Why Socialism is good
I take issue with people instantly rearing the ghost of Stalinism whenever socialism is mentioned. And contrary to seemingly popular belief, socialism and capitalism are not diametrically opposed or totally incompatible.
Without social safety nets capitalism results in pollution, sweatshops, natural resource decimation, unworkable public facility organization and infrastructure, and vast social inequalities. Capitalism definitely needs to be counterbalanced by environmental laws, labor laws, antitrust laws, civic long-term planning and coordinating bodies, and yes, anti-bribe laws when it comes to political spending (in the latter case, unbridled capitalism actually poses a threat to the very idea of democracy.) Equally importantly, all those laws must actually be enforced.
When people point out the prosperity of the West while crediting it to capitalism, they forget to factor in that the West is literally feeding on the rest of the world. As it stands, the vast majority of humans are devastatingly poor. However, the available resources of our planet are unlikely to be sufficient to bring them up to the same standard of living as the top western nations of today -- at least not without major technological change. Yet such a change can only be anticipated and prepared by long-term, far-sighted social programs. Capitalist institutions, on the other hand, are entirely too focused on the near term and typically on a very limited slice of the world's complexity.
Another area where socialism definitely comes in, is equal opportunity. And I'm not talking about "affirmative action" of any traditional sort. What I'm saying is that eventually free societies might want to respect one of their most fundamental (if often non-binding legally) premises: that all individuals are born equal. As it stands, simply being born into a poor family severely hampers one's chances of success compared to rich-family children. That is fundamentally unfair. At least up to adulthood (when personal decisions and fiscal autonomy kick in), even the poorest of the poor must be given a sporting if not equal chance when compared to the rich.
While one marvels at the American success, one also has to realize that in some ways it is a failure. Americans are the most overworked people among all industrialized nations. Compared to the rest of the Western world, Americans have no life despite their impressive fiscal standing. America is a nation of workaholics (whether voluntary or not), and it is getting worse all the time. Eventually, social action will have to kick in to reverse this unwelcome trend -- or we'll end up working ourselves to death. There is more to quality of life than mere possessions, and the overall quality of life in America is declining.
With respect to the poor in America, one has to note that the current poverty line is something like 20 years old, while the current percentage of the poor in the population is actually higher than 20 years ago. That means due to inflation today's poor are much poorer than the poor of the 1970s. And that is despite the massive recent economic boom. So much for the trickle-down effect.
When one talks of opportunity and the failure of individuals to pursue it, one glosses over the many showstoppers in that overly simplistic depiction. In the increasingly technological and globalized economy, it becomes increasingly difficult for some trailer park Joe to start and grow a successful business when he can't even so much as read and write at a fourth-grade level. His children (and likely there'll be many of them) won't have much of a better chance. And this is even before globalization truly kicks in and business goes truly international and forsakes expensive Western labor in favor of a cheap (nearly free!) third-world workforce. This will tend to deplete the western countries of manual jobs, and will further disadvantage the poor segments that are ill-equipped to succeed in a service/high-tech economy. Without a socialist framework to level the playing field opportunity-wise, the poor segment of the population is destined to remain poor and even to grow as it had over the last couple of decades.
There are other benefits to socialist policies. For example, every time we rely on business for our basic needs and services, we end up paying 200% of the cost (after all, the business is geared toward making money.) That's one reason why American medical care, for example, is so exhorbitantly expensive. One could argue that a government-driven medical care system would be mired in bureacracy and inefficiency, in addition to being sluggish when responding to technological advances. That, however, depends on the actual architecture and modus operandi of any such system. Perhaps a government/business hybrid could both retain the advantages of private health care and keep the price of care reasonable. As it stands, however, Americans are among the most deprived in the western world when it comes to health care. In most other western countries, for example, people get hospitalized for free until they are healthy enough to leave; in America, hospital care is prohibitively expensive and people are routinely thrown out of hospitals to recuperate at home after what most other western countries would consider inadequately short stays. In a purely capitalist medical establishment, patients are treated as business customers instead of people who need help and cannot necessarily afford it. In the current system, people pay 200% for the cost of services, plus an extra 200% on top of that to their health insurance company (which, after all, must make profit too.) If instead people paid as much money in taxes to the government as they spend on private health care, with the government then distributing the money to those who actually need care and using more cost-efficient care providers, a much better standard of care would be possible.
Another demonstrable disaster in the making is the nightmarish emergent combination of suburbia and the car culture. This is arguably purely a product of market forces -- but it is responsible for huge areas of land being sacrificed to roadways, and nevertheless ever-present and ever-growing congestion. Concomitant are pollution, road maintenance, expansion and policing expenses, and people spending increasing hours stuck or crawling along to/from work. People don't walk as much any more, as even a minor shopping trip involves driving to the nearest suburban mall 5 miles away; as a result we have the infamous obesity epidemic. There's been a decimation of urban high culture; the replacement apparently is MTV and the couch. Yet it didn't have to turn out this way. Instead of now facing the headache of fixing the unfixable problems, the society could have planned its growth and urban architecture a little better. This is a prime example of how long-term, far-sighted social policy could be superior to the short-sighted, fix-it-when-it-breaks capitalist mentality.
This post is already too long, so I'll wrap it up. The last thing I want to emphasize is that despite the fact that socialism has the potential to correct for the failures of capitalism, the two are not mutually exclusive. They can coexist and be balanced for optimal quality-of-life effect. In fact modern America has already come quite a way toward such a balance when compared to the old, laissez-faire capitalism of the nineteenth century. And people should stop denying the fact that U.S. is right now, already, a mildly socialist country. But the point is that more could be done -- and should be done, for all our sakes.
