Note: I didn't go and read through the whole thread because I figured it was the typical back and forth of left and right wingers saying why they believe X and not Y... But there was one quote in particular I -had- to respond to, because it bothered the shit out of me.
Jannah said
But we can't overlook the fact that capitalism continues to kill people every day. It's not a one-way street. We can't pretend like Marxism is some evil demon here.
Capitalism
doesn't kill people. Greedy people kill people, and greedy people will always exist. It's the reason Lenin's vision of the USSR failed. It's the reason why Mao's ideology resulted in the deaths of millions. Communism and socialism are idealistic but don't account for human nature.
In the end game of communism, (which is both a political and economic theory with both parts inseparable from one another), you don't have a government, so enforcing laws and the like would be up to cowboy diplomacy: Which isn't fair, it isn't just, and it isn't morally correct. Not to mention the host of other issues with communism, such as the fact that every attempt to produce it thus far have failed, usually to the extreme detriment of the people living in the country. Cuba is arguable the only example of a country that benefited from attempting communism, and even they aren't actually communist: They have a dictatorship government, which communism discards after a while.
In the end game of socialism, the government has a choke hold on the economy and decides what should and shouldn't be produced, and what the populace should and shouldn't get. It's fairer to say that the USSR was a despotic one-party socialism than it was ever a communist state because it never passed the dictatorship stage of the communist theory. Socialism is more realistic than communism: There's a government to maintain universal police forces, health care, firefighters, teachers, and so on. However, socialism is crippled by the fact that we have a finite amount of resources to give, and that a few people at the top can quickly corrupt the system without proper checks and balances, which are themselves prone to spreading corruption.
Then, of course, there's the problem that no matter how many checks and balances are put in, someone will find a way to jerryrig the system to benefit themselves, ergo the continual expansion of more checks and balances, or replacement checks and balances. As the old saying goes: "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." --Oscar Wilde
Now, that's not to say capitalism is perfect. It's not. No system is perfect. Just like how democracy is far from the perfect political system...
However, capitalism does two things that no other system does.
#1: When the people en masse "vote" with their currency for or against a product (by purchasing or ignoring a product), the company, entity, or otherwise that produces that product is forced to innovate or change to meet the demands of the people.
This is the main reason multi-billion (some even multi-trillion) dollar industries seemingly change all the time. Take gaming: People really hated the direction triple AAA titles were going, so the indie scene exploded, flash games became a legitimate medium through facebook and the like, phone games burst out onto the scene, retro gaming found a market, and so on. Fashion, something I'm less familiar with, tends to change all the time: Fashion trends that were acceptable in 2005 will look tacky in 2015, and so on and so forth. These are industries that could easily order your assassination if they wanted to, they're that bloody powerful, but they're forced to change because people didn't like what they were providing after a while and thus had to change.
Not all industries behave like this, admittedly, some are harder to change than others, but again, no system is perfect.
#2: Empowers people to make their own decisions. So long as there is at least some level of protection for smaller corporations from bigger ones, anyone can start ye olde coffee shop, or become a mechanic, a writer, an artist, a police officer, firefighter, soldier, pilot, and so on. Education for some of these are expensive, but that's a different issue to tackle at a different time: Capitalism, at its core, always lets you choose who you want to be.
Now. That being said, I'm still a socialist, I will always be a socialist. It's just who I am... However, I'm not going to pretend that capitalism is this evil entity that kills people and enslaves millions and etc etc etc. Capitalism is an economic system. One day, when resources are nigh infinite, and automation can take over for humans in the majority of mundane tasks, that will be the day socialism will likely take its place, because then a socialistic government no longer has to concern itself with whether or not there will be enough bread to feed everyone, or enough doctors to heal the sick.
tl;dr:
So seriously. Capitalism doesn't kill people. Greedy people kill people.
