Tell me unbiasedly what's good and bad about capitalism, communism, socialism and fascism.

Well, at least you are smart enough to know you are stupid.

Capitalism

Con: it seems to lead to increasing wealth inequality when it's not adequately regulated.

Pro: citizens who aren't extremely wealthy are motivated to be productive, because they have to be in order to make ends meet.

Socialism

Con: it can be tricky to come up with a framework where people are still highly motivated to be productive.

Pro: inequality is actively reduced.

The other two aren't really thought about in the west much any more.

Capitalism (the separation of economy and state) is good because it's the only social system based on the principle of individual rights and leads to unparalleled prosperity and a continuously rising standard of living for everyone who is willing to work. All the other social systems am you named are evil because they violate the rights of individuals and lead to declining standards of living and bloody dictatorships.

Everybody has different ideas of what they'd like in a government. By objective standards like measures of happiness, education, median wealth, level of crime, and social mobility the most successful countries are the social democracies of northern Europe. These are combinations of capitalist economies, strong voter and union participation, and large welfare states. I'll leave talk about good and evil to the, uh, philosophers!

The Enlightenment Homie wrote:

Capitalism (the separation of economy and state) is good because it's the only social system based on the principle of individual rights and leads to unparalleled prosperity and a continuously rising standard of living for everyone who is willing to work. All the other social systems am you named are evil because they violate the rights of individuals and lead to declining standards of living and bloody dictatorships.

And since some of you have made money off of me, why not do the same!!

A lot of people sure want to know how to get in touch with investors. They could pay me to find out where you are. If they know your location and your daily routine it sure would be easy. It's not that hard to throw people off where you go. I promise. I know.

... to expand on one thing I said, the US does have "unparalleled prosperity" in some ways: it has a huge economy, and the most millionaires and billionaires in the world. But if you choose to measure prosperity as the wealth of the median citizen (how prosperous the average Joe Schmoe is), the US is far from the most prosperous, at around 30th in the world.

The Enlightenment Homie wrote:

Capitalism (the separation of economy and state) is good because it's the only social system based on the principle of individual rights and leads to unparalleled prosperity and a continuously rising standard of living for everyone who is willing to work. All the other social systems am you named are evil because they violate the rights of individuals and lead to declining standards of living and bloody dictatorships.

You and your coworkers can work in the library! It's safe there.

Guy O'Leighken wrote:

Everybody has different ideas of what they'd like in a government. By objective standards like measures of happiness, education, median wealth, level of crime, and social mobility the most successful countries are the social democracies of northern Europe. These are combinations of capitalist economies, strong voter and union participation, and large welfare states. I'll leave talk about good and evil to the, uh, philosophers!

First, there are no capitalist countries (the U.S. certainly isn't one) against which to compare the success of modern democracies. Second, those are not objective measures of happiness; they are arbitrary criteria chosen and measured by anti-capitalist intellectuals in an attempt to make capitalism look bad (the implicit, albeit false premise is always that the U.S has capitalism, so therefore European socialism > capitalism). Scandinavian counties all have severe cultural, political, and economic problems which the "social democracy" fetishists selectively overlook and would trivialize as not being problematic anyway for indifference to individual values. All this is totally apart from the fact that much Scandinavian wealth comes from oil, which the same people are working as hard as they can to destroy in the first place.

"SocialismCon: it can be tricky to come up with a framework where people are still highly motivated to be productive."ChinaVietnam

Guy O'Leighken wrote:

Capitalism

Con: it seems to lead to increasing wealth inequality when it's not adequately regulated.

Pro: citizens who aren't extremely wealthy are motivated to be productive, because they have to be in order to make ends meet.

Socialism

Con: it can be tricky to come up with a framework where people are still highly motivated to be productive.

Pro: inequality is actively reduced.

The other two aren't really thought about in the west much any more.

Around the time of the industrial revolution, the US and England were very close to being pure capitalist economies. The same thing happened then that is happening now as our tax code has become less progressive: inequality increased, and there were a large number of poor people and a tiny number of very rich people.Norway has a lot of oil money, but Sweden and Denmark don't. The US has tons of oil money, not to mention money from a lot of other resources. That hasn't changed the fact that we have the most unequal economy of any developed nation.People try to get at a meaningful measure of happiness because in a way it's the final word about a country's success. It's a tricky thing to get at though; if you don't like it skip that one, and just focus on better education, less crime, and better standard of living for the average citizen.

