How can you explain communism/socialism to a libertarian who mostly hangs out with right wingers, randroids, von mises types, and generally just people who are all studying engineering or hard sciences for the sake of getting rich trough the free market?
I never really cared about politics, because of my political views. I dont really think there is any demand for more.. politicians or politics, and I also never went on any sort of public march or whatever. I think that technology is what solves problems these days, so I just focus on that, people need engineers is what I think, there's already too much supply in politics and activism and that sort of crap.
But out of boredom I wanted to talk about politics, and everyone I know is either right winger or a lolbert, so I wanna ask people here about a few things:
I talked with an economy professor once, asked him about socialism/communism, told him I am interested in it because I dont know anything about it, and it seems like a huge thing because there are tons of people interested in it, well not in my school (never heard anyone talking politics here) but in soft sciences and art and philosophy places leftism seems to be really trendy, while right wing politics are really popular with people who pay taxes, that's my way of seeing it.
And he gave me the 'classroom' example: he said that he took a class, divided them along their political leanings, gave them the same test, but those who prefer socialism were allowed to all work together collectively for their mock exam, while others all worked for themselves. And every time, people all working together to pass the test would fail because average students would prepare for it how they always do, slackers would always fail their part, and people who worked hard would just get really pissed off by the whole situation and constantly ask to leave the group.
He also told me about labor theory of value being completely false: basically value comes out of labor times efficiency, not just labor.
Take farmers for example: all of these farmers work the same hours, and all of them are equally healthy and physically able. And all of them work really hard. But one of these farmers is just a crazy guy, instead of jacking off or getting drunk or whatever, he decides to invest all of his free time in studying chemistry and biology, to understand his farming further, and he comes up with pesticide and fertilizer. But the guy is so personally invested in his farming, he even goes so far to study math and physics and comes up with.. farming mechanization (think of giant tractors etc).
And now out of all these farmers who all have identical farms, this one guy is suddenly a millionaire among these farmers who all started out the same.
So basically according to modern economy: value comes out of working hard AND working smart, humans require incentives (profit motive, competition, urgency, etc), venture capitalists are always on the look out for young, talented, worthy individuals to invest in, investment makes sure no one is poor for no reason, and people who suck just suck and cant be helped.
And finally he told me that left wing politics are for jealous people who just suck. He told me that if you have access to internet, you have nothing to complain about. But as well all know, people do not use internet to learn open heart surgeries, most of the traffic is videogames and porn. And this is why most of the people arent as rich as a few of the people. Most of the people find an excuse. Few of the people find a way. And that's all there is to economy and politics.
My question to this board is: was he wrong, and if he was, can you make an extremely simplified examples, so that anyone can understand (as Einstein said, if you cant explain it to a child, you dont know it yourself..)
Thanks for reading.