I know that there are a lot of you who believe that Socialism is a ludicrous pipe dream, but I disagree.
I think that Socialism can be viable if it is gradually implemented and the people are educated in the pros and cons of the system.
If you think about it, Socialism is a system dedicated to the rights of workers and economic/social equality. It also emphasizes government regulation and workers cooperatives, and it sets up universal healthcare and public colleges.
If you are against Socialism, express your deal breaker calmly and explain. I know this stuff causes tempers to flair, so let's try to have a pleasant debate.
Socialism does more than just your third sentence. It essentially sets up guarantees on
all resources, not just the few you mentioned.
Thus that would include land space, dwelling space, road space, classroom availability, living-wage job availability, free time from work time, oh, and of course, breathable air and drinkable water and hospitable temperature and food items ... don't forget the long lines in the old Soviet Union just to obtain a loaf of bread ...
Now, you may argue that what I just detailed is what you meant by economic/social equality .. and I'd let you win that argument without an argument.
However, the reality of all these economic/social equality details is, obviously, that all these resources must be
available (again, refer to previous "lines" reference).
And thus, there is a conversion-from-capitalism-to-socialism prerequisite that is non-negotiable in order to successfully implement socialism: the ratio of resources to population must be considerably greater than 1.00.
Today, that ratio is considerably under 1.00, and thus any attempt to implement socialism, even over time, will have a "revolting" effect.
Even with a respecting age-before-beauty or youth-will-be-served deciding guidance on the many various resource shortages, there could be just as many people doing without .. or more .. than there are with capitalism now.
Since many of the foundational resources are limited simply due to finite space on Earth, the only thing we can do to increase the relevant ratio is to manage the population .. meaning, greatly decrease it.
We have a long way to go to decrease the global and U.S. population. Why, even with today's "emphasis" on keeping family-size down, the world's population continues to increase and so does the U.S. population, the U.S. population continuing to increase
despite all the Boomers dying off more rapidly these days.
Yes, in 2010 it was estimated that, even with all the hope for population management, that by the current rate of population rate decrease, that rate will still be greater than zero .. and by 2100 we will have added to the planet since 2010 the 2010 population of China and India
combined. People are already painfully squished into our nation's cities -- I can't imagine it getting any worse.
One of the arguments against Capitalism is that it sets up arbitrary "capitalist game" rules that determine who eats and how well and who doesn't with all the population-to-resource limitations and few psyches are archetypally conditioned to really succeed at it. But with the planet's and our nation's current over-population, the "socialist game" will also have to make that same decision, and it won't matter to those doing without if the decision factors are "more humane". And, strangely enough, most would rather have the faceless, nameless, humanless system of capitalism decide than a "take it more personally" socialistic set of humans arbitrarily deciding who gets what and who doesn't -- it hurts more when fellow humans do it than otherwise, thanks to unresolved family-of-origin damage/dysfunction suffered by the vast majority of people that gets thereby "triggered" to the degree it's painfully felt.
Socialism may be a laudable ideal, but it's presently an impractical reality.
No one wants to convert from one bad system to another .. or to one that looks like it could be worse.
Let's first work on the prerequisite of getting the resource to population ratio considerably less than 1.00 for all resources, especially for the finite resources of hospitable land, breathable air, drinkable water, eatable-palatable food, and the like.
Then we can talk about the possibility of socialism.
Indeed, once we get that ratio a bit below 1.00, capitalism itself will begin to fold like a house of cards from natural causes.