I take issue with people instantly rearing the ghost of Stalinism whenever socialism is mentioned. And contrary to seemingly popular belief, socialism and capitalism are not diametrically opposed or totally incompatible.
Without social safety nets capitalism results in pollution, sweatshops, natural resource decimation, unworkable public facility organization and infrastructure, and vast social inequalities. Capitalism definitely needs to be counterbalanced by environmental laws, labor laws, antitrust laws, civic long-term planning and coordinating bodies, and yes, anti-bribe laws when it comes to political spending (in the latter case, unbridled capitalism actually poses a threat to the very idea of democracy.) Equally importantly, all those laws must actually be enforced.
When people point out the prosperity of the West while crediting it to capitalism, they forget to factor in that the West is literally feeding on the rest of the world. As it stands, the vast majority of humans are devastatingly poor. However, the available resources of our planet are unlikely to be sufficient to bring them up to the same standard of living as the top western nations of today -- at least not without major technological change. Yet such a change can only be anticipated and prepared by long-term, far-sighted social programs. Capitalist institutions, on the other hand, are entirely too focused on the near term and typically on a very limited slice of the world's complexity.
Another area where socialism definitely comes in, is equal opportunity. And I'm not talking about "affirmative action" of any traditional sort. What I'm saying is that eventually free societies might want to respect one of their most fundamental (if often non-binding legally) premises: that all individuals are born equal. As it stands, simply being born into a poor family severely hampers one's chances of success compared to rich-family children. That is fundamentally unfair. At least up to adulthood (when personal decisions and fiscal autonomy kick in), even the poorest of the poor must be given a sporting if not equal chance when compared to the rich.
While one marvels at the American success, one also has to realize that in some ways it is a failure. Americans are the most overworked people among all industrialized nations. Compared to the rest of the Western world, Americans have no life despite their impressive fiscal standing. America is a nation of workaholics (whether voluntary or not), and it is getting worse all the time. Eventually, social action will have to kick in to reverse this unwelcome trend -- or we'll end up working ourselves to death. There is more to quality of life than mere possessions, and the overall quality of life in America is declining.
With respect to the poor in America, one has to note that the current poverty line is something like 20 years old, while the current percentage of the poor in the population is actually higher than 20 years ago. That means due to inflation today's poor are much poorer than the poor of the 1970s. And that is despite the massive recent economic boom. So much for the trickle-down effect.
When one talks of opportunity and the failure of individuals to pursue it, one glosses over the many showstoppers in that overly simplistic depiction. In the increasingly technological and globalized economy, it becomes increasingly difficult for some trailer park Joe to start and grow a successful business when he can't even so much as read and write at a fourth-grade level. His children (and likely there'll be many of them) won't have much of a better chance. And this is even before globalization truly kicks in and business goes truly international and forsakes expensive Western labor in favor of a cheap (nearly free!) third-world workforce. This will tend to deplete the western countries of manual jobs, and will further disadvantage the poor segments that are ill-equipped to succeed in a service/high-tech economy. Without a socialist framework to level the playing field opportunity-wise, the poor segment of the population is destined to remain poor and even to grow as it had over the last couple of decades.
There are other benefits to socialist policies. For example, every time we rely on business for our basic needs and services, we end up paying 200% of the cost (after all, the business is geared toward making money.) That's one reason why American medical care, for example, is so exhorbitantly expensive. One could argue that a government-driven medical care system would be mired in bureacracy and inefficiency, in addition to being sluggish when responding to technological advances. That, however, depends on the actual architecture and modus operandi of any such system. Perhaps a government/business hybrid could both retain the advantages of private health care and keep the price of care reasonable. As it stands, however, Americans are among the most deprived in the western world when it comes to health care. In most other western countries, for example, people get hospitalized for free until they are healthy enough to leave; in America, hospital care is prohibitively expensive and people are routinely thrown out of hospitals to recuperate at home after what most other western countries would consider inadequately short stays. In a purely capitalist medical establishment, patients are treated as business customers instead of people who need help and cannot necessarily afford it. In the current system, people pay 200% for the cost of services, plus an extra 200% on top of that to their health insurance company (which, after all, must make profit too.) If instead people paid as much money in taxes to the government as they spend on private health care, with the government then distributing the money to those who actually need care and using more cost-efficient care providers, a much better standard of care would be possible.
Another demonstrable disaster in the making is the nightmarish emergent combination of suburbia and the car culture. This is arguably purely a product of market forces -- but it is responsible for huge areas of land being sacrificed to roadways, and nevertheless ever-present and ever-growing congestion. Concomitant are pollution, road maintenance, expansion and policing expenses, and people spending increasing hours stuck or crawling along to/from work. People don't walk as much any more, as even a minor shopping trip involves driving to the nearest suburban mall 5 miles away; as a result we have the infamous obesity epidemic. There's been a decimation of urban high culture; the replacement apparently is MTV and the couch. Yet it didn't have to turn out this way. Instead of now facing the headache of fixing the unfixable problems, the society could have planned its growth and urban architecture a little better. This is a prime example of how long-term, far-sighted social policy could be superior to the short-sighted, fix-it-when-it-breaks capitalist mentality.
This post is already too long, so I'll wrap it up. The last thing I want to emphasize is that despite the fact that socialism has the potential to correct for the failures of capitalism, the two are not mutually exclusive. They can coexist and be balanced for optimal quality-of-life effect. In fact modern America has already come quite a way toward such a balance when compared to the old, laissez-faire capitalism of the nineteenth century. And people should stop denying the fact that U.S. is right now, already, a mildly socialist country. But the point is that more could be done -- and should be done, for all our sakes.