Hm, I don't really see how most of your post has much to do with my question.

But economics is what's responsible for the wealth of the people.

Anything else is mostly cosmetics, it may cause the country to be a not-so-nice place to live, but it will have little effect on the amount of wealth it's people will generate.

How are laws under communism different from those of any other system?

I'm from Poland, and many of the laws over here have remained the same as they were back when we were the People's Republic of Poland.

Hm, you''ll have to explain what you mean by these.

So the failure of those countries was (partially?) because of socialism rather then communism?

How is the individual less accountable under communism then he is under socialism?

Human nature remains the same regardless of the system, so what specific shortcomming of communism allows the individual to be less accountable, and what specific safeguard is there in socialism that prevents it?

Also, to whom is the individual supposed to be accountable?

Well, I just didn't see how what you said later is relevant.

But what the hell, here we go:

After I stopped you wrote 2 paragraphs explaining how socialism works in your opinion (which doesn't look anything like countries typically called socialist today).

But it didn't answer my original question or any of the questions I asked later.

After that you gave a short catch-phrase description of communism and socialism

After that:

What do you mean? Every country that called itself communist* used to plan it's production in the very manner you describe.

But wasn't the failure of Katrina a failure of socialism (it certainly wasn't communism, and neither was it capitalism since it was the federal government that screwed up)?

Also where did you get that bit about comunes working only until present needs are satisfied?

For now I'll skip that bit about capitalism/libertarianism as I'd like to discuss the original topic a bit more first.

*) I probably should make it a bit more clear at the beginning. I didn't mean any teoretical version of communism/socialism, but systems that are and were in place now and not so long ago, that go by those names.

The whole point is that there is a certain kind of socialists, that when you mention North Korea, Cuba or the Soviet Union in a discussion, they always go: "No, no, no, that's nothing like the system I'm proposing. Look at Sweden, France and Norway instead."

So I wanted to ask what exactly was wrong with those communist countries I mentioned, that they wish to cut themselves off from any association with them so decisevly?

Like I said, I understand not agreeing with political oppression, but that was only a small part of the problem the citizens of those countries had.

Communism fails for two main reasons

1) It assumes human beings are unselfish, while there is some altruism its only for the benefit of close family /where there is low risk (generally there are exceptions but on the whole we are selfish)

2) Its a dogmatic and unable to adapt, the capitalist system survived because it can adapt, in a totally free market there would be the  very poor would be left to rot leading to the poor simply shooting the rich (communism). Instead we have a welfare state safety net which allows the system to work

All economies are mixed anyway, with market regulation, social security, capitalism also didnt expect the rise of unions (which are in effect companies for workers)

I have no idea what you're trying to say here.

It seems you believe the Soviet Union was much better then North Korea, can you name any specific policies that the USSR had and North Korea lacked?

Oh, I agree China a while ago started becoming more and more capitalistic... interestingly, that's when they started becoming succesful.

Errr... what does that even mean?

As far as I know, the US also took part in the Cold War, and had a few rediculous ideas of it's own, like Vietnam, and yet Americans were much wealthier the people of the Societ Union. Howcome?

It's also kind of interesting you never mentioned economics at all and that's what I asked for.

If you wish to argue that the shape of the political system in and of itself caused poverty in those countries, go ahead, but don't just assume it.

Aren't "mixed economies" based on this very assumption as well, the difference beeing that they give much less power to those supposedly unselfish people?

Can you give a specific example of one of the countries considered communist I mentioned, not adapting to something?

Countries where communist revolutions happened couldn't be said to have had a completely free market by any strech of imagination.

So... what would stop people from just participating in free market capitalism?

That would be true if it wasn't for the fact that my question was specifically directed at people who call themselves socialist, who say that countries like Sweden, France, or Norway are examples of socialism, and who disassosiate themselves from countries like the Soviet Union by saying they're communist, and not socialist.

I don't find myself to be in a position to tell socialists what socialism means, so if someone gives me a definition, even if it's half-assed like that, hey who am I to object?

I think I remember why I quit reading the infidelguy boards.

Sorry I wasn't able to sway the opinions you already wanted, Ivan. lol.

Ownership is the right to make a decision about something, how it'll be used, and so on. Any system that believes that people have the right to make decisions is a system of private ownership. Fascism and socialism both believe that people have the right to make decisions, much as they may disagree on which people can make which decisions. And because "public" or "government" is a label which changes nothing about the reality of things, there can be no such thing as "public property" or "government property", there will always be someone somewhere choosing how it is used, and for all pratical purposes, it is their property, and because all individuals are private individuals, it is by extension privately owned. And anything can be a means of production. Your body is a means of production. Your mind is a means of production. It is likewise owned, whether by you or not, privately. What contradistincts capitalism from other systems is not the private ownership of property, but who gets to make what decisions.

