Topic 1 : The World is screwed up, the Government is corrupt, people are evil and

self-serving and common decency is becoming extinct. The only way left to rebel is
to be a genuinely good person.
- Everyone is creating jobs, but only those who use their money and circulate it. If
you save your money, you are creating nothing with it. Rich would be creating
jobs if they would spend their money, but most just sit on huge piles of money
and spend only minor percentages of it. olomorn
- The thing is we might be better today than in the past, o, but we are still used to
thining lie wild animals. !e can see that in movies and literature" we still enjoy
the f#c out of low instincts lie violence and se$ over more sophisticated and
intellectual stuff. %o we may have laws and helicopters and sh#t, but in the end
we are just a bunch of apes who will never overcome corruption, violence, and
injustice. !e have been ruled by the dumbass military aristocracy for millennia.
laser&pi''a()))
- In my view, a perspective lie this is evaluating the whole based on the masses
and the lowest common denominator. !e can continue our painfully slow march
toward true civili'ation a few steps at a time. !e mae progress where we can.
!e can each tae actions to ensure we leave our individual worlds better places
than we received it. It*s a march whose lifespan transcends any and all of our own.
!hen we give up the fight +no matter how small our battles,, we mae it that
much harder for our spiritual in to progress. -ave faith in us and yourselves, and
we can improve the world. It may not be as grand an improvement as you*d lie,
but it*s there, and it will be felt by future generations. jeffem
- There is nothing wrong with self serving. ou must serve yourself first if you
you want to be able to help others !otherwise it"s not sustainable and is ..
suicide#. $ hahoahoa
- The only way. I thin" it is always lie that. /ou can change the systems but
unless you can change people*s mind, then nothing happens. 0ut hey, we are not
1esus. %o, we*d better change our own mind first. That*s why some say" meditation
is charity. daon23434
- To the guy who posted this" you are a good man. This is what all the religions
ever said. 0ut most never got the message, turned against religion rather than
blaming their own wrong doings. ahmedinram5536
- % personally believe there are way more good people still than &evil& people
li'e you say. %t"s simply that the negative stuff is blown out of proportion by
the media and generally something bad is remembered a lot longer and more
vividly than something good. $ boneflesh
- /ou seem to be under the impression that the world was alright and then it
decreased in 2uality becoming screwed up. /ou thin people just found out how
to be evil and governments are now trying this new thing called corruption. 7o...
It*s been screwed up since it began and it did change for the better. /es, it could
be worse and it trevor&philips
- I tae this as a good thing. 8inally people might reali'e that being a genuinely
good person is something that is beneficial to everybody. It sucs that the world
has to be screwed up in order to mae people reali'e this, but change never
happens when things are 9more or less :9. /ou need a tragedy; economic
collapse, earth2uae or genocide to actually mae people change. -opefully this
reali'ation is what is going to change everything for the better. It*s always darest
before the dawn. biomarie
- (ic' one specific problem, unite with people who have pic'ed the same
problem and tac'le it until it"s gone. )ope other people are doing the same
and someday the world will be a better place. *a'e sure you finish the +ob
but also care about how you solve it and how far you go. )itler had the right
ideas at first, too, but few would call him a good person in the end. $
unbeginning
- *ore simplistic, people are stupid- few thousand years ago people were more
helpfull towards eachother because they saw that it would also benefit them.
nowadays people are +ust disconnected from society because it"s so big. it +ust
isnt clear anymore that helping someone is also beneficial to you. we"re all in
the same boat. % help, but thats only because of my egotistical behavior. i
'now helping them would benefit society which would benefit me. and it
ma'e"s me loo' nice. it"s a win-win.
- )ate to brea' your rebel bubble, but the world is actually getting better and
better, and fast. .rimes are down, poverty is decreasing, there is less and less
hunger. Thin' about through cognitive bias: everyone thin's the world is
going to shit, so they only follow things that strengthen that view. /ue to this,
good news rarely sell, so we are bombarded with bad news daily, even though
statistically there are way more good news, on a large scale.
