The Institution of Socialism

In this round, I'm only going to offer arguments against socialism, generally, pursuant to PRO's stipulated structure. I'll rebut his specific arguments in subsequent rounds.Criticisms of socialism generally exist, more or less on two levels: economic viability and the costs of socialism's implementation as a form of economic organization. Right now, I'm going to (1) talk about the problems with centralized planning, (2) explain how publicly owned means of production hinder if not completely hamper market incentives for technological improvement and preclude individual's pursuit of prosperity and (3) explore the implications of socialism's implementation on a political level. I'll conclude with a quote from Nietzshe...1. Centralized Economic Planning Renders Actual Economic Calculation Impossible.Ludwig von Mieses introduced the "economic calculation problem" in his seminal essay "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth" which Friedrich Hayek would later interrogate socialism's permissibility for rationally distributing resources. Unlike in a free market where cost is assigned and resources are distributed on the basis of individual choices with limited resources, both argued that because socialism arbitrarily assigns the prices of goods based on factors divested from individual choice, goods and services could never be rationally distributed within a socialist economic order. Socialist pricing schemes, Mises argued, could never be viable as pricing schemes because in socialist economies, governments rather than individuals owned the means to produce goods, and capital goods could not be priced. The implication, then, is that socialism could not efficiently allocate resources. This is because, goods and services are neither equally desired nor needed by all people and individual consumption of goods varies whether holding for 'need' or not. (1) In the absence of a functioning pricing scheme, demand cannot be known and resources cannot be efficiently allocated. (2) Likewise, as Hans-Herman Hoppe argued, but for a coherent pricing scheme and by implication a means of knowing demand, there is equally no viable way to determine where and how labor should be allocated in the production of goods. (3) So, because a socialist economy cannot perform the economic calculation of how to allocate resources in a way that they are utilized, socialism fails of necessity.2. Publicly Owned Means of Production Hinder if not Completely Hamper Market Incentives for Technological Improvement and Preclude Individual ProsperityMilton Friedman's criticism of socialism resonates in his tracing the impact of state owned means of production on competition and technological innovation. (4) Competition, Friedman argues, is the guarantor of innovation because profits (the market incentive to create) are allocated to those who produce the product most consistent with consumer demand. Thus, producers have an incentive to create not only the best product possible, but to do so in the most efficient way. In the absence of competition, rewards are not allocated on the basis of demand at the cost of innovation and technological improvement. By implication, where the means of production are state-owned and prices are set not by demand but by central management, the state has no profit incentive to innovate or produce consumer goods. Likewise, where economic rewards are not distributed on the basis of free market enterprise but on the basis of state regulation, individual's have no incentive to produce where they do not compete with others in a labor market. Returning to Hoppe, under this scheme, both individual and aggregate economic prosperity suffer, accordingly, under a socialist economic order. On both individual and aggregate economic levels, competition is nonexistent because there are no incentives to compete, which abrogates economic productivity and translates into reduced opportunities to pursue prosperity for individuals, and produces a state of perpetual stagnation for economies. (3)3. Political Implications of Socialism's ImplementationTo the extent that the state and only the state can own/manage the means of production, political and moral costs follow. In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek "warned of the danger of tyranny that inevitably results from government control of economic decision-making through central planning. His message was clear: Nazism and fascism were not the only threats to liberty." (5) Socialism's enforcement mechanism, in order to actually control capital and distribute goods produced requires an exorbitant degree of coercion which invariably comes at the expense of economic and political rights and liberties, Hayek contended. While ostensibly a means to equality, "restraint and servitude" are the means by which centrally planned economies allocate resources, and individual's opportunity to contract their labor, exchange goods and pursue prosperity are abrogated. Some final Remarks for this Round:Socialism, as an institution, is predicated on illusory aims and tantalizing, but deceiving ideals. Nietzsche wrote that "Socialism is the visionary younger brother of an almost decrepit despotism, whose heir it wants to be. Thus its efforts are reactionary in the deepest sense. For it desires a wealth of executive power, as only despotism had it; indeed, it outdoes everything in the past by striving for the downright destruction of the individual, which it sees as an unjustified luxury of nature, and which it intends to improve into an expedient organ of the community. Socialism crops up in the vicinity of all excessive displays of power because of its relation to it... it desires....the Caesarean power state of this century....the like of which has never existed, [and therefore] it can only hope to exist here and there for short periods of time by means of the most extreme terrorism....Socialism can serve as a rather brutal and forceful way to teach the danger of all accumulations of state power, and to that extent instill one with distrust of the state itself. When its rough voice chimes in with the battle cry "As much state as possible," it will at first make the cry noisier than ever; but soon the opposite cry will be heard with strength the greater: "As little state as possible."" (6)Many thanks, once more, to my opponent, judges and all potential readers. I'll await my opponent's response in the following round.(1) von Mises, Ludwig. "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth." originally "Die Wirtschaftsrechnung im sozialistischen Gemeinwesen" in the Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaften, vol. 47 (1920)(2) Hayek, Friedrich. Collectivist Economic Planning. (1935) https://mises.org... (3) Hoppe, Hans-Hermann. A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. (1990) http://mises.org...(4) Friedman, Milton & Rose. Free to Chose. (1980) http://www.il-rs.org.br... (5) Ebling, Richard. "Friedrich A. Hayek: A Centenary Appreciation." Foundation for Economics Education. http://www.fee.org... (6) Nietzsche, Friedrich. "Human, All Too Human." The Nietzsche Reader. Blackwell, 2006. pp. 185-186 http://nazbol.net...