Talk:Criticism of socialism: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 08:20, 30 October 2012 edit213.211.143.162 (talk) →Famine and poverty ← Previous edit		Revision as of 14:12, 2 November 2012 edit undoSpylab (talk \| contribs)Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers25,139 edits deleted POV section that ws not about improving the article , as per WP:NOTSOAPBOX Next edit →
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	== Why is the title of this article different? ==		== Why is the title of this article different? ==
	For Capitalism, the title of the article is "Criticism of capitalism". This article is titled "CriticismS of socialism". Both articles contain '''mulitple''' criticisms and the proper name is in the singular(Criticism). Can someone fix this? I don't know how to change the title of an article. ] (]) 21:19, 22 July 2011 (UTC)		For Capitalism, the title of the article is "Criticism of capitalism". This article is titled "CriticismS of socialism". Both articles contain '''mulitple''' criticisms and the proper name is in the singular(Criticism). Can someone fix this? I don't know how to change the title of an article. ] (]) 21:19, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

	==Famine and poverty==

	I came here looking for connections between ], in preparation for an article on that topic. Socialism has variously been touted (by its advocates) for increasing the general prosperity but blamed (by its critics) for promoting famine and poverty. I just spent the last two hours reading about the ] and the conflicting reports on how "]" or "]" (a) made the famine much worse or (b) were just about the only thing that alleviated the starvation.

	I come not to "bury" socialism or "praise" capitalism, but to collect the arguments for and against. Can anyone help me? --] (]) 18:00, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

	:I can give you logical arguments, but it would probably be deemed original research, though it is not. Nor do I know anyone that have come to the same conclusions, though I'm sure many have. To understand the issues the concepts must be defined. Firstly, that economics is a way to understand one aspect of society, but in itself is an incomplete study. For example, a free society also must have a free market, because they are one and the same. A free society is almost always economic, since it really means "Where will I buy coffee today? And how much am I willing to spend?" Free choice is a free market. Until this understood, all else fails. Therefore, a free market is not an ism, or a belief, but nothing more than the maximum potential for free choices that all people make in any given society. Secondly, all degrees to control a free market are based on various ideals. Some believe it can be best controlled by corporations or businesses, (capitalism.) Others by the power of government (socialism and its many cousins.) What both mean is that choices are made by an elite few, not the majority in a free market. The logical question then is ... can a small group more efficiently run something that a free society does naturally?

	:Or, argued in scientific terms, the free market is natural selection. Can then any small group of people best manage natural selection than nature itself? The logical answer is absolutely not. Socialism is not a misguided belief because of any opinion, it is misguided because it attempts to change the nature of man himself (thus, social reform, not government reform.) It attempts to make society itself the problem, rather than acknowledge the simple fact that small groups of people are the problem. Small groups cannot better manage larger groups, just as we cannot improve on natural selection.

	:And yes, it is demonstrable, once the above is understood, that all attempts to manage the free choices of society results in undesirable reactions of society, such as famine. Government, like all institutions of small groups. can only manage so much before they reach a critical limit. Humanity in general already self-manages a great deal, after all, we are highly evolved species. In other words, a few computers cannot do better than a great many in processing power, but a few computers, for security reasons, is best suited for certain tasks such as antivirus and checking credentials for admission into the system.

	:Hope that helps. Of of course, socialists, in their infinite arrogance and lack of rational dialogue, will still argue that humans are imperfect, and must be managed by intellectuals that no better than the rest of us. There is absolutely no scientific basis for this assumption, but they are persistant. ] (]) 05:24, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

	I am surprised no mention is made about high taxation which is typical of socialist economies (parts of Europe come to mind). High taxation of an economy leads to value destruction, see http://en.wikipedia.org/Deadweight_loss
	This societal loss, combined with other inherent socialist issues like the calculation problem, inevitably leads to poverty. It's typical for such economy to stagnate, leading to poverty. --] (]) 08:20, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

	== Criticisms are directed toward central planning ==		== Criticisms are directed toward central planning ==

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Requested move 2010

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no move. Multi-page proposal doesn't appear to have generated any kind of support, and is opposed. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 10:25, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Criticisms of socialism → Criticism of socialism — Consistency. Vast majority of criticism articles are using the non-plural form. See PLURAL. Relisted. Jafeluv (talk) 00:24, 31 December 2010 (UTC) Marcus Qwertyus 08:39, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS is tragically not a reason to form "consistency"

At any rate, WP:IAR and WP:Consensus can change mean, from my view, that it should be plural if there is more than 1 (and by having an article i think it is).(Lihaas (talk) 17:47, 29 December 2010 (UTC)).

do not rename The high level category is Category:Criticisms; lower level categories are named 'Criticisms'; many of the articles are named 'criticisms' and a sampling of the ones that are named 'criticism' show they offer multiple criticisms not just one about the subject in question. These criticism articles are the ones that should be changed, should be made plural. Hmains (talk) 05:54, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

All category names are plural. Also non-plurals can make perfect sense . Skim through a couple of those, see if it changes your mind. Marcus Qwertyus 12:37, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

First, I think WP:PLURAL is poorly written and needs re-thinking. Second, I see no value in using the singular 'criticism' to describe a entire series of remarks, extending over time, involving multiple subjects, multiple critics, etc. I think the singular 'criticism' is very misleading in these cases, which include all the ones you mention in your nomination as well as others I found in looking at the Criticismstree. Same with 'controversy' Third, I am not considering other words at this time. Hmains (talk) 20:29, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I think that the titles should be "Criticism of" - this is because they need to treat the subject, rather than be a list of "criticisms". "Criticism" here is a mass noun rather than a count noun. Rich Farmbrough, 16:23, 1 January 2011 (UTC).

