Socialism is evil

PyromanGaming

Hello! Today I will be debating why I believe that socialism is evil. Firstly, I would like to define what socialism is for clarity in this debate and for people who don't know. I will be using the google definition.

Socialism
a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

So what is this definition saying? It's saying that the government controls almost all economical parts of the community. This is achieved in many ways. A few examples of this are that the government will spread all income equally between people, and that all business is owned by the government. Here are my reasons summed up for disagreeing with this political and economical ideology:

- Socialism puts more control on the government,
- Socialism promotes laziness, and
- Socialism takes much of the freedom away from the citizens.

So firstly, socialism puts more control on the government. What effects can this cause? This can cause oppression of the citizens and increased chances of corruption. We have seen time and time again throughout history governments taking away power either becoming tyrannical in the process or already being tyrannical. We have seen this with Adolf Hitler, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and all the roman emperors to name a few. None these rulers promoted socialism, but their societies have shown the oppressive nature of big governments, which is what socialism promotes. A very recent example is with the United States and the pushes to take away guns from the hands of civilians, putting more power in the hands of the rulers. This is a big problem and it needs to stop. Another issue that rises up from this is that with capitalism, while there are corrupt and powerful businesses, the damage they cause is alleviated by the competition of other non corrupt businesses. Give that big bad government all of your businesses, the only consumer market there is is that business. I personally don't want that, and I don't think you would either.

Secondly, socialism promotes laziness. Why? Because the wealth of the upper class is evenly distributed between everyone. No one has to even work. We can just sit on our asses and wait until the big bad cops break down the upper classes' doors and make them redistribute their money by gun point! How is that not stealing? In a capitalist economy no one stays in one class all their life. When millions of immigrants moved to North America they were dirt poor and they worked through the ranks. And now their grand kids are filthy stinking rich! There is no way that this cannot happen with the bottom 10%. The class you are in is entirely based on the choices you make. Now with socialism, you create the incentive for the lower class to stay there because eventually they will move through the ranks without having to do anything. Why does anyone have to work anymore? At the end of the day, it's the people's faults that they're in the class that they're in and no one else. I can give you an anecdotal example of this myself in fact that might show you what I'm talking about. My mother grew up in the bottom... 25% or 10% and now is in the top 75%. Her parents (my grandparents) are now in middle class since then. Everyone who is in those classes are in there because of their choices.

Lastly, socialism takes much of the freedom away from the citizens. By practicing socialism the government is now giving the economy less benefit. When people immigrate here they start their own businesses and help out the economy but what socialism wants to do is take that freedom away from them which actually puts a detriment onto society as a whole. People are unable to create businesses that mitigate the damage done by big business through competition using this corrupt political ideology socialism. The citizens deserve freedom. It has never put a detriment on society by giving the citizens more freedom it has actually put more help on society because it gives the people the incentive to help out their society instead of rebelling. But what socialism wants to do is take away that freedom and benefit in favor of a more controlling dictatorship.

In conclusion, the entire essence of socialism is to take away the human rights of the people by putting more power on the government. I find it ironic how by achieving financial equality between people you have to put a massive inequality on the power between people. Recap, my three main arguments for socialism are:

- Socialism puts more control on the government,
- Socialism promotes laziness, and
- Socialism takes much of the freedom away from the citizens.

These are the reasons why I believe that socialism is evil. Thank you!

Ampersand

First, let's analyse some of PyromanGaming's statements.

"So what is this definition saying? It's saying that the government controls almost all economical parts of the community."

You'll note, this is not mentioned anywhere in Pyroman's own definition of gaming - he gives the valid definition of socialism earlier of: "a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole." That's a valid definition and is literally what you receive if you type "socialism definition" into google. If you read it you'll see no mention of everything being controlled by the government and in fact if you investigate a little further you'll see there are entire socialist frameworks where this is not the case.

Let's look for example at Market Socialism. This is a case of businesses being owned by the workers - not the government. Essentially in a market socialist economy you would go into work, just like you do today, but you and the other workers would get a share of the profits that under Capitalism would go to shareholders and you would get a say in major decisions effecting the business - again like shareholders. There's no more government control than there is now, it's just a case of the people actually doing the work getting the benefits and control.

In fact Engels explicitly stated that the government should wither away in the later stage of socialism.

"...Socialism promotes laziness. Why? Because the wealth of the upper class is evenly distributed between everyone. No one has to even work."

This is easily countered. You can look at examples of socialist economies in action and see that people do need to work - after all if there weren't people producing commodities like food everyone would starve no matter how many mansions they had.

"In a capitalist economy no one stays in one class all their life. When millions of immigrants moved to North America they were dirt poor and they worked through the ranks."

