Socialism is more rational than Capitalism

Framework:Since we're looking at economic systems, what is "rational" should be judged by economic results. You can see quite clearly why capitalism is superior in this regard.==My case== I. Incentive structuresCapitalism allows individuals to pursue profit, and compete with each other for people's money in voluntary exchange. This creates a better incentive to invest your money properly and to innovate than does socialism where profit and loss are decided by those bureaucrats playing with money that isn't theirs. It's for these reasons that historically state enforced socialism has failed every time. Economist Hans Hoppe points out[1]:“…public property government resources are unsaleable, and without market prices economic calculation is impossible. Accordingly, it must be regarded as unavoidable that public government ownership will result in continual capital consumption. Instead of maintaining or even enhancing the value of the government estate, as a private owner would tend to do, a government's temporary caretaker will quickly use up as much of the government resources as possible, for what he does not consume now, he may never be able to consume… “This shows why socialism is bound to fail--a peverse incentive to spend and deplete capital is created because the loss/gain is not taken by the person/mechanism ultimately controling the industry. Beaurcrats and politicians cannot be trusted to act in accordance with the economic good, the vast amount of sheer unadulturated waste propogated by the government is evidence of that[2]. II. Empirical evidenceLuckily for us, lots of countries in the past have implemented socialism. Let's see if it made them any better off. It's pretty clear which system comes out ahead in terms of economic wellbeing when looking at history. My opponent may argue that previous socialistic governments failed because they didn't implement this policy or that, or because they didn't use his particular brand of socialism, but this is a ridiculous assertion. If public control of the means of production can work, all of the brilliant minds in state socialist USSR, China, Cuba, and a myriad of other countries would've found a way. My opponent needs to provide some serious justification for his system, because indeed there's never been a worse system for human wellbeing that socialism as defined by my opponent. R.J. Rummel of The University of Hawaii estimates that communism has been responsible for over 100,000,000 deaths in the 20th century[3]. Now of course there is a difference between Communism and Socialism, but they are similar in the fact that the government controls of the national resources is in effects, and indeed since true communism is stateless so called "communist" regimes have much more in common with socialism than they did communism. No doubt Marx turned over in his grave at the atrocities committed by a misunderstanding of his ideals. Rummel points out the common link behind all genocides, including non-communistic ones- is an overly powerful government. The leviathan is restrained by Capitalism as the wealth is held in private hands and without wealth the government can't have the level of control it does in socialism. So vote Pro for more genocide. My opponent needs some serious economic benefits to outweigh. Let's see how socialism stacks up economically.In terms of economic well being I think there are three cases that are as close to controlled experiments as you would be able to get when comparing socialism to capitalism. East and West Germany, North and South Korea, and China and Hong Kong. Keep in mind also that the wealthiest nations with the highest living standard in the history of the world, the US and Western Europe, are liberal capitalist democracies. Germany clearly saw a difference between it's capitalist and socialist sides. The East did so poorly that they had to build a giant wall through Berlin to prevent their citizens from fleeing to the capitalist West. Per capita GDP in the West was over double that of the East when they reunified (the equivalent of 22,000 Euros compared vs. 9,400 Euros), and so damaging was the socialistic experiment that even today the East is still catching up, and per capita GDP remains 30% below the level enjoyed by the West[4]. North Korea is an orwellian super-state that controls pretty much every aspect of it's citizens lives, certainly the economy. Are they any better off due to state control of resources? According to the National Review[5]: "At the moment, North Korea’s per capita income is less than 5 percent of the South’s. As the Atlantic Council’s Peter Beck puts it, “Each year the dollar value of South Korea’s GDP expansion equals the entire North Korean economy.”"Hong Kong was under the control of the liberal minded, capitalist English empire until the late 1990s, after China had already undergone a socialitic transformation under a genocidal maniac who destroyed its culture. Hong Kong was allowed to retain it's free markets when it was ceded back to the Chinses in 1997. Today per capita GDP in Hong Kong is over 5 times that of China[6], about $52,000 compared with $9,200. ==Opponent case== My opponent attributes all of the failures of socialism to corrupt politicians. First, there is nothing inherent in capitalism to prevent corrupt leaders from being elected, and the US government at least is very corrupt and corporatist, but because capitalism is so potent of a system we still have the highest GDP and one of the highest living standards in the world. You can actually turn this argument, because corrupt politicians have much less money to play with in capitalism than they do when they control the entire means of production. My opponent then argues that leaving people to "starve on the streets" is justified under capitalism. First of all, most of the Western capitalist states have extensive welfare systems so this is false, secondly economic prosperity is so much higher in a capitalist society that the standard of living is so much higher that essentially no one starves, and third if starving people out on the streets is bad, we shouldn't look to socialism since a socialist government committed the Holodomor in the Ukraine, a forced famine that let to an estimated 3.5 milion people starving to death[7]. There were literally peasants dead from starvation in the streets. My opponent then says that capitalism suffers from the tragedy of the commons--first, under pure capitalism there would BE no commons, secondly even if you buy this argument socialism suffers from the tragedies of genocide and poor economic perfomance. This outweighs.Pro argues regulation is necessary. Capitalism just means the means of production are in private hands, it says nothing against the government making some regulations. Government regulation does exist in capitalist states and has for some time.Vote Con. Sources:1. Hoppe, Hans-Hermann. Democracy: The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy and Natural Order. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2001. USA. 48. Print. 2. http://www.coburn.senate.gov...3. http://www.hawaii.edu...;4. http://www.theguardian.com...5. http://www.nationalreview.com...6. http://en.wikipedia.org...(PPP)_per_capita7. http://en.wikipedia.org...;