Debate: Capitalism vs Socialism
Side: Socialism

Now this is a post! It's about time you got abit serious about this debate. For one thing; you can hold the philosophical viewpoint that noone should be allowed to tell anyone what to do (within reason, as you have laid forth with cases of murder). That, of course, is merely a subjective viewpoint and is not actually backed up with anything beyond mere preference. "nope, i believe no one should have authority over our private lives... don't get how that's authoritarian somehow... seems more libertarian."Here is the problem; the nature of the world can be quite contradictory. You correctly pointed out that democracy can devolve into its exact opposite, despotism (or fascism, or totalitarian communism). My point, however, is that your pure libertarianism devolves into rule by corporate powers. When you focus only on government control and keeping governments out of our lives you neglect the control that corporations, industry, and business can have as well. In a pure libertarian system all land can, theoretically, be controlled by a single person or entity. Over time this person or company can slowly buy up every piece of property in the United States or earth. What would happen, then? If someone owns the land you live on don't they get to tell you what to do? If someone owns all the land on Earth wouldn't they make the rules? If people have complete control over property they own and noone can do anything about it anyone who lives or works on the property must do what they say, no ifs, ands, or buts.A company can prohibit smoking on its property, can't it? Can't a company say it is a drug free place of work? Can't apartment complexes stipulate that no alcohol is allowed on premises? If people don't like it they can live or work somewhere else. If, say, this company that controls all land on earth didn't like homosexuality and said that it cannot be practiced on its private property, what would homosexuals do? What if this only employer on earth said no blacks or women, Chinese, or Frenchmen can work? What are these people to do?You laugh, of course, you'd say it is merely hypothetical and that it is impossible for one company to own all land on Earth. Even with a pure libertarian system in place that might be true. However, you don't need one entity to have such problems, a small group of major employers and land-owners could own most of the land and provide most of the jobs. If this small group of extremely wealthy and powerful people share similar views then what would minority groups or individuals with habits, beliefs, and tendencies adverse to this group's ideology do? What if 90% of the jobs in a country or the world were controlled by men who didn't believe women should be employed? What are the women of the country to do? Move to a country where that isn't the case? What if most other countries are the same way?Maybe they could start their own business? How? If most of the money, land, jobs, factories, everything is owned by a small group of people hostile to them how are they going to get started? The sad fact is that this happens all the time; in the United States whole towns, called "factory towns", were run by a single company. Today, over 80% of the wealth in this country is controlled by the top 20%, 60% by the top ten. Guess what, that means if you want to be employed, take out a loan, find investors, buy land, live somewhere acceptable you must play by a relatively small number of people's rules. If this 20% doesn't like women guess how hard it is going to be to find investors or a business loan? This already lopsided wealth distribution would be even worse in an unregulated libertarian economy. In other words, without the people having control over their government, without equality in the vote, and without people having a say in their lives and over each other's lives (to a certain extent) we'd live in even less freedom than we have now.At least now, because of a government system of some equalization, checks and balances, and freedom to vote for policies and politicians that a majority favors we can at least have some say in how our lives are lived. In your case we'd inevitably have no say; it is whatever the new kings of our society want, whatever the people who own the land want, whatever the rich people want. I am sorry; your goals may sound noble but are nothing but a pipe dream. Until you figure out a way to keep the rich from controlling our lives I think I am going to put my lot in with government, social action, and community action.