Bush & roosevelt

[Arthur Dent]

Pure Capitalism has shown itself to not work

Neither does pure socialism.

Socialism only works on the small scale. A farming community with a couple hundred people at most. Why? Because of the fundamental human need for incentives and threat of punishment. In a pure socialist society, everyone gets the exact same alotment of food, shelter, entertainment, etc. no matter what their performance is. So, why push yourself to do more than the absolute bare minimum? If you work extra hard, you don't get anything for your effort. If your a lazy bastard and slacker, you still get your share.

So, there is no incentive to work harder and no incentive to be inovative. No reward.

The only reason socialism works on a small scale is becasue of social pressure. If your a lazy bum, everyone knows it and treats you badly. You end up being ostracized. The simple act of EVERYONE not liking you and refusing to talk to you is devistating to the human psyche.

But on the large scale, why should I care what you think of me? If everyone I work with doesn't want to talk to me, so what? It's a city of a few million people. They can't all know what I do or don't do. So, I leave work and go home to family and friends who don't care about what I do at work. That's why socialism fails on the large scale. No social pressure to replace monetary incentive or the risk of losing your allotment.

Communism is socialism with incentive in the form of state terror.