socialists win first round in chile.

[chucky2]

The problem here is if no one has to labor for their goods, who exactly is going to expend labor to produce the goods?

illegals/3rd world slaves/initial legal immigrants and their kids.

 

[CPA]

I think you have those backwards.

Capitalism works for a select few.

Socialism works for everyone.

The honest truth is capitalism does not work for everyone. You have people homeless on the streets, while the government can put a rover on mars. There is something wrong there.

lolololololololololololololol

Notice your example of capitalism has nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with government control of the money.

 

[Spungo]

Oh just wait until all of those price fixes she's talking about drive businesses out of Seattle, assuming they get passed. We'll see how much they like their socialism then.

The problem with a lot of government ideas is that wealthy people are citizens of the world. They are not restricted to a city or a country. Even saying the wrong things can be enough to drive capital away. Rich people fled France when the leader was talking about huge tax increases.

Ultimately, this is bad for Seattle. Not because her policies are bad, but using that word "socialist" is scary. In some dark and smokey room, men in $10,000 suits are talking about where their next store will be. One of them stands up, his penis still wet with saliva, and says "Definitely not Seattle. I heard they elected a communist muslim from Kenya."

 

[Abraxas]

The empires thought of as "great" typically lasted a lot longer than a few decades,

Do they? If you look at the history of recent empires they don't last like older ones did. The French Empire of Napolean died in about 15 years, the British Empire only lasted about a century after it. When you think about it, aside from Nazi Germany, nobody else was able to build or maintain an empire at all in the 20th Century and the Soviet Union made a go of it for 70 years.

and Soviet Russia was hardly a golden age for your average soviet citizen.

Compared to where they were before the Russian Revolution, it kinda was.

I don't think I'm doing anyone a disservice by stating the obvious historical fact that governments based predominantly on socialism or other, similar centralized resource distribution schemes fail.

It is when you won't define socialism. Otherwise I will contend Europe is doing just fine, as is China, and that you are being selective with your choices of socialist countries.

In fact they fail extremely quickly in a historical sense. Many monarchies have lasted longer than socialist states.

Many Monarchies also fell very quickly. Also, it is worth questioning what you mean by "fell" as Russia even after it's fall remains an extremely powerful nation.

And stop playing semantics. I can talk about "socialism" in general the same way I can talk about "capitalism" in general. I'm posting on an internet forum in a casual debate, not writing a thesis.

And if capitalism had a half dozen mutually exclusive definitions in common use that would equate. The problem is that socialism is so broadly defined as to make that unfeasible.

Depending on the definition, the most of Europe is socialist by virtue of high tax rates and expansive social safety nets. Alternatively, Cuba, North Korea, and maybe China are the only of the surviving socialist states due to them being the onyl surviving governments originating out of Soviet style governance. Alternatively you may just be talking about South American style "socialism" wherein you have heavily regulated markets and nationalized industry often built around quasi-democratic at best governments that frequently rely on military power to rule. Alternatively you could claim there has never been a socialist nation as at no point in histoy has a nation existed in which workers broadly control the means of production under democratic rule. I'm not playing sematics games, I am trying to get across that when you attack socialism but don't indicate what socialism means you could be arguing that Norway and Sweden fell, which is moronic, or you could be arguing that Allende's Chile fell, which, while true, was the result of a US backed military coup, or you could be talking about former Soviet states, etc.

So yes, if you speak in generalities and are just claiming everything anyone calls socialist fell, you are making counterfactual arguments. If you are talking about a specific brand of socialism, then you might have room to talk.

 

[Abraxas]

The problem here is if no one has to labor for their goods, who exactly is going to expend labor to produce the goods?

I don't recall saying you didn't have to labor for goods, only that through labor you gain access to all goods in a classical socialist society. What constitutes labor and what to do with nonlaborers is usually left to individual commuties to decide democratically by theory.