Socialism Vs. Capitalism – A Fool’s Debate

Socialism Vs. Capitalism is a Fool’s Debate. The unrest surrounding economic issues in America today is quite concerning or at least it should be from a statesmen’s perspective. A jarring number of people in America feel ripped off by the political and economic power centers in tandem with each other. The wealthiest nation in the world including on a per capita basis is having economics-related social unrest? This seems unnecessary and it is. The two-sided nature of our political system is making it an impossible problem to solve though.

We have two ideological groups who have essentially boiled the problem down to the socialism vs. capitalism dichotomy. This makes no sense because that is something a nation must decide at its founding on some level or be a very slow and progressive shift. Here is why. To suddenly switch from capitalism to socialism would force a government to break its own laws. That is called a dictatorship or an oligarchy. The one thing about America that distinguishes it from an oligarchy is the democratic system of laws that cannot outwardly be subverted by government actors. In other words, the elected officials of a nation must themselves submit to the laws they create, interpret, and enforce.

To become socialist would require that a law be written that allows the government to arbitrarily determine how to redistribute resources immediately. This would of course as it always does lead to corruption in a race to the bottom. Knowing that other elected officials will pile resources into the hands of their friends, a representative would feel the need to do the same. This is how we get to a true oligarchy, the scariest of all possible outcomes for America.

Other than immediately destroying all property rights which would destroy the entire economic machine in America, the only way to get to the utopian dream of socialism by and for all of its people would be for them to go through the official legal channels in order to redistribute wealth which is difficult to do and people have a personal interest in stopping you from making slow changes that give the government more power. That isn’t socialism, but it is a very slow process to get the smartest people into positions of power who are acting on behalf of the disaffected.

This is one of the reasons why the tax system is still so messed up. “No taxation without representation”, we cried in the declaration of independence. Well, i have to pay for a CPA to understand my tax form nowadays. I am definitely not represented within a system that forces me to pay it in order to understand how to pay it more. That is a country that is run not democratically but financially. A country that is run by its financial system which rests above a strong legal system can be as corrupt as a socialist oligarchy, so i choose to consider America an oligarchy despite my earlier point that it technically is not one.

The point in all of this is to say that America needs to find a way to redistribute wealth without destroying its legal system and rendering us submissive to fascism as it seems to be doing now. By fascism, i mean a country in which leaders are allowed to break their own laws to reach their goals. There appear to be increasingly prevalent inclinations towards moving America to this type of system and it is coming from both sides of our political aisle.