Capitalism or Socialism: Which is better?

[Rogernomics]

None of the above, which exists in current form. But saying that I haven't really made my mind up over Anarcho-Capitalism and Anarchist-Communism.

[Staenwald]

It's an accepted fact that human beings have an evolutionary imperative to propagate their own lineage. It's a very "selfish" impetus that has nothing to do with altruism.

you can behave altruistically for selfish reasons, food sharing is an example giving up food you could eat to someone else is an altruistic act, even if by doing so you improve the chances of your own survival, again please learn what an altruistic behavior is.

What are you on about? altruistic and selfish are opposites, giving away your food at the expense of eating it yourself and also losing the food you could save for later is an altruistic act- end of. It doesnt improve your life materially, and emotional wellbeing, although very important will not keep you alive if you are hungry because you've given all your food away. Working for mutual benefit is a self interested act of mutual exchange- not altruism. Continuing your lineage is a selfish act of course, but how can you say it has nothing to do with altruism if you are striving for an altruist ideal. In that case, altruism would preach that having children is immoral because it is selfish- and clearly that goes against our entire nature- and that is one of altruisms many faults. Please learn what altruistic behaviour and altruism are.

[Texans America]

Why are people even arguing about which is better? People are coming up with all these reasons why socialism is better, yet there is not even a real world ex-sample of a good socialist country, but I could think up tons of ex-samples of how the free market system has improved peoples lives. People will probably say that socialism hasn't been done right yet, they'll make a list of things that need to be done to make a good socialist country, and it will just end up being the same things the socialist countries are doing.

[The Black Plains]

Capitalism. Pretty obvious.

[The Grand World Order]

Corporatism.

[The Black Plains]

Corporatism.

Control and force cost $$$.

[Sibirsky]

I once said that if there was an election between The Grand World Order and a hardline socialist, I would vote for The Grand World Order and got something like 3 TGs within a minute that can be summarized by "OMG YOU GOT TO BE JOKING!!!!"

I am serious, about the vote and the TGs.

[The REAL Glasers]

Pure versions of either economy is just begging for your nation to fail, IMO.

I support a mix, I guess with a very slight lean to Capitalism. Capitalism would be allowed, but heavily regulated. I like having different brands and such, but I don't like monopolies and I don't like the nature of corporations and big business.

[Latin Hispania]

I think that a mix slightly leaning to socialism would be a whole lot better.

[The Fanboyists]

I say none of the above. Clearly, a hunting-gathering economy is far superior to anything.

If that didn't satisfy you...

If I had to support one or the other...Capitalism.

That said, mixed is always, without exception, better. Among other things, its far more flexible than a rigid system of one or the other.

Technically, for a capitalist economy to be truely and completely capitalist, there would have to be no regulation at all; in short, its a naturally-evolving, unregulated, economic system, rather than an actual ideological system; it's the absence of a fixed system rather than a definitive system of its own. If any regulation exists, it's already a mixed economy.

For a socialist economy to be truely and completely socialist, the government would need to not only run welfare, healthcare, etc, but it would have to very carefully and heavily regulate every industry, including fixing prices etc. Any system where this does not occur is already a mixed economy.

Therefore, there are no truely socialist economies (outside, perhaps, of dictatorships, which are required for socialism in its purest form to exist), and there are no truely capitalist economies in any actual state (though it exists in places where no organization of any kind exists). Therefore, by simple consensus, because most of the world uses a mixed economy of some type, mixed is easily the best.

Mixed of which proportions, though...that's the question. How capitalist vs. how socialist?

[Trotskylvania]

I once said that if there was an election between The Grand World Order and a hardline socialist, I would vote for The Grand World Order and got something like 3 TGs within a minute that can be summarized by "OMG YOU GOT TO BE JOKING!!!!"

I am serious, about the vote and the TGs.

And this means what, exactly?

Who and/or what is the Grand World Order and why would you vote for them over a hardline socialist?

[Sibirsky]

I once said that if there was an election between The Grand World Order and a hardline socialist, I would vote for The Grand World Order and got something like 3 TGs within a minute that can be summarized by "OMG YOU GOT TO BE JOKING!!!!"

I am serious, about the vote and the TGs.

