Socialism is better than your choice of an alternative economy

Please choose and mention the economic system you support in the first argument. We'll begin with opening statements, covering pros of your system, then we will move on to each other pointing out cons of the other person's system. Then we offer rebuttal, and so forth. Be sure to provide sources for any factual information(such as statistics) otherwise that which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. l'll open up with stating that when I speak of socialism, I mean the definition as provided by wikipedia and it defines socialism as "a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production" https://en.wikipedia.org... This definition of socialism comes closer to what Marx believed socialism to be. Therefore any state/country which had/has state/government control of the means of production is NOT socialist unless that government is democratic, since if it is a democratic state, the state owning the means of production would mean it's also a democratic control of the means of production. Therefore, countries that are totalitarian or authoritarian in nature, such as the Soviet Union, Venezuela, China, North Korea, and others should NOT and can NOT be used as examples of socialist failures since they do not meet this definition of socialism. If you want to call what those countries had socialism, fine by me, but know that I am NOT talking about the type of "socialism" those countries had/have, so pointing out those countries will be futile. Now, here is my opening argument about the pros of socialism: Similar to how most people agree that monarchy or oligarchy is an illegitimate form of government, as they do not provide consent from the governed, so to is capitalism and other systems of economy. Socialism provides a means through which people can consent to being governed in an economic sense. Under socialism, workers control their own businesses. They have a say over the rules and regulations the business would have over them. In addition to having a say over a business you work for, you are also compensated more under socialism. With socialism, a CEO or business owner would not be there to take majority of the money the company earns. Instead, this capital would be spread across the workers. Therefore, socialism benefits the majority in society, rather than an elite few. Next, I will be talking about democratic businesses and how successful they are. Democratic businesses, which is one way in which socialism is achieved and is the type of socialism I will be mainly arguing for, are known as cooperatives. Cooperatives are actually, in many ways, more successful than traditional business models. For example, 80% of cooperatives survive the first 5 years of being in business, compared to 41% of the traditional business model. (Source: http://www.uk.coop... ) Now, while a cooperative is difficult to start, mainly because banks almost never lend to cooperatives and it's hard to find like-minded people in the same business as you to come to together and start a cooperative, when they are started, they do well enough to survive usually, as mentioned before. Since cooperatives are difficult to start up, and banks seem to hate them, this is, I believe, the primary reason why there are so few of them. That, and we all live primarily in capitalist economies that favor the traditional business model that is an oligarchy. (source: ) Now, transitioning to socialism in general: there is one example of a socialist nation that, by all means, was a socialist success. This nation was Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito. They had the highest standard of living of any Eastern European nation, and a GDP growth of greater than 5% for most of the years it was socialist(source: ). While it is true Yugoslavia fell eventually anyways, this was in large due to NATO and Reagan inciting a silent revolution in Yugoslavia to introduce and pressure them into taking a market economy.(see the previous listed source, as well as this one: http://www.globalresearch.ca... ) In fact: "There is evidence that the US administration in liason with its allies took the decision in the early 1980s to destabilise and dismantle Yugoslavia. The decision to destroy Yugoslavia as a country and carve it up into a number of small proxy states was taken by the Reagan adminstration in the early 1980s. A "Secret Sensitive" National Security Decision Directive (NSDD 133) entitled "US Policy towards Yugoslavia." (Declassified) set the foreign policy framework for the destabilization of Yugoslavia"s model of market socialism and the establishment of a US sphere of influence in Southeastern Europe. Yugoslavia was in many regards "an economic success story". In the two decades before 1980, annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged 6.1 percent, medical care was free, the rate of literacy was 91 percent, and life expectancy was 72 years. While NSDD 133 was in itself a somewhat innocous document, it provided legitimacy to the free market reforms. A series of covert intelligence operations were implemented, which consisted in creating and supporting secessionist paramilitary armies, first in Bosnia then in Kosovo. These covert operations were combined with the destabilization of the Yugoslav economy. The application of strong economic medicine under the helm of the IMF and the World Bank ultimately led to the destruction of Yugoslavia"s industrial base, the demise of the workers" cooperative and the dramatic impoverishment of its population." ( http://www.globalresearch.ca... ) I do not have any other example of a socialist success and the primary reason for that is because just about every single socialist attempt was quickly shut down and overthrown by capitalist or totalitarian governments. (see above youtube link) Yugoslavia was one of the only socialist nations to survive more than a year, and it's a wonder no nation attacked their socialism before they decided to in the 1980s. For me to argue more, I would need to know what economic system the opposition is arguing in favor of, so I'll end it here.