Is socialism actully bad and can you explain why?

Nobody I know who owns land pointed guns at anyone. They bought it.

 

You mistake communism with socialism and they're not the same.

Under communism the government owns the means of production but not under socialism. Under socialism the workers own the means of production and not the government. Socialism does not include any mandate for control of supply and demand.

Socialism relies on the same market forces of supply and demand that capitalism relies on. The primary difference is that the success and profits of the enterprise are shared between the workers (employees) based upon their contribution to the success of the enterprise as opposed to profits going to absentee owners.

 

Sure:

http://www.politicalforum.com/polit...cialism-vs-capitalism-economic-trade-off.html

/thread

 

No, you mistake socialism for communism, and you don't know the meaning of either.

 

So a single trade can wash away all sin? You can kill John and take his property, this makes you a jerk, but once you trade that land for money, then the buyer is innocent as a lamb. This makes things simple for the socialists, all they have to do is hire someone to take your property, when they pay the thief that payment justifies the theft … “they bought it”.

 

Nobody I know who owns land bought it from someone who killed the previous owner and sold it.

And if your argument is that the land rightfully belongs to someone in the remote past from whom it was stolen, then please explain how you would suggest returning it to its rightful owner. And once you've returned it to its rightful owner, then please explain how social ownership of that land will be acquired.

 

Only if the purpose of the business is to produce profit for its investors. The purpose of a socially owned business is to provide benefits for the society. In market socialism, not all business is socially owned. Profit is made by the workers, vendors and suppliers. Vendors and suppliers may, or may not, be socially owned. Profit is still the motivator it just doesn't go to the socially owned business. If you are under the illusion that individuals do not receive promotions and get raises within the socially owned business of the Highway Department for coming up with more cost effective ways of completing projects, you are wrong. That is the profit motive within the socially owned business.

 

Yet they have no way to quantify those benefits because they have no revenue to measure.

Remember, everyone out there has things they want. Lots of things. Obviously each of us can't have everything we want, so we have to choose. Prioritize. Economize. When we purchase something, we are demonstrating through our actions that the thing we are buying benefits us so much that we are willing to pay for it. We value the thing above the money we have, so we trade away the money for the thing and are thereby made better off.

Now, firms hope to be able to purchase inputs (land, labor, and capital) and combine them in such a way that they produce something that people think will make them better off, so that they are willing to give up dollars in exchange. If the firm can acquire the inputs for less than it receives in revenue, then it is adding net benefit to people. However, if its revenue is less than its input costs, then it is adding a net harm, and will, rightly, go out of business.

Think of it this way. When a firm purchases inputs, it is bidding them away from other people who would also have liked to have them. So if a firm buys $10,000 of inputs, then the remainder of society must do without those things. Now, if it produces a product for which people are only willing to spend $6,000, it has just made society $4,000 less satisfied. Society would have liked to have the original input more than ($4,000 more than) the product.

Which brings us back to the transportation department. Sure, it knows the costs of its inputs. And it can even take cost cutting measures to lower the cost of those inputs. However, because it has no paying customers, it really has no idea what people would actually be willing to pay for its product. It assumes that its customers benefit, but without a revenue figure (i.e. what people are willing to give up for the product) it's impossible to know exactly how much benefit it is providing.

Yeah to all this.

 

Never said they were.

The text book definition of Socialism is that government controls the means of production.

I never said own. I said controlled.

Lets take a look at socialized medicine. The doctors and hospitals are still private, but the government is so entrenched in regulations, requirements, and even pay for such treatment, since they are the ones paying the bill, they control the entire system.

Absolutely it does.

Once the government has imposed control through regulation, they have the ability to define supply and demand simply through cost mandates.

In socialized medicine, the government (such as Canada) has such control over the healthcare market, they determine who is up for a procedure and when. They also control how much that procedure is going to cost.

Those two mechanisms below give them complete control of the supply and demand mechanisms of such procedures.

That is called profit sharing or employee owned. That can be fully achieved without any socialist concepts in place. In fact, it already does. Many corporations in this country are employee owned.

What you are doing here is playing a few games. One, you are redefining socialism in a format that appeals to the progressive liberal bias. Two, by making comments like "absentee owners", and "profits", insinuating that people are swimming through barrels of money and absolutely disconnected to the business. We both know that this rarely happens, but HEY if those lies allows for the promotion of socialism into our society, and we are talking real socialism... then you win.

