Well I'm sure that your followers will be disapointed. For someone who is strongly critical of capitalism you appear to place a fair amount of psychological weight on the accumulation of capital.
You accuse me of playing the man and not the ball, then you go right ahead and do exactly that. I said that Orwell made a bad argument in the road to wigan pier - effectively "conditions for miners and the unemployed are bad, and fascism is bad, therefore socialism." Saying this is a bad argument is not playing the man, it is playing the ball. I have read much of Orwell's work.... because I like and respect him as an author and someone who backs up his convictions with real world action - even if i disagree with some of those convictions.
I have never proposed withholding from people the ability to provide for themselves. This is a very strange claim. Anyone can purchase land and become a subsistence farmer if they so choose. The current system doesn't stop them from doing this, a (hypothetical) free market wouldn't stop this, and I wouldn't stop them.
I also haven't talked about luxuries merely standard of living. Here you seem to be linking ownership of private property with coercion. I also don't see where you think I am arguing for totalitarianism as I have made several arguments in this thread implying that totalitarian systems (e.g. communism and fascism) are terrible. Odd.
Pointing out that the 'anarchist' system had laws isn't minutiae. If the society had laws then it wasn't anarchist.
You say this right after calling some people bludgers.
Some people are angels, and on the other hand some people are narcissists and psychopaths - approx. 1% of the population. Most people on the other hand are good most of the time and selfish some of the time. If people are able to mentally excuse themselves from their selfishness then most will. This is especially true if the selfish behaviour takes self reflection to recognise. In the case of socialism, the lazy exploit the hard working indirectly. This is systemic exploitation not direct exploitation and as such people will mentally excuse themselves. Of course there is exploitation in capitalism as well, both direct and systemic, but here's the difference: the exploitation in socialism incentivises people to do nothing, while the exploitation in capitalism incentivises productivity.
Which one of these do you think will produce a functioning economy?
If 100% of people in society are artists then 100% of people are starving artists.
Look there's a difference between an imperfect system that functions (our current mixed economy) and an economically dysfunctional system that is subjectively perceived as being morally superior. Moralising is easy when you can simply ignore flaws people point out with the economics.
In a Radiohead song there's the line: "Pragmatism not idealism." I would say the same thing except without the sarcasm.
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