And this means what, exactly?

Who and/or what is the Grand World Order and why would you vote for them over a hardline socialist?

The Grand World Order is a fellow NS user. Why? It really depends on the particular socialist up against GWO in this hypothetical election. More economic freedom is the answer.

This guy.

Corporatism.

[The Merchant Republics]

I once said that if there was an election between The Grand World Order and a hardline socialist, I would vote for The Grand World Order and got something like 3 TGs within a minute that can be summarized by "OMG YOU GOT TO BE JOKING!!!!"

I am serious, about the vote and the TGs.

And this means what, exactly?

Who and/or what is the Grand World Order and why would you vote for them over a hardline socialist?

You don't know GWO? I suppose I've never seen you in II or FN&I but still, I would have thought his reputation to be large enough. He's a Fascist.

[Soviet Engineers]

In terms of philosophy, Socialism is the more consistent, fair, and functional ideology that has less internal contradictions. In terms of practice, we've never tried to fulfill the ideal yet, and attempts at State Socialism generally have lead to terror-filled reigns by men such as Stalin and Hitler, as well as eras of stagnation and corruption under men such as Brezhnev. There is certainly evidence that these economic styles can speed the process of capital accumulation in preindustrial/precapitalist societies, but there's yet to be a demonstration that Socialism can overtake Capitalism. That being said, there's also little evidence that capitalism alone is what fuels progress, and plenty of evidence that socialism can actually advance both economies and science faster than capitalism, though empirically this fast progress has often proved shortlived.

Ultimately, I think both systems fail simply because they rely far too much on the existence of a State and on Monetary interchange. I know, ideally Socialism would be post-monetary, but that is not it's defining characteristic (there are many forms of post-monetarism), and most forms that we have tried and most ways in which it is understood include money. If one wants to have a functional monetary system, it's going to require a mix of markets and safety nets to remain remotely stable.

I personally prefer technocratically manged productive, distributive, and service industries that maximize efficiency, sustainability, and job-reduction that distributes its output equally within a society where each individual's participation is voluntary. Think anarcho-mutualism that is highly influenced by science, engineering and technology.

[Trotskylvania]

And this means what, exactly?

Who and/or what is the Grand World Order and why would you vote for them over a hardline socialist?

You don't know GWO? I suppose I've never seen you in II or FN&I but still, I would have thought his reputation to be large enough. He's a Fascist.

I had a long, long hiatus from NationStates, and that was about during the time of NSII and the establishment of this iteration of the forum. Kind of sad I wasn't there at the final Ragnarök for Jolt.

[Emmeria Kingdom]

I say socialism. This means that the government really have no effect on the private business until they found out about this company

As from Capitalist. They say what goes

[Grandlife]

Capitalism is by far the best system. Under socialism there is one problem that can never be overcome; proper resource allocation. Under socialism often times people would wonder why the state would make so many pencils but not enough paper for example. It's quite simple a bureacrat can't possibly under the full relation of prices in contrast with the items that are needed. That said s/he might choose to produce more pencils with the current amount of trees. By the time the edict is put into action and approved and carried out.
A. To many trees were used
B. To much paper was made
C. Now was far as opporunity cost is concerned the time, energy and man power that could of been used to make more pencils like the people wanted is now gone.

Now the people have tons of paper and not enough pencils, by the time the bureacrat fixes the mistake it's too late and people are dissatified. With capitalism the producer would of seen that people stopped buying as much pencils, capital would of flowed into paper making and everyone would be happy. The producer has a product, the consumer has enough pencils and paper and the world has not wasted trees for nothing. Besides that under socialism work incentive falls away and true innovation by competition gets crushed which means lack of productivitiy growth and technological gains.

[The REAL Glasers]

Yes, but a completely free market allows for monopolies and other nasty things that destroy competition and degrade human life as well as waste resources.

[Aeronos]

Free-Market Monopolies aren't inherantly nasty. Most of the nasty monopolies are government-secured. A general rule is, if a monopolic corporation starts shitting over the consumers, it creates a market niche for competition to begin again. The only reason, say, Starbucks and Walmart can keep up what they're doing is through competition. People don't like what they're doing and there are fierce campaigns to support alternatives already (they're not even monopolies yet lol). Imagine if they became a giant monopoly and stopped offering competitive prices, smaller coffee houses and shops would be able to tear them apart like vultures to a beached whale, forcing them to compete once more.

