Democratic Capitalism (pro) vs Libertarian-Socialism (con)

Quotes from my opponent will be in italics, if the quote is too large I'll offer a summary in bold, and I'll offer rebuttals below. A man can be born poor and die rich in a capitalist system, but not in a socialist one.Yet, billions of people can work hard, perhaps harder than the rich man, and still remain poor under capitalism. Just look up how many people live off of a dollar or less a day in the world, majority of which are in capitalist countries, since capitalism is the majority system in the world. And the idea that this can't hapen in a socialist nation is not true. Let's take Vietnam for example, who has a socialist market economy. Here is a short list of very wealthy people in Vietnam[15]There are varying degrees of socialism, some of them want to make everyone equal in wealth, others allow for people to be able to acquire more wealth. In general, socialism will lower the wealth gap inequality. Sure, you won't have people who are multi-billionaires in socialism(or it's unlikely), but who needs that much money anyways and why should they have that much money? Do you really think they worked so much harder for that money than you did for your money? You also won't have people who are living off of a dollar a day, if the socialism isn't totalitarian. I would argue the socialism that tries to make everyone equal in wealth, would lead to a lot of people living off of a dollar a day, but this is irrelevant since I'm arguing for libertarian socialism which doesn't force people to earn the exact same amount of money. Many people will be paid more than other people, and that's fair because that person may have needed more education in order to get that job, may work more hours, may work harder, and may need higher skills to do that job. All of these are legitimate reasons for someone to be paid more than someone else.By the way, I would recommend to my opponent to not quote an entire paragraph from me. It would greatly limit the argument you can put into your round. Just summarize it, if I have a problem with your summarization, then I'll say so. But when I want to address a long paragraph, that's what I do. I only quote if it's a sentence or two. There are zero constraints co-operatives face from capitalism.Well, I listed the constraints in that paragraph you quoted from, though yes, they may not be constraints due to capitalism existing. Banks almost never loan to coops, the government almost never bails out coops(I recognize that Spain does bail out Mon dragon corporation actually, but it doesn't happen in most countries, such as the United States), but they will bail out traditional businesses. The fact that they bail out traditional businesses prevents those businesses from failing, if they were allowed to fail, perhaps society would start thinking we need a more reliable form of business... such as coops who fail at a lower rate than traditional businesses, as established before. And finally, the vast majority of people haven't heard or can't define what a cooperative is. That alone puts coops at a huge disadvantage for trying to take over the economy.I'll name another reason why coops are so few and far between: they're generally not malicious like some privately-owned businesses. The workers rarely want to take over another business and cause other businesses to fail. I could name numerous examples of traditional business owners acting maliciously to other businesses, where they out-compete them to the point of driving them out of business, where they are forced to be sold to that other business, or some other result. If you want me to provide examples, I could, but for now I won't. If you ask that I do name some examples, I'll do so next round. I just figured you would have heard of examples of this happening before, especially if you've had any decent history class. Cooperatives don't do this, since coops are governed by the workers, I would guess that workers are not interested in doing that, because they recognize it is a terrible thing to do. You have more people involved in the decision, which means the liklihood that they will choose to do something moral increases. When just one person is in charge of a business, who knows what they will do? They could be a ruthless, evil human being. I would contend that evil people are in the minority, but they still have huge impact when they're business owners, as they act maliciously to other businesses and take them over. This doesn't really happen in coops. So, this also would mean coops are more likely to be in the minority. It certainly doesn't have to do with their performance though, since as I established previously, coops usually do better than traditional businesses. Now, if you had a coop, and there's one or maybe a few people who are malicious, the majority who are not would outnumber them and they would never be able to act maliciously against other businesses. Perhaps the fact that 90% of Americans can't define a co-operative is something to do with a greater lack of outside knowledge. Co-ops are very un-American, as is, say, Afganistan. 90% can't point to Afganistan on a map of Asia.Right, I suppose that could be one reason why few people know about coops. Regardless of the reason why few people know about coops, it's still a reason why they would be in the minority. Now, one does need to wonder why coops aren't talked about in economics classes. Why aren't they? Maybe it's because the government we live in promotes capitalism. Just like socialist states leave out facts about capitalist ideas, I contend that capitalist states do the same thing. America is not any better in that regard. To fix this issue, I would require it that economics classes have to teach about cooperatives, as well as all business models. Maybe some people have learned about coops in their economics class, but I even took AP economics in high school and I didn't learn about them. You could even buy(or otherwise look through at the store) an AP economics book for test prep, and it's not listed there either. My opponent's suggestion that sole ownership of a business is selfish really grinds my gears.Well, let me state why I believe this. I want to say, first, that I have no problem with someone having sole ownership of a company if they are the only one who works at that company. All of the things my opponent listed after this is not selfish, I agree. However, I contend that workers are entitled to the product of their labor. It just makes sense, doesn't it? If you work for something, you should be entitled to have the results of your labor. If you disagree with that, please tell me why, and I'll further argue for that idea. The results of a worker's labor, often enough, is the expansion of a given company, for a company cannot grow without workers, which this would entitle them to own that company too. The fact that someone keeps the company to themselves, when the worker is entitled to owning it because it's the product of their labor, I consider to be stealing, and that is selfish. Stealing is a very selfish act. What I would propose should happen, is that the original business owner should sign on their workers to be joint-owners of the company, essentially making it a coop. I agree that the original business owner has right to own the company, but as I said in this paragraph, the workers do as well, thus joint-ownership through a cooperative is the intelligent and moral decision. It makes it so that the original business owner still owns a portion of thier business, as they are entitled to, and it makes it that the workers acquire the product of their labor, which is the business too. Perhaps my opponent can see where I am coming from now. They don't have to agree with me, but hopefully this makes more sense now. And the suggestion that there is a conspiracy to hide the potential benifits of co-ops is ludicrous.I don't think I made this suggestion. I'm looking through my previous argument and can't find anywhere I said that. Maybe you're saying that in general. Though, I don't think there would be a conspiracy, primarily because this would be true to an extent(notice that I said "to an extent", I don't say it's completely true). I mean, the government is controlled by liberals and conservatives, all of which are pro-capitalist. Perhaps the most left-wing senator we have, Bernie Sanders, even supports social democracy, which is still a capitalist system since there is still primarily private-ownership of the means of production in it. So, why would a pro-capitalist government want us to know about other alternatives to capitalism? I mean, just look at what the government has said about socialism and communism in the past with the two red scares we had in our history. To say the government doesn't hide information from us, or try to paint certain things they like in a positive light and certain things they don't like in a negative light would actually be ludicrous. Sources:[15] http://english.vietnamnet.vn...