Capitalism vs. Socialism

Now time to rebuttal your rebuttals to my rebuttals! Or rather, simply to defend my rebuttals. :) 1. Well, when I cited my example of prices rising too high, I wasn't referring to corporations raising them too high, but rather HOMEOWNERS as they bought and attempted to sell their homes. And you are right, people cannot get away with charging too much, which is why the housing market collapsed! 2. But when you think about it, INDIVIDUAL PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS would be the most capable individuals to determine the amount of goods necessary to produce or that they need to consume. While surpluses and deficits of goods may arise, these would be minimal as factories would have no reason to request more goods than they feel that they COULD ACTUALLY USE from the national plan, just as consumers would not request more food than they WOULD ACTUALLY CONSUME. That, and through the labor deduction method I outlined above, the national plan could also create a "nest egg" of raw materials in the event of a deficit or catastrophe, and if nonperishable goods are not used, then they can simply be returned to the stockpile. 3. I am only using the labor theory of value here to describe how workers would be compensated (i.e. through labor vouchers) in addition to the USE-VALUE of their product. The use-value can be determined based on how much of it is actually used in the economy. Also, just to note, generally, the more labor put into a product, the higher its quality, and the greater its ability to satisfy people's wants. Also, one of the major flaws of a capitalist economy is competition between workers, which lowers wages, this does not always occur in proportion to a worker's reduced necessity to the market due to an increase of labor to satisfy a demand for products. An occurring problem is that many workers, most notably migrant workers, are forced to sell their labor at a lower price than even the market might normally bestow on it in order to compete with workers that an employer has a supposed preference over. Employment discrimination is a problem that can never be fully solved in a capitalist economy, and many complain that programs such as affirmative action are apply brute force to a hiring process that requires a skilled touch. Now for my other defenses as to the flaws of capitalism: 1. My response to this is the same as my response to #2 above, but also pointing out that a capitalist economy relies on the decision making capability of a relatively small group of people (i.e. a board of directors). An economy planned from all producers, while by no means elimination irrational actions, would certainty reduce their probability considerably, as more voices could be heard at the table. 2. Actually, a recently found an EXCELLENT argument for incentives in a socialist economy on a Trotskyist "Marxist FAQ"(1), that is, that the incentive to innovate would be a reduction in the labor one has to perform. Innovations in production such as an improvement in machinery can reduce the time one has to labor in order to complete a finished product, and if products are valued according to the amount of labor they were required to produce before such an innovation, (through adjustments of labor voucher payments and costs) than the inventor would profit just as well as society. Not to mention that in capitalist society, inventors often do not receive the fruits of their labor. (2) Take for instance, Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin, who had his invention stolen from him just as he created it. Even today, employees that create an invention receive very little of the amount that their corporations receive. The creator of pacman, T!3;ru Iwatani, as he stated in interview regarding compensation for his creation, he said "The truth of the matter is, there were no rewards per se for the success of Pac-Man. I was just an employee. There was no change in my salary, no bonus, no official citation of any kind." (3) And yet Pac-man was a tremendous success! 3. True, but this is more known to happen in the reverse way (that is, customers favoring cost over quality). 4. Economic prosperity? While the United States does have the highest GDP in the world, it is really the way that it is distributed that counts. In 2010, the US census bureau claimed that more than 16% of Americans (50 MILLION to be precise) lived in poverty, including almost 20% of American children! (4) Compare that to Sweden, a thriving Scandinavian social democracy (which, I have already stated, is closer to capitalism than socialism. HOWEVER, it does show that socializing certain industries, that is, taking the profit motive out of them and turning them to society, can be effective), which as this paper shows (5) has a much higher standard of living and better income distribution. This time, I remembered my citations: 1.http://www.newyouth.com... 2.https://www.marxists.org... (at around page 100, question 13) 3.http://vh1.blogs.com... 4.http://www.povertyusa.org... 5.http://www.nber.org...