Why Socialism (and Communism) Fails and why our society is being destroyed

1). What elements of socialism create a better society?
2). Even if elements of socialism did create a better society, you're presuming that individuals are morally responsible for doing everything they can to make society better (even at a cost to themselves) as long as the overall benefit goes up. Why do you presume that? What objective moral code do you have to say that individuals are morally responsible for each other?

 

I think it's better to take aspects from different philosophies, as most of them don't work alone.

 

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/middle-ground.html

 

I am middle class and strongly beleive in conservative views, the UK is way overtaxed also.. 40% tax when you over 60k per annum, and i dont get any funding for university from the government .

I liked your post and agreed with it all the way .

 

Communism wouldn't work because people with crappy jobs
( I.E. Factory work, farmers ) are working their asses off, while some doctor sits there and does next to nothing. Is that fair to the farmers? Hell no.
They will take notice to that sooner or later, and since they are getting paid equally then why work?
Why work your ass off when you can sit around and make just the same as any lawyer or doctor?
No one would work as hard if their paycheck wasn't affected by it.

 

And what about all of those who do not have a job.
Do you know how high the unemployed rate is in just the US?

-The word "rate" is hyperlinked to CNN.

 

No, read the first post thoroughly about communism and you'd see why communism doesn't work, not just because people with 'crappy jobs'. Take China for instant, there are very rich business men and there are also very poor farmers. You have a wrong idea about communism.

 

Revamping this up, I really enjoyed reading ALL of these posts as I have been thinking about this kind of stuff for a while now in Government Class. Haha.

But in seriousness, Libertarianism and Capitalism are the key free 'governments'. Oxymoron..free government..please..

Example: Law; Freedom of Speech, without it, we have the freedom of speech. We have laws that grant freedom, but only take another right we have as humans away.

 

Capitalism is effectively free market, not freedom as far as civil rights go.

Socialism uses tax dollars into public programs: Education, subways, homeless shelters, etc. While this doesn't restrict anyone from opening their own homeless shelters, the government effectively puts smaller competitors out of business as their have a virtually unlimited source of funds. Hence the name free market capitalism.

 

Pure capitalism leads to 3 fundamental issues.

1. Underproduction of public goods - sometimes producing public goods cannot possibly be profitable - schools, roads, water/telephone to far away places.

2. Given the chance, oligopoly/monopolies will form - strong tendency for business to combine in order to undercut smaller business. We are NOT in an atomistic market. So prices to abuse the consumer, and lower production costs of bigger businesses...

3. Negative effects of business - IE, what prevents business to dump pollution in the river to save money?

 

In the UK, about 80% of professionals' (rich) kids go to university, while only 20% of manual workers' (poor) children do. This is when primary and secondary schooling is compulsory.

So just as one example, if you privatize the education system, make it entirely voluntary and base funding on (regressive) fees, you get a fair proportion of the population turned into proles with nary a primary school education. That's the future Sythe and the other libertarians seem to be striving for

 

If you privatize the education system, you have private schools popping up - lots of them - with competitive prices. This causes prices to go down, which in turn makes it possible to get a better education at cheaper prices. True, some may not attend at all, but those are the people who would've not paid attention in school anyways and end up just feeding off the public wallet.

 

What on Earth makes you think that those things cannot be profitable?

In an laissez-faire style economy, monopolies cannot form.

High prices do not abuse the customer. The customer chooses to purchase the product offered.

It's generally against most businesses self-interest to allow dramatic pollution.

In any case, there's nothing wrong with polluting a river unless it directly harms people - in which case those harmed may take it up with the company.

You think that if the entire playing field were changed, the nature of the schooling system would remain the same? In such a situation, the high demand for education would drive prices down. It wouldn't be very difficult to get into a reasonably good school for a reasonable price.

 

What's below are NOT my words, but a good explanation of why public goods may be be under produced.

A public good has the feature that the marginal cost of an additional individual enjoying it is zero. Examples include an army, street lighting, radio signals or information. If there is an army defending one person in a country, a street lamp for one person, a radio signal for one person, then it is with no extra cost that two or more people use the service. For information, whose character as a public good was emphasised by Joseph Stiglitz, an old aphorism of philosopher Bertrand Russell holds true,

"If I have one apple and you have one apple and we exchange apples, we both have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange ideas, then we both have two."

