conditions, perhaps living in a small corner of a tent for months or years in harsh and dangerous conditions to earn a middling wage - seeing a homeless person given a full, modern apartment of their own with access to subsidized food and other perks that workers living in worse conditions have to pay for, is an insult. Few people would begrudge the homeless a small room with access to a communal bathroom and kitchen - but I see again and again social worker types who are so focused on their designated beneficiaries of stolen funds that they pay no attention to the people they are stealing from - and by demanding standards that are far too high they also reduce the number of homeless that they will be able to help. Aid seems to be feast or famine: if a person receives aid they may be living better than the people paying their way, and if they don't get aid they might be living in a cardboard box. Meanwhile, political leaders have to listen to what their constituents demand - which tends to be self-destructive behavior.

"Providing a job that pays well, and which is in their interest/skill set so they can do a good job and achieve happiness, and to present them with reasonable shelter and physical and mental health care of sufficient quality to keep them off the streets is quite easily addressed."

Oh? Easily addressed, is it? Tell me: You have a supplicant before you asking for a well-paying job producing whackadoodles, which is the only interest he has. The public desire for whackadoodles is roughly zero. The supplicant is more or less physically able but has severe mental health problems for which there is no known cure.

Where will you get the funding to pay this supplicant to make whackadoodles? How will you cure them when there is no cure? Where will you get the funding to pay for the ineffective treatment? If you steal money from productive people to pay for the ineffective services for the unproductive people and the productive people recognize that with their reduced resources they will not be able to raise as many children as they would like to replace themselves which will lead to a decline in the proportion of productive people supporting the unproductive, how will you make up the lost provision of resources? As the unproductive recognize that they can now access more resources to support more of their own children who will learn or inherit their own unproductive traits and the unproductive population increases, where will you get the increased resources necessary to support the increasing numbers of the unproductive? What will you do with all the whackadoodles this supplicant makes which no one wants?

I look forward to your answers.

"Did you at least berate yourself afterwards?"

Why would I engage in such self-destructive behavior? I'm not some damned, self-flagellating Puritan.

"Your "free market" capitalism depends on a large underclass that works for tiny overclass that depends upon disparity of wealth, poverty, war, etc., to keep those at the top in power."

Really? That's odd, because free market societies have seen the greatest increases in wealth and far greater equality than any other societies except perhaps the neo-feudal ones.

What you describe sounds like another system that has been tried many times and has always resulted in the same failure mode: Collectivism, the most famous variety of which is called Communism. Many of its adherents may be well-intended, but the empirical evidence is that it has killed scores of millions and reduced many more to poverty. (Yes, I know - "real communism has never been tried" - every generation claims this, attempts to reform it, and repeats the same "errors" as the generation before. It is beginning to look like the errors may be an unavoidable feature of the ideology.)

"the evidence of a huge amount of homelessness, poverty, environmental destruction, and economic insecurity of the masses continues to refute your defenses of capitalism"

No system has yet been found which can eliminate misery altogether, but the evidence is clear that collectivist societies have performed far worse on all of these measures than capitalist societies, with the possible exception of homelessness - if you consider prison camps to be homes.

"you know quite well that was an antagonistic move on your part"

Just a little. I still have hope for you. Unlike most collectivists who are primarily motivated by jealousy, envy, and a desire for power, I think you really want to help people and just fell in with a bad crowd. Think of this as an intervention. ;-)

"since being at the top requires no intelligence whatsoever."

LOL. No, being at the top requires a great deal of intelligence. There are always a host of challengers attempting to replace whoever is at the top, with the intention of taking power and pushing their own ideas (which are almost always disastrous) on the people. The people at the top simply have a different sort of intelligence than you have considered: a political intelligence, an ability to understand people. And if they are a little smarter they will also know the limits of their own intelligence, and recognize that the best thing they can do for the public is merely to occupy that political space and prevent some overambitious challenger from taking power and wreaking havoc with their misguided ideas.


"Considering how little things change, and how poorly the status quo is ever challenged en masse"

You really need to read some history. U.S. culture has changed so much in the last century that it is practically a foreign country with a foreign culture and a foreign religion.




Baldur