Socialism is Not a Bad Word
Roads, fire and police protection, libraries, public education, public healthcare, CPP, employment insurance. All services we have decided were better done collectively to benefit the entirety of society and not just those with money to pay for them. Could you imagine a Canada without these? Without them, would we still have the quality of life that makes us continuously one of the best countries to live in the world? Would “survival of the fittest” really result in a better modern society for everyone?
Now imagine a world where people didn’t have to go in to debt to get a post-secondary education, something that is essential in today’s ever more global and automated society.
Imagine a world where someone who isn’t fit for higher education or entrepreneurship due to circumstances out of their control can still live an affordable and meaningful life.
Imagine a world where someone born with mental illness or grew up in an abusive or otherwise unsavory household didn’t have to live a life of misery due to a lack of affordable and effective support.
Imagine a world where people could tap into the online economy on fast, affordable and indiscriminate internet connections.
These are all things that the free market has yet to or may never effectively solve in Canada. Alas, not everything is best served by the fundamental free market motive to return and continuously increase profits. In some cases, such as with Internet and mobile service in Canada, we end up with essentially-noncompetitive oligopolies, creating a large amount of corporate waste while resulting in little innovation and expansion without the help of public funding.
Federal GDP has been steadily increasing in the last 40 years, yet median incomes in real dollars are all but stagnant and have gone nowhere since. It’s time we stop waiting for the profits from generous tax policies on corporations and the rich to trickle down. It’s time we stop the privatization of the services we need for a functioning society for the future. It's time we stop living quarter by quarter. Its time we start focusing on and planning for the future with an open mind.
As someone who grew up in a chaotic, single parent, low income household, I would have been absolutely fucked without socialism as part of our democratic, regulated free market society. Yet I consider myself lucky to have made it out of the cycle of poverty and am not surprised that so many of the people I grew up with were unable to.
Yes, capitalism has helped bring hundreds of millions of people into the middle class. But when unchecked, it has destroyed or is destroying many ecosystems around the world including the Amazon rain forests and the Great Barrier Reef. Capitalism has been the driving factor behind man made climate change from the burning of fossil fuels, in addition to the funding of pseudoscience and misinformation that tries to obfuscate this fact. Capitalism has caused many millions of people and animals to die or suffer in the pursuit of profits. Yet capitalism is generally not a bad word like socialism seems to be.
It’s time to seek some nuance and treat socialism as we do capitalism by adopting the best parts of it while protecting against the worse. Let’s stop getting irrationally triggered every time we hear or see the word socialism. Let's continue to think big and use measured approaches to end suffering. Let's come together, as we have before for many other issues, and continue making our country and the world a better place for everyone, and not just those lucky enough to have made it to the top. It really is the only way to ensure the survival of our species in a fast-changing world.
Thanks for reading. For another opinion on this topic in relation to US politics, check out this great piece by Arwa Mahdawi from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/29/socialism-no-longer-dirty-word-us-scary-for-some