Is socialism bad?

Great Debates
1

My father’s version of conversation these days is recounting whatever he’s been watching on television news. One of his favorite topics is how this country is becoming/going to become increasingly socialist.

After some reading, I’m not convinced that some socialist tendencies (such as nationalization of some sectors and more market regulation) is a bad thing. However, my knowledge base is limited to what I remember from civics class (which ain’t much) and what I read on Wikipedia.
So, please fight my ignorance. What is bad/good about socialism? How does it compare to capitalism?

2

The U.S. military is a socialistic system. Ask your Dad if he thinks it works.

3

The argument in your dad’s favor is that if things get too socialist, it can reduce the incentive to excell and innovate. “To each according to his needs, from each according to his ability,” can have the effect of “I need” pushing out “I can do.” It can lead to “why bother, Big Brother is going to take most of it away anyway, to give to others.”

That said, pure capitalism is not an ideal, either, as it leaves those who truly cannot help themselves – children and the infirm being the prime examples – by the wayside. And it leaves even the hardest worker at the mercy of potentially exploitative employers.

4

Socialism is in-between Capitalism and and Communism.

What I was taught growing up is that basically:
Capitalism - The means of production are privately owned.
Communism - The means of production are government owned.
So, of course then, with socialism, some of the means means of production are government owned, and the the rest are privately owned.

So that’s one of the reasons why some people don’t like Socialism. They see it as putting us on the path towards Communism.

Also, some people use Socialism and Communism synonymously, so to them, they’re pretty much the same thing.

Some people also classify any wealth redistribution as Socialist, while others are absolutely adamant that it’s not. So whether Social security (heh), Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment insurance, and the like are Socialist or not… well, that depends on who you ask.

Also, part of what makes us more resistant to Socialism (as a country) is that we value independence a little bit more, where as most European countries value team-work a little bit more than we do (Yes, it’s a generalization, I know).

Anyway, it’s usually difficult to have a rational discussion about this topic, because a lot of people go by emotion. Someone could be just fine getting an unemployment check, but be against Socialized medicine.

Anyway, as for me, I think that government should provide services for people who can’t help themselves. So some unemployment for those who are in-between jobs, for example, I see as a good thing. I’m also thinking more and more that universal health care would be a good thing. I mean, most people have no problem using tax money to pay police and fire fighters, so why do we deserve protection against muggings and fires, let’s say, but not illness?

Anyway, that’s my 2c.

5

Socialism is simply a way of managing goods and services. It has nothing to do with regulating markets. Capitalism actually needs a certain amount of regulation to work. I personally believe that a pure socialist economy would not work very well. But neither would a pure capitalist one. I think a hybrid system such as we have, were some things such as primary education, roads, and a social safety net are socialized, and most others such as food, cars, housing, and consumer goods are bought and sold in a competitive market is the best we are going to do without both superhuman abilities and ethics.

If your dad thinks socialism is so bad, ask how he feels about the fire department, or the police. Both are socialized services.

Jonathan

6

Better yet, ask how he would feel if they were privatized. Call about a fire and hope your credit card clears .

7

I think you just described Libertarianism.

8

If you’re running a group house with a bunch of buddies, Socialism is a great model to use. Or a kibbutz, or a food co-op. Country? Not so much.

9

There is nothing inherently socialistic about market regulation. You can certainly have socialistic regulation, but there are plenty of market regulations which do not constitute socialism.

My own viewpoint is the government should probably own most public goods/services, and that government should implement market regulations to limit economic inefficiency.

And my other viewpoint is that people who like to label anything and everything socialism (such as the OP’s father seems to) probably don’t know what they are talking about.

10

Well, just as capitalism comes in flavors from hardcore laissez-faire impementations to highly moderated “fair trade”, there is socialism and then there is socialism. To try to lump all policies into one category or another begets a fallacy by simplicity and exclusion. In the most extreme forms (i.e. Marxist-Leninist or Maoist implementations of Communist socialism) it isn’t just an economic and political philosophy but an underlying cultural mechanic; it isn’t just that “the workers own the means of production,” but that the workers themselves are instruments of the State, and exist not as individuals onto themselves but live only to advance the policies of the State. (One can barely classify butchers like Pol Pot as even being Communist, as his bizarre Year Zero philosophy is probably the most successful implementation of refined nihilism in recorded history.) More moderate forms of socialism (see France or Sweden in the latter half of the 20th Century) embrace the notion that the populace is entitled to a certain minimum of services and salary despite productive ability or output, and are more or less in line with historical Christian democracy or humanistic socialism. Other systems provide extensive educational, medical, and vocational opportunities under the theory that this will overall enhance the viability and productivity of the population overall (the justification for American welfare and Medicare programs), and thus reduce the burden on the free market in a way that is equitable and effective rather than relying on the vagaries of private charitable assistance.

