@edgarblythe,
edgarblythe wrote:
I understand how the word 'socialism' makes the dogs bark. I only label myself a socialist in some social media interactions. I would not blast it all over the place when so many don't understand it. Arguments against socialism work like the insidious notions hammered in about black welfare ladies driving in Cadillacs to procure racks of lamb for their dozen or so multiparented offspring, which drives others to harp until welfare gets gutted.
The reason people don't understand it is because they only want to use it to ridicule their enemies, but not to understand how capitalism naturally leads to various forms of socialism, private as well as public.
Public socialism just makes it obvious enough to criticize. Notice, for example, that no one was complaining about corporations and health insurance companies forming insurance 'societies' in the form of 'employee group plans' before ACA. Once ACA mandated health insurance, however, it was the government involvement that had people crying 'socialism.'
Ultimately, insurance is a form of socialism whether voluntary and private or public and mandatory. That's why it made sense when MLK said that the US already had socialism for the rich and rugged individualism only for the poor.
If we lived truly in liberty, we would all be economically self-sufficient and then studying medicine, politics, law, etc. would all be voluntary activities free people engaged in for the public good. They wouldn't need to charge money for charity, because they would be independently economically self-sufficient.
Capitalism thus steers individuals' choices of how to allot their time and effort and whose interests to serve (i.e. those that pay). Hardly anyone even pays a moment of thought to what the ideal of a truly liberty-steered society would be like, where people are truly free to obey only one master and not two, as the Bible describes service to money.
