Rimama
village midget
Those links in the op are awful. Whoever wrote the one on socialism sounds like they are still entrenched in the cold war and trying hard not to shout commie bastards throughout it.
Magamayoshi, i think what you are describing in terms of communism might be better labelled utopia.
Curse, i see the complete opposite in socialism to what you described. Socialism (as a more moderate and "newer" form of communism) seeks to end discrimination between classes, to become a classless society. The discrimination you talk of, i suppose, could be one of socialisms paradoxical traits, but it is seen by those who support the ideals as positive discrimination and something which will be a short term measure until balance and equality are achieved.
For a nation to function there must be both capitalism and socialism. as Fresnel rightly pointed out, communism cannot work between large disparate groups of strangers, mainly because essentially socialism requires the prior consent of every individual before doing anything. but, individuals need to be able to compete for higher acheivements than their neighbours for society to progress. there must always be goals to reach.
Capitalism has some healthy aspects and some which are dispicable, as does socialism, compare the USA's ethics with China...one abuses the human rights of foreigners and one abuses the human rights of its own citizens. Globally you could say that they are finding a balance between two extremes with a sort of symbiotic relationship...the USA feeds China's wealth and China feeds the USA's consumerism.
There must be a little of each for any society to function happily, and i would even say that personally i would like to see the capitalism focussed on economics and the boardroom and socialism out in the street informing peoples day to day choices and conduct. You can be community spirited and retain your individuality.
Magamayoshi, i think what you are describing in terms of communism might be better labelled utopia.
Curse, i see the complete opposite in socialism to what you described. Socialism (as a more moderate and "newer" form of communism) seeks to end discrimination between classes, to become a classless society. The discrimination you talk of, i suppose, could be one of socialisms paradoxical traits, but it is seen by those who support the ideals as positive discrimination and something which will be a short term measure until balance and equality are achieved.
For a nation to function there must be both capitalism and socialism. as Fresnel rightly pointed out, communism cannot work between large disparate groups of strangers, mainly because essentially socialism requires the prior consent of every individual before doing anything. but, individuals need to be able to compete for higher acheivements than their neighbours for society to progress. there must always be goals to reach.
Capitalism has some healthy aspects and some which are dispicable, as does socialism, compare the USA's ethics with China...one abuses the human rights of foreigners and one abuses the human rights of its own citizens. Globally you could say that they are finding a balance between two extremes with a sort of symbiotic relationship...the USA feeds China's wealth and China feeds the USA's consumerism.
There must be a little of each for any society to function happily, and i would even say that personally i would like to see the capitalism focussed on economics and the boardroom and socialism out in the street informing peoples day to day choices and conduct. You can be community spirited and retain your individuality.
I think one of the points I was trying to get across was that a country can suffer quite heavily if there is an excess of any sort of system, but the greater of the two evils as I saw it, was Socialism, from living around ½ of my life in a Socialist country and the other ½ in relatively liberal countries. Also, while I do agree that political theory and genuine speculation shouldn't be disregarded, but I believe that people need to experience how badly Socialism can affect a country, which in this case was Sweden and my experiences and thoughts are of course recounted above so I don't like the idea of me being labelled as someone who screams COMMIES COMMIES and stuck in the cold war if you were referring to me.
There are a great amount of advantages to an economically liberal system, mainly due to the flexibility of being able to grow, which comes at the cost of being able to plunge similarly to how many economies have, but much of it originates from poor decisions from people at all levels of society. I believe that Capitalism is a viable system but has the clear pre-requirement that decisions made are rational, which may be why Socialism seems quite advocated but a clear problem is that most socialist economies have a hard time growing and may have employment rates that change very slowly or little at all in some cases, such as in France which is quite regulated where even in good economic times the unemployment rate would stay at 8% and hardly change (socioeconomic factors are of course debatable).
nobody is suggesting you are screaming "commie bastards". it was a remark about how a description in an encyclopedia appeared to be bigoted.
absolute capitalism is a theoretically viable system only if there is very limited disparity between the richest and poorest inhabitants of the country in question...it is unlikely to work any better than absolute socialism in most countries. i think we are agreeing with each other in saying there must be some of each to produce the most desirable living conditions for all.
