Devil's Advocate Debate: Socialism is an overall a better system than Capitalism (rematch)

I thank Con for posting his argument, I shall spend this round on my rebuttals. Note that I will be referring to the graph a lot for my first few rebuttals so here it is for convience sake: "Con must prove statement B true. He hasn't provided a proper explanation to this conclusion" I will take my previous analogy with China's economic growth to apply in this argument.; The human capital of China was greatly reduced following Mao's rise to power, his persecution of the upper class , the "bourgeoisie" and professional workers resulted in the faltering of China's growth, this correlation can be seen on the graph above. "Capitalism is only surviving now because of socialist integrations, even the place you later cite, China, had to be communist to be successful in that case, no?." However under Mao and under his various economic "five year plans" and the "Great Leap Forward" China's economy faltered greatly. In fact the Great Leap Forward resulted in one of the worst famines in Chinese History, even the most conservative estimates point the death toll to being at least 15 million. The human capital within China at the time was also greatly reduced as many professional workers or wealthy land owners lost their profits and were sent to "Labour Re-Education" camps. To compensate for this loss of human capital Mao had infamously ordered citizens to produce steel furnaces in their homes to increase steel productivity, this failed greatly. The correlation between the economic stagnation of Mao's reign and the economic growth of Deng's reforms could be seen in my previous mentioned graph. "I would simply like to demonstrate that even if the opponent is right and capitalism lead to increases in economic output in china, it doesn't mean socialism doesn't work, it just means the Chinese were doing it the wrong way." That argument however is an example of the "No True Scotsman" Fallacy in which an individual distances their perceptions from unpleasant acts done as a result of them claiming that not "true" or "proper" member of said perceptions would have done said actions, this can be seen when you said that " it doesn't mean socialism doesn't work, it just means the Chinese were doing it the wrong way." "Here is a list of successful and modern socialist countries: China Denmark has a wide range of welfare benefits that they offer their citizens. As a result, they also have the highest taxes in the world, Small businesses thrive, with over 70 percent of companies having 50 employees or less." However this contradicts your previous claim in which you said that China was not practising Socialism properly. Moving to the rebuttals of Pro's main arguments (my rebuttals to the previous arguments were short as they were meant as rebuttals to rebuttals hence was not my main priority) "Although its prescriptions for the problem " things like raising the minimum wage, universal healthcare and shared ownership of productive assets " are trickier to deliver than they assume, socialism is far superior to capitalism in telling us that a member of the electorate is being left behind and that a gap in the wealth distribution is widening. This is natural " capitalism puts a premium on unbridled freedom rather than egalitarian equality." However prescriptions such as raising minimum wage, nationalizing healthcare etc result in the raising taxes, the more social programs correlates to more taxes on both wealthy and poor. This puts a burden on citizens, individuals pay taxes to help others against their will. While Welfare may help the poorest few it financially burdens the majority whom do not depend on welfare. Said welfare may result in the removal of incentive for the lower-class individual to work themselves out of their situation. Sources: 1. http://en.wikipedia.org... 2. 3. http://rationalwiki.org...