Why Socialism Works

double post

Where? Actually I think we are dipping dangerously close to socialism here in America already. I was once married to a woman whose mothers family was Czech. They had relatives that still lived in "the old country". One cousin was here in the US in '68 when the soviets came down on the country. She stayed here and would not go back.The Czech government punished her family for this transgression. They lost the good university jobs and survived by being laborers. Nice. A couple of other cousins came over here before the wall fell, and cried when they were taken to a US supermarket. They had never seen anything like the abundance. And that was in what was the best of the east block countries. I had a lot of hours of discussion with cousin #1 about life behind the wall. It was NOT pleasant.

Here, they take half of every paycheck and "re distribute" it to the FED, Welfare, The local govt thieves, and so on. In my state (Maryland) they support CASA, an illegal immigrant support organization with tax money. They put up "speed" camersa (Revenue enhancement for the local govt) How about "Click It or Ticket"? The propaganda that is on every radio and TV station around here is un bearabile. I wear a seat belt, but in a FREE country, it would still be MY choice. Back in the 80's when Air Bags were mandated, the choice was airbags (explosive device in your cars dashboard) or mandatory seat belt laws. Since Congress lacked the balls to force seatbelt useage laws on us, we got airbags. Now it seems, we get the seatbelt laws too. Never mind that the airbags add thousands of dollars to each car sold. How quickly people forget.

Now I hear that John Warner( R Military Industrial Complex) wants to stuff the 55MPH speed limit down our throats again. Wonder how many tickets that"ll produce?? What ever became of the 10th amendment anyway.?

Yeah, Obama says that we all need to give back some more. Screw that!!! I give every time I get a paycheck. Let him and his millionaire wife give back if they want to. It is time to kill off the FED, and take our country back from the bloated Federal Government., and the pocket lining stooges that we re elect every year.Just think, in most places it is illegal for a cop to accept a free meal, because it might affect their ability to evenly enforce the law. Meanwhile, the congressmen, and senators raise MILLIONS of dollars in "gifts" to their campaigns. You know they are ALL BOUGHT AND PAID FOR BY SOMEONE OTHER THAN WE THE PEOPLE!!!!!! Plaese work hard AGAINST the incumbent unless their voting record stands up with Ron Pauls.You know it won't. so RE ELECT NOBODY< and get our country back!!!!!!!!

The Western European countries that you speak of as socialist, were able to maintain their lifestyles under socialism so long because they have or had colonies or investments in Africa, South America and other third world countries. Not one of them is or ever was self sufficient. Denmark for example also managed from the benefit of petroleum drilling in the North Sea. Now that this is coming to an end they will need to make necessary changes.
grant

Means 50% communism and 50% socialism that we have in this country. I would consider the military a communist system, since it is collective, government owned, operated and military personal are property of the U.S. government. Am I wrong?

samples of failed socialism
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-515332/A-E-patients-...
http://freemarketcure.com/videos.php
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/020238.html
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080618...
John Stossel - Sick in America - Part 1 (of 6) http://youtube.com/watch?v=aEXFUbSbg1I

Remind them of our 50+ trillion with future entitlement debt, then remind them of the dollar sinking, and ask them if socialism honestly works.

Davy C Rockett

Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is LIBERTY! - 2 Cor. 3:17

http://www.thelibertypost.com
http://screamfreedom.blogspot.com
http://liberty-central.blogspot.com

Means 50% communism and 50% socialism that we have in this country. I would consider the military a communist system, since it is collective, government owned, operated and military personal are property of the U.S. government. Am I wrong?

The problem is that if the state can tax it, you don't truely own it. So the truth is that the government controls everything already. There is still so called "private" ownership of businesses and homes in Denmark and so called socialist countries.

Anything will work... But for how long and at what price?

Try this article:

How the Welfare State Corrupted Sweden
http://mises.org/story/2190

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europe4ronpaul.blogspot.com
Hasta la libertad, siempre ;-)

Denmark and other Western European countries are more social-democratic than socialist. You cannot compare Denmark to Venezuela.
Denmark is a small country and did not had to deal in the past with lots of immigration form other countries, now that they have, the "central rightwing" parties come into power. There social walfare state is under a lot of strain now. There is indeed more economic freedom.

