Why socialism is bad

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Well, I think we can do better than our current medical system too, but I don't think we need socialized medicine to do so, nor do I think we should seek it. Frankly, I think that no matter what system we have, we will have rich people who get medical care where poor people are left to suffer and die, and that is simply due to the scarcity of some resources, however, you are correct, the US's medical system is certainly poorly set up.

" All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others,."
George Orwell, "Animal Farm."

Actually, we seem to be good at destroying and conquering... just construction is more difficult than destruction.

Well, are we really *that* good. Our defense budget is larger than the GDPs of the nations we are destroying. Heck, our defense budget is larger than all but 16 nations in this world including our own, if anything, I might argue we aren't getting our money's worth and thus military spending is another government failure.

Perhaps.

I'm abandoning ship as soon as I'm able to; the US is not for me. Have you ever heard of the Etruscans and their political ideas? As of late I think their philosophy applies to America.

I'm not even remotely convinced that certain cures are intrinsically rare, but rather the expense is lining the pockets of corrupt private healthcare companies, but I'll let that slide for now. If wealth is to be used as a yardtick to determine treatment then wealth is something that should be earned, the wealthy should be the most deserving. As that is largely inversely true, in that wealth is amassed through abuse, inflation and inheritance then scarce resources should be distributed on a basis other than wealth.

On a more general level while I'm sure corruption is a problem for socialism it is not a unique one, but at least there is a general intent to improve quality of life. In capitalism there is no such goal and with so much energy expended on utterly fruitless tasks along with efforts to research directly worse products in the name of profit and distribute inappropriate goods (medicine is a good example, expensive, dangerous products are marketed over readily available safer alternatives) means that barriers to such a goal would have to be staggering to generate an overall lower cost of life.

I had already posted a link from a Harvard economist's blog where he made that argument in terms of pricing. I also did not claim that this was the reason for all of our health care problems at all, but rather a factor preventing all health care from being equally distributed and still efficient. Frankly, I would argue that if your argument for how wealth is amassed is completely true then we exist in a fundamentally corrupt system and thus reforms are useless. Not only that, but frankly, I disagree with much of the argument as there does not seem to be evidence from my perspective that abuse is a major source of wealth, nor do I see how inflation really CAN be a major source of wealth given the fact that traditionally inflation has been used to reduce unemployment and many right-wing economists (pro-market, corporation, rich, etc) have been against inflation. Finally, the capitalist system inherently is based upon the assumption that wealth means deservance, and thus violations of that must either mean that the capitalist system has been invaded by a another system, or that theories of marginal productivity are flawed and that theoretical understandings of capitalist profit-seeking are wrong and essentially that capitalist firms are not driven to seek profit.

With socialism however, we do have unique problems such as greater difficulty in allocating resources, as well, corruption under socialism as we have seen it, has been significantly greater than under any capitalist society. Not only that, but general intent really doesn't matter, as in both socialism and the US government there is supposed to be an intent for improving the quality of life, however, both have taken actions that directly work against that goal and even in modern policy debates we see politicians, with the claim of acting towards better quality of life, taking actions that experts say will lead to worse quality of life. As well, the notion really is that profit maximization will coincide with increased utility as people will make purchases based upon choices as to what will improve their lives the most, frankly, I would argue that the example you just gave is an issue of information problems within a capitalist system, which do happen and can cause problems. However, I would also argue that empirically varriers to improving quality of life are significantly less under capitalism than under socialism given the fact that capitalist societies have the highest qualities of life, most economic growth, and that newly emerging capitalist societies also enjoy higher economic growth. At the same time, comparisons to other systems show that capitalism tends to enjoy higher long-run growth.

I'm too tired right now to really go into depth but there are some things I just have to get off my chest now. First up inflation is absolutely the primary source of income, and if any right-wing economists are arguing against it then it must be more on the basis of retaining it's effect for themselves, or they are playing Devil's Advocate to win. A millionaire will get more money through the effects of inflation than someone who starts with nothing can ever earn. Of course if he is willing to dirty his hands he can achieve much more through the deserving traits of selfishness and callous treatment of others. There's plenty of money to be made in paying starvation wages and crushing competition, and no-one ever got rich by paying workers a fair wage. The idea that wealth means deservance can only have been built on these principles.

