Holy cow, what have I missed ;)

Lifharsil: (but not only you ;) )

Again: What some governments are calling themselves is not what they represent: The examples you mentioned are more of Stalinism than socialism.. Or even better to say pure dictatorships.......

They are not even communist countries.

And again too stress it out, PLEASE do not mix POLITICAL and ECONOMIC models together ;) The problem is that in our language we throw them kind of all together ;)

No, not only poking at you ;)

BUT Socialism has not failed, again, as some people are mixing Stalinism with socialism, that is plain wrong. I think that the best example of as stated above, socialistic democracy (I kind of hate this combination aaarg mixing economic and political together.....) is like Sweden.

Monkeydelarge and back to the discussion:

As I suggested, the Swiss model could work quite well: People don't like, they vote upon, unless like a 2/3 or 3/5 majority is deciding against it.....

And again don't underestimate the power of open source ;)

Political and economic intertwine when discussing capitalism vs socialism. You can separate the political aspect of totalitarian control vs freedom (eg police states) to some extent, but there are inherent and implicit legal concepts of property and ownership which prevent a complete separation.

You are right though, if by political you mean only democratic, etc... as that is the political method, rather than the political values relevant to socialism vs capitalism.

@Lifthrasi and monkeydelarge
I want just to add that according to Wikipedia the term socialism isn't completely definable:

Wikipedia: Socialism
Wikipedia: Sozialismus

That was more of a political decision and no indication of the model used in the USSR better than the model in the West (which was far more a mixture of different economic and political models.

The problem with discussing ECONOMICAL models is that we through in countries, which have an underlying POLITICAL model involved.

Just look at the free market model, for me IMHO, it is just a derivation of the capitalistic model, which failed utterly.

Sorry have to bring it up, it is like discussions about Theory of evolution: They (oppononts) were not able to disprove it, so NOW they claim they have a new Theory, which is only a hyppothesis and not worth looking at it.

Same goes for some discussions about economical models, we have to differentiate and take the political model out of it.

In one point you are correct, with the POLITICAL decission to put more ressources into the space race, they won, square and fair ;)

I do agree that the patent laws are being missused heavily (I mentioned it above). The original intend was to give the INVENTOR (so a natural person) some reward out of HIS invention. But if you look at some patents being out there, they do not even have a working model to back up their claim, especially the Japanese, but not only, do like to do it.

With exploiting: Look at Nigeria, even Iraq and Iran.

I once found an artical (longer time ago, after the major incidents in Iraq finished) that stated, that the Iraqi government was not happy with the offer from BP IIRC of 4$ a barrel for an oil field up for sale, needed investment.

Funny enough though, like 2 hours later, despite still having the link and all information, I was not able to find it anymore, no it was not junk source, coming via reuters!!!!!!

Funny enough though, only the english 'definition' says (shortened) state owned production ;)

So there we go again..........;)

And funny enough:

This sentence is completly missing from the english wiki:

"Schon in den 1920er Jahren ließ der Soziologe Werner Sombart in einem Seminar alle damals bekannten Definitionen von Sozialismus ausarbeiten, und kam auf die Zahl von 260."

Meaning in 1920 there were already 260 different definition available ;)

I've been busy and haven't had the time and energy to give a proper response and I just don't visit gog.com very often anymore, but I wanted to get Neo Scavenger and decided to necro this thread and reply anyway. My "appeal to ridicule" comment was pointed more to a certain user in post #76 but I don't have much desire to reply to him when he's in that kind of mood as I somewhat consider him our local Knight Templar/Totalitarian Utilitarian when replying in that manner. Fair or not, that's just the impression I get from his posts in the past and I thought that your posts had content in them that was worth replying too..

The "appeal to ridicule" comment was also for any of the comments that are basically "Capitalism?! Haha, that is responsible for all present and past evils in the world and none of the good." I haven't ever used the term "capitalism" in this thread because I don't know what people are specifically talking about when the word is used. Much of the accusations toward capitalism in this thread are things that I am also against. They are forms of legal plunder like mercantilism, protectionism, state-enforced exclusive monopolies (yes, I am also very much against copyright and patents as I find them to be anti-private property and I don't know why we didn't abandon this when we abandoned much of the other state-guild monopolies in favor of freer interstate trade), crony capitalism. It is all too common that people lump me in with this kind of vile crap when I try to explain my position so I'm not too angry about it but just know that it does offend me. Myself and others who believe like me are just as much (even more so in my case) against redistribution from the many to the few elites as we are against any other redistribution schemes.

This is why I believe in a separation of business and state. I'm not against you when you point out some of the problems that the U.S. has. Using eminent domain for an advantage for a big business doesn't happen if there's a separation of business and state. IMO, most of those giant corporations you're afraid of would be many smaller, decentralized businesses if they hadn't obtained state privileges in the first place. The elite have always used the state to redistribute wealth from the many to themselves, whether that is stated outright or whether it's stated that the goal is for the "common good" like the USSR. Many elites in the USSR government got very wealthy stealing land and resources from individuals in the very rich part of the world known as Russia.

