Why I dislike socialism

 So, I've written articles expressing my dislike of socialism before, but I think the Alex Gourevitch article really got me digging deep into why I dislike socialism, and I will be walking through that in this article.

So, as a believer in indepentarianism and Widerquist's Justice as Pursuit of Accord, it doesn't inherently matter to me if we have capitalism or socialism in the sense that both are coercive systems that force me to participate. Capitalism does it in a more lax way, using my natural needs for things like food and shelter against me, and socialism does it through forcing people to participate more directly. If I had to choose between the two, I'd say I actually prefer capitalism. And capitalism also provides more individual freedom for people in most situations. That's not to say capitalism doesn't have problems socialism claims to solve. Like insane inequality, but like I've discussed relatively recently, I feel like a lot of leftists are more interested in punishing those they deem living extravagant, than legitimately improving peoples' lives.

First, to define socialism, I'm going to define it as a form of democratic or social ownership of the means of production. This ranges from market socialism, all the way up to a command economy. I will be discussing multiple kinds, so we'll see what issues I have with each specifically. But first, I want to discuss the theory a bit. Socialists think that the problem of capitalism is that each business is like a mini dictatorship. And that most peoples' live or organized in a rigid hierarchical fashion in which they have no freedom and autonomy over their own lives. Their lives are dictated to them by a boss, and they are told what to do every minute of the day almost. And I kind of have to agree, it's why im an indepentarian. I certainly don't approve of the idea of being unfree and having your life dictated to you by a boss. But...doesn't socialism just change who dictates your life to you and why? Replacing a boss with a cooperative, or the state, might sound more just in theory, but if you're not free to not participate, you're still unfree in my opinion. Having a democratic say in your own life might be better than having it dictated to you, but it isn't giving you autonomy, as long as a requirement to participate, whether formal or informal, exists, you're not free in my mind. And this is why I'm not super warm on socialism.

That said, let's look at market socialism. Market socialism is the idea that we maintain a market system, but that traditional businesses are replaced with cooperatives. While I believe this system can work, heck, Richard Wolff, the Marxist professor who has a podcast I sometimes listen to often promotes worker cooperatives as a viable replacement of traditional capitalist businesses, honestly, how much really changes? As I've said before, a lot of pressure put on people in a capitalist business isn't always from a boss, but from coworkers. If a coworker isn't working as hard as the others, they will be bullied and shamed for it. You have some businesses that have unlimited vacation days, for example, but hardly anyone takes much vacation time, because if they do their coworkers will rat them out for being lazy. So even without a boss exerting pressure themselves, you can still be subject to a hostile work environment from theoretically equal coworkers who outnumber you. As long as your paycheck is tied to the institution, will things improve? Formally, coercion might be "solved" according to some due to the democratic nature of those businesses, but there's still plenty of room for informal coercion, or even entire hierarchies to form without them being formally recognized. I know I've heard this happens in Valve, which is said to be a flat organization. While Gabe Newell is the boss, everyone under him is supposedly equal, but are they really equal? According to bad reviews from ex employees, no. There's tons of informal hierarchies and cliques, etc.

More state based socialism isn't much better. If the state takes over an economy, it might manage your work place directly. And while you can vote in the government, much like today will your vote mean anything? And then you gotta keep in mind, with government socialism, you need to replace markets with an entirely new system. So new incentive structure, tons of new bureaucracies, etc. You end up with a form of command economy. And let's face it, will people be able to vote directly on issues that impact them? No, they might be subject to the will of the larger community, or even worse, unelected bureaucracies since the system is too complex to be managed by individual workers or even voters. This seems to be the problem with state socialism, like we see in the USSR. The economy becomes inefficient, sluggish, corrupt, people have no freedom, the government tells them what to do every moment of every day. Personal freedom isn't respected. And you're basically a slave to the state. All the bad things we normally hear about communism and socialism seems to come out of the overall idea of governments running entire economies. Rather than a decentralized market, subject to market forced by individuals, the government becomes a leviathan that has its tentacles in everything. And you're never truly free to live as you want. And of course, people are forced to work. And the government is now the employer. And it spies on you every minute of the day, and you end up with totalitarianism.