The information "problems" as you term them could fill several volumes by themselves, but the principal issue is that it is rarely in a companies interest to make information readily available. Moreover information helps little, as shaving companies successfully develop increasingly brittle metals to make razors from the companies that produce these will be most profitable and on the principals of profit all alternatives will disappear.

Generally speaking capitalistic systems relatively high quality of life has only come about as the result of abusing other countries. The tremendous profit the western world makes of the second and third world means they will enjoy certain benefits. With this aside though the tremendously high quantity of valueless labour means that capitalist countries have an overall quality of life that is staggeringly low given the resources available.

Well you're obviously going to deliver an objective viewpoint .



I think both need to be considered equally as indicators of value.



Australia's had what you could call "Socialised medicine" for decades. We're far from going bankrupt. Granted, government funded health care is expensive (indeed, health care in general is expensive) but there are ways and means to minimise the cost without sacrificing quality of care.



1. Why would the rich profit from the middle class if the government is spending on health care? If anything, that's what happens when medicine is privatised. Private compnanes, understandably do what's best for themselves, not necessarily the public. They at the very least need regulation.

2. Again, government aid has been around in Australia for decades. While there are those who are pure bludgers and ride the system, they are a minority. I wouldn't have a chance of being able to attend university without such aid and my case is far from unique. I think you'll find that the majority will use it as a hand up more than a handout.



To me, this looks to be born more out of personal greed than a genuine critique. Those people will need care and that's a fact. Under a completely private system, those who can afford care will get it while those that can't will be more or less left untreated.



So, you're quite happy to see others being poor and impoverished with little means of support and not do anything about it? Anyways, in my view, the socialistic obligation to the community is inherently a good thing. I'm quite happy to pay taxes that go towards helping others and the community in general. In fact. Looking at it from a more self centered point of view, I can often benefit from it myself.



That's precisely it. It looks to me that you've just gone and trawled the internet for some very generalised largely invalid critiques. I'm not saying you should go "commie", but a little more objective research would be helpful to you imo. You won't understand your enemy at all, if you only look at one side of the argument.



Writing off critiques that you could understand Socialism better is a cop-out.



Not necessarily. It could be argued that Australia has a mixed economy and judging by your comments, it probably does in your view. I don't think we could be described as a "Corporate Fascist" state, nor one that's on the road to it. It only becomes of great concern under totalitarian regime and when the power of private companies outweighs that of the people.

Roosevelt said:
"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power."



I agree with you here. However, you can have a fair tax system and still have Socialism. In fact, one of the most important principles of Socialism is a fair system. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

Last edited by The_Q on 04 Mar 2008, 6:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Not really, actually, right wingers have traditionally been inflation hawks with the left being less concerned. You really have to remember ideas such as the gold standard which is more prominent on the right as we see with Ron Paul, as well as with Robert Mundell, one of the thinkers associated with supply-side economics, as well as with Milton Friedman who once proposed a monetary rule to essentially eliminate inflation. Honestly, most of the evidence also goes towards the honesty of these individuals as well, as there is little gain for them to claim something so unorthodox, really it is the left that will favor inflation more given their increased reliance on the theories of John Maynard Keynes who argued that a little bit of inflation was a good thing. Also, one of your later points is wrong well, Henry Ford is actually famous for paying the highest wages in auto manufacturing and many cite that as a successful move on his part as by doing so he got the best laborers and significantly less turnover than other companies. As well, many economists cite the idea of efficiency wages in labor economics, which is the idea that employers pay workers a little bit above market wages in order to ensure loyalty.


Well, of course they could fill several volumes. I imagine that multiple economists have, can and will get their PhDs specializing in various issues of information problems. Often times these arise due to incentive issues, as pointed out in Freakonomics by Steve Levitt where he points to how realtors will often take more time selling their homes than those of their customers. I do disagree with your assessment of companies interests as steps towards improvement seem common and the logic backing up ideas to the contrary seems specious to most economists.

