Many socialists bill socialism as a post modern state of affairs, which you know, before the Soviet Union collapsed, it was the fruition of a post modern state of affairs unfolding before our eyes. So, while I appreciate what you're saying, I'm going with lol-both, and Chernobyl is post modern art, from a certain point of view.

Also, I've already watched this debate on youtube. Ancaps vs socialists in a formal debate

Advancing AI and robots dont nessary mean wealth for everybody.
It could though.
Keep in mind there are diffrent scenarios:

Scenario 1:
Transhuman Socialism
The robtos and the AI will overtake more and more labour. The technology will be so far developed, that it is enough to publish source code on the internet so that anybody can gain an advantage from it.
This will result in free consumary and will solve alot of difficult political problems. The AI will distribute the recources in a fair manner, and mankind can stop worrying about their basic needs.
No more wars are fought, since a fat belly tends to be more tolerant than a thin one.

Scenario2:
information based Hypercapitalism.
Only a few people have access to some sort of superAI. Very likely there will be diffrent forms of AI and AI driven machinery. Most people are working slaves doing silly jobs they cant understand and can be fired anytime once they can be replaced by some robot. There is basically no law protection unless you are rich, and rich people can treat poor people anyway they like. Being a human has become relative (it already is, companys are persons befor the law and illegal immigrants sometimes arent), anything will happen described in the dystopies like "1984"

Scenario 3:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo

there are a lot of other possibilites, including there will be no super AI or we will be killed by climate change befor we reach any scenario.

What do you mean when you say capitalism has gotten out of control?

i would recommend looking at this:
http://thebulletin.org/timeline

I'm not sure I understand this so if you can get passed the lol socialists I'd be happy to discuss it if you can be bothered explaining it to me.

As an example this is a response to a post modern account of socialism and would be something I'd be intuitively sympathetic to.

Postmodern socialism

I'm not sure how accurate that is an account of post modernism but it seems accurate enough when talking about it's contribution to socialist thought.

Can you explain to me why I should read that and a 1 or 2 sentence explanation on what you think that means? It looks like a silly conspiracy site at first glace.

Great article discussing how Venezuela has become the perfect example of a socialist state and why US media outlets have gone out of their way to make excuses on why Venezuela faces the problems it does.

http://www.investors.com/politics/ed...e-journalists/

silly conspiracy?
you have never heard of this? just wow.
sorry, but it strikes me if somebody argues for capitalism and never heard from its biggest problems, particularly the harm that is done by uncontrolled economy to human society.

To get back to the link in question:
There are several Nobel laureate and other known scientist involved. The project started around 1947 and they try to measure how close we are to selfdestruction.
The 2 biggest threats are nuclear war and climate change. In another thread i quoted Chomsky "the GOP is the most dangerous organistation in history" just because of these 2 threats.

If you dont think capitalism has anything to do with the GOP, well, than i cant help you.

Lets forget for a moment on how legit or not legit that site is and how this may or may not be a bunch of fear-mongers and focus on this:

You think capitalism has gotten out of control and your reasoning is because some people believe we are just as close to doomsday 5 months ago as we were 32 & 67 years ago?

yes,
in the past nuclear war was a much more likely reason, and we are very lucky we didnt nuke ourselves of the map. and if we continue to stay that close to midnight, variance will get us sooner or later.

i think this is one of the main reason capitalism is unacceptable, because there is no mechanism in free market that can stop global warming.

And global warming will certainly kill us if it will go unchecked. Look at what Stephen Hawking says: http://time.com/4767595/stephen-hawk...rs-new-planet/

besides from that i think capitalism is very likely to get rid of democracy.

http://www.businessinsider.de/econom...17-1?r=US&IR=T

i know that in the past democracy and capitalism worked together, but thats not the case anymore. The reason is neoliberalism for the most part.

North Korea, a communist nation, being a huge (majority?) reasons there is a chance of a nuclear war happening in the next 20 years (what are those odds, .00000001%?) doesn't change the fact in your mind that the odds of a nuclear war happening all come down to capitalism, right?

