Socialism is more rational than Capitalism

Thanks for the debate.==My case== I. Incentive structures Pro drops my argument on incentives and the card from Hoppe showing how absent the free market, economic calculation is impossible and capital becomes depleted. This serves to prove logically the empirical analysis I offered in my second contention. Socialism leads to bad economic results, you can negate right here as Pro failed to give any counter to this insuperable objection to his system. II. Empirical evidence Pro argues I am disrespecting the poor people by advocating Capitalism, however the very opposite is true. As shown by my arguments, the best deal for the poor people is to live in a market economy where individuals are free to invest. I offered three cases we can look to that are as close to controlled experiments as one could hope (all dropped by Pro). Has state socialism helped the common man? Absolutely not. Again, look the the GDP analysis I offered, there is an extremely distinct difference in the economic well being of the common man in each of these regimes, a difference that heavily favors my position. Pro argues that when "business is included in Government" economic mobility stagnates, and this is true. However this is a critique against corporatism, not Capitalism. While some Western democracies express some corporatist tendencies (and some socialist ones), the vast majority of the market remains free. The free market has done more to lift people out of poverty than any other system in history. Pro characterizes my arguments on genocide and claims that we're debating what is "more rational" not which governments kill more people, but the economy is a social mechanism people use to maximize their well being--we're debating which incentive structure, Capitalism or Socialism does this. Clearly a system in which the power of the government isn't checked by that of the people in charge of the market, a system where men are not viewed as freeholders of property rights but rather as cogs in the national machine, fails to do this. Pro calls these arguments "cheap" and argues that he can name "millions" of deaths Capitalism is responsible for. I doubt seriously Pro can point out a Capitalist government that committed genocide--it's never happened. Let's see if his assertions stand up to scrutiny. Somehow Pro argues that Capitalism leads to starvation. First of all, under socialism there is more starvation, even socially engineered mass starvation's like the Holodomor. Recall the dropped economic analysis-this is key, I solve for Pro's starvation impact more than he does because Capitalism enhances everyone's economic well being. Does this completely solve world hunger? Obviously not, but it's done a far better job that Socialism. Pro also argues that the brutalization of the Congo was a Capitalist policy. This is a perplexing argument considering that Capitalism is about property rights and private ownership of the means of production, and the crimes of Leopold II in the Congo involved stripping people of their property rights, enslaving them, and proclaiming the government (the King) as the rightful owner of the land, namely the rubber industry. You can see that socialist governments have committed most of the genocides in history, so vote Con for less genocide.Pro gives a lot of one line impacts about why socialism is good, such as everyone will "work together for the common good" as if people are willing to work for less incentive (compare the per capita GDP's of Capitalist and Socialist countries). Pro is right about one thing though, under socialism people do have the same opportunities: none. Pro also makes patently absurd arguments like contractual agreements of labor in exchange for a wage is "wage slavery" and "stealing from the workers". I'm sure any actual slaves would be happy to live in the slavery Pro envisions, a world where they can freely sell their labor to the highest bidder. Pro also argues that socialism makes health care and education better with no warrant at all, he just asserts it. Ignore all these one liners.Pro argues that welfare states are socialistic policies. First of all he's shown no contradiction between free/private markets and welfare states. 6 of the top 10 countries on the index of Economic Freedom[1] have pretty extensive and successful welfare states (Australia, ranked 3, New Zealand ranked 4, Switzerland at 5, Canada at 6, Denmark at 9, and the US at 10). Even if Pro is right, my impacts still outweigh. Capitalism without the welfare state is superior to state socialism with it's economic failures and genocides.Pro misunderstands my characterization of the hunger argument--I'm not arguing no one starves in Capitalism, just that it's less so than Socialism. Remember the atrocities brought on by socialist states even before looking at their abysmal economic track record. ==Pro's case== Pro gives a lot of short reasons to support socialism. Don't let him get away with this, I could laundry list assertions in favor of Capitalism as well. Even so, I'll address them to show where his arguments are flawed. I'm not really sure that the person who wrote Pro's article understands what Socialism is. As my opponent himself defined it, Socialism is all about the government owning the means of production. The bad news for Pro is that government services aren't all socialist. If the government owned the farms and sold food, that would be socialism. If the government decides to fund a police force, that is not socialism.Military Pro somehow argues that the military is a socialistic institution. Wrong. This is a government institution, and there's no inconsistency with a free market and the existence of a state, and the military isn't a factor of production. Pro tries to characterize this as a socialist institution since it defends even those who don't pay taxes, but this is absurd. The military is not a business, it doesn't fight in exchange for payment, it's a result of the governments moral obligation to defend it's citizens in a hostile world. Police Again Pro is arguing for the existence of a state. What does a commonly funded police force have to do with government ownership of the means of production? If these things are Socialist, then there can BE no Capitalistic governments and all of Pro's arguments are attacking a system that doesn't exist. It's strange that Pro calls my arguments "cheap" and then tries to characterize every social institution as socialism.Student loans First, part of the reason college tuition has gone up so much is due to government subsidies as LearnLiberty points out[2]. Secondly, again this is not socialism. Court systemCourts have existed for centuries, the US legal tradition itself was inherited from the much older common law system in England. Unless my opponent wants to argue that Feudal England, a system completely based on inheritance and ownership of property, was a socialist country, this is an absurd characterization. Health care for 9/11 The government rewarding social workers who do their jobs well is not socialism. Even if it is, my impacts outweigh this by several orders of magnitude. Disaster reliefThis is once again an example of the state protecting it's citizens. What factor of production does the government seize to relieve disaster areas? Scholarships Once again this is just a government policy, not it seizing control of private industry. For Pro to win he needed to counter my arguments and show positive impacts from government control of the economy. He has failed to do so. Positive results from government are not examples of socialism unless they are examples of the government taking control of an industry. For why government action is not in conflict with Capitalism, see the analysis of the index of economic freedom. Vote Con, as my opponent has failed to show good impacts of socialism. I show why it fails both theoretically and empirically. 1. http://tinyurl.com...2. http://tinyurl.com...