quote:

Originally posted by MarkT as for #2...bullshit. profit and personal gain is not 'the human condition' and I'd suggest our striving for a better lifestyle is because that's what we've personally known and been taught to think. since when does socialism mean that everyone gets 'the same'? it's well documented that financial incentive alone does not influence motivation. if you grew up in a socialist society (pure socialism...not some poverty-stricken abomination), you'd likely see your motivation not being tied to profit or individual gain.

What would be the motivational factor in a true socialist system? There has to be some way to quantify and reward the efforts of one persons work and accomplishments over another. Otherwise the accomplishment or extra work is useless. Competition is healthy. It drives progress, innovation and productivity.

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Originally posted by MarkT doesn't capitalism fail in real life for precisely the same reason as #1?

It can, in a totally naive implementation that essentially amounts to anarchy. But capitalists are generally pragmatists and realize that people with power will inevitably end up abusing that power. That is why the majority of capitalist systems are constitutional systems - they are set up specifically to limit the amount of power that any one person or group can have.

It's hard to have the same divisions in a socialist system because it's simply the "state" that owns and runs everything. If you divide up the power and allow each operation to run autonomously, which also implies imposing a hard budget and making some sort of competitive provisions, then it just starts to look like capitalism again, like any old big publicly-traded company. If you don't do that, and everything is technically traceable up to the same entity, then there is no accountability in the system.

That is why capitalism fails sometimes and socialism fails always. In capitalism, businesses can be held accountable but often aren't due to consumer apathy, laziness, or perceived helplessness. In socialism, there is no accountability at all (and don't tell me people can vote, that's slap-worthy).

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whether its the heads of state who are corrupt or whether its big business unduly influencing gov't policy...the effect is that the people suffer as a result of greed and corruption by a relative few.

You've neglected to ask the most important question: How is it that these corrupt few are able to influence government policy in a capitalist system? Isn't the real problem here that the government is actually able to do what's being asked of them?

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as for #2...bullshit. profit and personal gain is not 'the human condition' ... if you grew up in a socialist society (pure socialism...not some poverty-stricken abomination), you'd likely see your motivation not being tied to profit or individual gain.

I can only assume that by "pure socialism" you are referring to the utopian ideal that's been shown countless times to be completely impossible in real life, and it's impossible because people are selfish. The society you imagine could only exist if all its citizens and leaders, without exception, behaved altruistically all of the time. In other words, you've left us with a classic chicken-and-egg problem.

Anyway, even if you could resolve that, it's still an untenable position; decades of psychological research AND political experiments have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that imposing rules on the way people are allowed to behave does not change the fundamental way that they think. If anything, rules erode the intrinsic motivation behind most actions and behaviours; they never, ever create it.

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quote:

Originally posted by MarkT doesn't capitalism fail in real life for precisely the same reason as #1? power and capital is held/controlled by the few with a gross % of population living in poverty due to corruption. same shit. whether its the heads of state who are corrupt or whether its big business unduly influencing gov't policy...the effect is that the people suffer as a result of greed and corruption by a relative few.

Not the same shit. In socialism the government controls all. There is no competition and there for no incentive to do better. Throw a dictatorship in the mix and this theme becomes even more apparent. Yes, capitalism does put a lot of power in a few hands also. But the important difference is that these entities are still competing against each other and the end user has a choice in the end of who to deal with. The competing interests keep a check on each other. This is why in a true capitalist society, the governments role is to ensure healthy competition.

quote:

as for #2...bullshit. profit and personal gain is not 'the human condition' and I'd suggest our striving for a better lifestyle is because that's what we've personally known and been taught to think. since when does socialism mean that everyone gets 'the same'? it's well documented that financial incentive alone does not influence motivation. if you grew up in a socialist society (pure socialism...not some poverty-stricken abomination), you'd likely see your motivation not being tied to profit or individual gain. this is *hardly* meant as a defense of socialism. I'm just pointing out the flaws in those two points.

Personal gain doesnt have to be monetary. But humans are no different than any other animal when it comes to the carrot and stick philosophy. We NEED a carrot to dangle in our face in order to run after it. If we just end up getting the carrot automatically without even a hope in hell of eating apples in the future, then whats the point of running?

Human nature requires motivational factors. Socialism fails to recognize that.