Actually, most people do stay the same economic class their entire life and will typically be in the same economic class as their parent. The wealth you are born into is one of the prime determiners of how wealthy you will be in later life and that the more Capitalist a country is the less people will succeed based on merit:



Now with socialism, you create the incentive for the lower class to stay there because eventually they will move through the ranks without having to do anything.

The point of socialism is to develop a classless society.

"Lastly, socialism takes much of the freedom away from the citizens."

Pyroman then just makes a load of claims, again without evidence as per the rest of their argument, which presumably make sense to whatever their economic ideology is but just seems like a bit of a bizarre rant to me to the extent I can't even really decipher the logic behind it enough to respond.

The truth of the matter is that socialism is a political-economic ideology which emphasises people being rewarded based on their effort rather than people being rewarded based on how much money and wealth they already have. It can be implemented well and implemented poorly. Now to the detriment of modern socialist everywhere, the primary example of it in recent times has been the USSR which was godawful in a lot of weights (although even then managed to outdo other nations in several areas). The problem is that Russia was an backwards country with no history of democracy or institutional freedom. Regardless of which ideology it went with it was likely to end up as a backwards dictatorship just like other Capitalist countries in the same situation did. What stands out is the achievements it made despite this.

PyromanGaming

Hello opponent and judges! I will be debating for round 2 on why I believe that socialism is evil and will spend the majority of my speech clashing with what my opponent has said.

 

So my opponent here has clarified that the definition that I used does not specifically mention on how there has to even be a government, and has made a brief mention of the concept of “Withering away of the state”, where Friedrich Engels has talked about it and that due to the ideals of socialism the government will eventually disappear when implementing the ideology.

 

The issue I have with this is that a government is extremely important for any self-sustaining community. This entire ideology seems quite similar to anarchy in the sense that without a government a society can fall into disarray. There is no well-functioning society on earth that has the absence of an authority figure. When we look at people who have lost their government, they completely fall apart and are often put into oppression by a new government. When this disorder happens in socialism, it encourages this type of government to rule.

 

Ampersand said:

“Let's look for example at Market Socialism. This is a case of businesses being owned by the workers - not the government. Essentially in a market socialist economy you would go into work, just like you do today, but you and the other workers would get a share of the profits that under Capitalism would go to shareholders and you would get a say in major decisions effecting the business - again like shareholders. There's no more government control than there is now, it's just a case of the people actually doing the work getting the benefits and control.”

 

Everything sounds pretty good, not anything special to note, except what I bolded. Firstly, this suggests that there is some form of government involved dictating how this would work (which contradicts Ampersands’ point of that socialism isn’t controlled by the government) and secondly, there is no point. They can become shareholders themselves. This is an aspect of socialism that to say the least, isn’t necessary.

 

Ampersand said:

“You can look at examples of socialist economies in action and see that people do need to work - after all if there weren't people producing commodities like food everyone would starve no matter how many mansions they had.”

 

While yes, I agree that many would still work, this idea still incentivizes people to do nothing. In a capitalist society, you get paid your worth, which is as fair as it will ever get. Secondly, you’re still taking people’s money. It doesn’t matter what the money is going to, drugs, or charity. It’s still stealing, and that is immoral.

 

So next, Ampersand countered my point on that people never stay in one class all of their life by showing this graph:

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2010/02/mobility1.jpg

Sorry I don't know how to copy and paste an image onto an argument. Just copy and past the image onto a new tab. So I looked at the website I found with this graph if you want to visit it it’s https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/02/18/comparing-socioeconomic-mobility-across-oecd-countries/ and it specifically said:

 

“The figure shows that Great Britain, the U.S., and Italy have a near 50% correlation rate.  So, in these countries, parents status predicts about 50% of the variance in children’s outcomes.  In contrast, Denmark, Australia, Norway, Finland, and Canada have much lower correlations.  People born in the countries on the left of this distribution, then, have higher socioeconomic mobility than people born in the countries on the right.”

 

So there are two things that this graph is saying. Firstly, it’s saying that out of 1 being kids being 100% the same financially, and 0.0 being not at all, the average out of all of these countries is about a 0.3, which contradicts Ampersand’s point about how people have very low socioeconomic mobility. I should also point out that this graph is messed up because the y axis should say 1 at the top to make sure that it’s not misleading, but this graph doesn’t do that. Secondly, the countries on the left (so more socialist countries) have more socioeconomic mobility than countries on the right, which shows that the idea of developing a classless system actually fails.

 

I said: “Now with socialism, you create the incentive for the lower class to stay there because eventually they will move through the ranks without having to do anything.”