- (eople become evil and self serving when they feel threatened. 0elf-
preservation is the first instinct. Right now, most of our economies are up shit
cree, our jobs are scarce and underpaid, and our way of life is threatened by
beauocracy, political correrctness and a guilt-ridden metropolitan elite. 8i$ the
system, and people will be happy again. mj&hammer<=
- 1lso, to be informed of what"s going on. Then you can be a good person, and
informed. 2ecause being a good person is good, but being a good person and
standing up for the right things every now and then, when the opportunity
comes, is better. 3r you can be an activist and ma'e opportunities. $ 'irill456
Topic 5: .ommunism vs. .apitalism
- /ou do not understand the idea of communism. 7obody lacs anything. There
still is a private property. /ou get everything you need and more. 0ecause stuff is
taen from those who have too much and given to the worers, so everybody is
e2ual. In modern world just a small bunch of wealthy people own the majority of
resources, money etc. It would be shared amongst worers. >ssuming that you are
a middle class citi'en, you would eep your house, car, all your stuff, plus get
something more. slopraprotni
- he main idea is that since people are 9e2ual9 one job is no more prestigious than
the other. %ince there is no consumerism you get as much as you need so you
don*t strive for food or to feed children. These factors combined mean that instead
of the job you have to go to to survive, you can do whatever you want and reali'e
your potential. ?ar$ wrote about alienation. !hen you do what you love you are
creative and happy, you invent. eichhorn
- @ommunism is not a good idea at all. The concept of everyone woring together
for the greater good of humanity and splitting everything e2ually is simply
unhuman. There will always be those who pull no weight in society and bring
people down. There will also be those who are forced to do more than their fair
share with no additional compensation. These utopian societies are always
destined for failure. It*s called natural selection" those who pull their weight move
forward. jason<)5
- To be honest, the only way for people to live together is the socialism. 0ecause
people being divided in strata and loosing their dignity isn*t going to wor much
longer. !e need an improved version of socialism in economic way, otherwise
it*s not going to wor. %ocial rights are more important then money aren*t they. -
slopraprotni
- 1ust my two cents, none of the 9communist9 countries so far were actually
communist, they just used some of the ideas +very few actually, and the name to
appear something different, no true communist country will appear through
revolution, only through evolution to it. thesoulmaster
- Auys, the idea of communism sounds lie 9from everyone by their ability, for
everyone by their needs9. Thin yourselves whether it is good or bad.
arutri$$$<3
- ...the problem is people always blame rich people for poverty, what*s wrong with
people who accumulated wealth. Thin about it lie this - It is bad that people are
starving, but that doesn*t mean it*s bad for other people to be rich. /ou cannot end
poverty by taing wealth from the rich, that*s just a made up definition of
e2uality. I too am sorry for starving or very poor people, but that doesn*t mean I
can compare the to wealthy people, ( different matters.
- 1ust to put things straight people - 8or an economic system +how you organi'e
means of production, you can have a capitalist system, a socialist system or a
mi$ed economy system +usually free maret B government owned economy, C
>ll =st world countries are mi$ed economies, no country survives solely on
socialism or capitalism +just loo at north Dorea, they are solely a socialist
country,, even %candinavians are mi$ed models, they are not solely socialist or
else they would banrupt.
