Man, I wish I had more time to get involved in this-- Great minds with different perspectives.
One thing I would point out is that no one seems to understand what socialism even means. To have socialism and communism in the same sentence shows that lack of understanding so don't remember who said that, but read some Marx.
Socialism, by Marx definition, actually greatly increases business activity by taking the decision to move forward off of the "owner" or wealthy person and putting that decision into the worker's hand. Not really important if you agree or not with that being right, just that you understand what Marx meant and don't fall for network television's or an old book to "learn" the true meaning. Socialism also rewards value added. Many of you have pointed out that people have different value and socialism takes that into effect. Marx wanted to end hoarding of wealth in the rich and use those resources for the good of all. After all, be it luck or not (and I agree that much wealth is connected to luck), be it crime (where much wealth also originates), the wealthy are only wealthy because of the poor. Thinking that a person's hard work is the main cause of them being successful is just childish in my opinion and is the "baby boomer attitude" that doesn't understand nor want to understand the connectivity of all of us.
I work hard, I make good money-- But I couldn't if that guy in Mexico quit picking my fruits or if the guy who works at the gas station quit coming to work. Is my job harder than their's-- no way, in fact it is way easier. So, why do I have my job and they have their job? Why do I get paid more for a much easier job? Choices of course play a role but more of a role comes from either my luck in being more intelligent than them or my luck in the situation in which I was born. You can throw that out the window if you need to to be able to justify your life or your actions but bottom line is, opportunity is not the same for all and never will be why we have a fake free-market system.
I don't consider myself a socialist but don't kid yourself for a second and say that we live in a free market system that is better than socialism. Marx socialism was much more free market than our current system and whoever pointed out that our system is set up to favor those in power hit the nail on the head. It's probably a large reason for why many of the founding fathers stated that there would need to be another revolution in 100-150 years to again "spread out" that power.
Glad to see it moving away from personal attacks into debate and look forward to having more time off work to jump in. Have a great rest of the week guys