CommentsONE MAN’S OPINION-Socialism is “a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.”
Is This Different from “Democratic Socialism?”
Politicos love to confuse voters so they can present themselves as givers when, in reality, they are takers. Democratic socialism is no different from regular Socialism. The government owns all the means of production, all the means of distribution and all the services are centrally organized and doled out by bureaucrats.
Some politicos deceptively prefix “democratic” to Socialism so that it no longer sounds like the authoritarian systems in the Soviet Union or Mainland China. That does not alter the basic political truth. “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” (Lord Acton 1887) By its nature Socialism concentrates power at the top which is inherently anti-democratic.
Medicare is not Socialism
For Medicare to be Socialism, we would have to end all private doctors including HMO physicians and physicians under PPOs and have every doctor working for the federal government. Each hospital would be a federal facility. Quite likely, the nationalized hospital system would be re-arranged to be similar to the Catholic church where you would be geographically assigned a parish hospital with doctors selected by a central bureaucracy.
General Motors and all other American car manufacturers would become owned by the federal government and foreign cars would have to be banned since the U.S. government could not own foreign manufacturers. Likewise, Ralphs, Albertsons, Pavilions, etc. would cease to exist and grocery stores would stock only merchandise manufactured in government factories.
Americans Do Not Want this Absurd Socialism
Virtually no American wants this type of Socialism, but what they fail to recognize in this election is that the Democratic Socialists like Bernie have created a Straw Man type of capitalism which is as extreme as the above described form of Socialism. The Capitalism the Democrats rail against does not exist.
The Great Similarity between Socialism and Capitalism
This brings us back to Lord Acton. The closer Socialism and Capitalism get to their ideological purity, the more each centralizes power. Whether a nation falls prey to excessive concentration of economic and political power in the hands of a small elite in a capitalist society like Nazi Germany or in a socialist society like the Soviet Union, it is the absolute nature of power which makes life in tolerable.
America Is Not a Capitalist Country
Perhaps the biggest economic myth is that America is a capitalist society. It is not. Like socialism, capitalism does tend to concentrate power, but in America, we’ve had a countervailing ethos of limitation on power. The seeds of Americans’ dislike of concentration of power is in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution where every individual has inalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the government’s power is balanced both inside and outside the government.
The division of government into the executive, legislative and judicial branches was one check on power, as well as the federal nature of the system with some power held by the central government and the rest of governmental power held by individual states. The Separation of Church and State allowed religion freedom to be an independent force and freedom of the press allowed the media to investigate and report about everything – public and private.
Keynes Showed the Proper Role of the Government in The Economy
While Americans always fought against the concentration of economic power, it was not until John Maynard Keynes (Keynesianism) that the world had a coherent theory of macro-economics, e.g., government fiscal policy. Contrary to the socialist concept that the state should own everything and tell everyone what to do and what they may have, Keynes set forth the principles that describe the government’s role in the economy. It was not to own everything.
Keynesianism Has No Room for the 1% to Enrich Itself at the Expense of Everyone Else
Under Keynesianism, the government’s role was to regulate the economy the same way a person drives a car. There’s a time to accelerate and a time to apply the brakes. An idiot thinks driving is wild and rapid acceleration followed by slamming on the brakes. Keynesianism is a melt of cooperative caution in a system which functions so that each may pursue his inalienable right of happiness.
The economy ran relatively well from 1945 until 1999 - 2000, when the Dems and GOP had the bipartisan repeal of Keynesianism by ending Glass-Steagall, which permitted credit default swaps and allowed Wall Street to mess with the commodities markets. Although the forces to end Keynesianism had begun in the 1970s, it wasn’t until 2000 that we entered an era which should be called Corruptionism. Under Obama, 90% of productivity gains went to the top 1% and Los Angeles nose-dived from the nation’s most desired destination city to the most shunned urban area (although LA’s decline began in 2001 and continues today).
No Dem Dares Speak Economic Reality
Adam Smith and Lord Keynes agreed on one thing: the need to protect the Price System. Dems refuse to admit the existence of the Price System because it inherently refutes the notion of government ownership of production and services. The GOP won’t speak about it since the 1% want to charge as much as possible with no regard to whether their prices are fraudulently inflated. Thus, Americans live in an information vacuum when it comes to the Price System.
The only way any economy can properly function is for every individual to have rapid, accurate feedback on the price of everything and the individual power to act on the basis of that information. Socialism denies each individual that power. Businessmen want to know the exact cost of the supplies they buy yet they want their consumers to remain ignorant of the true price of the goods they sell The only way everyone can know the actual price of everything is by having the Supply and Demand curve devoid of fraud. The government’s role is to keep fraud out of the price system, but the Dems and the GOP want fraud in the Price System to benefit their supporters.
When Wall Street is permitted to deceive people as to the actual price of homes, we have economic disaster. In 2008, it crashed the entire economy. Today the evils are found in fraudulently inflated housing costs, the homelessness crisis, and the family millennials’ migration away from urban areas like Los Angeles.
Do we really want to change to a system where the government owns all the housing and decides whether you can have one or three bedrooms and how large your closets shall be? That is part of democratic socialism. It is a main goal of California Sen. Anthony Weiner’s anti-single-family home crusade. Do you want to shell out an extra 30% of your monthly income to Wall Street? That’s what Corruptionism is forcing families to do to live in Los Angeles.
Americans do not want actual Socialism which has become a meme meaning “we are mad as hell and won’t take it anymore.” Unfortunately, like many irate people, most voters are running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
