The Blog Not Taken

Well, I just lost a few weeks of my life. Blame it on blogging.

What I wanted to do, originally, was to point out that - despite all the national and global political rhetoric - neither Capitalism or Socialism is actually a  form of government. They are economic systems, and both of them will eventually create a kind of government under which they can thrive.

Of course, I didn’t stop there. I wanted to look at how, as they become more and more successful in creating that government, they lose their way and become a philosophy on steroids, creating so many problems that everything starts to fall apart.

Good Marxists will cheer at the thought that Capitalism carries within it the seeds of its own destruction, a thought they have heard before. They will not cheer at the thought that Socialism has the same seeds, planted in the same garden, and will have the same problems.

See, political balance.

Well, that was all in week one. I got so immersed in the origins of those two concepts - I’m talking about the invention of tribes and the invention of money - that my wife almost stopped talking to me. I couldn’t find my copy of Wealth of Nations, and she bought me Adam Smith’s classic book. (Parts of it are still dead on, other parts have not aged well. Like some of Shakespeare’s plays.)

Then I started writing. And writing. And writing. So many boring pages started accumulating that I trashed the whole thing - well, I might do different blogs on Socialism and on Capitalism some time in the far future.

What went wrong? Well, I realized one thing was missing from my blog, one thing that would tie all my thoughts together and bring them into focus.

I hadn’t bothered to define Capitalism or Socialism. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the way you define something steers the entire conversation. That’s why President Trump’s cute little nicknames have so much power, and they won’t stop until someone he insults returns the compliment - calling him a Fat Fool, or an Incompetent Infant or, best of all, that he should have been cast on Biggest Loser.

But, I digress.

The problem with both Socialism and Capitalism is that, while the terms are thrown around a lot, few people agree on what they really mean. If you doubt it, pick any search engine you like and try to find a list of the biggest Socialist nations in the world, or the biggest Capitalist ones. Then look a bit closer and see what standards are used to make up that list.

I have been looking a lot, and haven’t found any two that match precisely. There is at least one - pardon me for not spending my life on this -which has China as one of the biggest Socialist nations in the world and also one of the biggest Capitalist ones.

A lot of web sites don’t list Russia as a Socialist nation, and explain why at great length.

So, what’s a person to do?

Well, you could take the long view. If anyone is accused of being a Socialist, they should ask just what is wrong with Social Security. If anyone says they are a pure free-market Capitalist, ask them if the government has any role in regulating drugs. How about letting aircraft manufacturers set their own safety standards and do their own safety inspections and determine pilot training on new aircraft.

That would save millions of dollars, at least at first. Then, after a couple of airline crashes, the problems with that system become very visible indeed. And saying that unregulated Capitalism carries its own seeds of destruction doesn’t seem so outrageous.

Want to talk about the problems of unregulated Socialism? Have a seat. That will take a long, long time.