Capitalism vs Socialism (Capitalism > Socialsim / Capitalism is superior).

I just realized, we never did agree upon definitions of capitalism and socialism, so I will use the common definitions of them as provided by wikipedia: "Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit." [1] "Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production" [2] As long as you have no objections to those definitions, I will continue. Now, I shall post my argument why I believe capitalism to be immoral and socialism to be moral, first, and then point out that socialism can be as successful, if note more successful than capitalism. First, I wish to point out that capitalism is inherently hierarchical. The reason I say this is because it is the private ownership of the means of production, and what this means is that it puts one or a few people in charge of a business. Capitalism pretty much always leads to some people owning businesses while others work underneath those business owners. While there may not be anything inherently wrong with this set-up, I consider it to be wrong because it has an unnecessary position who takes money away from the people who could be earning that money. This unnecessary position is the business owner. The business owner is unnecessary because the workers can invest in the business themselves and can vote on business decisions. In fact, businesses that are set up this way are known as cooperatives, and many people consider cooperatives to be the socialist model of business, because it is a form of a democratic ownership of the means of production. The fact there are successful cooperatives such as Mon dragon Corporation, the largest cooperative in the world,[3] suggests that a business owner is entirely unnecessary. Since the business owner is unnecessary, they are essentially taking profit away from the workers who could be splitting up the business owner's salary among themselves. Additionally, capitalism is set up in such a way where only a few have power: and that's the business owners. It's essentially an oligarchy of sorts. Most people would agree that an oligarchy is an immoral system of government, and would agree that a republic or a democracy is more moral because it gives consent to the governed. Socialism makes the economy into a republican or democratic form. However, for whatever reason, most people make capitalism an exception to this rule. I suppose most people think capitalism is different because they believe the worker is consenting to be governed by a business owner because they choose which business owner to go to, but are they really consenting? In a capitalist society, to survive you need to work under someone or make other people work under you, or else profitability goes down which increasing profits is a key goal of capitalism. If you decide not to do either of these two things, you may eventually get taken over. For example, one could choose to live in nature and not participate in the capitalist society, however a business could come along and kick you off that land if they legally buy it. They can do that since you didn't buy it since you're not participating in the capitalist world. One could say you could self-employ, but not everyone can do that, and plus that's not as profitable as having workers underneath you or being a worker yourself. Not everyone can be a business owner under capitalism, since if everyone was, there would be no businesses as there would be no one to work under the business owners. Thus some people are forced to only be workers. However, under socialism, everyone can be a business owner since the workers themselves are the business owners. Capitalism generally puts profit above people. Business owners have an incentive to pay their employees the least amount possible so that they can take a higher pay themselves. In some cases, this leads to paying them nothing as slavery exists even to this day in some countries. In addition, working conditions tended to be terrible under capitalism prior to regulations. One just needs to look at history in the 1800s to see how it was: people had to work long hours, people worked for small wages, people had dangers to health in the workplace, etc. The business owner is generally not motivated to fix these problems because it costs money to do so. Socialism fixes this because the workers are the ones in charge of the company, and they would usually not subject themselves to long hours, low pay, and terrible working conditions. To recap: Capitalism is immoral because it has unnecessary positions which take money from other people who could be doing that job, and that unnecessary position is the business owner; Capitalism leads to terrible work conditions. Socialism fixes all of these problems. Next, I shall point out that socialism can benefit people through examples. I will not be arguing from a moral standpoint here now, but rather I will be showing that socialism can be successful if implemented properly. There is one example of a socialist nation that, by all means, was a socialist success. This nation was Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito. They had the highest standard of living of any Eastern European nation, a GDP growth of greater than 5% for most of the years it was socialist, and poverty also declined significantly[4]. Yugoslavia did not see this kind of growth under Capitalism. While it is true Yugoslavia fell eventually anyways, this was in large due to NATO and Reagan inciting a silent revolution in Yugoslavia to introduce and pressure them into taking a market economy.[4] [5] In fact "There is evidence that the US administration in liason with its allies took the decision in the early 1980s to destabilise and dismantle Yugoslavia." [5] In addition, there is Bolivia. Since having voted in a socialist party in 2006 and which has become more socialist since, Bolivia has had it's GDP soar from $8 billion to $33 billion[6] and has the fastest growing economy in Latin America. In addition, the extreme poverty levels went down from 38.2%, just before the socialists were elected, to 18.8%[7] and the general poverty rate went from 68.4% to 38.6%[6]. While Bolivia is still a poor nation, it is improving widely under socialism. Bolivia did not see this kind of growth under capitalism. A third nation that did better under socialism than under capitalism, was Spain. In the Spanish Civil war, Revolutionary Catalonia had the standard of living of the average worker go up significantly after implementing socialist ideas [8]. I can't find anything else about other indicators of economic improvement for Catalonia unfortunately. This is likely because they existed for such a short period of time, as they were eventually taken over by the Fascists and Franco. What these three countries seem to indicate is that socialism can improve the situation of countries more than capitalism in some instances. Bolivia did far worse under capitalism than under socialism, as GDP growth was tiny beforehand, and poverty levels were ridiculously high. Yugoslavia fared better under socialism as well, and so did Spain. I wish I had more characters remaining to argue more, but I suppose I will in my next round. I'll also directly rebut the points made by my opponent, since I couldn't do so this round as I ran out of room. Sources: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org... dragon_Corporation (I've had trouble with this link in the past, if it doesn't work, simply go to wikipedia and type in "Mon dragon Corporation") [4] [5] http://www.globalresearch.ca... [6] http://data.worldbank.org... [7] [8] econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/spain.htm