Why do people still believe in Socialism?

Yes you are missing just about everything. The whole thing about socialism is that you don't have to obey all the rules of socialism.. There is socialism in America where it's most hated around the world, and people don't even know it's socialism. I come from a country where socialism works extremely well. We enjoy high living standards, good healthcare and educational system and the country is one of the happiest countries in the world. The good thing with socialism is that if you're broke, there's always a way back. Even if you've got no money and get sick you can still get treatment, whereas in the US they'd leave you on the street to die.

The main problem with socialism is that people who are too lazy to work get a free ride, but at least in Scandinavia that's extremely few. You don't want to live on welfare because people look down on you. But it's better than getting thrown out on the street.

The example you give with education is not at all how it works. I've never heard of an educational system in a socialist state who uses that system.

So yes I think based on how successful socialist states are and how unsuccessful capitalist states are, that socialism works pretty well. Just look at what happened to China when Mao Zedong turned it into a hardcore socialist state aKa communist state. They went from the 18th century to the 20th century in just two decades. And even now they are much more advanced than we are.

I think getting the whole nation out of poverty is better than having the richest 1% being the richest people in the world and hoping for the 'trickle-down' theory to actually work, it doesn't..

Preception is a funny thing. The US poor are far better off than the poor in most all other countries. Secondly, the US has 300 million people. Scandinavia is so small it is like a neighborhood or family living together and sharing what they have. That is much eaiser than a huge nation trying to take care of everyone that does not want to pull his wwn weight. Also if you think China is or was a good place to live, they you are ignorant. Their poor are still much pooper than the US poor. The communists murdered 60,000,000 of their own people. Stallin Murdered 45,000,000. North Korea, North Vietnam, Cuba, Cambodia are all poor - very poor - cuntries that murdered millions to establish socialism, and they are poorer than when they started. Europe's poor are far poorer than the US. If I were poor, I would want to live in the US. All the places I have mentioned are sociaists countries. Anyone who thinks socialism is a good thing is ignorant and should bone up on their history. On the other hand Capitalism has worked everywhere it has been tried and the poor have benefited. Socialism works in one very small part of th world - Scandinavia. You cannot tell me another place where it works.

For those countries that are still socialism, it's purely to benefit the governments. Maybe the word rulers or emperors are more suitable to describe the officials of those countries. The officials use "socialism" where it is no really socialism, to take control and slave the citizens which is their main purpose, obviously every "socialism" country stands 1 king.

Not sure what the perfect system would be, capitalism is not sustainable long term either, any concept that requires more growth to get better will never be viable long term, it is all about buying stuff, making everything bigger so people can buy more things, kind of a boring concept overall.

I dont see any description that describe a government I hear a lot of stereo types about them..

I really loved the one about how in america no one stands chance to get back on there feet because if you get sick and cant offord it hospital toss you in the street thats a classic 80's dramatics about how some in the country felt about HMO's :)

it has happaened a few time for real and alot of people and companys were in deep crap because it is Illegal :)

fact is in america there is enough charitable hospitals, medical colleges that there are poor people without health care getting better care then some who have all the money in the world just depends how far you are willing to go and how hard you are willing to push your will to live ..

its kind of like the homeless some are homeless simply because its how they choose to be they have the education to do very good paying work they choose not to you could give them all they needed they would turn it down..

Any system that relies on the government to provide common important services, will always fail.

Compared to the market, the government does everything at a significantly greater cost. For direct services (eg education), there is a ton of waste (I work in the DOE and have first hand experience of this). Taxes are stolen funds, you can define it as taxes all you want but the functional definition is exactly the same as theft. You are forced to pay or the government will do bad things to you (eg taking all of your property and eventually putting you in a cage)

When a organization is tax funded, there is less of a focus on efficiency as there is no concern of a bottom line. (in my experience, this leads to $70 for a 100 pack of DOE branded pencils, $1000 LCD TV's that would cost $400 anywhere else, and many other forms of waste)

Then for most of the services the government provides, they are contracted labor. For example, when the government wants to fix a road, they take your tax money to hire another company to fix the road. The issue with it is more money is spent on the workers who contract out the repair work than what actually goes into repairs.

Imagine your water heater breaking and you hiring someone for $100 to fix it (free market solution), now imagine a government way, you hire a bureaucrat for $70,000 a year to monitor your water heater, then when it breaks, he or she will then take $100 out of your bank account and hire someone to fix it. which seems like a more efficient use of the money.

