Posted on 07/18/2014 3:21:50 PM PDT by blam
July 18, 2014
"UNDER capitalism", ran the old Soviet-era joke, "man exploits man. Under communism it is just the opposite." In fact new research suggests that the Soviet system inspired not just sarcasm but cheating too: in East Germany, at least, communism appears to have inculcated moral laxity.
Lars Hornuf of the University of Munich and Dan Ariely, Ximena García-Rada and Heather Mann of Duke University ran an experiment last year to test Germans' willingness to lie for personal gain. Some 250 Berliners were randomly selected to take part in a game where they could win up to EUR6 ($8).
The game was simple enough. Each participant was asked to throw a die 40 times and record each roll on a piece of paper. A higher overall tally earned a bigger payoff. Before each roll, players had to commit themselves to write down the number that was on either the top or the bottom side of the die.
However, they did not have to tell anyone which side they had chosen, which made it easy to cheat by rolling the die first and then pretending that they had selected the side with the highest number. If they picked the top and then rolled a two, for example, they would have an incentive to claim--falsely--that they had chosen the bottom, which would be a five.
Honest participants would be expected to roll ones, twos and threes as often as fours, fives and sixes. But that did not happen: the sheets handed in had a suspiciously large share of high numbers, suggesting many players had cheated.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
The Collective has no consequences for their actions. They will always blame their failures on the opposition.
Better to be exploited by one’s peer than by autocracy.
Socialists are idiots.
Those of us who do business with China are well aware of this...they can give lessons to Middle Eastern rug merchants. :)
There is no incentive to do better through hard work in socialism.
During celebration of October revolution the speaker talked about how the revolution has helped the people:
“Look at Mary she used to be shoeless peasant, now she milkmaid, Look at Nicholas, he used to be Theif stealing chickens now he party leader....”
Bad people in a Just Society Earn an Justly deserved Ill reputation.
Bad People in a Communist Society earn a reputation of Effectiveness in Executing Communism...
exactly
What GeronL said.
Although I agree with the premise that socialism induces moral laxity, the experiment seems designed to get the desired results, aka, “confirmation bias”. What part of the experiment is supposed to simulate socialism?
That part of the experiment was not described in the excerpt. The researchers went on to give participants a questionnaire asking about where they had lived, East or West Germany, and for how long. There was a positive correlation between the amount of cheating and the length of time spent in East Germany.
Sounds like Obama and the Dems.. or wait...
I like the Old Soviet joke bit let me offer a correction
Under Capitalism man exploiting man is private business
Under Socialism man exploiting man is public policy
I like the Old Soviet joke bit let me offer a correction
Under Capitalism man exploiting man is private business
Under Socialism man exploiting man is public policy
In simpler term if your going to get screwed..it’s nice to have a say in the matter
When we give government the ability to create infinite amounts of money and we give it a monopoly on the use of deadly force, we give government the ability to make any program work eventually, even if it has to redefine the meaning of the work “work”. Make no mistake, ObamaCare is the focus of the political will of a whole generation of secular utopians. Since they are now in power, the WILL make it “work”, even if they have to burn through a million dollars a minute and hire every IT expert in the country.
Any focus on the failures of ObamaCare web sites is misplaced. Even if signups when smoothly and 100% got their coverage, the system itself is corrupt, economically disastrous and morally corrosive. It is the most grave threat to the very meaning of being “American” since the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, the income tax and the Great Society.
But don’t take it from me. Put socialism in another context, on another continent, with a different people, and see its effect on them.
Václav Havel was a playwright, essayist and a poet. He was also the last President of Czechoslovakia before it was broken up into the Czeck Republic and Slovaka.
He lived under suffocating socialism. Socialism depends upon a fundamental lie: that society will be better when everyone lives at the expense of everyone else. This required institutionalized lies that had a horribly corrosive effect on humanity. In his famous essay, Power of the Powerless, he wrote:
“...[socialism] touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government;
the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and
the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance.
Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent
and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.
“Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.”
from:
http://bit.ly/4bqmRu
Collectivism, being an economic model based on theft, lies and murder, can only prosper in a moral climate where the people are okay with it.
bump
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