I am by no means an expert at this, but I have heard enough that I have gotten curious and went looking for myself. Socialism is a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. That sounds a lot different than what we have here which is capitalism which is an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
As someone who likes things fair and equal, yes, on the surface, I would say I like the idea of socialism, where everyone is equal and everyone gets an equal slice of the pie. The problem comes when it is time to work hard, there is no motivation in this system to outdo your neighbor. Why be creative, why try to come up with new technology if there is no reward. We have a few examples of socialism at play and we can all say the soviet union failed in the 80's, Venezuela failed in the 90's or maybe even more recently, I was just watching a report on YouTube from within Venezuela where yes, gas is super cheap, but the people have to line up for food rations which only come every other week. There is food at the stores, but the Venezuelan dollar has been trashed, it is worth nothing, so people can't really buy their own goods.
We've all seen Cuba, another example, the people seem lovely, but the imagery always includes American cars from the 50's, probably near to when we closed our borders to them. If Socialism is so great, why is most of Venezuela not doing better? Why is Cuba not making its own cars?
The truth is that for a country to be prosperous and creative, there must be free flowing knowledge and then there must be a reward, usually in the form of money, to create something that makes people's lives better. I don't understand where millennials in college started thinking that sharing everything was for the better? Just in a very small example, a friend of the family says she is for this socialist movement yet she is aiming her studies at the medical field. I have to ask "why would you put yourself through a hard eight additional years in school so that you come out the other end and the government says "ok, teachers and doctors should make the same amount of money." I know that teaching is a noble profession, but the knowledge a doctor has to gain has to be worth at least 4-5 times the pay of a teacher. I have no disrespect for a teacher but no way are the two in the same field of play.
I personally still believe in good old capitalism. One buys what one can afford and that is how the system works. It is by no means a perfect system, but I believe it is key to ensuring humans keep pushing forward. We won't get off the planet and into the stars as travelers with a bunch of people who only care about working 4-5 hours a week and a good supply of weed.
It is all I have known to teach my boys, work harder than the next knucklehead and hopefully you will be rewarded for your efforts. That is how life has worked for the most part.
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