Ampersand said: “The point of socialism is to develop a classless society.”

 

So I would like to clarify my point. Once a country implements a socialist ideology, in order to become a classless society, the poor will have to get to the middle class, which according to the socialist model will eventually become the only class so that it’s basically a classless system. With this ideology, you create the incentive for the poor to do nothing so that because they will eventually be average financially. And now everyone else has to pay taxes so that these people will get more money, and I believe that’s stealing. The forceful taking of someone else’s money is the definition of stealing.

 

Next, my opponent has said that I have no evidence for saying that socialism takes away freedom from the citizens. I would like to elaborate on that point. I’m first going to pull up the definition of socialism that I found:

 

Socialism
a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

 

What is this definition saying? It’s saying that a bunch of economic aspects should be owned by the community as a whole. In other words, there is only one business owned by society, there is no freedom to create your own businesses. And as I said twice earlier, your financial freedom is taken away when the community forcefully takes away your money. That’s taking away your freedom.

 

In conclusion, I’m not denying that some aspects of socialism are good, what I’m saying is that the fundamental idea of socialism as a whole is evil. Thank you!

Ampersand

"Everything sounds pretty good, not anything special to note, except what I bolded. Firstly, this suggests that there is some form of government involved dictating how this would work (which contradicts Ampersands’ point of that socialism isn’t controlled by the government) and secondly, there is no point. They can become shareholders themselves. This is an aspect of socialism that to say the least, isn’t necessary."

Reread my statement - I specifically point out that Engels was referring to the later stage of socialism (what we would now call Communism). It wouldn't apply to market socialism, hence no contradiction. It would involve no more government than there is at the moment, market socialism is a type of socialism i like to point out because it can be transitioned to very easy and is easy for everyone to image. It's like it is now, except people get paid based on how hard they work rather than how much capital they have invested. The government would protect the ownership of businesses in the same way as they do currently, we just decide ownership in a different manner - which could be reverted to democratically (e.g. capitalists get their shares bought out at a set price which gives them wealth but they are unable to invest this in more businesses.)

The only way to become a shareholder in socialism is to work - you can't buy shares. This means the people who actually do the work profit and are incentivised to work harder - getting more profit the harder they work. It's a type of business that is already in use in some Capitalist countries where workers have formed their own businesses. For instance the John Lewis Partnership is a ~90 year old company in my country that  has around 90,000 staff and revenue in the billions and it is run just like other businesses but with more engagement and with employee profit-sharing. that would be the new norm and is beneficial.

Please also note that from the points Pyroman tried to make, he didn't actually have any response indicating that this was evil in any way.

While yes, I agree that many would still work, this idea still incentivizes people to do nothing. In a capitalist society, you get paid your worth, which is as fair as it will ever get. Secondly, you’re still taking people’s money. It doesn’t matter what the money is going to, drugs, or charity. It’s still stealing, and that is immoral.

With his previous statement that nobody would work being retracted, Pyroman now reverts to saying that people are still incentivised to do nothing. This is  not supported by any argument I can see and he then gets so vague that I can't even follow his logic. For instance he is saying "In a capitalist society, you get paid your worth". Is he talking about workers or Capitalists, two completely different types of people who recieve money in relation to work that is performed? I have no idea - he could even be talking about something else. I also have no idea what he is referring to by taking peoples money and stealing. this is all far too vague.

So there are two things that this graph is saying. Firstly, it’s saying that out of 1 being kids being 100% the same financially, and 0.0 being not at all, the average out of all of these countries is about a 0.3, which contradicts Ampersand’s point about how people have very low socioeconomic mobility. I should also point out that this graph is messed up because the y axis should say 1 at the top to make sure that it’s not misleading, but this graph doesn’t do that. Secondly, the countries on the left (so more socialist countries) have more socioeconomic mobility than countries on the right, which shows that the idea of developing a classless system actually fails.

The guiding principle of socialism is "From each according to his ability" as karl Marx put it, which is to say that everyone benefits according to how much work they actually do - absolutely nothing that I have stated or has been included as a definition of socialism states that there will be no difference in pay - it's just that in a socialist world people should be getting that based on how much they work.

Now let's give ourselves a little reminder about Pyroman's original claims, he stated: "In a capitalist economy no one stays in one class all their life. When millions of immigrants moved to North America they were dirt poor and they worked through the ranks."

Now as Pyroman admits with his statement that "the countries on the left (so more socialist countries) have more socioeconomic mobility" this also means that the inverse is true and that countries on the right (the capitalist countries) have less socioeconomic mobility, meaning the more Capitalist a society is the harder it is for the "dirt poor" to work that way through the ranks. This of course makes total sense - the child of a billionaire who can be bought every advantage will almost always do better than the son of a disabled person living on benefits.However the more you do to make wealth work for the public good rather than private gain, the more society benefits rather than just the wealthy and the more chance the next generation have.

