Socialism

PRIVATE PROPERTY: What I meant by this is it's someone who is not participating in capitalism and doesn't believe in the concept of private property. Since it's not considered to be that person's property, they can then be kicked off of that land. I again bring up the native Americans who didn't have a concept of private property, and were forced to relocate by Americans who did have a concept of private property. Many native Americans died because of that forced relocation, but under capitalism, that is perfectly acceptable since it wasn't considered their land. WORKING FOR AN EMPLOYER Ok, why don't we look at wage trends for between 1800 and 1900 for the United States, which is a time period where government mostly stayed out of business and the economy. In 1800, the average wage was 25 cents a day, while in 1900 it was $1.86 a day.[1] These numbers don't necessarily mean anything because we also need to take into account inflation between 1800 and 1900. When accounting for inflation, actually between 1800 to 1900 we had deflation, so that makes the amount even more. So yes, it looks like you are correct that wages generally go up over time under capitalism. However, the problem isn't so much that wages don't go up, but more to do with the percent of wealth people own. In fact, the rich earning more wealth could have accounted for the increase in wages from that time. From 1800 to 1900 the amount of wealth that the top 10% of Americans owned went from 50% of the total new income, to 70% of all new income[2] and has only gotten worse over the centuries. In fact, it could be argued that the average wage went up between those times because the amount the wealthier wage owners earn went up, while everyone else's stayed the same or even went down. The fact still remains that the rich generally paid their workers poorly in the 1800s and could hardly afford anything, and "in 1869, 75 percent of urban households earned a meager subsistence wage or less"[2]This was how it was in the 1800s when capitalism was unfettered, many couldn't even afford to have a healthy amount of food, and most were barely given that. Therefore, quality of living is not increased under capitalism for everyone, since the 1800s saw many, many people who could barely afford to live. MORALITY: The people didn't really get a chance to agree to that set-up actually. What other choice does one have but to work under someone? It's either that or you make people work under you. You have no other options almost. Cooperatives are extremely rare, and I'll explain why when I address your conclusion later. I'll also explain why people don't have the option to form their own cooperative. EXAMPLES: There's a reason why Tito was so popular in Yugoslavia, and it was in no way a terrible place to live, which is why it's fallacious to compare Yugoslavia to Zimbabwe. Just a few things about Yugoslavia: "In the two decades before 1980, annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged 6.1 percent, medical care was free, the rate of literacy was 91 percent, and life expectancy was 72 years"[3] and standard of living rose as well. Tito was loved by Yugoslavians because of how much he did for them, and how much Yugoslavia improved under socialism. I question your sources for Alaska's and California's GDP per capita. According to my sources, Alaska has a GDP/capita of $55,940[4], while California has $63,763[5][6]. Not to mention, it's really not as though Alaska doesn't have resources. They have plenty of oil, so that's why their GDP is as high as it is. As for the native Americans, it's not as though they knew there was oil, or what it could be used for. No one before the 1800s even knew what to use oil for anyways. But yes, the efficient use of resources does also matter, however I would argue that socialism uses resources more efficiently since it's more based around worker needs, and not capitalist needs. Capitalists will spend the least amount of money as possible, and they will want to produce items at an extremely fast pace, to the point that they waste items. We have a huge waste problem in America. Socialism could help this since workers would be in control, and they wouldn't necessarily focus on making things quickly, but would rather have everyone be able to get what is necessary. Since there would be a democratic control of the means of production, it means that people are voting for how many things to make, and they would vote for what is necessary to make, and not necessarily what will just profit them most. Cooperatives generally are run in the interest of workers over profit. Bolivia still has lingering problems left over from when it was capitalist, as your source says, their congress is passing legislation to crack down on corruption. The corruption was much worse prior to socialists coming to power, according to your source. As for your argument about how that country had to come to power through private businesses offering money, and how I bought my things from private businesses, what else are we supposed to do in a society that is capitalist? There's no other choice. I am earnestly looking for cooperatives to shop at from now on, but there are so few of them. I basically have no choice but to shop at capitalist businesses. I would prefer to shop at cooperatives, but I've not had luck with finding any in my area. CONCLUSION I'll address each of your questions: "If Socialist workplaces were more efficient than capitalist workplaces, why haven"t all of the Socialist Workplaces ran the Capitalist workplaces out of business? And if socialist businesses have higher success rates than capitalist businesses, why are almost all businesses capitalist?" First of all, capitalism came before socialism, so capitalism already has a head start because of that, so there were only capitalist businesses before socialism was invented. Next, because the system was capitalist to begin with, banks won't loan out to cooperatives because they see them as risky since they are a new idea for a business. They'd much rather loan out to traditional business who they trust more because they have been around for longer and majority of businesses are traditional capitalist businesses. In addition, the government only ever bails out traditional, capitalist businesses, and never cooperatives. Finally, it's hard to find people who are like-minded in that they oppose capitalism since everyone is raised to believe capitalism is the best system, economics classes all build assumptions based off of capitalism and not socialism, and finally we are all taught from a young age to buy things from traditional businesses and that society works based off of traditional businesses. Plus, when did you learn about traditional businesses? How old were you when you learned about them? Compare that to when you learned about cooperatives. Chances are most people know about traditional businesses many years before they learn about cooperatives. All of these facts help perpetuate the capitalist business majority. As I've pointed out in previous debates, cooperatives, which are socialist businesses, do better than traditional businesses, but because of the above listed reasons, they are not able to gain momentum and spread their ideas. I shall now link to a previous debate I did on cooperatives which should show you that they do better than traditional businesses, see this source: [7] Round 1 is basically all you need to read. "If Socialist creates such high economic growth rates, why are all of the richest nations capitalist, and most of the poorer nations socialist?" Just remember that correlation doesn't equal causation. The poorer nations that are socialist generally have had vast improvements to their economies after becoming socialist, they're still poor, but that's because they were so far behind to begin with. Imagine what it would do for a larger nation like the United States. The bigger nations, in general, have seen socialism as a threat and never allowed socialism to get large support in their country, that's why none of the richer nations are socialist because they prevent it from happening. "If Capitalism exploits workers and pays them slave wages, why are all of the nations with higher wages capitalist, while all of the socialist nations have phenomenally low wages and terrible working conditions? " Now this one is just a loaded question fallacy. It has a presumption built into it that no evidence was provided for. I can't answer this because it's simply not true that the socialist nations have lower wages and terrible working conditions. I go to Bolivia again as an example. They've had poverty levels go down tremendously, GDP go up tremendously, etc. Sources: [1] http://www.nber.org... [2] http://www.jstor.org... (you need JSTOR access to see this article, but all you need to do is make an account and you'll have access to this one. It's free) [3] http://www.globalresearch.ca... [4] https://fred.stlouisfed.org... [5] https://www.bea.gov... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org... [7] http://www.debate.org...