Now, socialists will say I'm saying "that isn't true socialism", and I'll just respond by saying "true socialism can't exist, and the outcomes in those states is the inevitable outcome of socializing an entire economy and forcing people to participate". Even if the system is intended to be democratic, that democracy might only exist on paper and not in practice. So clearly the solution isn't, for me, socializing the entire economy. Honestly, I see nothing wrong with markets. if anything, markets seem to normally be a good thing. That's not to say that "socialization" of select industries like healthcare to some degree cant be a good thing, as there are certain industries where the market fails hard, and the state has a better track record at providing healthcare in some form to people than the market, but for the entire economy? No. I mean, in capitalist countries, socialized healthcare still has some elements of markets involved. People arent forced to work for the healthcare industry, they "choose" to in a traditional capitalist fashion. Still wage slavery, but not literal slavery. Let's distinguish one as better than the other. I might rip wage slavery and capitalism all day, but it's not LITERAL slavery as would exist under another economic system that coerces you with literal active violence for not working. And often times, people have choices in healthcare all the time. In single payer systems for example, you can still choose your doctor or hospital. The government just pays for it. The government funds it but doesnt take the choice out of the market for workers or consumers. So it's not as tyrannical.

Even if you weren't forced to work under socialism, if the government decides to give you your basic needs directly, you still might be put in a situation that makes you vulnerable to having to work. With a UBI, you can choose what to spend your money on, and you can choose whatever you want. Everyone gets the same amount, and you can make it fit your situation. But socialists end up often supporting universal basic services schemes, where they would provide you with housing and food. But they might not give you any choice in what you get. They might force you to take the worst housing, or the worst food, for example, in an explicit attempt to force you to work. They will claim you're free and don't have to participate, but they would still be forcing you. Admittedly, UBI might end up in a similar situation where you might live in a bad neighborhood for a lower price, and get cheaper food that you might not like, but you'd still have more choice, and as per the last article, be free to pool your resources with others in a way that could scale much better in households than it would individually. And you'll be an equal member of those households, having an icnome that allows you to pull your weight without simply being a leech or a slacker, and allowed to leave and take your income at any time. It would allow greater freedom of association, and far more adaption to a wide variety of circumstances than in kind aid would be in most situations. If you get a house, you might be forced to share it with certain other people the government assigns to you. You might get certain food you dislike, and that's it. The government will tell you what's good enough for you, and you'll have to take it. Individual freedom is reduced under basic services.

Honestly, the best way forward is, I think, to improve on this market system. By giving people the power to say no. The problem with markets is that markets are still informally coercive. So you just fix those coercion issues, and you then give people as much freedom as possible. There's no need to remake the entire system with socialism. I'm gonna be honest, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to market socialism, as it still exists within those larger market dynamics, and it is a form of socialism that could improve freedom and autonomy in the work place, but in and of itself, it isn't gonna solve much. It might replace one authoritarian structure with another, but given our work happy culture, it's still gonna lead to tyranny by majority. As long as your income is tied to working for an institution, you're not gonna be free, whether that structure is democratic or not. It's only through an unconditional source of income that you can truly be free in my opinion. Not even guaranteed services would be as good as a UBI for most people, in most situations. We need a system that maximizes and respects individual freedom. And a UBI with certain limited additional services like universal healthcare and education (since the market sucks at those things) is best. You want a system that allows people to choose what they want to do with their lives, while exerting as little control as possible over them. That would be, to me, a form of human centered capitalism organized under indepentarian principles. Again, some level of market socialism is potentially okay too, but market socialism is largely indistinguishable from capitalism within this frame work in my opinion. Again, the key is to minimize authoritarian intervention in peoples' lives. You want a government powerful enough to give you money, and collect taxes, and implement some basic social services the market sucks at, but not strong enough to tell you what to do more than absolutely necessary. You definitely don't want government managing your life like a business tries to do. That's the road to tyranny, which is why any form of socialism more aggressive than existing social democracies or market socialism are just a no go for me.