Socialism

REMAIN CALM!!!!!!! (you know who you are....) I know that word riles up some people here like almost no other. Anyway, I'd just like to ask, from a purely academic/political theory standpoint, why those of you who approach politics from the right have such an abiding hatred for socialism? The word seems to be used here as an epithet of of the greatest disdain when referring to certain politicians.
----- After all, socialism is already deeply entrenched in all western democracies. For instance, around the world, various taxes collected from "the people" pay for roads, school, police, military, parks, welfare and many other types of things that can only be construed to be "the common good" and which do not have any kind of "user pay" funding.
------Some countries may include a lot more items in this free "common good" (think Sweden here) while others include fewer (like the USA). Some regimes took it to greater extremes by virtually eliminating capitalism and individual initiative (old school Communism, e.g.) I doubt very much that there is any regime in the world where there is no socialism of this kind.
------Certainly the structure of the tax rates as to who pays what and how it is tied or not tied to income varies wildly around the world as well. But I do not think any political entity can be anything but socialist in its most fundamental sense. It's just a matter of degree, isn't it?
------So why so angry, guys?
Dave in Toronto.

Socialism, IMO, rewards mediocrity, laziness, and is a disinsentive to hard work, independence, and innovation.

Andreas

David Cotterell said:

REMAIN CALM!!!!!!!

[...]

It's just a matter of degree, isn't it?
------So why so angry, guys?
Dave in Toronto.

Yes of course, just like pregnancy is "just a matter of degree".

David Cotterell said:

REMAIN CALM!!!!!!! (you know who you are....) I know that word riles up some people here like almost no other. Anyway, I'd just like to ask, from a purely academic/political theory standpoint, why those of you who approach politics from the right have such an abiding hatred for socialism? The word seems to be used here as an epithet of of the greatest disdain when referring to certain politicians.
----- After all, socialism is already deeply entrenched in all western democracies. For instance, around the world, various taxes collected from "the people" pay for roads, school, police, military, parks, welfare and many other types of things that can only be construed to be "the common good" and which do not have any kind of "user pay" funding.
------Some countries may include a lot more items in this free "common good" (think Sweden here) while others include fewer (like the USA). Some regimes took it to greater extremes by virtually eliminating capitalism and individual initiative (old school Communism, e.g.) I doubt very much that there is any regime in the world where there is no socialism of this kind.
------Certainly the structure of the tax rates as to who pays what and how it is tied or not tied to income varies wildly around the world as well. But I do not think any political entity can be anything but socialist in its most fundamental sense. It's just a matter of degree, isn't it?
------So why so angry, guys?
Dave in Toronto.

The opposite of socialism is anarchy...


The government should operate no differently than a publicly traded company, and in some ways it does. We have a board of directors (or representatives, mayors, governors, etc) that we as shareholders (our shares being purchased through taxes/citizenship) have the right to fire and hire via elections. In a way, our government is the epitome of huge corporations. If Richard, Jim, James etc, don't like it, y'all have the right to try and vote out the current board....Or sell your shares and move to Bermuda where they let you do what you want (and I bet the skies are darker there to 8) ) Reality is, these guys took the White House by a margin large enough to be almost considered a mandate. If enough of those folks feel as though they have buyers remorse, then we can look forward to Palin as our next president , that should make the above mentioned fellow A'marters feel much better!

Socialism is a great mechanism for sapping entrepreneurial energy and encouraging complacency and reliance upon the state. On a serious note, I have not seen one statement from the Obama administration that would entice a corporation to do business here or that would incentivize the creation of one private sector job.

We've decimated our manufacturing capacity, we've outsourced our information technology jobs, and we are left with pure service jobs. We sell each other insurance, financial services products, and healthcare. If we socialize medicine and move towards a single-payer system, then we'll put a ton of insurance jobs on the chopping block. If we take the profit motive out of pharmaceuticals and hospital systems, there will be less incentive to do drug research, to build MRI clinics, and for people to become healthcare professionals. IT was supposed to be the savior, but we gutted that with H1Bs and foreign outsourcing. We better think three or four times before we gut the healthcare and insurance industries.

In our culture it is simply a word that is used to stifle meaningful discussion, because in our historical context the word 'socialism' carries connotations of the Red Scare, the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming, etc. It hardly even matters what the word actually means anymore.

It is a word that has become a rhetorical weapon to raise innate fears of foreign takeover by an old enemy. It is devoid of meaning in the modern context, a transparent tool to generate an emotional knee-jerk fear reaction and divert discussion away from the actual merits of the issues at hand.

It is, in short, a quick and easy way to avoid debate.

One reason to be scared of socialism - government workers. I'm pretty convinced that--if it wasn't for me working 6-days a week in the summers between 1985 and 1989--no patents for electrical equipment would have been issued and all societal progress would have stopped. My wife had similar experiences in government. Mostly with supervisors who had converted supply closets into offices so they could close the door and watch their soaps in the middle of the day.

An example of a convenience we currently enjoy, but which could never be implemented in today's political climate:

The public water supply. Got my water bill today, it was like $3 per 100 cubic feet or something. Go buy water on the private market and you'll pay $1.29 for a 20oz plastic bottle of the stuff.

Now, if you tried to introduce the idea of a 'public' water supply today, it would be politically impossible: you'd get a massive organized mobilization against it. People would be mobbing town hall meetings, torches and pitchforks in hand, wailing about this 'tyranny from the faucet', the feared notion of socialized, communist, "guvmn't water". Complete with rumors that the government will take away your private water, and make decisions for you about where you'll use it, dictating how many cups you can feed your kid, water the ficus with, etc. They would talk up a huge threat of bureacracy, of how you'd have to fill out 17 forms in triplicate every time you want a cup of water and how some bureaucrat would take 3 months to give you permission to have it.

Know the odd thing? The reality is that I turn my faucet on, and water JUST COMES OUT. Isn't that just NUTS? No complicated forms, no lines to stand in, nothing like that. It just works. Which goes against everything we've been told the last couple of decades, that government services , the public sector, etc. absolutely don't work.