Socialism vs capitalism

[Kriminal99]

The system is never run by for what the people need. It's naive to think otherwise. You are saying the average person knows what's best for the country better then the people in charge. Fair enough- but support that premise.

 

The customer is NOT always right. The customer wants free pie. To bad- it's bad for overall business. The customer wants to eat naked while smoking a hooka. To bad- it's bad for overall business. Regulation of behaviors is a vital component of any business OR government. The question is how much regulation...

 

But isn't that 90% getting what they want- which was what you said earlier? also, describing staff appreciation events as corruption is a little selfish.

 

There's a faith based response. There's no evidence for this on the long term, since it hasn't been done before. The free market will give you an understanding of people's desires, perhaps- but desire is a far cry from need, and most importantly- I can't stress this enough- the free market will only give you an understanding of the desires of those people wealthy enough to buy into the process. If you have any care for those who have too little to participate in the system, you cannot trust the market to handle it. Which brings me to my next point...

 

 

 

The environment CANNOT buy into the system, and thus CANNOT influence the free market. The "amount of pollution the system can handle and recover [from]" is obviously not decided upon by the free market, it's an ecological issue. The free market tells you the amount of pollution people will tolerate in their backyards. And as long as we can throw pollutants to other parts of the world, people won't even have to worry about that!

 

 

 

Treating the symptoms, not the cause, but that's an issue for another thread.

 

 

 

This is rediculous. Since when does "whatever gets people the most amount of money" equate with "making the most amount of people happy"? Balanced belief in the free market system as the best alternative is one thing, naivity is another. The free market system is based on winners and losers- zero sum theory. It's really a tangental benefit that often, people can come to mututal, non-zero sum interactions. But the basic premise in competition is "I win to the exclusion of you." This means happiness is not a priority, people's contentment cannot be commodified.

 

And all this neglects the basic premise that people desire what's best for them. There's huge things wrong with that idea- from the short term thinking most people work in to the long term detrmints of many habits we're into, which most people simply don't understand. Regulation is not the "great red menace."

 

...and this may be my longest post ever...

 

In a free market economy, the people decide what they need and want and that is what they spend money on. The best I can make out of your claim is that people dont know what they need or want, to which I would have to say is an unethical claim. I believe that by definition, what a person thinks they need or want should be considered what they need or want. You can try and convince them to like something, but what they spend their money is still the ultimate indication of what they need or want. As for whats good for the country, well the country is made up of a bunch of people. If the majority of these people choose secondary education institute A over B because they feel A is better and is run according to better ideas, and B goes out of business, then the secondary education system is being run according to what people want and need according to this reasoning.

 

In any system there are limited resources and unlimited wants. You are right that no resturaunt will give you free pie with no strings attached or withotu expecting anything in return. But if there was such a resturaunt, its existence would make the strategy of the other resturaunts "wrong" because everyone would go to the free pie place. The fact that noone can give away pie is what makes any one resturaunt that cannot acceptable. That pie cannot be given for free is PROVEN by the fact that a restuaraunt which does not can stay in business, and is more profitable than one which does give away pie. In a government run resturaunt, things which supposedly cannot be done are just some hairless monkey's opinion.

 

No it isn't 90% of the people getting what they want- People who go to a buffet go there to eat, it is only the staff that would care how the buffet line looks because it is their creation. While you might say patron's derive some benefit from seeing an untouched buffet line whcih looks pretty, it would not compare to the benefit of being able to eat whenever they need to. Of course, in a free market this would be proven by the fact that people would not go to a buffet where the people busted a tude for getting food from it. (If I was correct) The idea of that point was that when 90% of the people come in, they absolutely HAVE to let the patrons mess up the buffet line and thats the only reason they allow it.

 

As for the staff appreciation events: I do not pay for the food hall to run so that the staff can appreciate themselves. I pay for food. It is entirely possible to run a food hall without this type of occurence imposing on customers, therefore it is uncompetitive that they do this. From their point of view, they are there to do a job, and they do that job in exchange for the money that they recieve. If they do not like the job, they are supposed to find one that better suits them if one exists and they can. (if no such other job exists than they accept the job and everything it entails) If a company can not find any one to do a job, they raise the benefits of doing it. Maybe throwing parties such as I mentioned is worth more than it costs as benefits to the employees. But a free market company would have to add to the cost of them the discomfort that it causes the customers because they depend on the customers comfort level to stay in business. Publicly run food halls may not look at this cost because they have captive audiences. This is corruption. Needless to say privately run resturaunts do not have staff appreciation parties that impose on their customers.

