Quote from: BARR_Official on March 01, 2016, 01:51:05 PM

Quote from: cjmoles on March 01, 2016, 08:10:58 AM

It takes the laborer eight hours to create a product for the capitalist. The capitalist then offers that product back to the laborer for twelve labor/hours.

If that was true, the laborer would just "create a product" and sell it to another laborer for 12 labor/hours.
Maybe you've left out some important details?

What you've described makes "laborers" look like complete fools,
obviously in need of your control to save them from their own choices.

The truth is that a free market allows everyone to engage in voluntary exchange.
Whatever deal the laborer makes, he makes it freely because he feels that it is beneficial to himself.

But you don't want the laborer to be able to decide what is best for himself.

And that is what socialism is about:
taking away people's freedom, their power of choice,
and giving all that power to a few people.

Nicely said.

The Socialists here don't really give a shit about moral arguments nor logical ones. They're hung up on the fears of "monopolies", meanwhile they advocate for the most dangerous form of monopoly called Government. Nothing was said when I pointed that out to them, except "look at the Gini index". That is not an argument, it's just throwing stats around and avoiding thought.

Quote

The gini index is extremely important. It goes from 0 to 1 and describes inequality of wealth. At 0 everybody in a country owns exactly the same amount of wealth. At 1 one person owns everything.

In France the gini index steadily decreased years after years under a true socialist government. It stabilized around 0.27; which seemed to be a good end point as you don't want EVERYONE to have exactly the same thing, that would make no sense.

I do agree a widening gap between rich and poor is not ideal. But who the hell are you to determine what that correct arbitrary number is? You understand that you'll never make everyone equal in terms of wealth and you admit it wouldn't make sense. So in other words, in your opinion, there is some magic number that is "fair", which only Socialism and it's all knowing leaders can determine?

Socialism attempts to make things more equal or more fair based on some purely subjective measure of fairness. Yet fair and equal mean different things to different people, even among Socialists!

Socialism promises equality for everyone (except the ruling class of course). Free markets or Voluntarism just give people the best chance at an equal opportunity.

Notice I didn't say Capitalism. Capitalism these days is way too confused with what I call Cronyism or Corporatism. I refer to free markets (Voluntarism), which under the current Capitalist systems throughout the world, don't really exist. I don't consider the USA to be a free market. There are some elements of free markets, but for the most part Western economies are just mixed economies or semi-socialist.

You're whole argument is essentially that American Socialism (which you call Capitalism) is bad and that European Socialism is better. There is a saying, "Same shit, different pile". They are two sides of the same coin.

You'You can't really have a free market when the Government has monopoly control over the nations money and hence why I am very enthusiastic about Bitcoin. I believe there should be a free and competing market in currencies. They shouldn't be monopolized by nation states. As a Socialist though, I'd assume you'd rather Bitcoin be controlled by government like everything else, correct?