anomaly said:
Job security is not something socialism promises perse, but I do think that unemployment will lower under socialism and that homelessness will be eliminated.
I’m glad we agree on
something. It takes only a modicum of common sense to realize that the most efficient way to deal with the problem of the unemployed individual, is the traditional American way of putting him on his own mettle to find that thing, which he can do, that other people most value. To the extent that some may still need outside help, the most effective help is apt to be a local agency, whether public or private, that can respond to the “individual” needs, without having to satisfy the checklists or theories of a distant government committee, in a distant Capital.
anomaly said:
I was referring to the fact that the market creates winners and losers, and that with a government planed economy, the amount of losers could be reduced.
A government planned economy? How you bought into the idea that a government can effectively “plan” an economy is baffling but believing they will reduce the number of losers in business is beyond my comprehension.
Jobs will inevitably be eliminated, either by a new technology or the end of a cycle. People are not interchangeable. We do not all have equivalent aptitudes or even nearly equivalent aptitudes. Those who come to pick fruit and vegetables may not be able to adapt to the only jobs that may be available if more growers go to automated systems. The same applies to niche workers in technological job categories and myriad of other worker categories. Short of preventing the development of new technologies that would replace the worker, I fail to see how government planning would be a solution to the natural evolution of technologies and with it, the market.
By adding a new layer of variables, which must be considered, it can only slow down the ability of a market to adjust to changing conditions. The more elaborate the intrusion, the greater the detriment. Central planning in a complex economy would inhibit the capacity of a market for self-correction.
anomaly said:
I fail to see the 'efficiency' of the private sector. The private sector is great at producing a surplus, but a surplus is not the definition of efficiency, and producing a large surplus is extremely inefficient.
To what source do you attribute this free market tendency to consistently over produce? A free market moves inevitably towards a self-correcting equilibrium, one that fairly balances the factors of production with the demands for production at an optimum level. Surpluses are inexorably corrected by the very nature of a free market. Should I explain how this works and offer historical context upon which this
fact is based? This “surplus” idea is a red herring, as you well know.
A free market economy is a dynamic. While there is an inherent tendency towards equilibrium in a free economy, changing realities, habits, wants, and natural forces, will always prevent there ever being a point where perfect equilibrium is actually obtained. If this is true of a free market, where the players can each make the best possible immediate adjustments for their own clearly perceived interests; it is far more evident where Government seeks to intrude decisions made by distant committees, with far less adequate perception of those interests, adding another layer of fluctuating variables to slow down a market's ability to respond to previously changing factors.
Virtually every action by Government intended to effect economic adjustment to real conditions, or intended to impose upon economic activity a set of social goals or objectives, involves a matter of setting values: Of substituting the values dominant in the Government, effectively the values of a remote committee, for the valuations put on goods, resources and human action by the dynamic, inter-active market. The inherent flaw in the concept is obvious.
anomaly said:
And besides, the efficiency of the government sector would likely increase do to planning done by workers themselves on the most local of scales.
Workers planning what? Are you seeking to make a CEO or board member out of every callous bearing illiterate in this utopian society?
anomaly said:
One of the reasons for socialism's superiority is its higher efficiency.
This is where I ask for case models, throw the innumerable failures of nearly every socialist nation at you and point to the statistical odds of such socialist nations turning into totalitarian or dictatorial regimes. To which, you respond by explaining that
”your” brand of socialism has never been tried. Did I get that right for the most part?
You can jot down “wouldn’t it be loverly” ideas on every bar room napkin you encounter but it won’t change the reality of the world we live in. I admire your desire to make the world a better place but wishing it so won’t make it any more real than your claim about socialism being superior to capitalism in efficiency. Try clicking your heels together three times and wishing really, really hard.
anomaly said:
The anarchic, unplanned production process of capitalism always results in the wasting of human and natural resources.
Government can never create prosperity. Intrusive Government is ever the impediment to prosperity. In its very ability to complicate each decision, to make economic adjustment of every sort more difficult and uncertain, while taxing production to pay for that very wasting of human resources in an administrative bureaucracy enforcing an intrusive purpose, necessitating responsive layers of unproductive and misdirected supervisors engaged in damage control in the private sector; there is a mountain of evidence to suggest that intrusive Government is the single most baleful influence on any economy.