Socialism vs Capitalism

[Zeroth]

I'm interested in hearing what people have to say about this issue. There's lots of vitriol on both sides, so I would like to encourage people to not do attacks, but instead argue their point of view. Use facts, statistics. Don't use phrases like, "In short, the wish for socialism is a wish for unparalleled human evil." or "You only want unrestrained capitalism because you want power and greed." There's enough of that in other places.

[wtd]

I don't think we've ever really seen a pure implementation of either. Ego tends to interfere: pure socialism would leave the leaders powerless, and pure capitalism would open up the possibility of the leadership being eclipsed.

[Zeroth]

What leaders are you talking about? Most free market crazies(you know the ones, with the expensive suits, that call socialism the greatest evil of our age) say that socialism is government control of assets. Wouldn't socialism necessarily strengthen the government? And in Capitalism, what we'd end up with, is maybe a lot worse company behaviour than we do now. Now, the companies are constrained by regulations, laws, etc. Sometimes it doesn't stop them even now, like Peanut Corporation of America that deliberately sold tainted peanut butter. With no regulations, no laws constraining them, I'm supposed to believe companies would finally play fair, and not try to poison me?

[DemonWasp]

Concur with wtd's first point - nobody's ever gone full socialism or full capitalism, to the best of my knowledge. The closest thing to either has probably been the massive deregulation of commerce and finance seen in the United States over the previous 8 years, or perhaps the fascist movement in the 1940's (please note: I'm not trying to Godwin this here, I don't necessarily see any tie between increased capitalism and Nazism). The closest example to socialism are probably certain nations of the European Union, all of which are still capitalist.

One of the big problems with this debate is that "socialism" and "capitalism", as words, have achieved a colloquial definition that's entirely unrelated to the reality of what they imply. Capitalism is seen as a holy grail in the mainstream media, whereas socialism is considered a slur.

Both systems have their advantages.

Capitalism, assuming sufficient competition and regulation, works very well in non-vital roles. Supplying electronics, books and other products that fall outside the "basic requirements for life" category seems to suit capitalism just fine; the competition keeps innovation moving and prices low. The average citizen benefits from capitalism in this regard. However, this falls apart a little in healthcare, social security, road maintenance and emergency services (among others), for a number of reasons. First, nobody wants to foot the bill for the fire department, but they'll be very unhappy when their house burns down and nobody saves it. Second, companies are made to earn money, and if saving your house is not profitable (perhaps Fire Departments, Inc. has a contract with a house-building company...), then they have no incentive to do so.

In providing for society as a whole, socialism seems to win out. Everyone chips in to the fire department, which will save anyone's home if able (and absent any conflict of interest). Everyone pays a little for the roads, and the healthcare, and their retirement. Removing corporate greed from the equation is helpful here, because the focus shifts to the basics again - helping the people out; competition in this arena would not help the customer (compare the quality of healthcare in the US to anywhere that has a socialist healthcare system).

This all, of course, assumes fairly idealistic implementations. Current capitalism allows for monopolies (cough Microsoft) and anti-competitive behaviour (why does Canada have a grand total of 4-5 cell phone / TV / internet suppliers?); it also allows companies far too much sway with government, often resulting in laws specially designed for a specific corporation or set of corporations. Also unhelpful is the patent / copyright system, which seems to be designed to supplement the income stream of existing big businesses rather than inspire innovation (patents and copyright last way too long and make no distinction as to whether or not the patent owner is actually doing anything with their patent). Current socialism suffers (at least in North America) because we seem to like mixing it with capitalism in unfortunate ways. Poor people may receive welfare, but there's no guarantee they'll be able to pay for money or shelter as those are both controlled by capitalism - in fact, many people on welfare can't quite do it.

[Zeroth]

To me, my initial readings of these theories seem to ignore a simple fact: they deny human nature.

Capitalism says because it harnesses human nature it is inherently superior. But part of greed is preventing others from making any success. So in a pure free market, company A could go and hire some mercenaries to wreck startup B that threatens A. Hell, if you want to see what happens with an unrestrained(mostly) free market, just look at the black market for drugs. The killings, lack of safety, quality control, etc etc.

In addition, companies sure as hell rely on a lot of government "handouts", like enforcing contract law, law enforcement, protection against espionage, assured bank accounts, SEC, roads, hospitals, public education systems, and so on. Every free market crazy completely ignores these, saying everything we have, we got because of capitalism.

It certainly is not that clear.

On the other side of the spectrum is "socialism". Socialism completely ignores, again, human greed. People /want/ to have more than their neighbours. Its how we've evolved. Its a survival tactic, that has an evolutionary benefit. In addition, the purest example of socialism, soviet russia did it all wrong. They centralized all the power in the hands of a few, which of course did things terribly inefficiently. Too many workers at unneeded factories, not enough workers at overloaded factories. Some groups worked hard, very hard, and others didn't, but they were paid similarily. Not a good thing to do. State management of all resources also left little room for people pursuing luxury items. Because no one had the money to pay for them. Many of the spreads of technology happened because of the upper crust buying these "new" things, like cars, printing presses, and computers. This made it a bit cheaper to produce more... and so on. By having no luxury spending allowed, it made it very difficult to move from expensive and rare to cheap and plentiful.

