Help with Economic System Debate?

if it’s just a tried and true argument you’re after, adam smith and the wealth of nations / each acting in his or her own interest argument is very solid. specialization is also an offshoot of this. For something off the beaten path, explore how capitalism is, in one sense, the exploitation of inefficiency in business / general society. I had a professor who taught a session on this one day and it was very interesting and compelling.

Just think about incentives. There almost always must be an economic incentive for someone to do something.

Socialism is based on the idea that every person’s incentive is to work harder for the benefit of the nation; however, the individual asks himself, what incentive is there for me to work hard when the nation won’t notice my decreased productivity and I won’t get fired regardless of how productive I am?

This is also why so many people try to avoid taxes.

Go for individual freedoms. In a capitalist state the individual has more freedoms. While in a socialist/communist state freedoms are sacrificed for the whole. List the freedoms/bill of rights and than explain how each are sacrificed for the good of the whole.

Capitalism is good because it encourages people to innovate. The person with the best innovations has the best rewards, and more importantly, gets to keep a greater share of said rewards.

Fact from fiction, truth from diction. Socialism basically breeds mediocrity. When everything is done for the collective you might as well be like a Star Trek Borg. You are just another cog in the machinery. When everyone has ownership or possesses it, when something really needs to be done everyone is assuming the others will take care of it. On the other end, no one will hardly go the extra yard unless they just want to do it for themselves, do something more, or better has no meaning because you will get no more recognition than one who just did the minimum.

Communism is about as bad. When the government owns everything there is still no reason to rise above mediocrity. You are guaranteed a job and a salary so one knows they are covered. I suspect under communism what job you have is not what job you want but where your skills best serve the nation, which could lead to unhappy workers who are less industrious.

With capitalism the individual has a chance to be his own boss, have his own business. Therefore, they have a stake in their future and their own direction. The added effort they put in has the potential to manifest itself into higher profits. Under capitalism one has the chance of doing what one likes for the good of oneself. Healthy competition leads to innovation and greater efficiency. Because the bottom line is the responsibility of the business owner to rise above mediocrity and have a better product or service is a desired goal. For having better service or goods means more customers, which equals larger profits.

I’ll say what I said in my own post.
So here’s my take on socialism:
You have a lot of people like Michael Moore claiming that socialism is a great system. I saw him giving a speech on how people in Cuba look at their socialist health care system as “We either swim together or sink together.”
Well it turns out that Michael was dead wrong about the health care system in Cuba. I don’t think he was lying, I think he was just mistaken.
A Cuban-American film maker, Luis Moro, who lived in Cuba for a while, AND supports socialized health care had this to say:
http://www.guba.com/watch/3000051845/Michael-Moore-gets-slammed-by-filmmaker-Luis-Moro
So I don’t think there’s any doubt that Michael got it wrong.
More info at therealcuba.com
So anyways, this is my take on socialism: Probably the majority of those people in Cuba that are living under that crime-to-humanity health care system are against it. Wouldn’t surprise me. But socialism says that it does not matter what they think. It does not matter what they oppose. Socialism says that they have to be a part of the system whether they like it or not. Socialism says that if they refuse to be a part of the system and pay up, the government can take that money by force.

Unregulated capitalism ultimately leads to an accumulation of wealth with a very small percentage of the population, in fact, what is now happening. The concentrated wealth creates tremendous power. The market is no longer free because it reacts to wishes of the powerful instead of normal market forces. When a person or group can manipulate a market freedom is lost and eventually revolution occurs. It happened almost 300 years ago and again during the civil war. If conditions in the U.S. and Europe maintain their current path, the will likely be a world wide revolution with incalculable damage.