Why is socialism becoming increasingly popular in the United States?

Socialists have a tendency to assume they're right and refuse to leave office when the people don't want them in power any longer.

 

"Voluntary groups?" Corporations are voluntary groups.

 

And we could argue that workers at corporations are choosing to "opt out" of "opting in" to the concept of a co-op by not choosing to use their income to buy stock in their company.

 

Those changes were little more than an acknowledgement of a trend that was already well underway and had been for about half a decade. Note the Democrats controlled the house and the republicans had a bare majority in the senate so the bill could not be passed without significant Democratic support.

 

Of 30 million businesses in the US only 3000 of those are employee owned.

 

Prove what? That most cars these days have things on them that neither the manufacturers not the customers by and large wanted?

 

Your ignorance of reality is not my fault.

See above.

 

The Democrats and the public was significantly against such changes and protested them.

Nope. All Reagan needed was the great majority of the Republicans and a few of the Democrats. And he got them. But even if it were ENTIRELY passed due to Democrats, it still stands that Reagan passed it.

LOL!! You started out saying Reagan didn't defund mental health. Nice job of backing down.

 

Prove that "1/2 to 2/3 of the price of everything you buy is because of government rules and regulations."

 

Ignorance of what?..... -that a power tool today has the same number of moving parts as it had 50 years ago? Or that you didn't directly address what I had said but instead changed the subject? LOL!!!!!

 

What do you thing the cost of thousands of tons of extra paper work per year? What do you think the costs of trying to idiot proof the known universe is?

 

But it doesn't and it comes with twice as much paper work.

 

You're talking about TAX DOLLARS, not pricing or costs to the manufacturer.

 

Prove it.

 

The farmers running the co-op I was a member of years ago were about as far from socialists as you can get--religious (many were Mennonites), rich guys--and they ran the co-op like the business it became when they opened up sales to anyone living in the community. It was a collective, every member had a vote, and no one got a dime if they quit. Times have changed, a lot of the farmers have sold out and many (they or their successors) are really, really rich as their farms are turning into suburbs. The co-op still appears to have great prices when I checked online. It's a business that just refuses to die.

 

Free markets and capitalism are logically contradictory. There can't possibly be a free market under capitalism because by definition, capitalism requires private ownership of the means of production: natural resources (which classical economics called, "land") and producer goods ("capital"). Private ownership of natural resources forces everyone else to subsidize the owners. Forced subsidies cannot exist in a free market by definition. QED.

 

Because it is voluntary, not imposed by force. Same with the Israeli kibbutzim. The only successful examples of socialism are voluntary because those who are not participating voluntarily will find ways to steal from the enterprise, and such theft will gradually become the dominant mode of "labor." This has occurred every time socialism has been imposed by government.

No. Running a business requires decisions to be made. Someone has to decide. The decider's incentive is by default to pursue his own benefit, not that of society. Plato's selfless "guardians" are a fantasy. Sparta tried to create them, and it failed, just as the "new Soviet Man" and every other attempt has failed. The best we can do is create an institutional environment that is consistent with human nature -- i.e., in which the deciders can only benefit themselves by benefiting others: Smith's "invisible hand" in a free market.

 

Not if people were justly compensated for the forcible removal of their natural individual liberty rights to use land to house themselves, as would be achieved under the geoist system.

 

Is it a failure to understand economics, or just a deliberate decision to force everyone to subsidize idle landowning?

Capitalism has everything to do with it. By definition, capitalism requires private ownership of the means of production: natural resources and producer goods. Natural resources include land. When land is privately owned, those who don't own land have no right to a space in which to exist, and must pay a landowner full market value just for permission to do so. Some cannot afford to pay a landowner full market value for permission to live, so their right to life has been forcibly removed.

 

There are co-ops all over the place. Most grain farmers sell their corn, wheat, and soybeans to their own local co-op. Pedernales Electric and many rural/suburban electric power companies are co-ops. Cranberry growers formed a co-op. Raisin farmers formed a co-op. A co-op is just a bunch of individuals getting together and forming a company like a corporation or a partnership but with a different structure. They are entirely free private enterprise and capitalistic, not socialistic.

 

With you, this isn't some theory or policy discussion, it's at essence a religious one. Anyone of the "true Communism has never been tried" variety is usually unreachable given the number of tries in the 20th Century. And sure enough, you start right out of the gate with "The immediate change would be that the government would be populated by people who intend to provide for the society in a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people"."

So your religion at essence depends on angels, not humans.

I didn't respond to your explanation because to a rational person it was simply ridiculous to depend on some type of human who has never existed. It's why communism has always failed when it's been tried and always will. Since I didn't want to get involved in a theological explanation with you, I declined to answer, but you called me out so here we are.

I'm not interesting in talking you out of your faith. You're an old red and will die as one.

May you go to Marxist heaven.

 

I think we have a semantics problem. I should have been more precise and said "free private enterprise". It means individual ownership of business entities, not just land and resources. Free private enterprise and capitalism go hand in hand.

 

Government helping certain people (charitable organizations and individuals, too, for that matter) is NOT socialism.

 

Socialism is described here and most everywhere else ten different ways from Sunday with little regard or even interest in its classic definition.

 

The difference between a co-op and a private capitalist corporation is that co-ops normally do not allow any participant-owner to own more than one share.