Concur with Rich Farmbrough. --Coolcaesar (talk) 19:20, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree these pages should be "Criticism of...". Criticism is also more neutral than "Inaccuracies", since the allegations of inaccuracy is POV. It's attributed POV, but still POV. "Criticism" is more attributive. Nightscream (talk) 22:45, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Relationship with other criticisms

Should McCarthyism be referenced in this article?

What is the relationship between Criticism of communism and Criticisms of socialism?

Should this article be understood as a criticism of socialism, with socialism as in social democracy?

What is the relationship between Criticism of welfare states and Criticisms of socialism? 87.89.44.229 (talk) 22:20, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Undue focus given to criticisms from Austrian Economics

Why do Misplaced Pages editors let these dingbats put a mark of such unwarranted size on every page related to economics? Somebody trying to educate themselves on economics with wikipedia would assume that the Austrians are dominant, rather than largely ignored. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.196.36.30 (talk) 22:28, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The result of the move request was: pages not moved. No support at all for the proposal. Andrewa (talk) 11:20, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Criticisms of Socialism → Criticism of Socialism — Consistency. Criticism is a mass noun. Vast majority of criticism articles are using the non-plural form. See PLURAL. Marcus Qwertyus 20:32, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Oppose While criticism is indeed a mass noun like "fish", its form with an "s" does have a meaning separate and distinct from the form without one. Compare "fishes". Where there are schools (or types) of criticism, the form with the "s" is appropriate. In these cases it is better to grasp at the various types of criticism that these doctrines, people, policies, etc. are heir to. As such we should encourage such articles to use the "s" in their title and to avoid having content that just deals with a single type of criticism. --Bejnar (talk) 03:51, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Oppose. The content of most of these articles is multiple categories or types of criticism, i.e., criticisms. (N.B. mass noun: "Some mass nouns can be used in English in the plural to mean 'more than one instance (or example) of a certain sort of entity'".) They are mostly laundry lists of grievances of various opponents of the topic in question. Criticism (without an s) implies a singularity that doesn't exist. While "criticisms" could be subsumed under "criticism", using the plural makes the nature of the articles clearer. This is indirectly covered by WP:PLURAL#Exceptions. Cf. Limitations and exceptions to copyright, Concerns and controversies in Shanghai Expo 2010, Schools of Buddhism, Approaches to evangelism. — AjaxSmack 17:56, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. What Ajax said. —Tamfang (talk) 20:00, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Section "Absent or distorted price signals" could need editing?

Hello, I finally decided to get more involved on Misplaced Pages, and I incidentally found myself a bit flustered by this paragraph.

First, there is a quote by von Mises that might easily be read as stemming from Trotsky. Second, it seems that the essence of the section could be summed up easily in about two or three paragraphs.

If no one objects I will attempt to revise the section in the next week or so.

Djupp (talk) 04:03, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Criticisms of criticisms of socialism

Hello, after finishing reading the article there remains a question in my mind: Should we not also produce counterarguments to the criticisms given in this article? To me it seems that NPOV actually would indicate this as necessary. The way it stands, it seems that Milton Friedman's silly "socialism means inefficient first class mail delivery" argument is somehow the only opinion on the matter (and so on with many other criticisms). There is quite a good amount of respected scholars in both economics as well as political science who would disagree with that. What is the consensus, should there be a "Criticisms of Criticisms of Socialism" article or do we want to include that in this article?

Djupp (talk) 04:20, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Disagree. Misplaced Pages is not a soapbox or a debating forum. Misplaced Pages already contains articles on socialism and its components that extensively detail its merits, and this article contains the critiques. That is sufficient. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:15, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I understand your concern. However, I am not speaking of the merits of socialism but of specific critiques of some of the arguments given in this article. I still think that this criticism should be addressed in the article. If I understand it correctly, Misplaced Pages:Content_forking has the following to say on articles like this one: "A point of view (POV) fork is a content fork deliberately created to avoid neutral point of view guidelines, often to avoid or highlight negative or positive viewpoints or facts. All POV forks are undesirable on Misplaced Pages, as they avoid consensus building and therefore violate one of our most important policies." Djupp (talk) 14:50, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I can't say I agree. It would be pretty difficult to find all the refutations if you didn't know the topic well. I don't think it's 'soapboxing' to centralize the information. -unsigned. 7:56 8/23/2012

Why is the title of this article different?

For Capitalism, the title of the article is "Criticism of capitalism". This article is titled "CriticismS of socialism". Both articles contain mulitple criticisms and the proper name is in the singular(Criticism). Can someone fix this? I don't know how to change the title of an article. Somedifferentstuff (talk) 21:19, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Criticisms are directed toward central planning

The critiques leveled against socialism in this article overwhelmingly focuses on central planning or a command economy, so I have taged the article as being pushing a PoV.Battlecry (talk) 01:54, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Nonsense. That is what socialism means ... central planning, or the means of production being held in trust by a few, rather then privately in the hands of the laborers themselves. It is quite simple. you have central, or you do not. Thus, that defines ALL ideologies. Or better put, does the individual govern themselves, or does someone else? Simple, and to the point, and logically ... not at all a POV. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jcchat66 (talk • contribs) 05:29, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

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