Why socialism is bad

Post Reply New Topic

How does it not work though? We have a system that has lasted for over a hundred years, that has increased the well-being of most of the people who dwell within it. Not only that, but you are taking the word of a Marxist of what the capitalist system is or must be, and to me that seems ridiculous. Frankly, all you are doing is asserting something based upon the authority of rather sketchy scholars.


I disagree with that first premise, and therefore we must look at the population of the particular countries that are capitalistic. Not only that, but actually from what I have read, world wide inequality has been declining since 1980 based upon the growth of India and China. Capitalism cannot be blamed for the success of lack thereof of countries that it is barely involved with, just as it cannot be blamed for what happened in the USSR.


Socialism fails because it cannot create a good pricing mechanism for determining who gets what scarce resource in a world where people have different and competing interests. Honestly, I also disagree with your psychological assessment of leadership as if only due to human arrogance and self-delusion I imagine that they do think that the world needs their power.

I don't think that this premise is one of my premises at all. I also don't agree with your set of assumptions either about the capitalistic system as you are approaching it with a Marxian theory, which I reject as invalid, and even label as stupid, as Marx himself did not prove when his revolution would come, how it would necessarily come, how this new system would work, and the predictions he did come up with seem wrong based upon our current economic analyses. As well, Marxian analysis of the capitalist system has been considered outdated in the field of economics for over a hundred years. Frankly, I would argue that under capitalism and not under any other system have we had such a long period of economic growth without economic collapse, and even Marx would not reject that claim as he himself described the system as revolutionary. Heck, given Marx's apparent failure to predict the trends in wages of the working classes in developed nations, and the actions of political systems, and things of that nature, I would argue that Marxism is either flat wrong or unscientific and I know that philosopher of science Karl Popper actually called Marxism unscientific.

I knew I shouldn't have got into this so tired, you're quite right in that inflation is not a system that inherently benefits the rich, just the opposite. The concept I was thinking of but too groggy to makte the connection is interest. The effect of money accruing more money is a major source of wealth, far more so than anything that directly benefits society.

Companies actually uncercutting one another on wages may not always lead to the best performing company, but in order to have any kind of success ultimately a company must always pay workers less than their labour is worth, there always must be a difference between that is called profit. Extending this level of profit by using child labour and paying starvation wages is an existing tactic and this surely cannot be something that increases a persons worthiness.

The idea that capitalism somehow has an efficient system for dividing resources is ultimately the issue I have the most problems with. We get delicacies flown from halfway across the world while people in neighbouring countries starve, the great-great-great grandson of a man who assisted in a military coup 300 years ago lives in fabulous opulence in a colossal mansion and does no labour while a man who helps produce housing lives in abject poverty. While the man who produces food has little, the man who destroys it earns fabulous wealth. Imagine that, wealth goes to the man who destroys the very product that allows us to live, since it's existence is not profitable. And how much work is actually of any value? How many people produce and distribute the things we want and need? A million? Two? Yet how many people are involved in marketing, shifting around money, guarding it, running redundant services? Forty million?

No matter how bad corruption gets, no matter how inefficient and blundering it has to work better than a system that gives nearly everything to entrenched land owners and expends the vast majority of human effort in doing so. Even the worst planned method can't fail to compete favourably with that. No matter how much time and effort is expended inappropriately and on corruption, even so much as 90% would still compare favourably to capitalism.

Rack,

Just one question... do you actually BELIEVE what you have written?

I do not mean that as flippantly as it may appear. I am genuinely interested to know if you have thought your assertions and theories out in a calm reasonable and critically logical manner.

And if you believe that statism is better than capitalism, then I can only hope you end up deciding to live in a statist country. Because when you complain that that isn't what you expected... you'll have deserved the lot of it.

P.S. I know this may come accross as an "argument from intimidation." Which it probably rightfully is in the reasonable sense. I am, however, willing to bear that cross in order to ask the first question. Call it 'theory of mind' problems if you must, I am actually interested to know your response. Even if it is to tell me to "go stick it"

Interest benefits society. It leads for people to give their stored capital to profitable enterprises.


Rack, that is Marxian theory, it is also bullcrap. Labor has no inherent value and the gains by capitalists are not derived directly from labor so much as from capital and entrepreneurship(doing things better/differently than the other guy) Honestly, your ideas are not ones that could be respected by any economist worth his diploma given that the LTV is rejected in favor of the marginal theory of value, which is superior because it accounts for wage differentials, and a deeper understanding of demand, and that you don't accept the idea of a labor market. I'd say that the real existing tactic is paying people as low as you can keep them, as that makes sense.


