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| Author |
Message |
Capitalism vs Socialism
| Capitalism |
| [ 12 ] 85% |
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| Socialism |
| [ 2 ] 14% |
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Total Votes : 14 |
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| NBarden |
 Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 5:44 pm |
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Joined: 28 Dec 2006
Posts: 5468
Location: I don't know...
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To many dissertation long philosophical posts to read.
To summarize what I’m sure has already been said:
The underlying principle to socialism is that man is inherently good. If man was inherently good, or influenced by good (see early church), then communism would work. |
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| TheHobbit13 |
| Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 7:56 pm |
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Joined: 27 Jul 2006
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Location: minnesota
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ant’s seem to be alright with socializm  |
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| Celebrimbor |
| Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 10:46 pm |
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Joined: 12 Sep 2006
Posts: 953
Location: UNKNOWN
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That’s because ants aren’t evil.
NB: Yep that sums all of it up just about.  |
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| AgentDrake |
| Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 10:54 pm |
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Joined: 01 Apr 2007
Posts: 667
Location: Halfway between eccentric and insane...
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Ants don’t have socialism. They have a hive mind.
Single communal entity vs. Community of individual entities.
Fair warning: the first half of this post is sorta wandering. I get onto a fixed topic down in the second half, where I mention a specific socialist program that I consider good, and the reasons why. So if you get tired of my rambling, skip down there.
To Turin’s argument, I agree that using socialism as a tool to help others is good. Using it as a base system, however, does not work, and I don’t entirely agree with the extent that Turin uses as an example, but I’d hardly call that example a horrible system.
Turin06 wrote: For example with a free healthcare system like ours it helps poor people keep their money for other things unlike in America when they get financially bitch slapped everytime they get anything wrong with them.
And half that particular problem comes from the idiocy/ignorance of the consumer (not necessarily their fault) and market indoctrination, not capitalism per se.
Statistically, the vast majority of people in the US don’t save money. In other words, they don’t prepare in advance for said "bitch slap," even though it should be deadly obvious that it will happen eventually. I did mention preparation and saving as one of the key elements for successful capitalism in my initial arguments; this is unfortunately sadly lacking, especially within the United States. I don’t know exactly what the statistics are, but I could find them, if anyone wants actual evidence of this point.
I will grant you that it’s capitalism which has allowed this particular flaw to develop, however consider a few generations ago within the US: debt, loans, even credit cards, were considered utter foolishness. If you didn’t have the money, you didn’t purchase the product (except in cases of survival, etc.; you wouldn’t be branded as evil if you got a loan to pay for a triple-bypass heart surgery, or something like that....)
The point is, temporary and unnecessary debt has become a major factor in American economics (think credit card). This is not a necessary component of capitalism. There’s nothing inherently wrong, IMHO, with credit cards, though Dave Ramsey might disagree. But there is something wrong with the extent to which it has ingrained itself in our culture. To the point of medicare: I’m all for charitably offering to help others out, but quite frankly, from everything that I’ve read, the British and Canadian healthcare systems are rapidly declining in quality. In America, it’s not. (I will grant that I have not extensively examined this topic for the last two years; I did look into it a bit before that, due to relevance with the homeschool Debate topic) PArt of this reason is because keeping the metasystem for medicare as capitalism means that price competition affects -- and improves -- quality of product and cost/value ratio.
Again, socialism as a sub-system, affected by charitable individuals is a GOOD thing. I’m all for stuff like socialized optional systems; someone else -- who can afford it AND IS WILLING TO -- pays your bill because they’re a nice, generous person... or because you help them out somehow, or whatever. That’s great.
Turin’s personal example, I’m not entirely comfortable with, as it creates the potential for additional government control over churches, (or whatever) because it adds government funding (indirectly) to that institution, but again, as Turin points out, with the proper safeguards, limited socialism can be a good thing. In his example, i’d call it iffy at worst.
[/rambling]
Another point I just thought of is the "third party": Tort law.
Tort law here in the US is a bloody disaster, which, quite frankly, is throwing both capitalism and socialism way out of kilter.
Example: The infamous McDonald’s coffee incident. I don’t know how much you non-US people would know about this, but basically some woman sued McDonald’s for a ton of money because she pulled too fast out of the drive-through window, spilled the coffee she had ordered on her leg, got burned, and won a ton of money out of it. Why? Because McDonald’s had given her hot coffee (which is exactly what she had ordered) and it burned her.
A related example, which demonstrates, to my mind, good socialism: OBGYNs in the US are a dying breed. Why? because on average, they get sued MORE THAN THREE TIMES in their careers, AND LOSE THE LAWSUIT for Medical Malpractice in a particular sort of "birth-related injury" which, it has been scientifically demonstrated, actually has nothing to do with the OBGYN’s actions. In other words, its something that they can’t cause or prevent during the birth. The vast majority of Cerebral Palsy MedMal cases in the US, it’s physically impossible for the OBGYNs to actually have been negligent. despite this, the trauma means that the parents win a ton of money, and the doctor gets a very big black mark on their record, besides losing a ton of money, and having massive malpractice insurance premium increases.