- The problem here is, each country can be prosperous and developed, but the
solution is not the same. 8or instance in %candinavia socialist measures wor
great, but in my country people hate paying ta$es, so it wouldn*t wor, and our
politicians are too corrupt to benefit us. blacout<6
- !e need each other. !e only e$ist as a society together, so, I cannot bring myself
accept a system where a big part of society lives crushed and barely survives. I
just don*t understand why people can*t see this, why so many people would rather
gather money to just sit on top of it instead of contributing to a system +as flawed
as it is, that, somehow, helps people live with some dignity. I don*t care if some
are la'y +sometimes it*s the system*sEsociety*s fault,, I care if they live. dryah
- @ommunism is actually a good idea. Feople are just not good enough in their
core. >s someone said above +I*m in a mobile and this is tiring, 9I don*t want to
wor for the la'y,so I*ll just seat bac and get what I can9 yeah.... he thing is, I
agree our society can*t tae it, because people,in general,were not prepared for
this. To do the best as they can in what they do, just because it is the right thing to
do. !e are suppose to contribute to the society. +and I*m not taling about goods
and property or wdv,but it applies, and communism, when it was applied,for
e$ample by Genin,wored e$traordinarily well. The problem was that afterwards
someone wanted to get rich. /eah,the human problem got in the way,,the people
didn*t lie,so the only way to eep the regime was by force. >nd that*s the only
e$ample of communism that passes again,the dictatorship and hunger. dwolf
- % feel li'e 7arl *arx, along with me, would agree that communism didn"t
wor' because those countries +umped straight into communism. They didn"t
have the correct cultural, political and economical environment in which
communism would flourish !ie refined socialist society#, and so they turned
into communism"s opposite, a dictatorship. *any people seem to have given
up on humanity, and want everyone else to do the same, but humans are very
adaptable, and % thin' any one who thin's socialism is impossible simply
lac's the imagination and vision to see it"s possibilities. $ angry8paranoia
- /ou defined it well, it*s an utopia, humans have always been greedy and selfish.
-ec I*m greedy and selfish, why should I share what I*ve legitimately earned
with people that don*t contribute to society. I don*t mind donating and helping
people, but please don*t force me to do it as if I had an obligation. 0y the logic of
humans being good and not greedy, I actually thin anarchy would be a lot better.
blacout<6
- There is fantastic information that only a maret driven economy with prices can
provide. -ow does the government now how to mae the billion decisions that
an economy needs everyday. %ay that want to build a factory. !ithout real estate
prices how do they now where it should be built. Gets say there are
interchangeable components that need to be included in a finished product. If you
don*t now the price of each which do you choose. landjim
Germani4er !long post#
- /ou now humans traits lie greed are e$acerbated because of the environment
around them. If you have a society where there is scarcity, ine2uality which
maes competition a more necessary trait you will have more greedy humans. If
you a society where there is less scarcity, less economic e2uality in which
cooperation between humans is cultivated you will have less greedy and power
seeing humans. If greedy and power seeing are the minority, they*ll have less
effect on society.
- Tae for instant psychopaths and sociopaths" there are people which are born with
the tendency to become one. 0ut if this person has an healthy envionment, which
means a stable fammily and social life the most liely won*t become sociopaths,
this is a scientific fact. > more une2ual society can mae some negative traits
become active, and e$acerbates the one traits which most liely inherently human.
- That all said I don*t thin the bad traits of humans won*t allow a society to be
socialist. I thin with socialism is achievable through voluntary association of the
individuals, abolishing of the %tate and worer control of the means of production
and resourses, and maing public as woring place decisions through direct
democratic process. Tae for instansce how Hapatistas proceed, and also the
occupied >rgentian factories in the last years.
- 9There is enough for every-bodies need, not for every-bodies greed9. There is
enough resources in the world, the problem it is poorly distributed because a thing
called 9private property9. I really don*t buy the argument of scarcity" it is common
sense that there is enough food to feed the world, and how much empty land that
could be cultivated an empty houses are simply sitting there because of
speculation. ?uch more could be said... that Iirect Iemocracy sucs because
people are ignorant, is the same argument a monarch would give to not give up
his privileges and power. It is really condescending saying people could not be
educated out of ignoranceJ 0ut nonetheless @atalonia is an e$ample of how even
ignorant people can educate themselves and organi'e in an hori'ontal way that did
boost the industry greatly of an almost pre-industrial %pain and did confront very
hardly an centrali'ed and trained fascist armyJ
- >lso, even in a Iirect Iemocracy you can elect representatives. 0ut you can
withdraw them in the moment that you don*t fell more represented by them, and
this is how it should be. The most important feature in a truly socialist way is that
the wor place wors through Iirect Iemocracy, that*s the way worers decide
for themselves what to do. 7owadays societies call themselves Iemocratic, but if
you are an employee, you face 3 hours per day in a place that is not democratic at
all.