The Enlightenment Homie wrote:

First, there are no capitalist countries (the U.S. certainly isn't one) against which to compare the success of modern democracies. Second, those are not objective measures of happiness; they are arbitrary criteria chosen and measured by anti-capitalist intellectuals in an attempt to make capitalism look bad (the implicit, albeit false premise is always that the U.S has capitalism, so therefore European socialism > capitalism). Scandinavian counties all have severe cultural, political, and economic problems which the "social democracy" fetishists selectively overlook and would trivialize as not being problematic anyway for indifference to individual values. All this is totally apart from the fact that much Scandinavian wealth comes from oil, which the same people are working as hard as they can to destroy in the first place.

[quote]Guy O'Leighken wrote:

... to expand on one thing I said, the US does have "unparalleled prosperity" in some ways: it has a huge economy, and the most millionaires and billionaires in the world. But if you choose to measure prosperity as the wealth of the median citizen (how prosperous the average Joe Schmoe is), the US is far from the most prosperous, at around 30th in the world.

This post exemplifies how college destroys people's minds. "Capitalism" doesn't mean "the U.S. economy" like Noam Chomsky wants you to think. Capitalism is THE SEPARATION OF ECONOMY AND STATE, i.e. a social system in which the sole function of government is to protect individual rights. It is nonexistent in the modern world, and the counties that come closest to it are Hong Kong and Singapore. The U.S. is rushing toward increasingly dramatic forms of government control over the economy, and our loss of prosperity is a direct result of the loss of capitalism.

I would very much like to know what the Founding Fathers would say if they could see capitalist children being debauched to further the cause of Clearasil.

let's see.

Capitalism: My father did not graduate from HS, and now makes over $300K/yr working for an 'evil' corporation.

Socialism: my European friends father has two MD degrees, and works as a furniture store manager.

True story.

Keep it up, dude. You've got all the answers. You're making people laugh. Keep it going. You're doing great!

OK, OK, take it easy. Nobody said the US had a pure capitalist economy. Including Noam Chomsky. But the real trend in the US is toward decreasing tax burden for the richest people and increasing tax burden for the rest. That's been the trend since Nixon signed a big cut in the top marginal tax rate and then Reagan signed an even bigger one. In that time the capital gains tax rate was also reduced. So everyone else pays more. But you're wrong that pure capitalism increases prosperity for average citizens. That hard lesson was repeated in many locations in the 1800s as the industrial revolution moved around the US and Europe. Whether or not economic freedom is helpful to people who need to work all the time to make ends meet... I'll let you think about that one on your own.

The Enlightenment Homie wrote:

This post exemplifies how college destroys people's minds. "Capitalism" doesn't mean "the U.S. economy" like Noam Chomsky wants you to think. Capitalism is THE SEPARATION OF ECONOMY AND STATE, i.e. a social system in which the sole function of government is to protect individual rights. It is nonexistent in the modern world, and the counties that come closest to it are Hong Kong and Singapore. The U.S. is rushing toward increasingly dramatic forms of government control over the economy, and our loss of prosperity is a direct result of the loss of capitalism.

hmmm... well, wrote:

let's see.

Capitalism: My father did not graduate from HS, and now makes over $300K/yr working for an 'evil' corporation.

Socialism: my European friends father has two MD degrees, and works as a furniture store manager.

True story.

Great story bro. Sounds very enlightening.

So, what you've demonstrated (if one is to believe you at all) is that there is at least one person in Europe with two MD degrees who works as a furniture store manager and that there is at least one HS dropout in the US (assuming your father is in US) who makes over $300k/yr.

Wow, I bet there aren't any reverse examples.

Seriously, truly enlightening!

fascism is very effective. If you really want to get $hit done, go the fascist route.

geetar wrote:

fascism is very effective. If you really want to get $hit done, go the fascist route.

Not really. Incentive of greed is limited by fascism while incentive of fear is somewhat self limiting.

Check out US war materials production vs Germany in WWII. Fascism in a pretty damned pure form didn't really "get $hit done".

... oh, the first paragraph of my last post should have also said that in those 40 years the percentage of US revenue paid by corporations has dropped from 27% to 9%. I probably just forgot to mention that because college destroyed my mind!

The Enlightenment Homie wrote:

This post exemplifies how college destroys people's minds. "Capitalism" doesn't mean "the U.S. economy" like Noam Chomsky wants you to think. Capitalism is THE SEPARATION OF ECONOMY AND STATE, i.e. a social system in which the sole function of government is to protect individual rights. It is nonexistent in the modern world, and the counties that come closest to it are Hong Kong and Singapore. The U.S. is rushing toward increasingly dramatic forms of government control over the economy, and our loss of prosperity is a direct result of the loss of capitalism.