That’s not the common form of socialism. The term usually means that most of the economy is run by the government.
Here is the United States we have plenty of segments of the economy run by the government; police, schools, fire fighting, mail delivery, prisons, highway maintenance, etc. The people who work in these areas are government employees but they are certainly getting paid for their work.
The problem is that all of these capitalists want there to be affluent consumers out there in the public to buy their products. But they have no incentive as individuals to want to pay their own workers high wages. The ideal for a capitalist is to pay their own workers as little as possible while having all the other capitalists pay their workers as much as possible.
And because all of these capitalists are competing as individuals, they each do what’s in their own best interest; they pay the lowest wages they can get away with. And then the collective result of all of their individual actions is a stagnant economy where nobody has any extra money to spend.
Capitalists want to maximize profits, which means keeping wages as low as possible. Meanwhile, they can only maximize profits by having more sales, but that means higher wages. Given that, the ideal was to extend credit, which banks want to see happen as well because they can only earn more if more people borrow more, while increasing productivity in exchange for the same if not slightly higher wage.
I think that started during the early part of the previous century. Manufacturers like Ford conceded to increasing wages but used more technology and processes like the assembly line and Taylorism in general to increase productivity. To encourage more sales, banks extended credit to workers who used part of earnings and job security for long-term loans.
Socialist countries adopted modern industrial processes too; that’s not an ideological thing at all.
Socialism (at least economic socialism) verse capitalism is really just a command economy verse a market economy in the end. I think, historically, we can see which have done better. We just have to look at how, by and large, the western Europeans have abandoned economic socialism, or how the majority of socialist states have fared economically, especially if they haven’t adopted at least some market-based economic reforms (such as China) to make it work, at least sort of.
You have to understand the context of that point by reading the rest of my post.
Everyone debating Capitalism vs socialusm would do well to read this:
The companion to this would be Hayek’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech:
Hayek was way ahead of his time. His ideas are part of information theory and complexity theory - fields that didn’t really take off until computers became ubiquitous. His criticisma of social planniing and central control of the commanding heights were insightful and right on point.
His Nobel prize citation:
It’s the last part that the two passages above talk about.
Can we? Most surveys like that look at the examples of failures in socialist systems and then conclude that socialism is worse than capitalism. They generally don’t look at successes in socialist systems or failures in capitalist systems.
Can you name a few success stories for socialism? I honestly can’t think of any, but if you name a few we could look at them to see how successful they were, and how the compare to market based capitalist systems. I can name a dozen market based capitalist systems that seem to be pretty successful to compare and contrast.
I mentioned several above; police, schools, fire fighting, mail delivery, prisons, and highway maintenance are all run by the government. And they seem to work as well as their private equivalents would.
None of those things make a socialist economy or a socialist economic system. Those are social programs. The US has all of those things…so do most western countries. None of those countries, today, have a socialist economic (or political for that matter) system however. Those that did in Western Europe, say, abandoned it in the '70’s. Even China, which is still socialist, uses a hybrid economic system…and the parts of their system that actually work is the market (sort of) driven part, not the state controlled parts.
So, we are talking about totally different things.
What about all the failures of capitalism?
Slavery, abject poverty, genocide…
Or maybe something on a smaller scale?
Millions of people go starving every day in the US, and at the same time thousands of family farms go out of business.
Millions of people are homeless and yet the housing industry is in a catastrophic slump.
And the ever popular; 1% of the population of the US owns nearly 1/3 of the the wealth, at the same time that nearly a quarter of the population lives at or below the poverty line.
So while you may think socialism is a failed policy, there are many of us who feel that capitalism is much worse.
That seems like a No True Scotsman argument.
The things I listed are part of the economy. A major part of it; there are twenty million government employees in the United States (not counted the military) which is one eighth of the national workforce. The United States is essentially a hybrid capitalist/socialist economy.
I’ll also note that police, schools, fire fighting, mail delivery, prisons, and highway maintenance have all been run by private businesses at some point and some people have proposed re-privatizing them.
Or consider health care. In the United States, we have a predominantly privately run health care system. But many other countries have predominantly public health care systems. So is health care a private business or a social program?
What about them? Have there been capitalist economies that have failed? Sure. But the most prosperous human kind has ever been historically is under market based capitalism.