- -ierarchy is necessary for all societies, we wouldn*t survive without it, maybe in a
perfect society we would, but not in real life. Gie the Romans said, authority
without freedom is tyranny, and freedom without authority is caos, we need both.
!hat guarantees do I have that those people would be capable of managing
economy, creating laws, defenses, health etc. -ow would I now that their
decisions would be better. Is there authority. blacout<6
- :bviously most people don*t 2uestion the system they grew up in. @apitalism
does, what it is supposed to, namely fuc up most of the people so badly they
don*t even reali'e it and serve a powerful elite*s perverse fantasies of power.
!hen you e$amine it with proper reflection, you might notice it as what it is" a
cancerous tumor. It serves nothing but itself +lie a cancer, destroys the world it
lives in +lie a cancer,, and will die, once it drained its host. fredhoven
- @apitalism means that the production facilities are in the hands of private entities
and everything gets played out in the maret. !e are taling economy here.
Gooing out for your population does not undermine the trade, it*s just sane
government. It can arguably be labeled as socialist, but as long as you don*t
disrupt the capitalist economic principles, you are still a capitalist state. I lie
northern europe style socialist government practices. thefeli$
- ...Feople need a minor politicalEeconomical class" ?y political science professor
distinguished between political regime +Iemocracy or dictatorship, and the latter
can be totalitarianism, fascism or authoritarianism,, form of government +republic
or monarchy in modern days mostly, but it could be aristocracy etc,, system of
government +presidential, parliamentarian etc, and economical system -
@apitalism, socialist and mi$ed maret system, blacout<6
- The idea of communism is good, but it cannot be done, because it*s against the
human mentality. ?ost of us lies beign rich, having more money andEor stuff
than others. Ksual thining" first ?E and my family and then everything else. If
you must choose between eliminate every debt of your goverment, or =) million
euro on your account. I have no doubt what would choose <<L of the people in
the advanced countries. ombinator=<<=
- %n my opinion % thin' that having a capitalist system is the best in regards to
innovation and personal motivation )owever % thin' there should also be
guaranteed free healthcare, education 9 !crappy#housing for the homeless.
Those are the only : things. %t"s then up to individuals to decide how they
wanna play this game called "society" $ +ay+ayere
- The alternative to capitalism, lie capitalism itself, is a spectrum, it goes" social
liberalism, social democracy, socialism. Iialectically @ommunism is only really
Geninism and %talinism, and suffers from the fatal flaw that it doesn*t follow
?ar$ist historical process. 0ecause the people went straight from feudalism to
socialism, with no capitalism in between unlie ?ar$*s idea, they did not demand
enough freedom from their leaders. juliusagricol
- Every form of society that tae as its center the society, the economy, or every
other thing that is not the well being of every single person is wrong. Especially if
you bring these societies to the e$treme +capitalism or communism,. -ow can a
human be happy in a society where the value of his e$istence is almost nothing
and he have to live for the economy or a superior being called society. It should
be the opposite. blaccom<)
- @ommunism breeds la'iness. !hen different levels of wor elicit the same
rewards, regardless of time put in or product put out, people are going to do as
close to nothing as they can, cutting production to almost nothing. Fure capitalism
I% a perfect system, unfortunately no such system e$ists in this universe.
noahstepp
- @apitalism is unsustainable and communism always leads to oppression.
nihilism4)
Topic M" Education maes people harder to fool; politicians hate it. B Eliminating poverty
via Education
- The better the education, the easier the worer is to retrain and teach him new
sills. Education improves your intelligence level, which means you*re more
fle$ible. /ou can more easily change fields and you spend less time unemployed.