By trying to catch me out with his incorrect thinking that socioeconomic differences are anathema to socialism, Pyroman has effectively conceded this portion of the argument - not just that Socialism isn't evil but that it specifically does better than Capitalism.

So I would like to clarify my point. Once a country implements a socialist ideology, in order to become a classless society, the poor will have to get to the middle class, which according to the socialist model will eventually become the only class so that it’s basically a classless system. With this ideology, you create the incentive for the poor to do nothing so that because they will eventually be average financially. And now everyone else has to pay taxes so that these people will get more money, and I believe that’s stealing. The forceful taking of someone else’s money is the definition of stealing.

They wouldn't get to the middle class because there wouldn't be a middle class - and I would also point out that you seem to trying to make a mis-mash of terminology. The USA's class system is quite weird compared to other countries, class being type of social terminology that differs from country to country. Most of what the US considers the Middle Class would in the UK be the working class and would be the proletariat in Marxist socialist terminology.

Also why do you think the poor will think that they don't need to do anything to get money? You keep on coming back to this but I have no idea what your reasoning is. In Socialism you get paid in relation to your work. So to be average financially you have to work financially - so people are incentivised to work. Do you think that Socialism says it just hands out money to everybody for free and doesn't expect them to work? if so you're arguing against a strawman of socialism, not socialism itself.

What is this definition saying? It’s saying that a bunch of economic aspects should be owned by the community as a whole. In other words, there is only one business owned by society, there is no freedom to create your own businesses. And as I said twice earlier, your financial freedom is taken away when the community forcefully takes away your money. That’s taking away your freedom.

Again Pyroman makes up a strawman definition backed up by nothing other than his say-so. I have already linked in my previous post to a specific example of socialist ideology which allows for just as many businesses as there are now, market socialism which has employee owned businesses competing with each other in a market economy - like our currwent market economy but it's the workers who own each individual business.

Even in Stalinist Russia, the most backwards example that no sane modern socialist wants to follow, there were still individually owned businesses. Hell Lenin's New Economic Plan even made the economy more Capitalist because the Leninist ideology was that you couldn't transition directly from the kind of pre-Lenin agricultural feudal set-up of the Tsars directly to a socialist economy and needed to go through Capitalism as an interim measure.

Pyroman's argument seems to be based on claims he feels very strongly about but can't back up with any evidence.

Not only that, but as he seems to be making this about the relative evil of Socialism vs Capitalism by making constant comparisons between the two - I will argue that there is no way socialism can be considered the worse of the two. Capitalism is inherently flawed and causes massive amounts of death. 

This year, just like last year and the year before and the year before that and every year that Capitalism has been the global economic system - millions of children under 5 years old will die from preventable causes. That's not millions of people. it's not even millions of children. That just children under 5 and still millions will die needlessly. They will die of malnutrition because it's more profitable to sell way more food in developed countries than it is to provide enoguh for everyone to eat when some people have very little money to buy food with (which is because their work is so poorly paid because the Capitalist system allows for the easy exploitation of people in poor countries) - this is even though the world produces enough food to feed everyone. Essential drugs can be sold for up to six times what they would cost to get from a public body. Even diseases which aren't currently preventable are kept as such because there isn't enough interest in finding a cure - companies spending more on developing cures for baldness than life-threatening illnesses because the kind of people who care more about having a full head of hair than dying of malaria can pay a lot more for their treatment.

Because of these actions which a Capitalism system incentives, allowing people to focus on pursuing profit, millions of people will die each year.

PyromanGaming

So I would like to again respond to my opponent's points:


Ampersand said: 
"I specifically point out that Engels was referring to the later stage of socialism (what we would now call Communism). It wouldn't apply to market socialism, hence no contradiction. It would involve no more government than there is at the moment"

However you are still giving the government more power with an increased amount of taxes, which as we all know... too much money and power = corruption. We have seen this time and time again with authoritarian governments, which give the people less freedom, like in socialism by in this case forcefully taking other's taxes. You seem to be constantly resorting to certain examples of socialism to argue that the fundamental premise of socialism is evil, which is a fallacy.

Ampersand said:
"The only way to become a shareholder in socialism is to work - you can't buy shares. This means the people who actually do the work profit and are incentivised to work harder - getting more profit the harder they work."

This is what happens in a capitalist system:

Worker: Hey boss! I have been working harder lately and I want a raise!

Boss: Sure!

