75
4 votes
Apr 24, 2015

show me a socialist system that has given more to the world than our capitalist system and I will consider it. A casual reading of world history would indicate that max freedom equals max wealth for citizens per capita and more importantly,, max freedom.

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50
main reply
4 votes,
Apr 24, 2015

This is rather hard to do; there are currently no socialist economies.
In a socialist economy, every decision about the production of goods is made democratically. People collectively own the means of production. Normally this is envisioned through government ownership, but as I am also an anarchist I tend to imagine a more union-driven model. People working at various factories collectively create a system of several levels of organization, which polls people on what they want and need, and decides what the factories need to produce. The factories then produce this, to create the maximum benefit that factory can produce.
Unfortunately, socialism is really strongly geared towards physical production - industrial societies. I honestly don't know how well it would work, if at all, in an information economy. But! That shouldn't really matter, since capitalism is just about dying (soon a huge portion of work will be automated - no one will be able to work enough to buy things) and socialism doesn't look like it's going to take its place.

Also, please consider that currently America has a socialist health system (before obama care - if you walked into a hospital with no ID and no way to pay, you got free care. This was then covered by taxes.), a socialist fire prevention system (tax-covered firestations), and much more.

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100
linked reply
1 vote,
Apr 24, 2015

This is something of a "no true scottsman" fallacy. Every attempt at a socialist economy results in either a totalitarian state and/or economic collapse due to the lack of responsiveness of political organs.

Also, the claim that the US had socialist health and fire services is just a non sequitur. Not all government functions are automatically a part of socialism. These are "emergency services" and represent a much older aspect of government than either capitalist or socialist economic theory.

The socialism vs capitalism debate centers around the ability of an individual to gain profit via trade vs labor. Emergency services are supplied to an entire area and must respond to emergencies under their authority immediately because emergencies are, by nature, time sensitive. There is no time for a political organ to make a decision of how/when to use the community resource of "fire truck" (socialism), or for a property owner to purchase the service "fire truck" from a vendor or even for the fire-fighters to sort out weather they have a standing contract with a particular property (capitalism).

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50
2 votes,
Apr 24, 2015

" Every attempt at a socialist economy results in either a totalitarian state and/or economic collapse due to the lack of responsiveness of political organs."

Not so, unless you are defining socialist in some utterly pure and rarified manner. In fact, socialist countries rate highest on the prosperity index, with Norway sweeping up in the last 5 years.
Scores are based on " entrepreneurship, personal freedom, health, economy, social capital, education, safety & security, and governance."

forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2013/10/29/the-worl...-countries-2013/
edition.cnn.com/2013/09/09/business/earth-institute-wo...piness-rankings/

Besides, any type of government can succumb to fascism....see Mussolini's Italy. Fascism is a device of corruption and inequality, and is generally linked to right wing ideologies....although it can sometimes arise in leftist governments as well. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

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