Instigator / Pro
6
1485
rating
11
debates
63.64%
won
Topic
#4293

Would socialism on a large scale be worse for society than America's current form of capitalism?

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
3
3
Better sources
2
2
Better legibility
1
1
Better conduct
0
1

After 1 vote and with 1 point ahead, the winner is...

Sir.Lancelot
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Rated
Number of rounds
5
Time for argument
Two days
Max argument characters
4,000
Voting period
One month
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Minimal rating
1,500
Contender / Con
7
1587
rating
182
debates
55.77%
won
Description

In this debate, socialism will be defined as a command economy in which all the means of production, distribution, and exchange are owned and regulated by the federal government and democratically elected officials.

Burden of proof is shared.

All arguments given MUST be at least 3,500 characters to prove that both participants are committed to the debate. Failure to adhere to this will result in a loss.

Forfeiting a round will result in a loss.

To clarify, the first person to forfeit or break the character rule loses immediately, after that the rules no longer apply.

Round 1
Pro
#1
I would like to thank my opponent for participating in this debate and thank everyone else for reading.

Economists tend to be skeptical of socialism, mainly because command economies fail to allocate resources efficiently or respond quickly to supply and demand. Socialism relies on the famously debunked labor theory of value, the assumption that the value of an item is determined by the number of hours required to produce it. This theory has since been proven false [1]. This fact is so widely accepted that I don't think my opponent will dispute it. But if it becomes necessary, I can explain in more detail why the theory fails.

Because value is subjective, a command economy will produce much less value than a free market with similar amounts of labor, as the items produced do not respond quickly to supply and demand. If a company is not turning a profit under capitalism, the owners will switch to producing something people want. But large economies are extremely complex, and most businesses fail due to lack of demand for the product produced [2]. Under capitalism, only the businesses satisfying a need survive, and millions of businesses invest huge amounts of effort into meeting consumer demand. Under socialism, the government can fail repeatedly, and competitors do not exist to pick up the slack.

Economists today are divided between the theories of John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich August Hayek. The most famous (or infamous) example of Keynesian economics was the implementation of the New Deal. It is known today that not all New Deal policies were helpful and that some even made the depression worse [3]. Under socialism, the government would be forced to regulate every market indiscriminately, even those that are better left alone. Even Keynesian economists will scoff at this.

Command economies consistently fail for the reasons I have mentioned. The USSR, China, and Cuba all failed to keep up with their capitalist counterparts, but each of these countries recovered in part when some markets were reopened. In China, for example, starvation was widespread until Deng opened markets [4].

Due to the complexity of the economy, a socialist government is forced to aim for superficial targets, such as low employment, even if the jobs people get aren't producing anything people want. Value is subjective, and optimal prices can only be achieved through voluntary exchange as businesses adjust to supply and demand [5]. Cuba can only survive by privatizing some markets and allowing limited capitalism [6]. Still, Cuba cannot keep up with freer markets in other countries.

In the centuries after socialism was first proposed, it has been repeatedly debunked. Economists tend to prefer market economies as more efficient [7] [8]. They also claim they are unable to predict demand for items or boom and bust cycles. So for socialism to work, economists must be much dumber than they say they are and much smarter than they say they are (in order to accurately predict demand). In fact, elected officials have to do this accurately and repeatedly when the smartest economists in the world claim to be unable to do so.

Under America's current form of capitalism, there is more than enough value to go around. Wealth can be redistributed through taxation. But in a socialist economy, value is in short supply and the poor cannot be helped. I will remind the audience that my opponent must defend government control of all industries, not just some. They are arguing that the government should regulate every single industry. And every time this has been tried, it has led to living standards much worse than those generated by capitalism.

Con
#2
Preamble:
I shall aim to prove Socialism on a larger scale as a form of governance than the current state of Capitalism. This case shall be demonstrated in several contentions.

BOP
This debate is “on-balance.” Pro wins if he demonstrates that Capitalism is better and I win if I prove that Socialism is better for society.