 

Once again I will say that even if a person is not capable of determining what they really need, no other person is in a position to be more capable of doing so. Claiming otherwise is grossly unethical and I will gladly deal with any counter argument or example.

 

As for the issue of wealthiness... The first thing to recognize here is that you get money by succesfully meeting the demand of other people, how much money you get represents how many people and how well you satisfied their demands. Secondly, lets use the restuaraunt analogy again. Poor or rich, noone wants to go to a restuaraunt and be treated like **** (for simplicity's sake, forget about those off comedy restuaraunts for now) so its irrelevant in this case. The only time this is an issue is when rich people have a different want then poor people, BECAUSE of the fact they are rich to some degree. If a particular want is shared equally between the two, there will be 1 rich person for every poor person who wants it. The types of wants that are going to be different are superior and inferior goods, and these are the things that are supposed to serve as motivation to benefit more people and make more money.

 

The enviornment is also not a consious entity and it is irrelevant how much polution it can "handle" outside of how overpolluting it effects US the people living in it. Perfect flow of information is a factor here though, meaning we have to know how it is going to effect our living conditions or those of our children in order to be able to accurately judge how much money we want to spend on pollution abatement in order to maintain our quality of living.

 

The free market is not based on winners and losers. The limit of a free market economy as the sources of market failure (poor flow of information etc) approach 0 is a socialist economy. Meaning when 2 companies compete, the end result is both having similar prices and providing the best service possible. Only when a company fails to meet consumer demand or prices uncompetively would they go out of business. Its the same on the job market side, if a job pays more people are supposed to populate that market until the job pays the less than some other job, at which point people choose that job instead, until all jobs pay the same. (Except some jobs require more of you or more training so noone would work those jobs for the same pay as easier ones)

 

Again you mention people not knowing what they need. Ill add a few more things to my earlier comments on this. If you believe a person needs something that they do not believe they need, there is nothing wrong with trying to convince them. If you cannot convince them however, then you should not only accept what they do believe as "what they need" for all practical purposes, you might also want to confront the possibility that it is in fact YOU who is wrong.

 

You speak of our short term thinking as being detrimental. This is the one thing I cannot disagree with- There is a terrible, terrible loophole in the way that the human mind works that makes it the case that were we to destroy the planet earth the day after the last person alive to decide about it now were to die, there would be no valid argument as to why we shouldnt do it. That loophole is the fact that the human sense of morality is composed of an animalistic sense of power and a tenancy to generalize. In the aforementioned case, noone who would suffer exists yet to do anything to forcibly stop the person from destroying the planet in the future, and while the generalization that doing things good for other people benefits you may hold to some degree while a person is alive, if you will be dead by the time the person you are benefitting will live, we have no reason to believe that benefitting that person could come back to you in any way shape or form.

[motherengine]

maybe in a perfect world a capitalist-based country like the united states would set an annual income (or equivalent) bar and demand that those who gross a certain amount [i.e. the rich] would have to sacrifce a certain amount to fund the oiling of the machinery and causes directly involved with stamping out poverty. trade the cars and the "cribs" for the help needed to establish actual rights in place of hierarchical ones. in a perfect world, though, we probably wouldn't have gotten into this mess to begin with.

[Beelzebub]

Capitalism is natural. Socialism is completely unnatural.

Most animals live in a world of complete capitalism - also known as complete lack of society.

Humans however live in varying degrees of socialism -or society.

Capitalism vs. Socialism is the same thing as Nature vs. Society.

In nature the strong win and weak lose. In society people work together to help the weak and the strong don't win as much.

Nature doesn't care for the well-being of living creatures, it cares for its existence.

Socialism stops evolution. Capitalism stops happiness.

[Southtown]

Capitalism is natural. Socialism is completely unnatural.

Most animals live in a world of complete capitalism - also known as complete lack of society.

Humans however live in varying degrees of socialism -or society.

Capitalism vs. Socialism is the same thing as Nature vs. Society.

In nature the strong win and weak lose. In society people work together to help the weak and the strong don't win as much.

Nature doesn't care for the well-being of living creatures, it cares for its existence.

