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Well i wasnt arguing against capitalism, i was arguing for communism, and i know you were talking to smash, but hows this for an example? How many people live in poverty in the USA? In Europe? In Africa? Now lets imagine cuba had the resources to be self-sufficent and didn't have to rely on the former soviet union, it would be the perfect state, there are no poor people, all are equal, this argument is only a disadvantage to bush's "have mores".

Your argument about Communism not being at fault is just silly. That's like saying that the fall didn't kill you, it was the sudden stop at the end. If only we could find a way to fall without ever hitting the ground, then that would work, right? Problem is that no one has found a way to contruct a Communism that was not inherently very vulnerable to political takeover and despotism.



FUC[b][/b]KING NORWAY!!!!!!

FOR THE 9 MILLIONTH TIME



Edited, Fri Jul 2 22:22:06 2004 by Smasharoo

Ok. But first, we have to define what "poor" means.

The standard definition used for how many poor are in a nation is to take the median income level of a nation, and anyone who earns more then 40% below that amount is "poor".

There are inherent problems with measuring it that way though. It automatically makes nations with "flat" economic levels seem like they have fewer poor. Consider a line in which you've listed every person in the country and their income level in order. The result will be a line that goes from left to right and moves upwards along that line. The middle point from left to right is your median point. You can then look at the value of that point vertically (income) and draw another vertical line 40% lower. Everything on the left and lower then that second line is in the "poverty" range.


Here's the thing though. The steeper the line, the more people are going to be under that poverty level. Now, the socialists will tell you that therefore a large difference between rich and poor is "bad". However, did we actually lose anything in the process? If I take a somewhat flat line, and without reducing the lowest values at all but simply increase the slope of the line, I've actually increased the total "wealth" the entire population has. Sure. There's more focused within the people represented to the far right of the line, but the people at the left end haven't actually been reduced in wealth at all. They have the same relative buying power in terms of good and services available to them. But that steeper line would make it appear as though those people were suddenly "poor".


Contrarily, if you already have a steep line (as we do in the US), then if you simply increase taxes as we go rightward on the line, we can shallow out that slope quite a bit. If we do it enough, we can even lower that povery line to the point that the far left is no longer below it (no more poor. Yay!). Unfortunately, there is *nothing* about that change that ensures that those people who are no longer considered poor have anything better about their lives. We haven't given them any food. We haven't given them houses. We've given them nothing.


Not that I'm claiming this is all of socialism. Obviously, socialists attempt to take that tax money and turn it into goods and services to that left side of the line to make it come up a bit as well. My beef isnt' with that. My beef is with the fact that because of the method used to calculate who is "poor", you can't really tell if a socialist program has worked or not. You aren't really measuring whether the poor persons life has gotten better. You've just measured that the wealth persons life has gotten *worse*. Enough worse that the poor person isn't more then 40% worse anymore.


It's just a bad way of measuring things. What we should be looking at is standard of living.

You can argue a lot of things, but people (even poor people) in the US live in vastly more comfort then people anywhere else in the world. I'm reasonably certain that I lived in more comfort while unemployed and sharing a studio appartment then 90% of the worlds population does today. And that's something you can't measure by just looking at relative income.

You can argue a lot of things, but people (even poor people) in the US live in vastly more comfort then people anywhere else in the world.

LET ME SAY AGAIN. ******* NORWAY!!!!

Higher quality of life by any standard of measure.

I can't comprehend how you come to the conclusion that a country with an infant mortality rate similar to that of Lybia has the highest quality of life in the world.

Huh? Norway is a Constitutional Monarchy Smash. Just like the UK. They're not a communism. I'd also like to point out that they've begun privatizing in recent years in order to allow them to distance themselves from their reliance purely on their oil reserves for their standard of living (planing for the long term by moving to a more capitalistic system... hmmm...)

They are the most successful socialism Smash. They've got a great standard of living, and only about a 4% unemployment rate. Not bad. But again. They're currently riding high on the hog due to huge oil deposits found offshore. Let's see how they're doing in 30 years...


It's easy to hold up one standard like Norway for socialism. But then it's pretty easy to take a nation with a relatively small population, and a relatively valuable export, and be able to afford to give tons of stuff to everyone in your nation. Try doing that with open immigration, and a larger population, and more "realistic" ratio of national exports to national expense needs.


A glance around at other nations with less successful socialisms tells a different story. Spain has a 13% unemployment rate. Italy is like 9%. Norway is not a typical example. Like I said. It's easy to have a successful socialism when you have a small population and high value exports. It's a lot harder when you actually have resources available that approximate what it costs to support your people. What works in Norway will *not* work in the US. Not unless we close our borders to immigration, reduce the population by about 60%, and start opening up all internal sources of natural resources for sale on the open market to pay for our people.

Huh? Again Smash. Where are you making this stuf up?

Infant mortality rates (2000 figures)

Norway: 3.9/1000 births
USA: 6.69/1000 births
Libya: 27.9/1000 births

What definition of "similar" are you using Smash?

let's look at a few more:


UK: 5.45/1000
France: 4.41/1000
Spain: 4.48/1000
Italy: 5.76/1000
Germany 4.68/1000


Ok. So relatively small European nations have slightly lower infant mortality rates then the US. Let's look at larger nations though, shall we?

China: 27.25/1000
India: 61.47/1000
Russia: 19.78/1000
Canada: 4.95/1000


Look. I'd certainly put the US infant mortality rate in the same range as the european (and Canada) socialisms. It's no where near Libya's.

