Socialism is a symptom, not a system. Socialism can exist in any system, including capitalism. So, it’s essential to understand socialism is not the antithesis of capitalism, much of our capitalism is oligarchically controlled socialism. Examples abound, right here in the U.S.
The sad part about socialism is that it reduces the ability to find and breed outliers of innovation capable of changing the world for the better. Socialism by definition relies on social acceptance and conformance to group-think, which at best can yield continuous downstream optimization with inevitable sub-priming as a last resort. Socialism will systematically refute any upstream innovation, i.e., protest, needed to change the world.
To get this crazy notion out of the way: giving all people access to affordable health care is not socialism, even though many countries which some describe as socialistic provide it. Healthcare and other public provisions are merely ways to establish optimal individual freedom with the protections and guardrails supplied by collective freedom. No freedom can exist without paradoxical rules of collective freedom.
Socialism is a consequence, not a cause of a lack of a meritocracy aligned with evolution. Much depravity of reason is the outcome of such fundamental confounding.
The confounding of terms and definitions are thrown around in economics with everyone having their interpretation is the reason why our popular religions of economics are so meaningless, and the debates are endless. One ought not to debate the outcome of a definition without agreement on the meaning of the description.
Hence the reason why I am reinventing the playbook of what economics is supposed to do.
