Need an argument to refute this

[Zostrianos]

I received this email that's going around, and I was trying to find a good argument to refute it:

An economics teacher at a local school made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Gillard/Brown socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The teacher then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on the Gillard/Brown plan". All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the teacher told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
It could not be any simpler than that.

[CryingWolf]

All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

This does not reflect socialism. At all.

[Ostrinski]

Is this even based on a real event

[CryingWolf]

Is this even based on a real event

Of course not.

[Ostrinski]

The aim of a socialist society is not to "make everyone equal" down to the meals they eat, clothes they wear, and what side of the street they put their trashcan on. It's to standardize everyone's relationship to the means of production and put all control of the productive process into the hands of the direct producers.

[MustCrushCapitalism]

If they can make shitty stories which attack a strawman and cite it as an argument, so can we.

An economics teacher at a local school made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that capitalism worked and that the hard workers would be rich and the lazy would be poor, a great meritocracy.

The teacher then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on capitalism." Four of twenty students in the class will be free to not take any tests or do any classwork. The rest of the class will take their tests for them. Most of their correct answers shall be counted to the tests that the first four students did not take, so that they will always be able to get an A+ and everyone else can get a satisfactory but lower grade.

After the first test, the grades were averaged, and the four students all got a B+. The remainder of the class were somewhat upset, because no one received a grade higher than a D. Most of the class continued to study hesitantly, because they had no other way of receiving a grade.

On the second test, most of the class received a D-, while the four students all received an A.

When the 3rd test rolled around, most of the class failed as the same four students got an A+

As the tests proceeded, the majority of the students were disillusioned with a system in which grades increase only for those who did not work to attain them. They formed a mass party against capitalism and held a classwide revolution against the teacher and the four students. Upon the next test in the new socialist classroom, everyone was happy to have received the good grades they had worked for the whole time.

[Ocean Seal]

Grades are not a resource with any relevance to society. They are personal accolades, not things like food, heating, etc.

[Fourth Internationalist]

I don't understand it.

[Lowtech]

This story assumes primarily two things about capitalism that

1. People require money to understand the merit of their deeds

And

2. Capitalism rewards hard work

Response to the first assumption is that humans do not require money to understand the merit of their deeds. This is another form of the incentive or human nature garbage that capitalists assert. It comes down to condescension; they feel we are idiots without the motivation of money - in fact the truth is the reverse, a market economy and artificial scarcity created by the concentration of wealth gives exchange value to crime and makes working in horrible conditions a necessity.

Response to the second assumption is that capitalism does not reward hard work, commodities are sold above cost and labor is devalued, so some of your earned "reward" is in fact retained by the elites.

Also, under capitalism, work/compensation is completely miss aligned. Pay and positions available is all based on exchange value of the end product, which usually means how cheaply it can be produced, so capitalists seek to sell you garbage and to pay workers as little as possible to produce that garbage. Marketing is a means to "polish a turd"; to stimulate "demand" for this garbage produced by wage slaves.

A capitalist might assume that, for example, fast food or department store jobs are plentiful because they are low skilled jobs, while in reality, they are plentiful because their value to the rich increases with volume; this shows the hypocrisy of them denouncing an economy planned for the benefit of humanity while they plan capitalism for the benefit of the few.

Capitalism's view of itself is utopian. As, capitalism cannot provide it's "splendid" promises to all individuals, rather it depends completely on the vast majority being workers. Ironically enough, they impose a kind of socialism on workers within a company. No worker is allowed to use more resources than necessary to do their job. Pay, although insufficient, has strong uniformity. Resources are internally managed.

[Lowtech]

I don't understand it.

This is a thread about capitalists using a silly chain email to falsify socialism, not an m. Night shyamalan movie :D (who's movies I love btw)

[Peoples' War]

Worth about as much as anything Ayn Rand has said.

Don't waste your time refuting it. Anyone who thinks this disproves socialism is a fucking ass clown, and should be drowned in a boiling hot cup of tea.

[CryingWolf]

Worth about as much as anything Ayn Rand has said.

Don't waste your time refuting it. Anyone who thinks this disproves socialism is a fucking ass clown, and should be drowned in a boiling hot cup of tea.

I was going to suggest something a lot less nice than tea. :lol:

[A Revolutionary Tool]

I have seen literally about ten of these threads before. Someone finds this stupid chain email, they come in here to ask about it, and the same answers are given everytime. This shit should just be stickied so we don't have to go through it again!