Definitions:
Current - Belonging to the present time; happening or being used or done now.

Capitalism - An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.

Society - 1 : People in general thought of as living together in organized communities with shared laws, traditions, and values.

Better - 1. Improve on or surpass. 2. Of a more excellent or effective type or quality.

Worse - Of poorer quality or lower standard; less good or desirable.

Contentions (First Version: Why Capitalism is bad.)

l. Capitalism kills too many people.
Contaminated Water Supply
  • “Some 829 000 people are estimated to die each year from diarrhoea as a result of unsafe drinking-water, sanitation and hand hygiene.”
Starvation
  • “Poor nutrition and hunger is responsible for the death of 3.1 million children a year.”

Vaccine Preventable Diseases
  • “Of these children, an estimated 5.3 million died of all causes in 2018, with an estimated 700,000 who died of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases; 99% of the children who died had lived in low- and middle-income countries.”

Malaria
  • “The estimated number of malaria deaths stood at 619 000 in 2021 compared to 625 000 in 2020.”

ll. Capitalism is failing in holding companies accountable.
One of the most popular companies in the world, Nestle, which owns the largest water bottle company would intentionally purchase all the clean water, leaving 3rd world countries with only contaminated water. One of the locals in a Pakistani village blamed Nestle for their infants getting sick.

  • Nestle also bought chocolate from a cocoa plantation that was trafficking children for labor. (Hershey’s AND Nestle.)
  • Nestle has also infected people with E Coli.
  • Nestle is operating in California without a permit and refuses to show just how much water they’ve taken, causing people to speculate they are responsible for the drought.

Capitalism is allowing companies to underpay workers and steal wages.
  • “When a recession hits, U.S. companies are more likely to stiff their lowest-wage workers, research shows. Some businesses pay less than the minimum wage, make employees work off the clock, or refuse to pay overtime rates. In the most egregious cases, bosses don’t pay their employees at all.”
  • “Some major U.S. corporations were among the worst offenders. They include Halliburton, G4S Wackenhut and Circle-K stores, which agency records show have collectively taken more than $22 million from their employees since 2005.”
Round 2
Pro
#3
I would like to thank my opponent for engaging in this debate, and I would like to thank all of you for reading it. I also encourage you to vote afterwards.

In this debate, I will attempt to emphasize one central point: that killing a baby is a bad thing. Perhaps I will have more difficulty than I  expect in establishing this point, as the killing of babies is often convenient to justify. I expect we will hear many arguments that justify murder for the purpose of economic convenience. I expect I we will also see babies and human beings referred to as something other than babies and human beings. But if we are to discuss abortion, it should be defined in simple terms, and abortion is best defined as killing a baby. When a woman goes to a clinic for an abortion, the doctor's job is to kill the baby, and if the baby is somehow alive by the end of the procedure, an abortion has not been performed.

Therefore, I hold that abortion constitutes the killing of an innocent human being. But when do human beings become human beings? The pro-choice camp does not provide us with a singular answer, but science does. In Essentials of Human Embryology, Keith Moore writes the following [1]:

Human development begins after the union of male and female gametes or germ cells during a process known as fertilization (conception). Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm (spermatozoon) with a secondary oocyte (ovum) and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei (the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum) and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being.

In Medical Embryology, Jan Langman writes:

The development of a human being begins with fertilization, a process by which two highly specialized cells, the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female, unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.

Note that the aforementioned zygote has its own unique human DNA. A Japanese zygote implanted in a Ukranian woman will always be Japanese, not Ukranian, because the identity of a fetus is based on his or her genetic code, not that of the body they occupy. Furthermore, if the woman’s body is the only one involved in a pregnancy, then for most of the pregnancy, she must have two brains, two circulatory systems, two noses, four legs, two sets of fingerprints, and two skeletal systems. Half the time she must also have male sex organs. To deny that abortion is killing a baby, my opponent must reject the overwhelming scientific consensus that life begins at conception, agreed on by 95% of biologists [2].

