My father lived on a kibutz for a few years during the 70s. It's where I really got the idea from. They aren't failing because of capitalism, taxation isn't a part of capitalism. But even if they were left alone, they would collapse. Just as socialist systems always do.

But that's not the point. Saying 'they don't work' is no reason to force other people into communism. People who want to be free to live their own lives. People should be allowed to live communially (this doesn't mean having to live on a Kibutz. It can be done economically, through organizations. Just distribute wealth, to use to interact with capitalists) if they want, but what you're saying is 'we need successful people, so we're going to enslave them as well, regardless of what they want'.

Yes i know, that is what the media tells you
but i leared long time ago to NOT trust media, and follow simple logic

- who told you that they activist movments in the Middle East becomming unpopular?
if you ever lived in Israel, then you know how wrong they were (those who told you that)

- if we will follow the Bibble idea of "death for death", and count the ammount
of citizens murdered by USA during its invasions to the Middle East + How many citizens were killed by Israelis
you will see that the West Imperialistic USA is even worse then the activism movments, that even
though they did killed many civilians, it is still far from the numbers the west achived.
(dont forget the USA nuclear bomb, and all the children, women, old, and disabled that were murdered) 

- when USA invaided Iraq, thay said it was for freedome, to free the Iraqi people from dictatorship but:
   1. no one aked to be freeid          2. usa did it to gain controll over the oil 

CocaColaAddict,

Good question, well-posed and I hope no one wants to flame over it.

In my opinion, thinking of Capitalism and Socialism as political doctrines (I.e. things that have any associations with RIGHTS and FREEDOMS of man) is wrong. Both are political-economic frameworks, and both certainly tend or appear to be associated with the promotion or neglect of certain rights, but they aren't. Capitalism is the birth-child of the Industrial Revolution, brought forward by the doctrine of Liberalism. What I mean is, thinking of capitalism as being associated with Western Democracies and their brand of Liberalism is anecdotal, as countries like China are unequivocally Capitalist bastions whose state-endorsed RIGHTS and FREEDOMS are similar to previous Socialist configurations, but are not tied directy to the government's hand in economic matters. The government essentially has the right to interfere, to any degree or maginitude in the private sphere in China, but they generally don't (when it comes to the cities on the coast, the inland and western provinces are a different matter all together).

Socialism is a completely different kettle of fish. The word "socialism" is so ambiguous and wrought with conotation and blurry significance that the term really doesn't define anything in particular. People often associate Socialism with Marxism -> Communism. Marx himself sometimes refers to Communism as "s"ocialism, but actual "Socialism" is kind of a made up term. To Marx (who, ironically, most "socialist" minded people look to for intellectual leadership), Socialism, as it has been realized in the 20th century, is just as bad as Capitalism. Marx' beef with Capital isn't that people aren't sharing or that some are richer than others, it's that the real and the concept of "capital" deprives peole of their human-essence.

Socialism, as I think we are talking about here, is the crude variety which simply asserts that the State is the better determinant of economic prosperity. That is, the government should be in charge of (more so than in Capt.) the distribution of wealth because Capitalism generally fails to distribute the wealth evenly, often times when it is appallingly apparent that money could be much better divided.

It comes down to that. And, personally, though I agree that there are instances where the government would be better suited to determining where money should go via taxation and spending, the market will always be the better determinant of where money should go. It's in the nature of the beast -- the market is the totality of the interests of all parties involved, just like a language or an art form. At the end of the day, the thing will never be perfect, but it will suffice.

PS - To all Americans who think Socialized medicine is the way to go, take it from a Canadian, when wait times are 8hours to get a broken leg seen by a doctor and your governement's expenditures on health-care represent 53% of their budget and are rising, you'll appreciate the private system you have.

Naz

Flat out wrong. Clearly you were too busy flinging turds at anyone who disagrees with you to read some actual literature on socialism. Are you just making this stuff up as you go along? Your description of socialism is incompatible with the theories that socialists support. Unless you are speaking of a society being "classed" as socialism when it reaches this threshhold, in which case: welcome to page 13 of this thread. You might want to go back and check all those posts I made where I specifically don't call a society socialist or capitalist, trying to get the point accross that both capitalist and socialist economic theories are actively implemented in society right now.

"...not have to pay a toll? Socialism" Yes, the economic theories of socialism are being applied in this instance.

If you meant the economic theories being applied were not socialistic: again, do some research. "Socialists" advocate nationalisation of the means of production to varying degrees. Just because you're not nationalising actual direct production like factories doesn't make it "not socialism". Wanting universal healthcare is an example of a slightly further degree of implementation of socialistic economic theories. Some people want those factories nationalised. I'm not one of them. I think that is (far) less efficient.

"...the argument for public infrastructure and emergency services is that you can't make money providing them, they can't be anything but perfectly alligned with capitalism."

You're saying profit-less services are perfectly aligned with capitalism. Your words not mine. Why even present that? Some sort of inane "test" to see if someone who disagrees with you can distinguish black from white? The conclusion is a contradiction and the premise is false too. Great. It makes so little sense that whatever point you're trying to make amongst the flaming is lost. Obviously you can make money from infrastructure and services. That comes from such services actually having value. You could privately own them, you could publicly own them. In the case of infrastructure and services, public ownership is simply more efficient. Which is the whole idea in applying socialist economic theories to these.