Tl;dr, becoming a monopoly doesn't exempt you from market forces. To do that requires governmental securities (like Standard Oil did in the late 1800s).

[Crabulonia]

Capitalism is by far the best system. Under socialism there is one problem that can never be overcome; proper resource allocation. Under socialism often times people would wonder why the state would make so many pencils but not enough paper for example. It's quite simple a bureacrat can't possibly under the full relation of prices in contrast with the items that are needed. That said s/he might choose to produce more pencils with the current amount of trees. By the time the edict is put into action and approved and carried out.
A. To many trees were used
B. To much paper was made
C. Now was far as opporunity cost is concerned the time, energy and man power that could of been used to make more pencils like the people wanted is now gone.

Now the people have tons of paper and not enough pencils, by the time the bureacrat fixes the mistake it's too late and people are dissatified. With capitalism the producer would of seen that people stopped buying as much pencils, capital would of flowed into paper making and everyone would be happy. The producer has a product, the consumer has enough pencils and paper and the world has not wasted trees for nothing. Besides that under socialism work incentive falls away and true innovation by competition gets crushed which means lack of productivitiy growth and technological gains.

That example doesn't make much sense, even to myself - a supporter of an Anarcho-Socialist system that doesn't fit. Central planning doesn't decide that millions of pencils are needed then forgets that paper is needed as well, what sort of moron do you think would be in charge of central planning? It seems more likely that for a centralised Socialist state to work it would need to be technocratic and a meritocracy, only in this way could the best planning be ensured.

I don't quite get what you're suggesting, that Socialists can't count?

[New Genoa]

Capitalism is by far the best system. Under socialism there is one problem that can never be overcome; proper resource allocation. Under socialism often times people would wonder why the state would make so many pencils but not enough paper for example. It's quite simple a bureacrat can't possibly under the full relation of prices in contrast with the items that are needed. That said s/he might choose to produce more pencils with the current amount of trees. By the time the edict is put into action and approved and carried out.
A. To many trees were used
B. To much paper was made
C. Now was far as opporunity cost is concerned the time, energy and man power that could of been used to make more pencils like the people wanted is now gone.

Now the people have tons of paper and not enough pencils, by the time the bureacrat fixes the mistake it's too late and people are dissatified. With capitalism the producer would of seen that people stopped buying as much pencils, capital would of flowed into paper making and everyone would be happy. The producer has a product, the consumer has enough pencils and paper and the world has not wasted trees for nothing. Besides that under socialism work incentive falls away and true innovation by competition gets crushed which means lack of productivitiy growth and technological gains.

And capitalism allocates resources well? Really? That's why we have these ecological crises approaching us head on?

[The Merchant Republics]

Capitalism is by far the best system. Under socialism there is one problem that can never be overcome; proper resource allocation. Under socialism often times people would wonder why the state would make so many pencils but not enough paper for example. It's quite simple a bureacrat can't possibly under the full relation of prices in contrast with the items that are needed. That said s/he might choose to produce more pencils with the current amount of trees. By the time the edict is put into action and approved and carried out.
A. To many trees were used
B. To much paper was made
C. Now was far as opporunity cost is concerned the time, energy and man power that could of been used to make more pencils like the people wanted is now gone.

Now the people have tons of paper and not enough pencils, by the time the bureacrat fixes the mistake it's too late and people are dissatified. With capitalism the producer would of seen that people stopped buying as much pencils, capital would of flowed into paper making and everyone would be happy. The producer has a product, the consumer has enough pencils and paper and the world has not wasted trees for nothing. Besides that under socialism work incentive falls away and true innovation by competition gets crushed which means lack of productivitiy growth and technological gains.

And capitalism allocates resources well? Really? That's why we have these ecological crises approaching us head on?

It allocates resources the most efficiently, sadly in the case of public land, most efficiently tends to coincide with most ecologically destructive, however resource allocation is one thing no one can say Capitalism does not do well, as I haven't heard of a shortage on well, almost anything in the Western World for the past two decades.