As for whether socialism is "bad’, I’d say that largely depends on how it is implemented and what resources exist to support the system. One definitive thing we can say about socialism is that in order to be effective it requires a high per capita income level and a broad acceptance of universal social and educational services; if a significant segment of the population is supporting said services without return benefit then there will be pushback. Socialist services also need to be well-regulated without encouraging the continuous growth of bureaucracies that oversee them. Too little oversight leads to graft and complacency; too much causes services to become moribund and ineffectual. And I think it is without question that absent of the profit motive that is core to capitalism there is little incentive from a business standpoint to perform better or innovate. While theoretical and technical developments may continue apace (typically driven by native curiosity or a desire to be renown in one’s field) the practical implementation will be slow and of indifferent quality. Witness many of the innovative science and technical developments of the former Soviet Union, and yet how poorly most were implemented.

It is also instructive to see how executive political capital for ideas that are clearly baseless and without effectiveness (i.e. Lysenkoism or The Great Leap Forward) wrought horrible damage to centrally planned economies without check. So far no “pure” centrally planned socialist economy has ever been successful by any metric, and even generally well-run centrally planned economies like the Titoist “socialism with a human face” of pre-1980 Yugoslavia, while producing better products and a more robust economy than their Warsaw Pact siblings, were still mediocre at best compared to all but the economically weakest nations of Western Europe.

Of course, unchecked capitalism, like the robber-barons of 19th Century America or the European colonial powers in South America or Africa can also leave havoc and destruction in their wake. But in general, a reasonable degree of free trade tends toward more effective market optimization, whereas artificial models intended to analyze and predict markets are rarely better than crude first order approximations of actual results even in the short term, and are often self-fulfilling (or sometimes self-defeating) prophecies.

On the whole, I think that providing a certain minimum level of social services (education, medical care, basic sustenance, et cetera) is a net positive to society as a whole, as long as the providers of such services don’t become an end onto themselves, and acts as a complement to a moderately-regulated open market.

Stranger

11

You have obviously never lived in a group home with a bunch of your buddies. :frowning:

12

There are fundamental differences between agreeing that resources for primary education and healthcare should be provided to those who need them, and insisting that the government manage and provide the delivery mechanism for those services.

For example, you could provide vouchers for poor people to purchase educational services and healthcare, or health insurance. That would be a transfer of wealth that would give them the necessary resources, but also empower them to make the best choices with those resources as they see fit.

Or, you could just give them straight cash, much like the EITC, and have them spend it any way they want. If they want to tilt the balance towards education and away from healthcare, or vice-versa, that would be up to them. Or, they could just blow it on liquor and hookers in Vegas. But at least they would be given the opportunity to do so.

That is a long, long way from socialism. My observation is that the two issues:

  1. Resources to help the deserving poor get access to healthcare and education
  2. Having the government provide healthcare and education, or regulating it

Get hopelessly conflated in discussions such as these. And they don’t need to be.

Why would you want someone else - meaning a government official - making decisions for you on your behalf? Why wouldn’t you want that power for yourself?

13

It is in the sense that it is centrally organized, based on property held in common by the whole organization, and has a from-each-according-to-his-ability, to-each-according-to-his-need ethic. However, it is not economically self-sufficient; it has few (not none, but few*) directly profitable economic functions, and depends entirely on funding from outside the organization. The real test would be a socialist country with its own national economy.

  • Military R&D programs sometimes produce new inventions. The military routinely patents these – not in hopes of making money off them, but just to avoid having to pay royalties to any other inventor who might come up with (or reverse-engineer from military prototypes) the same thing, and patent it.
14

So wait. If you create something that the military absolutely must have (or are afraid of what might happen if it falls into the wrong hands) , it can’t just come in and take it from you in the name of national defense?

