Why Does Socialism Always Fail?

How is greed tied into bad governance and not capitalism?

 

It's dessert. If a country works hard and produces a lot of value, it can indulge in spreading a little of that value out to make life more appetizing for it's citizens. Like having chocolate ice cream at the end of your meal.

Where countries get into trouble is when dessert becomes the central focus. A little ice cream makes life more pleasant. Trying to live on it makes you sick.



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Call it greed or ambition, if that desire to have more more makes you build more — it can be admirable. If the desire to have more causes you to ask someone else to build more for you... it can cause resentment.

At some point that guy will look at you and wonder why you are getting more by 'governing' him rather than building your own wealth.



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The post to which you have responded refers back to post 819
http://www.politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=485624&page=82&p=1066951183#post1066951183

 

That's not a good example of what you predicted. You said that pure capitalism (no regulations) would inevitably lead to corporate control of the legislature. My question was: To what end? In an environment with no regulation, why would a corporation even bother with the legislature? There are no regulations controlling them, so it would seem that they already have everything they desire. There's no need for them to seek any legislation.

 

If you are trying to say that there's some problem with EpiPen and that it is a result of unregulated capitalism, please elaborate.

 

Capitalism has nothing to do with greed. Communism does/will not work because there is no personal incentive to work hard. Capitalism does work because this is a personal incentive to work hard. Additionally working hard on an individual and corporate basis results in the maximum benefit to society because of the ever increasing assortment of advanced products. Capitalism rewards productivity improvement which results in better products at lower prices. Of course the rule of law and light regulation is required by the people via government.

So again what are your specifics for your list which you are convinced are condemnations of capitalism ??

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Capitalism is its own dessert. Capitalism has produced more benefit for more people than any other economic system. Standards of living are higher and social programs are higher. Government attempts to command & control capitalism are to blame for failures. Think it through.

 

Those richly funded socialist programs are not capitalism. Like most things in life, having them is a trick that requires a balance. In this case a balance between respecting the value exceptional individuals produce and recognizing the benefit of building a society that includes them.

The best life comes from achieving balance. Folks tend to be less happy if they go too far into either extreme.



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Costs about $5 to produce. Sells for $450 - $650.

Why? Regulations force them to price it that way?

 

The social welfare programs are funded by capitalism. This is one of the mysteries of the liberal progressives who want large social welfare programs. They apparently aren't smart enough to figure out that if they pass supply side policies that grow the economy at a ~ 4% rate there will be more monies available for their social programs.

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What were the gov imposed development and testing costs ??

 

If it costs $5 to produce, then why doesn't someone like yourself produce it for $5 and sell it for that amount? In a pure capitalist (i.e. unregulated) system, you ought to be able to do that and put the other producer out of business.

 

We certainly aren't. There are few socialist countries left on earth: Cuba, Laos, Vietnam (barely), North Korea, maybe a few others.

 

Textbook idealized theory. Nothing more. Maximum benefit? I listed some of the "benefits".

"Better products at lower prices"? I listed some things with their "lower prices" like EpiPen. Did regulations do that? Do you ignore changes in products in the grocery store? You must if you can say that with a straight face. They now put 8 cookies in a box so that it's a bit more than half full. The size of the box stayed the same and the price went up, but that's ok because the marketing approach is to mark up the price from $3.59 to $4.85 and declare "SALE!" People think "SALE" means a lower price you see. The size of soup cans and vegetables and etc used to be 16 ounces decades ago. Now it's 14.5 ounces or less. This week I saw a wine in Freddy's that I often buy there for $11.98 and it had a big "SALE!" sign on it. The sign said "Regular price- $15.98; Sale price- $13.98!" Dishwashers 25 years ago cost $250 for a GE or Kenmore and they never needed repair. Today the same brands are $550 - $750 and you had better buy an extended warranty and a maintenance agreement because you'll need them. If capitalism produces increasing quality for a lower price, how does Royobi survive? And why then is it that Craftsman tools couldn't be beat 30 years ago and now they're shoddy and the price went up with everything else over time? Somebody will say "then don't buy them!" I don't. But obviously consumer demand for quality didn't work as you claim it does. I know you didn't read this.

You're pretending that the capitalist doesn't seek ever increasing profits and that can mean cutting costs while raising the price. Cutting costs means shoddier products. Even the CPI gets away with jettisoning a product that goes up in price at a rate faster than the average and substitutes a cheaper alternative.