C'mon man. Knock it off with this dommsday clock rubbish. There is a reason I don't go in the conspiracy threads. It is sad reading about posters who believe that stuff and I don't want to have to see that stuff in non-conspiracy threads.

"He (hawking) has theorized in the past that the chance of a disaster on Earth adds up over time, so that it's a "near certainty" in the next 1,000 or 10,000 years" Cool, thanks for the theory that something bad can happen in the next 10k years, bro.

In all seriousness, even if we looked at hawking like he is a genius - he was including asteroids strikes in his claim that the world could end in the next 10k yrs (which many scientists believe is unrelated to capitalism). He also included epidemics in there and if you don't think we are more likely to see catastrophic epidemics because we are more capitalistic than socialist I'm not sure we should continue this conversation.

Capitalism has no better friend than democracy.

while it is true that North Korea is a threat, it is mainly because of the US that has turned down any negotiation so far.

http://thebulletin.org/sites/default...0Statement.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock

the wikipedia article says the doomsday clock has to be taken seriously.

did you watch the video in the link? there he says climatechange is #1 danger and could be prevented.

for the past i agree. since neoliberalism i disagree. it is easy to show the democracy is declining since the neoliberal agenda in the 80's. Also the social inequality is rising since then.

since 2006:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

edit: altogther no shift in the last 10 years. at least we can see the last 10 years democracy hasnt developed world wide.

Yeah, it is the US' fault that kim jung un acts like a child. Good point. Yeah, I'm sure none of this has to do with socialism and an evil dictator.

It isn't funny anymore. Nobody wants to see this stuff. Please take it to the conspiracy thread.

well than call a mod, im sure he will decide its not conspiracy.

By the way, I just saw an article talking about the "socialist diet" aka "The Venezuelan Miracle Weight Loss Program." The creaters of the diet claim that the average person who tried the diet "lost 19 pounds in the last year".

http://www.investors.com/politics/ed...nks-socialism/

I think it was a commercial for the product where I heard:

"It's a sad fact that Venezuela was once one of the wealthiest countries in South America, and even now has the second-largest oil reserves in the world. It should be a rich nation, filled with prosperous people worried about gaining too much weight, not losing it to hunger (I think the author meant to say "diet" here and not "hunger").

But as formerly middle-class Venezuelans scavenge for food — some even stooping to dumpster diving and eating formerly beloved pets just to stay alive — socialists allied with Maduro have changed nothing."

I haven't tried the diet, but I heard it was kinda like the South Beach Diet that turned heads in 2015 because you eat other people's left overs that you find in the trash and your own pet. Don't knock it until you try it. #fitfam

Firstly I am not advocating for any other system. Absolute socialism or communism is destined to fail.

But capitalism has to be regulated some way or supplemented with socialist polices like free healthcare for example.

Lets take the US as an example. The gap between the rich and the poor has never been greater and people who work full time jobs live in poverty.

As a result of having a privatized prison system you have the highest % of population in prison in the world it is no coincidence that you have people who benefit from having more people in prison , it is barbaric and sadly ironic for a country that prides itself on freedom.

Your privatized medical system is similar. It punishes poor people and insurance companies will always be serving the interests of their shareholders first before the health of their patients. No one should ever go bankrupt or not be able to afford health care in one of the richest countries in the world.

And in a more global example of capitalism getting out of control is trade deals that allow companies to sue governments if they get in the way of that company making profits. Which means you governments of poor countries can be punished for putting their own peoples welfare ahead of foreign corporations best interests.

To reiterate im not advocating for any other system im just saying that capitalism should be regulated and not be allowed to run riot. There needs to be a free market system of course but some things like health care and prison should be socialized.

Has democracy ever worked? Has capitalism ever worked? Have the rich ever worked? Have slippery slopes ever worked? Has talking about politics ever worked? Interesting questions of our day. Shrug I'm bored again.

Just ordered a book, "From Marx to Mises" by Steele, have read Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth by Ludwig von Mises. I'll get back to this when I finish reading.