This is not good. Two states have adopted semi-socialist plans to deal with the huge flaws in the tort system here, the flaws being that, quite frankly, it’s a bad situation for all involved, and it is a terrible injury to the kid, and the parents are understandably upset over all this, and the kid will need a lot of expensive care, and.... etc. So there’s justification for giving the parents money. But it’s taken from the OBGYN, who did nothing wrong. I would call this one example where some level of socialism is a good thing. Florida and some other state -- either Virginia or West Virginia, I don’t remember which, have both enacted socialistic plans which OBGYNs can opt-into, paying premiums to fall under the plan. In cases of Cerebral Palsy (CP) the parents can apply for coverage, which provides compensation for costs of treatment and care if the OBGYN was covered. non-subscribing OBGYNs have to pay a very, very small fee ($250) per year; covered pay $5000 per year In comparison to the alternative in increased insurance costs, this is a minuscule amount, and helps everyone (heck, even the lawyers like it, because they get paid $45 to file the claim for compensation, and it barely requires any work, to the point where it’s actually more cost/time efficient than a lawsuit.) Overall, it works out better for everyone, except the state courts, who get less power (and in fact, have actively tried to hinder the plan, but that starts wandering into questions about other social problems)
In fact, I think somewhere around here I have a copy of my old Debate case, which was basically enacting the Florida plan, if anyone wants more specific information or evidence of my points.
Reasons why I like this particular socialist plan:
1. It does not come into conflict with capitalism (everyone gets paid for their services, they set the price of their services based on quality of service, competition affects prices, free market is not affected, etc.), however it still carries the socialist distribution benefits, and addresses a significant, existent need.
2. It is optional for all involved; if someone does not wish to be covered by the plan, they are not, and their fees are reduced to minuscule levels. One could argue that the levels should be dropped to zero, and that subscribers to the service should pick up the rest of the slack. I haven’t checked the numbers re that for the past three years, but I expect that would probably work. Either way, though, $250 a year is still more than offset by the overall drop in insurance premiums, which would rise/fall based not only on the individual, but the level of litigation in the system, which would substantially drop under the plan.
3. It is a small-scale program, aimed at a specific target. It isn’t vast or encompassing, and is specifically tailored to the situation,thus avoiding significant potential loopholes, etc.
EDIT: Oh, and NB: Yeah, I’m talking NICA. I read that article about all those reasons not to enact it... most are irrelevant, misleading, or else actually support NICA. |
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| Shieldmaiden |
| Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 4:07 am |
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Joined: 07 May 2007
Posts: 389
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
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Well done again, AD. I agree with a great deal of what you have to say. However, there are a couple of points that I would like to make.
As a person who has lived both with the American health care system and the British health care system (NHS), I greatly prefer the British one. The level of care under both systems has been exemplary. I see no difference between the kind of care I received in the States and what I received here.
The difference has been with money worries. In the US, I constantly had to worry about insurance. Some jobs do not carry sufficient benefits to support the needs of a family, and some of jobs have no benefits at all. There were times when I was struggling, seriously struggling to make ends meet and feed my children. I simply could not afford health insurance at the time. I just had to pray that nothing serious would happen to any of us while we were going through hard times (happily, my prayers were answered). And I wasn’t the only one. I knew many other people (I still do, lol) who were going through the same thing.
I’m not saying that the NHS is perfect. It’s a long way from that. But the American health care system is not as wonderful as it’s made out to be either, especially for people who are struggling at the lower levels of the working force.
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/HomeMortgageSavings/America’sHealthInsuranceCrisis.aspx?GT1=10927
If you want a really good example of a health care system, look to the French. Their health care system is said to be second to none, the best in the world. It is a combination of public and privatised care, socialism and capitalism. This brings me back to my original point. A good combination of socialism and captialism is best. |
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| Turin06 |
| Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 11:48 am |
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Joined: 24 Oct 2006
Posts: 197
Location: Good Question
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Celebrimbor wrote:
Socialism (or communism) is man’s finite attempt to create a perfect (or in other words, utopian) society.
Technically Socialism and Communism are not one and the same. Communism is the result of extremist socialism just as Islamic Terrorism is the result of extremist Islam. To be a socialist does not mean to be a communist and is unhelpful to say it is because of the big taboo associated with the C word. |
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| Turin06 |
| Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 11:52 am |
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Joined: 24 Oct 2006
Posts: 197
Location: Good Question
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| AD I agree with a lot of what you say. I think capitalism works by far the best as a base system but with socialist elements to try and keep the system humane and compassionate and not totally about the great god profit. Also I lived in the USA for five years from the age of 9-14 and I must say I didn’t notice much difference between the quality of care there or in England. |
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Between the emotion
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| gil-estel |
| Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 12:18 pm |
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Joined: 25 Apr 2007
Posts: 545
Location: Groningen, the Netherlands
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The things I notice is that people tend to debate in a way of: because socialism is utopian, we’ll run the opposite site. Knowing man is evil and accepting it - I’m referring to an attitude of: I’m evil, so I can’t help it, ergo: I can act evil, because I can’t help myself- is a bitter lame excuse IMHO.
Love to see all the americans worrying about a makeable, utopian society, while the founding fathers implied a system right from the philosophers’s mind. I mean, the American society is built upon the ideas of Enlightment, where men are equal and free, ideas nowhere to be agreed with. The ideas that common man is able to judge others in matters of justice, man should be able to wear arms, just to defend themselves against government. Those ideas seem somewhat idealistic to me, given the flaws that have appeared around these matters.
Also the argument of thinking that people who have less, are lazy bothers me. I don’t want the government to though my well-earned money. What well earned money? Many people take it for granted that they are payed the way they are. Sadly not everyone is getting what they deserve, especially when it comes to working hard.
An other thing that worries me is the fact that we consume in a way -in the Western world- that we are heading for disaster. Given the fact that the western world contains roughly 1 billion people (give or take) and the rest is dying to live the way we do, we are facing serious problems.
We’re so fed up with getting the stuff we think we deserve that we don’t take notice of things around us....Well, again, just my two cents |
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| MR. Lurtzy |
| Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 5:37 pm |
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Joined: 30 May 2007
Posts: 423
Location: Living with the Governator
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Thanks for all the helpful posts guys!  |
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| sickofpalantirs |
| Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 9:28 pm |
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Joined: 23 Mar 2006
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