I think this binary view that a government is either socialist or capitalist is unhelpful. Because those two words are just labels that mean different things to different people, they tend to obscure rather than clarify. They have become nothing more to most people than an ideological rallying cry used cynically by politicians and blindly by partisans.
But the worst thing is that they form a barrier to rational discourse by turning what should be an informed debate about the costs and benefits of specific policy proposals into a holy war of good vs. evil fueled by ignorance and invective.
We all are the beneficiaries of both "capitalism" and "socialism". We all enjoy the products of others' ingenuity and invention that improve and enrich our lives. But consider the fact that all of that is possible only because our businesses are built upon a vast infrastructure that we have established with great effort and maintain at great cost.
Public schools, libraries and roads are of course the poster children of this infrastructure. But the maintenance of private property, the enforcement of contract law and the ability to maintain law and order are no less important.
Now if you look at the goals of what people are currently deriding as "socialism", I believe it is really just seeking to expand and fortify the infrastructure that undergirds our prosperity. For example, when public education was first established, 8 years of schooling was considered an adequate foundation for the average person to lead a moderately prosperous life. That is no longer the case, not because people are more stupid, but because the world has become vastly more complicated and sophisticated since those mainly agrarian times. Then, many years ago, to again secure domestic prosperity, we began providing every child with 12 years of education regardless of ability to pay. Now a high school education will no longer secure prosperity for the average person and so additional education is necessary, as any job seeker can attest to. Providing access to higher education regardless of individual ability to pay is a policy issue. It is a proposal that comes with costs and benefits. It may be that the benefits substantially outweigh the costs, as I believe they do, or it may be that the costs outweigh the benefits. But that is a discussion that should be conducted as much as possible on the basis of empirical data and rational debate.
Yet we heedlessly throw around highly charged words like "socialism" and "crony capitalism" deliberately to inflame and enrage. Whereas if we were to stand down and conduct a rational debate in measured terms for more than two seconds, we might actually be achieve cost-effective measures that deliver good value.
Health care is another area of concern. We have reached the point now where even relatively affluent people must often delay or forego necessary medical care because of financial concerns. Nobody is well served by this. We can argue that health care is overpriced because of government meddling or because of the AMA or whatever. But the causes of this are neither simple nor easily conveyed in a sound bite. The fact is, in a wealthy country, there is no good reason why an accidental injury or disease should bankrupt a family. Yet this happens all too often. No one benefits from such an occurrence. But this is a problem that is amenable to treatment. Many countries get healthcare right: an efficient, cost effective service available to everyone, not for "free" (another loaded word), but accessible regardless of ability to pay. In other words, health care is reliably available and provided as an infrastructure-based service. Everyone benefits when sick and injured people can be effectively treated without incurring hardship.
Now, this may or may not be everyone's opinion, and that is fine. But let us debate the issue rationally and on an empirical basis, not by labeling healthcare as "Socialist" and making it needlessly difficult to solve the pressing problems of cost and availability that are reducing our prosperity and hampering our ability to participate in the global marketplace.
One last thing: capitalism is an important, even vital ingredient in our success. Without it, we would indeed still live in medieval conditions and all be incomparably worse off. But we must remember that capitalism as we have implemented it focuses exclusively on the interests of investors and shareholders. That is by law and by intention. It has resulted in many people getting rich, which is good.
But wealth also confers greater access to the levers of power, and, over time, this has resulted in the formation of public policies that favor the patrons of business and industry, their shareholders and investors, at the expense of the interests of citizens. It is costly in the short run to provide education and health care to all. And so powerful corporations do what they are required to do for competitive reasons and by law: act in the best interests of their investors and shareholders. But sometimes, by exerting influence on lawmakers to create an environment that is amenable to their own business interests, the end result is detrimental to the interests of citizens.
This does not have to be the case. Win-win solutions can often be crafted with a little give and take. In the end, I believe corporations actually harm themselves in the long term by failing to invest in the infrastructure that supports them. Only a strong central government has sufficient power to counter the strong influence of business in such a way that is in everyone's long-term interests. But because we make a holy war out of it, we polarize voters and turn our political process into a circus of increasingly inflamed rhetoric, a vast one-dimensional tug of war that hampers good, effective governance. The result is that we continue to undermine and underinvest in the very infrastructure that forms the foundation of our mutual long-term prosperity.
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