Need a sound & brief refutation of socialism

[ibaghdadi]

Guys, please point me to a resources (book, video, article, etc.) that has a brief but sound refutation of socialism on economic grounds. I mean a refutation so total that it makes socialism appear to be the economic irrationality that it is.

[Acala]

I suggest checking out mises.org.

It was Mises who put the stake in the heart of socialism by showing that economic calculation is impossible in a command economy.

[Stary Hickory]

Well the easiest way is this:

If people know that when they produce that it will be stolen from them why produce? Effect producers choose leisure time and produce less. Work is only worth the effort when an economic gain is achieved.

If people know that they can use the system to rob others, why work? In fact it makes sense to choose more leisure time and to try and get what you want from others. Effect, once again people are not working or producing.


What is the end result? Less people producing in society, A spiraling standard of living, an increase in poverty and the people become poorer and poorer. You cannot take the incentive away for working and expect anyone to work. This is the simplest refutation of Socialism that there is. It's why it always fails and topples over. You can just look at communist Russia and see these problems they encountered. The posters all extolling hard work and trying to convince people to work hard, the massive amount of corruption that came about over there as everyone tried to rob the system.

Socialism is something that would only work with robots, so that one man could command everyone to live in way he sees proper. You cannot apply this to other human beings who are your equals. It's immoral and unrealistic.

[Travlyr]

Guys, please point me to a resources (book, video, article, etc.) that has a brief but sound refutation of socialism on economic grounds. I mean a refutation so total that it makes socialism appear to be the economic irrationality that it is.

Socialism is only possible with fiat money. Socialism must by necessity starve some of the people in order to enrich others. There are plenty of real life examples. "A Cross of Gold" by Edwin Vieira points this out.

[Stary Hickory]

This works as simple as it gets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQAwdEdAT3Y

[Stary Hickory]

Socialism is only possible with fiat money. Socialism must by necessity starve some of the people in order to enrich others. There are plenty of real life examples. "A Cross of Gold" by Edwin Vieira points this out.

Socialism can persist longer with fiat money, because it uses deceit to fool people into believing they are getting an economic return for their activities. Of course the real stinker is that the fraud in the monetary system ensures that there is no possible way each and every individual could ever have what he or she thinks she owns in terms of material wealth per dollars.

Fraud is one of the ways socialism tries to overcome the lack of incentive for working, by effectively fooling people to work for fiat currency, you get an economic result by deceiving the other individual. It's very sinister and makes people waste their entire lives for naught.

[Travlyr]

It's very sinister and makes people waste their entire lives for naught.

Quoted For Truth. It is very sinister. This bothers me a lot, and it is why I come here everyday for answers. Many people have had to go their entire lives knowing that a criminal cabal of bankers enslaved them because the elite (laws do not apply to them crowd) held the guns. It continues today. I hope I can go to my grave with a smile on my face knowing that I helped to defeat the bankers ... once again and for all time. End The Fed.

[Sentient Void]

'SOCIALISM' by Ludwig von Mises

Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/SOCIALISM-Lib-Works-Ludwig-Mises/dp/0913966630

Free PDF, html, e-book, etc Versions:
http://mises.org/resources/2736

[Elwar]

If your audience is a student put it this way.

A teacher decides that it's unfair that some kids are getting "A"s and others are getting "F"s. So she decides to take the average grade of the class and give everyone that same grade. The first test she gives the average comes out to a "B". All of the kids who were getting low grades are happy with the new system, those who usually got "B"s were ok but the people who got an "A" are upset. The next test comes out and the grade comes out to a "C". It seems that some of the "A" students decided not to study as hard because they weren't getting rewarded for their efforts. More people are upset, except the low grade students. The next test comes back and everyone gets a "D", it seems hardly anybody studied for that test because they knew that they'd get the same grade no matter what. Eventually, by the end of the semester everyone is getting an "F". All motivation has gone out the window. The whole class fails.

Or, for someone who's not a student and has a good looking girlfriend/boyfriend:
Imagine if one day a law was passed to help out the more homely people in society. It's not at all fair that some guys get to have sex with pretty girls while the ugly guys are stuck at home with no girls or the ugly ones. So a law is passed that says that if you have a hot girlfriend, you only get to have sex with her once a month, the rest of the month she has to have sex with a wide range of guys who would not have otherwise been able to have sex with such as beautiful woman. And, as a hot guy, you must now have sex with ugly women who would not have had a chance with you. Everyone must accept this new law in the name of equality. To keep some ugly fat guy with B.O. from having sex with your hot girlfriend would just be unfair.

[SWATH]

Socialism...Because you don't matter.

[awake]

The DMV. Line ups, anger and incompetence for something that no one wants. Under socialism everything would be DMV.

[Elwar]

I also like to point out human nature.

Humans naturally avoid pain and seek reward.

If you consider pain to be work, or something you basically don't want to do then that is something you avoid. You can consider reward as stuff that you want that you can get with money.

If nobody worked then society would basically go to shit. So people are supplied with reward (money) in exchange for a certain amount of pain (work). You get to set the terms of how much pain you are willing to bear in exchange for reward under a free market system.

Under a socialist system the reward is equalized amongst all people. The pain still varies though. Over time people's natural instinct is to avoid pain. If the amount of reward is no longer linked to the amount of pain you are willing to endure then people will eventually seek a point of having no pain (no work) whatsoever.

In order to bridge this gap, the only way to motivate people to endure pain is either to threaten further pain (jail/torture/death) or try to brainwash people into creating a new type of reward (propaganda/nationalism/love of country).

True Socialist/Communists theorize that socialism is a middle road to communism where people will eventually evolve past this pain/reward human instinct and have some world utopia where people no longer seek reward and welcome pain. I respect people who admit to this fantasy because at least they acknowledge the facts and aren't falling for some BS. Even though I disagree with them in the belief that human nature can be overcome in this case.