Well, ‘slavery’ is a long period. Most of the slavery period, wrt the US anyway was more mercantile based, not capitalist. Also, today, the largest user of slave labor is…China. A socialist system. As for ‘abject poverty’ and ‘genocide’, again, that is a pretty large historical period where those things happened. What time period are you saying was ‘capitalist’, and, well, what were the other economic systems doing during that time period?
The rest of your post just is too strange for me to take on. Sorry.
See there’s you’re problem. Prosperity from whose point of view?
I would bet slaves, native Americans, and the people who lived through the dust bowl (and various other economic disasters) would disagree.
That seems a little disingenuous. Slavery was not a government program in the United States. Slaves were owned by private individuals who were using them in privately owned businesses to generate profits. This was a capitalist system, even if that term was still in development.
Now if you want to talk serfdom or involuntary servitude, those are government-run systems.
Um…no. Literally you are talking about something that isn’t a socialist economic system. This isn’t a No True Scotsman fallacy, at least on my part. You (and seeming a bunch of other people in this thread) are conflating socialism and a socialist economic system with social programs. EVERY market driven capitalist economy today uses these services or social programs in one form or another, including the US. Is that No True Scotsman? I don’t see it.
They aren’t part of the economic system. A socialist economic system is a command economy. Tell me how police, fire, etc is a command economy…or any sort of economy. They aren’t. They are PAID for by an economy from taxes raised by the state in one way or another. Taxes that are funded, in every case in western nations and, frankly most nations today, by a capitalist market based econony.
Ok, I’m considering healthcare. I can’t see it as an economic system, either command or market based. It’s part of and paid for by an economic system using taxes. So is social security. Taxes on corporations and income taxes on individuals who are largely in market driven capitalist companies. Are there a few command economy corporations and state run enterprises even in the US? Sure. But the vast majority aren’t.
Again, we seem to be talking about two different things here. You are focused on social programs and social systems such as fire, police, etc. I’m talking about actual, real socialism and a socialist economic system. There are still examples, and the big one I can think of doesn’t actually have all that many social programs as you and others are envision them. They actually have very little social safety net for most of their citizens. Know which country that is?
Disingenuous? Slavery was during the mercantile period if we are talking about the US. Is that incorrect? Going from memory, the US didn’t become 50% or more capitalist as an economic system until the early 1900’s. Again…are you disputing that? Just what is ‘capitalism’ to you? What definition are you using here and what, exactly do you mean by it?? Because you seem to be using ‘socialism’ to mean ‘social programs’ and I have no idea what ‘capitalism’ definition you are using.
Well, what point of view are you talking about? Today, right now is the most prosperous for the most number of humans in history. Name me a period and a different economic system that was better. Again, I can’t think of one.
I doubt it, considering earlier periods of history. But, again, slavery, at least if we are talking chattel slavery in the US wasn’t during a capitalist period (I’d argue that the slavery today is on the socialist ledger, but you could make a case that China is at least hybrid, and that it’s capitalist aspects drive the slavery), unless you guys are working off some weird definition of capitalism. But I’d say that, by any measure using any standard, people today are more prosperous and have more access to basically anything and everything than at any time in history. Doesn’t mean all is rainbows and sunshine for people, but then it was even worse in the past. We have come a long way…way further than seeming most of you think. And this is due to market based capitalist systems.
Now, if you guy want to talk about social programs and what they have done, I’m all for that. They have softened western capitalism, and added immensely to peoples quality of life, something that capitalism is pretty bad at doing directly…but then, actual capitalism is an economic system, so of course it’s bad at doing that.
Missed this. Again, you are talking about much earlier economic systems in place during this period, at least if we are talking Western Europe or the US…or even China wrt serfdom (capitalism was late 16th century in Europe, and didn’t really take hold as a major economic system until, I don’t know, late 18th or early 19th century IIRC). Those were during the feudal period, or perhaps the mercantile period at the latest. Now, involuntary servitude, at least if we are talking today could be laid at China’s feet for sure, but I think that puts it in the socialist system category, though I will concede a case can be made to drop at least some of that on capitalism, considering that western countries and companies participate…as do our citizens wrt to the products made.