You can tell the supporter the US is quite socialistic, which is part of the problem. The Eastern European countries were the more socialistic, but they liberalized the most and in the most capitalistic North European countries, the economic growth is the strongest. Estonia is the most libertarian country in the world and also one of the fastest growing. The Scandinavian countries are technologically from the most advanced.
Corporate taxes in Slovakia has been reduced considerably and they are now growing very fast, faster than the richer Cheque Republic, which is more socialistic.

You can also tell the supporter Zimbabwe used to be one of the strongest economies in Africa, exporting a lot. SInce the past two decades with socialist policies, where there was a move to a radical socialism, the economy and inflation is in tatters.

France was quite socialistic, with the 35 hour law, but they are liberalizing economically slowly to the UK and USA and the country should benefit from it.

You can also mention Hong Kong and SIngapore in the East as rapid growing, very economically liberal, open with a high standard of living.
China and Vietnam especially have actually became economically very open and capitalistic, especially Shanghai, that grows with 10% annually since more than a decade now.

You can probably not change things overnight, as this will lead to a disruption, so we have to take it step by step, but radical changes are needed.

and they have been a whole lot smarter in the way they do it. In many instances they have greater economic freedom than we do and in some instances such as the education system in Finland they have used competition and free markets much more than we have, and it shows.
This economic freedom leads to the ability to support their socialism for quite a while but eventually time and compounding make it unsustainable just like it has done for us.

Free and Brave
or Cradle to Grave
You can't have both

"The whole" is the combination of love and freedom, wihich require each other.

An excerpt from a column on the topic, "Blinding by Paradigm":
http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/allport/allport2.html

Marxists and other coercive socialists fail to see the dissonance between coercion and compassion. As with libertarianism, the Marxist/socialist paradigm denies the interconnections between compassion and freedom, but coercive socialism focuses on compassion and fairness (at least in theory) rather than on freedom. Extreme versions of the Marxist/socialist paradigm have largely blinded millions to the stunning mass-murder committed by every Communist government. The coercive-socialist paradigm ignores the criminal nature of coercion in general, as long as that coercion is being used by a government claiming to create a particular kind of utopian society. This same paradigm blinds coercive socialists to the reality that rewarding people for non-productivity while penalizing those who are productive must, without fail, reduce wealth in a society and eventually impoverish that society. (For the same reason, no poor nation has ever adopted coercive socialism and then become wealthier). Making it even harder to see outside this paradigm is that coercive socialism can appear to function well for a time – if the nation already has significant wealth to cannibalize, and as long as one focuses on those receiving the stolen wealth.

Also this:

Most libertarians use a paradigm in which the cohesive duality of love and freedom is – to one extent or another – denied. In this paradigm, freedom is the important thing and compassion (or love generally) is downplayed or ignored; many libertarians can be compassionate and loving, yet see those characteristics as existing in a different realm than freedom. Breaking the love and freedom link has done two things: first, it has made libertarianism unattractive to most people, who instinctively want love and compassion explicitly included in their own social/political framework. Second, by fostering a mechanistic view of society, where (for example) the market functions magically without a widespread sense of connection between people, the libertarian paradigm leads to a misunderstanding about how a free and healthy society functions and thus about what is needed to create such a society.

It takes a while for things to completely fall apart. The US is moving from being a *comparatively* free country to a more socialist one and it will take a while to run things down.

The UK have had a National Health System for 40 years, I believe, which used to be the biggest employer in Europe next to the Soviet Red Army and only in the last 15 years is it really starting to kill people , which is what it does.

I remember seeing a cartoon about English hospitals with a couple of bacteria talking to each other "I feel much better since i have been in hospital" - that's what you get - unless you are rich.

Updated - their Health Service is 60 years old not 40 - quite a long trial period imo.

At least that's the opinion of one of Dr. Paul's intellectual influences, Lugwig won Mises.

Check out www.mises.org - the literature/media sections have many good articles/videos/mp3s about the impossibility of a socialist system of government.

I will sum up(as far as I understand it) the argument: without a genuine market economy based on private property and sound money, rational prices cannot be attained. Socialism, by definition, means the so-called public ownership of the means of production. Since public ownership means state ownership, private property ceases to exist. A market cannot operate without private property holders buying and selling goods. Prices of goods are formed from this market activity. State ownership cannot produce rational prices, so when the state central planners try to allocate resources to meet demand they cannot use economic calculation(capital gain/loss) to determine an efficient means of production. Without the ability to know if one is running a capital profit or loss, there will always be shortages or waste of capital and consumer goods. Socialism means the end of monetary calculation. Real world socialist states have survived by crudely copying prices from international markets and by being mixed economies.