Let's talk about your profit sharing for a second. I mortgaged my house a couple of years ago. I took out a second mortgage to fund a start up professional services firm. I know I know, how selfish and greedy of me. So you are telling me, that now that I have some employees, and I have paid off the loan after assuming the risk, and after I built this company up, and got clients in the door, chased down money, paid the bills, and made some profit.... I should be forced to share that with people that I hired who had some skills that I needed to deliver the product?

That doesn't make any sense. Nor does your definition of Socialism.

Here is the definition:

socialism
noun so·cial·ism \ˈsō-shə-ˌli-zəm\
: a way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies


Are progressive liberals really trying to redefine socialism to mean "Employee Owned"? Even so... what is the motivation to start a company if all of the reward of such startup is given to people who had no risk from the beginning?

Jealousy and envy are ruining our society.

- - - Updated - - -

Never said they were.

The text book definition of Socialism is that government controls the means of production.

I never said own. I said controlled.

Lets take a look at socialized medicine. The doctors and hospitals are still private, but the government is so entrenched in regulations, requirements, and even pay for such treatment, since they are the ones paying the bill, they control the entire system.

Absolutely it does.

Once the government has imposed control through regulation, they have the ability to define supply and demand simply through cost mandates.

In socialized medicine, the government (such as Canada) has such control over the healthcare market, they determine who is up for a procedure and when. They also control how much that procedure is going to cost.

Those two mechanisms below give them complete control of the supply and demand mechanisms of such procedures.

That is called profit sharing or employee owned. That can be fully achieved without any socialist concepts in place. In fact, it already does. Many corporations in this country are employee owned.

What you are doing here is playing a few games. One, you are redefining socialism in a format that appeals to the progressive liberal bias. Two, by making comments like "absentee owners", and "profits", insinuating that people are swimming through barrels of money and absolutely disconnected to the business. We both know that this rarely happens, but HEY if those lies allows for the promotion of socialism into our society, and we are talking real socialism... then you win.

Let's talk about your profit sharing for a second. I mortgaged my house a couple of years ago. I took out a second mortgage to fund a start up professional services firm. I know I know, how selfish and greedy of me. So you are telling me, that now that I have some employees, and I have paid off the loan after assuming the risk, and after I built this company up, and got clients in the door, chased down money, paid the bills, and made some profit.... I should be forced to share that with people that I hired who had some skills that I needed to deliver the product?

That doesn't make any sense. Nor does your definition of Socialism.

Here is the definition:

socialism
noun so·cial·ism \ˈsō-shə-ˌli-zəm\
: a way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies


Are progressive liberals really trying to redefine socialism to mean "Employee Owned"? Even so... what is the motivation to start a company if all of the reward of such startup is given to people who had no risk from the beginning?

Jealousy and envy are ruining our society.

 

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/maint/Pavement/Pavement_Program/PDF/2013_SOP_FINAL-Dec_2013-1-24-13.pdf
Pavement Projects Awarded (Capital Cost Only) from FY 2009/10 to FY 2012/13
Total Costs $1,050,000,000
Lane Miles 11,058
These figures can be used to calculate the average cost per mile. $94,953.88 per mile.
Compare this to privately run road builders.
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/23/world/mexico-s-privately-run-highways-prove-a-costly-failure.html
The Mexican Government embarked on one of the most sweeping private road-construction programs in the world, licensing scores of companies and banks to build and operate highways between 1987 and 1994.
At a cost of $12,000,000,000 for 5,500 kilometers (or 3,418 miles). http://www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/1999/06/03/000009265_3980901130229/Rendered/PDF/multi_page.pdf see paragraph 4.34.
Averaging $3,510,825.04 per mile.
This is in Mexico, over 10 years ago.

 

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/maint/Pavement/Pavement_Program/PDF/2013_SOP_FINAL-Dec_2013-1-24-13.pdf
Pavement Projects Awarded (Capital Cost Only) from FY 2009/10 to FY 2012/13
Total Costs $1,050,000,000
Lane Miles 11,058
These figures can be used to calculate the average cost per mile. $94,953.88 per mile.

Compare this to privately run road builders.
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/23/world/mexico-s-privately-run-highways-prove-a-costly-failure.html
The Mexican Government embarked on one of the most sweeping private road-construction programs in the world, licensing scores of companies and banks to build and operate highways between 1987 and 1994.
At a cost of $12,000,000,000.
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/1999/06/03/000009265_3980901130229/Rendered/PDF/multi_page.pdf see paragraph 4.34.
They built 5,500 kilometers (or 3,418 miles) of roads.
Averaging $3,510,825.04 per mile.
This is in Mexico, over 10 years ago.