Have TV and the movies lied to me this whole time?:eek:

15

We’ve had socialized education in this country now for over 150 years. One of the more unfortunate aspects of the Republican Party’s plan for this country is that they would love to take the education system and de-socialize it. But they don’t have the honesty to say that, because they know we aren’t really ready for that step (if we ever would be), so they cloak their efforts under the guise of things like vouchers, and “school choice.”

But just because socialization of a given social need works in one case doesn’t mean it will necessarily work in another. In my opinion, the closer the issue gets to something more purely economic in nature, the less workable socialization becomes, especially on a large scale. Even China is figuring that out, and they are managing an economy of over 1 billion people, so you could certainly not blame them for trying something else other than the chaos of a free-market system! Too much sharing of economic output takes away incentive to excel for too many people. Then, you get less-than-optimal output.

What confuses me is the perception by the father of the OP that this country is becoming increasingly more socialized. Quite the contrary seems to be true, really. Education is being slowly de-socialized, the government constraints on the private sector in banking and financial markets have been loosened considerably over the last three decades (with some would say predictably poor results), the airline industry remains unregulated (ask your dad if he remembers when you could fly from some place like Rochester, New York, to Las Vegas, without an intervening stop, at a set price that varied rarely), and despite efforts for some time, the medical delivery system and insurance system remain mostly unregulated. Not quite sure where the increasing socialization of the country is happening, but it sure isn’t here in South Carolina! :eek:

16

Public schools are paid for with government money. If we switch to vouchers, the vouchers used to pay the schools will be funded with…wait for it…government money. And if you hold teachers of both public and private schools to certain standards, how would that system be less socialistic than the current one?

And vouchers have come about as a response to the ever increasing poor results of the public schools, and lack of willingness on school unions to go along with any meaningful reforms.

17

The education system is a perfect example of how socialism works. We have decided in this country that everyone deserves the same level of education through senior year of high school. No matter how much money you have, you get to go to the same school as everyone else in your town.

Most people seem to feel that the public education system is overly beurocratic, provides medicore levels of service and doesn’t meet the needs of kids who are too far on either end of the bell curve (ie too smart or too remedial). Parents with money tend to move to school districts with better schools (creating virtuous/vicious cycles of affluence and poverty and fostering a socioeconomic class hierarchy by school district) or they take their kids out of the public school system entirely and send them to private school.

Teachers constantly complain that they aren’t paid enough. I mean everyone thinks they should make more, but teachers salaries are at the whim of the school board who isn’t really subjected to market forces.

So basically you get an ok level of service and no one really gets rich being a schoolteacher.
Really the big problem with socialism is the inefficiencies and coruption it introduces. In a capitalist market-based system, companies and organizations that are not profitable go out of business. Their resources and capital is then freed up to be used elsewhere in the economy. Socialized businesses tend to attempt to preserve themselves long after they should have ceased to exist. Public outcry pressures the government to continue to fund them, usually by raising taxes. And it takes away incentives to run the business more efficiently.

We tolerate certain socialized services out of a sense of “fairness”. IOW, you shouldn’t have to haggle for price when you need a fireman or policeman to come to your house. But these socialized government institutions aren’t always the most efficient. We sacrifice efficiency in order to provide a consistant level of service to everyone.

18

We had that . It is as American as baseball and apple pie.Houses had fire dogs. They were signs that were put on houses to show what fire dept. they were paying. If they came and the fire dog was wrong they left. Not only was that the American way but our Capitalists thing thats how it should be.

19

Well, that’s one argument for socializing fireman and policeman. But you are using a specific definition of efficiency here, and I can make an efficiency argument in favor of socializing fire services.

Fire services are especially prone to free-rider problems, because I can’t well afford to let my neighbors house burn down if its burning down is going to put my home in danger. If I’ve contracted with the fire service and my neighbor hasn’t, and my fireguys could easily put out my neighbors fire with no damage to my house, or I have to wait until my neighbor’s house is so fully ablaze that my house actually catches fire, then I’m going to choose the former, and my neighbor gets to free-ride off my good planning.

So, I “tolerate” fire services being socialized, not because of “fairness,” but because of the free-riding problem inherent in the provision of fire services. That is, if all fire services were privatized, there would be a positive externality problem, which means that privatized fire services have their own efficiency problems. I can do similar arguments for police services and schools as well.

20

Do you really want the rest of society to work like the U.S. military? For example, do you want the police to come and arrest you because you decided to quit your job? Do you want to spend time in jail because you mouthed off to your boss?