I'm not sure how "If people can't compete with the large corporations they should form small corporations so they can compete" leads to less overall suffering.

I'll grant you, "I got mine - screw you" is easier. Not better, just easier.

OK then, you support a Canadian style healthcare system. What is the condition under which someone could loose this entitlement? Same with food stamps, housing supplements, education aid. Is there any condition under which someone could loose these entitlements? What are the conditions on continually receiving minimum wage?

They're all implemented as unconditional entitlements, so you say one thing but the reality is all these socialist programs are what they are.

Another example of compassion without any sacrifice and proof that we really only care about ourselves. This example is about as compassionate as prayer. Seems that if one were concerned about injured players, one would sacrifice the pleasure of watching sports. But the fans only really care about the 'high' they can get from watching sports.

But sports is a good analogy for what I'm talking about. Your solution to uneven competition is to take points from the team ahead and give them to the team behind.  You would take prize money from the winners and give it to the losers. So what happens? Neither team tries hard, there is no reward for excellence

What do sports leagues do to reduce uneven competition? The give the poorer teams better draft choices. But the still have to be careful not to have an incentive to loose(NBA draft lottery). They have to prevent the rich teams from buying up all the best players(resources) and monopolizing the sport.

We have the capacity to cooperate and compete at the same time.

Caring and compassion are false concepts. We are incabable of 'caring' without strings attached. Socialists exhibit phony compassion and moral indignation as a strategy to get something for nothing. This is because they are trying to gain an advantage against those they compete against.

"OK then, you support a Canadian style healthcare system."

Only in the face of a lack of better alternatives. If I had my way, the whole country would be socialist, though not the "socialism" you and I both abhor.

"What is the condition under which someone could loose this entitlement?"

Refusal to contribute to society. ie: work.

"Same with food stamps, housing supplements, education aid."

Food stamps and housing supplements would not exist, as there would be no need for them. Education is an investment, one that would more than pay itself off.

"They're all implemented as unconditional entitlements, so you say one thing but the reality is all these socialist programs are what they are."

Just because they are entitlements in our capitalist societies does not mean they would remain so in a socialist one. You just don't get it. There'd be no need for ANY socialist program running today. They'd all be scrapped. The only reason they exist at all is to protect people from the excesses of capitalism.

"What do sports leagues do to reduce uneven competition? The give the poorer teams better draft choices. But the still have to be careful not to have an incentive to loose(NBA draft lottery). They have to prevent the rich teams from buying up all the best players(resources) and monopolizing the sport."

Yet the solution is so much simpler: cap the funding that any team would be willing to pay out. Better yet, assign each team the exact same amount of money they have to spend, adjusted for different tax rates and other local costs, and the playing board is even.

"We have the capacity to cooperate and compete at the same time."

Same difference. The terms are interchangeable for the purposes of my argument.

"Caring and compassion are false concepts. We are incabable of 'caring' without strings attached. Socialists exhibit phony compassion and moral indignation as a strategy to get something for nothing. This is because they are trying to gain an advantage against those they compete against."

Vastet, you sound like you would follow a political system I read about once.

The creator gave it the name "SHEFocracy" where SHEF stood for what he believed the government should guarantee all its citizens:

Shelter, Health, Education, Food. The rest the citizen gets on his own.

To just stand an applaud for a few seconds. BFD. And they feel sooo good when show 'compassion'. They do it for themselves not the player. Compassion is a drug and it's best when it doesn't cost anything.

 Seems that if one were concerned about injured players, one would sacrifice the pleasure of watching sports. But the fans only really care about the 'high' they can get from watching sports."

If there is no fans then it is just recreation for the players, so they're not going to risk injury as much for free. If you pay to go to a football game you're encouraging hard play which leads to injury right? So if one is concerned and compassionate about injured players, it seems one would sacrifice watching the games. But no one has any real compassion, just excuses.

It's like the Christians that pray for no injuries and pray after a player get injured. Why even play the game if you have to keep asking Mr. Invisible to keep everyone safe?

You don't control nature or human reproduction. Passing laws to this effect doesn't grow food or stop people from fucking. The laws of nature will trump laws based on an idealist fantasy.

What exactly are the "magic wands" as you define them. I'm for making everyone pay for the government services they use and the resources they require. Otherwise freedom. You want a system where people can vote themselves freebies from the government all the time.

And when there's not enough 'magic' to go around? And when people stop working because the magic is delivered by the government, then what?

Can you give an example of where this happens and I support it?

"To just stand an applaud for a few seconds. BFD."

They don't have to stand or applaud at all. Hell, if they were truly selfish, they'd boo. Taking out opposing players increases the likelyhood that your team will win.
I already responded to the next segment. Repitition is not refutation.

"If there is no fans then it is just recreation for the players, so they're not going to risk injury as much for free."

