Explain Like I'm Five

The most common gripe I hear is that because not all labor is similar[EG: Healthcare vs Mining] there is no easy way to make sure that people are putting in the same value into the system. For people that already mistakenly believe there is a large group of "lazy immigrants" draining resources in the current system, this is a deal breaker. The internal logic isn't too much to swallow its just a hurdle to get people to sit long enough to hear the answer. They would rather fight over the crumbs than share the whole because somehow thats more "fair".

Decades of fox news propaganda, that's all. They tapped into the cold war talking points when it came to anything Obama campaigned on.

If everyone does better, then you're doing worse by comparison.

I want 10% unemployment and 0% interest rates. That's the magic formula where I can sexually harass my au pair and she has no choice but to put up with it.

The term "socialism" was poison since the Russian revolution and the red scare that followed. The rich/capitalists used all powers available to poison it so that even the mildest western EU forms didn't threaten the tiny amount of their exploitation of the working classes.

Because it is opposed to clasical liberalism. that is the idea that humans can choose their own direction and control their own persuit of life. 'life, liberty and property'.

socalists like to talk about capitalisn because that is an easy strawman to beat up. the fundamentals of liberty are very differnt from their conception of capitalism though and they don't want you to know just how messed up their theory realy is.

don't confuse clasical liberalism from what modern language calls liberal.

No, its means workers control the means of production.

Edit: Im getting really tired of people conflating socialism with social programs. Its not socialism when the government does something, stop saying it is.

I think the general idea of those against it is that they assume it is zero sum. Meaning, for everyone to be taken care of, the person must lose or have less.

You need a definition. You didn't define it, and people who hate it rarely define it. If nobody knows what everyone is talking about, then it's all a waste of time.

So, what do you think it means?

I think it’s fear. People fear that their country doesn’t produce enough and isn’t wealthy enough to support an army that is capable enough to keep any real or imagined enemies at bay. Add a good amount of corruption and propaganda to it, and you get a perpetual cycle where this fear needs continuous fuelling.

The worst part of it is that the fear isn’t entirely unjustified. As the Ukraine war shows, predators will try to pray on the weak, and Europe has been complacent about its own defence.

That doesn’t mean I think capitalism is the answer of course, but it is a horribly delicate balancing act to consider all concerns.

I think socialism is awesome but capitalism, when highly restrained, is more effective at generating capital.

I think a few fairly simple steps can merge the best of both.

Limit personal net worth to, say, 01 million dollars. Companies can have a networth of, say, 1 billion tops. Below that, put like 10 or so tax brackets, the more you're worth, the more you pay tax. Anything over those limits goes 100% to tax

This favors many smaller companies working together instead of one huge monster that can't even take care of itself and requires regular bailouts

The tax income will be more than enough to support a large socialist system that can take care of free education, free healthcare, etc, hell, even universal basic income

Best of capital generation,best of socialism.

Capitalist propaganda, the Nazi party's title, and the cold war. That's to keep it short.

Socialism’s critics believe that people who receive government aid become reliant on it and cease making an effort to become self-sufficient.

As someone who works in community mental health, I sadly have to admit that those criticisms aren’t entirely false. Ironically, I think the fact that the government organizations that implement these social safety nets being underfunded contributes to the problem. Because it takes so long to obtain benefits like disability (SSD/I in America), people don’t want to risk getting a job, potentially losing it, and having to go through the long, arduous disability application process again. So they just learn to be content living on disability pay and food stamps.

But that’s disability. I don’t think the same applies to just public assistance (which you can’t live off of) and SNAP.

Anyway, despite there being a kernel of truth in said criticisms, they’re largely off-base. I think a lot of the critics also confuse socialism with communism, and don’t realize that all most socialists desire is a system like European countries have, which is proven to work and not threaten capitalism. Then there are the really sick fucks who believe in social Darwinism and genuinely think poor people deserve to be so, and that it would be just for them to die off. But thankfully, those are in the extreme minority.

Socialism, as far as Marx was concerned, is a transitional stage to Communism. This is why it gets a lot of push back. Because of that connection. Worse, youve got generations of people conflating the two. And worse still, you have a few examples of people who were claiming to be socialist, who were really just using socialism for their own ends.

The reality is that Socialism is about everything being about the betterment of the people. That assets are a shared ownership, rather than privately owned. This in turn creates a fairer distribution of the wealth generated. So everyone's lives improve.

The issue, the real issue, is that socialism needs a very large government in order to work. The fear is that this would create out of control bureaucracy. With middle mangers everywhere doing middle manger things that would create a system that was slow and worse far easier to corrupt. On top of that, you have the issue of competition not being the driving force of innovation. The government would control and mandate investment and innovation. Which again comes back to the middle mangers. There is also an issue with free speech. After all, if the government controls everything, where do you go if that government doesnt see the issues that its created? And worse still, how might it handle those dissenting voices?

The reality is that no one system is "the best" and really what would work best is a mixed system. One that builds a well regulated economy while maintaining a safety net for the people. So you would have private businesses, competition, innovation combined with free healthcare, free education, unemployment support, worker rights, high taxes, and high transparency and accountability.

People hate socialism because they believe it is a right/freedom be able to privately own and control the "means of production" from tools to assembly lines to mines and groves.

Thatcher said it best: "There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty." and by economic liberty she means that ability to own / exclusively control any (non-sentient) thing.

(end LI5)

Personally, I think authoritarian socialism (sometimes called "communism") is problematic due to the authoritarian part. I think libertarian socialism (often called "anarchism") is problematic because "warlords" (selfish people willing to use violence to hoard property) will naturally arise from any sufficiently large group and I think they are best opposed via a State with a "monopoly" on violence. But, I am convinced that rent-seeking behavior has been choking Capitalism for a while and it's only gotten worse since I was born (1980)... something needs to rein it in, and I think that something has to be very democratic and significantly socialist, but I don't really have a name for it myself.

Every politically charged term ends up having highly disputed definitions, but I think most of those will acknowledge that the term has way more baggage than just the idea of taking care of yourselves and neighbors.

From Wikipedia:

Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems[1] characterised by social ownership of the means of production,[2] as opposed to private ownership.[3][4][5] It describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems.

It represents a whole set of beliefs about how the world works, in addition to political goals. Someone might broadly agree with the idea that people should be taken care of, but have strong objections about the specifics. One of those beliefs that I'll object to is the idea that just about everything should be understood as being about class conflict; I don't think that's always accurate.

The people who don't like socialism mean something else. To them, socialism is when the government takes care of you and your neighbors. This is scary and can go badly: sometimes the government does not know your needs, isn't paying good attention, or is making choices in a bad way. There are examples of governments that said they would take care of everything for everyone, and then many many people didn't get enough food.

People also worry about a little socialism, because when the government takes care of some things automatically, it means local communities don't have to worry about those things. Then the people in the community forget how to do them (imagine tasks like building houses) themselves, and that makes them more dependent on the government. This is also scary, because in an emergency (like after a flood) you might not be the governments first priority. It also means that you can more easily live in a place without being part of a local community (like a church), and that loss of close friends makes everyone more lonely and sad.

It's not clear that the people with these worries are right. Other systems also have problems, and so even if there are good concerns here, maybe socialism is still best.

Remember to look for nice people who disagree with you, and listen to their fears, needs and dreams. It is easy to end up in echo chambers, and feel like everyone who disagrees with you is dumb, evil, or crazy. But usually we only see the loudest (not the smartest or kindest) voices that disagree with us. Algorithms and popularity contests online really like to reward things that make you angry.

WKUK-Backseat