That was kind of disappointing. But oh well. All I will say is that if you are not willing to accept a evidence based approach for politics, there is no way to resolve conflict between parties.
Besides, I *have* changed my political opinion before, and I have laid out my requirements to change it again. I don't see how I could be more honest or open to argument without having my brains leak out.
@Monkey: I agree, but that is an oversimplification of the debate we've been having isn't it? Otherwise that reframes the debate from socialism to a debate purely over welfare.
@Rocket: What arguments are those?
@Mak: Any response on the economic development index question I asked?
I don't agree that it would be dishonest or meaningless to address individual programs, since a whole lot of individual programs are what make up an individual's interactions with government(a system). You advocate mixing socialist ideas with libertarianism with the goal of achieving a balance, so why not discuss the systems under which socialist principles have already been applied to America?
I mainly wanted to point out that there is no way to argue when you say "show me a modern society based on liberty" and brush off our examples as irrelevant.
Well no, you can argue specific points and that is fine. I just meant you can't say, "Socialism=bad" by pointing out specific examples of failed (real or not) socialist programs. Again, I can point to failed capitalist programs or successful socialist states. Since there are thousands of each, it isn't productive or honest to paint either broad system with specific programs cherry picked by either side.
That is the problem though, I'm not seeing positive examples for your side, just negatives. If I say A is bad, B is good my standard of proof needs to be higher than A has X wrong with it and nothing else.
Fair enough, then. I personally would not wish to live in France, England, Switzerland or the like. If you think you'd be happy within those systems, cool, but I wouldn't.
And that is fine. We can disagree and still have a productive political process under those terms. Then it becomes a question of who in the country wants to move towards what system and politics ensue, like it is supposed to.
Those are not valid...
Actually, I have heard people talk about abolishing any government service beyond defense. It comes up fairly often here.
I am curious now though, what is your definition of socialism? It seems to be different from some others on this board, and it might help both of us to be clear about terms. On this board the word socialism tends to be applied to any government program that steps over an arbitrary line decided by the poster, and on this board I use it in the same way. In your examples you seem to be picking and choosing what is good and bad ad-hoc. That is fine, but it doesn't address the general point, it only addresses specific programs.
To me it seems like an argument for my side, at the root of it, because you accept that there are some things the government does better than private industry, often for the benefit of society as a whole. Once you do that you've accepted some level of socialism and then we just need to debate specifics, through the political process.
That is one of my major gripes with the way this debate often takes place, everything is arbitrary and no-one agrees on what is properly libertarian and what isn't. I've personally spoken with people who say roads and utilities would be taken over by private industry without any problems and so should be kept out of government power.
To me you have two options in the larger debate. 1) Full freedom, possible exception for defense spending and everything else is left to states or local governments. 2) Government power is decided by the voters and their representatives. As I said above, the problem with this middle-road libertarianism is there is some sort of objective right and wrong about this program or that program but even on this board no-one agrees about what crosses that arbitrary line, so you can't resolve conflict.
I would love to see what a mega-corporation would accomplish without any kind of regulation or oversight.
Ok, look how large companies behave before they are broken up by monopoly courts. Without regulation a successful company can be too big for a free market competitor to fight. Say we're talking about Wal-mart, if they had zero regulation. How in the world would anyone fight a 400 billion per year company if they 'went bad'? Even with the regulation we have now they already wipe out the business community of small towns they enter. You couldn't compete, you couldn't undercut their prices, you couldn't out-advertise, they could make it impossible for you to get good locations...businesses can't fight them now. I dunno man, right now Wal-Mart has the 26th(22nd if you go by the CIA world factbook) highest GDP of any country in the world, double that of Israel(202 billion in 2008). You don't think they could leverage that to do whatever they wanted in an unregulated world? I don't know if people really realize the scale of a modern mega corp (you might, I'm not saying you don't).
I'm not anti-corporate, not at all, but you can't have mob rule and you can't have corporate oligarchy either. There has to be some sort of system for arbitration between the 'classes' of a society that is in some way neutral (or at least looks like it is).
Honestly I don't think we have much to debate in this specific thread. My point has simply been socialism!=bad in some objective way. From your posts, I think you would accept that if phrased in a way that didn't set off your socialism alarm. We can argue about specifics all day long and we'll agree on some things and disagree on others...that is fine. I'm not out to convince anyone (right now) that some specific program is good or bad, I just want the acknowledgment that mixed systems are a reality. I don't think most posters are accepting that as a valid point, or that it is even my argument, but you might. Past that I don't care, I'm not interesting in a mega-thread going through the yay and nay of random government programs that I'm probably not qualified to debate anyway.
I appreciate that you took the time to write a thoughtful reply.