Says you. Evidence is to the contrary. I'll use hockey, because it's the only sport that matters. 70 years ago, players got a fraction of the money they do now. Even adjusting for inflation. Players needed an actual job to survive. Yet padding was nonexistant. Helmets as well. Fights were both more common and allowed to continue for longer. The stands and ice were of significantly lower quality than today. Crowds were a fraction of the size. Medical technology was nothing compared to today, many injuries were career or life threatening. Yet there was no shortage of players, nor injuries.

"You don't control nature or human reproduction. Passing laws to this effect doesn't grow food or stop people from fucking. The laws of nature will trump laws based on an idealist fantasy."

You don't have to control either. Fact is that the more educated and secure a person is, the less likely they are to spawn a dozen kids. Even ignoring the fact that we have the technology and knowledge to sustain the entire population of Earth for a significant period of time, if not indefinitely (or as indefinitely as we could with the mineral resources available in the solar system). That we do not use this knowledge and technology to its maximum benefit is another fault of capitalism. There is no motivation to cooperate on such a level.

And where is the requirement in the Canadian healthcare and welfare system that one become an educated person? One gets more freebies from the government for spawning a dozen kids, while one gets a higher tax bracket for becoming educated.

I agree technology could be used to improve living standards. So why do you support a tax system that penalizes innovation and efficiency? If someone adopts technology to grow twice the food using the same resources, they go into a higher tax bracket and this extra profit is taxed for entitlements.

Also without population controls, humans will overpopulate to negate any gains technology produce.

Incidentally, this is a myth. Socialism doesn't encourage people not to work, it never has in reality. The people don't and can't stop working for one because the government does not provide their needs, they do.

The role of the government is simply to distribute a vital proportion of those goods within the society in a manner the constituents see fit to approve, generally that approval would be based on the standard of basic freedom and assurances that they want pro rata to their membership in the society.

So Socialist welfare is, no more than, the goal of assuring all citizens equally a basic means of survival and well being, a lowest possible standard of living that one should expect within the community.

From there, contributions to the system above and beyond the basic contribution everyone makes simply by being a a consumer, processer and an individual mind (ie: a cog in the basic system of civil advancement) could be justly rewarded with the means to more freedom of expression and stature for the individual. (means of exchange notwithstanding as it could equally be money or barter or whatever works).

What are you talking about? Wherever it is practiced, it amounts to the government providing the need. If you make health care a right, the government is providing it. If you have food stamps, the government is providing the need.

Government doesn't produce any goods only individuals and businesses motivated by personal gain to do that, so how can government ever distribute goods. All government can do is redistribute wealth.

Even if this goal could be met, the laws of biology tell us that any species including humans will multiply until a lack of resources is the limiting factor, so a government can not meet this goal without population controls. The communist system in China is the only society that has ever attempted addressed this dillema.

Humans are not motivated by "the means to more freedom of expression and stature". People are motivated by sex, reproduction and money to buy nice things like big houses, cars, clothes, electronics, vacations, etc... Socialism takes people's disposable income thereby destroying their motivations.

I don't think anyone is actually claiming that socialism encourages people not to work, but that it can't offer the same motivation to work that capitalism provides. People do work for their needs, but in socialism, they don't reap the rewards as individuals, right? Instead, resources produced are pooled together and redistributed evenly.

No, that isn't true. They may not reap AS MUCH of the rewards as individuals, but they still reap the rewards. Socialism is NOT mutually exclusive to capitalism, also.

Simply because workers own and administer the means of the production or allocation of resources, does not mean that people go uncompensated for what they do, or their innovation, which EXC so often assumes.

Basic needs SHOULD BE PROVIDED for everyone in the society. It should be a right for everyone in a developed nation. Rights are, contrary to what some may think, provided by other people in your society. No one would really have a right to free speech if someone would shoot you the moment you said something they didn't like. 

Please don't pretend to be dense, EXC. If health care is a right, a doctor (read: person) will provide it for you. No amount worth of food stamps from the government is going to satisfy your need for potatoes if there isn't a long line of People growing, packing, wholesaling and retailing them for you to access with your food stamps.

The governent is not providing the need. As it always will be, the people are providing the need. The government, ideally, is just a mechanism by which they can collectively plan how, and to what aspiration as a collective.

It's true that the logistic growth equation tested against biology in reality holds rather well, but not in all cases as you seem to be implying.

And note also, despite its efficacy, the model proceeds from some really heavily simplistic instructions, not least of all that the relationship between the points (0, r₀) and (K, 0) is linear. Be aware you're making a strong claim from pretty shaky ground there.

We have population controls. We have contraception, pioneers of childless personal fulfillment, and we've recently discovered a ball park figure for the global K. These are pretty good existing controls for population, all a government needs to do is educate people about them.

BTW, China is such a comparitively denser population because its civilisation is older and practiced medicine and hygeine earlier than the west, it has nothing to do with communism. In case there was any implication in that.

