Talk:Criticism of socialism/Archive 2

message: Note to User:Vision_Thing. Here is some text from Wikipedia:Spam#How_not_to_be_a_spammer:
*Adding many links to (or mentions of) the same site or product. Going through an article and adding the name of your product to every paragraph where it seems relevant is just going to attract the revert button. 
*Adding the same link to many articles. The first person who notices you doing this will go through all your recent contributions with an itchy trigger finger on the revert button. And that's not very much fun.
Please show some sense of proportion and please stop spamming this and other pages with multiple links to mises.org material.--Cberlet 12:48, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Four links are not "many". Also, all links are relevant to the article, are form different authors and they can be found only on mises.org. -- Vision Thing -- 16:39, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is still obviously link spamming to promote a political POV. Please stop it.--Cberlet 19:44, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Link spamming mises.org

message: Gatoclass must not be able to read. that would explain why he cannot see that I have listed relevant sources, and have removed any POV from article. I have not said that those states ARE Socialist, just that they, and much of the rest of the world claims that they are. I have also (unnecessarily, since it's would be neutral enough without them) included pro - Socialist counterarguments. The figures are not inflated at all. Wikipedia endorses the HIGHER figure. So if anything, by even bothering to put in the lower figure, I'm being biased IN FAVOUR of Socialism. Clearly Gatoclass is either biased or thinks he knows more than the internationally acclaimed professional historians who make up valid Wikipedia sources. How arrogant. Who does he think he is? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.234.157.64 (talk • contribs) 
: I've reverted you again. You need to understand that Wiki is a consensus enterprise. You don't get to just put up what you think is appropriate and ignore the views of everyone else. This is a controversial edit, and we are having a discussion here and trying to reach a compromise that everyone can live with. You can either participate in this process or continue to act like a dick [] and engage in edit wars. But perhaps you are now beginning to realize that edit wars are not the way to go, because it's a great way to ensure that no part of your views gets represented. More to come... Gatoclass 03:26, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Reply

message: NO actually what is put on wiki editing depends on the TRUTH and how valid the sources are. This is nothing to do with what you or I think, or any of the other users who edit this page. This is about the fact that verified trusted information by sources who are far more knowledgable than anyone here say that these figures I am writing about are valid. So  I have reverted you, and will continue to do so until hell freezes over. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.234.157.64 (talk • contribs) 
:Yes, and I notice that while you've been sanctimoniously swearing your commitment to "the TRUTH" and lecturing us for allegedly removing "verifed, trusted information", you went to the Central Intelligence Agency page and whitewashed[] a number CIA operations by deleting well established information, such as that the Mossadegh government overthrown by the CIA was democratically elected, or that US supported regimes in Guatemala were responsible for over 100,000 deaths. In other words, you've been doing the very thing on other pages that you've been accusing us of doing here. That's called hypocrisy. 
:Not only that, it underscores your blatant POV pushing. Gatoclass 06:12, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Reply

message: Since Iggy decided to try and integrate the number of victims of communism onto this page in a more NPOV fashion, I decided to suspend my objection to this material appearing here at least for the time being, even though I still believe it is inappropriate to this page and more than adequately covered on the CoC page.
I have therefore made a correction to Iggy's edit and reworked the text somewhat to effect a more balanced picture. Since the alleged number of "victims of socialism" has now been included on this page, I think this is a more than fair compromise. Regards, Gatoclass 07:12, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Integration

message: Re: The critics of socialism often claim that imposing a policy that would lead to the reduction of inequality would also reduce incentives, and therefore productivity and total wealth would be reduced in turn. Empirical evidence shows no statistical correlation between a nation's wealth and the degree of inequality in that nation. The most egalitarian nations in the world include wealthy countries such as Denmark, Japan and Sweden, while the countries with the most economic inequality are the poor African nations of Botswana, Lesotho and Namibia (see list of countries by income equality).
Is this not original research? This declaration of "no statistical correlation" is based on a very superficial list, not to mention that "inequality" itself is not the incentive that capitalists have in mind. It would be one thing to source someone who makes this argument, but I don't see this as in line with Wikipedia rules without a reference. Many poor African nations are run by corrupt and dictatorial governments, so I don't see how this rather weak statistic shows anything except, perhaps, the editor's own philosophical leanings. Aplomado talk 01:17, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Have you tried googling any of this?
*There is no clear functional relationship between growth and measured income inequality. 
*There is broad empirical evidence that societies with a moderate level of inequality do better -- by many measures -- than highly unequal ones. Economists Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini conducted a thorough statistical analysis of historical inequality and growth among modern nations, and found that those with more equal incomes generally experience faster productive growth. Numerous other studies have also confirmed their findings. 
To answer Aplomado's question, it's clearly not original research. It's something the contributor may have assumed was common knowledge, but should have been sourced. I have supplied two sources from Results 1 - 10 of about 226,000 of a Google search on the sentence, "Empirical evidence shows no statistical correlation between a nation's wealth and the degree of inequality in that nation." --Uncle Ed 14:58, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Hm. The way it's phrased does come across as original research, and will seem so to the reader, I'll wager. The question is how to give the evidence fair credit without making the article sound like 'opponents of reducing inequality are blind'.--Nema Fakei 16:57, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

text: In a February 2006 paper, Günther Rehme wrote, "There is no clear functional relationship between growth and measured income inequality."
It's not original research when we quote some non-Wikipedian's ideas, is it? --Uncle Ed 17:02, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Nonsense. Any growth in such states is concentraced in a tiny elite. 72.139.119.165 23:38, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Weak graf

message: Cut from intro (was first paragraph):
:One of the fundamental goals of the socialist movement, throughout its history, has been the abolition of capitalism. As such, many of socialism's opponents have been advocates of capitalism - most often, advocates of "pure" or laissez-faire capitalism. They include liberals, conservatives and libertarians such as Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Joshua Muravchik, to name a few.
This smacks of labeling critics as Capitalism advocates and therefore not objective (since they are merely advocates of a point of view). 
This paragraph also suffers from not explaining what any critics were saying about socialism. I like the short paragraph at Socialism#Criticisms_of_socialism better:
:Criticisms of socialism range from disagreements over the efficiency of socialist economic and political models, to condemnation of states described by themselves or others as "socialist." Many economic liberals dispute that the more even distribution of wealth advocated by socialists can be achieved without loss of political or economic freedoms. There is much focus on the human rights records of communist states. Some critics identify these examples with socialism, while others reject the categorization of such examples as socialist.
We should add to this what is probably the most common criticism, namely the claim that socialism as an economic system creates negative economic growth. --Uncle Ed 14:50, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wouldn't that fall under "disagreements over the efficiency of socialist economic and political models"? In any case, I haven't heard anyone arguing that a socialist economic system creates negative growth - the common argument is that it leads to sluggish growth; that is, positive but very slow growth. -- Nikodemos 05:19, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe you should ask the people you're talking to, to define their terms more carefully then. Have the critics you're referencing been using aggregate or per capita figures? Sluggish growth in aggregate may well be growth that doesn't keep up with population increase, which makes it negative growth per capita.  --Christofurio 14:57, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This smacks of labeling critics as Capitalism advocates and therefore not objective (since they are merely advocates of a point of view).  But critics of socialism are merely advocates of a point of view: broadly speaking, that socialism is bad.  If you dispute the labelling of the critics as capitalists, then you only need to look at the notable critics of socialism, all of whom are capitalists. -- WGee 05:13, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Weak intro