And TRUE socialism is communism. And true communism is that everyone has the same. No one owns property and that they are taken care of cradle to grave. Hence the commune in communism.

digi and i basically said the same thing heheh

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Originally posted by VDub That's one of the most retarded comments I've heard to date...

You gotta look on the bright side. With that missing appendage, they can start collecting disabilities payments from the Government. Welfare + Disabilities pay = MORE CIGARETTES AND BINGO! YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

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Originally posted by Spam You gotta look on the bright side. With that missing appendage, they can start collecting disabilities payments from the Government. Welfare + Disabilities pay = MORE CIGARETTES AND BINGO! YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

LOL

You must have been to Keswick hahahah

quote:

Originally posted by Jayx1 LOL You must have been to Keswick hahahah

Hamilton.

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quote:

Originally posted by Spam Hamilton.

A fine bastion of socialism if ive ever seen one.

there is no merit to debating capitalism vs. socialism here and that's not my intention. neither system is without flaws, neither system exists as intended, and there IS merit to extracting beneficial elements from each in shaping our own system. that's it

it's the 'same shit' from the perspective of much of the general population. the end result is that wealth is controlled be a privileged few and not enjoyed by all of the people. it makes no difference to the average person if that wealth is controlled by the state or a handful of citizens (or foreigners, as the case is quickly becoming in the U.S.)

socialism doesn't fail to recognize motivation. it fails to assign personal wealth as the primary motivation. believe it or not (even in a capitalist system), people choose to pursue jobs that result in things other than wealth accumulation...like social status/privilege, personal satisfaction, or simply because they feel it's 'good work' and perhaps even that they 'ought' to do it if they have an aptitude for it. if that can be done *within* the context of a capitalist society, it's not a stretch to think that those motivations would become more prominent in a socialist one. is that utopian, idealistic...yes. so take what you can and apply it to reality instead of just dismissing it. there ARE beneficial elements that can be extracted.

my point is simply that the criticism of corruption presented against socialism exists in our current capitalist society and that the end result for a large % of the population is the same...and that motivation could take other forms, even on a large scale.

competition and wealth distribution are not inherently mutually exclusive.

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Originally posted by Anton

As for you, I don't have the patience anymore to respond to most of this rhetorical blather. I'm only going to respond to the two things resembling facts:

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40+ million people without insurance in the U.S. is not slipping through the cracks. You talk about euphemisms and employ a pretty large one here.

I hear this parroted often, and always out of context. What people need to recognize about this statistic is that the majority of uninsured are aged 18-35 and especially 18-25. Almost all in this age group are uninsured by choice and become insured as they age, before they develop any health problems (if they develop any at all).

So while 40+ million may sound like a lot, the number of those who actually run into financial difficulties as a result of health problems would be in the thousands, if it's even that high. Definitely no worse than any other part of the world.

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What about Enron arbitrarily shutting the power down in california just to make a profit?

Another example I hear quoted often, probably because it's the only one that socialists can think of. But if you ask me, Enron is a perfect example of how a capitalist system really does work. Investors started getting suspicious of Enron early on and basically drove their stock into the ground. Coupled with massive customer complaints and legal action, the company was dust in a matter of weeks.

If this had happened in the government, the same people would still be around, doing the same things. Our "accidental" blackouts due to insufficient power and antiquated grids are no less detrimental to individual residents than Enron's "arbitrary" shutdowns were. And how do you know - I mean how do you really, really know that all our power quality problems are really an accident?

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And Yes, you do hear politicians clamoring to loosen those up - Republicans.

Sadly, that's not the case anymore with the "compassionate conservatives". The ideal of smaller government left the Republican party around the same time Reagan did.

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quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut ...I hear this parroted often, and always out of context. What people need to recognize about this statistic is that the majority of uninsured are aged 18-35 and especially 18-25. Almost all in this age group are uninsured by choice and become insured as they age, before they develop any health problems (if they develop any at all). So while 40+ million may sound like a lot, the number of those who actually run into financial difficulties as a result of health problems would be in the thousands, if it's even that high. Definitely no worse than any other part of the world. ....

some less skewed numbers would be interesting...though I suspect 'the thousands' is underestimating

similar to unemployment figures. I imagine that it's difficult to pinpoint the # of people who choose to be unemployed, have temporarily exited the employment sector, work outside fo the legal one, etc.