>ctually, globali'ation has mostly positive effects, the only downside is that the
losers aren*t being compensated due to the political problem. >lso, if you wanna
tal unemployment, it*s a vast field and with many ideologies based on different
assumptions. 0ut I will give you one that*s easy" unemployment depends on
anticipated demand. If the consumers have no money cu' of low wages and
unemployment, the companies will not produce goods and will not hire people,
resulting in Bunemployment. - dsM66
- !hen the efficiency of wor thans to better ways to produce increase and the
need for 9more stuff9 decrease + because people may understand sometimes that
we do not have endless resources on this planet, we will have to rethin the role
of wor and society anyway. The globali'ation is not bad, its just fair.
thiesclausen
- Knemployment goes down when demand goes up because there is a strong middle
class. The problem is that middle class is disappearing. !e have rich and poor
only, neither of which create demand. Education +college-level, is half of the
problem. The other half is corporate personhood and low ta$ rates on the rich
+who don*t create domestic jobs at all by the way, middle class does that too,.
dltamer
- !hat the marets are demanding now are people not with lots of nowledges, but
with selfconsciensness, social habilities, capacity for cooperation wor... The clue
is to teach this to students, not lots of stupid things that wonr be usefuls for them
bcause they will tal about them so little and so superficially that they will have
forgotten just made the e$amJ casapan
- Education is the number = tool to have vertical movement in life. If however you
believe sandwhich maing is your true calling then why go to university. /ou are
only indebting yourself. If you want to be a business owner and be successful,
education can play a big role in youe success. >s well education is not merely a
degree or certification. whymustmynameap
- ?ost educated people who do crime fool the uneducated population.
+politicians,companies, scam artist and so on,. !hat we would get would be
fewer petty crimes +i thin, but some really elaborate great onesJ +Tric the
tricster so to spea, 1app1app
- !ell educated population is a good thing. -owever, you can never eliminate
poverty. In a fair society every man has the same chance of becoming rich, but
not all of them have the same ambition. %o some of them won*t study and wor
that hard, stay poor and they*ll be fine with that. If you want to eliminate poverty
by giving everyone the same amount of moneyEresources, you*re building an
idealistically socialist society. - jimmyyyyyyy
- There are not many 9dumb9 people out there, just the ones who haven*t trained
their brains. ?ost people are capable of actual incredible things. Thin of how
many millions of years evolution has brought us. 1ust thin about that for a
second and how many people died and how many strong ones con2uered and
survived and outwitted. !e are the product of those successful people. !e all
have capabilities. Inspiring speech done. drspon
- The post said eliminate poverty through education, not government jobs
programs. 0ut neither of those is going to eliminate poverty anyway. /ou can
provide all the education and jobs programs you want, and there will still be
millions of poor people. %ome people simply aren*t interested in education, or in
woring to support themselves. %ome people are just useless, la'y fucs. That will
never change. psaltriparus
- Eliminate capitalism and replace it with a resource based economy. >utomate as
much as possible and educate everybody to the highest level. That*s how it should
be done. -owever, probably won*t happen anytime soon, because the only people
with enough power to initiate 2uic change only see NNNNNNN. yumbamielol
- Education won*t eliminate poverty. It will create huge amounts of educated, but
still poor, , and therefore more disgruntled, citi'ens. This already happened in e$-
communist states in the <)s, where inefficient economics, and free education
created hordes of people with university degrees, but nothing to eat. I don*t say
that education shouldn*t be free and accessible to everyone, but it*s not the only
answer to the poverty problem.
