In practice, socialism requires a ruling elite.

1. Socialism requires authoritarian rule of economic society Con did not disagree that government must perform functions I listed in (a) – (e), nor did he disagree that government has the unique ability to use force to compel people to obey it's decisions. In a free economy, consumers can choose products and services. Under socialism, choice is replaced by the force of government. That's authoritarianism in economic society. Pro claims that an elected ruling elite should not be considered a ruling elite. The ruling power elite compels compliance from the 49% who are stripped of their right to make their own decisions. To do that, it is only necessary to convince 51% of voters that they are justified in stripping the 49% of their rights. The ruling elite is sold to the majority as enforcing justice and making “correct” decisions for people not competent to decide for themselves. Russian President Vladimir Putin is an example of a democratically-elected head of a power elite. [15. http://tinyurl.com...] He was subject to term limits, and simply alternated with Medvedev. Any number of alternatives are available to foil term limits. Socialism requires authoritarian rule of the economy, so if some foolproof mechanism for foiling authoritarian rule were found, it would be incompatible with socialism. Another mechanism for maintaining a power elite is through a government bureaucracy empowered through legislation. Con did not dispute the power of the U.S. bureaucracy, issuing 5000 regulations each having the force of law, with none voted upon by legislators. Japan has been struggling for decades with the problem of an empowered bureaucracy. Japan has changed prime ministers eight times in the past nine years [16. http://tinyurl.com...] in an attempt to get their country back on track, but the bureaucracy waits out leadership changes. The problem is well-known, and politicians plan on ways to confront the bureaucracy. [17. http://tinyurl.com...] 2. A bureaucracy is necessary for socialism. Con argues that in free markets bureaucracies operate within companies, so that socialist bureaucracy only replaces that. But private enterprise has many fewer decisions to make because market forces determine the allocation of capital, the costs of production, and which products are produced and which fail. “Market forces” are the decisions of individual consumers. The government does not need to decide how many Apple, Android, and Blackberry smartphones are produced, because the market does that automatically. There are at least 20 million coordinated product decisions which the government must make under socialism. Free market bureaucracy is much less and is unable to deny the right of choice, and the bureaucracy is distributed. Corporate bureaucrats are put out of business if they make poor judgments. Socialist bureaucrats have few checks. If they fail to develop new products, no one is identified as being at fault. Theoretically they can be fired, but in practice they have extreme security, no matter how badly they serve. 3. A large police force is necessary.I claimed that a socialist government removes consumer rights, and not everyone losing choice will go along with that. Black markets, smuggling, and an unregulated underground economy will inevitably arise, so there must be a substantial police force to suppress it. Con agrees, saying, “Yes, it's true that socialism will require a large police force, and they'll have to be paid well enough to keep corruption low.” He claims they would not necessarily be corrupt. It isn't necessary to be corrupt to qualify as an elite. We seem to agree that the socialist police must have wealth and power distinguishes them from ordinary citizens. They have unrivaled powers to compel people through force. While it isn't a logical necessity that the police act in support of a ruling socialist regime, it's a natural alliance that occurs in practice. In the U.S., the police, fire, and teachers unions are among the largest contributors to candidates who want to expand the size of government and the wealth of government employees. Doing so is not corrupt, it is their honest belief that government employees deserve high pay and that government ought to grow. Con's statistics on police pay are bogus. He compares the median wages of individual police officers with the media household income in the U.S. At the median level, there are 1.29 workers per household. [19. http://tinyurl.com...] So police wages are not just 12% higher than the average citizen, they are about 41% higher. In addition, “wages” does not include the value of benefits, and public employee benefits are much higher than median private sector employees. Benefits for government employees typically include lifetime health care, early retirement at a high percentage of final salary, and enormous job security. The end result is the 74% advantage observed. Con that since there are no private workers, some cannot be paid more than others. But as the novel Animal Farm proclaimed, some pigs are more equal than others. The rule-making bureaucrats and the police enforcers are a natural elite. Both have extraordinary power as a consequence of socialism, and both are natural allies of the political leadership. In the Soviet Union it was the Party members who staffed the bureaucracy and the KGB. The are analogous forces in democratic socialism, and their power is proportional to the size of the socialist component of the economy. 4. An elite is required to sustain socialismCon claims my numbers on overpayment of government employees are wrong. His numbers, however, are incorrect in three respects. He only considers Federal employees, whereas the most gross overpayment occurs with state and local government workers. My numbers were for all government workers. In state and local elections, the government employee unions provide massive funds and uncounted labor to elect candidates, mostly Democrats, that reciprocate by making sure that government employees get lavish treatment. Another error is that Con's numbers for the Federal government are broken out by college degree and then averaged by category. The only category in which Federal employees are paid less is the category with PhD.'s and physicians, of which there are few in government. The large numbers are in the lower categories where there is the most overpayment. The enormous benefit of virtually guaranteed lifetime employment is not counted. PhD research scientists are then willing to work for the government for slightly substandard compensation. Because of the job guarantee alone, government employees should be paid at least a third less than the private sector. Scandinavia is not a counter example. “Scandinavian nations are more free [than the U.S] in several decisive areas. Denmark has greater business freedom, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, freedom from corruption, and labor freedom while having comparable property rights and trade freedom scores to the U.S. Sweden has greater business freedom and freedom from corruption, while having comparable trade freedom, monetary freedom, property rights enforcement, investment freedom, and financial freedom to the United States. Finland has greater business freedom, monetary freedom, and freedom from corruption than the United States, while having comparable property right enforcement, financial freedom, and trade freedom. Norway, the least successful Scandinavian nation, has greater freedom from corruption than the United States while having comparable business freedom, trade freedom, and property rights” [20. http://tinyurl.com...] The Scandinavian example shows that high taxes can be extracted from a free market economy if there is little regulation. There are a few socialized industries, but those can be tolerated if a much larger market economy is there to support them. There are no examples of socialism contrary to the resolution.