The ideas that socialism puts out are unnecessary. In both shareholder situations you sacrifice something. In socialism, you sacrifice time and energy. In capitalism, you sacrifice money. Why should this be any different?


Ampersand said:
"Now as Pyroman admits with his statement that "the countries on the left (so more socialist countries) have more socioeconomic mobility" this also means that the inverse is true and that countries on the right (the capitalist countries) have less socioeconomic mobility, meaning the more Capitalist a society is the harder it is for the "dirt poor" to work that way through the ranks."

So yes, a capitalist society then fails at what it does. But we're not arguing whether or not capitalism is evil, we're arguing whether or not socialism is. Now let's note Ampersand's example of the poor being unable to move up the ranks. There are organizations devoted to helping people in need in a capitalist society. Thousands of dollars maybe even millions are devoted to helping poor people every year in these organizations. While in a socialist society, you have cops breaking down your door demanding that you pay taxes that will help the less fortunate by gun point. But my opponent thinks that this is somehow okay.


Ampersand said:
"Also why do you think the poor will think that they don't need to do anything to get money? You keep on coming back to this but I have no idea what your reasoning is. In Socialism you get paid in relation to your work. So to be average financially you have to work financially - so people are incentivised to work. Do you think that Socialism says it just hands out money to everybody for free and doesn't expect them to work? if so you're arguing against a strawman of socialism, not socialism itself."

One of the core fundamental ideas of socialism is that there should be a redistribution of wealth. Like I said, the government taxes the rich forcefully and gives the money to the poor. As I said earlier, there are charities that help with this, and the "redistribution or wealth" is stealing. I'm not arguing against a strawman version of socialism. I'll put my sources at the bottom of this argument for this idea of socialism.

Ampersand said:
"Not only that, but as he seems to be making this about the relative evil of Socialism vs Capitalism by making constant comparisons between the two - I will argue that there is no way socialism can be considered the worse of the two. Capitalism is inherently flawed and causes massive amounts of death. 

This year, just like last year and the year before and the year before that and every year that Capitalism has been the global economic system - millions of children under 5 years old will die from preventable causes. That's not millions of people. it's not even millions of children. That just children under 5 and still millions will die needlessly. They will die of malnutrition because it's more profitable to sell way more food in developed countries than it is to provide enoguh for everyone to eat when some people have very little money to buy food with (which is because their work is so poorly paid because the Capitalist system allows for the easy exploitation of people in poor countries) - this is even though the world produces enough food to feed everyone. Essential drugs can be sold for up to six times what they would cost to get from a public body. Even diseases which aren't currently preventable are kept as such because there isn't enough interest in finding a cure - companies spending more on developing cures for baldness than life-threatening illnesses because the kind of people who care more about having a full head of hair than dying of malaria can pay a lot more for their treatment. 

Because of these actions which a Capitalism system incentives, allowing people to focus on pursuing profit, millions of people will die each year."



All these stats don't reflect that capitalism is bad. This is irrelevant to the debate, but I'll entertain the idea.

So first, Ampersand uses a world health organization source for that millions of children under 5 will die from preventable causes. Now Let's look at the key facts that the website shows:

Key facts

• 5.6 million children under the age of 5 years died in 2016. This translates into 15 000 under-five deaths per day.
• More than half of these early child deaths are due to conditions that could be prevented or treated with access to simple, affordable interventions.
• Leading causes of death in children under-5 years are preterm birth complications, pneumonia, birth asphyxia, diarrhoea and malaria.
• Children in sub-Saharan Africa are more than 15 times more likely to die before the age of 5 than children in high income countries.

Just like the graph Ampersand used in the first argument, he has used a strawman fallacy using these facts. Firstly, it says that over half of these deaths are because the children didn't have access to simple and affordable interventions. This is exactly what capitalism gives their citizens access to. Nextly, it said that people under 5 in sub saharan africa are more then 15 times more likely to die than children in high income (capitalist) countries. And we can stop this by encouraging capitalism ideologies in these mostly non-capitalist places. The quality of life in these places is low, but how did areas like the United States become economic giants in 250 years from nothing? From capitalism. This and the next source are examples of a causation - correlation fallacy.


Next, Ampersand used the stat that the world produces enough food in the world for everyone, yet many capitalist countries exploit poor people. Let's look at the chart that it has:

https://www.oxfam.ca/sites/default/files/styles/node-full/public/enoughfood_9.jpg?itok=pZ92GezU

Now let's first note the USA , Australia, and Canada, all majority capitalist countries are in the best condition. The yellow and orange countries are underdeveloped. Let's also note that the red countries are overpopulated and cannot sustain themselves, and what's on the red? China. A communist (which as Ampersand stated is a later form of socialism). So socialism is actually the worst when it comes to starvation.