Short answer, socialism in all forms is a kind've post-modern fantasy that is impossible for various reason. Marx saw socialism as something that would exist after capitalism, though there is not really anything more effective than capitalism. Mises' criticisms of socialism on the economic calculation problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social...ulation_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econom...lation_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econom...t_Commonwealth) was proven correct. No matter how many times it's tried, it will always turn out like Chernobyl, because there is no room for entrepreneurial error or entrepreneurial success. The Chernobyl disaster has everything to do with the economic system and how it "worked".

You have a lot of very simple questions - kind of like a child. Anyways, let me know if you need me to go into more detail on any of these.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

What do you mean by this? If you are trying to ask if the slippery slopes argument has ever proved a point then the answer is yes.

Again, I'm not sure what you are asking, but I will take a guess. I think you are trying to ask if discussing politics has ever benefited anyone. The answer to this question does not deviate from the pattern of answers to your other questions as it to can be answer with a simple yes.

Mises contribution has to do with planned economies which isn't strictly needed. Finland and Alaska's sovereign wealth funds have multiple groups compete internally for better returns and investment strategies while the gains go to the SWF.

Capitalism has been out of control for a very long time.
I guess it's difficult for us to understand and more so remember the suffering capitalism has brought up the global population. Let's look at the 20th and the 21st century so far and see how this global system has fared:

2 world wars with untold numbers of deaths
the holocaust
the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
mass genocide
mass famine
perpetual economic crises
people trafficking
mass unemployment
perpetual wars in the middle east
the Vietnam war
the Khmer rouge
the CIA trained death squads in south America, Afghanistan and the middle east (AKA al Qaeda, ISIS, Daesh)
tons of other US wars
the british empire and untold oppression and death

Capitalism has brought all of these horrors to bear, and capitalism only.

What happened in Russia, North Korea, China and all the other so called 'Marxist' states was pure capitalism. The difference with eastern capitalism: the state has a monopoly.
To show this simply read Marx's fundamental principle of the socialist revolution - that the emancipation of the working class is the act of the working class. Therefore none of these states are socialist - these are states where socialism is something 'done' to the masses by a higher class, often at the end of the barrel of a gun.

yeah I'm going to reply to leavesofliberty in more depth when I have time but this is an important point. Matt Bruenig is pretty decent on this his medium post is worth a read if you haven't already.

Nickel and dime socialism

How can you blame the world wars, holocaust, mass genocide, people trafficking, and other wars on capitalism?

Famine? Really?

Even with economic crises we are better off w/ capitalism. It isn't really fair to blame all economic crises on capitalism when it is often ill-advised government decisions that cause the crises.

Yes capitalism creates famine. Food gets dumped in Europe to keep the price high while millions starve in Africa. Privatisation of water supplies in the global south leading to death from dehydration and disease. While their leaders sit in splendour as they sell their minerals and oil to the west.

What is war? A land, resource and labour grab. Capitalism is competition, to get ahead of rival businesses to survive, to chase markets over the world which creates conflict and war. Yes previous systems had wars, conflict and oppression but not on the scale of the 20th C and 21st C. Capitalism creates crises - periodically crippling the system. Fascism is capitalism when democracy fails to control the restless mass of the population, when a period of Government by consent fails due to the failure of the economic system to provide for the people.

What is Government? What does it do, who does it represent? Look at the connections between the powerful, the rich, the capitalists - bankers, traders, landowners. And their media - controlled by a handful of men. The government is the connection and the government controls the police and the military who are responsible for war and mass killing. In whose interests do they act?

Are we better off, and if we are, is it because of capitalism? 'we' is subjective. If I am homeless then no I'm not better off because in the middle ages I had a mud hut at least.
The benefits you describe are not gifts of capitalism. Raw capitalism is described by George Orwell in Burmese Days or road to wigan pier, or read Steinbeck's accounts of US poverty and famine in the 30s. The western living standard is a product of socialist thinking, forced by working class organisation of strikes and riots. Why are western living standards falling? Because people aren't striking and rioting.