What would you say to this?

[Green]

"He's talking more about Communism or state-socialism here.


" Economists believe that socialism failed for several reasons.

The first reason is called the information problem.

In a socialist economy, a central planner needs information on (1) what products and services can be produced, (2) the monetary or labor cost of production, (3) the quality of products and services produced and (4) the value of the products and services to consumers.

A central planner needs the above four pieces of information for hundreds of thousand of products and for millions of consumers. For a commodity product like steel, finding the above four pieces of information is possible. A engineer at a steel mill could observe and calculate the needed information. This is why socialist economies were able to produce commodity products like steel.

But for more complex products like cars, the quality is
harder to observe. Every car would have to be inspected. The factory could lie to the central planners and say that every Lada is well built. Would you tell your boss, the central planners, that your work is bad?

For more complex products like computers or even magazines, the four pieces of information are more difficult to collect. How can you measure if magazine articles are good? How much time and money should it take to develop a new computer? How can you measure if a computer software program is good? Central planners were not able to get this information. Since central planners did not know what complex products could be produced, how much it
would cost to produce complex products, or if the products would be useful, few complex products were produced. Information on services is also difficult to collect. It is difficult for the government to determine the quality of millions of restaurant meals.

In a market economy, there is no central planner. The
consumer decides if a magazine article is well written. The consumer decides if a computer is good. The consumer decides if a car is good. The consumer decides if a restaurant meal is good. Individual businesses decide if they can make a quality product for less than consumers will pay for it. No central planning is needed. This is a great advantage of market economies.""
---------------------------------------------------------

What would you say to this?

[Karl Belin]

This piece talks a lot of a "central planner", like there is some sort of god-like figure planning the entire socialist economy. This isn't the case. The planning of the economy is done by the entire body of society, based on a democratic formation of Soviets, or councils.

The quality, production, distributuion, etc. of all goods is based entirely upon the need of society as a whole. If people don't want something because it's of poor quality, they won't buy it - the same in a socialist economy as a capitalist one.

One brilliant thing about the socialist economy is that if something is of poor quality, the people have a direct way in which to change that - the Soviets! If people are pissed of in a capitalist economy because of poor quality, there's very little they can do about it aside from start a consumer advocacy group, lobby for several years, and perhaps get some small results through boycott or something similar. In a socialist system, the economy is directly dictated by the proletarian state, allowing the dissatisfaction of "consumers" to be heard loud and clear.

In reality, the cause for the "failure of socialism" has been because of isolation. These economies ever had a chance to survive on the capitalist world market. One shining example of the resilliency of the planned economy is Cuba, which has survived all these years in this capitalist world. However, it also shows that isolation can cause hardshps and in fact some sectors of the ruling elite are looking toward capitalist restoration within the island's economy. This is why socialism in one country is utterly impossible... An isolated planned economy cannot survive on the anarchical world "market" economy.

[paulie paul]

" Economists believe that socialism failed for several reasons.

exactly where has socialism been properly applied to not have failed?

in russia, which in 1917 was the "india of europe" with 80% illiteracy, famine, starvation, cannibalism, foreign invasion and civil war? which despite its stalinist beaurcratic future became one of the worlds superpowers? fidels cuba with the most advanced health service and educational system in the world, despite being a third world nation?

the economic proof is that a planned economy does work, when we can establish a democratic workers state to stand alongside it that will be the key to the future of our dying planet.

[Universal]

First, I would like to ask when socialism and communism has been properly fitted and executed by a society?
Second, there is no godlike figure who looks at the entire economy, it is the society as a whole who votes for people to manage and plan the economy based on test and poll averages of a test product. Or the people have products that they use and report if it is good or bad.
Third, economies like capitalism are quick buy economies. Once they begin to loose buyers, they fail and are destroyed.
Finally, if a society is ever going to execute socialism to communism, then there must be a public School system teaching that greed is not right ( in which it is true, greed is never right) and that you should help one another together. Have the government afraid of the people, and install politicians in the government with these thoughts and ideas. If you do not, then the government fails, the people fails and the economy fails.
That is what people have been doing is installing government officials who lie and cheat to get to those positions. THAT IS NOT SOCIALISM OR COMMUNISM, IT IS TOTAL CHAOSE AND WILL FAIL IN DUE TIME.