This is just a general thought I had on socialism, so I thought I would share.

Here is an interesting exercise. Draw a line, like a timeline, and on the far left, put "extreme socialism", and on the far right, put "extreme capitalism". This line is to represent the form of government of a country at a time, not the leader.

Now, take every leader of a major country over the last 200 years, and put them somewhere on that line. To the far right, you would have all our early presidents, with the newer ones moving slightly to the left, as the US over the last 100 years had gotten a lot more socialistic (this would put Obama somewhere in the mid right side of the graph). Following this would be the UK, and probably Australia in there somewhere.

On the far left, you would have Old Russia, Cuba, Old China, then as you move to the center, you would see WWII Germany, New China, North Korea... and as you got to the center, you would see most of the countries of modern europe.

Once you have all the world leaders on that graph, look at where all the ones who impacted the world the most in a negative way, and see where they are.

Stalin, Linen, Hitler... They are all on the far left of that graph.

But here is the thing. Many more leaders on that list might have been as bad if given the opportunity. Some might say Bush Jr, but he could not of killed millions of people, because he was bound to a government that didn't give him the power to do so. Some same the same about Obama.

The thing is, both of those leaders live in a country where they don't have the capability to do massive amounts of harm to there people. And I say, why in the hell would you ever give them the opportunity?

The US has moved down that line towards the left slowly over the last 100 years or so. Under this administration, we are accelerating down that line at an alarming rate. Once we cross it, we move into territory where leaders have tremendous control over our lives.

Someone we don't even know yet will be leading us in 10 years. Do you want that person to have complete control over your life? I sure don't.

There WILL be another Stalin and another Hitler in the world. In fact, there have been thousands of them already. The only difference between those two men and the thousands that have come after them, is a system of government that forbids the kinds of actions these men took.

Those two guys had to fight and murder for there power. Today, in America, we are just giving it away.

I agree with your analogy. However, I strongly feel that both capitalism and socialism can't work when you just have one in the extreme. It was different in the past, but now it really is essential to be more central of the line.

It is best to take the successful aspects of each system and get them working together well, creating a blend of the best ideas, and this what I believe.

Unfortunately the right seem to attack this as they see it as a threat for some reason, as though they see it as a halfway point to communist. But Britain has been like this for over 60 years and we won't become communist any time soon, the same goes for lots of countries.

As for the whole left sided politicians kill more, it's sad that people on the left have become corrupted and this is what lead to the killings. The right is harder to get to that point. It's all rather sad really. Central wouldn't allow it as much as the right.

People rarely argue for a larger government or to give up their rights to their government, they're lured into giving up their rights to a government by the impossible promise of a utopia in exchange for these rights ... Quite often what people receive falls far short of what they currently have, let alone what they were promised, which makes it very similar to a devil's bargain.

Now, people who argue against free markets tend to believe that making the system more "Equal" will make everyone better off which has never been the case. Over a long period of time (a couple of generations) the more unrestricted an economy is the more it grows and the more technology it develops and the higher the productivity of a worker becomes; and when you combine all of these together this means that everyone, including the "poorest" people in the economy become better off even though the system is not equal.

I hope you realise that on the extreme right you have the failed nations in places like Africa?

Essentially extreme liberalism means the warlord in your town kills you whilst extreme socialism means the government in the capital kills you. Either way you're just as dead and just as much a victim of the system.

Actually many countries are able to develop because of governence and not in spite of it. There are no developed and liberal nations on the planet. I doubt that a liberal country could even function because in the strictest sense there are none whom have survived in spite of any beliefs in the righteousness of their economic system. What we have left is a mixture in the middle ground which does prove that government 'interference' does more good than harm in most societies.

Is imperialism and slavery considered to be relate with capitalism? I remember hearing 2 people arguing about it. If one is purely capitalistic, the number one priority should be profit, with all else considered secondary.

Well was actually quite an efficient economic system, the triangular trade. Ships loading with manufactured goods from Europe head south and trade those for slaves which are then taken to the U.S.A. and traded for consumer goods and raw materials (spices, sugar, cotton) and then shipped to Europe again.

When has a country ever moved right on that line?

Never. The only way to move to the right is a revolution, or the country just failing. Then, the slide left starts all over again.

The reason it always slides to the left, is moving left means the people in power get more power. Never in the history of the world has giving government more power been better for the people of that country.

The US will move to the left, and fail. Just like every other country. Even the creators of our country knew this. The best we can hope for is to slow that move down as much as possible. Making a huge jump over a 4 to 8 year span is a horrible idea.

Im pretty sure my country did, and there was no revolution.

One example of a country getting better when the government was given more power was pretty much every single one of them. See, some government is pretty much always better than no government you know police, military, enforcement of contracts, money, legal systems etc.

Move to the left and fail, huh? So help me out here, are we talking socialism? communism? marxism? communalism? hippyism? Because I hope you realise that America is wayyyyyyyy to the right of most other nations in the world, so therefore it would have to jump a long way to the left before it would reach that threshold of failing if there are other countries which have successfully hovered over them for so long.

Technically in a liberal sense you can do whatever you want, and further to that since you're not forcing kids to go to school you may as well put them into work. I mean you would have to 'jump to the left' and 'increase government power' if you want a society where a factory owner cannot just hire thugs to put an end to a workers riot for example. Just taking to the extreme the idea that 'right is right'