RE: Mutualism, Lange-Lerner Socialism, & Libertarian Social Democracy
I agree that monopolies are bad. You need competition to drive prices down and create ingenuity. The free market allows that to happen. However, I feel a big problem lies with debt and central bannkers colluding with politicians. Large companies that borrowed money from Big Banks get into financial problems, and go to the banks looking for help. The banks go to the politicians and tell Congress that if these companies fail, there will be unemployment, hardship, and financial crisis. The politicians don't want this, so they "nationalize" the company and now the company went from privatized to owned by government. The state adds layers of bureaucracy and regulation to eliminate competition and often runs at a loss, but all is well because the money is guaranteed by the government (AKA tax payers via taxes and inflation). The blame shifts to greedy capitalists even though the free markets have been manipulated (Classic Marxist attack on Capitalism). I'm not saying Capitalism is perfect, but central planners and big government are working in ways that bring down true capitalism and drive things more towards Socialism. Socialism works...until you run out of other people's money.
Oy, I don't think you understand socialism.
Why should I?...it's failed repeatedly. It's run on propaganda using slogans such as "Social Utopia," "economic justice," "economic democracy," "fair share," "share the wealth," etc to make it look like the people are getting cheated out of "entitlements" that aren't theirs in the 1st place. Hard work, risk taking, entrepreneurship, and innovative thinking are not rewarded. Instead, you reward the lazy and people who do not want to work. Do you think the rich and upper class are going to stick around to watch their fortunes get dwindled down to masses via taxes and redistribution of wealth? No way, they have the means and intellect to pack their bags and abandon ship. The rich are not all "evil." In fact people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs revolutionized humanity via their hard work and entrepreneurial minds. Think of how many jobs and how much wealth was trickled down to others due to computers and IPhones...even Blockchain technology became a possibility out of their work. I'm a hard pass on Socialism.
That being said, I respect your opinion and beliefs and I think you are smart writer and add value to Steem.
The reality is that you don't know anything about socialism, basically. Your rejection of it is based entirely on ignorance and anti-socialist propaganda. I would assume that you are probably unaware that anarchism is a socialist philosophy. There's Ricardian Socialism and Individualist Anarchism and Georgism, which are laissez-faire free-market philosophies. Then there's social democracy, with its more liberal democratic approach, which is definitely not laissez-faire. Then there is Marxism and Leninism (which is very, very different from Marxism). There's also guild socialism, syndicalism, mutualism, communist anarchism, etc. Then there's council communism, Lange-Lerner Socialism, etc. Each of these philosophies differs from the other to such a great extent that no one can honestly reject socialism as a whole without just being ignorant of what socialism is.
The reality is that banks and landlords benefit from artificial property rights, linked to legal documents, rather than natural property rights linked to occupancy and use, which allows them to charge rent and foreclose on homes, which is how they get wealthy. Under a truly free market, without the legal framework created by a powerful State, such things would be impossible. Furthermore, companies that manufacture pharmaceuticals and such benefit from monopolies granted by patents. That would certainly not take place under a truly free market. Socialism simply says that we ought to either remove these special government-granted privileges that allow certain groups to accumulate capital at the expense of others or else we should require them to pay for that special privilege (through taxation, or other means).
https://steemit.com/anarchism/@ekklesiagora/property-as-theft-the-libertarian-socialist-critique-of-property-summary-anthology