Reality Gets in the Way of Idealistic Socialism and Capitalism
I used to consider myself a straight-up, dyed in the wool, freedom-loving libertarian. I’ve since dropped that label as my views have changed quite a bit. Instead, I’ve tried to put greater emphasis on getting away from party-based group think, getting out of social media-induced echo chambers, and steel-manning the opposition to the best of my ability.
As a result, I’ve found a lot of things wrong with my previous capitalistic and libertarian ideas, and I continue to see a lot of things wrong with many of my friend’s socialist ideas.
Caveats Before Starting
There are many different brands of capitalism and socialism — I’m doing my best to contend with some of their most popular ideas.
Each point here probably deserves its own article, or maybe even its own book, sorry, this is a shortlist for now.
What Capitalists Overlook
- We have hard evidence that while the market is great at producing wealth, it doesn’t simultaneously optimize for good results in other desirable areas. For example, while the market makes us rich and productive with oil, it can destroy the environment and breathing conditions if left unchecked.
- “Property” is a concept defined by a collective society. Property doesn’t exist without a governing set of rules to protect it. Capitalists make a special exception to their rule of “more government =less freedom” when it comes to protecting private property. To them, private property is a necessary component of freedom, I would argue those concepts are orthogonal.
- We likely live in a deterministic universe, where free-will is an illusion. Assuming this is the case, the ideology of a meritocracy is flawed. A meritocracy might be effective, but the moral ideology is flawed.
- The anti-trust laws that protect against monopolies are necessary. We live in a world of finite resources. When a resource is monopolized the free market thesis is destroyed. If only I have access to water and you don’t, you’re my slave, not my client.
- A purely free-market capitalist society is not a true meritocracy. It’s not a game of chess where the best player wins and all you bring to the table are your brain, brawn, and your force of will. It’s more like a game of Texas Hold ’em where there’s some strategy and skill, but there’s also a good amount of luck and it doesn’t hurt if you started with a fat stack of cash.
- A certain level of inequality of outcome is a problem, even from a purely selfish point of view. At some point the masses get violent.
What Socialists Overlook
- The government is basically terrible at everything it does. Every government website has the worst UI/UX I’ve ever seen. The DMV is perhaps the least efficient organization on the planet. It makes sense, they don’t have to do a good job to stay in business.
- The free market is the best economic system we know of for fostering innovation and increasing the overall wealth and economic well being of humankind.
- A world with less equality of outcome but an overall higher standard of living is better than a world of poverty where everyone has the same amount of nothing.
- Giving the government more power and wealth is a dangerous game. It’s naive to assume strong socialism (i.e. communism) can be implemented without serious risks. There’s a reason most countries that have tried to completely socialize have gone the totalitarian route.
- The “means of production” are becoming less and less important, generally speaking. I don’t need a factory and an expensive set of tools to start a business, though this argument would have held more water in the 1800s. Economies are becoming more service-based, and manufacturing isn’t the most lucrative part of the economy anymore.
Disagree? @ me on Twitter.
