Okay, first and foremost I must put this out there. The body of Demo’s post is from an old, derrided forwarded email that appeared around early 2009. If you don’t believe me, just google the first sentence and you will see links dating way back with the exact same wording.
Hell you can even read about it on Snopes:
http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/socialism.asp
/r/Socialism:
http://redd.it/9122l
/r/Libertarian:
http://redd.it/9123r
Humorously, if you follow the links that show up specifically on Reddit, you will see a lot of deconstructions and outright point for point responses that disassemble that chain letter. Everyone from the /r/Socialism, /r/Capitalism, and /r/Libertarian sub-reddits have dismissed this chain-letter.
“Weak. This story misrepresents grades as analogous to profits and Obama as socialist (which should immediately throw up some red flags). Chances are, anyone who doesn’t hold some pre-existing biases is going to see this as a ridiculous oversimplifcation” – mtfmtfmtfmtf (posted two years ago)
Let us begin the deconstruction anew.
Quote:
Originally posted by chain_mail
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class.
“Citation needed.“ — doubleginntonic
>> “It reeks of a forwarded email.“ – belandil
The chainmail does not specify an actual college or the identifying the professor. This should immediately raise a red flag. This is on par with, “A friend’s cousin’s friend once…” in terms of reputability.
Let’s say, theoretically—that this actually happened, don’t you think there would of been some sort of coverage about this? We don’t get any names, we don’t get any actual identification. If such a professor was so adamant in his “correctness“ don’t you think he would spread the word of this action?
Quote:
Originally posted by chain_mail
That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
“Obama’s socialism“ those two words are another huge flag that this content doesn’t come from an objective source. You would be hard pressed to find any “socialist“ who actually thinks that people who have earned their money through hardwork should be stripped of it. The typical “socialist“ just wants a fair and equal chance for everyone. There should never be a huge wealth gap where a handful of people have thousands to hundreds of thousands times as much money as the average person. There should be a safety net for people.
Quote:
Originally posted by chain_mail
The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).
…
Simply a horribly inaccurate analogy. This is the mind-set of being fed circular logic and propaganda on a constant basis. The analogy doesn’t work for a lot of reasons.
1.
It doesn’t scale between a set of letters and the vast difference in wealth. The grading system is A, B, C, D, and F. If we try to line this up with actual difference is wealth the As would be 70 billion and Fs would be $0. Trying to match a linear scale to something that should be kept on an exponential scale is beyond stupid.
Linear scale.
A = 70,000,000,000.
B = 52,000,000,000.
C = 35,000,000,000.
D = 17,500,000,000.
F = __,___,___,__0.
Now you, personally, where does your personal wealth put you, rounding to the closest number of course. That is right, you are getting an F. Except Hondawg who is getting a B.
2.
It correlates direct effort into wealth. It is nice to believe that direct effort means direct results. But it doesn’t. The richest people on the planet are not the hardest working. You will never work your way up from the dregs of the lowest tier in a company to the CEO. But it is a nice dream, right? Most made their money through isolated and incredible circumstances or through sheer luck. Take a look at the Forbe’s top billionaire list.
http://www.forbes.com/wealth/billionaires/list
Out of all those people, how many can you point to and say that they are solely responsible for their company’s rise? How many would you say are actively participating in key roles that keep their company’s functioning? Yeah a handful of them are “self-made” billionaires, but they really aren’t “self-made”, their rise is only because of the people that worked hard to push them up. Carlos Slim Helu, he is worth over 63.3 Billion dollars. Was he instrumental in every aspect of his Mexican Telecomunnications systems? Did he lay every single strand of fiber for the network? No, did he put direct proportions of effort to his rewards? No. Neither can Bill Gates or anyone else on the list. Those people are the ones would had both the intelligence, the idea, and the luck at being able to pull off what they did.
Now both Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, and many of other billionaires have signed a pledge to give their massive amounts of wealth back into the community. All in the attempts to help the poorest people to pull themselves out.
Yeah, some people do work their ways out of the lowest rung of society, but they will never reach the levels that the top have. Eric and I, once debated for a while the merits and drawbacks of a socalized system. He directly referenced a known friend who built up his own successful business with full-time employees who make decent livings. Now despite all of his hardwork, he will never break the top ten of billionaires. It sucks because he works hard, he plays by the rules, but he will never achieve that level of wealth for his effort.
3.
It dismisses the idea of the infinite amount of variables that go into success. Look at how the poorly thought out analogy is put. It only gives a few variables, those being effort and desire. That doesn’t happen in real life. There thousands if not tens of thousands of separate variables that infleunce the result of success. Look at Bill Gates, what if he hadn’t lucked out and found Tim Patterson to buy DOS from? What if DOS wasn’t for sale? What if DOS was too costly for Bill to buy? What if Tim Patterson had never bothered with computer science? What if IBM had never asked Bill for an OS? The list of questions and variables can go on infinitely.
4.