EXC, the definition of {Sex, reproduction and money to buy nice things like big houses, cars, clothes, electronics, vacations etc..} IS "a means to more freedom of expression".

Means - sexual availability, fertility, and money

Freedom of expression - Sex, reproduction, nice things like house cars, clothes, electronics, vacations

You missed stature.

And if you don't, do you loose free healthcare and other welfare? I don't think so, so people just do the minimum required to keep their benefits. At some point you have to cut people off if they simple want to take advantage of the system. Does any socialist system do this? Cut of the benefits if an individual refuses to get with the program?

On the Canadian income tax form, does it care how you made your money? Does it matter how much natural resouses you required to make your profit? Does it ever matter how innovative and effiecient your business operates? Does it matter if your busness requires a lot of government services? No. It's just if you made money send it in. Pretty much like a mafia shake down.

The effect of progressive income tax and unconditional entitlements is to punish sucess and reward failure. You can try to deny this reality by calling it other names, but it is what it is.

Compare apples to oranges much?

Knocking a natural system out of balance (your park analogy) is not the same as restoring balance to an unbalanced artificial system.

Societies are natural - economies aren't.

You're wanting to compare imposing human will on a natural system to imposing human will on a human made system. Since you know that human imposition to a natural system (guaranteeing that the bears don't go hungry or contract disease) will work to the system's detriment, you want us to believe that correcting a broken man-made system will make that system worse.

Apples and oranges.

Are you're advocating the dissolution of all economic systems?

"Suppose you were put in charge of a large national park. You were given the task of making sure that no bear in the park ever went hungry or died of a curable disease. What would be your plan for achieving this goal?"

Unless those bears have jobs I don't see how I'd care.

Please stop straw-manning. I never said humans were artificial (though I think you would enjoy that - one wouldn't need to pay automatons a living wage).

The systems they create (which economies are) are not natural systems.

The broken system has never functioned correctly - that's the point. Why is your solution to break it further instead of fixing it?

Again, economic systems need not conform to the laws of nature as the vast majority of them aren't natural.

There are only two systems that one would consider "natural" that I can think of:

1. the "If I want something I'll take it. Screw the owner - if he objects, I might have to kill him" system.

2. the "no one owns anything/we all own it in common" system.

I've a feeling you're a big fan of system #1 as the other would violate your belief that humans are all self-serving bastards. System #2 is too scary for you,

Ugh... we've had this little discussion before, about Natural / Artificial

I shall sum this up with a brief example;

Doomy chops off his arm, and replaces it with a prostetic limb

Is the prostetic limb natural or artificial?

EXC's arguement is that the limb is natural because its composed by materials that are found in nature, and made by humans... which are techinically found in nature.

Doomy's arguement (and im going to assume Jcgadfly's) is that the prostetic limb is artificial... for obvious god-damn reasons!

"It seems to me that natural vs. artificial is another one of these concepts that have no real meaning, but are only propaganda tools to manipulate weak minded and irrational people"

It seems to Doomy that natural vs artificial is another one of these concepts that weak minded and inferior beings have trouble concieving... like evolution... and common sense!

"Are some foods natural and others artificial"

...by the blood god... YES!

Natural food is a carrot

Artificial food is a gummybear

Truly this concept cannot be so hard to grasp

When i see "all-natural" on a label, i think... Oh! no Artificial coloring, no adatives... etc...

What do you see when you see the label

"Artificial Potatoes" ?

Hmm.... Supernatural spirit potatoes.... om nom nom!

Is any of this registering?

Indeed... a good question

I believe the last time we discussed such a thing, i had developed the idea of some form of "artificial" evolution, where humans had affected their environment, development rate, biology, to such an extent that i found it an interesting thought that i could actually divide evolution into natural and artificial versions... but it was nothing more than an interesting and passing thought, that i never really followed up, in any meaningful manner.

but to answer your question, Yes, the arm would be natural (as long as the genes of the human wasnt altered, pre-insemination... because that would make the human an "artificially generated life form" so to speak... an interesting discussion as well).

I think the distiction needs to be man designed and engineered vs. product of an evolutionary process. Gadfly's argument seems to be that merely being "artifical" makes a socialist economy immune to the problems of a "natural" economy or system such as free market capitalism or bears in a natural ecosystem. If you design a artificial arm, your still bound by the same laws of nature. This seems to be the socialist mindset that they can just design an economic system that suspends the laws of nature without explaining how.

What if it is genetically engineered or given fertilizer, pesticides, etc..? What if I cook it with other stuff or juice it? What is carrot cake?

Give me a criterion as to why? Why do companies market "natural" gummy bears?

Because you can't come up with a definition. It's kind of like deciding what is 'holy'? It's BS concept

They add high fructose corn syrup and call it natural. Why is that natural?

Yes. People call something natural when it's convienient or profitable. They call it artifical when it's convenient or profitable.