Aiden: Funny thing about the crime of robbery/assault: Those who experience it are commonly the weak and defenseless.
Hmm, I wonder why that is?
I wonder in case that if instead their potential victim was male, huge, rough and aggressive looking and armed (like a piece of steel pipe) then they would still commit the crime. Just wondering....

Of course the desire of self preservation (which all selfish people have and the more selfish they are the more the desire it) plays on the mind of most of those who commit robbery. So risk aversion is related positively to selfishness!!

Aidan:

Another example of how selfishness can reduce crime is in the case of house contents theft:

Typically when a thief wants to commit a burglary and theft, they don't just steal from the first person they see. What they do is case potential targets first. For example, they drive along a street and look for places that show signs that the owners aren't home, they look for security features like steel screens and alarms, and especially look for vicious looking dogs.
Now why do they do this? It is to lower the chances of getting caught. And why don't they want to get caught? Well that's because they are selfish! The thief values their life so they don't want to waste it in prison or potentially be injured by the owner or by the dog. So the more selfish they are the less chance they will break into just any home, rather they will become more selective about the target.

On the flip side: typically house owners don't just leave their front doors wide open when they leave. Instead they deploy security.
Now why do they do this? Because they don't want their stuff stolen. And why don't they want their stuff stolen? Well that's because they are selfish! The house owner values their stuff- it's theirs not anyone else's. The more selfish they are the more they'll do to protect their goods- eg. be meticulous about looking doors and windows, install security screens, own dogs, hire private guards, erect high boundary walls with video cameras, push for hard punishment for the crime of theft, etc.

So for any given house, if you increase the level of selfishness of both the thief and the home owner you decrease the chances that the house contents will be stolen.

Struth, thinkabit, going into more detail won't prevent you from losing the argument!

Indeed I think you've lost it already. You FAILED to recognise that there's a balance of risk and reward, and it was only this gap in your understanding which led you to the perverse conclusion that risk aversion equated with selfishness. Now, even after I've explained it, you're preposterously still trying to make the same point!

This time you're claiming that because crimes are more likely to be committed against the weak, it somehow invalidates my point. It doesn't - those who commit crimes are still much less risk averse and more selfish than those who don't. The fact that their behaviour can be changed by increasing the perceived risk (without a corresponding increase in reward) doesn't change my point; I never claimed risk aversion was boolean!

Sure, if everyone was completely selfless then nobody would use or need locks. But that doesn't make selfishness in any way proportional to risk aversion.

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LEGO, I'll reply to you later, possibly tomorrow. Sorry, there's only so much in the way of ludicrous claims that I can deal with at a time.

Looks like you are madly running around the internet trying to find some info to support your erroneous beliefs, Aiden. And failing.

Rotsa ruck.

LEGO,
Your arguments were so ludicrous that responding to them was a low priority. I certainly wasted no time "madly running round the internet".

>If Fascism and Communism are polar opposites,
STRAIGHT AWAY YOU STARTED WITH A STRAWMAN!

I acknowledged the similarity between fascism and some forms of communism.

>then there must be very significant ideological differences between them, right?
There were very significant ideological differences on economics and on race. Not everyone was affected by those differences, hence Guy Sajer's observation, which I skipped because IMO it was irrelevant.

>Hitler had his Gestapo and Stalin his NKVD...
Yes. Both were murderous authoritarian scumbags who used violence to gain and secure political power.

>Stalin called Beria "My Himmler."
I find that quite surprising. Do you have a reference?

>Democratic socialism is a contradiction in terms and makes about as much sense as democratic fascism.
And here we see you lose your grip on reality so totally that it's difficult to see how to bring you back to it. For in reality, democratic socialism was a major force in postwar Western Europe.

But if you think there's a contradiction, please explain how the Attlee government (which won the British election straight after WW2 by a landslide, nationalized a vast amount, and then lost the following election) was either not democratic or not socialist?

You seem to have trouble comprehending that socialism is left wing by definition, but isn't necessarily authoritarian.

>China went from Communist to Fascist because right wing socialism is infinely more
>aware of economic realities than left wing socialism.
China still has a huge public sector, so the idea that it ceased being communist is rather dubious. It would make more sense to ask why other communist countries were stupid enough to attempt to suppress their private sectors.

>socialism thinks it can create wealth by decree.
There may have been some socialists stupid enough to think that, but it certainly wasn't the majority view. What most socialists thought they could do by decree (and by other forms of government intervention) was remove the obstacles to creating wealth.