DJ Duk

October 13, 2004

Socialism

An economic system characterized by poverty, class envy and happy bureaucrats. Socialism is the 2nd best way (behind communism) to form a breadline. At its core socialism is the belief that anything worth doing ought to be done by the government or not at all.

Under an ideal socialism (like Star Trek, although its worth noting that the socialist Federation is still terrified of its big brother Borg communism) each person will work, be paid, and return all or most of their wage to the government through taxes. The government then provides everything they need to live in a welfare state. Aside from assuming that there is no reason for a greater than subsistence lifestyle one tiny step above that of the nomadic, reindeer herding Laplanders, socialism tends to fail because I (and many like me) am a lazy person. We, the lazy, under socialism discover over time that we can do less and less and maintain our quality of life. As we produce less and less the total amount of work getting done goes down and wealth is diminished for the entire body of people. This continues until a negligible amount of wealth is produced and everybody "earns" an equal part of less than the Laplander’s lunch money.

Socialism is especially popular with people who already do nothing for money. Poets, students, and the very rich enjoy the idea of more equally distributing everybody else's cash. Even in the collapse stage of socialism a poet can probably do better off the welfare state's dole than he can on his own.

Depending on the inherent saintliness of the participants socialism can work. Marriage is essentially a socialist institution. It’s a collective of two (non-Mormon) people who have agreed to share their property (prenuptial agreements notwithstanding) and their income equally. As this couple has children they add additional, usually nonproductive, members to their little socialist utopia. It’s typical for the younger members to be eager to leave their welfare state at home and become financially independent. It’s usually those who never leave home that like the idea of including the entire nation in their little economic collective. Even larger groups than two can have successfull socialist societies in microcosm. The problem is that the only people who ever master socialism for more than 6 people at a time usually sample the wrong Kool-Aid and visit the comet, never to return and teach more gastricly cautious economists the secrets of successful social organization. On the other hand they may resort to group disembowelment to avoid having to admit they're all (collectively) broke.

Socialism tends to run its natural course in 5 stages. Note that even a limited socialist structure will tend to reflect these stages.

1. Collectivism People in some other form of economy begin to notice that through collective action they can accomplish more than any individual. This makes sense. People will unite and work together under any system to accomplish mutual goals. One example is a medical co-op where people will group together and save money. They combine resources to buy discount supplies and the group can bring resources to assist one member who is ill while the rest are healthy. This begins to lead to socialism when people are united, against their will, to accomplish somebody else's goals. Once collective groups appear certain people realize that they can achieve a private goal by "guiding" the collective group.

2. Socialism An official social structure is put in place. This differs from a voluntary collective in that contribution to the group is mandatory. For example, our medical co-op allows people to come and go. If it becomes compulsory then people will always have the care that the co-op provides but are no longer allowed to seek individual care or to leave the co-op and go it alone or to join another. If whatever features attracted a person to a collective structure change people stuck in socialism are just stuck.

3. Utopia The truth is socialism works. At least for a while. The combined economic power of a group of people is greater than its individual members. For a while resources are plenty and everything goes well. There are no differences of opinion about how to allocate resources because the resources are plentiful. Everybody gets what they want. This is the state of being of some of the successful European Health Care systems so touted by their governments. This stage is why we haven't yet finished with experiments in socialism. While it’s an undoubted fact that every large scale (bigger than bread box, at least) socialist experience has failed its proponents can always point to the Utopia period and say, "See, it works."

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That’s enough for tonight. Wouldn't want to overload Bailey. Besides, I'm tired, I'll finish up the socialism post tomorrow.

Posted by DjDuk at October 13, 2004 01:54 AM