Socialism

Pro falsely assumes that everyone wants to survive. Suicidal individuals contradict this[1], as do people who are arguably more healthy and advocating euthanasia.[2] On top of this, it is likely that Pro was intending to mean everyone wanting everyone else to survive equally to themselves (as this is the only way that socialism of Pro's style could work). If everyone wanted everyone else to survive there wouldn't be killings and suicide bombings but there are a total of 4,118 recorded suicide attack in over 40 countries up to date[3](the latter is an example of suicide and killing at once). Pro then states that everyone has an aversion to pain and suffering. Suffering to a masochist is actually not linked ot pain but rather to not feeling anything, they actually derive huge amounts of pleasure from intense pain, this can be both sexual[4] and emotional[5] whereby it is known formally as Masochistic Personality Disorder.[5] Following on form this is the opposite end of the scale, meaning people whose only method of gaining emotional and sexual pleasure is through the suffering and pain of others; these people are known as sadists.[6][7] The next claim that Pro makes is that coexistence is needed for survival and that this necessitates that humans working together has helped them climb to the top of the evolutionary food chain. This is absolutely correct. The reason humans work so well together is because of an unequal society where there is a place for everyone and everyone either keeps to their place or are severely punished for not doing so, and perhaps rehabilitated into more obedient citizens. In a socialist society of Pro's type, there would be no one to tell anyone to do anything, and no punishment for the wicked. everyone would have this unequivocally granted birthright to 'power' equal to any and all other human beings. The issue with this is that if everyone is born with equal power, they may grow to abuse that power differently to how their fellow humans use it and if no one has more power so as to step in and prevent them from any further abuse, they are free to abuse as they please. Socialism is actually a system where humans are not working together, but are in complete chaos and working dysfunctionally. Pro states that in a socialist system, there will inevitably be a chain of command and authority but then how on Earth do the people underneath these authority figures have 'power to the people'? they are powerless and are lower ranking. If the authority figure says jump they say 'how high sir/ma'am?' and this is then not socialism. Socialism is inevitably going to lead either to pure and utter chaos or to a very anti-socialistic mob/mafia styled running of the world. Pro then states that as long as people periodically have the power to decide on certain issues, the system is socialism even if there is inequality and unequal spread of power throughout the populace, this is like saying that every single country where voting and elections occur are socialist. In that case, pretty much every political system is socialism and what Pro is actually debating is whether voting should occur or a tyrannical dictatorship should arise, which is a whole other debate topic altogether. Pro then states that it is insane to mass murder people but if there is no punishment system in place and no one has the unequal authority to say no to them then how does on stop a mass murderer or deter future ones? Pro finishes by stating that they are not an anarchist because anarchy is no one having power whereas socialism is everyone having equal power. Unfortunately for Pro, if everyone has equal power, no one has any since it all cancels each other out and there is no one who can claim to be powerful relative to anyone else i the political or legal sense of the word. Pro is correct though; they are not an anarchist because they are not a Socialist either and are clearly confuse don what Socialism actually is. I thank Pro for this enjoyable debate and their friendly manner of discourse and conclude that Socialism has not been successfully support by Pro, who had the burden of proof in this debate. Sources: [1] http://www.mind.org.uk... [2] http://www.theguardian.com... [3] http://cpostdata.uchicago.edu... [4] http://www.minddisorders.com... [5] http://samvak.tripod.com... [6] http://www.forensicpsychiatry.ca... [7] http://www.psychnet-uk.com...