Socialism stops evolution. Capitalism stops happiness.

Did you know Strong's Concordance interprets Beelzebub as the "dung god"? LOL

 

I think that both economies can be considered "society" because they both determine a structure of coexistence and a heirarchy of wealth or status. Capitalism ideally allows equal opportunities for all people to become wealthy, whereas socialist individuals have their fates sealed by authority, chosen or abandoned at the sole discretion of the wealthy. The difference is not the presence of natural selection in capitalism but of free will.

 

Sadly, with American corporate lobbyism, or legal bribes, companies (the wealthy) have more pull with the government than the people (the peasants) do, creating a quasi-socialist situation, and the accompanying pitfalls of such get mistakenly attributed to the intended capitalist ideology.

 

But I agree that altruistic behavior is not natural, neither is it practiced. One would wonder how humans contracted the idea of morality in the first place... providence? Regardless of the rules placed on them, it is the line between generosity and selfishness upon which humans dichotomize sociologically. Thus, humanity must decide between divinity and animosity.

[Kriminal99]

Capitalism is natural. Socialism is completely unnatural.

Most animals live in a world of complete capitalism - also known as complete lack of society.

Humans however live in varying degrees of socialism -or society.

Capitalism vs. Socialism is the same thing as Nature vs. Society.

In nature the strong win and weak lose. In society people work together to help the weak and the strong don't win as much.

Nature doesn't care for the well-being of living creatures, it cares for its existence.

Socialism stops evolution. Capitalism stops happiness.

 

I dont think thats completely true. I think socialism is a kind of idea case of capitalism, and nature demonstrates it to some degree in some situations. When you compare a wolf to a bunch of rabbits, you realize no number of rabbits could kill a wolf. When you compare a wolf to other wolves, you realize that 2 wolves could likely kill anyone 1 wolf. (any member of the same species is likely to have a similar amount of power over each other) Hence the beginnings of socialism... If one wolf goes around screwing over all the other wolves (by stealing their food or something) to a point where they must fight back to survive, then the other wolves will simply gang up on the one wolf. Therefore even if a wolf is slightly stronger than the others he must consider the needs of the other wolves or risk getting killed.

 

Socialism just seems to be what results from natural capitolism when balance is introduced into the situation.

[questor]

this discussion has been hashed over millions of times. altruism only works if there is a quid pro quo so that no one feels he is having to do all the work and not being paid enough for his labors. why should i work for you? that is socialism. shouldn't i work for myself and my family? shouldn't everyone do the same? that is capitalism. the only problem with capitalism is when people cheat the system. read Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand if you want to get a good knowledge of capitalism. shouldn't i try to become the best i can be by educating myself and working hard? am i also supposed to pay for those who are too lazy to work or don't care about an education? do you work for yourself or do you work to give it to others ? what do they do to deserve it ?

[Southtown]

shouldn't i try to become the best i can be by educating myself and working hard? am i also supposed to pay for those who are too lazy to work or don't care about an education? do you work for yourself or do you work to give it to others ? what do they do to deserve it ?

Right, socialism claims that affording the apathetic their just-fruits is inhumane. But there's absolutely no way to help those who don't want to help themselves... lead-a-horse-to-water and what-not. Capitalism presents opportunity for people to help themselves, but when it ceases to allow the apathetic to be poor, it does so at the expense of the efforts put forth by the opportunists. Then the opportunities dwindle, and the decadent cycle of socialism begins.

[Southtown]

this discussion has been hashed over millions of times. altruism only works if there is a quid pro quo so that no one feels he is having to do all the work and not being paid enough for his labors.

Well, altruistic society is only theory, and any experimental prototypes could only include willing participants. A perfect society must be just that... perfect.

 

I said humanity must decide between divinity and animosity, but I must clarify. The choice we have to be either altruistic or egoistic, generous or selfish, is a subjective one. So then statistical probability says near half the population will be altruist and the rest will be egoist. We can add to that a biological leaning toward survival instincts and a frequently illicit pursuit of pleasure which would leave us an almost totally egoist species (whether one subscribes to an inherently sinful nature or not.)

 

A realistic society must invoke controls for the latter personality type, and an altruistic government would not qualify. The only way to control an egoist is with personal incentive, as you've described, or by poverty/prison as ideal capitalism would have it. If we attempt our experimental altruist prototype in a realistic way, with both altruistic and egoistic participants, then of course it will fail by the heavy sucking effect of the selfish portion.

