On balance, Capitalism is a better system for mankind then Communism

I shall demonstrate that capitalism is a superior model due to a variety of factors. A communist society would be unable to produce the goods and services that society will want. This will lead to shortages and surpluses which are inefficient. The worse example, shortages that are a result of lack of food which cause death and starvation. It furthermore does not provide the mechanism that will increase wealth in society, which increase the well-being of society through increasing life expectancy, and happiness and reducing violent crimes. 1. The Social-Calculation Problem In a Communist society there is no way to measure the value of goods and services. There is no way to figure out which goods and services should be produced, and which resources should be saved for capital use or for future demand. There is no system for producers to determine which goods and services to buy for their production facilities, and which are available. Figuring out how to “calculate” the value of goods and services is also an impossible task, since all goods and services are intertwine with one another due to substitute good effects, complementary good effect, and income effect. For example: How many shovels should society produce? Well one would need to know who needs it, why they need it, the resources available to produce the shovels, and what the alternative use these resources can be used instead of making shovels. Knowing how each person values a good or service is also impossible since one cannot know an individual’s subjective preference. Capitalism solves the problem through allowing supply to equal demand. What this means is that producers produce more supply if prices increase and the opportunity for profit exists, while consumers consume more if prices decrease. This allows equilibrium to occur in which a quantity is produced at a specific price. Therefore, there are fewer problems with shortages and surpluses in a capitalist society, and people can obtain the good and services they desire based on their own budget. This system of supply equally demand allows welfare between producers and consumers to be maximized. This profit based-system produces information that can never be figured in a communist society. Producers know how much to produce because they are incentivizes to produce items that will create the most profit. If opportunities exist for a good or service to be produces that people demand, then entrepreneurs will take these opportunities in order to obtain a profit. Furthermore, these entrepreneurs can take advantage of specialized knowledge that planners do not know. Since anybody can be an entrepreneur, everyone can take advantage of their own specialized forms of knowledge. Consumers will also cut down on consumption if the quantity decreases and increase consumption if the quantity increases. Therefore capitalism makes resource-management more efficient then a communist society ever could. 2. Empirical Evidence of the failure of communism and the success of capitalism Nations that implemented communism have lower gross domestic production growth, and nations that were under communism tend to have lower gdp then capitalist nations. Empirical evidence has shown that societies that have implemented capitalism have successful grown their economies. A few economic miracles have occurred: The economic miracle of Chile, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Israel and Singapore. These nations were originally poor nation but have become industrialized due to implementing capitalism policies. If one looks at a graph comparing highly capitalistic nation, those nations that rank the best under the “economic freedom index”, one can see that these nations have higher gross domestic production then those that do poorly under the economic freedom index. [1] North Korea, which is a communist society, is much poorer then South Korea despite the two nations being identical in terms of population, past culture, geography and natural resources. Evidence of the social-calculation problem occurring also has empirical evidence. Massive famines and starvation has occurred in North Korea[2], China [3], and the Soviet Union [4]. People waited in long lines just to get bread [5]. While China (video) remains more capitalistic, it still has communist elements to it. One result that has occurred is that China contains ghost cities which nobody inhabits [6]. Gross domestic production is a net benefit to society because it causes a lot of positive results that benefit society. People that live in wealthier nations tend to be happier [7]. Life expectancy increase as gdp increases, since people have access to healthcare and nutrition [8]. Higher gdp also correlates with a decrease in murders[9]. 3. The Tragedy of the commons The tragedy of the commons is the problem in which that if no individual owns property, there is no incentive to maintain the property. Thus property publically owned degrades quicker. If property is privately owned, then each individual has an incentive to maintain the land, because if they do not then it will lose its value. As John Stossel notes (video) [10], privately-held parks are better kept and maintained the public parks because the owner has a greater incentive to keep the area nice. Public areas, for example, public bathrooms are not maintained properly and smell badly. There are other examples in the real world where public ownership has created problems: for example, overfishing occurs because nobody owns the ocean. 4. Innovation incentive and productive efficiency Capitalism incentivizes innovation since those that innovate obtain the profit from their efforts, research and development, and investment they put into R&D. It also creates a system in which producers minimize cost of input while maximizing output through use of prices. Engineers and business administrators are taught how to reduce costs of good and service and how to maximize output. Such calculations would be impossible under communism due to lack of a price system, and since there is no profit system there is no reason to do these calculations in the first place. Furthermore, since the production method is decentralized, any person can experiment and put their theory to the test based on his/her own special knowledge. Bureaucrats are less likely to come up with a method since there are simply less of them then the billions of people in the world that can come up with an idea and produce it. ConclusionI have demonstrates many reasons why capitalism is a superior system over communism. I look forward to CON's rebuttal. [1] . http://tinyurl.com... [2]. http://en.wikipedia.org... [3]. http://en.wikipedia.org... [4]. http://en.wikipedia.org... [5]. http://3.bp.blogspot.com... [6]. http://www.youtube.com... [7]. http://markhumphrys.com... [8]. http://tinyurl.com... [9]. http://thecivilisingmission.files.wordpress.com... [10]. http://www.youtube.com...