Socialism is an idea which advocates ownership by the workers. In all the definitions of socialism I have seen this has been the one overriding and consistent goal. State control is advocated pending worker control only because many socialists are hypocrites and don't get that the state is controlled by the hated bourgeoisie, that it is controlled by the bougeoisie by nature, and that co-opting the state does not change it's nature as a tool of the capitalist class.

Capitalism is an idea which advocates ownership by some other group of elites, almost always the politically connected and the politicians and bureaucrats, but in the more benign forms, just by businessmen that are good at what they do.

It is the difference between equality and elitism. Once it's understood that political and economic affairs are both just a question of who owns what, who is to make which decisions, and that the political and economic elite are in almost every case in bed together, the principle can be applied that having the power to decide in the hands of the few is subject to all of the same principles of inefficiency economically as politically. Centralized decisionmaking is inefficient, bueaucracy and management is overhead costs to be realized at both the worker and customer ends, the difference between the value of the product of the worker and the worker's wage is inefficient to the worker, reducing incentive to become a wage-slave and increasing incentive to come into possession of one's own means of production. In a free market power would tend toward equalization, the means of production would fall into the hands of the workers, and you would have socialism. Capitalism doesn't survive the free market.

There's no contradiction between worker control of the means of production and a free market. There's no consistency in control-by-the-elite to abolish control-by-the-elite, a top-down approach to enforcing a bottum-up approach, as it merely trades old masters for new ones. That's the typical failure of socialism as it is normally tried. The free market naturally ends up in the supposedly-contradictory blend of equality and liberty. 

There's nothing in the definition of capitalist that implies it, but common usage of the word does imply it.

You don't have to abandon the "anarcho-capitalist" label, although I've found it useful to do so in many situations where a strawman attack is likely to be elicited by the word capitalist. When talking to anarcho-capitalists and libertarians in general you won't cause much if any confusion by calling yourself an anarcho-capitalist, but if you do so around more "left" anarchists, or leftists of almost any variety, you might wish you'd simply called yourself an "anarchist". There's a left-libertarian movement that's largely trying to reconcile and based on what I've read by "left" anarchists about it, they reguard agorists like me as "left anarchists" also, not too radically different from them, it's largely a matter of "right libertarian" rhetoric tending to piss off/confuse/mislead them. Look into agorism, as it's basically anarcho-capitalism with a few rhetoric and focus adjustments. 

That's why I usually say I'm in favor of free market capitalism, and explain that what we have now is hardly a free market.

You're right, it seems that some of them are allergic to the c-word, but most people I've met were willing to hear me out, even if they didn't want to agree with my stance. 

Will do, thanks. 

To answer your first question. For one thing there are massive problems with command economies (please bare in mind here that I'm not an economist but a philosopher) especially when such economies are put under pressure. These economies are controlled by one elite group of individuals (the state) in response to the needs of the state. Where there is great pressure, as during WWII and the Cold War the needs of the state is war and so the state demands certain machinery to be manufactured at the expense of consumer goods. At the same time command economies are bad at generating wealth, primarily because it lacks the versatility of the market economy, lack of consumer goods is one reason (again especially under pressure because artillary isn't bought and sold but used directly by the state). At the same time there is a similarity between command capitalism and market capitalism, that is that neither are inherently welfarist, the elites of both economies would be better off paying workers the bare minimum, in order to squeeze out all the profit possible. This brings me on to the second question: Yes Alienated Labour is just as much a problem under the communist economy as under the capitalist, both sets of workers are making products which ultimately do not belong to them (although the state capitalists product is theirs by technicality only) both involve gruelling and repetative labour. 

This of course is one of the benefits of the market economy (please note when I say market economy I do not mean the same as market capitalism (which we might also call regular capitalism)). Markets are better able to respond to the requirements of the consumers through a process not dissimilar to natural selection; the best and cheapest products sell whilst others fail and do not survive. My problem with market capitalism is the capitalism. Capitalism makes the market's form of natural selection as violent and bloody as the biological natural selection of genes. We are human beings, altruistic by our nature and not to the detriment of our survival in the natural world but actually to our advantage, our altruism is a key to our survival, perhaps the key to why we have civilisation and society and moral frameworks. There is no justification, based on any morality for treating the economic structure of our society (which is of course the most important factor in our manufactured environment) as if it were the cut-throat world of nature. My problem with capitalism is on an ethical level, it inflicts itself upon people's lives in a way that traps them into a lifetime of gruelling and essentially lonely slog. This brings me on to the next point...

