In true socialist sistem there is no ownership, everything belongs to the people not to one person
for excample Kalashnikov who invented the AK47, this automated rifle belong to USSR and therfore to its people
the developer maybe didnt get richer, but he was honored by the people, a respectful man!
in a world where you dont need money, you dont need ownership! whatever you do, you do it for the sake of everyone!
when you invent a cure, you give it away to the people to use it, while under capitalism only those with the money
will use it, while others will die, excample: people in africa who cant afford paying for AIDS treatment
or Cancer treatment, or other stuff, why? are they less humans then those who can afford the treatment?
and the developers of the treatment selling it instead of giving it away because:
1. they need income to susrivive under the capitalist regime
2. greed

Take Cuba for excample, they are not rich, they cant offer much, but they still do thair best to help others
Cuban doctors working all over the world to help people who cant afford treatment
sure cuba is not ideal, but it trys! people are welcome to migrate to cuba, while USA closed it borders
and the only way you can get in is only if you have some sort of super high education
the resason why cuba welcomes new citizens (but you have to be socialist ofcourse)
is because cuba have no ownership on itself, it belongs to the people, all people, from all over the world.
now its a bit topic so lets not dig into it, yes i know there are limitations and so on
but there is a reason for everything, if there is a limitation, there is a reson for it.

Now I get what you're saying and well what you're saying is pretty much spot-on. It's one of the easiest problems to solve. unfortunately one of the hardest to actually implement. Telling someone he can't have a second house in florida to help kids in a continent you never even heard off is something people can't seem to accept.

those "people" who cant seem to accept are unaducated selfish fools
if school education is not enough for them to undarstand it, then the goverment should start
a nation wide educational program where they will send ships full of students to Africa
both for educational porpuse and help.
yet why should the goverment do such thing? they are good with what they have now...
people all over the nation take loans to open busineses, then pay x2 the ammount of the loan back
and then all the taxes they take from those busineses, its a whole lot of money...
and the fact that people happy with it is even better for the goverment
why should they care about some african kid who just died a min ago because he starved to death?

I remember i read in a newspaper about how much some admistrative workers get per month
they dont do much, they just make sure people are working as hard as they can for as low income as possible
guess how much they get per month? 1 Mil? 5 Mil? 10Mil? nope... 18Mil $ per month!
do you know what you can do with that money to a country such as Africa?
but neh, they prefare to spend it on a 1 Mil yacht and a 15 Mil house, and the rest to invest in feauture proffits

yeah shocking isn't it? The scary bit is that it only takes $10k a year to run a school in those countries due to the extremely high value of our money.

and the more shocking part is that YOUR high value money is based on exploatation of workers
and exploatation of those very countrys that are the poorest.
Google for "third-world countrys exploatation by capitalism"

My main problem with socialism is based on my agreement with the notion that you get less of what you tax, and more of what you subsidize. Since socialism as practiced in America and Europe involves taxing the productive to subsidize the unproductive, the inevitable long term result will be fatal to any nation, in my opinion.

Socialism is more compassionate than capitalism, but capitalism is more practical and sustainable in the long term.

I think you may be confusing socialism and communism.

It's an easy decision to decide what to vote for in a country where political dissidents are thrown in jail. You vote how you are told to vote.

And that is why i tell people to learn some basic facts before posting...
There is a diferance from dictatorship, to communism, and the combination of socialism in them both.
IDK how its like in cuba, never been there and the information online is limited
but i do know how it was like in USSR, a combination of communism and socialism
where people vote for a new leader, not for a new dictator!
a cumminst leader is just there so that he will apply people needs to the whole nation.
USSR had a problem though as they did a huge mistake, giving the people the option to vote
only for some selcted people, that werent selcet by them (the people) at the first place.