 

I would prefer a more localized infrastructure, as in the native American tribes. World-scale population, though, requires cooperation between smaller governments. In this need, authority would serve well to police the inter-tribal relations, or maybe serve as a conduit. But other than setting and enforcing communications behavior, higher authority should be powerless over tribes. I support small governments because large scall governments forget their purpose is the people and focus on their own goals and desires, and basically contrive a global prison system in the long run.

[questor]

if you want to go Native American, go to New Mexico. the Navajos there may let you cut your wrists and come in as a blood brother. i hear they pay no taxes, receive a monthly

stipend from the gov., and get to play bingo every day. sounds like a good life to me. you don't need altruism, because the gov. takes care of everything.

 

as far as the rest of the discussion, only those who are dissatisfied with their life want to change it. usually they think they deserve a larger piece of the pie because they are special, unusually intelligent, forward thinking, or have been treated unfairly by the producers. the thought of getting more education or working harder does not enter the picture. how can anyone else be worth more money just because he works harder or has a more upwardly mobile job or more ambition, or more talent ? it just isn't fair, so maybe we should be socialists or communists, then i can get what I want. this type of thinking has wrecked numerous societies and caused millions of deaths. just look at Russia, China,

Cuba and other countries involved in this idiocy. if you want to change something, change yourself, make yourself valuable to the market, choose a job with a future, don't smoke dope or knock up girls. stop sitting around dreaming that someone else should share their money with you. prepare yourself, then go out and work for what you want.

[Southtown]

I don't know why you are so abrasive. I'm just throwing around ideas. Are you against that?

 

In my experience, working hard gets you more work, not more reward. This is because despite any merit earned, the people over you would prefer to stay that way.

 

Also, the only way to leverage a corrupted system is to be corrupted yourself.

 

P.S. What if all I want is dope and girls?

[questor]

i guess i'm abrasive because people are constantly trying to re-invent the wheel. if you want dope and girls, two things will happen. dope will ruin your life and prevent you from having extra money to pursue girls, who are very expensive. for me the rules of life are quite clear:

 

1. you are responsible for yourself. your success, whatevery path you choose, will depend upon the talent and effort you put into it. failures are those who wait for others to improve their lives.

2. your quality of life is what you make it. you don't have to be wealthy, but you do have to choose a clean, healthy lifestyle.

3. your choices are very important, the friends you choose, the spouse, the food, the books, the job,your daily habits. if one chooses to take dope, chase women, smoke, drop

out of school, not study, not take good physical care of himself, he will be a failure.

4. treat others with the respect you want for yourself.

that's it. pretty simple, but look at the success stories and make your own judgements.

[lindagarrette]

Socialism and capitalism are recent human constructs. Communism is the natural order. Look at how primitive man lived. A family is a good example of a comunistic system. so is a tribe.

[freeztar]

The natural order is exactly that....the natural order. Humans cannot dictate such things. Our actions are meaningless in such a broad sense.

[questor]

Communism is not a natural order in human society. we do not live in tribes. most human beings are competitive and respond best to a system that gives rewards based upon achievement. those that prefer societies based upon living from the efforts of others are becoming increasingly rare and are generally dictatorships that force the citizens to provide for the leaders. communism and socialism are for those who think they will be able to be part of the ruling class and live off the production of others, thereby avoiding

having to achieve for themselves. you do not find ambitious, hard working , self-motivated people looking for these alternative systems.

[Southtown]

Socialism and capitalism are recent human constructs. Communism is the natural order. Look at how primitive man lived. A family is a good example of a comunistic system. so is a tribe.

Then explain the rise of America, and the fall of Russia.

[lindagarrette]

Then explain the rise of America, and the fall of Russia.

Actually, it's Communist China that's rising and America that's falling. But that's not the issue. No nation has a perfect system. Political ambition is probably the main defect.

 

Next to Humanism, Communism is the fairest of the "isms." In theory, all members of the group are provided for and contribute however they are best able. That means, if one member is retarded, for example, and another is a genius, the genius will obviously be expected to produce something of more value whereas the retard will do more basic work. No slackers allowed, however.

[questor]

Linda, China is abandoning communism as quickly as it can. that is why they are becoming a a world power. since you seem to admire communism, what type position and work would you be involved in in that type society ?