A 2012 scene and political ideology
I was watching 2012 with a friend. We were discussing a point in the movie in which many people were loaded onto several large boats (very similar to Noah's Ark) in effort to withstand a coming global flood. One of the characters was trying to rally other boats to open up their gates and allow the many desperate people outside to board. One of the American characters refused. He was worried about not having enough resources and being over capacity.
My friend said "Russia would never agree to open up the gates." For some reason, my reply was out of haste, but got me thinking even more. "Would China?", I prodded. He said in a matter of fact manner, "No". At this point, I felt as though I was wildly misunderstanding socialism and communism. My understanding is that those views are less individual oriented and more group oriented. For instance, they would dislike how 1% of Americans control the majority of wealth in our country. They would rather that the wealth was distributed equally among the population at large.
With this in mind, I feel like both Russia and China would be more likely to open the gates than the Americans. This only considers the basics of socialism, communism and capitalism, without taking into consideration how those nations employ the principles of each, respectively. For instance, America is supposedly “by the people, for the people” but there is some debate as to how accurate that statement is when applied to the historical actions of the American government.
Perhaps I'm simplifying this far too much because there are many degrees of socialism/communism/capitalism/etc. However, with less people on the ship, the Americans would feel as though they'd be more likely to survive individually. I think the Russian/Chinese view would be with more people on board, there may be more casualties, but the group as a whole would have a better chance of surviving. Another difference that I see is that the Russians may want to select certain people from the outsiders to board the ship based on their ability to contribute to society as a whole; whereas the Chinese would be less selective.
Thoughts?