 

So how much were the willing customers willing to pay? Did what they pay exceed the cost of inputs?

 

So you are saying that it takes multiple trades before the sins are washed away. This will make things slightly more difficult. The socialists will have to put a few middle-men between them and the thief who they hire to steal your land. But, then they will own the land based on the same justification that you now claim to own the land. Having a few middle-men is doable … but what is the point, really.

You know that I don't believe in private ownership of land. People who use land should simply pay compensation to those who they are forcefully excluding from the land that nature freely provided. This method of land tenure satisfies the need of the market for a pricing mechanism and provides compensation to those who are being excluded from natural opportunities. Unlike yourself, I do not believe that some people should be enabled to tell other people that they have no right to live on this earth, just because they were not born earlier.

 

Capitalism, like Socialism and Communism, is a Property Theory. A Property Theory answers one and only one question: Who should have control of Capital?

Capital is anything used in the means of production and includes, but is not limited to, cash, credit, labor, resources, land (when used for production), draught animals, live-stock, ships, aircraft, vehicles of all kinds, equipment, machinery, tools, and much more.

Capitalist Theory states Capital is best left in the hands of individuals. History has proven that individuals use Capital more efficiently or effectively; respond faster to the needs -- Demands -- of the Markets; and are not inherently subject to Group-Think.

Socialist Theory suggests that Capital should be controlled by Groups. These Groups may be government or non-governmental organizations (NGOs), or simply cartels or others, like shareholders in a corporation. Groups use Capital inefficiently; are slower to meet the Demands of the Markets; and are inherently subject to Group-Think.

Communist Theory claims that Capital should be controlled by the People-at-Large. The People-at-Large do not use Capital efficiently or effectively; are slower to meet the Demands of the Markets; but are not as negatively impacted by Group Think as Socialists are.

Those are the theories, now let's apply them in real-world situations to understand how they work.

The Market demands organic tomatoes.

A Capitalist immediately shifts Capital --- in this instance: cash, credit, land, labor, farming tools, farming implements, farming machinery, farming vehicles, other vehicles, storage space, etc etc etc --- to the production of organic tomatoes.

A Socialist will decide by committee, which can take an agonizingly long time. If the government or NGO decides that it will not profit off of the production of organic tomatoes, then it will not produce them. Group-Think is prevalent here. If the government or NGO is collecting $1.00 in revenues from each pound of GMO or regular tomatoes sold, why would government want to collect less in revenues? The crop yields for organic tomatoes are less, so less revenues are collected. Better to continue growing GMO or regular tomatoes.

Communists -- and let's assume the level of organization is at the township or municipal level -- decide by vote, which typically can be forced, so that it doesn't sit in committee for 5 years (as in the case of Socialism). The problem here is low-information voters. They don't understand the benefits of organic tomatoes, or any other issues, and that's how they vote. You have difficulty convincing the majority --- what 51%? 67% 75%? 50.01% -- to approve by vote the shifting of Capital to the production of organic tomatoes. That's complicated further when other issues arise. For example, suppose land is limited to the extent that the only way to grow organic tomatoes is to reduce the number of fields for GMO or regular tomatoes. Or, suppose you have to plow under your crop of broccoli to grow organic tomatoes?

My guess is you're probably confusing Property Theories with Economic Systems.

The Economic Systems are completely separate and apart from Property Theories. Economic Systems answer three basic questions:

1] What products or services should we produce or provide?
2] How shall we produce the product or provide the service?
3] For whom shall we produce this product or service?

There are three Economic Systems, plus hybrids of each. One such Economic System is the Traditional System. It is still used by about 2 Billion people, mostly in those States that have social structures based on clans or tribes. Suffice to say that everything is done based on Tradition, which is heavily determined by Culture and thus influenced by Group-Think, so we'll ignore that here.

Your two Economic Systems are:

Free Market System -- often incorrectly called "Capitalism"
Command Market System -- often incorrectly called "Socialism."

(and of course hybrids).

The system itself is the answer to each of the three questions. In the case of the Free Market System:

1] What shall we produce? The Market will decide.
2] How shall we produce it? The Market will decide.
3] For whom shall we produce? The Market will decide.

In the case of the Command Market System:

1] What shall we produce? The Command Group will decide.
2] How shall we produce it? The Command Group will decide.
3] For whom shall we produce? The Command Group will decide.

The Market is all Classes of Consumers, including but not limited to individuals, households, businesses, governments, buyers, sellers, wholesalers, retailers, distributors et al.