Next he uses a drug statistic. I didn't bother to look into it because I don't understand the argument he poses. He's saying that essential drugs can cost as much as 6 times more compared to what you would get from a public body. But a capitalist store is part of a public body!


Finally, he cites a statistic that companies are spending more on developing cures for baldness than fighting life threatening illnesses. Because these companies aren't hospitals!!! They're sellers!



A final message to people watching this debate: Many debaters you will go up against will use a crap ton of fallacies, like my opponent using strawman after strawman and 2 causation-correlation fallacies with no evidence or regarding evidence that says otherwise. Pay attention and practice your critical thinking skills to spot them. This has been a really fun debate Ampersand though. Thanks!


A few videos that I recommend about this debate:

A rebuttal to the school of life's pro communism video by Steven Crowder


Socialism is evil change my mind livestream by Steven Crowder



My sources:

Steven Crowder
https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/


Good luck Ampersand!

Ampersand

However you are still giving the government more power with an increased amount of taxes, which as we all know... too much money and power = corruption. We have seen this time and time again with authoritarian governments, which give the people less freedom, like in socialism by in this case forcefully taking other's taxes. You seem to be constantly resorting to certain examples of socialism to argue that the fundamental premise of socialism is evil, which is a fallacy. 

Nowhere in either the definition of socialism provided at the start of this thread, my example I linked to of market socialism in my earlier post or Pyroman’s explanation here is it explained how or why a socialist government has more power to tax.

 Having his rationales for why the government has more power rebutted, Pyroman now just seems to be assuming the conclusion of his argument with no proof to back it up – it can therefore be disregarded as illogical as he seems to be arguing a strawman of socialism rather than actual socialism.

This is what happens in a capitalist system:

Worker: Hey boss! I have been working harder lately and I want a raise!

Boss: Sure!

The ideas that socialism puts out are unnecessary. In both shareholder situations you sacrifice something. In socialism, you sacrifice time and energy. In capitalism, you sacrifice money. Why should this be any different?

Pyroman’s argument is now based on an idealistic assumption of how capitalism work without any evidence – and I’m sure one that will ring untrue for many people who have actually experienced work. In fact the Capitalism has a powerful incentive not to give raises or to limit how many raises they give: The less they pay out to workers the more money the capitalist gets.

 

In fact whether or not someone gets a raise will often have more to do with general economic factors than how hard a customer works – in hard economic times when there is a greater unemployment rate most businesses can avoid giving raises because there is a lot less chance of the worker finding a job elsewhere.

 

An often reported problem is actually how bosses exploit workers by hiring illegal immigrants (to pay people below minimum wage), by exploit loopholes and hiring workers who they then classify as self-employed and therefore can be paid below minimum wage, hiring interns as free labour rather than teaching them skills and expecting workers to work overtime for free rather than paying them for their work. This is the exact opposite of Pyroman’s idealistic and unrealistic claims.

 

Examples:

 

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/dpd-uk-gig-economy-worker-sick-holiday-pay-employment-rights-amazon
https://www.independent.co.uk/money/spend-save/uk-people-unpaid-work-hours-year-british-workers-a8266676.html

So yes, a capitalist society then fails at what it does. But we're not arguing whether or not capitalism is evil, we're arguing whether or not socialism is. Now let's note Ampersand's example of the poor being unable to move up the ranks. There are organizations devoted to helping people in need in a capitalist society. Thousands of dollars maybe even millions are devoted to helping poor people every year in these organizations. While in a socialist society, you have cops breaking down your door demanding that you pay taxes that will help the less fortunate by gun point. But my opponent thinks that this is somehow okay.

 

You are constantly using comparisons to Capitalism to judge whether Socialism is evil – you can’t change your logic the moment you realise your logic shows Socialism is superior.

 

Not only that, but if socialism is the best and most effective economic system then implementing it can only be good – with any downsides caused by it unfortunate byproducts of there being no magical 100% perfect system.

 

Regardless Pyroman concedes that Capitalism is worse at allowing people to succeed based on merit. His rebuttals based on imaginary occurrences can again be ignored as they are not evidenced and because we know from looking at the data I provided from the OECD that regardless of the actions (imaginary or otherwise) that the relative systems take, Capitalism allows for less social mobility and makes it harder for people to succeed on merit. Frankly that’s just common sense: of course a child born into an impoverished family will struggle to compete with the richest and most advantaged children unless something is done to level the playing field.


