Should the free market be abolished and be replaced with Socialism or maybe even Communism?

[Liberal Atheist]

free markets are very good at feeding war machines.

[Harley Drive]

it's fine as long as exploitation and dishonesty and fraud are eliminated

[Spotty J]

How about, no.

[Sienna]

Socialism and communism are *economically* the same thing - common ownership and control of the means of production. They are not possible in theory, and that is why they are not possible in practice.

The reason why they are not possible in theory is because economic calculation in terms of money prices is not a characteristic of economic activity in general. It is a sub-category only of economic activity under a system based on the private ownership of the means of production - capitalism. This means that, in the absence of private property in capital goods - socialism - there is no way to calculate what is the more or less economical way of doing things. This was demonstrated by Ludwig von Mises in 1921 in "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth": http://mises.org/pdf/econcalc.pdf
You should read it.

This means that the question whether socialism or communism are more desirable does not arise, since it's not possible.

It follows from Mises' theory that, any attempt to implement socialism or communism must necessarily result in
- planned economic chaos
- political totalitarianism, and
- massive human rights abuses.

Remember, that's even if no-one misuses his power, there is no corruption - a completely unrealistic assumption. But *even if everything goes according to plan* (which it won't because you'll need to vest total power in a single man or committee), the result *will still be* completely abusive and disastrous.

Mises theory predicts that, and that's in fact what happened, every time they tried to implement socialism or communism, isn't it? So his theory has explaining power.

On the other hand, the socialist or communist theoreticians have no credibility at all, because
a) they do not explain *how* we can calculate economically without prices for capital goods, or how we can have prices without markets - a complete FAIL in their theory, and
b) according to their theory, the fact that all attempts to implement communism have ended terribly is JUST SOME KIND OF STRANGE COINCIDENCE.

Now in case you haven't noticed, all the war machines are being run by governments, paid for by taxes based on government's claimed monopoly of the use of force - the opposite of free markets.

So
a) you're blaming capitalism - private ownership of the means of production - for a problem which is caused by socialism - governmental ownership of the means of production
b) you're proposing something which has already been definitively proved wrong, both in theory and practice, over and over again
c) you're proposing the aggressive violation of the very possibility of peaceful social co-operation, based on confusion and error.

The concept that is completely missing from your mindset is: freedom.