Rogue is right about the evils of capitalism. The U.S., Canada, Japan, Western Europe, Oceana are littered with starving, uneducated people with dytheria dying in the streets. Back in the good old days of serfdom we sure didn't have these problems. And this horrible distribution of wealth!! Why just tonight I went out to buy an extra large sausage pizza and the counter girl told me that Bill Gates could order 1 billion pizzas if he wanted! Wow! What disparity. He must never have to use coupons!
Another factor that I think ART is avoiding is the danger of concentrating that much wealth under a beauracracy. I remember being at a restaurant on that same Czechoslovakia trip and one of the waitresses had a beautiful cross on. I looked at it and the next time she came back it was tucked into her dress. My point is this: giving the lion's share of a nation's wealth to one group of individuals is the most dangerous thing I can think of and is in my mind the single most negative aspect of socialism. Look at western europe: while it's form of socialism is comparatively mild, it will be next to impossible for europeans to ever break out of it should they want to. Let's say in fifty years Asia begins to supplant western europe because of their free markets - will western europe even then be able to break out of it? I don't think so...
You can argue whether or not this is fair and equitable. Carnegie argued that it was not and lobbyed the super-wealthy to give away their wealth. His famous maxim was "To die rich is a disgrace." But that said, I still cannot see forced wealth redistribution by a monstrous beauracracy working. Wealth distribution only works, as someone else pointed out, if it voluntary. But, that said, I am glad that we have semi-regulated capitalism. Having a monopoly in any one industry or sector is almost as bad.
Here is something to think about. Which scenario would you rather have. Would you rather have capitalists like Bill Gates and Jack Welch and all the evil corporations, would you rather they have all the money and power and have government watching over them or would you rather have the government to hold all the wealth and power? Think about this now for a second. If corporations have all the wealth we can regulate them, we can send bad CEO's to prison, we can break apart their monopolies, we can take way their power. However, on the flip side, if the corporations have no power and the gov't has all the power then we are powerless to stop them. We cannot regulate the gov't and we can't send the gov't to prison and we cannot take their power away from them. See I rather have the gov't act as a watchdog and let US have the power. It's much easier to go after the bad apples in corporate america then to try to go after the gov't and take the power away from it. Wouldn't you agree?
Well said, although I'd go even a step beyond: Let's say a "doomsday" scenario occurs and 10-20% of our middle class disappears never to return and I'm one of the unfortunate slobs that gets laid off and I have to work at some low paying job w/o health insurance. I would still take that any day over socialism just so I (and my little boy) could live in freedom. No job would be worth the price of living under some Clintonesque, Goreified beauracracy...
Standards of living exclude the quality of life? Since when? Howard Hughes toward the end of his life had a high quality of life, a standard of living that normal people would aspire to? That is the problem with compartmentalization, a study it may measure one aspect of a chapter but often misses the larger point of the story. "The higher the standard of living, the more time and resources that are available for the pursuing of mental health and well being." Mental health and well being are a luxury of the wealthy? Not from what I have seen. This is the fallacy, that money, free time, and other luxury can produce mental health and well being. Many Americans in our history worked their entire life from dawn to dusk, and could be seen to have a high state of mental health and well being.
If you are a US citizen, perhaps you've heard this bit of truth: I subscribe to the idea that the pursuit of happiness, or in other words the ownership of property is a self-evident right. People living in a socialist economic system are unable to pursue happiness according to this definition. Socialism also fails to live up to the standard of a form of government that derives its power from the consent of the people, and that is answerable to the people. And as to those on the dole, they are slaves just as much as those who are the workers in the socialist society because they only have what is given to them and they cannot improve their situation through their own effort. The preceding explains why the fall of Communism and other repressive regimes is inevitable. The main theme running through the Colonies' list of grievances is lack of representatation.
What does this have to do with the pursuit of happiness? Locke's original formulation was life, liberty and property. These are the natural rights which government exists to protect. In fact, they are the description of freedom. If a government has arbitrary rights to take your life, liberty or property, that society will inevitably deteriorate into tyranny, as power accumulates towards the center, and the exercise of that power requires ever more arbitrariness in order to grow. Jefferson's innovation, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness," expands upon Locke in one important way: it recognizes that property ownership is a means to an end. Having property means that one has the ability to support one's self without the need for any outside agency - you could if necessary grow your own food and clothes stocks, make whatever implements you need and so forth, as well as sell your products for cash to pay taxes and buy needed goods you can't produce yourself, so long as you have enough land. (The necessary amount of land is remarkably small.) However, property ownership is really only a way of ensuring that you cannot be made desperate and miserable by others because of lack of food/money. The critical natural right is the ability to pursue happiness in whatever way you choose. Property rights allow you the resources to pursue that happiness. The pursuit of happiness encapsulates property ownership. A society that does not allow for property ownership cannot provide the pursuit of happiness for all its citizens.