Although
absolutes don’t tend to do well
in general, I support
Socialism over
Capitalism in
general principle. After all, the whole
purpose of Society and of a
nation is to
work together to achieve what cannot be achieved alone, and the ideals of Capitalism would throw all this away in the name of
competition and a "better life for all", forgetting that
competition is ultimately self-defeating because it results in one
group,
company,
whatever, being slightly better than all the rest and consequently
destroying its competition and establishing a
monopoly, which when
unregulated can never be good for the
general public.
After all, most
capitalists would still agree that
certain regulations are necessary to prevent
monopolies forming and
abuses of corporate power from occurring, yet in
a pure capitalist society these would not exist; the capitalist advocates the
principle “
may the best man win”, which when carried to its
logical conclusion results in the doing away with government altogether, allowing
ultimate competition and “
user-pays” philosophy to
reign.
However, when
examined such a system obviously
does not provide much benefit to the majority of people in that country.
For example, with
privatized police forces, only those who can afford it would have protection from
crime of any sort, while the monopolies that the most
aggressive and dishonest companies would eventually form in the absence of regulation would be able establish a
virtual dictatorship, likely resulting in conditions for the
average worker not unlike the
early industrial revolution.
And although capitalism would be more efficient
at first, in the end it would result in massive
redundancy and
inefficiency, as
monopolistic corporations price-gouge and every
citizen is forced to do everything in their lives for themselves, or pay others
high rates to do it. Instead of paying a small portion of their taxes to fund a
FDA-like organization to make sure their food was not
contaminated, they would have to hire someone to
do the job for them personally instead of
the nation as a whole, costing a lot more overall if they didn’t want to risk an early death due to food contaminants. This
massive inefficiency, combined with the fact that
unrestrained capitalism tends to
move wealth from the many to the few, is why I support Socialism.
Rather than fighting against the
basic tenants of society, those of
cooperation and
specialization,
Socialism works with them.
Corporations are run by the government, and rather than attempt to
merely make the most money possible, they
attempt to do their best for society. Capitalists claim that the
competition inherent in
early-stage Capitalism drives
innovation and
better services, and while that is partly true, it also drives
devious advertising,
dishonest business practices, and
corporate warfare; anything to prevent
lowering prices and
spending money on improving products, while still retaining
market share. Because of these effects,
the beneficial effects of Capitalism are greatly overestimated.
Skeptics also claim that in a Socialist society
workers will lack
motivation, but this can easily be overcome by having the government primarily
pay people on the basis of how much energy and thought effort they expend in their work, on a
linear scale (ie
work twice as hard, get twice the money), with a
bonus for especially
creative or
useful work such as
new inventions or
good art. This results in
motivation for hard work and creativity, while not
paying people of out proportion to how hard they actually work. Do CEOs really work
20 times harder than a typical example of their workers? Capitalism seems to think they do, but all that achieves is
unequal,
wasteful distribution of money and
discouragement of effort in “less important”, but still economically vital, jobs.
Instead, by paying people for
the actual difficulty of their work (and
how hard they work), Socialism encourages even people in what are traditionally considered “
bad” jobs (such as a
janitor) to work hard,
increasing overall efficiency. Efficiency is also retained in society in general by means of
specialization, resulting in less time wasted. You don’t have to go around checking prices, because you know that in buying from the government provider
you are already getting a good, fair price designed to pay for
production and
innovation, and help keep the country running,
rather than to transfer wealth to an agressively greedy few. Because
Socialism works
with, rather than
against, the
purpose of society in these ways, I feel it is, in the
long term and with
proper implementation (ie not like the
USSR), a much better
economic system than
Capitalism.