Is socialism actully bad and can you explain why?

Is the Mona Lisa bad? I think it's very overrated - others disagree. Nothing I can say will convince them, because there is no truth value in my claim that it's not aesthetically pleasing. Neither is there any truth value in claims that socialism or capitalism are superior. At the end of the day it's all aesthetics.

Where do you find beauty? Over time I've come to focus more on distributed sovereignty than capitalism itself. I am currently in the Republic of San Marino on the Italian Peninsula - a small sovereign nation. Perhaps you might see beauty in the order and security Italian annexation/EU membership would provide.

Again, nothing we say to each other will convince us. We have differing ends.

 

BS... competitive capitalism has brought pollution, envy and social alienation. A better system is a mix of capitalism and social welfare.

 

So that would explain how it raised man to the highest level of wealth and living in world history. Got it.

 

Socialism is bad because it is based upon violence. The use of violence to force one person to serve the purposes of another is tantamount to slavery.

 

Socialism is tantamount to having a race with three runners. Regardless of how they finish, they all get the gold medal. So, in that kind of society... why should they train for the race at all?

 

Socialism rejects the profit motive as the foundation of all economic transactions. Consumers of medical care under a socialist system, for example, would no longer be held hostage by private corporate collectives seeking to inflate their bottom line by denying life saving medicines.

"Democratic socialism is primarily a political philosophy, with its adherents championing a variety of different socialist economic models throughout history.

"Some democratic socialists advocate forms of market socialism where socially-owned enterprises operate in competitive markets, and in some cases, are self-managed or managed as workplace democracies; others advocate for a non-market participatory economy based on decentralized economic planning.[38]

"Contemporary proponents of market socialism have argued that the major reason for the failure of Soviet-type planned economies stems from their totalitarian nature, lack of democracy, and for their failure to create rules for the efficient operation of state enterprises.[39]

"Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas, both of whom were United States presidential candidates for the Socialist Party of America, understood socialism to be an economic system structured upon production for use and an end to capitalism and the profit system.[40][41]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism#Relation_to_economics

 

Why not? Socialism is an economic system. It says nothing about the political system involved.

 

Because there are zero workplace democracies, employee co-ops, private communes, etc. None of those exist.

 

Here's the problem with many of the answers in theis thread:

People think socialism = Marxism. It doesn't. Socialism predates Marx by nearly 100 years and socialist theorists were working way before he was. Additionally, not all socialists agree with Marxian theory.

Marxism and the brands of socialism derived from it run into a serious problem in that their most major underlining is flawed. The Labor Theory of Value underlies all Marxian theory but it's fundamentally flawed. It claims that the value of any good or service is dependent solely (or at least mostly) by the labor used to produce it. It doesn't recognize the intrinsic value of the resources used in production. It doesn't recognize the value of intellectual property and invention (really any mental labor at all). And most importantly, it doesn't recognize the value of the risk and entrepreneurial ability of the person who created the business. By failing to recognize the value of those things, Marxian socialism cannot arrive at an equilibrium point on the supply and demand scale. There will always be inefficient surpluses of things people don't want and equally inefficient shortages of other things they do.

Now, non-Marxian forms of socialism like certain types of Syndicalism can and do work efficiently because they work within the market rather than trying to replace it. I'm a huge fan of workplace democracy and employee owned businesses. Both are socialist and both result in efficient, market driven systems.

I'm torn on other non-Marxian socialist ideas like Geoism. They seem nigh impossible to actually implement.

 

Most powerful? Yes. Most powerful by fighting against socialism? I had no idea that fighting against socialism makes a country powerful. I think there are a lot more factors involved than just that.

Richest? Doesn't seem so.
http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/...world-the-ten-richest-countries-on-the-planet
http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/world-top-ten-richest-countries-map.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-richest-countries-2011-9?op=1&IR=T
http://www.fool.com/investing/international/2014/10/11/the-5-richest-countries-in-the-world.aspx


By the way, do you realize that there are hundreds of millions of people who live in countries with some minute form of socialism (e.g. education system, health care, public libraries, police, fire brigades, etc ... wait, doesn't the US have some of that as well?) and who do not want to come to the US?
Odd, huh? But tis true.

 

A perfect example of how socialists completely reject basic economics and does not understand how prices work. Socialists think that prices are set by volition. That is, that prices are set by the sellers discretion in a vacuum. Anyone with basic economic knowledge knows that prices are not set volitionally, but the ignorance of that fact is one of the bases of socialism. And since they are not paid volitionally, there is no "fair" wage, which represents "their actual work". That is just socialist nonsense.

Utterly ridiculous, just pure socialist mythical nonsense. Socialists typically have no understanding of what either fascism or capitalism is, and they draw silly conclusions like that the former is somehow an extension of the latter.

Yes, people like you tend to misunderstand it completely.

And this is the ultimate example.. You are stretching the definition of socialism to absurdity, making it encompass pretty much all kinds of government forms, making most states throughout history "socialist". This is of course to be expected, since actual socialism was so thoroughly proven wrong with undeniable theoretical and empirical evidence in the 20th century that no serious person is still advocating socialism as such. Instead, in order to not lose their faces completely, socialists have started to redefine socialism, and use nonsensical definitions such as the one you gave. no, there has not always been socialism. it began in the 19th century. no, not all advanced countries are socialist. they are capitalist.

lol what? no, that is just ridiculous. it is just the reverse, socialism does not offer incentives.

many people claim it is good despite not knowing what it is. please, do provide the definition.