One of the core fundamental ideas of socialism is that there should be a redistribution of wealth. Like I said, the government taxes the rich forcefully and gives the money to the poor. As I said earlier, there are charities that help with this, and the "redistribution or wealth" is stealing. I'm not arguing against a strawman version of socialism. I'll put my sources at the bottom of this argument for this idea of socialism.

As stated earlier, the change to a market socialist type economy could be done by slowly paying out existing business owners for their shares in businesses and simply not allowing them to invest in new businesses. Paying people is not stealing.

 

Not only that but progressive taxation is in place in basically every country on earth regardless of whether the country is socialist and is entirely legal. The idea that taxation is stealing is a radical minority position accepted neither in law nor by most right-thinking people. While it may be your personal opinion, it is something most people do not agree with.

All these stats don't reflect that capitalism is bad. This is irrelevant to the debate, but I'll entertain the idea.

 

Capitalism being responsible for millions of needless deaths every year does in fact show that capitalism is bad.

So first, Ampersand uses a world health organization source for that millions of children under 5 will die from preventable causes. Now Let's look at the key facts that the website shows:

Just like the graph Ampersand used in the first argument, he has used a strawman fallacy using these facts. Firstly, it says that over half of these deaths are because the children didn't have access to simple and affordable interventions. This is exactly what capitalism gives their citizens access to.

Pyroman is now resorting to delusion and trying to overall my sourced facts with his ideology. We know that Capitalism does not give people access to this because these people live in Capitalist countries in a world with Capitalist international trade and millions of people die each year.

Ergo; we know his statement is wrong and ideological rather than factual so it can be disregarded. His is now engaged in literal counter-reality claims where he thinks because he believes something it is more real then actual facts and stats from trusted international organisations.

 

Nextly, it said that people under 5 in sub saharan africa are more then 15 times more likely to die than children in high income (capitalist) countries. And we can stop this by encouraging capitalism ideologies in these mostly non-capitalist places. The quality of life in these places is low, but how did areas like the United States become economic giants in 250 years from nothing? From capitalism. This and the next source are examples of a causation - correlation fallacy.

Sub-saharan countries are also capitalist countries, so we know capitalism isn’t a cure.

Also the USA prospered by ethnically cleansing the native population of a continent and replacing them with colonists from the then most technologically advanced countries on earth – then introducing protectionist anti-free trade policies.

During their years of development the now industrialised countries did not have a laissez-faire capitalistpolicy because almost all of them with a few exceptions like the Netherlands had government that put in place trade restrictions to make imports uncompetitive, restrict capitalist and build up their own industries. For instance in the USA 1816 tariff law almost all manufactured goods were subject to tariffs of around 35%. The tariff of 1832 (The “Tariff of abominations" raised this even higher, adding high tariffs to raw materials or low value-added manufacturers (liquor, fur, wool, help, etc). The tariff law of 1832 did a little bit to alleviate this, but not much, with only small cuts and still high protection of 40%+ for wooled manufactured goods and clothing.

This actually caused a crisis (The Nullifcation Crisis) with South Carolina refusing to accept the law. Due to this a year later a bill was passed which didn't do much up front but over the decade or so would gradually bring down the tariffs to about 20-25%. Of course as soon as the 10 years were up a new tariff (The Black Tariff) was introduced and raised the tariffs back to what they were before, around 40%.

Due to the different interest of the protectionist North (which was industrialised and benefiting from these policies) and free Trade South (which just wanted to keep it's slave based agrarian unindustrialised economy), this was a major issue which helped bring about the ACW. In case you don't know (spoiler alert) the North won and there were very high tariffs until the Underwood tariff of 1913 which loosened things a bit but kept the average tariff on manufactured goods still at around 25%. This quickly changed though with World War 1 right around the corner which saw a tariff increase to pay for it. Up until 1945 the USA was one of the most protectionist and least capitalistic free trade countries, possibly THE most protectionist countries around, for like 1 and a half centuries.

That's not even mentioning other matters like the government support of agricultural research (Morill Act of 1862) and the establishment of government research institutes to help the private sector like the Bureau of Animal Industry and Bureau of Agricultural Chemistry or the government giving hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of land to railway companies to fund and aid them in expanding West as they otherwise would have been unable to afford it (because capitalism sucks at large scale infrastructure projects with no immediate payoff).

Similar things went on in most countries people randomly assume were full on Capitalist. The truth is, they had strong government-lead protectionist policies to allow them to build up their industries and only became more free-trade later one once they were fully developed and had strong established industries that could compete with others.[/history lesson]

 

Not only that but the idea that all countries can become like the USA is absurd – like saying that if they try hard enough that everyone can be a CEO. That doesn’t work because just like some people have to do the actual work in a business rather than the management, some countries will have to produce low value added goods and raw materials that other countries then consume or use to generate high value added goods. While which countries produce which may change; we can’t have every country focusing on producing computers and jet engines or we’d all starve to death. In a competitive environment where companies and countries are looking to maximise, this will lead to rich and poor countries.