The most common method of abortion involves sucking the fetus out of the womb with a vacuum hose [3]. Another common method, known as D&E, involves ripping the baby's limbs off and removing them from the womb one body part at a time [4] [5]. Dr. Martin Haskell, an abortionist, states the following [6]:

The more common late-term abortion methods are the classic D&E and induction. [Induction] usually involves injecting digoxin or another substance into the fetal heart to kill it, then dilating the cervix and inducing labor...Classic D&E is accomplished by dismembering the fetus inside the uterus with instruments and removing the pieces through an adequately dilated cervix.

To argue that abortion is not killing an innocent human being, also known as murder, my opponent must establish that an unborn child is not human, that an unborn child is not innocent, or that abortion does not involve killing an unborn child.

Con
#4
I would like to thank my opponent for engaging in this debate, and I would like to thank all of you for reading it. I also encourage you to vote afterwards.

In this debate, I will attempt to emphasize one central point: that killing a baby is a bad thing. Perhaps I will have more difficulty than I  expect in establishing this point, as the killing of babies is often convenient to justify. I expect we will hear many arguments that justify murder for the purpose of economic convenience. I expect I we will also see babies and human beings referred to as something other than babies and human beings. But if we are to discuss abortion, it should be defined in simple terms, and abortion is best defined as killing a baby. When a woman goes to a clinic for an abortion, the doctor's job is to kill the baby, and if the baby is somehow alive by the end of the procedure, an abortion has not been performed.

Therefore, I hold that abortion constitutes the killing of an innocent human being. But when do human beings become human beings? The pro-choice camp does not provide us with a singular answer, but science does. In Essentials of Human Embryology, Keith Moore writes the following [1]:

Human development begins after the union of male and female gametes or germ cells during a process known as fertilization (conception). Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm (spermatozoon) with a secondary oocyte (ovum) and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei (the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum) and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being.

In Medical Embryology, Jan Langman writes:

The development of a human being begins with fertilization, a process by which two highly specialized cells, the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female, unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.

Note that the aforementioned zygote has its own unique human DNA. A Japanese zygote implanted in a Ukranian woman will always be Japanese, not Ukranian, because the identity of a fetus is based on his or her genetic code, not that of the body they occupy. Furthermore, if the woman’s body is the only one involved in a pregnancy, then for most of the pregnancy, she must have two brains, two circulatory systems, two noses, four legs, two sets of fingerprints, and two skeletal systems. Half the time she must also have male sex organs. To deny that abortion is killing a baby, my opponent must reject the overwhelming scientific consensus that life begins at conception, agreed on by 95% of biologists [2].

The most common method of abortion involves sucking the fetus out of the womb with a vacuum hose [3]. Another common method, known as D&E, involves ripping the baby's limbs off and removing them from the womb one body part at a time [4] [5]. Dr. Martin Haskell, an abortionist, states the following [6]:

The more common late-term abortion methods are the classic D&E and induction. [Induction] usually involves injecting digoxin or another substance into the fetal heart to kill it, then dilating the cervix and inducing labor...Classic D&E is accomplished by dismembering the fetus inside the uterus with instruments and removing the pieces through an adequately dilated cervix.

To argue that abortion is not killing an innocent human being, also known as murder, my opponent must establish that an unborn child is not human, that an unborn child is not innocent, or that abortion does not involve killing an unborn child.

I thank Pro for his concern, but I’d like to remind voters that the subject deals with the politics of Socialism vs Capitalism. 
Not the ethics of abortion and infanticide. 

Extend Round 1 contentions and definitions. 
Round 3
Pro
#5
Forfeited
Con
#6
To clarify, the first person to forfeit or break the character rule loses immediately, after that the rules no longer apply.
Extend.
Round 4
Pro
#7
Forfeited
Con
#8
Extend.
Round 5
Pro
#9
Forfeited
Con
#10
End.