h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I thought that this room would be for discussing socialism as a whole, not simply defining it. In my opinion, socialism is far better than capitalism, and if a country is ready for communism, that is even better. As for all you who think that capitalism is good, look into poverty in other countries, you disgust me.

In fact look at this country! I really can't see how private ownership works! How the hell can it be better for a private company to run the railways for example. If the government runs it all profit can be put into cheaper fares and reinvested; with a private company some of it has to got to shareholders. Surely that means higher fares? I can't see why the private sector can manage things better surely people are people. Do they breed private sector managers differently to public sector managers or something?

The thought with capitalism is basicly that people works for themselfs, to get more money, power etc. When the fruits of your labour goes directly to yourself it´s perhaps easier to motivate oneself to work hard and become more effective thus making a private company cheaper and better than one owned by the government. It´s also widely regarded that concurrence forces companys to become better and more effecient and when the government owns everything there can be no concurrence.
I liked the text but as with almost every text I´ve read here on h2g2 I think it should be longer and more detalied, but I atlest learned something about different forms of socialism and for that I´m grateful. /Regards Sunkan

English = not my language

just a quicky:
nice idea capitalism... however the main point of capitalism is that everyone is free to work towards what they want - eg money. however not everyone starts off equal - and so people are not free to do what they want as some (many in my view) start off being oppressed so they simply will never be able to achieve what they want to, because of the structure in which they have been born into.

ill write more when i can... (if u want)

-Simonus

If capitaism motavates
people to work harder
how come most people
work as little as they
can get away with in
there Jobs?

The main difference between the systems is the taxes. Voluntary and involuntary. In one, you can choose not to pay your taxes and maybe the authorities will come after you, with a lawyer and an accountant. In the other, there is no choice and the tax collector has selective-fire rifle.
Left out of the discussion is the white man's favorite poison, fascism. An army beats a collective every time.

We must all ways remember that an army
must be made of people, these people
have famiallys and freinds and live in
society just like the rest of us. They can
only resist enlightenment for so long
When they start to rebel with in the context
of a genral revolution the revolution will
all most be won.

Revolution is a strange thing. Witness the differences between the French and the American versions. Take a peek at Cromwell's take on it. Many third world revolutions are a reassertion of old feuds. The communist revolutions simply replaced one empire with another. No war is ever 'won' and no revolution is ever over.

"the white man's favorite poison, fascism" yea because all white people love faschism, might want to look up biggot in the dictionary... possibly racist aswell.

Hello. I'd completely forgotten about this until you popped it back up on my space.

great to see people kept on their toes

written on a whim really, so probably not really an exciting thing you wanna read if youve forgotten about it

Always ready to engage in a bit of whimsy.
I've always acquainted politics of any kind with varying degrees of sutpidity, mine and other peoples.
I accidently ran across a report on Canadian and Australian Police Treatment of 'Aborigines' this morning that smacked seriously of the 'us and them' tendencies of....excuse me, it just started snowing.... an unusual activity for 1/1/02 in this part of Texas...
oh , where was I? Oh, despite the nice warm and fuzzy aspects of 'socialism' (I've always been disturbed by the word 'social' in there. It has connotations of 'social studies' and 'social drinking')as they apply to the mainstream population, there is always a 'victim' element to the resultant policies, so this form of politics is very much like any other in that it is celebrated in action by what it is against, rather than what it is for.
The Police of any country or political persuasion need to be watched very carefully because the politicians can say anything they want, but it is the boys and girls in the squad rooms that are being listened to on the streets.

yea you tell em

YMWAHAYFSOE.....MPHG

ummm right. whatever

From Monty Python's Holy Grail:
Your Mother Was A Hamster And Your Father Smelled Of Elderberry

I was messing around on the web yesterday looking for definitions of acronyms I could not figure out. You just happened to catch the edge of my wish to spread a little confusion similar to that caused to me.
I am still a newbie and I find a lot of things very confusing.
Like when my window slid down the screen a couple of minutes ago and I could not figure out how or why it was doing that.
Now that I've got it fixed, I still don't have any idea how I did it in the first place.

well, sounds good to me!!!

Capitalist theory states that competition in the marketplace provides lower prices, higher quality goods and greater wealth for the general public. This is mostly utter rubbish, of course, but there is some truth to it. Competition improves products and services until one company becomes more powerful, and gets a monopoly on that product or service. This creates problems. The solution to this problem is socialism, but this is also as flawed as capitalism. Socialism takes monopolies away from private enterprise and gives them to the government -- which is even more monolithic, idioitc, and incapable of acting in the public good as the private monopoly. The solution to capitalism's problems can't be to transfer control form private industry to the government - some combination of the two is needed.

"The third school of thought, characterised by the militant Trotskyist Fourth International, adheres to the idea that capitalism must be overthrown through a violent workers' revolution"

This is utter crap, I would be amazed if there was anyone who would not support a peaceful overthrow of the capitalist system over a violent one. Just because one system of government replaces another, this does not mean it has to be violent. If enough people rallied against capitalism, especially if the armed forces were on the side of the workers, the capitalist system would be overthrown peacefully.

Capitalism is a system that places profit before the welfare of the planet and its inhabitants. This is the reason I believe it should be replaced by a socialist system, that exists to benefit the people rather than maintain and extend the wealth and power of those who have ownership.

Well,I consider that socialism is what they had in USSR in 60th.It was proclaimed then that "socialism has been succesfully built in USSR, and the next generation of people will enter the new phase-communism".Well, salaries were peanuts in USSR,working week not less than 8 hours.
So most of the developed world now lives in Socialism.
I remember that in late 70th in USSR there has been circulating a nice story:one budding journalist undertook to write an article with capitalist exploitation as a point of concern.And he waxed on eloquently and on to the effect that millions are jobless in USA,that they may lose their jobs at one hour notice,that capitalism is rotten pumpkin etc. He accidentaly mentioned that state allowance for jobless was 500$. "Well,Tovarich"-replied his editor-,if people come to know that in US you may be jobless with this lump sum, I'm affraid I would have my marching orders soon".For my part,I think that this state is Socialist that has more than 10000$ per capita GNP.