Because there is no way to make the government 100% efficient, it is impossible for it to ever serve everyone it rules over adequately as the government it's self does not create wealth (if it did, it would not need taxes) and since most of the funds it collects are spent internally on supporting it's self, when it comes time to actually serve the people, you either get a system where portion of everyones wealth is takes so that a small and select few can benefit, or you end up with a system where there is rapidly increasing national debt and inflation due to the government printing money to to pay for services beyond what the taxes are paying, and once you get to a point where other nations lose faith in your countries ability to pay off the debt, then your country will enter a state of hyper inflation until the whole system completely collapses.

This is why governments in general don't work (and why through out history, a governmental system would only last around 200-300 years before collapsing (with the exception of a small few nations that have managed to slow the downward spiral)

Functionally, the only societal system that is entirely self sufficient (in being able to function without going into debt and still serve everyone), is a volunteerist society with a agorist market. A system such as that has no bureaucracy or central form of power. This means that all labor must be productive in order for it to be successful.

When you create a centralized government, then you get waste as you end up with a class known as the parasitic class (those whose work is not productive and thus it relies on taxes to function and could not function in the absence of taxes)

All of the money in the world cannot pay off all of the debt in the world. The problem with debt based societies (what we currently have around the world (almost every country has a large national debt), is the debt only continues to grow. And so-called methods of balancing a budget often includes huge spending cuts without lowering taxes which means bringing the country closer to one of my previous statements where wealth is forcibly takes from everyone and then given to a select few (imagine that you are a t-mobile customer and you are happy with your service, but verizon comes along and puts a gun to your head and forces you to pay them $100 a month so that they could give the richest person in the US a free data plan ), that is what most spending cuts do. A perfect example of this is Detroit they are in a ton of debt and in an effort to balance their budget, they cut most services (but have not lowered taxes) 2/3rds of all street lights are turned off (but not a single street light in the areas where the politicians live are turned off), government funded trash pickup has stopped for about 80% of the people (but no cutbacks on the locations where the politicians live), Police service has been cut back from 24/7 to 9-5 for everywhere except the locations where the politicians live (they actually have faster response times than states like NY which is a police state + additional state funded personal security. Overall, spending cuts without reduced taxes = more people paying but fewer getting served for the money they put into the system, and history has shows time and time again, (from the great depression to many countries going into huge depressions, taxes are still collected but the vast majority of the people lose the services that their taxes are suppose to pay for, the ruling elite are usually the only ones who continue to get the government funded services)

Even if you believe the stereotype of government being needed for national defense. That is one of the most untrue statements in history as if there is anything in history that is well documented, is the thousands of wars that have happened over the past thousands of years as nations rise and fall. During times of war, the military resources are directed at protecting the ruling class. people being ruled over (citizens aka peasants, and surfs) are left to fend for them self and are often (in large part) killed off if they refuse their new rulers, and the rest are enslaved to the new rulers)

this happened in modern history also, in all of the wars where the US has taken place in, the countries that the US attacked, those countries sent their military resources to bolster defenses around the ruling class, leaving the people to fend for them self (and worst get caught in the crossfire of war). Furthermore it has also happened in the US, every attack on the US, (pearl harbor, 9/11, etc, they have all lead to temporary bolstering of military resources around the areas of the ruling class (people running the government) (they have never stationed additional resources of protection around the various neighborhoods around the country.

All in all, no system that contains and forcibly funds a parasitic class can ever be successful for more than a short while.

edit: image in second comment:

So all the works of Marx and Engels and Mill and Bentham and George Bernard Shaw and Charles Kingsley and Keynes to say nothing of the work of Wedgwood and Rowntree amount to is 'give everybody a C'? Nice of you to attempt to save us from reading all that stuff but, if you don't mind, I think I'll make my own mind up.

As always, it is rash, if not just plain stupid, to rush to judgement on the value of any 'idea' on the basis of its application by the misguided and the mad (most politicians, for example)!

Every philsopher makes good points and the writers as you mention were not followed. they would be appaled at the pain and suffering caused by men in power who claimed their concepts. Example - Keynes was not wrong. He believed that the budget had to be ballanced eventually. Deficit spending is a temporary action not a way for politicians and parties to stay in power. It is stupid to pursue ideas that have failed when capitalism combined with the US constitution and freedom has produced the greatest economic prosperity of all tme.