The US needs more European style socialism, social democracy, democratic socialism, communitarianism - whatever we call it. I think of it as an expression of fairness, mutual responsibility and concern for the common good. There is no perfect political system, but the highly individualistic, capitalistic society we have in the US is less and less able to sustain people fairly and decently. (And many European countries are more congenial for bicyclists than most parts of the US) Most socialist (and all Marxist) dont beleive in equality of outcome, just equality of oppurtunity.
This means that everyone gets the same chance at sucsess. This does not happen in capatilism because it is far easier for an owner of a company to make money than a worker, and for a rich kid to go to colledge than a pook kid.
First and foremost, I am a socialist because I disagree with the Founding Fathers’ ideas on morality and the Rule of Law. It is important that we have a centralized government that redistributes all the wealth. The State needs to have the power to take some of the wealth away from those the State decides have too much of it. Obviously, no one has a ‘right’ to one’s own wealth or property. And I don’t believe that ‘all men are created equal’ because, if there is a law against theft, then obviously because we need to allow agents of the State to take wealth away, then therefore laws against ‘theft’ must exempt agents of the State. That means that some people should be above the law.
ReplyDelete"And I am a socialist in medical care because I think that the centralized government should control everyone’s medical care – it’s as simple as that. It is important that government bureaucrats and their government doctors and medical services have a monopoly in the medical industry so they don’t have to deal with competitive interests, as opposed to a free market in medical care in which the consumers determine which doctors and medical plans would stay in business and which ones would fail. Some people assert that that gives ‘power to the people,’ but we socialists don’t want the people to have that kind of power – it takes control away from government bureaucrats and that’s why I don’t like that. It’s important that government officials control the ultimate decisions in what affects American medical patients (and because the Blue State grandmas are more likely to vote for the "good guys" than the Red State grandmas, if you know what I mean).
"I support socialist immigration central planning because the State has a right, for example, to prevent an employer in Arizona from hiring an applicant from Mexico despite the fact that the employer believes that individual is qualified for the job and the Mexican applicant is willing to accept the job at the wage both agree on. Their prospective contract should not be in their control, it should be in the central planners’ control. When we say that socialism includes public ownership of the means of production, then that includes ownership of the employer’s business, as well as the prospective employee’s direction of employment (as well as the employer and employee themselves – after all, one of the most important of the means of production is the people).