The flaws in Socialism, democratic and totalitarian...

[billc]

A nice article on why socialism failed in the Soviet Union and how western democratic socialism survives...for now...

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/socialisms_fundamental_flaws.html

Today's Westernized socialism casts out doctrines of centralized planning and nationalization of enterprises, and incorporates democratic governance, rule of law, varying degrees of public services, safety nets and entitlements, all existing pari passu with free-market capitalism. Yes capitalism, the most effective economic system extant because it harnesses instinctive self-interest, close cousin to man's primordial drive of self-preservation, of millions of people bustling about in pursuit of economic advantage to ultimately produce, on average, the greatest amount of wealth, for the greatest number with the least amount of pain overall. So socialists have learned that not only can they live side-by-side with capitalism, but they are dependent on it as the wealth generator to fund...well, socialism!
However, the Western economies have recently slowed to a crawl, causing soaring national deficits which some governments have attempted to mitigate with reduced spending. In several nations this has impacted public services and threatened entitlements causing widespread public protests ranging from peaceful to violent, while world stock markets have dropped precipitously and turned volatile. We're facing an economic crisis of potentially global proportions which, though it may have had its genesis in the 2008 subprime mortgage bubble, is now attributable to the underlying and growing sovereign debt crisis, which threatens entire economies with collapse. The common denominator: The involved nations are democracies, increasingly encumbered with the unsustainable social spending of the welfare state. Unsustainability is the fundamental flaw of Westernized socialism

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/socialisms_fundamental_flaws.html#ixzz1eASk1CKt