Who Would Choose Socialism?

https://reason.com/1978/05/01/who-would-chose-socialism/

by barry-cotter • 3 years ago

21 61 3 years ago

reason.com

tokai• 3 years ago

(1978)

sam_lowry_3• 3 years ago

It would be helpful if someone compared this to the contemporary kibbutz movement.

Are there still the same number of people? Rising? Declining? Morphing?

What changed after Kibbutz crisis [1]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz_crisis

ZeroGravitas3• 3 years ago

(1978)

Note, old Reason was pretty wild in content and contributors:

"Did Reason Really Publish a "Holocaust Denial 'Special Issue'" in 1976?"

https://reason.com/2014/07/26/did-reason-really-publish-a-ho...

Another of that issue's contributors, Gary North, would later be excoriated in this 1998 Reason article for arguing in favor of violent theocracy and the stoning of gays and others.

aww_dang8• 3 years ago

Disclaimer and background:

Reason isn't my favorite libertarian outlet. The pejorative commonly used is "beltway libertarian". There's a divide between the Rothbardians and the Koch, Reason and Cato types. Even today, you can find a somewhat recent crusade against Hoppe by a Koch funded academic Phil Magness. Of course Reason uncritically gave airtime to this crusade.

That said, whenever there is a vaguely free-market publication submitted here, the guilt-by-association comments seem to come out of the woodwork.

Interesting that the same is not true for CNN, BBC or the New York Times articles. They all have a long history of printing horrible deceptions. We could squabble over these past misdeeds or discuss the article at hand on the merits.

pydry3• 3 years ago

That said, whenever there is a vaguely free-market publication submitted here, the guilt-by-association comments seem to come out of the woodwork.

Try bringing up communism and see what happens. It'll be all guilt by association with various dictators concerned more with with personal power than communism (i.e. exactly like capitalist dictators).

The libertarian movement was largely dragged from obscurity in the 80s by the Kochs during their fights with the EPA.

That's where all that nonsense about hairdresser licensing got its headwinds. It was entirely an investor driven ideology, with its roots in letting rich businessmen enrich themselves by freeing themselves from the constraints of "overbearing" environmental regulations.

ZeroGravitas3• 3 years ago

I pretty regularly see people bring up the NYT's record and don't really see a problem with context being provided.

Maybe CNN and the BBC are more often submitted here due to the actual news they are covering rather than as part of an agenda that they are continually and explicitly expounding and so need that context less?

dragonwriter• 3 years ago

Claiming an opposing bias (“Reason isn’t my favorite…”) to lend credence to your primary argument is the opposite of a “disclaimer”.

_vbnz• 3 years ago

Seems weird to pit socialism against free markets.

There's nothing about disallowing private ownership of the Earth's common resources, natural monopolies, etc. that stops having free markets everywhere else.

If anything, allowing that is what corrupts free markets - as even with privatisation, you never have a real free market on the railways, highways, or electricity grid because we can only build a limited number of them and can't support multiple disjoint networks. But those corporations can then use that captive market for an unfair advantage entering other markets / verticals.

I think the best solution would be free markets and liberalisation, except in natural monopolies, and a lot of taxation against accumulated and inherited wealth (not income) to provide a level playing field and economic mobility.

avereveard• 3 years ago

I'm ok with high taxes for sale and redistribution, but I don't think they have such large impact on economic mobility, at least at the top. After all real tax pressure on companies has been steadily going down, but the rate of change in the fortune 100 had been steadily increasing

pydry3• 3 years ago

Economic mobility != fortune 500 companies being swapped out with one another. Even more so as people increasingly opt out of individual stocks and just end up buying VTSAX or similar.

It almost seems like a metric designed to mislead about economic mobility in fact. Where did you read about it?

nivenkos3• 3 years ago

I mean economic mobility like making it easy for people to switch jobs, move city, work for startups, etc.

So separating healthcare coverage from your employment is one important step, as is providing modern, in-depth STEM + Medicine education so people are able to work in highly skilled jobs where we really need them.

That's a big part of driving disruption and progress.

pydry3• 3 years ago

you never have a real free market on the railways, highways, or electricity grid because we can only build a limited number of them and can't support multiple disjoint networks

Search indexes too - the electricity costs alone for running one are prohibitive.

deadpannini• 3 years ago

They won't always be (prohibitive).

aww_dang8• 3 years ago

As the article demonstrates, there's nothing preventing socialists from voluntarily choosing to live in socialist communities, inside of the context of a market oriented economy. The conclusion is that most people simply prefer not to.

nivenkos3• 3 years ago

But what is a "socialist community" in that respect?

The only thing I can think of that's achievable is worker co-ops, and a lot of start-ups are like that for early employees and founders.

the_third_wave2• 3 years ago

There's nothing about disallowing private ownership of the Earth's common resources, natural monopolies, etc. that stops having free markets everywhere else.

