Have Marxist states done better? They've caused more death/environmental damage (China). I guess you don't need to worry about children not having clean water when they're indentured for crimes their parents committed, right?Hey, he asked a question(about what socialists think), I directed him where the answers are. :)
I can also accuse capitalism of being responsible for 2 World Wars and a hundred smaller ones, environmental destruction that is *still* not addressed as it should because corporations' interests always get in the way(but "greed is good", right?), and hundreds of million of children not even having clean water. But okay, since it personally "saved your life" and gave you the chance to buy a second house, all is forgiven and there's no reason for us to even question it or try to imagine a successor system.
Those countries certainly have done better than what they *were* before their socialist revolutions. You really think Castro in Cuba is not better than the fascist Batista?
You seem to forget that there was a never a socialist revolution in any advanced capitalist country(like "orthodox" Marxism predicted). Russia was a poor agrarian country, with a huge amount of the population living in absolute dreadful conditions and fighting in the awful WW1 fronts. Socialism didn't bring poverty, it inherited it, and even the perverse version of it that was eventually implemented there at least brought the industrialization of the country, the defeat of Nazis and it made it a superpower, didn't it?
Also, you seem to forget that the capitalist countries didn't just say "okay, you Russians chose socialism over the tzar with a mostly bloodless and grass-roots revolution, we'll leave you to it and see how it turns out". They immediately sent their White Army to protect their interests and caused the hugely devestating Civil War. It's kind of hard to build a democratic socialism and keep your promise for "all the power to the Soviets!"(Soviet = city councils, created spontaneously by workers before the 1917 revolution, and *not* by the Bolsheviks), when you are encircled from all sides and you have to fight a civil war in order to protect what you've achieved.
But as I said, I don't consider them a model for the future, and many other socialists don't either. I'm certainly aware they commited crimes against even dissenting fellow socialists, Red Terror, Purges, Show Trials. Many socialists engage in "apologetics" for those, but I won't. I certainly wouldn't want to give up democracy and freedom of criticizng the State in a hypothetical future socialist society, and my opinion is that an undemocratic socialism is a perverted form of socialism that shouldn't be followed. If anything, I want *more* democracy(even direct one, to the extent that this is possible for a large population - technology can help with this today) than less.
I'm perfectly okay with critizing marxist(or so-called marxist) states for their crimes. Hell, I said, if you got any other proposal for a succeeding system to capitalism, I'm all ears. I'm not emotionally invested in the theory, and certainly not blind to the problems its implementation brought forth. I'm certainly not okay with "capitalism is as good as it gets and this is the end of history" though. As far as I'm concerned, capitalism built a great civilization(with great crimes commited in its way, of course, too), but now it has lost most of its positive power and has become detrimental to our further growth as a species. What *is* our future and our children's future under capitalism, exactly? We basically now just wait for the next great crisis, the next war, probably the next biblical Flood, and the next cool gadget to keep us occupied in the meantime.
The environmental issue, climate change, which is *amazing* we're still not addressing and putting the whole planet in danger, just because corporations' interests and they spend untold money in trying to discredit what is now well-accepted scientific facts, is the most glaring example I can cite. You are right that China is a major factor in this, but you are wrong citing it as a "marxist state" - China in the last 30 years at least is a major capitalist powerhouse that just doesn't waste time with parliamentary procedures. - http://www.businessinsider.com/how-china-went-from-communist-to-capitalist-2015-10/#the-country-is-in-the-process-of-transforming-itself-from-a-global-center-of-low-tech-manufacturing-into-a-major-hub-of-innovation-and-consumption-10
I think you being able to work in the currently profitable tech sector in the US and bying a second house doesn't really negate all this. We'll probably sing a different song when *our* jobs get automated and we get left by the side of the road because all we did was learning another slighly different programming language and API.