The Onion: Socialism Vs. Capitalism

Source:The Daily Review

Just to be serious for a minute or so and risk losing viewers who are expecting nothing but laughs from me and for me to be an asshole. Socialism vs capitalism, is not a real debate. Socialism, is a broad collectivist political philosophy. Capitalism, is an individualist economic system that every developed country in the world has a version of including social democracies. Britain, France, Denmark, Sweden, go down the line. The amount of major countries in the world that don’t have a capitalist system, you can now count on one hand and perhaps not need a second finger. Just chop off the other four, or save yourself from some extreme pain and point out North Korea and perhaps Syria. While you hold your other fingers down. This should really be capitalism vs Marxism, or capitalism, vs Communism.

So let’s try it this way and compare democratic socialism and use perhaps Bernie Sanders as the elected leader and not Marxist dictator. Versus what I at least call Randism, that I personally named after Ayn Rand and name Ayn their leader. You should’ve seen the ceremony, because it was beautiful. No one forced Ayn to show up, because she’s an objectivist and showed up voluntarily.

You have Democratic Socialists who say that the state or society as a whole is the most important thing. And because of that you can’t let people to be free and as individualist as they want. Because some people are just better and more productive than others, which will make the poor and ignorant look even worst and hurt their self-esteem. They say what we should do is have a big central state and not even have states and localities with much power over their own affairs either. Because if they’re free to do well than others will be free to struggle. And one part of country will be doing very well, because they know how to educate, how to build, how to regulate, how to tax and everything else. While other parts of the country will have central planners who don’t do much else than planning screw ups. And their people will suffer as a result. So you need a big central state to run things from government central to take care of the nation.

And then you have Randian’s or Libertarians, or Objectivists. Who say, “what’s mine is all mine! And anything that government take is a form of theft! And any type of regulation is a form of imprisonment.” So in a Randian system, government doesn’t tax or regulate. Just arrests criminals and imprisons them. (I guess after a fair trial) And protects the country when it’s under attack. How they even pay for that? Your guess is as good as mine. They would say tariffs, but Randian’s also believe in free trade and part of free trade is low tariffs. In a Randian system, instead of government trying to do practically everything for everybody, short of running business’s, government does practically nothing for no one. Except when a someone becomes a victim of a predator.

So you have Democratic Socialists who say that the collective is more important than the individual. They say you can’t have people living for themselves and showing everybody how much smarter, more productive and cooler they are than Joe and Jane Average, as well as Tom and Mary Below Average, and John and Susan Moron. They say what instead society should do in a Democratic Socialist’s mind is say that at the very least Bob and Anne Rich, should take care of the Average’s, the Below Average’s and the Moron’s, because they can afford to. That if you encourage people to become independent of the state as far as trying to succeed financially, then that is exactly what will happen. So you need big government to step in and prevent that from happening so everyone is taken care of.

With the Randian’s saying, “of course we want to be free on their own! And is someone falls down, people especially Bob and Anne Rich and other Rich’s, will step in and take care of the people who fall on hard times.’ Democratic socialism, is not the ultimate of collectivist economic systems. But only Marxism beats it when it comes to collectivism. Randism, is not the most individualist of economic systems, but anarchism beats it. But Democratic socialism and Randism, are at the opposite ends of the political spectrum. Democratic socialism, has at least one thing on Randism, it has been tried and still in use in the world with success. Randism, well there might be more Randians than Marxists right now, but a squirrel is bigger than a mouse, so what. I’m not a fan of either, but they’re both fascinating to follow.