Yes, and we also produce a lot more than the people in neighboring countries. If you haven't noticed our GDP is higher. Not only that, but the money used by the man who does nothing was still collected and stored up by a person who did something to get that money, and given that you claim the money still comes to him, that capital must then be used to create more wealth, and essentially, as long as the man is making more than he is losing, then his property has been creating more wealth than he has been destroying. As well, all paid work is of value, otherwise nobody would be paying for it. Marketing is a valuable service for giving consumers information about new products, and it is a reason why TV costs less than it could and allows for more of a market set up for television. Shifting around money is allocating capital, something that all societies with capital would need to do, especially one with as many different forms of production as our own, the task is simply a higher level of management above that of the corporations themselves to make sure that those corporations do their jobs. For all societies there will need to be guards of wealth and power as well. Finally, redundancy comes to a question, are the tasks really unnecessary? If they are unnecessary then why hasn't some smart chap dealt with that?

You really do not know what you are talking about. The Soviet Union was very notable for being less egalitarian than we were with no middle class but rather a class of peasants and another of rulers, they polluted areas so bad that levels of retardation for youth born there are enormously high, literally millions of people were directly killed by the government there, shortages of goods were very commonplace, and the entire system was considered a monstrosity with even old economist supporters of the idea recanting of their beliefs because of how terribly wrong it went. Heck, states such as China and India are even gladly switching models from planned to capitalist because of the successes of capitalism, and most people would agree that they are proving wise for doing this too as their growth rates have been high and large numbers of people are having their lives improved, in fact, some scholars have written papers about how this massive capitalistic growth rate is effectively reducing worldwide inequality. Honestly though, I think that Izaak is somewhat justified for his questions on your beliefs as most seem wrong, and the last one seems grossly so.

What you have described is welfare capitalism. The bosses are still in control, but they are tossing bigger bread crumbs. Socialism means public ownership of the means of production. The ideal is that we all belong to one social class, the workers, instead of two social classes, the workers and the owners. And if you don't think that the bosses could pay for socialised medicine, I strongly urge you at Bill Gates tax returns.

Deleted. Double post

Last edited by Rack on 06 Mar 2008, 2:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You know I always wondered how anyone could defend capitalism, I always wondered even if they were right in condemning certain alternatives they had to see the horrible waste involved, and realise how much life could be improved by living in a well run society. But the meaning of the bastion of capitalism eluded me. But there it is, in black and white, repeated as an argument and clearly accepted as a universal truth.

Labor has no inherent value.

Can he really be saying that? Because the implication is clear, if time the only resource people have has no value then people are worth nothing more than a few pence of raw materials. Human life has no value. Is this really what they think? Well not quite. The human development index indeed takes life expectancy into account so a human life is indeed worth something, I'll have to do the maths later to find out what. But human happiness, human freedom, to me the most important factor of all has no value, is of no concern. Economists gleefully declare a success story when people are condemned to hard gruelling labour for someone elses benefit because that increases GDP at a very low cost to life expectancy.

I can't accept that, I can't even begin to accept your measurements of success. But at least for the first time I can see them.

In case you still want clarification, yes I'm serious, I go to work every day to find new ways to make people buy crap. It's a good day if it's crap that won't kill them, it's a bad day if it will kill them instantly. I look through the job pages trying to find a useful, worthwhile job above the poverty line but I've never seen one. Hundreds of jobs that benefit stockholders and no-one else but I can't happily accept the vague root to benefits. Advertising reduces the cost of TV but raises the cost of produce, someone has to do useful work so I can write this crap, and believe me information is normally the last thing I have in mind. And of course there are always billboards, telesales, mobile marketing and direct mail. Do you know it's not even legal to not have an aperture in your house to allow people to throw garbage into?

Living on the benefits of others suffering I'm really too weak and not moral enough to go elsewhere and be the abused rather than the abuser. So I live with the benefits of the money trick and the mighty pound because I know too well how entrenched the safeguards around capitalism are, and experience shows just how far entrenched landowners will go to to defend it, and how suffering will never lead anyone to question it. For as long as the Earth survives people will be distracted by the real hot issues of the day, immigration and overpopulation.

Really? Interesting. The issue I think is that your opponents consider capitalism to be a reasonably well-run society as societies can go. As GMU economists often say though: markets fail and governments fail, let's use markets.


Sure, lets just say that you decided to go off on a walk to North Carolina. That is labor, but it sure ain't benefiting anyone. The value of labor really goes back to the subjective value given to that labor.

No, you are making a mistake. The issue is "inherent", not only that, but you are also drawing the economic idea of value into the ethical idea of human worth, even though these questions are different.

