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What\’s wrong with Nick Clegg

I basically believe people are born good. How can you think anything else when you see the innocence of young children?

Rampant stupidity.

If we were all nicey nicey from the git go then socialism would work.

We\’re not all such nicey nicies from the git go which is why capitalism works. Because it channels those distinctly not nice parts of the average human personality, greed, self-interest, selfishness and even jealousy into activities that benefit others.

22 thoughts on “What\’s wrong with Nick Clegg”

  1. Brian, follower of Deornoth

    “If we were all nicey nicey from the git go then socialism would work.”

    Not so, sadly.

    “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

    Need tends to proliferate rather faster than ability. As Mahatma Ghandi didn’t quite say:

    “There is enough in the world for man’s greed, but not for man’s need.”

  2. Erm. No. If we were all nicey nicey from the get-go we wouldn’t need out betters to force us to donate to charity help the poor and needy etc. on pain of imprisonment.

    Quite simply: free marketeers believe that humans are basically altruistic, socialists believe that altruism has to be enforced.

  3. Socialist have always struggled to reconcile Marx with Darwin. The idea that intelligence or behaviour could be evolutionary gets their knickers in a twist. So they cling to the delusional belief that we are all born as blank slates ready to be shaped by the Nick Cleggs of this world.

  4. “If we were all nicey nicey from the git go then socialism would work.”

    If we were all nicey nicey from the git go socialism would never exist.

    I sort of agree with sconzey. Where I differ is that free marketeers think humans are altruistic. Selfish desires drive us, even when giving to charities – it makes us feel better to be helping people less fortunate than us.

  5. Has this man ever met any young children? He’s really telling me that they aren’t in constant competition for status and wealth? That they won’t fight when left alone? That not one single one will ever be a bully?

  6. “If we were all nicey nicey from the git go then socialism would work.”

    Only if there were people who were also omniscient and infallible. Until then, no matter what the average human personality, the centralised planner is always going to less aware of a given individual’s preferences and therefore less able to direct his efforts towards satisfying them.

  7. I’m not sure why self-interest is “not nice”. Selfishness maybe, but that’s not really a question of ethics.

    And, to the others, doesn’t self-interest preclude altruism?

  8. Basically Nick Clegg is the sort of guy who thinks sitting around a campfire singing Kumbayah is all that’s needed to keep us all sheltered, fed, medicated and safe from predators human or otherwise.

    The reason he (and his equally dippy hippy chums) isn’t dead yet is because other people take a slightly more pragmatic view of the world and do the things necessary that allow him his safe, cuddly delusions.

  9. “What’s wrong with Nick Clegg”

    Where to begin?

    More seriously, regardless of whether socialism might, under some circumstances, “work” (which, I maintain, it never will), it will always be evil because it treats some people as the slaves of others.

    Once again, of course, we see a politician claiming that his versions of “virtue”, “goodness” and “the right thing” are the correct ones. “Oligarchs offshoring their wealth to avoid tax” have “no moral code”. No mention of the “moral code” of those who leech off the productive.

    “There is a fundamental problem: unfairness is hardwired into Britain’s economy, politics and society.”

    Damn right it is; it’s grossly unfair that I have to work to support those who don’t, that I get no benefit from well over a third of what I earn, that I have absolutely no control over how my taxes are spent because successive governments pander to the parasites in order to secure their votes next time around.

    BenS asks why self-interest is “not nice”; simply because it’s not the socialists’ way. Among logical people, self-interest is the only rational morality, the only means of securing one’s own existence. Altruism, the moral code whereby each person has obligations only to others, is an abandonment of rationality.

  10. I’m with sconzey and Paul. Liberal optimism about human nature is what enables us to be optimistic about leaving people the f*** alone. Your views have just awakened the appetites of every interfering socialist out there ….

  11. By no means impossible, Ben. Altruism, (“the philosophical doctrine that right action is that which produces the greatest benefit to others” according to my Collins Millennium Edition) is certainly possible, if only at the cost of one’s own self. It’s the underlying doctrine of Christianity and all other forms of socialism.

  12. Quite; purveyors of altruism seeks to impose on others the duty to perform selfless acts. We donate to good causes, and wash Aunt Flossie’s windows because we feel good about it, but the basis of altruism is self-sacrifice; doing what does not make us feel good, because we have been told that it’s our moral duty.

    To quote Rand, “Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime. The issue is whether you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose to approach you. The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence.”

  13. Brian, you contradict yourself. If we were all nicey nicey then ‘needs’ would not proliferate.

  14. What Paul Lockett said. Most people think the problem with socialism is that people are self-interested and need incentives to produce anything. True, but it’s not enough. Even if people were nicey nicey, they would have no way of knowing what to produce, so they’d all still be dirt poor. You need a price system, which only works when people pursue their self interest. So you need selfishness in production and consumption.
    Socialism could only work if people were selfless and we had a replacement for the price system.

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