People are thrown to jail for voting for freedom only in countrys based on dictatorship
in USSR they only throw you to jail if you were anti socialist and therefore anti people
you should undarstand that it is one thing to be anti political, and another thing to be anti people
socialists are people, ruled by the people, anti socialist activism is the same as you will go out and shout
"i want it all and i dont care about others" so naturally people will not like you...
many soviet citizens supported it when people were thrown to jail for anti socialist ideologis.

Another thing i do when i check on countrys, is that i look at the people
i look at thair eyes when it possible to see them, by doing so i can tell if a person is happy or unhappy
when the Cubans went to vote, i exmined the photographs very carefully
i looked for fear in thair eyes, yet i didnt found any! if they would of been unhappy
then smiles would be fake, and its easy to see a fake smile, no propoganda can hide this
yet i saw photos where people are trully happy, no fear at all
then i combined those facts with the numbers, 98%, in cuba people dont have to vote, no one will harm them
yet 98% did, and all voted for Catro, while other communist member were in the list.
no one writes his name on the vote, so even been scared of voting for someone ales is not possible
as you are annonimos when you vote.

Here to undarstand better what "peoples nation made by people for its people" means:
I posting this video not as activism, i post it because there are images of USSR in it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHAuTKkeF7E
Now look at everything, factorys, citys, buildings, ships, aircrafts, everything in there
look at it very closly, as it was made for free by the people, FOR the people
no one charged anyone for anything, no one owns anything yet it belongs to the people as a whole.

I know it may be hard to imagine in a capitalism infected mind, but that how it was like.
now look at the people, look at thair faces, thair eyes, do they look unhappy? do they look scared?
this is only one video...
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

CocaCola, USSR doesnt exist anymore and one of the reasons is that it is wrong to send people to jail just for their different political opinion. Socialism failed and the movies and photos showing how great it was are just pure propaganda. It doesnt really matter how you feel about people pictured in these movies.

If you really want to enquire something about real life at Cuba, google "Generation Y" and "Yoani Sanchez".

In the same way i can say that the "american dream" is just as propogandistic as this movie...
and USSR dosnt exist as a nation any more, but it lives in some people, and our numbers are huge
ang growing, and with the corrent crsisis out number growing even faster.
and as long as there are people like me, USSR will live.
And trust me, i dont have mazochistic tandancies by saying that im pro USSR
its just that when i say im pro USSR i say im pro the true USSR as it should be, as it was after the revolution.

k i read about Yoani Sanchez
nothing much to say here as i already said, cuba is not a good excample for socialist communism
as in fact it is not... cuba is communist, following socialism yet failing, which results in "totalitarian state"
USSR was much better with socialism then cuba, but even then not yet good enough
i bet if only USSR had the chance to live with Generation Y, then not only that it would of survived
but it would of be way better, and much closer to what a true socialism is.

Hi. Interesting topic. I'm joining in rather late, but I felt compelled to throw in my 2 cents. I didn't get to read the entire thread, so I may be repeating someone else's opinions.

First off, some background about my experience: I've lived in a communist country (Romania) for 12 years. Now I live in Canada. This February I went to Cuba for a week on vacation, and travelled through some of the cities and towns between Santa Clara and Caibarien. Although my experience there was fairly superficial, I did recognize right away a number of traits that I've see before, growing up.

The biggest problem that I see with socialism is that it inadvertedly promotes laziness. I've seen this happen in Romania, in Canada, and in Cuba as well. People become accustomed to think that their problems will be taken care of by the rest of the community/government, so they become lazy in a large number of ways. Progress inevitably comes to a halt. Garbage ends up dumped on the street, people remain complacent on welfare cheques, and invention and innovation stay at a minimum. I live in Ottawa right now, where most jobs are in the government sector. Everyone knows how wasteful things are there, with people getting paid large salaries for going to get a paper signed at 10 AM, and returning with it at 4:30, just before getting ready to go home. If anyone rolls up their sleeves and works harder than everyone else, they get scorned.