The Command Group is an oligarchy run by a government agency or bureaucracy, or a non-governmental organization, which includes unions, monopolies, cartels, corporations and associations.

Let's apply this to the Free Market.

1] Shall we produce corn? Yes, because Markets demand corn.

2] How shall we produce Corn? The Markets have demanded corn produced using neo-classical farming methods, traditional farming methods, genetically modified corn and organic corn.

3] For whom shall we produce? The Market will decide. There are Markets for corn-in-the-husk, corn-on-the-cob, corn, creamed corn, succotash, frozen corn, corn starch, corn flour, corn meal, light corn syrup, dark corn syrup, ethanol, alcoholic beverages etc etc etc.

Let's apply this to the Command Market.

1] Shall we produce corn? The Command Group will decide.

2] How shall we produce Corn? The Command Group has decided that you will use genetically modified corn or nothing at all.

3] For whom shall we produce? The Command Group will decide. The Command Group has decided that 50% of all corn produced will go to the ethanol market, even if it causes food prices to increase dramatically.

And that's the problem with Socialism, it creates problems where no problems existed before.

 

Do you know what happens when government builds a new road? The value of land near that road skyrockets. That is because beneficial government spending is always pocketed by landowners. If government spends $10 million on a new road, then if that money was wisely spent, the land along that road will increase in value by $10 million or more – this is fact based on actual observation. This is also how people like Donald Trump got so rich … by pocketing the land value created by government spending. So, whether government builds the road itself or hires contractors to do the job, funding the road is as simple as levying a tax on the value of land. As the new road is built the market will start offering more rent for the land along the road, government simply has to tax that increased value heavily in order to pay for the road. The answer is not socialism. The answer is simply to stop landowners from keeping the increased rents that public spending on infrastructure and services is giving them, and instead tax that rent heavily, and pay for the road with the rent collected.

If we deregulate the privileges out of the economy and allow the free market to do its job, competition will ensure that all surplus value created by labor and capital will be passed to landowners (land monopolists), where it can be efficiently taxed away and returned to the community on an equal per capita basis. This is by far the easiest and most efficient way of returning surplus value back to the community. This system is called geoism, and it gives the government the feedback it needs in order to make wise decisions on how to spend scarce public funds. If government believes that building a new road will increase the value of land along that road by more then the cost, then government should do it. Governments which do it right will prosper and expand, while governments that do it wrong will wither away … and that is a good thing.

 

What sin are you talking about?

 

You've yet to show that I brought up socialism. Collectivism and Totalitarianism, yes.
Socialism, no. That's because N. Korea isn't Socialist.

<Mod Edit>

 

You keep going back to the model where the purpose of the business is to make money. True for private businesses but not for socially owned businesses.
Socially owned businesses produce a public good at a lower cost than private businesses will. That is the function of socially owned businesses.
I have already demonstrated the enormous difference in costs to the public.

 

Even if a government owned business doesn't intend to keep the profit, it still needs paying customers in order to determine whether it is benefitting or harming society. Of course, a government owned business doesn't have to keep the profit in the business. Profit could go to the treasury.

 

According to the text book that isn't techincally true because the workers, not the government, own the enterprises and it's the enterprise that controls the means of production and not the government.

http://www.diffen.com/difference/Capitalism_vs_Socialism

So the government, under socialism, controls economic activity based upon supplying the demand but that's also true to a limited extent under capitalism. How the government exercises that control is also open to a broad interpretation under both socialism and capitalism. For example both can provide tax breaks and/or subsidies to the enterprise that supplies the demand to control the production and economic activity.

The key difference is that under socialism it's providing the supply for the demand that determines the economic activity while under capitalism it's profit that drives the economic activity. The capitalist is only concerned with profit. If they can profit without any demand or if they can profit based upon a demand created by fraud or misrepresentation they're just as happy.

We can also note that under socialism the prices of goods and services are based upon the cost of providing the goods and services where the workers profit. Under capitalism the prices of goods and services are based upon the profits for the owners without any regard as to whether the workers profit or not.

 

As a libetarian I have a fundamental belief in the "natural (inalienable) right of property" as express by John Locke in his Second Treatise of Civil Government, Chapter 5 and that places me in conflict with both capitalism and socialism as we understand each.

There are basic axioms related to the "natural (inalienable) right of property" that need to be addressed.