[Occupied Deutschland]

And capitalism allocates resources well? Really? That's why we have these ecological crises approaching us head on?

Capitalism allocates resources to their most highly valued use. If that is quick and easy energy blam, coal plants. After that stage usually comes the "I value clean air more than quick and easy energy" blam scrubbers and such put on coal plants, and new energies are investigated and brought to the fore.

[The Merchant Republics]

Capitalism is by far the best system. Under socialism there is one problem that can never be overcome; proper resource allocation. Under socialism often times people would wonder why the state would make so many pencils but not enough paper for example. It's quite simple a bureacrat can't possibly under the full relation of prices in contrast with the items that are needed. That said s/he might choose to produce more pencils with the current amount of trees. By the time the edict is put into action and approved and carried out.
A. To many trees were used
B. To much paper was made
C. Now was far as opporunity cost is concerned the time, energy and man power that could of been used to make more pencils like the people wanted is now gone.

Now the people have tons of paper and not enough pencils, by the time the bureacrat fixes the mistake it's too late and people are dissatified. With capitalism the producer would of seen that people stopped buying as much pencils, capital would of flowed into paper making and everyone would be happy. The producer has a product, the consumer has enough pencils and paper and the world has not wasted trees for nothing. Besides that under socialism work incentive falls away and true innovation by competition gets crushed which means lack of productivitiy growth and technological gains.

That example doesn't make much sense, even to myself - a supporter of an Anarcho-Socialist system that doesn't fit. Central planning doesn't decide that millions of pencils are needed then forgets that paper is needed as well, what sort of moron do you think would be in charge of central planning? It seems more likely that for a centralised Socialist state to work it would need to be technocratic and a meritocracy, only in this way could the best planning be ensured.

I don't quite get what you're suggesting, that Socialists can't count?

The problem isn't of counting it's of pricing, centralized command economies cannot allocate resources correctly because they lack the pricing method, so to take their example, we are dealing with one logging company and two lumber mills, one mill produces paper, the other produces furniture, the logging company can only produce so many logs per day, so a central bureaucrat must allocate those logs to either the paper mill or the furniture make, so how do they make their choice? In the market this decision is made by prices, you see if paper has a higher demand in the market then the paper mill will have more money to purchase those logs, thus they will buy the logs they need first since they can take them for the most money, the furniture company gets the rest, vice-versa if the demand is in favour of furniture. There is no way to simulate that without competition and pricing, a bureaucrat therefore must be arbitrary, assuming people use paper more then furniture he sends more to the paper mill, but little did he know that furniture would become demanded, their is now a shortage of furniture and an excess of paper, it isn't a matter of simple math, it's a matter of complex economic relationships which any number of bureaucrats simply cannot manage. This is a rather simplistic scenario, so imagine if you will that each of these mills also needs machinery and other tools that need to be produced by other factories which will need their own resources, competing in the market, they will typically all satisfy their needs for production or elsewise will be financially punished.

In a centrally planned economy, the mill A which produces paper may receive too much machinery and too few logs, while Mill B has the opposite. The economic system required to make an ordinary pencil is extraordinarily complicated with perhaps a hundred industries involved all working to match their supply with demand, a bureaucrat, ten bureaucrats, a thousand bureaucrats cannot make it work nearly as well as the market could. Soviet Russia, China, and North Korea are prime realizations of the politicized economy, it leads to suffering and destruction.

[The Merchant Republics]

And capitalism allocates resources well? Really? That's why we have these ecological crises approaching us head on?

Capitalism allocates resources to their most highly valued use. If that is quick and easy energy blam, coal plants. After that stage usually comes the "I value clean air more than quick and easy energy" blam scrubbers and such put on coal plants, and new energies are investigated and brought to the fore.

Sadly, as for now externalities are involved in the process, a company dumps oil in the river because no one owns the river, so no one will charge them for it's use, if someone or some larger organization took charge of the rivers and lakes and oceans water pollution, overfishing, and many other unpleasantries would be eliminated, much the same as animal extinction. Air is perhaps the only thing which is difficult to produce ownership of, though I imagine the effects on the ground like acid rain could be made actionable in court.