Why do people create false dichotomies?
Moved to my journal because this was getting far too far offtopic.
In response to someone on abortiondebate claiming that socialism is discredited
In order to have working capitalism, you need a workign market. This isn't as easy as it sounds.
In order to set up a market, the first thing you need [EDIT from comments elsewhere: the second thing you need - the first thing is something to trade] is enough force to make sure that it is more efficient for any individual trader to barter at the market rather than simply hire a pack of brigands and rob the market. By the same token, these guards need to be under the control of someone sufficiently powerful that telling the guards to rob the market will gain him very little - and he needs sufficient control over those guards that they don't rob the merchants. If all this doesn't hold, then it is too risky for merchants to trade anything except luxuries, so capitalism isn't worth it.
The second thing you need for a market is a relatively strong legal system - one which gives a good chance of restitution for wrongdoing. For obvious reasons, this needs to be independent of the control of the merchants and stronger than any individual one of them. It also can not be financed by the merchants due to incentives of this nature perverting justice.
The third thing you need is some form of infrastructure. There needs to be some way to get to the market reasonably safely. Over sea, this is reasonably easy - you need boats and enough of an escort to prevent piracy (of course a navy wiping out the pirates actually works out cheaper than each caravan hiring a big guard, but this is not necessary). Over land, it's much harder as you need some form of road (or rail, river, or canal) network (and taxing the direct users of these roads. You can't put the roads under the control of a directly profit making entity because you've just produced a monopoly under the control of a corporation due to land being limited. You therefore need someone disinterested and powerful to run it. (Yes, you can then subcontract out the maintainance - but this is only subcontracting).
For reasons I've outlined (if not fully explained) above, all the above need to be funded by an institution bigger than the merchants themselves. As you can't rely on benevolent autocracies and oligarchies having bottomless coffers to maintain things, taxes are probably the best way of funding them. Hence you need some measure of socialism to maintain capitalism.
At this point the only question becomes where to strike the balance - too much socialism and the capital generation dries up, too little and the capitalism fails to work.
As for socialism outside the direct maintainance of the market, sewer socialism (and public health generally) is simply cheaper and more efficient to impliment through socialism than it is for people not to have working sewers and vaccinations - it cuts down disease prevelance significantly enough and helps everyone that it is worth it. I could easily go on.
In response to someone on abortiondebate claiming that socialism is discredited
In order to have working capitalism, you need a workign market. This isn't as easy as it sounds.
In order to set up a market, the first thing you need [EDIT from comments elsewhere: the second thing you need - the first thing is something to trade] is enough force to make sure that it is more efficient for any individual trader to barter at the market rather than simply hire a pack of brigands and rob the market. By the same token, these guards need to be under the control of someone sufficiently powerful that telling the guards to rob the market will gain him very little - and he needs sufficient control over those guards that they don't rob the merchants. If all this doesn't hold, then it is too risky for merchants to trade anything except luxuries, so capitalism isn't worth it.
The second thing you need for a market is a relatively strong legal system - one which gives a good chance of restitution for wrongdoing. For obvious reasons, this needs to be independent of the control of the merchants and stronger than any individual one of them. It also can not be financed by the merchants due to incentives of this nature perverting justice.
The third thing you need is some form of infrastructure. There needs to be some way to get to the market reasonably safely. Over sea, this is reasonably easy - you need boats and enough of an escort to prevent piracy (of course a navy wiping out the pirates actually works out cheaper than each caravan hiring a big guard, but this is not necessary). Over land, it's much harder as you need some form of road (or rail, river, or canal) network (and taxing the direct users of these roads. You can't put the roads under the control of a directly profit making entity because you've just produced a monopoly under the control of a corporation due to land being limited. You therefore need someone disinterested and powerful to run it. (Yes, you can then subcontract out the maintainance - but this is only subcontracting).
For reasons I've outlined (if not fully explained) above, all the above need to be funded by an institution bigger than the merchants themselves. As you can't rely on benevolent autocracies and oligarchies having bottomless coffers to maintain things, taxes are probably the best way of funding them. Hence you need some measure of socialism to maintain capitalism.
At this point the only question becomes where to strike the balance - too much socialism and the capital generation dries up, too little and the capitalism fails to work.
As for socialism outside the direct maintainance of the market, sewer socialism (and public health generally) is simply cheaper and more efficient to impliment through socialism than it is for people not to have working sewers and vaccinations - it cuts down disease prevelance significantly enough and helps everyone that it is worth it. I could easily go on.