AISC - MWH

nihaal, i wasn't even the one who posted that rebuttal! I never wrote anything to refute anything in Moon's argument... This is weird.

If you say that no system of money exists, then prices won't either, thus removing the benefits of prices (econ knee, econ), among with is the benefit of having a level playing field for the supplier and consumer. Furthermore, if a country has no system of money, then no one gets a salary, no one gets profits, no one get anything, therefore bring the country's GDP to grand total of NOTHING. If a country doesn't any money system, then it has no money, therefore it also can't get imports and make exports because the money that would come in from exports would be useless, and imports would be impossible because there is no money in order for any to come in. Finally, if you don't have any money system, how does one know how valuable something is? would you say that a Bugatti is comparable to toilet paper, because neither has a price to fairly and equally denote one from the other.

Secondly, if a state doesn't have a government, then it is just basically anarchy. You are arguing that it is possible to have "equal anarchy"? I don't think so. When there is anarchy, people tend towards SOMEONE, therefore elevating him above all others who follow him, this is human nature. This someone will always have more say and influence in matters just because he is the one who everyone seems to follow - therefore compromising the whole point of communism, to keep everyone and everyone's say equal.

Well knee, if you argue that "money can't buy happiness", then you are killing the whole point of your argument/communism because if money doesn't matter, then what is the point of redistributing the wealth among the population, if ultimately it doesn't matter since "money can't buy happiness"?

You said something about motivation and that workers may lose that. Well if don't have motivation then it's your fault. But what happens then it's the government's fault. Even though your motivated the government goes corrupt? So as the government goes corrupt then no matter how motivated you are it's not you who is providing for your needs. In a capitalist society you only have one person to blame and thats yourself and the only thing that you don't need to be concerned about is your sense of security which the law will protect you on. Everything else you have to provide everything in your life because it's your mistakes your problems your needs. Not the government's, that way you can actually learn.

Capitalism - an outlook on society based around the self - governing market system that allows those who put their abilities to work better to ultimately succeed. Capitalism emphasizes the freedom of the people and encourages ambition and hard work.

Communism - a contrasting system where there is strict government control on all aspects of society, including price controls and strict control of production. At the core of this system is to ultimately achieve equality for all where everyone provides for each other.

I believe that capitalism is clearly the more logical and practical system for any country for several reasons. Firstly, communism gives the right to the government to take the money, that the people worked very hard for, away and redistribute it in order to keep everyone equal. This is clearly unfair because those who worked harder than others will still get the same salary and be able to afford the same products and services as one who slacked off during his or her job, someone clearly not deserving the same pay as someone who actually put his/her full effort into the job. On the other hand, capitalism treats those who work harder and put effort into their work more fairly as these people would ultimately get higher pay than those who don’t work hard. For this reason, communism basically motivates individuals to be lazy because they will anyway get everything that all others will get.

Secondly, communism creates a society where competition is at its minimum because everyone has the same salaries, and no one would have any incentive to go ahead and put more effort into their work or better the quality of their goods because they wouldn’t get any reward at the end of it. A society without competition is clearly negative because products and services would be priced higher and the quality would stay where it began, if not becoming increasingly worse. In contrast, capitalism creates a society where competition thrives because people have the incentive of reaping the benefits of their hard work such as more money and privileges, therefore motivating people to increase the quality of their products/services and make better use of their abilities.

Thirdly, due to the previous two points, communism creates a society where growth of a country’s economy will be minimal - if all societies in history were communist, we would barely be in the Stone Age now. This is because communism doesn’t allow a certain business/businessman to be more successful than anyone else because communism states that everyone must be equal, this again doesn’t provide an incentive for anyone to do well in a business or even start one for that reason. On the hand, capitalism greatly helps the economies of countries grow because it allows businesses to gain money and be more successful than another, providing the incentive for making the business better, thus getting more profits and ultimately increasing the GDP/GNP of a country. A great example is South Korea vs. North Korea. The South went through a period of great growth from 1962 to the present – its GDP back then was a lowly US$ 2.7 billion, in 2007, the South’s GDP broke the US$ 1 trillion mark (that’s a 37037.04% increase in GDP in just 45 years!). Now compare that figure to North Korea’s current GDP of (around) US$ 40 billion.

Fourthly, communism may look fantastic on paper because of the strong ideas of equality behind it, but, ultimately, it is not a practical system to apply to society. People are far too ambitious and greedy to be satisfied with the money that the government provides the people equally because this is human nature. Rationing, for example, is a small-scale example of a government-controlled aspect of society/economy. Amongst the several disadvantages of rationing, is that people will never be satisfied with what they get, and if this government controlled system, communism, is applied to a larger group of individuals, then the consequences will only be more severe. Also, communist states are rather susceptible to turning into an oppressive totalitarian state due to the overwhelming power of the government, which allows the leader to basically control everything in society. For example, take Stalinist Russia - before Stalin’s rise to power, Russia had just turned to communism and was a ‘normal’ (as in not totalitarian) communist state, but this period was very short – lived. After Stalin took power, he oppressed the people of Russia and converted the nation into a totalitarian state, going against the ideals of communism. Furthermore, to date, there hasn’t been a single perfectly communist state EVER, this shows you just how impractical and difficult it is to implement this system in the correct fashion. This is a clear sign that communism, which is just an idea, will, and should remain exactly that because if it isn’t implemented perfectly, then the ideals of equality that communism was built on will be completely destroyed.

Fifth, in a way, capitalism also helps the people at large get what they want. This is because in a capitalist society, the economy is built around demand and supply. If the people want something new/different to be supplied (basically increasing demand), then new businesses can be built (new businesses can provide the supply for the increase in demand) in order to satisfy the people’s ever - changing wants and/or needs (can a need change? Hmmm…).

Lastly, those for communism might argue that capitalism promotes greed, but we have to remember that greed is a part of human nature, and as I demonstrated earlier while mentioning rationing, no one is going to be satisfied by getting what everyone else gets (this is actually small – scale competition between those in society).

FILIBUSTER FTW!