What are "the Earth's common resources"? Is farmland one of those? What about forests, are those part of those "common resources"? If the answer is "yes" your claim of there not being any hindrance between Socialism and "free markets everywhere else" falls flat since it would not be possible to have a free market in essential goods - food and shelter.

For where it concerns "natural monopolies" I tend to agree. As to "a lot of taxation against accumulated and inherited wealth (not income)" I mostly disagree since this is a big disincentive against saving and living within one's means. Parents who want to take care of their children to help them on their way would be punished for their thriftiness (which turns "income" into "wealth") to finance slackers and spendthrifts, the classical dilemma which gave rise to the likes of Ayn Rand writing "Atlas Shrugged". Such a system does not promote economic mobility either since it takes away the incentive to become mobile - why bother when the state provides "equity"?

6510• 3 years ago

you never have a real free market on the railways, highways, or electricity grid

My philosophy is to have a system that monitors innovation done in a sector and if it is deemed insufficient we turn it into a government department (and pay a reasonable price) The government department is compared to private industry in other countries, if performance is deemed insufficient it will be privatized. (with privatized I don't mean given away for 1 euro) It should continue to have the same employees after the transition unless it switches between public and private and back to fast. Then people should be replaced and shuffled around at all levels.

To use the railroad example, if the company is able to find funds to stay on the cutting edge technically, in service level, price and reliability it should [most definitely] stay a company. If it is just sitting there not doing much of anything besides maximizing revenue we might as well have the government run it.

If we really need the service (as is the case with railroads) and it needs bailing out we give each tax paying person or entity an amount of shares that scales with the amount of tax they paid.

PrimeMcFly4• 3 years ago

Capitalism just has too many advantages, and closer mirrors human nature with our desire to take risks and build our own ideas.

Socialism takes too much control away from people, stifles creativity, and IMO doesn't mach human nature.

A hybrid system is ideal, or something even new that takes what works from both.

For starters, a wealth and income threshold is needed. No individual human needs hundreds of millions of dollars let alone cash, and none of them directly earned or deserve that much. Everything past the threshold can be redistributed.

Convolutional• 3 years ago

Capitalism just has too many advantages, and closer mirrors human nature

It mirrors human nature? From the time of the early cave paintings tens of thousands of years ago to the rise of the class system 10,000 years ago, social classes did not even exist. Even 1000 years ago there were no capitalist societies.

Odd how an economic system which "mirrors human nature" is so recent.

In France I watched the yellow vests protest economic conditions and then the more recent strikes. Lula just took over in Brazil, and most (not all) of Latin America is run by governments of a like mind. Also 2022 did not see an expansion of trade, but Russia being cut off from it, and steps to cut China off from it (chip ban). The capitalist economic system may have a short life span.

snvzz3• 3 years ago

Public universal health, transport, education, basic housing (bed and desk, with shared showers and toilets) so that nobody is homeless, I can get behind. I'd even add a small, fanless computer running open source software and with internet access.

Increasing taxes on a ladder, I can understand. High taxes (50%) past a certain point, I can understand.

Even universal income.

For starters, a wealth and income threshold is needed. No individual human needs hundreds of millions of dollars let alone cash, and none of them directly earned or deserve that much. Everything past the threshold can be redistributed.

Absolutely not. Any country that does this would have me (and most people who actually value hard work) leaving.

The idea should be to provide the basics (as above) to everybody, and not more.

So that they can live a basic life, acquire skills, and potentially get an actual job and the benefits that come with it.

PrimeMcFly4• 3 years ago

"Any country that does this" would eventually be all countries.

cgrealy2• 3 years ago

Depends on how socialist you want your socialism to be.

Most countries aren’t purely socialist in the same way the US isn’t purely capitalist.

Who would want to live in a purely socialist society? Probably very few people.

Who would want to live in a social democratic society? Most of the developed world.

refurb2• 3 years ago

What does social democratic society even mean?

Canada has almost 100% public health insurance coverage, while Switzerland insurance is entirely private. The US is a mix.

The US public school system is based on where you live, while Sweden has a school voucher system where parents can choose where their kids go including private schools.

So what exactly is a social democratic society?

soco2• 3 years ago

Swiss insurance is definitely NOT private the way US understands it so let's not throw them in the mix as an argument for private insurance. It's run by private companies true, but the rules to run them are very strict, established by the state and revised periodically both by the state and by popular referendums. So, there's absolutely no free insurance market and I'm happy having it this way.

toyg• 3 years ago

"Social Democracy" is typically used as shorthand for "Social Market Economy". Which itself is obviously slightly fuzzy, technically speaking, but again is shorthand for "a mixed system where the State has a significant and proactive role redistributing wealth and identifying priorities, asserting primacy over pure market forces". How that is implemented can vary.

arp242• 3 years ago

This is the problem when people talk about "socialism", "capitalism", "free market", and these kind of terms. Almost every country on the planet today has some elements of that – barring some extreme outliers – with all sorts of different different implementations and restrictions.