[Zealot]

I received this email that's going around, and I was trying to find a good argument to refute it:

An economics teacher at a local school made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Gillard/Brown socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The teacher then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on the Gillard/Brown plan". All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the teacher told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
It could not be any simpler than that.

This is such a massive strawman I don't know where to start. There are a huge number of assumptions being made here:

1) It assumes that this is the "Socialist" policy being carried out by Gillard/Brown (it isn't).
2) It assumes that academic tests are a good analogy for labour and reward (it isn't).
3) It assumes that under Socialism there are people who get a "free ride" and that under Capitalism they don't (!).
4) It assumes that workers are paid the same wages under Socialism (they aren't).

[Jimmie Higgins]

I received this email that's going around, and I was trying to find a good argument to refute it:

An economics teacher at a local school made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Gillard/Brown socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The teacher then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on the Gillard/Brown plan". All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the teacher told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
It could not be any simpler than that.

The short answer to this story is: what grades did they offer to Galileo that resulted in his discoveries?

If they want a real counter-analogy it might go like this: The course was designed to help students learn about the English Civil War. Normally the class would be given one research topic and each student could go to the library and look up things and hand in a 15 page research paper which would determine their final grade. Instead there was a revolution and there was no professor, but the students all agreed that it was urgent to learn all they could about this subject. So they spent the first class going over a survey of the subject and then broke into groups to argue about what people thought were the most important aspects of this history to look at, and then at the end of the class they created a rough outline of what areas they wanted to research. Then rather than each student individually producing a shallow overview research paper on the subject, often repeating the same arguments of the professor from his lectures or the arguments from some influential books, the students as a group divided up areas of research and and coordinated their efforts, sharing information they discovered and arguing over conflicting accounts or data - at the end of the semester rather than producing 30 individual research papers about Cromwell, they produced a 200 page book going into various aspects of the historical period.

Anyway, maybe not the best analogy, but what I had to work with was a pretty weak analogy to begin with: grades =/= education and secondly, no one starves if they get a C- on a paper and thirdly, it's not as if there is some material limitation on grades... there's a glut in the "A" market!!!

[Beeth]

As a great man - probably me - once said, this is so ridiculous it is not even wrong.

P.s.
Waiting for some smarta$$ to come up with Pauli's original quote.

[Sir Comradical]

A rather odd analogy to be using given the incredibly high scholastic standards of the 20th century workers states. Standards that bring shame on the underfunded, capitalist US schooling system.

[Philosophos]

I'm sorry but this arguement has nothing to do with socialism and it doesn't represent the reality...

[rti]

1. This theoretical scenario does not reflect socialism
2. Default scenario ( normal schools ) does not reflect capitalism ( student cant trade grades, student don't compete over scarce number of A grades etc. )
3. There is no proof that this scenario actually ever happened.

[James Connolly]

Lol, I got this from chainmail before.

This is more of an attack against the Welfare state, not Socialism.

Remember, Socialism is the ownership of the Means of Production by the Proletariat, and where people are paid according to their work. The goal of Socialism is for the workers to keep the fruits of his labor.

Edit:
This is literally the 3rd post I've seen about this topic, on RevLeft, in the last month.

[Raúl Duke]

It's a strawman that focuses heavily on the "free-rider" issue.
It's something to make anti-socialists think they're clever but you have to realize that the classroom setting itself is a can of worms.

Interestingly, they all like to talk about the so-called "free rider" problem but capitalism has this same problem: there are people out there who don't work, do anything productive, and make a living on the returns (dividends, etc) on their stocks, etc.

[leftistman]

In a communist society, the community will fall apart if everyone does not work; food will not be produced, houses will not be built, etc. Also, progress reports would be conducted to ensure that everyone has an adequate amount of produce. To use the school metaphor, if there were people only getting F's and D's, methods would be taken to give those people higher grades.

[Le Socialiste]

Easy - that's not socialism.

It could not be any simpler than that.

[Rugged Collectivist]

I'm sure you have better things to do than refute chain Emails. You might as well go around telling people that refusing to post this message on ten other videos will not, in fact, cause an angry ghost to attack you.

If someone on another site tries to use this as a argument, by all means refute the shit out of it. Unless that happens there isn't much you can/should do.