With the technology we have today we could be living in a near-utopia of high quality at low cost and such abundance that we would be able to work half weeks and have more leisure time, but all that gain goes to the top.

 

Ever hear of something called "patents"? You can't manufacture an EpiPen-type device. That's why they charge so much. The only answer is price controls on pharmaceuticals and make them non-profit. Health-related goods and services should not be allowed to be profit centers. It creates a serious conflict of interest.

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For years it cost $5 or so. Nothing changed but the greed.

 

So now you are claiming that any alternative to appropriation of natural resources as private property is the same as "no rules"?

Oh, really? Is that the case with the Pacific Ocean, or the earth's atmosphere? Is there constant conflict over them because no one has a legal right to control them?

It is true that we need rules to govern possession and use of scarce and rivalrous resources. But that does not by any means argue that they should or even can rightly be appropriated as private property, and everyone but the owner's liberty rights to use them abolished without just compensation.

 

What did Reagan call supply-side economics again?

 

Ah, patents. A government regulation contrary to unregulated capitalism. And you you're blaming unregulated capitalism for government regulation?

 

Those are just silly and ahistorical Marxist concoctions. Nothing of the sort actually happened. In fact, there were lots of civil wars before the 1640s, and the notion that a "commercial class" -- whatever that is -- controlled England's Parliament in the 17th century is absurd.

You don't seem to know capitalism was in place centuries before that.

 

But a kibbutz is small (a few hundred people) and completely voluntary, the only people in it are those who choose to join - and choose to stay. If a person wants to leave a kibbutz, then they leave. Nobody is forced to stay or join. Those that do not fit in, leave. What you are left with is a self-selected group of people who are all very similar. Each kibbutz is homogeneous, it contains like minded people. For example, one kibbutz may only contain Ashkenazi Jews (or almost all) and will operate under that particular lifestyle.

Its easy to get a small group of people who are very similar to each other to live and work together, who all know each other by name and like each other. You cannot do that on a large scale such as a nation, and certainly not on a scale of the USA.

And that is why socialism on a large scale always fails, and always will fail. Socialism requires everyone to follow the party line, and on a large scale there will be many who disagree. To keep people in line requires force, a police state, gulags, stasi, killing fields, re-education camps, and all the other niceties of socialism.

 

Oh, I do. Because they prove your claims are false and absurd.

Businesses that fail are in operation and contribute to our economy right up to the time they close their doors. So you choose to be wrong. No surprises there.

It is certainly not desired by the owners of the company, which proves your claim is objectively false.

So you choose to be wrong, and to describe the operation of an ACTUAL capitalist economy incorrectly. No surprises there.

Meaningless gibberish. Profit is the HOPED-FOR result of production, not something obtained in return for consideration. It is precisely the uncertainty of obtaining profit -- or even preserving his purchasing power -- that implies a risk premium for the capitalist investor.

The seller is able to sell something for more than it cost. For products and services, that proves he has CREATED greater value than he expended in the course of their production. Which is the fact that Marxism seeks to delete from objective physical reality.

There are no "components" of a sales price. It is simply the point at which supply meets demand.

 

Which decisions? Managers make decisions every day in free market business in capitalist economies.

 

Supply-side economics as far as I recall. And the three times those policies have been used they increased tax revenues as more people were working and paying taxes, twice that almost brought us into surplus budgets and once it actually did. What's your gripe about supply-side economics. We just had 10 years of demand side economics, how'd that work out?

 

No we can't, because you cannot name an exception.

But only on a small scale, and when the participants do so voluntarily.

No, capitalism works even when it is imposed by force, because it enables and rewards production.

No system IMPLEMENTED by mankind is perfect, but that doesn't mean a system's DESIGN can't be perfect.

Not necessarily. The telegraph system worked very well within a few years. Deep learning systems have become extremely powerful in just a few years, too. Automated driverless vehicle systems did not exist 10 years ago, but they are already arguably safer than human drivers.

 

I read everything with an agenda of looking for weak points to attack. And I find them.

No, because they are not introducing socialist reforms. They are just pursuing public policy treatments of some of the diseases of capitalism.

 

No, not going to argue with any supporter of Trump; it's a waste of time. (The man is UNFIT for POTUS and always will be.)

Goodbye.