Not even came as a bonus when Hussein tried to take over Kuwait?

I went to a small hick highschool in the country in Indiana.

We had to pass a class in logic to graduate. Was this that unusual?

Should a fundamental human right need to be asked for?

. . . and try telling that to all of the Iraqi women with purple thumbs, that voted for the first time, and those who have decided to not wear veils now that it is no longer law to wear them.

Not our primary reason. But that is a subject for another day.

And what if the same happened under socialism, and nothing was done to bring in tourism money? The government would become broke. They would be unable to keep offering people their free health and cheap cars.

You keep missing the whole point: Economics isn't magic. You can never have truly free stuff. The only reason it seems free is because the cost is being absorbed from somewhere else. Just because the costs aren't visible to you doesn't mean there are no costs. Somebody pays for all of that "free" stuff. Always somebody has to pay, no exceptions.

In any case, new flu isn't really turning out to be any worse than the standard flu in the USA. Frankly, Mexico never had much of a medical system; that's probably why they had so much trouble with it. Our medical system in the USA may have its problems, but at least it works.

Nah - it seems the smaller schools teach more than the big ones in our system. I went to a small college that taught logic, and the only reason I'm learning any logic at my large university is because it's so fundamental to Computer Science.

Correct, although there arises the question of narrow vs broad definitions. It is not recommended that the same word be used for two definitions if it is important to retain the distinctions between the broad and the narrow definitions of the word.

In other words: It might help to agree on a definition of "socialism" sometime . . .

Interestingly, the newspaper from the state that I live in had an artical saying that there was a survey about government control. Alot of people (30% to 50% depending on the country) in Australia, India, China, some european countries and even the U.S want the government to take more control. The artical said that the findings indicated many people want the government to have a framework that is more "socialist". Apparantly people's greatest fear now is anarchy.

In Australia at least, this is rarely heard of. The reason why people die on the waiting lists is because not enough people are organ donors.

I'm not a Christian, but my concept of enlightened self-interest definitely includes the well-being of all my fellow humans.

That's both because we're a social species and simply need each other for comfort and productivity *and* because when we get crowded, our capacity for violence amongst ourselves has too many chances for expression. We're very like bonobos and chimpanzees in both those respects, but unfortunately we also have all these crazy tools and most of our groups have been overbreeding for millennia.

*ahem*

"You might want to go back and check all those posts I made where I specifically don't call a society socialist or capitalist, trying to get the point accross that both capitalist and socialist economic theories are actively implemented in society right now."

For the nth time, I'm not labelling our societies as socialist. I'm making the argument that socialist economic theories are actively implemented in our societies as well as capitalist (and other) theories.

I've been putting up with people pretending socialism is something else the whole frigging thread.  Lieu specifically defined it as public control of the means of production, then went and did the same screwup everyone else has been making.  Ignorance of the definition is bad enough, I'm not putting up with someone using the proper definition and then fucking it to hell anyway.

I postulate an ass monkey market theory that includes our current copyright laws and mandatory buggery of the populace by the politicians, all production is to be owned by ass monkeys.  Our system is now a hybrid of capitalism and ass monkey economics.  Grasp the flaw in your logic yet?

With you in it.  Where do you find all your perfect worker drones that do everything for the good of humanity?  I'm a lazy procrastinator, I'd love to slack off.

Something you work for isn't free anyway.  Money isn't required for cost, it's just an advancement on the barter system.  Instead of trading pickles for a new roof, you sell pickles for money and use money to pay for a new roof.  Time is the actual resource you're expending for things.

But that's only because treating 'Christianity' like a unified nation-state or consistent ideology is sillier than half the sloppy typing in this thread. Every social system has economic aspects. The roots of the English word are in a Greek word that roughly translates as "household management." In other words, everybody needs food, fibre, and shelter.

You can't get into arguments about social status, metaphysics, or art until you have 'the necessities' covered. And then there's the problematic fact that things get rapidly and steadily more complicated once you add complex (possibly autonomous) technology to the mix and put that mix in a highly overpopulated environment.

The real problem for ardent lovers of late-20th free market rhetoric is that they have no answer for the core critique in Das Kapital: money is not the root of all evil, it is the ultimate abstraction--and as such it is a profoundly corrosive element of larger social systems that use it. Corrosives can do all sorts of handy things in the short term, e.g. etching circuits on microchips, but in the long-term aggregate they tend to be destructive. Schumpeter types can crow all they want about 'creative destruction,' but as a humble citizen with no great aspirations to fabulous wealth, I'd rather have a bit more stability in the total political economy and that requires some corrosion-resistant public policies in a world that requires money almost as much as it requires food, fibre, and shelter.

You could have just said no, it would have been less typing.  It probably wont matter, but I'll make it more obvious.

My brilliantly comedic theory was supposed to point out that the inclusion of basic concepts that predate the philosophy by hundreds or thousands of years, does not make pre-existing conditions a hybrid of the new theory and whatever system they have already been using.  Public roads predate socialism.  Public roads were never invalidated by capitalism.  Public roads are not socialism any more than the existence of oxygen in the atmosphere is socialism.  Theory neutral and pre-existing make a hybrid not.

For those of you that take yourselves way too seriously for your own good, I make no serious claim to comedic genius.  That too was sarcasm.