Not evil, just imperfect.
people struggle to understand what is politics, and what is economics. they see the first one as just s bunch of guys with suits and ties giving speeches , backstabbing each other and occasionaly declaring war. politics. economics, they see as a bunch of suits sitting in offices and deciding if this is going to go up or if that is going to go down. ya know...economics.
neither of these visuakisations is accurate.
politics is loosly defined as the system in which decisions about socieity’s needs are acheived and how the power to implement these decisions is drawn . how that is accomplished may vary greatly...
economics is even more unsatisfying. economics is simply the underlying method in which resources are allocated. again, there is more than one way to skin a....well..more than one way to spread the butter over the toast.
i am starting with these two definitoons, because the question of capitalism vs. socialism is both a politican an economical question.
lets look socialism first. it hurts to see other people in need. it feels wrong to see immense disparities, especially if they evoke a personal memory of a similar need or want. socialist thought is nobal in that it tries to find a way to make sure that such gross inequality will be abolished. sadly, socialism in all its forms has shown a massive gap between the ideals and the way they turned out. here the pilitical organisation is partially to blame: be it massive superpowers, or small communes cooperatives and trade unions, we can’t seem to get people to universally strive for a utopia. coarsing people to devote their lives to a rejection of the individual need , indoctrinating them to hate, and subjecting them to repressive laws or norms, will invariably backfire. there will be abuse, corruption, waste and indifference. people that are supposed to seize the means of production will care very little for them, once the respobsibility of constantly thinking about it weighes them down. furthermore, the strong ideals of parents will not be echoed by tje children, but the reality of a repressive culture will depress them greatly. socialism struggles to find incentives, lacks efficiency, personal innitiative, innovation and waste. in my wanders upon this wastland i have lived among socialist communities (i am not including state-wide regimes, like north korea, because it would just be too extreme of a negative example) and find that they do not live up to the goals they were founded upon. it is sad to admit it, but utopias are found only in science fiction and not possible realities.
capitalism as an extention of liberal thought is just as grand and just as doomed. it assumes that people make rational decisions, and that their decisions would reconcile their self interest with morality. the result would be a world that would be as free as possible, where everyone does their best, acts fairly, collaborates when required, and strives to better their personal lot and indirectly that of the greater good. nice idea for sure.
sadly again, things are a bit trickier to work out in reality. for starters: most people are definitely not rational. i am no exception, if you ever saw me in front of an all you can eat buffet. we are greedy, we are selfish, we are destructive, jaded, insensitive, bigotted, and hateful. how is that for a strong foundation? freedom, as COVID has demonstrated is something that should be tempered with reason. if we can’t get people to wear masks as a precaution, how could we hope to get them to be decent yet competitive actors? the answer , of course is the creation of a policeman. a regulator that will suspend freedoms if they are endangering others. cooarsive measures need to be taken to curb the party just enough so the neighbors can get some sleep and no one drinks paint thinner.
sadly, “policemen” are just people too, and they are pliable as the rest.
so capitalism is disfunctional and socialism is a mess, and all is lost.
but we need to live somehow. the answer , is somewhere in between. a gray, depressing area that lacks the shine of freedome, or the promise of utopia. no wonder no one wants it. it’s too boring. it’s too weak. it’s a compromise. a policy-induced yawn.
the maxi-min is just not sexy. it is convoluted, it is far away in Eggheadland. but it boils down to this: of every possible choice of action, consider the worst outcomes. then of all those miserable outcomes , choose the course of action with the least awful possible result and not the best outcome of all wonderful oucomes.
it works on a Murphy’s law kind of level: where things could go wrong, they WILL go wrong.. and this is actually the world we live in. a combined model, allows for freedome, but it draws lines, and needs enforcment. there could be a grand vision, but it will not see trampling on people as eggs that must be cracked to make an omlette. there are social walfare, and nationally facilitated services like health, education, sponsored retraining, and infrastructure investment.
this is , again not a sexy revolution, or a sleazy, escapist binge. it is the stuff that needs to get done. now, how is this middle way achived?
politics, sad to say...