As Kant and Nozick would point out; it is the duty of the society to equalize any inequalities that are due to violence or other non-sanctioned acts. However reversing the history of human-kind to find what present inequalities are due to these non-sanctioned acts is an impossible task. Which leaves the room wide open for a well-fare program.
As to the incentive question - if socialism is such poison for private incentives, how can you explain the growth of Scandinavia? This has also been a rather large debate in economic circles, where private incentives of course plays a rather large role. However there is no empirical evidence that the main incentive for producing is material reward - though there’s evidence for the opposite (cf. Adaptation and Human Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective
by Lee Cronk, Napoleon A. Chagnon, William Irons).
As Stiglitz points out; the median american 30-year-old today is poorer than a 30-year-old in 1978 - despite the huge growth in GDP. Now is this fair? Is this all due to the top 5% is in fact creating the growth in GDP and therefore get what’s becoming them?
I think you confuse socialism with totalitarianism. There are no cages necessary to take a chunk of the average top US CEO’s $15.6 MILLION a year salary and use to help people who are making minimum wage
unfortunately, it seems to be a common strategy to discredit socialism with all sorts of made up critique, all of which are only applicable to the old USSR. To discredit socialism qua pointing fingers at the old evil soviet empire, seems to be the ultimate answer to every critique of capitalism. “Socialism eh? So all that disagree should be sent to Gulag? Assign random people as doctors aye? [That claim is so utterly ridiculous it doesn’t belong in any philosophic debate on socialism].”
The fact of the matter is (to take two commonly accepted examples):
capitalism creates great inequalities in the outcome and start-off between men.
the utilitarian logic of capitalism enables people to be virtually born as slaves, when they have no other opportunity for health/food/housing than serving their feudal master.
In any socialistic society the state would take care of the poor/hungry (and no, they won’t force-feed them through tubing or rape them or burn their flesh - please stop making these inane claims).
The state would educate the poor, in order to equalize any socially contingencies (i.e. initial wealth to pay for education). This won’t happen under capitalism (because state education is by definition socialistic).
All philosophers agree that the state should intervene in the economy to equalize to a certain point between men. Beg to differ? Show me one that does not.
This is not to appeal to authority, but just to show how the notion ‘everything socialistic is evil’ is rather simple and fails to capture the problems with pure capitalism.
