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HappySqurriel on 17 January 2010
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TheRealMafoo said:
DaBuddahN said:
In theory, most forms of government are perfect. But they will never work perfectly, because we are imperfect beings carrying out the tasks. People can fight about wanting a capitalist utopia, or socialist utopia, but as long as we are humans, we will attain neither.

The problem is half the world wants different things out of a government. You can break everyone down into two categories.

1. To create a world where each year, everyone has the opportunities to live a better life then the life they lived last year.

2. To create a world where each year, everyone is guaranteed a better minimum standard of living then the standard they had the last year.

To achieve either of those, is to sacrifice the other. Until everyone wants the same thing, we will never achieve anything.

While you could say that it is a matter of semantics, I have always seen the difference between people who support capitalism and people who support socialism based on how people would define equality. People who are supporters of a more capitalistic economic system tend to favour the concept of equality of opportunity whereas supporters of socialism tend to favour the concept of equality of outcomes. In both cases there is a realization that the ideal outcome can not be met at the current time, but you see their view of equality showing up in issues all the time.

Using education as an example, if you had two students with roughly the same academic record that both wanted to go to University but one was from a wealthy family and the other was from a poor family you would (likely) have to different views of what makes this a fair or equal situation. If there is a way for the poorer student to go to a university which is not too unreasonable (possibly going to a local school while living at home and working with some debt and/or scholarships) then he has the same opportunity for higher education and most people who believe in equality of opportunity would have no problem with this situation. In contrast, someone who believes in equality of outcomes would think that this situation could only be fair if money was no longer a consideration and the poorer student had the same exact access to education as the wealthier student.