I think you are being slight glass half empty about it all atm! Capitalism has also had a great deal of success. I doubt that there would be as many people on the planet now were it not for the innovations in medicine and agriculture bought about by capitalism, don't you? If it was I saying saying all the bad things that had ever occurred under socialism, and were therefore socialisms fault, people would be saying "that wasn't real socialism." I guess that would be invoking the 'no true scotsman' fallacy (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman), so I won't do that as it is a tad too easy and a little disingenuous for my liking.
I am happy to hold my hands up and say that capitalism is far from perfect, and has led to some pretty horrible outcomes for a lot of people. But it has also done an awful lot of good that I don't think socialism would have done, and I don't think socialism is or ever will be a magic bullet to any of the problems you have listed. I think the assumption that we would have public transport were it not for capitalism is a rather poor one, because we used to have better public transport (or so i'm told - at least more extensive?), but that was before most people got the opportunity given to them by capitalism to own their own car (and before capitalism resulted in our country growing by over 10 million). Now, you might say that is a bad thing because it stopped everyone being totally reliant on the state to get them from A to B, which therefore took the money away from the state and into the hands of private business. But without effective personal transport many jobs would be nigh on impossible to do, and most would take a lot more time to do as well. And that's before we get into transporting not only our own goods around, but also others goods, and tools and stuff for work. Further to this, the revenue the government get from the tax on fuel is a staggering 26.2 billion, which is over a quarter of the cost of the NHS! Now compare this to public transport, which the government has almost always made a loss on, and you can see why the situation we are in is so much better.
I think of all your examples, fuel is probably the best one to challenge. What makes you think socialism wouldn't face similar problems? (assuming you are advocating socialism in it's place). Do you think we use more fuel because global output is higher because of capitalism? If so, why don't we just go back to the dark ages and forget all about capitalism. Let's do away with all the cushyness of capitalism - lights, computers, beds etc. Let's go back to a time when the infant mortality was sky high, and the average life expectancy didn't top 30. I am of course being absurd, but my point is that it is a trade off, and I don't think humans are capable of engaging in anything whatsoever without there being some degree of greed and evil. Socialism won't remove that. On the other hand, thanks to innovation and capitalism we are looking at a future where we could well have a plethora of alternative fuels, and the main one I am interested in is nuclear fusion. This means that although capitalism took us through perhaps a few decades of turmoil in certain hot spots, it ultimately came good and provided us with unlimited clean and virtually free energy. Socialism on the other hand probably would not have innovated in such a way, or not as quickly any way, and probably would have caused equal problems the world over in their quest for fuel.
Almost all innovation starts in universities, of that i'm sure. Maybe not so much in the computer industries, but in science in general it certainly does. Most new materials, processes, discoveries etc. come from universities. I think the best example would probably be quantum physics, which started in university physics labs around the world, and has now been gradually adopted and integrated into products by entrepreneurs. Even when Apple is deciding what to make the next ipod out of, their engineers will keep draws full of composite materials and computers full of university papers to delve through to make their decisions. They don't have time to create everything from scratch, and besides that isn't their field of interest.
I think the innovation that is coming from the need to make money, no matter how hollow a motive, is going to herald an amazing technological age in the next 100 years. I'm thinking self replicating nano bots, powered by fusion, that can become anything you want them to be. I'm thinking 100% safe cars that drive themselves. Bathrooms that you walk into that can diagnose you with a multitude of diseases. The possibilities are endless, and you only have to look at how far we have come in the last century thanks to capitalism to see that. Socialism never really proved it was capable of getting anything of any real life changing ability to the consumer in the way capitalism has. Yes, like I said it has it's faults, but it is the best of a bad bunch. Let me finish by taking your ipad example. We are currently in a situation where a few people have them, and lots want them. But it's early doors. Give it 20 years and you'll be able to pick up an ipad from a local dump. You would have been saying the same thing about mobiles 20 years ago no doubt, and now even children in slums have better phones than any city banker ever had. We won't all get one by making the current ipad slightly worse, we would just end up in a situation where none of us got one, and none of us had the prospect of ever getting one. We are fast approaching the point where chips are going to be cheaper than paper!
Sorry, this was all quite disjointed and i'm guessing I missed some points you wanted addressed. I appreciate that you have managed to make your point without treating me like the reincarnation of Hitler too, thanks mate.
I thought we were just keeping up the normal tit for tat game we usually do. Are you going to be ok? Fucking hell, what terrible news.