Not true, the success of capitalistic nations comes from the higher levels of capital and the efficiency in allocating resources. Honestly, such an argument completely ignores the effects of the Industrial Revolution towards creating more and better goods, as well, it ignores the blatant imperialism that occurred in socialist nations as well as it is a historical fact that Stalin took all of eastern Europe and stripped it of its industrial capacity. Finally, the argument seems very false when applied to modern societies, as the societies that grow and gain the most are the ones that trade with us the most rather than the opposite, and this can spectacularly be noted with China and India. As well, the argument ignores the fact that we were still economically successful even when we traded less with other nations and even before we began running trade deficits. Honestly, a lot of this labor really doesn't matter without industrialization.

Capitalism is an excuse for the selfish behavior of greedy men. There is nothing "inherent" about any economic system except that people must eat if they are to stay alive more than a few weeks. The answer may not be socialism, but so far we haven't been decent enough or smart enough to come up with another system that will work, so I'll stick with my efforts to make economic systems more socialistic.

So far we haven't been decent enough or smart enough to make socialism that works.

That we can. If power if stripped from the greedy power holders of money and the subjectivist pseudo-scientific peddlers of monetary myths called economists and given the empiricalists.

Are the best empiricalists today scientists or economists? Would you trust a economist with your life who've never arrived at any conclusions through laboratory verifiable experiments or would you trust somebody more practical and obsessed with the truth?

Visit: N.E.T.

Most of this post is making bald assertions, begging the question. For example, when you write "value of goods," you are referring to market value while the people who produced the goods see value besides market value. In other words, when socialists and capitalists argue about the value of a good or service, they aren't even arguing about the same thing!

So far we haven't been decent enough or smart enough to make capitalism work either. As Lenin said:capitalism must eventually be a world wide system, but (as Marx said) it will eventually sow the seeds of its own destruction anyway. A grass roots socialism or some other system where mutual survival is the goal of everyone will come eventually if human beings survive as a species. (Marx allowed for the possibility that we could not give up capitalism and therefore would not survive).

Because capitalism is a "global" system, we must judge its success or failure on the basis of how well it serves the world population--not just the population of a particular capitalist country. Tilly (I think it was Charles Tilly, might have been Immanuel Wallerstein) held that the average person in the world today is worse off in terms of material welfare then the average person has ever been in the experience of the planet (Earth, that is). I think he might have been right.

Socialism fails only because it works from the top down. Leaders and rulers refuse to apply the principles of justice and equality to themselves. They fear that we could not run a society without their intelligence or skill. Or at least they pretend to have this fear. I think in their hearts they know that we really don't need them and that their bloated salaries and bloated power are an unnecessary drain on the planet and its people.

I agree that if everyone had Asperger's syndrome Capitalism might work as well as any other system. I might not notice the victims of the system or not care about them. But the othr 9,964 out of 10,000 people need some form of community and need to take some responsibility for that community. Come to think about it, I need it too, whether I know it or not.

Last edited by Bobby1933 on 04 Mar 2008, 9:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Economists are concerned with empiricism, and the term is actually empiricists. In fact, Milton Friedman is known for writing that the validity of a theory should rest upon its ability to predict rather than anything else. Frankly, economics already has a branch of its field dedicated to empirical knowledge known as econometrics, where we do statistical analyses on sets of data in order to find answers from it.

Now, that to me seems like a false choice. Scientists and economists work in different fields with different demands. What am I doing, trusting an economist to perform surgery??? Not only that, but how do you perform a laboratory verifiable macroeconomic experiment? You obviously can't and the argument is stupid. Economists are relatively practical and seek the truth, now given that they work in a social science there will be more opportunities for ideological biases, but still, technocracy is not driven by an obsession for truth, and its members are not reformed economists but rather left-wingers who reject the existing structures. Frankly, there are a number of economists who have scientific backgrounds such as David Friedman who got his PhD in Physics, Robin Hanson who got a masters in Physics, Robert Barro is another economist who got a bachelors degree in Physics, and Nobel laureate and aspie Vernon L. Smith got his bachelor in Electrical Engineering. It really seems to me that economists include in their group a lot of people with some scientific background and thus the distinction made is even falser.