I think the market is a fantastic thing, productive and versatile and responsive. However it is also a dangerous force when let to run free. If left to its own devices the consequences can be disasterous: poverty, resulting in crime, psychological problems and a whole host of problems caused by poverty. During the 1980s, Thatcher's government in the UK set about dismantling Britain's welfare state and setting the market forces free. The result was extreme poverty, rioting (quite rightly but not desirably). The same things have affected the worst off in American society where there is much more of a free market. America has high levels of poverty and lack of opportunities for those in its worst off communities, and we might even associate the turn towards increased religiosity as resultant from this (subject to further study). The same principle here would exist if it were co-operativism operating in a free market. The bigger co-operatives would force smaller co-operatives out of business by offering lower prices and gaining monopolies over whole areas of industry and commerce, not only is this kind of competition unfair it means that people's lives can be ruined, people lose their incomes whilst others benefit from it. In this country to a certain extent the markets are controlled in such a way that small businesses stand some chance against larger corporate opposition. However, my old corner shop didn't stand a chance when a new Tesco Express opened nearby. The need for rules and regulations doesn't just stop there...

The workplace is probably one of the most, if not the most important parts of an ordinary person's life. We spend most our day there, but, except for a minority of people, most of us have very little control within that workplace, we are wage slaves, making someone elses product under someone elses authority and being paid enough to keep us mildly content while the owner sells our product for a much larger amount of profit than he himself deserves. Co-operatives are not all democratic, there are many that aren't. Co-operatives however lend themselves more to democracy than a business owned by one man (or a family or wealthy shareholders). How is it that a person can choose his political leaders and have a say in the governing of his country, state, local region or town but is ruled and dominated by his boss almost entirely. Co-operatives are common property of all the people who work in them, to have them dominated by an elite defeats the object of them existing. There must be a rule in such a possible state for there to be some level of democracy in every co-operative whether it be direct or representative (say for the larger ones). There also have to be regulartions on membership size to income ratios (to ensure that everyone has access to a decent wage) and to the market to ensure that co-operatives don't go out of business or at least provide decent benefits to its membership (i.e. subsidising the smaller co-operatives).  

I will answer this tomorrow. I'm tired and I have to be up early tomorrow.

Ok, but you seem to show alienation of labour as the root of all economic problems. Could explain how it leads to any economic problem?

What's the difference?

I think that's an oversimplification of what free market capitalism is. You can only arrive at this conclusion if you look at the problem very narrowly.

It may seem cruel when a mom and pop store has to close down when they can't compete with the prices of a supermarket, but don't you think it's even more cruel when poor people have to pay high prices to buy basic necessities of life in this very mom and pop store?

Don't you think it's even more cruel to put a gun to their heads and force them to pay to keep a store in business, that has ceased to provide a valuable service, and is now essentially wasting resources?

And it's not like the owners of the store are forced into poverty, if they are outcompeted. If people pay lower prices for grocieries (and notice this now includes the ex-store owners themselves) they have more money left to spend on other things, and that translates to more opportunities for enterproneurs like them.

Ok, so could you show how a free market leads to poverty?

Hm, as far as I can tell Thatcher pretty much left the education and healthcare system alone, so I'm not sure what you mean by dismatling the welfare state. I'd be grateful if you could provide examples of what you mean, and show how they lead to poverty.

Truth be told I'm sceptical of that.

I've been to the States and had worked a minimum wage job there. It sucked donkey balls, I admit, but the thing that hit me is how easy it was to save money over there (after 2 months I had something below 3000$ in my pocket).

With money saved you get to pick an choose any kind of training course to boost your skills, and boost your income as a consequence.

Sorry, I'm a bit sceptical about the lack of opportunity thing.

It's actually debateble if the laws favor the little guy, but the question is why do you think the little guy should be protected?

The industrial revolution has put millions of manual workers out of their jobs, but it has brought a previously unimaginable amount of wealth to the people. While the effects are not as drastic with Walmart vs your local grocery store, it's really the same mechanism.

If it were that simple then there would hardly be any wage workers, everyone would just open their own little business.

The reality is that the business owner bears uncompareably larger risks and responsibilites then his workers. If the business gues under, the workers will be only out of their jobs, it's really not that much of a problem to find a new one if you have skills and experience.

The business owner on the other hand will not only lose his source of income, but will also have liabilities to pay. If you're a wage worker, you work a few hours a day, and the rest of the day + weekends is yours, a business owner has to worry about all sorts of shit 24/7.

If you knew any business owners, maybe you'd have an idea how stressful their work is, and how arrogant the idea that they don't deserve the fruit of their work and risks is.

About them co-operatives.

If they really are a better model, why do you think they haven't become dominant in our economies? If they really are better they should heavy easily outcompeted normal companies.

Good point, but it's not like the relative handful controlls the market completely, or even mostly.

There are still lots of little and medium sized businesses, why aren't mos, or at least a significant part of them co-operatives?

Could you elaborate on this a bit?

I can easily see how corporations can use their money to influence politicians to give them advantages over other businesses... but on a smaller scale?

So... what would stop people from just participating in free market capitalism?