technological elites enjoying fruits of the economic growth, while the majority gets gradually reduced to TaskRabbits - that's really a disgusting picture...
Socialism, as a whole, leads to Bad Things. Sprinklings of socialism help and are good, but if you subscribe fully to any specific socialist doctrine, history shows your group will be harmed by it.
what seems more important, history shows that there are no Iron Laws Of History Written In Capital Letters. what we see is always an outcome of particular circumstances. like - "trying to establish a particular form of socialism (i would rather say this was communism, not socialism, but let's not open an argument here...) in an isolated, pre-capitalist country, that was recently destroyed by war, and has no democratic culture, produces shitty effects". that doesn't tell much about choices we have today.
If you mean 'communist', then say 'communist'.
Not to mention that there isn't any system which survives your counterargument.
>>> Not to mention that there isn't any system which survives your counterargument.
If you can't distinguish good from harm or follow casual links - maybe. Fortunately, many people can.
The producers are actually the poor bastards working 40+ hours a week on the factory floor. The entities forcibly taking resources from them are the wealthy, by controlling the means of production, increasing CEO salaries, and colluding with legislators to provide more tax cuts and loopholes that only the wealthy can take advantage of. The political whim is that congressmen get more dollars from corporations after Citizen's United.
It's fucking ridiculous to be an Objectivist. You can continue to assert that poors are able to fight their way into the "producer" class by "not being lazy" or whatever. But the reality is when you can barely support your housing, food, transportation, and healthcare you don't have many rational options for aggressive advancement.
This is one kind of producers. But definitely not "the producers" - there are a lot of ways to produce value besides working on the factory floor. I suspect you yourself are paying your bills via one of such ways.
>>> The entities forcibly taking resources from them are the wealthy,
If they indeed do so, and you know about it, please call the police. I suspect, however, you do not understand what "forcibly" means, as wealthy people rarely resort to robbery - it is usually resort of the desperate and stupid.
It is true, however, that some wealthy employ other means of forcibly taking resources from other - namely, they benefit from various government programs, which forcibly extract resources from producers - ones working at the factories and in other places - and give it to some wealthy that are politically connected, claiming it is "for public good". Unfortunately, Supreme Court in infamous decision in Kelo vs. New London, decided it is completely legal to take private property and give it to another private person just because some government bureaucrat decided it is a good idea. In the very New London the case was about, they succeeded into converting a thriving residential neighborhood into a literal dump, spending tons of taxpayer money on the way. But I suspect for a socialist it is no problem at all.
>>> The political whim is that congressmen get more dollars from corporations after Citizen's United.
Barack Obama, who criticized this decision, spent $775 million on last election (http://www.cnbc.com/id/49550998/) outspending Romney by 75 mln. Romney is a rich man, and Obama is not exactly poor either, but this kind of money is not possible to come up without attracting donations, unless you want to have elections between Warren Buffett and Bill Gates each time.
Biggest political spenders are the unions (see here: http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?type=A). So if you are worried about money in politics, that's where I would look. But then I don't see how you'd finance it... Oh, let me guess - instead of fatcats giving up the money voluntarily you want to tax the poor bastards working 40+ hours and get the money from them. Thanks, man, brilliant idea.
>>> It's fucking ridiculous to be an Objectivist.
I wouldn't know but if you say so...
>>> You can continue to assert that poors are able to fight their way into the "producer" class by "not being lazy" or whatever
No, I can't "continue" to assert that since I never started to assert it.
>>> But the reality is when you can barely support your housing, food, transportation, and healthcare you don't have many rational options for aggressive advancement.
When you have 1 welfare recipient for every 1.65 workers and the ratio is getting worse each year (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-27/when-work-punished-...), and if you count government workers who are financed form taxes the ration is 1.25 - this means you only getting barely more than half of the value you're producing on average. If you don't produce a lot, this half indeed may not be enough to have very good life. However, for some people solution is for the state to take more and make the ratio worse. How this makes sense for them - I have no idea.