The other big problem I see is in the absolutely false notion that everyone is created equal, and that therefore we should redistribute the wealth from the rich to the poor. People are only equal in the sense that we all have the same basic human rights. However, every person is an individual, with their own personality, strengths, and weaknesses. If someone works hard AND smart throughout their life, and gets rewarded for it significantly more than others, why should this person be punished by being forced to give up a larger part of their reward for the good of everyone else? This person should be free to do whatever he or she wishes with the fruits of their labour, as long as they don't infringe on other people's rights.

I've seen a lot of poor, or struggling people who work hard all day, and yet they barely manage to have enough. Many of them think it's unfair. They think they work harder than other people who are much richer than they are, and that therefore they should get their "fair" share. A big problem is that the kind of hard work that they put in may only be of a very small benefit for the community/market, and therefore be of low value to the rest of this community. Someone could be working hard all day scrubbing toilets, and be absolutely exhausted by the end of it, and yet, frankly, the market value of this work is much smaller than someone who works only 3-4 hours a day managing a 3000 person company. The skills required to scrub toilets are simply of significantly smaller value than the skills required to sucessfuly build and manage a large company.

The last big problem that I have with socialism is that it creates a huge Big Brother government under the guise of "people power". Inevitably, when power and money get concentrated into this government, it creates a sort of large black hole, where all that goes in doesn't seem to come back out. It seems to me absolute folly to think that someone up there in government knows better than you or me how to lead our own lives. Anyone who tries to convince other people of that is a big liar and a swindler. People who serve in government are NOT Gods. In most cases they are people who are more interested in personal power than in the good of everyone else. They are called politicians. If you give this body of politicians the power over everything in the community/country, then it's like investing with Bernie Madoff.

Ideologically speaking, socialism favours the community over the individual. However, in real life, erasing the individual has always proven to be an abomination. It happened with Nazi Germany, Communist China, Communist Russia, etc. A lot of people nowdays seem to forget what "Nazi" stood for - National Socialist Party. Humans are individuals. We feel and think as an individual, and we prefer to interact and live in a community. This will continue to be the case for at least centuries to come, seeing as it hasn't changed in the past few thousand years.

Now, my personal preference is for something along the lines of libertarianism, and true free-market economics like the Austrian school advocates. The economic system in the US is anything BUT free-market, so I would definitely stay away from it. In a free-market system, the market is the one that determines the value of products and services, NOT the government or any private entity. Essentially, the market truly is the wish of the people, since it's their supply and demand that comprises it. This goes to show that a true free-market would be the ideal system, since it would truly benefit everyone FAIRLY. Socialists tend to think it is a harsh and unfair world, and they want to artificially make it "better" by forced control. As soon as the market is forced artificially in one direction or another, THAT is when things become unfair for one group of people or another. This is basically how monopolies start in the large majority of cases - through government interference.

The economy in the US right now is controlled by certain banks, through fractional reserve banking and the Federal Reserve (which is a private bank, NOT owned or controlled by the people). They hold a monopoly over the money supply, and the people have no say in it. A large number of problems in their society stem from this fact. The same is the case for a large number of other countries that operate in a similar fashion (money supply is in the control of a private Central Bank). This is not free market anymore. It's a big swindle.

Whoever in the US or Canada thinks that they're paying income tax for the good of the community is either naive or delusional. Not only does the income tax violate our basic human right to the fruits of our labour, but it is used to pay off the interest on the money that government borrows from the Private Banks (which should be created by the people with no interest at all). Forcing people to pay income tax is basically saying that the government OWNS 100% of our income, and that it decides to let us keep a certain percentage. Education is truly lacking in our society today.

Anyway, that was my 2 cents .