Talking about these concepts in broad general strokes is worse than useless; it just muddles things. Talk about health care, or social security, or specific free market issues, or specific things like that instead.

Medicare is "socialism" and popular; it was already instituted in 1973 (when this article was written). The American people had already "chosen socialism", just not the extreme version the author seems to implicitly assume.

the_third_wave2• 3 years ago

Not socialism, that is what it is. The name is rather unfortunate as it brings up this confusion with big-S Socialism but social democracy is probably best defined as a balance between a free-market capitalist economy with a tax-financed social security system, tax-financed (e.g. Sweden, the U.K.) or through some mandatory insurance scheme (e.g. the Netherlands) universal healthcare, affordable (usually free) schooling up to ~16-18 years of age, often with some form of school choice which counteracts the ideological capture seen in some public school systems. Social democracy is not a precursor to "Democratic Socialism" (an oxymoron since it is hard to see how all private means of production can be "democratically" nationalised). It is the most likely end stage of a free market economy since it has shown to be a workable solution to the problems posed by unbridled free-market capitalism without taking away the benefits of the latter.

Have a look at one of those "happiness surveys" [1] and you'll find that the top countries in those list tend to be social democracies in some way or form. Find some Socialist countries - hint: look towards the bottom of the list - and you'll find people are less happy when the promised Utopia remains outside of reach - for them.

[1] https://worldhappiness.report/archive/

drewcoo• 3 years ago

in the same way the US isn’t purely capitalist

The US has killed, jailed, blacklisted, and otherwise denied civil liberties to people for having leftist politics. Whether that's "purely capitalist" or not, it's still not safe to be a leftist in the USA.

lucozade• 3 years ago

Whether that's "purely capitalist" or not

It's not. It's got nothing to do with capitalism, pure or otherwise. In fact, I think there's a case for saying that the US state is both very large and highly invasive in people's lives both in, and outside, the USA. And that's a very un-capitalist trait.

krapp• 3 years ago

It's never been safe to be anything but a straight white Christian male in the US, ever since the founding of this great white supremacist Republic.

cgrealy2• 3 years ago

Whether that's "purely capitalist" or not, it's still not safe to be a leftist in the USA.

I don’t disagree.

Remember that “shocking” scene from the Newsroom years ago where the main character had the audacity to suggest the US wasn’t the freedom-est country in the world?

The rest of the world just nodded and said “yeah, we know”.

Gibbon1• 3 years ago

I'll take socialism over the type of amoral rentier capitalism Reason pushes any day of the week.

HelloNurse• 3 years ago

I suppose this article wasn't meant as a parody, or is it?

derelicta• 3 years ago

Workplace democracy BAD say capitalists. Totally unbiased.

tjpnz• 3 years ago

Given the malignant form of capitalism many countries follow now could we blame them?

Why do we bail out fragile financial institutions and reward the billionaires who run them? Why does a poor person with a good idea get ignored, while a wealthy grifter with a terrible idea gets treated like the second coming of christ?

andrewclunn• 3 years ago

Is Reason low key admitting that socialism can work, but only if there is ethnic homogeneity and ideological / religious unity? Somewhere between the "Socialism never works!" and the "Real Communism has never been tried!" flame war, the "What about national socialism?" question invariably emerges. Then everyone flees because the right wing doesn't want to be associated with Nazis, and the left wing doesn't want to admit what functioning socialism actually entails.

Is my post bashing Reason and the selective memory of the right, conflating all socialists (and modern Israel) with the Nazis, or advocacy / apologism for national socialism? Well that all depends on your own bias as you read it.

azubinski• 3 years ago

"The kibbutzim are now a very comfortable alternative"...

"Robert Nozick ... teaches philosophy at Harvard. He recently spent a year in Jerusalem".

Why is this so funny?

WeylandYutani• 3 years ago

Anyone who doesn't earn enough money to live in a gated community with private police.

But hell even rich people want socialism. Poor people carry diseases that they can spread so clean drinking water was installed in the slums.

gibikahi• 3 years ago

What a stupid article.

Even this does not enable us to disentangle (imagined) self-interest from our topic: the desire to participate in socialist interpersonal relations of equality and community.

Why would we want to "disentangle" material benefit? Material benefit is the whole entire point.

these communities have been widely admired for performing the important functions of... Jewish self defense...

Going mask-off here. Socialism is when imperialism.

The writer obviously started with the agenda to justify Zionism and capitalism, and the article is a thin argument in favour of his preconceptions.

freediverx• 3 years ago

Reason: the propaganda rag for libertarians.

Who Would Choose Socialism?

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