Well, yeah, actually economists often do calculations to determine how much a life can be approximated as worth all of the time. Honestly, you are not recognizing the fact that I am drawing up value from subjective areas rather than seeking an objective way of weighting it, especially given that the conclusion of the labor value is that longevity is the most important element of a person's life, when obviously we might consider the short-lived but brilliant cancer researcher a better boon than the long-lived janitor, so in order to make this distinction, we need something else, and subjectivity seems the best way considering that even utility refers to subjectivity ultimately.

Human happiness and freedom have value, that is why richer societies are freer and spend a lot of money on luxuries. Economists gleefully declare a success story when GDP increases and continues to increase because to them that means that people will later seek to acquire happiness and freedom. Once again, you are assuming the LTV for your point, people always labor for their benefit, the issue is whether coercion exists or not, and given a negative rights framework, capitalism does not tend to have coercion.


You define these things a lot different than I do, and you twist my measures to make them soulless, perhaps as a means to justify your beliefs and in a display of your psychological biases.


Hmm... I wasn't aware that there were a lot of products that if used properly would instantly kill people, assuming that proper use isn't murder of some form. Advertising does impact production, however, even though I know that when advertising the focus of the effort is into grabbing people's desires, the idea is not that people will buy a product without knowing what it is, so it still plays an informatory role.

Advertising hurts people? They often agree in some form or fashion to be advertised to. I wasn't aware that immigration was considered one of the real hot issues. Frankly, I think that the issues with overpopulation really come down to food production, and this ultimately to fuel sources, the green revolution makes our food production dependent on fossil fuel, but that might be limited. Really though, without that worry I would not be much worried about overpopulation.

Comparing Marx and those whe were able to learn from him (Lukach and the Frankfort School people for example) with the likes of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Hayek, Milton Friedman, etc., etc.-- it is not possible for me to agree that the latter were superior thinkers--quite the opposite. Are you saying capitralism is not a global system that affects every corner of the world. I am not sure whether material equality among nations has increased since the 1980's; but equality among human beings certainly has not. It has continuied to go the same direction it has for the past 600 years--rich people are richer than ever before; poor people are poorer and are a greater portion of the world population then ever before. And its going to get worse. Who says its going to get worse? -- The World Bank (a Capitalist institution) for one.

If a man walks to Carolina there may be some inherent benefit (health) but there is certainly an inherent cost and that is time. For all of having one of the highest GDPs in the world quality of life in America is relatively low because of the low amount of free time available. Freedom requires two things, resources and time and the latter is in remarkably short supply under capitalism and has been falling for most of the last century. But this seems to be a factor that is largely ignored.

It doesn't seem coincidental that this is one of the areas where Capitalism fails. If time has no value or is no cost (whichever way you look at it) then it doesn't really matter that the majority of all work, and all rewarded work has no value, produces no output. Perhaps the other resources, the energy consumed and the products used are considered. Or perhaps those who defend capitalism simply cannot conceive of a world without banking, insurance, marketing or the large number of stores in the same location selling exactly the same produce.

As for who this benefits I'm surprised you haven't realised this. A man working on the poverty line earning for himself enough to keep body and soul together and to pay the land barons for the right to live in the place of his birth is doing little to benefit himself. But his employers are sure to do very well out of his efforts as are the entrenched land owners. He benefits himself in that he doesn't need to starve on the streets but I have to say I view that as a good deal worse than coercion.

In case you're curious the product that kills instantly (it would probably be fairer to say directly as it isn't quite instant, though is in a very rapid timeframe) is medicine. Used correctly it will save lives and save people from debilitating and damaging symptoms. Used incorrectly it will kill people. Naturally we're paid to push both uses, but particularly the second as it is the least likely way it will be prescribed normally.

The hot issues of overpopulation and immigration have been so in the tabloid rags for at least the past 100 years and are surprisingly popular despite being patently absurd, so it's good to see you haven't fallen into this trap. In fact your arguments seem well structured and informed all round. Still there's a core issue I don't think we've addressed. Just how good or bad do you think Capitalism is? Assume humans weren't hopelessly immoral and stupid, barring further technological advances and allowing for a similar potential criminal element how much better do you think the world could be? For myself I think the world could be an absolute paradise, virtually unrecognisable next to the mess it's in right now.

And there we disagree, as I would argue that the latter were clearly superior thinkers, especially given that Classical economists gave Marx some of the economic framework he built from, not only that, but as well, the sheer number of thinkers would likely side with the economists as well. I am saying that capitalism is not a system that has ever been completely implemented across the world. Technically, all systems affect all parts of the world, so we would have world-wide communism at the same time as world wide capitalism. Equality between nations and simply across the human race has increased. As well, your statements are factually wrong, anyone who has looked at the likes of John D Rockefeller and Dale Carnegie knows that those 2 were richer than Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, and I think it ends up being 2 or 3 times richer as well. As well, if we mention the past 600 years, we then have to recognize that many capitalist institutions had not arrived yet and true capitalism was a rare thing. Honestly though, we see a few startling examples of growth today where we had more impoverishment in Estonia, and other "Baltic Tigers", in China and India, as well as other Asian nations, and I think the major region that continues to be poor is Africa more so than any other region of the world where there are a few countries that have a negative growth rate.

