For those of us who weren't paying enough attention before, Bernie Sanders put the concept of socialism in the U.S. right up near the top of things to worry about.
There are plenty of reasons to avoid socialism. But let's give Bernie the opportunity to explain what exactly this thing called "Democratic Socialism" is. He's quoted in Bernie Sanders Defends Democratic Socialism at Fox News Town Hall:
“Democratic socialism to me is creating a government and an economy and a society that works for all rather than the top 1 percent,” he said.
The website Democratic Socialists of America expands that vague definition:
Democratic socialists do not want to create an all-powerful government bureaucracy. But we do not want big corporate bureaucracies to control our society either. Rather, we believe that social and economic decisions should be made by those whom they most affect.
Social ownership could take many forms, such as worker-owned cooperatives or publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives. Democratic socialists favor as much decentralization as possible. While the large concentrations of capital in industries such as energy and steel may necessitate some form of state ownership, many consumer-goods industries might be best run as cooperatives.
In other words, the government would take over large industry, and small industry would be run as cooperatives, presumably by majority vote. As for why this hasn't worked anywhere else, we get the standard answer that it hasn't yet been done right.
As Thomas Sowell says, "The great promise of socialism is something for nothing."
But if that false the promise is actually fulfilled, it happened with force. And from there it is just a tiny step to full blown tyranny.
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3:08 PM 5/15/2019
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