Are we a bit high? Yeah. But then for a nation that doesn't have socialized medicine, we're pretty darn low aren't we? I'd actually attribute most of the reason we have a higher rate to the silly Religious Right and their refusal to allow effective sex education taught to teenagers. I'm reasonably confident that the existence of socialized medicine has about zero to do with it.

No. They are not analgous at all Smash. Population has *everything* to do with it. They have a single primary industry that is sufficient to provide for all the needs of their citizens. However, those deposits were found in the last 40 years Smash. So they found one industry of great value and took advantage of it.

Norway is small enough that the world market can gobble up their oil and provide them with plenty of money to provide for their people. You kinda approach a point of diminishing returns when you have a vastly larger population to support. We'd have to sell more oil each year then the entire world consumes in order to do the same thing. Sure. We have other resources, but we'd have to seriously work at it to do the same thing, and would chew through our resources that much faster. The model that works in Norway would not work in the US. Not a chance.

You're really comparing apples to oranges Smash. Also, Norway only discovered those deposits in the last 50 years. They adoopted a socialist government to reap the benefits of those resources. However, there's a move now to privatize industry in Norway specifically so that they have something to produce GDP once the oil stops being the cash cow it is today. If they simply stay with the system they have, they'll live wonderfully until the day their oil runs out, and then they'll be destitute. That's great for the short term, but fails eventually.


Always the problem with socialism. It certainly gives people a bigger slice of the pie today. It just doesn't do anything to ensure that the pie stays the same size (or grows) tomorrow. It's a question of how short sighted you want to be.

When someone mentions population as a factor in an argument about Socialism failing, Gbaji responds:


Oh. And it had *nothing* to do with population.


Whne someone points out a sucess of Socialism, Gbaji responds:


No. They are not analgous at all Smash. Population has *everything* to do with it.


Apparently population is only relevant when it can be used as an argument against Socialism.

It's rare that someone condradicts themselves so blatantly, but you've truely elevated it to an artform.

Um. I'm not sure where you're trying to go with this Smash.


So small nations with easily sellable exports are able to use socialism to provide a pretty decent standard of living for their population.


Large nations can't. Here. Let me put this another way: Find a socialism with a population in the same range as the US population, and compare its success to the US.


That's my point. The more people, the more it costs and the more your nation has to produce. You'd think that'd all be relative, but it's not. There are hard limits to how valuable any individual product is on the market. Supply/demand come crashing in here. I think I very adequately showed how a Small nation like Norway can take relatively moderate deposits of oil, and sell them easily on the world market and make enough money to pay for lots of goodies for their people.

A larger nation can't do that. It has to be much more diversified. Diversity works well in a free market. It generates more complexity in a socialism though, since the Government has to decides "how much" of each thing to focus on. Norway is an extreme case because they really have just *one* product. It's super easy. You can't support even a nation with the population of Germany on the world demand for one product, much less a nation the size of the US.

Population size does matter. Again. Find me a socialism that works well on a large scale.

Heh. I'll just turn it around then. How convenient that you've defined "success" for socialism in such a way that only successful socialisms are even considered.

Um... has it occured to you that China isn't considered industrialized *because* it adopted Communism/Socialism?

Whereas the European nations mostly adopted industrialization first, and then adopted socialism? Nothing there precludes my original statement that socialism retards industrial and techological growth. If anything, China supports it strongly.


Whatever. I'm heading out for the weekend. Have a nice 4th and all...

Whereas the European nations mostly adopted industrialization first, and then adopted socialism? Nothing there precludes my original statement that socialism retards industrial and techological growth. If anything, China supports it strongly.


In that case, Bangladesh supports the argument that capitalism retards industrial and technological growth.

Isn't it amazing how capitalism ruined Bangladesh? Had they been Socialists, Bangladesh clearly would have wealth on the order of the UAE.

Because clearly, political systems lead to wealth and not a variety of other factors.

Lay off the crack, please.

No. I don't say it's "impossible". I say it's impossible to do without retarding *future* growth and development.

I agree 100% that an already industrialized nation, with reasonable natural resources, can adopt a high degree of socialism and will in fact improve the quality of life for their citizens.

However, the cost for that increase in quality of life *today* is that they are using the bulk of all the industry/technology they've worked so hard to develop just to maintain that quality of life, and are leaving very little of it left over to build on that technology to maybe make life ever better down the line.

You keep ignoring that part of the argument, as though maybe if you don't recognize it, it'll just go away. I have *never* disagreed that we *could* use socialism in exactly the way your describe. I don't think it'll be as efficient with a large population, but I do think it can be done. My disagreement has never been with whether it's possible. My point is that it's not something we *should* do. To my way of thinking, living in a world like that would be like living in a prison. Free food, free housing, free clothes, free medial. But no ability to ever have anything more.

It's a dreary future that I'd really like to avoid. And if that means that things are a bit more difficult, then so be it. Mankind strives on adversity Smash. We seek to overcome. We are not really good at just existing. Your system puts all the focus on making sure everyone's lives are ok, by ensuring that they can't "fail". But the cost is that we can never truly succeed in that kind of world either. If I was forced to live in such a world, I'd be the first in line to start a revolution, and people who think like you will be the first against the wall when it succeeds. And it will succeed because people the people who would want a world have to essentially be sheep willing to let others take all the risks for them.

That little interlude aside, I really think it's not a goal we should be seeking. It just seems kind of pointless to e for us to develop all this industrial capability merely to use it just to keep people alive and healthy. What would the whole point of the human race have been Smash? Should our epitaph be: "We lived comfortably"?