2 cents? i think it was more like a dollar :]
bit shallow though

K lets see... I lived in Israel for a long time
back there it was the first time i ever worked, my entire life i never recived more then 1200$ a month
which is the minimal payment by law. Ok i admit, i never finished school due to a disability i had and still have
but i managed to gain quiet good skills with computers, yet when i worked for HP corporation
i recived the very same 1200$ as i recived when i worked as an industial worker.
while when i worked in a factory, it requiered no skills at all, HP seems to think that my computer skill are
worthless as well, this is the only explanation i can find for the fact that they payed me the same ammount.

Now lets move to the second issue, 1200$ were just enough for me to rent an appt' to pay bills and to buy food
i had about 100$ left in the end that i spent with freands.
now there was a time that i wanted to finish school, so that ill go to a collage or/and univercity
but when i saw the price tag, i lost motivation...
some may say, "you could take a small loan", well, i checked it, due to the fact that i never held
a job for more then 2 months due to the disability, they refused.
i also had nothing to offer them as a "back up" for the loan payment
so no loan for me, and no education for me as well

Today, 6 years later, i am still a guy who didnt finished school, can bearly afford treatment for my disability
and cant work for more then a few months, i am a survivor, on dailiy basis.
6 years and i am still in the same position, no one helping me, and yes, i asked for help many times
my disability is not "good" enough to recive help from the goverment

now i talkd about it with many people, fammily, freands, many tryed to help
yet everything failed, so tell me, how a guy in my possition can live within the capitalist sistem?

and its not like i am so unique, i know a whole lot of people who are in the same possition
i have a freand who gathared for years and year about 5000$ for education
today he is a student, hes studying network administration and managment
in case you dont know, this is a very hard job wher the payment at best will be 1500$ instead of 1200$.
he also was lucky enough to finish school, to be healthy, to finish army with qualification as electric
and he is preety much in the same shit as i am.

welcome to my world of freedom and endless possabilitys
i support socialism not because it is better then capitalism, but because capitalism got too many flaws in it
and people like me cant survive in it, and the only alternative we got is, socialism/communism.

Bravo, great post, completely agree with you.

Hi CocaColaAddict. I understand your pain, and I can imagine how frustrating it must feel to be in your position. You probably have also been taken advantage of, and treated unfairly. It is a shame. However, the point I am trying to make is that people in your situation should not be helped by infringing upon the personal rights of others. That would be like healing one person by hurting almost everyone else. It makes no sense. Others should help you voluntarily and sincerely, not be forced to do so.

Personally, I truly believe that people receive back what they give in life. If you help others, you will be helped in return. Maybe not right away, maybe not in a a few months, but it will happen. It seems like a basic law of nature. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Making excuses for ourselves and blaming all of our problems on the system (however flawed it is) is not the solution either. There are plenty of examples of people with disabilities that made something of themselves in this world, by working much harder and smarter than the average Joe, despite their shortcomings. Everyone has weaknesses, visible or not. Some people, although very smart, may never become good leaders or managers due to poor social skills. Most great leaders became that way because of personal charm and their skill in dealing with people, while having limited or mediocre technical knowledge. Even Hitler was known to be quite charming in person, and we all know that his oratory skills were excellent.

Also, like I previously wrote, the reward we receive in a free-market system is directly proportional with the value of our labour in that system. If our skills and labour are highly demanded within the community, then we get highly rewarded for it. It doesn't matter if the skills we have are highly specialized, and only a few people have them. If the market does not have a high demand for this type of labour, then the reward for it will be small. I could be very skilled in building highly intricate houses of playing cards, but if this sort of thing is not in vogue, not a lot of people will pay to see my art.

First thing first, my disability dosnt play a role in the fact that i beliave that a true socialism is way better
then capitalism, second thing, my computer knowlage is in high demmand, yet there are so many
people of the Genoration Y who knows how to deal with PCs that the big corporations know that
they dont have to pay us a good money as they can find a replacment in no time.

