Capitalism, Communism; there is a third alternative

It is not and should never be a government or governmental style's responsibility to provide a certain level of living to it's citizens. It's responsiblitly lies in providing, keeping and securing the parameters required for it's citizens to obtain and secure that quality of life. i.e. a free market.

The main issuses with a socialised system lies deep with the human psyche. Most people have the innate concern for one's neighbors - read as charity and compassion; but counterproductive to this yearning is another innate human trait of complacency - read as, doing as little for as much reward.

It is this negating effect of basic human traits that breeds mediocrity in a socialised system.

In other words, it is the citizens themselves who should create and maintain any socialised programs. It was handled mainly through the churches throughout the early history of America, but for whatever arguable reasons, that has diminished and left a rather large hole.

Another point to consider, is that this quality of life that we all strive for, and most feel they are entitled too, is brand spanking new - barely 150 years old.
There was a time when people understood and joyously took any job that paid consistently, but it seems in recent times, that people feel they are above some of the more remedial jobs that are out there. Offer a starving man a job of knuckle breaking field work, and he thanked you with a sincere smile - Offer a welfare provided man the same job and he will squak at you.

Granted, with the loss of unexplored land for a man to settle and sustain himself with agriculture, that man is forced to fully immerse himself into the system which we have today. Essentially meaning that with food under lock and key, he is forced to work for the dollar.

This brings us back to a modern governments responsiblity. To provide and secure the parameters to allow jobs to be created, to ensure inflation and other economic factors are kept in check, so that the dollars we are forced to earn, can sustain us. This is also the beauty of a free-market. As citizens we have the opportunity to become the employer, rather than the employee.

I'll finish with this thought. All above is very general and there are many facets which need to be addressed and dealt with - such as education, and the ability to obtain it. Discrimination and other factors which suppress one's ability in this system. Corruption and other factors which also suppress on'es abilities.

I would rather live in poverty today, than in poverty 150 years ago.

Very nice arguments, but they ignore history.
That's what attracted me to Libertarian economic theories in the first place, they're very elegant, plausible, and self-consistent.
But just like Marxism, they don't work in the real world.

Like I said earlier, show me an example of a an unfettered free market that has resulted in broad increases in wealth across a population, instead of concentrating itself at the top and causing social instability. Around the turn of the last century, most of the industrialized world had nearly pure free market economies. And guess what? Social instability increased.

Where social reforms were introduced, in the US and Europe, the system was stabilized. Where they weren't, countries fell to communist revolutions, leading to economic stagnation and huge black markets.

What exactly about these "reforms" caused "social instability to "stabilize"?

Basic human nature.

When you have lots of poor people who can't afford the basics, you end up with a lot of angry people who have nothing to lose.

One of two things happen: 1) society implements a set of social safety nets that promote a large middle class and keep the people at the bottom from total desparation or 2) the teeming masses of desperate poor decide it's time to kill the wealthy and simply take their wealth. Bullets are cheap, and there are a lot more poor people than rich people, so...

You can argue ideology and theory all you want.
History tells us something different.

And I'm asking how exactly it does this. If you want to find history, find historical examples along with your explanation.

I'm struggling to find a graph that shows wealth distribution over time throughout the 1800's and 1900's (specifically income). =/

[edit on 8-4-2007 by Johnmike]

One doesn't even have to do that.

The decline of Communist political strength in the US and Europe is notably concurrent with the adoption of welfare state practices.

People forget that the Communist Party in the US was steadily increasing in numbers and power through the Thirties. But FDR's New Deal stole their thunder, and they were never much of a political force again.

And I would say it is desperation rather than simply poverty that drives the instability, and you can't really quantify that in a cute bar graph.

[edit on 4/8/07 by xmotex]

That has nothing to do with it, at all. Whether or not a political party had strength or was happy has nothing to do with how effective certain government policies are on an economy.