Do you think you can be a socialist and

[Swedes]

1. Pay for your child to be independently educated?
2. Buy a house in right catchment for the right school?
3. Feign religion to get your child into a faith school?
4. Object to a lottery system for school places with urban areas (ignoring all convenient environmental issues)?
5. Vote Tory? (because some people seem particularly confused)

Ah, Xenia, you're picking and choosing your arguments again. You really can't say on school threads that we should all scrimp and save to send our children to private school to give them a "better chance" in life, and then in the next thread say we shouldn't work to reduce inequalities!

Hey, Xenia's been audited!

Indeed Who's next?

"natural inequalities"

People aren't 'natually' unequal - that's a conscious choice societies make. Human beings are moral animals. Alturism is part of the natural order. If you want the law of the jungle, go live in the jungle with the dumb amoral animals.

I think pedantism is essential to being a socialist!

There's a different between trying to preserve inequalities and not bothering that they are there. The latter was my point. I never said don't bother working hard because you might as well stay poor. Those who can and choose to will work hard to give their children the best start in life whether that's good food on the table, school fees or whatever you can afford.

People are very different from each other. Isn't that inequalities? Some of us are clever, some not, some pretty. It's all just an accident of birth.

Why is altruism the natural order? I thought that had been found to be untrue? We might help the sick so we're helped when we're sick or it may be in the interests to look after those we care about because that benefits us but I don't think it's natural we might for example give away all we earn or share within a group. Whenever that type of communism has been tried it's failed.

Yes, but it usually doesn't make that huge a difference to your quality of life if you're not as pretty as someone else. It does if you're a lot poorer. I think you help someone if they're sick just because it seems like the morally right thing to do.

LOL

Who told you that alturism wasn't natural??

Giving everything away for the group? Who has ever mentuoned communism on this thread??

Disclaimer; I haevn;t read it all but most people seem to be talking abotu socialism or liberal democratic values

Monkey, your name may be confusing me, but I'm sure I read studies recently demonstrating some altruism in primates - will see if I can find it.

Loads on google. Isn't it what oils the wheels of a civilised society? Xenia - you're Catholic, aren't you? That's supposed to be all about being altruistic.

LOL habbibu, I am a very alturistic ape!

Yes there is tons of it. It's not contentious.

Most people get the oppostite idea simply by reading the title of Dawkin's The Selfish Gene and draw all kinds of conclusions from that. That and not knowing the differences between natural and sexual selection.

It's pedantry, not pedantism - says seeker, pedantically.

Socialism relieves people of altruism and destroys it.If instead the state provides less people are more likely to be benefactors. The US are better at this than we are in the UK probably because they have less of a welfare state. The altruism of chimps (and us) when it exists is because it works in evolutionary terms. Babies look cute so people are inclined to preserve them etc

Not sure I agree that being born pretty is any less an advantage in the UK today than being born poor and being born clever is another advantage. If you're a pretty girl you'll likely marry a rich man and if you're very bright you just might rise out of that council slum and become a teacher or whatever. So yes the natural inequalities are all around us. In genetic terms I suppose the weaker the people the more likely they die out and the fittest survive but that does not drive out all differences by any means.

I don't know - sometimes I think that Xenia is attempting to be(quite clumsily) a devil's advocate, but her arguments are quite often ill-informed, so it just ends up looking a bit wierd.

...and rather lacking in imagination, which is ironic, considering her views on the benefts of independent schooling...!

Not weird. It's good for weird left wing people to realise how most people think and how the capitalist world (i.e. most of the planet) operates.

Xenia - Have you mellowed with age?

Most people become less left wing as they get older.I am not sure how I have changed in terms of political views. Certain in my life time we have witnessed the almost total failure of socialism on this planet. It must be enough to make all socialist weep. Berlin wall fell, China actually allowing ownership of property. What have you got left? Do you count Cuba? Even France isn't exactly left wing at the moment, is it?

You are confusing socialism with communism again, sorry

Didn't someone once say a Tory at 20 is a bore at 60, or something like that? At least if you sratrt of left wing, you have a chance of being vaguely interesting in retirement.
I don't think I have become more right wing as I have aged; less idealistic, maybe.
The socialism/communisn thing is rather irritating, Xenia; would you appreciate being called a fascist?

Xenia, what's weird isn't that you have right-wing views and wish to express them - that's good, as you say, to foster healthy debate. What's weird is that your arguments seem often rather ill-informed and oddly structured, so that your point rather gets lost in what appears to be some bizarre comments. For example - if you're pretty you'll probably marry a rich man, so that's an advantage - that's utterly against a lot of the very sensible feminist arguments you've made elsewhere.

I enjoy Xenia's posts for the entertainment value but I do sometimes wonder if she is a MN invention to increase the ratings. It just seems impossible to me to hold down a job which pays enough to send 5 children to private school and spend so much time on MN.

She's a lawyer, evelyn - Quattro gave away the secret of lawyer working/MN multitasking on another thread - apparently you say "Well, let's go back to first principles" a lot, so people think you've been listening.

Good point..Ohhh! Now I am torn between hoping she is, and hoping she isn't!!!