I will agree that organized religion certainly has a well-documented history of some of the worst abuses and atrocities in Human history (the Spanish Inquisition and the Burning Times being only a couple of these). However where Economics is concerned, only someone who wishes to take from others would wish as the previous poster does that everything be freely given out of "love" when it takes hard work and effort to create and produce those very products and creations.
While fewer and fewer actually pick up books and read anymore, I would still like to highly recommend the powerfully insightful book "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, who addresses this very subject so prophetically well.
In the book, a future socialist society is envisioned that is the socialists' dream: a "utopian" society where increasingly government enacts laws that force all to put into practice (under governmental control, of course) the Marxist socialist policy of: "From those according to their ability, to those according to their need."
While for those who only "live for today," such a policy sounds great as it rewards all those who glorify irresponsibility and laziness, yet it is self-destructive to a society as a whole... and for exactly that reason!
Such an economic philosophy betrays freedom, punishes those who produce and who create, and rewards those who simply wish to trade away their freedoms so that they can continue to live parasitically off of the hard work and efforts of others "according to their ability" and suck in everything from them "according to their need."
In "Atlas Shrugged," we watch as government enacts laws that strip away rights to personal property, to the fruits of one's own labors and efforts and, instead, makes it all public property. Thus government steals and siphons away from the true producers, the inventors, the artists, the entrepreneurs, etc., everything they have worked so hard to invent, create, and produce. Thus, they collectively stop producing except as government forces them to do!
Inevitably, as anyone with the brains to think beyond simply "living for today," as Lennon so idiotically encourages of us, under this "utopian" society, the dream quickly fades as those who produce cease to find incentive to do so... as everything they create is stolen from them, including their rights of ownership (copyrights, patents, etc.) to their very creations! As a result, the only ones who benefit are the idlers, the lazy, the parasites who seek only to take and take from those who actually do the work and create the products.
This is turn teaches the true workers and producers that there is no point in actually working more than they are forced to work by government as there is no incentive to do so... no personal benefit, at all.
So... work production decreases and products are manufactured with less and less attention to detail and to quality control. Thus, more and more government (who has legislated away every possible "carrot" as incentive) begins to replace the natural "carrot" of personal achievement under a free economic (capitalist) society with the "stick" of threats and then punishments if they don't work harder and better.
(Yes.. this is also exactly what happened in the Soviet Union where workers and producers were threatened and punished with imprisonment in forced-labor camps in Siberia or outright murder if they would not produce!)
And thus... all freedoms are lost and government is forced by its own policies into becoming increasingly more and more totalitarian and oppressive as the standard of living drops further and further.
And how do we know this to be true? Yet again... people... the lessons of history, itself!
This is EXACTLY what happened in the "utopian" Socialist society that was the "Union of Soviet SOCIALISTS Republic"... the Soviet Union! This is what is currently happening in North Korea and what was happening in communist Red China... until Free Enterprise and the freedom to actually OWN one's own products and creations began to be tested there.
And now... China is an economic POWERHOUSE as never before in history because, finally, the citizens there are able to naturally rewarded for their efforts and, thus, have incentive to PRODUCE and CREATE. THIS is true economic freedom, people. This is true achievement and self-fulfillment... not Lennon's (and Lenin's) "pipe dream" of stripping away freedoms and rights under the guise of making the world a better place!
Hopefully the day will come when China realizes that, as the Soviet Union learned the hard way, communism and socialism is anti-thetical to self-fulfillment and achievement... as much emotionally and intellectually as it is economically.
Wake up, people, before John Lennon's "imagine"-ation and Michael Moore's depiction of Capitalism as evil ends up having us all ignorantly using our currently remaining freedoms to choose having government strip them all away from us!
What's the old saying? Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it.
- Upir'