There are obviously clear strengths and weaknesses to both sides. But you can't have pure either, as they ignore the impact of human behaviour and nature. Capitalism forgets to take into account that rich people will keep others from getting rich. Socialism forgets that people like to try to succeed and be rich.

[saltpro15]

Well, I've lived in a capitalist society all my life, and it's awful, greedy businesses control everything, I would like to experience socialism, there is no way it can be as bad as capitalism from my experience

[btiffin]

I like the Canadian Balance.

A little freedom from, a little freedom to. Middle of the road is usually the best political system. Boring perhaps; the highs are lower but the lows are higher. You can break your arm in an accident and not have to worry about being broke for 3 years to pay for it. And you can't just assert a right to carry a concealed weapon. I like that freedom from. We're all free from just a little bit of over the top crazy.

Note; this goes counter to my view on education. Education should NOT be from a central authority, but be a local phenomenon. Allowed to fail miserably in places, allowed to soar in others, with the bell curve keeping most people educated at the "just right" level. But what that does, at the expense of some unlucky students given an unfair shake is open the door to high flying entrepreneurs that can carry a lot of people along for the ride ... including the poor soles that end up in the bottom of the barrel schools. Attempting to guarantee an "average education for everyone" is poor governance imho. Yet attempting to guarantee an "average life for everyone" is a worthwhile endeavour (and I don't mean far left Socialism, I mean middle ground average. You can own a factory, but perhaps you can't own ALL the factories, at least not without the odd hurdle thrown in).

Cheers

[apomb]

Which education system are you talking about btiffin? the elementary/high schools? or college/university?

Because in the college/university world, this is indeed the way things work, professors give every student the same information, the good ones will make something of it, the rest will do what they can to get by.

However, if it is about the elementary/high school levels of education, yes, i agree in that too much time is wasted in the classroom trying to level every kid off to some imaginary low water mark, however education is not something one should have to buy.

Everyone should get the same CHANCE to learn, and get that education at their own pace. Especially from an early age. So yes, let kids fail, the ones that are going to do well will do well regardless.

[btiffin]

apomb; Yeah, I was hinting at Ontario's standard curriculum for Public and High school. What does someone in Toronto really know about the best educational needs for say someone in Sudbury. Or why deny a "Dead Poets Society" level teacher from just doing their thing.

And I agree about post Secondary. But by then, it might be a little too late for the masses to have a chance to generate the extreme ends of the bell curve.

But in general, I still like the Canadian balance of socialism and regulation mixed in with a chance to own as much as you can own. I want to see one of the smart kids of compsci.ca start up the Great Canadian Software HiTech BeAllEndAll Company. I'm still waiting for news. And if that multitrillion dollar firm makes for a better hospital for my little one, then yayy.

Cheers

[md]

Btiffin, what do you think of the state of telecommunications in Canada?

[saltpro15]

@md, lol do you mean our 4-5 telecommunications companies vs the dozens the US has?

[DanielG]

you also have to remember population, Canada has about 30 million people, USA has 300. so the USA would need to have 10 times as many to call it equal.

[Zeroth]

Well, the reason the US has so many telecom companies is because of Ma Bell in the 70's. It grew so large, and controlled vertically the entire telephony stack, from the telephones (which you rented at a yearly increasing fee!) down to the telephone wires themselves. So the US marched in there, wrested Ma Bell into dozens of regional companies that could not merge. They also prevented any Ma Bell or other telecom companies from producing telephones, instead granting initial subsidies to several manufacturers to do so. What this enforced is that the manufacturers, to achieve the best market penetration, could only make phones that worked with the lowest common denominator features across the telephone networks. This caused standardized telephony to arise, where before it was standardized because one company had total control.

In the case of Canada, there were two major telecom companies until recently, Bell Canada(which iirc used to be Nortel) and Telus. Telus had the west, and Bell had the east. But Bell and Telus never controlled the entire stack like Ma Bell did, so they were never forced to separate. At least until recently.

Another factor is that from the 50's onwards, Canadian companies and the Canadian government, invested 3 times what the US companies did in long distance telecommunications. The first telecom satellite was designed and built in Canada. Fiber optics were invented and laid out across Canada first. Even if we're larger, Canada has significantly more expertise and knowledge in long distance telecommunications. This allows 4-5 competitors to cover larger areas and hedge their costs.

A company like Rogers invested in 3g from the start, which allows them to build 1/5 of the towers that Telus needs, and cover the same amount of area. This gives Rogers a significant market advantage, especially up here in the boondocks of BC.