Next, Ampersand used the stat that the world produces enough food in the world for everyone, yet many capitalist countries exploit poor people. Let's look at the chart that it has:

https://www.oxfam.ca/sites/default/files/styles/node-full/public/enoughfood_9.jpg?itok=pZ92GezU

Now let's first note the USA , Australia, and Canada, all majority capitalist countries are in the best condition. The yellow and orange countries are underdeveloped. Let's also note that the red countries are overpopulated and cannot sustain themselves, and what's on the red? China. A communist (which as Ampersand stated is a later form of socialism). So socialism is actually the worst when it comes to starvation.

This is a very bizarre response. Pyroman ignores the content of my source and the evidence it provides and instead assumes that a random image in the article is actually a data-backed chart. Nothing on the page indicates this is anything but a random image and if you compare it against actual data (see https://data.unicef.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Stunting-UNICEF-map-JME2017-nov3.png example) you can see that China beats the majority of Capitalist countries for which there is data.

Not only that, but by focusing on countries like the USA Pyroman is ignoring the vast majority of countries in the world. Why does he mention the USA but not Ethiopia? Canada but not Honduras? Because he would rather cherry pick the best examples rather than look at the worst or even the average examples and avoid having to consider whether it is even possible to equalise and raise everyone up under Capitalism.

There is also the issue that Pyroman’s analysis is very simplistic – labelling countries as underdeveloped and then just assuming this is solely due to economic ideology and no other factors. By his metric we should consider Islamic republics as the best form of government because they’re the wealthiest – and not bother to consider that it could be due to their massive oil wealth.

There are a lot of different factors which make direct country by country comparisons hard, but Nobel prize in economics winner Amartya Sen found a way around this by comparing India and China. In the 1950s India and China they were remarkable similar in terms of development. They developed incredibly differently though and while China went Socialist, India went Capitalist

As Sen explained in Hunger and Public Action, this example where the countries were directly comparable and thus we could be allowed to see the difference ideology caused showed that Capitalism was far more harmful and resulted in far more unnecessary deaths. To quote:

" Comparing India's death rate of 12 per thousand with China's of 7 per thousand, and applying that difference to the Indian population of 781 million in 1986, we get an estimate of excess normal mortality in India of 3.9 million per year"

Essentially because India focuses on people making private profit rather than social benefit, millions of people needlessly die each year in India alone.

I'll also point out that this means since independence more deaths have been caused by the inequality of India's economic system alone, not even taking into account other Capitalist countries, than by all the deaths attributed to every Communist state in the entire history of the world.
As for the economic comparison, that should be obvious. Although it started off as under-developed before it switched to socialism and so has had a long way to

Next he uses a drug statistic. I didn't bother to look into it because I don't understand the argument he poses. He's saying that essential drugs can cost as much as 6 times more compared to what you would get from a public body. But a capitalist store is part of a public body!

‘Public’ and ‘private’ are basic economic terms and distinctions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_sector. The point is that the capitalist search for profit causes millions of deaths of young children every year.  Capitalism is evil, not socialism.

Finally, he cites a statistic that companies are spending more on developing cures for baldness than fighting life threatening illnesses. Because these companies aren't hospitals!!! They're sellers!

Yes, that is exactly the issue and Pyroman concedes the point. These companies are sellers and in Capitalism we expect them to work for a profit even if this leads to social harm for others (people who then can’t afford lifesaving drugs) – that’s the Capitalist system in action resulting in these deaths.

A final message to people watching this debate: Many debaters you will go up against will use a crap ton of fallacies, like my opponent using strawman after strawman and 2 causation-correlation fallacies with no evidence or regarding evidence that says otherwise. Pay attention and practice your critical thinking skills to spot them. This has been a really fun debate Ampersand though. Thanks!

Please note that the most basic requirement of any debate is to support your arguments. This applies to accusations of fallacies as well as more general arguments.

By simply making these accusations but not explaining why they should be considered valid – an issue he has had through much of this debate – all Pyroman is doing is offering a baseless opinion with no evidentiary value. With him offering no explanation or evidence to support these claims, I couldn’t rebut them if I wanted to because I have no idea on what basis he’s making these claims. The onus is on a debater to back up their arguments and by failing to do this and asking the voters to do the work for him he has failed as a debater.

Due to the poor level of his arguments and lack of evidence, Pyroman’s arguments should be disregarded.