.. completely clueless on how prices work arent you?

Hah! how can any person with even a little knowledge of history even suggest such a notion?!

no, not if we define a goal and compare them.

the environment is better in capitalist countries and just horrible in socialist countries. there is no truth to your claim.

so is every ideology except anarchism. force is a necessary evil.

and there is a very good reason for that...

 

My post was sarcastic. All those things I posted about exist. The guy I was responding to was lying.

 

I wonder what caused our massive debt. Could it be social programs and unfounded social program liabilities? Sure we spend too much on defense, but it is the primary duty of the federal government. The more we socialize, the further we go in debt and fall on the liberty scale.

 

at this time, it is save to say that socialism might/cud work, there is nothing in this concept that makes it inherently unsuccessful...capitalism on the other hand is proving since some years that it doesn't work, the possibility of going on with the present-day-style-capitalism way into the future is non-existing - at some point we will either have totalitarian regimes ala "hunger games" or something like anarchy when the masses of poor have overthrown the regime
and if u really look at capitalism today this is quite obvious - if more and more money belongs to the rich, if the rich get fewer and if we don't change anything - guess what, at some point EVERYTHING will belong to ONE person

im not pro socialism or against a free market (in most areas) btw

on the incentive issue: what about if all the workers of a certain business wud own the company more or less equally? certainly this scenario shud have the biggest incentive for workers to work hard.....

 

So called Democratic socialism is the notion that two wolves and a sheep can come to a reasonable compromise of what's for dinner without allocating half the sheep to each wolf. It is largely based on ridiculous assumptions of collusion of the sort that makes no economic sense save in the minds of the criminally insane which unfortunately all too adequately describe most of the founders of what now passes for modern socialist thought.

Socialism does not produce innovation save in the field of extortion which it calls taxation. The equipment that the former Soviet Union used for farming couldn't be given away in the US in a similar time period and sometimes not if they could have brought them from that present day to a period ten years in the past. Socialism basically kills innovation stone cold dead . Had Socialism been in vogue in 1900 the inventor of the car would have been stoned to death for trying to put the horse carriage makers out of business. Never mind the fact that he almost certainly was one of them at some point in his career.

 

Socialism is based on the initiation of force, which is ethically unjustified.

 

There is UNDENIABLE theoretical and empirical evidence that socialism does not work.

If you truly are interested in this, you should learn some history, because what you say is as far away from the truth as possible. The 20th century proved that capitalism won over socialism, and that capitalism is in fact the best system by far of all that have been tried.

No it isn't. Explain why.

Stuff like this is nearly impossible to write a serious reply to, because it's so ridiculous and nonsensical.

They are free to do so already. They just need to make a corporation and own the stocks themselves. That kind of business model is not very popular though.

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And so is every other ideology except anarchism. No, it is not ethically unjustified, because the ends justify the means. It is justified because it prevents even greater evils.

 

Socialism doesn't create wealth, it only spreads out the failure...

thats a fairly direct and to the point reason why its "bad"...

just think about that for a while...

in what instances have you ever found it creating wealth (not redistributing it, or forcing it, but actually creating it), versus spreading out the failures of others to be absorbed by others... so essentially it doesn't lift people up, it simply drags everyone else down... "equality"... there comes a point in socialism where you're no longer able to drag anyone down so all people live a lower quality of life than if some were allowed to succeed greatly, most were allowed to live average, and just a few were allowed to fail... and this is an open cycle so people could routinely move through these various levels of success... but overall, more people would succeed than fail... look at unemployment rates and income rates in these various countries...

I know its hard to do a fair comparison sometimes when you get into quality of life and access to things like education and healthcare etc etc, but hey its your research paper right... also look at freedom in choices, because in some socialist countries you don't have the freedom to make choices, they are made for you despite your desires to choose something else, thats a very big quality of life issue when you don't have the power to choose and as a result create competition to improve the choices you get through a companies desire to capitalize on your dollars... anyhow I could go on for hours but I'm already babbling like crazy...

 

A system of governance instituted for the mutual protection of our property rights in our bodies and the resources we own is not based upon the initiation of violence.

 

So, how come that countries which are more socialized than the US regarding their social & political structure (e.g. Norway, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Austria, etc.) are less in debt than the US?
According to your logic, shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't they have massive debts?

 

It must be in order to function effectively. Otherwise, there will be free rider problems.

 

There is no initiation of violence under a system of governance voluntarily instituted for mutual protection.

 

Likely because they enjoy near free defense and American business.

 

Wrong. Sweden is a democratic socialist country. It has a very free market, but a very strong social safety net.

 

Have we all forgotten one of the best internet stories ever passed around the last few decades???

An economics professor said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. The class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little ...

The second Test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for anyone else. All failed to their great surprise and the professor told them that socialism would ultimately fail because the harder to succeed the greater the reward but when a government takes all the reward away; no one will try or succeed.