this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Capitalism has given a lot of people out there a raw deal: low wages, increasing gap between the rich and the poor, home ownership is out of reach to many, healthcare is unaffordable to many, having a family is prohibitively expensive, we own almost nothing and rent almost everything, even basic necessities like food, water and clothing are painfully expensive. What's more, when you look at the systems in place today, it appears that these aren't bugs, but features.
I'm a socialist because I believe that society ought to use its collective power and money to guarantee all of its people a minimum of the basic, essential things that they need to live, by subsidizing food, water, shelter, clothing, heat, electricity, data, education and healthcare.
Outside of those crucial things, capitalism is just fine, as long as people are being paid fairly for their time. And, as we've all seen, capitalism needs strict rules and guard rails to make sure that workers aren't being constantly exploited. If capitalism was working well for everyone, we were all getting paid fairly for our time, and people could take care of their needs (not to mention their wants), then nobody would have any reason to care or complain about capitalism. But sadly, as it is today, capitalism is just not working for a lot of people, and many people out there are not even having their basic needs met (even despite getting an education, taking out loans, getting a job, getting a second job, working hard, etc.).
To me, creating a prosperous and happy society is much more complex than picking capitalism or socialism, and some mix of both is probably the best of both worlds.
There is actually not much separating capitalism and socialism other than workers being in control of the means of production.
Socialism doesn't have anything against markets. Socialism doesn't have anything against organizational structures. What it does have issue with is workers not having any democratic say in how their workplaces operate and who they choose to do business with.
That's the thing, not a lot would have to change, other than putting legal protections and norms in place for workplace elections and so on.
There is nothing preventing anyone from starting a worker-owned collective. The fact that they don’t, while having the freedom to do so, indicates that the typical arrangement of wage labor is consensual. It’s what people choose.
If socialism requires an arrangement other than the one they would freely choose, then socialism requires a non-free market where people are forced into economic arrangements they wouldn’t freely choose.
So socialist may not in principle have anything against markets, but the fact that the implementation of socialism requires curtailing markets means it does have something against markets in practice.
As someone who started and still works in a co-op, it's because it's hard. Banks don't understand worker coops and won't lend money to you without a real person to attach the risk to, which means founders have to take an enormous risk which it can be hard to compensate them for. The legal structure isn't common so you are limited in the lawyers who can set one up for you. Others have mentioned the cost problems - I started a software dev coop so we didn't have a large capital outlay but it did cost nearly 10k just in setup costs.
It took a lot of work to get to where we are, with little supporting resources. In contrast, I started an LLC in half an hour and $150 registration fee to the government. So no, it not just "what people choose".