This is why I also don't call myself a Libertarian because most people think of Ayn Rand and her view that a few elites control the economy and the elites should be able to do whatever they want. Yeah, sure, if we just ignore the fact that those elites have obtained their enormous wealth because they are the preferred businesses of the state even though they're not political statesmen themselves. Here's an article that has some J.R.R Tolkien included in it that sums up my view on that. That's not to say that everyone would be the same in a freer world, but just from my own observations where I live, the people with the biggest economic advantage are those with political connections.

Instead of making a Ninth Amendment to the Constitution and saying ours is a government of enumerated powers, it has been more effective to accentuate the negative things that the government cannot do like in the other Bill of Rights, such as freedom of speech and separation of church and state (which doesn't mean State Atheism as some people would like to believe). I believe in having a separation of business and state amendment now too and it's more likely to work as we are able to more easily gain knowledge and communicate with each other rather than be dependent on the state. Otherwise whatever regime is in control believes it can do whatever is not forbidden instead of having enumerated powers. Also, a regime and the laws the legislative body makes for itself doesn't reign in the regime, civil disobedience does.

The fact that you get defensive about someone stating that the USSR's economic model was a planned economy but then have no problem stating that robber barons in Middle Age feudalism is pure capitalism is entertaining to me as well. Robber barons originally got their privileges from the state, which they abused of course. But still, were the peasants allowed to carry arms to defend themselves against lords? Did they have self-ownership and freedom to associate and freedom to contract with whoever they wanted to? Buy property and move? No, they didn't. They probably wouldn't have even wanted to complain too loudly to the other lords who were not robbing them for fear of being killed for questioning the divine right of the nobility in front of others and thereby getting unwanted ideas in the lesser people's heads that the nobility was not infallible. Common rules that apply the same to everyone so a divine right of lords does not exist, such as recognizing self-ownership (owning private property in yourself) and common rules against murder and theft covers your concerns about robber barons. A planned economy doesn't. That's about controlling what people do with their own resources, how they trade, who they trade to.

There was also a post about the wealth destruction of hundreds of millions of people in the USSR and democide of tens of millions of people in the USSR being superior to crony capitalism because the USSR got to space before the USA, which I find to be a poor point to try to make. Also, private property is a solution for conflict resolution to the tragedy of the commons where rivalrous resources are concerned, not a cause of the tragedy. There is no need for property in non-rivalrous common resources like ideas. Property in non-rivalrous resources is just conflict seeking. Where companies externalize costs with pollution is where commons exist, like air and waterways, not private property. Even if pollution damages another person's private property, if it is through a commons like air, the victim is not allowed to sue to collect damages most of the time. Instead the perpetrator usually just has to pay the state for the right to externalize pollution in the commons and then onto Farmer Brown's apple orchard instead of paying anything to Farmer Brown.The argument against private property instead of a commons managed by a government (lords in past feudalism) in the tragedy of the commons debate is that owners of private property will sometimes conserve their property too much instead of putting it to use, not that they destroy their own property like they would if they didn't own the resources and were allowed to do whatever they wanted, which is then the tragedy of the commons.

To conclude, I do think that you and I want the same thing but go about it different ways. The way I look at, voting and politics is based on human talk while a market is based on human action. Have you ever heard "Your actions speak so loudly, I can not hear what you are saying"? I'd rather have a system for human action. I just don't believe in voting as I just see it as an act of violence that people can't do themselves so they vote for state agents to do it for them. It's like bullying on a grand level. That aside, I know there are better ways to vote than just a first past the poll vote and ways that are more proportional and decentralized but I still don't think it works real well. Voting is much slower than a market as voting still has the knowledge problem of time and place and is also susceptible to demagoguery and mob rule/tyranny of the majority.

Also, I think you mentioned that in your preferred voting system that people vote and if the people do not like the outcome of the vote later they have to get 75% votes to nullify the law? If voting is the system, I would rather have that reversed so that any law requires a super majority of 75% to pass, otherwise it's put back to the process where people can further evaluate and discuss it but if it does pass, a smaller percentage like 50% vote is needed to repeal it.

I wouldn't want a bunch of people voting to make policies on things that they have no clue about either. Much of the time, the only knowledge voters have is whatever opinion that the opinion makers for the political party they are associated with told them to have. In a freer society, advertising and marketing would still use much of the same tactics as political propaganda does now to form people's opinions, but hey, at least then I could laugh wholeheartedly and ignore people I think are idiots instead of the halfhearted laugh I do know because I know if there's enough idiots that believe the propaganda they could vote to use the state to try to coerce others into the groupthink/collective narcissism of their one harmonious plan.

tl:dr - After reading your posts, I still think we're better off when we are allowed to focus on cultivating our own gardens how we see fit with common rules that apply the same to everyone.

Listen to what the man says! It is already here!! Enjoi!!!