Who prefers Socialism over Capitalism?

[smeagol]

fyatuk has no clue what socialism is.

[fyatuk]

Me too!

Yeah...and your definition differs from several others I have read...including Karl Marx.

Part of what I've been saying is that people have their definitions too narrow. There are a crapload of flavors of socialism. Kind of like Linux. There's so many varieties that it's hard to define Linux beyond the kernel.

Marx was a communist, though of a little bit of different sort than Lennin. Socialism predates Marx by quite a bit. Apparently I'm classified as a social democrat.

Like I said, the key concept of all breeds of socialism is that the workers control production, either directly or indirectly for the affected industries (since some breeds, like social democrat, don't require complete socialization).

It becomes stupid and dysfunctional when it is applied and enforced on a large scale...IE, Socialism.

I agree. I think if society does evolve into a socialist structure, it will also evolve into more of a city-state setup with small communities working together under a larger umbrella with limited power.

At least until technology improves sufficiently. After that, it should evolve into the utopian communism that the Star Trek universe modelled.

[Don Quixote]

Wow ... such great faith the socialist places in the power and virtue of government! They rightly see the corruption and lack of character already existing in our (semi-)republic, but fail to make the connection that it will still exist do an even greater degree in a socialist gummint. What will prevent the gummint from exercising greater and wider control over the people? Who will govern the governors over us? The socialist just has ... faith that it will work.

Like I said, I'm not sure how to reason with them on this one. It's like trying to reason with cult members -- it can be daunting. It's better to simply defeat them politically.

But really, the arguments for and against socialisn are very old ones. I don't need to rehast them here. The West tried socialism in the 20th century and it was largely a disaster. Certainly, the majority of Americans have not wanted it. In fact, the American reaction to it (occasionally overblown) was the chief factor in the rise of the American conservative movement under Buckley and Goldwater.

But I'm not sure how the arguments would convince a committed socialist.

[smeagol]

bumping it for lying boutons piece of .