I said I was going to stay out of the debate, but I just have to ask a few questions.
I'm not going to debate why communism would fail. We've already been around that circle enough.
I think we can agree that what is fair on this would be that a worker should earn as much as he worked for.
Although most of us will agree with that statement, everyone measures work in a different way.
What instead would be the more ideal and humanitarian factor would be reward should be equal to that of the labor power you put in.
Which is measured in many different ways.
Thus if the production of a car takes the same amount of time as that of 5000 tennis balls, then if I worked and built a car myself I should be able to use the reward of that to buy 5000 tennis balls.
You are measuring work by time. If a doctor works 5 hours, and a janitor works 5 hours, they should both gain 5 hours worth of needs, such as 5 hours worth of crops (I don't know how you would measure this), or a desk that took up to 5 hours to make (which people could slack off and make their 4 hour jobs take 6 hours to gain more needs, if they were crooked).
The reason why many of us believe the doctors should make more money is because doctors have to withstand great mental stress. What they do is greatly important, and many of us believe that a doctor should be paid more money to reward his great intellect and service to the people (saving lives). A janitor doesn't have a bunch of mental stress from his job, nor does he use great intellect to do his job. It's easier to become a janitor, therefor they get paid less.
So what we perceive as fair greatly differs.
Back to farmers, most of them work on their own time. You would need a supervisor to make sure the farmer is working for a certain amount of time.
If you have a farmer who plants corn by hand and farms only 1 acre all day, and you have a farmer who uses machinery to farm 10 acres in the same amount of time, should they really be payed the same when it takes them both the same amount of time to farm their crops?
The one acre farmer needs food and a few tools, which would cost him less money/hours than the farmer who needs the machines. After that the farmer who uses machinery will have to buy gasoline and have maintenance done to his tractors, while the other farmer will only need a few tools repaired once in a while.
So the farmer who takes care of 1 acre of corn will end up making him more money than the farmer who must farm 10 acres with machinery.
The only difference between the 1 acre farmer and the 10 acre farmer is the amount of corn they have. The 1 acre farmer could give away his corn for the hours of service he put into growing it (don't know how this would work exactly). The 10 acre farmer would have 10 times more corn, yet if valued by work, his 10 acres is worth as much as the other farmer's 1 acre.
Would the 10 acre farmer multiply his hours by the amount of corn grown? This seems like the only way that farmer can benefit for using machinery, to pay off the maintenance. But if he multiplies his hours by the acre, he just made more money/service hours than the 1 acre farmer for the same amount (if judged by time) of work!
What do you mean would they accomplish anything? If they don't want to starve, then yes they would actually work.
The fruits of their labor are theirs.
Let's say that 2 men make tennis balls. One worker can make 200 an hour, the other can make 250. Would the second worker be rewarded for his extra skills? Plus, both men have to work for someone, who must be profiting from these tennis balls somehow. However, I don't understand how they would distribute the tennis balls.
If you have two companies, one has skilled workers that produce 2000 balls in 8 hours, and the other produces 6000 in 8 hours with the same amount of people, which business profits more? Some of us believe the one providing more should make more.
If the people work for themselves, then the person with more skill will have to sell/trade more tennis balls than the less skilled worker for items of the same value. The more skilled worker will have to trade 250 balls for an hours worth or work, the other man would have to trade 200.
Both men worked their hardest, so the extra 50 balls shouldn't matter to the more skilled worker. However, many people believe that he should earn more. What if the more skilled worker grows lazy and makes only 200 balls an hour? What if one of the men grows lazy and produces only 150 balls an hour (you can't really tell if their trying their hardest of faking it). You have less goods, therefore tennis balls raise in value. Each ball is worth more hours than what they potentially should be worth.
This is also contradictory to your view that people get paid as much as their labor is valued.
The capitalists of course value the labor of their employees -- for without it they are nothing! No profit can be made without the labor of the working class. The only way profit can be made is if the workers are underpaid!
Thus, capitalism is inherently contradictory to the notion of having labor be fair.
It is unfair that the upper class makes more money than the lower class for the same amount of work and in many cases, less effort. People are basically being payed for being "important" or they are being payed simply for hiring people, then taking the rest of the day off. I can see how this may be unfair. Some people have to work their way up to this position, others inherit it. That's also unfair.