- Aetting 9tough on crime9 should be a combination of everything - creating
opportunities +Cjobs and support for small businesses,, social services, legal
infrastructure, law enforcement, access to education, and lots of other things
vadimOM35
- The title e$plains well why we are heading towards the middle ages education-
wise. !ant less people aware of what*s happening. :verprice education, maing
it only available to the rich; capture their attention using decoy media events; then
profitJ <raf<raf
- Foliticians need crime to promise to get rid of it during election years. They also
need dumb voters to believe in those promises. Gteddy
- !ithout poor people, no one would be at the drive-thru to tae your order, no
waiters, no janitors, no cashiers at the store, no one to do the jobs you would
never tae because of the salary. /our entire lifestyle would change. The little
gears eep the big ones turning. Even if you paid them all more, you would just
redefine what income is poverty level. Aetting paid e2ually across the board
would just be socialism and would eventually crumble from corruption just as
capitalism did. joshjohns
- The best way is to increase the estimated punishment for commiting a crime.
education doesn*t stop people from being egoists or douche bags. education alone
also doesn*t stop people from acting careless or thoughtless. if the estimated
punishment is high enough then crime would get down a lot. just imagine that
people would have to pay 5N each time they jail wal, or wal on red light. in my
city people do that easily a do'en times a day. if they got a bill for a single day,
they*d stop... sfvdibu
- /eah, lie maybe we have a 9!ar on Foverty9 or something. !e*ll call it the
97ew Ieal.9 %eriously, this idea is 5) years old. I guess a half century of history
and e$perience can*t outweigh something that sounds good. Foverty and lac of
education do 7:T cause crime -- they are things that you get along with crime
when you have single mothers and absent fathers. steveobeda
- %ome people won*t learn, some people don*t want to learn, some people actually
now but they still doing what their do...so...how is education going to avoid this
ind of people from illing, from raping, not everybody can be educated.
pablongo=(
- /ou want to eliminate poverty through education, but for education you need to
eliminate poverty first. >nd even if that wasn*t such a vicious circle and you
succeeded, you just get rid of the small fry, the losers, the low-lives. The real
problem are the white collar criminals and the top-=L-super-rich fucers. They
have all the money. That*s why the rest is poor. port)r
- 7:. This is only partial solution. The most antisocial and destructive individuals
are resistant to even best education systems. Therefore, we need to introduce
mandatory abortion and sterilisation of individuals that have tendency to crime
andEor parasiting on social care or show signs of retardation. I don*t give f. if you
compare me to -itler, I thin the procreation should be FRIPIGEAE, not right.
1ust lie with adoption.
- >nd it has to be education and 7:T indoctrination. Education can mae people
independent and successful, indoctrination teaches drones how to hate people who
are more successful than themselves and rely on politicians to tae from others.
danielhiga
- Foverty will only go away when the interest based monetary %ystem is abolished
and replaced by a gold baced currency aa goldEsilver coins. !atch 9?oney as
debt9 to understand the current system and how ?oney is created.
- !hat if I told you that there are some people in the world who will never have the
capacity to learn enough to avoid a life of crime, and there are those who will
always be criminals regardless of how educated they are. catbug
- ;liminate poverty< That"s 'ind of a childish dream. % thin' a more practical
approach would be eliminate materialistic ideals. 0ome one will always be
richer. 1nd real world 'nowledge tells me not everyone is made for school
that doesn"t mean they are dumb or useless. =et"s also not forget some people
are +ust born stupid and others evil. $ rylo>?@
- This is way too vague though. 8irstly, you fail to mae it clear that the crime
you*re referring to is crime based on a person in need of money or some other
source of survivalEsustenance. %econdly, I highly doubt you could eliminate
poverty. >t best what you*d probably due is set up a new baseline which would be
considered poverty. Foverty is dynamic. johnrchrichton
- Imagine that there are =)) beans in a cup and ten people in the room. Foverty is
when 4 people only get ten beans and the rest go to the other three. There is a
finite amount of wealth in the world, but it is more than enough for us all to share
and live comfortably. Then greed gets in the way and those three people do their
best to ensure that poverty doesnt go anywhere. thedartortoise
- There must be a balance in everything. If all people are educated , they will all
strive for a better position , leaving the bottom positions empty. The economy will
go haywire and the religion will lose power. @ause more often then not , an
educated person choses either to disregard gods , or believe in a deity , but live by
their own morals and rules. >nd lets not forget that the biggest criminals are
educated , well respected people. - abidos