The problem of the public good is that if people can use the good or service at the same time and cannot be excluded from its use (which with a cost they sometimes can, e.g. encoding a Wifi signal with a password) then people can "free-ride" on its use. Consumers will not be contributing to the costs of production. Because producers cannot recoup enough expenses, there will be an underproduction of public goods. There is therefore a role for state intervention. The government through taxation can get all people to contribute.

Why? We are not an atomistic market, therefore the tendency to profit more (and reduce production costs) will cause clumping in the market, which develops into monopolies/oligopolies. Some products are just destined for such: IE airplane production. Only someone who can offer a very high investment can make airplanes, thus you won't have many airplane producers.

Sure, consumers "choose" their price in an atomistic market. This however is not such a utopia.

This is true. Generally, self-interest will drive for a reduction in negative externalities. However, frequently, profit is the greater of the self-interests. And WHO's going to take it up with the company? You can't just run in commando style. There's needs to be something in between.

 

The cost is not the same between one person using a water supply and 100 million people using the same water supply. Much more funding is needed for piping, filtering, etc.

In any case, I didn't consent to the taxation.

In a truly laissez-faire market, there are no intellectual property rights. It is extremely difficult for a large corporation to form.

Also, if an entire market, say, the automobile industry, becomes fully controlled by a single corporation, there is nothing wrong with that unless that corporation begins to charge unreasonably high prices. If such a thing happens, then doubtless some entrepreneur comes along with a little capital and a good idea and is vastly more successful than the corporation. That is competition.

Generally, consumers are not forced by a corporation to purchase a commodity against their will. They choose to buy it, either because they want it, or they need it. They willingly fork over their own money for the product, and in doing so, agree to the exchange.

If a company harms you with its pollutants, you can treat it just as you might treat a man who punches you in the face. You can try to bring them to a private court, or if they refuse, run down to the local media outlet who would very probably appreciate your story of the "big corporation hurting the little guy".

 

Oh come on Shredder, you don't have to win every battle. My point is simple: Sure it's not going to be the SAME, but public goods have a costly infrastructure. The logic in the previous argument stands.

Start your own country then...

Why do you advocate for something that you know won't form? There's utopia then there's reality. And since when were you advocating against intellectual property rights?

Monopolies will only form when none such are present. IE: Operating systems. Sure, now's there's Windows, Mac, Linux even - but there shouldn't be any pretense of who actually dominates the market. Single corporations WILL FORM, and oftentimes if you're American like me.. you'll wonder what happened to them? The government breaks them apart like Bell Labs etc....

Prices are controlled on two dimensions. Supply and demand. Consumers control demand, but if supply can be controlled, I'd say the supply is the greater factor.

It turns out that life really isn't that simple. How do you know who's doing it? How do you know how much? Who has the authority to investigate?

 

I will reply to all arguments.

Public infrastructure isn't really that expensive. It's nothing that couldn't be supplied by the free market.

A gang of criminals takes over your neighborhood, and demands safety money. By your own logic, you should not protest, you should not fight back, you should move out and start your own neighborhood.

How do you suppose that such a society would come to be without people such as myself constantly arguing with others, and convincing them?

I have always been.

Microsoft's dominance over the market is allowed by the intellectual property laws. If such laws were scrapped, they would lose their majority extremely quickly.

Supply and demand are not separate - they are very closely linked. It is demand that drives supply. If there is a huge demand for gasoline, then there is a huge incentive for people to search for oil and refine it. If one man controls the entire supply of a noncritical resource, and charges exorbitant prices, people will not resign themselves to the situation and simply purchase the resource, they will either stay away from it, or get it from the black market.

How do you know who's doing it with the presence of a militarized group of criminals nearby? It turns out that it's really not that difficult to see who's pouring pollutants into the river, or smog into the sky, or sewage onto the streets.

 

Who are you to know or say how expensive it truly is? What evidence? I've taken a variety of college-level business classes - the price certainly isn't trivial.

Let's try another example. Protection. We have a military - private contracting for such a need would not be profitable.

In economics, a public good is a good that is non-rivaled and non-excludable. This means, respectively, that consumption of the good by one individual does not reduce availability of the good for consumption by others; and that no one can be effectively excluded from using the good. No particular good matches this exact definition. It doesn't mean that there aren't products closer to this concept than the private good.

You can't fight the hand that feeds you, unless you chose not to be fed.

Your right. It won't. Your non-funded army would be crushed by any other countries' tax-funded military.

Once again, that is utopian. The reality is we are NOT in an atomistic market, so both can be manipulated with some independence.

Not all negative externalities of business can be seen or touched. Even the ones you can see/touch aren't easy to regulate.