Quote from: d5000 on March 05, 2018, 07:05:31 PM

Quote from: Sextus on January 24, 2018, 11:54:13 AM

People should do what they want, not what you want, or any party or "glorious" leader. Trade created our world. As a certain P. N Whitehead said, men have resolved their differences through two means: force or commerce.

While I agree with most of your post, this cite is a bit over-simplified. There are decision-making techniques that are not based neither on force nor on commerce - for example, voting, discussing, etc. Commerce can also include force, e.g. if one party is structurally weaker and the other one abuses that. There's not only black and white.

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Socialism has concepts which are sheer nonsense but which for some reason are very catchy at first glance. Like democratic control of the means of production. Let's say I start a firm and devote my time and money in developing a product which becomes a success and can't keep up with contracts.[...]

Yep. Incentiving real innovation is a largely unsolved problem in socialist theories based on democratic control of production. In state socialism ("real existing socialism") there may be incentives to work hard (so you step up in the "socialist pyramid"), but you always work inside the "planning schemes" rolled out by the ruling class. There may be some limited innovation incentives like prizes for scientists. But innovation always needs the "approval" of your work by somebody who is in a superior part of the pyramid, or - in the "anarcho-socialist" variants - of a majority of the group with those who work with you. So lots of innovation potential gets lost, and these systems will tend to have less innovation - and thus, a less effective productive system.

Everybody that wants to talk about an alternative to capitalism must solve that problem: There must be an incentive to innovate that is equal or higher than in capitalism. I don't think it's impossible - capitalism is also an "invention" so a better system surely can be invented - but it's a really hard challenge and the traditional socialist theories are far away from solving this issue.

I do not think that capitalism can be supplanted by something better because capitalism is not an invention it is just the natural order of things, if I'm a hunter and I hunted a deer then I want to keep most of it after all i did all the effort, I can share some of that with the community but I'm not going to share it all if I had to do it then I'll have no incentive to hunt anymore, why risk my life? So what people call capitalism is nothing more than the natural order of things.