Friend, do you remember that the market is based on Supply AND Demand? You hear that there is a high demand for computer literate people, and yet you don't think that a high supply of these people should affect the value of such skills. There is always a demand for dishwashers, garbage collectors, cab drivers, etc, but the reason why they don't get paid very much is because there is also a high supply of people who can perform those duties.

If we want to be more valuable in the society, we need to cultivate and use skills that are more valuable than the ones we already have. It's as simple as that, yet the work and dedication required for us to do so is the difficult part. I'm speaking from experience.

Patents.

Ok, so this guy invents the laser mouse and he's not filthy stinking rich.  It's such a crime that he was being paid to come up with shit by someone else.  His alternative was to starve in his basement until he came up with something like the laser mouse, then use his own patented device to become rich.

Free market capitalism gives you choice.  You can rough it out yourself and fly or fry based on your success, or you can find someone with money that will pay you to design things for him.  Microsoft probably ate a loss on the guys paycheck 90% of the time he was employed there.  That's just how an engineering department works.  They come up with something brilliant, you make a fucking fortune.  They come up with Onlive, you piss a bunch of money down the drain on design and production of a product that doesn't go anywhere.

Risk versus reward, if you want the reward, take the risk.  When you choose to be employed by a major corporation, you choose to skip the risk and give the reward to the company that's paying you.

Yeah, I like ragging on the guys behind Onlive.

Patenting the human genome...  All I can say is what the fuck.  This is what happens when you give your government the power to tie it's own shoes.  Patenting a specific creation based off of work with a genetic sequence would be one thing, but we've gone shit for brains crazy with patents just like we have with copyrights that survive their creators grandchildren.  It's the same flaw in the design that gives me a considerable lack of animosity towards piracy, government has gone crazy, promoting monopolies well past the point of benefit.

The risk talk is all fancy and semi-persuasive, but what about the fact that no one in this day and age should expect anything from a corporate employer other than (hopefully) pay for work up to the day they drop you like yesterday's copy machine? How is demi-indenturing yourself to a pathological social construction any protection from risk? Isn't it just trading one set of semi-inscrutable risks for another?

I could accept that if it were true.  The fact that the vast majority of the currently wealthy earned that wealth from working both hard & smart, then investing well (as opposed to living off the work of prior generations) puts the lie to it, however.  'Invisible free-market corporation X' is a myth.

     In a full communist country, people have no rights, government can jail them for nothing.  In a "capitalist" country like thr USA, people have freedoms(e.g. freedom of press, speech, assembly, right to bear arms (guns) )  Just read the Bill of Rights.  In a Communist country, you dont have those rights, the government can jail or even kill you for no reason at all.  Just look at North Korea. 

       Russia invented Communism, and it was as bad as Nazi Germany.  Stalin killed 20 million innocent people, and kept the Soviet Union on the brink of starvation. 

Please stop confusing small-c communism with Stalinist authoritarianism; plausible reasons for deriding those two things are very, very different. And please to not presume that all capitalist systems are as tolerant of civil liberties as we see in the US. Singapore is 'capitalist,' and they are no leader in liberties other than the ones needed for big business. And I won't even try to start about post-Mao 'Communist China' on account of knowing more than enough to know that I don't know nearly enough...

It's also totally wrong to say that Russia invented 'Communism,' unless maybe you start out on some Stalinist rant about the naivete of Marx and Engels and the 'treachery' of Trotsky. Karl Marx was born German, and most of his writing was both deeply influenced and financially supported by an 'Englishman' named Friedrich Engels. They both lived off the profits of Victorian sweat-shop factories, and it drove them crazy enough that they ended up trying to write serious social analyses that ended up mixed with political rants and coarse language and are still well worth reading today for scholars of any ideology. Not that I'm begging people to do some fucking reading before they go flinging about Really Big Words in a Terribly Sloppy Fashioin.

I would like to see the source of this statistic. I believe it to be invented.

I have sources that have this at below 18%, which is down from 1990. Most of these people are in Africa and Asia, where there is very little capitalism.