It doesn’t scale in population. As I said before in number 1, it simply does not take into consideration the multitude of people. If you were to take the number of billionaires, you know the ones that would of gotten the A’s and then compared it to everyone else in the US it would be 403 to 307,000,000 people. Now let us scale that down.
000,000,403 --> 00.0000403
307,000,000 --> 30.0000000
So out of that class of thirty people, no one would of had an A to begin with. Hell by the scale used in the story there probably wouldn’t of been any Bs, Cs, maybe some Ds and the majority would of been Fs. So how would a slow scaling, that in reality wouldn’t work even if the professor tried. Everyone had Fs to begin with.
5.
It assumes that the only motivation for effort is a physical or noted reward. There are tons of people that do stuff because they find it fun, and do it out of pure altruistism. I like to read various different subjects outside of stuff that directly relates to what will make me money. So do you, so does everyone. Yeah some people tend to be lazy and like to leech, but those people eventually get what is coming to them regardless of the situation.
6.
It tries to imply that you would be a C, B, or an A to begin with. Which you wouldn’t be, you’d be the F student no matter how hard you tried. Simply because of the grading curve, the simple scale. But again, it doesn’t work because the scale is too large to be comparative to the actual subject.
7.
Wealth just doesn’t simply disappear. The claim of this story is that suddenly no one is able to recieve anything but money doesn’t work that way. Grades can because they are immaterial, just abstract concepts used to label achievement. Money on the other hand is a more concrete thing. It doesn’t suddenly disappear from existence because you don’t personally have it.
8.
The worst suddenly isn’t as bad as it was. If it were to properly illustrate what a socialist welfare system would create, no one would be Fs, there would be a narrowed scale, it would bring it to a B, C, and D. A D would still be comparatively better than a F.
9. This is actually a primitive example of Demotivation of External Rewards. He just appends the idea of Socialism to it to make it seem like one will directly lead to another. Read the psychological studies by Elliot Aronson, specifically on The Social Animal, which along with thousands of other studies tat show that rewarding work results in people liking work less and focusing directly on the reward as their goal. Hell go pick up a copy of Freakonomics or Super Freakonomics.
Quote:
Originally posted by chain_mail
ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
Utter bullshit. Again, you would be hard pressed to find an actual, real Economist to say that and not say how all economic systems fail. And no, “Fox News Contributors” are not real economists. This is simply dismissing this people who instinctively drive to out perform and out do others in an attempt of show. No sane person would dare try to categorize everyone into one small, simple group.
Quote:
Originally posted by chain_mail
Remember, there IS a test coming up. The 2012 elections.
The real test is if people are actually dumb enough to slit their own throats. If you think any of those politicians are out to help you, you belong in an insane asylum. If you fall for these bullshit chain mailings that lack credibility and actual evidence, then maybe you should have your vote removed from the tally. Because clearly you are unable to think for yourself.
Quote:
Originally posted by chain_mail
1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
Actually you can. When you take all of that money that is not actually flowing in the economy and put it back into the economy, people have money to spend on things. Crime drops. Standards of living go up. If you want to tell me that the Koch brothers with their $65 Billion in personal wealth, that they were born into, is doing a better thing for America than say 305 million people being able to actually afford their homes?
Quote:
Originally posted by chain_mail
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
Except it actually doesn’t work like that. It is a system of a safety net, not everyone gets everything. But again that is the perpetual propaganda from the ’50s. There should always be a safety net for everyone, it lowers crime and raises the standard of living.
Quote:
Originally posted by chain_mail
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
Who usually have not actually put the effort to accumulate the wealth to begin with. Or does make it fair that some people have to work 60 hour weeks just to keep their small homes while some rich asshole doesn’t have to strive to do anything because he has inherited the money? One percent of the population should not have ninety-nice percent of the wealth and privilege. Bill Gates isn’t personally installing Windows on your computer and performing customer service for you is he? No. Is Larry Ellison personally installing your cable modem and running the switching station himself? No. Are the Waltons helping you find what you need in their Walmart stores as Walton cousins stock the shelves, and ring you up? No.
The richest people are not going to suffer from suddenly having slightly less excessive amounts of money. Do you think suddenly Carlos Slim Helu is going to be pan-handling for change?
Quote:
Originally posted by chain_mail
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
Read number one. Because you can. You can create wealth in the rest of the populace instead of a select few.
Quote:
Originally posted by chain_mail
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.
This just circular logic that uses poor post hoc reasoning.
What really saddens me is how people readily accept this poorly thought out tripe. People are so fearful of things without critical thought that they are so willing to cut their own throats to appease the rich. As Eric said, Obama is not a socialist. He is a corporatist. The people did not get bailouts, the corporations got the bailouts. But that is how the rich play, spend money to keep money. Mean while you make people fight amongst themselves ignoring the populist ideas that are good for them.
But I’ve had enough of this inane thread. I’ll leave you with an image.
---
Is socalism perfect? No.
Is capitalism perfect? No.
Is any economic system perfect? No.
Why? Because people are imperfect.
That is why I am voting for Cthulhu 2012.
