In theory, socialism is supposed to be ideal in all humans coming together to contribute to the common good. It's a lovely idea, of everyone being one happy family and taking care of each other. Nobody's rich, nobody's poor, and nobody's miserable or unhappy.
The reason why it doesn't work is because human beings are naturally selfish creatures. They do not feel motivated to work if they will not get a reward for it, or they will become angry when they work really hard, get fed, and then see lazy people who never lifted a finger to work, and got fed anyway. It's very demoralizing. Even worse, the only way socialism has been implemented was either through trickery or force, and you often ended up with a broken country ruled by a single dictator and his cronies, or you had a country that was broken by internal strife and ruled by anarchy before a new power came in to bring order from chaos. In both cases, they fail because they run out of other people's money, and eventually collapse economically.
Also, keep in mind that the Marx and the other guys who came up with socialism, as well as people who support it, never worked an honest day in their lives, and wanted to change society so they could sit on their asses and collect a paycheck they didn't earn, while a small group of over-worked slaves do all the heavy lifting. That's where America's going if we keep this up, and you will not see equality come out of it one bit. The entire country will become slaves to a tiny oligarchy living in Washington, all rights will be abolished, and people will be starving because the govt. will do such a good job regulating the food supply, instead of listening to farmers who know what they're doing. Can't have independence, right?
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InquiringMind (2272)
2 years ago
Socialism is about the workers owning the means of production. That's it. It has nothing to do with not working or getting something for free. What you're talking about is a welfare state, something that is often desired by people in a socialist society, like a UBI for example (more on that later). The idea is that capitalism is based on exploitation. A capitalist hires an employee. An employee uses his labor to make a chair. The capitalist sells the chair for $10. Therefore the chair is worth $10 dollars. But the capitalist can't pay the employee the $10 because there is no benefit for him, so he pays him $5. So the employee gets $5 for $10 of work in order for the capitalist to exist. This is the arrangement. It doesn't even matter if the employee is fine with being exploited (some slaves didn't mind being slaves, they had good masters), but it is exploitation nonetheless. This is what socialism attempts to solve. In the work place, it wants to make every worker an owner and operator of the enterprise so there is no exploitation. In the government, it wants a party that represents the working class, instead of large multi national corporations.
And yes, socialists have historically been the hardest working people. Socialists and communists were the blue collared workers of America. They helped to unionize America in the 30's. They have been erased from history because of anti-communist propaganda.
Lastly, the welfare state. Yes there is for example the UBI (Universal Basic Income). It gives everyone for example a $1000/mo regardless whether you work or not. It is a nice idea. There are benefits to it. But there is one major flaw. You alluded to it. UBI is based on taxes. This means that you as a worker are going to be paying for people who don't work. This is a problem, not for me, I don't mind paying for others, but generally people are going to become angry, bitter, resentful and it is going to cause division among the poor and working classes. END OF PART 1
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InquiringMind (2272)
2 years ago
PART 2
This is why I propose the idea of a UBD (Universal Basic Dividend). Unlike a UBI, a UBD is not based on taxes, it would be based on a collective ownership of resources. For example, the oil we export as country can be owned by all of us as citizens instead of one corporation, and we could get dividends based on the shares we own in that oil. We could do this with all sorts of natural resources or various other exports. The idea is that every citizen would simply own a share, just like having shares in Amazon or Apple, but this one you couldn't trade or sell, you would simply own it by virtue of being a citizen of the United States. Like any other share, these shares would pay you out a monthly dividend. We could set up a system where you essentially get the same result as a basic income; For example, every US citizen on average receives ~$5000 from the profits of the resources that belong to all of us. Because in this system they DO belong to all of us. With oil for example, instead of ExxonMobil owning the oil, we would own the oil collectively. This is just one idea. There are many ways that we could arrange society that would benefit the many instead of the few. Helping the people who actually need it, instead of propping up a bunch of parasitic rapacious oligarchs.
By the way, if you think my idea is pie in the sky, It's not. We already have it here in America and had for a long time in Alaska. Residents get a monthly dividend from oil there. It is collectively owned. And it's a Republican state.
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