There may be, or there might not be. There is his effort. Quality of life in America is very high compared to less developed nations as free time is less scarce in America. It is only with comparisons between us and other developed nations that things look bad, and this is partially due to cultural differences as well. Actually, I would say that a major component of the economic issues we've been having has been due to the change in technology and the rise of outsourcing and would say that negative trends would probably be sooner dated back to the 70s or 80s.


Time is a cost, but only relative to other uses of time. Once again, you are not understanding me. I did not argue that there is NO value, but rather no inherent value, which means that the actual value of time is X not necessarily 2 or 3, it could potentially be 0 but I will admit that this is not likely. I tend to doubt that, I think rather that it is those who oppose capitalism do not understand the necessity of such mechanisms such as mechanisms to allocate resources, mechanisms to convey information, and mechanisms to promote variance in method and meet different desires. Even if the produce is the same, the stores cannot all remain in business unless people have different preferences.


I say I view that as a good deal better, as a man does not have to live in the place of his birth but rather can move places. Frankly, the employers aren't really getting a lot from his efforts nor are the land owners as the man you describe is plenty expendable, he provides nothing to society that it couldn't get easily from another.


Ah, medicine, ok. Instantly isn't a fair assessment.

Like I said, I think capitalism is the best we've come up with. The next question is difficult for me, as capitalism is not ideal for a static world at all, so in order for this question to be good, we both must have a lack of stasis but also a stasis, capitalism requires change in order to be of any value though, so if there were no change at all, then socialism may be good as we could fine-tune every mechanism to work perfectly, I just don't see socialism as being dynamic, so even though we saw high Soviet growth rates at the start of their system, it ended with a whimper as time went on.

There's very little I can go on from here, if you believe that a network that spends 5 times as long distributing goods as it does producing them, while offering little in terms of incentivising moral or directly efficient behaviour is as efficient as you can conceive then I can't progress from there. As alien as this outlook is I can't actually prove it's fellatious.

For myself I think time ought to have an implicit value, at least as a minimum, in order to avoid the current situation where people have too little time to live healthily or raise offspring, let alone to forward personal development. I can't help but think that if people were able to work together the resources of the world are easily enough to create a paradise for humans while drastically reducing the harm to animals as well.

I think a man living without leisure access to leisure that provides tens of thousands to his employer and thousands to his landlord is clearly benefitting others beyond himself, and would gladly sacrifice the opportunity to be similarly abused elsewhere for the opportunity to live without this yoke.

So I see Capitalism as an outright failure. It squanders resources, generates perverse values and promotes abuse.

All available evidence contradicts this assertion.

Well, what if the distribution is more important to human welfare than the actual production? Service As well, moral is hard to determine, and "directly efficient" is hard for me to determine the meaning of.


The issue is not "ought" but rather methodology. The assertion is that time does not have implicit value and that nothing does but rather that it all has subjectively assigned value. Honestly, the time they have to live healthily and raise offspring is a historical high in some ways, as well as the resources available to personal development. Essentially speaking you seem to be a utopian socialist, the issue I would raise is how we will still have a dynamic system under such conditions as not only must we grow but also towards where production is truly desired.


Most people have access to leisure. The 80 hour work day is gone and television purchases have been increasing.

But where was the world before capitalism? It was clearly and objectively less productive with even more hierarchical systems than the modern one. What has happened to non-capitalistic attempts at society trying to compete with capitalism? They have unequivocally failed. To me that speaks of success.

Probably most practicioners of the dismal science do prefer some form of capitalism to other economic systems. Also probably most Imams prefer Islam to Judaism. You say this is relevant? Capitalism is based on the assumption that rational people are behaving optimally with complete and accurate information. That is harder to swallow than the things most religious people are required to believe.

People are less healthy than they were 500 years ago all the gain in life expectancy has been made by public health measures and a decline infant mortality. These measures have only a flimsy and probably accidental relationship to the rise of capitalism. Cubans are now healthier than Americans, dispite our efforts to desttroy their economy and infrastructure.

And talk about infrastructure, ours is starting to rot away, something we thought would never happen in the 1940s.
Everybody benefits from sewers, bridges, roads, water systems, emergency services, etc, etc. but no one can make a profit from them except through bribes and cost overruns. And our medical system? Other posters have already said more then enough about that! Economic profit is not useful when it comes to serving the needs of human beings