1. All land and natural resources (wealth) belongs to the "common" (i.e. all people).
2. That a person has a right to secure from nature, through their physical labor, enough of the natural wealth to provide for their "support and comfort" with the following caveats:
(a) There must be "enough, and as good" (as) left for all other people.
(b) No one has a right to dispoil nature.
(c) A person that acquires more "wealth" than is necessary for their "support and comfort" does so by fraud and theft of the natural resources (wealth) from the "common" (i.e, all people).
(d) No person has a right to the labor of another person.

Neither capitalism or socialism is exclusively based upon these principles but by addressing the "workers" that comprise the vast majority of all people (over 90%) as opposed to only the "capitalist" that is the manager of wealth (the top one-tenth of 1%) socialism is more closely aligned with the "natural (inalienable) right of property" than capitalism as currently defined. Socialism is based upon the vast majority of the people that are workers benefiting from the labor which establishes the "natural (inalienable) right of property" while capitalism is based upon the very few "money managers" that are the non-workers benefiting from enterprise.

For me there is middle ground where we can have capitalism where the workers and the owners profit from the enterpise. It's about how the wealth is distributed based upon the "natural (inalienable) right of property" between the worker, that creates the wealth with their labor, and the owner that makes it possible for the worker to create the wealth. There needs to be balance and neither socialism or capitalism, as we define them, provides that balance.

 

Assuming you remove human nature from the equation, it's perfect&#128521;

 

Profit is not the only available yardstick. Simply subtract the cost of the product as provided by the socially owned business (in this case lane/mile costs) from the cost that would otherwise be incurred.
Cost savings are a perfectly good yardstick for measuring benefit to the society.
If the same product costs more to produce publicly than it costs privately then the business should be restructured to exploit Public/Private Partnerships.
If, on the other hand, it proves to be more expensive to produce through private industry, or Public/Private Partnerships, then a socially owned alternative is needed.
A Public/Private Partnership is where the projects are outsourced to private industry under public regulation to insure the quality of the product is not compromised.

 

Profit is the only necessary yardstick of we apply it across the board using the following definition.

Profit is income in excess of the necessary expenditures.​

We expect an enterprise to pay for the full costs of products and services it requires, covering the necessary expenditures and profit, to it's vendors. This is accepted as a common principle of capitalism because enterprises must receive enough in compensation to cover their costs plus a profit margin for the owners of the enterprise. If they don't then the enterprise will ultimately cease to exist.

Where we don't apply the yardstick of "profit" is when it comes to the workers that also have necessary expenditures such as housing, food, energy, transportation, health care, and even investing for retirement because they won't be able to work forever. Many enterprises pay less than the "necessary expenditures" that their employees must fund so that the can come to work. Their employees are "operating at a loss" and they require outside welfare support simply to survive and go to work.

The employee must also "profit" from working for the enterprise just like the vendor must profit from the enterprise. Both have necessary expenditures that must be met and while we expect the vendor to be paid to cover it's expenditures we don't apply that same criteria to the employees of the enterprise that are also, in a real sense, are a vendor selling their labor to the employer.

If everyone "profits" then the economic system will be successful. If not, if by it's structure, it inherently results in some making a profit by exploiting others that are forced to operate at a loss then the system will eventually fail. That's our current problem with capitalism in America because by it's nature of only focusing on profits for the owners of enterprise it results in the workers of enterprise often being forced to operate at a loss.

 

Again. That isn't the definition of socialism. You are changing the definition to align with your agenda.

That is a pretty good qualifier for controlling it, wouldn't you say. The more profitable, the more efficient and competitive.

We have substantially lower costs of living than many socialist countries. Their cost of living far exceeds ours, and a big factor in that is keeping consumer costs as low as possible.

In my world, profit isn't a dirty word.

Nope. I refuse to debate the pluses and minuses of the two systems under the presumption that one is measured by illegal activities and fraud.

If you have to represent capitalism as fraud in order to justify socialism, then that should indicate how poor a system socialism is.

Partially true.

You are back to that profit thing.

Even in socialist countries, corporations are often privately owned. Having a socialist economic system has to do with control, not profit.

What it does do is remove the ability for profit by the government controlling the means of production in private companies.

You never answered my question about risk. Why should an employee with nothing invested into a company be a stake holder? If a company goes bankrupt, which many do, do the employees also assume the risk and liability of the cost of such bankruptcy? This is always the question that "employee owned" people never want to answer. Are employees willing to mortgage their homes to fund a failing business?


Under capitalism the prices of goods and services are based upon the profits for the owners without any regard as to whether the workers profit or not.[/QUOTE]