> I mostly agree with your points, but this one fails. I say there's a pyramid. You say thats a politically incorrect concept to think about from a psuedo-right perspective, therefore it surely doesn't exist and all topic change-y. Bzzt try again. Is there or is there not a pyramid of skills, and if a working definition of the level of civilization is looking at how the downtrodden are treated, what are you proposing?
Let me put it this way. For the simplicity sake let's present workforce as the pyramid. So you have 1% who enjoy 50%+ or more of the wealth. You have 80% who are doing just fine. And you have 20% who are rock bottom poor and screwed over big time. The problem I have with socialism is that it obsesses about the poorest 20% so much, that is screws it over for the rest, the 80%. And at the end of the day everyone is poor because none of these socialist policies really work well. They just make everyone poorer. Margaret Thatcher is a great example of that on works. When she was the Prime Minister the income of the poorest 20% has been growing the fastest since the end of the WW2. The problem is that the other 80% was getting richer even faster. So poor felt like they are not getting their fair share. Without understanding that if you start introducing policies wealth transfer from 80% to the poor 20%, the poor won't get richer! They'll be still poor. You are so obsessed with this one pump attendant who made it big that by introducing the laws to take some wealth from the rich attendant, you don't see that the same law makes the other 4 attendants poorer too. The problem with socialists is that they want to feel so much, they forget to think.
>There is another issue that as a civilization we've decided civilization means citizens will have police, fire, libraries, schools, national defense, unemployment, welfare of some forms, foreign aid, all that stuff (More civilized nations or more civilized people believe health care belongs on this list, and I agree).
Equaling civilization with socialism doesn't work in my book. What about equaling the amount of freedom and responsibility with being civilized. So, if you - like one of my coworkers - eat, eat, eat and eat all day. She is fat, I tell you. And then - no excercise. Zero. Nada. Nothing. And then cigarettes. And then you go there and tell me it is civilized that I'm taxed higher to pay for her doctor, so I don't have money for my kid's school supplies? Nice. Very civilized. And where is her responsibility here? And where is my freedom to spend money on what I want, not what you want, my coworker wants, or the Government wants? What happened with this in our civilization?
>Anyway it takes $X to provide those services privately or via taxes, or the govt at an overhead cost of Y*$X will provide those services by taking extra money from everyone else and redistributing from each according their ability and to each according to their need.
And we know it doesn't work. 20 years after communism failed there are still people who believe that you can run economy on a premise of Marxist "redistributing from each according their ability and to each according to their need. " Again, go back to your history books. Don't listen to me. Even hard core communists like Slavoj Zizek will tell you that economically that didn't and can't work.
>The "welfare queen" in this situation is the service station, getting labor hours at a below civilization market cost.
And what is "civilization market cost" ? 1usd/hr? 2usd/hr? 50usd/hr? 1000usd/hr ? Can you define this nonsense?
> Essentially the welfare queen service station is stealing money from me as a taxpayer rather than paying their employees a legitimate fair wage.
If there wasn't welfare state, nobody would be taking money from you.
>This is the well known "walmart effect" where poverty increases when walmart moves in, because the employees are below poverty line so the net effect is negative on .gov and the residents of that .gov who know have to pay higher taxes so Sam Walton's heirs can become richer, all while being told this is fairness, capitalism style.
Why these people work at WalMart? Because they couldn't find a better job! So WalMart is doing the a favor because without WalMart they would have ended up at even more shitty job. And shitty jobs are good. I had one - was sorting out garbage. Once you do that type of job, you'll learn how to move up, without any stupid Government program. And if you stay at that level. It's 20% of the poorest. Why would you rather screw it for the 80%, to have it better for 20%. And then the 20% would be still poor too. That's what communism taught us. Everybody became poor. They made everyone equal. In their poverty.
>Why should I as a 3rd party be impoverished to make a rich welfare queen business owner richer, because a welfare queen business owner doesn't feel like paying his employees what has been determined to be a fair minimum wage?
Nobody told you to vote for leftist welfare programs. If you voted for them, yeah, you need to pay for them. I know sucks, to have people voting for that nonsense that cost me money too bro, so we're in it together.
>I legitimately and legally and ethically earn enough income to pay enough taxes to pay my share of national defense; why should I have to chip in more than my share because some welfare queen business owner isn't competent enough to match my level of business skill and pay his fair share of taxes via paying his workers a fair wage?
What is fair wage? 5usd/hr? 10usd/hr? 50usd/hr? Is it fair when a guy cleaning WalMar makes as much as software developer? You think?
>Your more fundamental failure is not recognizing that when .gov and .com merge, as they've done globally, a marketing game of divide and conquer makes losers out of people fighting on either side. The goal is the destruction of the middle classes globally. They're winning. Some countries are trying a PR campaign where .com and .gov merge and pretend .gov is in the drivers seat of the prison wagon, and some countries have a PR campaign where .com ang .gov merge and pretend .com is in the drivers seat of the prison wagon. However, if you're the guy in the prison wagon at the start of a real world "skyrim" game do you really care about which PR campaign is superior and who's pretending to drive that prison wagon?
This what you describe, this merge, is a very fascinating topic indeed. But its proper name is fascism (or corporationism as Duce called it), not capitalism. So, I'm afraid you might be barking at a wrong tree here. Let me give you example here: it were few Republicans, Tea Party sympathizers who voted against big banks bail-outs. All Democrats and rest of the Republicans voted for the fascist state where banks and the Government are in bed together. But not people who are by the left called the 'extreme right'. Tea Party and others, who believe in capitalism, have been and will always be against bank bailouts, or special treatment to big corps. They believe in free market economy and honest competition. If banks have to go bankrupt, let them. That's what capitalist would do. And we all know how left voted on this.