In the capitalist world, this unfair advantage is accepted, as long as the workers being underpaid, are still making enough money to buy food, clothes, and home, along with entertainment. As long as the worker is making enough money to be happy, they don't care if they are being underpaid.
If a worker is unhappy, he must find a new job, work harder/more, or revolt against the company through methods of forming a strike or going to the government and forcing the company to pay their workers better. This is basically impossible for one man to do. To accomplish such tasks, strong leaders must be chosen. That's the flaw, we American's have shit tastes in leaders. Mainly because the government offers us very few options to choose from. This isn't necessarily the fault of the capitalist system, because changing the way leaders are picked or figuring out a way better leaders can be chosen won't necessarily change capitalism to socialism, communism, etc.
In a communist system, if a large chunk of society decides to slack off, the rest of society has to outcast those who aren't working, or force them to work. This would cause civil disputes and a large hole in the nation's economy. If the government forces the people to work harder, those being forced will either rise up and try converting the government, go on strike, or they will be unhappy. If a large percentage of people are unhappy with communism in general, then they should go somewhere that's capitalist or deal with it. But this would only strengthen my argument that communism isn't for everybody.
There's no hard proof that communism would work, because the "idea" communist society has never truly existed. The arguments you provide that show how crappy communism is may be factual, but communism itself is still nothing more than a theory, because it has never been proven.
I will admit that many left ideas would probably benefit capitalism. However, I still believe that capitalism will always provide more for the people.
We are arguing about a theory, not facts.
Millions of people starving here becomes good for capitalism and for business! Poor countries are nothing but reserves of cheap labor -- sweatshop labor!
America only buys from sweatshops. If China has sweatshops, then it's China's decision to own sweatshops.
Sweatshops actually being good?Yeah, after watching the video you will probably say "If America didn't buy from sweatshops, then those countries would create better jobs for the people." There's just no evidence that would be the case.
The problem that I do have with the American system is that it's cheaper for the higher ups to buy from third world countries rather than buying products from their own country. This is why the economy sucks, too much money being exported, rather than being recirculated into the system. Of course, some trade is good.
What answer would you have for these countries other than to revolt against this capitalist system?
Maybe they should revolt with... let's say... their own government who is selling them out to America? I think capitalists would adapt, but if they didn't this would benefit communists. If people working in sweatshops revolt against their own nation who is selling them out, then capitalist nations wouldn't be able to use these people. Then the capitalist system would fall apart (or not). If these people who revolted were rewarded with better jobs, then maybe capitalist nations will do fair trade with them. This would, however, mean that capitalism wasn't causing their problems, only benefiting from them. If America decided not to trade with these people, this would prove your point right, in which case, capitalism would fail, and Americans would be open to communism.
It sounds like a win~win to me. In one, people aren't working in sweatshops and being underpaid, or people aren't working in sweatshops or being underpaid AND America becomes a communist nation.
Does this not at least prove that capitalism prospers off the poor of the others? And that the system as a whole does nothing for the conditions of the poor (which now constitute the majority of the population) while at the same time it does nothing but to create a few minor super rich?
It does nothing for the poor in other countries. I will agree with this statement. However, as I said before, America is benefiting off these people, not depending on them. I believe that America's benefition over these people are only causing problems in the economy, because higher ups are depending on the poor in other countries more than the people, middle class and poor, in their own.
Why communism wouldn't benefit other countries, only themselves (if communism was successful).
With communism, the country would work within itself, having very little to do with other countries, but trade with other countries keeps nations together! England and France always hated each other. There have always been constant wars. They start trading with each other and became defendant on each other. Now they don't fight with each other. The whole world would have to be communist and share the same exact values as each other, such as what constitutes as fair.
The reason why China won't bomb America is because we provide them with income. If America became communist and stopped buying from China almost altogether, then China would have no reason to keep on good terms with America. This is the same with many countries that America trades with.
So don't talk about America being the cause of foreign problems such as starvation and poor wage. Under communism, America wouldn't be involved, and there would be no surplus of food to waste or to give to other countries, and therefore there would still be starvation and wage issues around the world, because China causes its own problems. Communism, if anything, would only benefit itself, not the rest of the world (other than keeping their nose out of affairs they should stay out of maybe).
China is the one restraining their people, not America. Maybe America could do something about it, but not by becoming communist.
