ANALYSIS and OPINION:
Many moons ago we did nothing but long educational videos. Since recent news and opinion pieces (especially from Fox News) have focused on an increase in voter support for “socialists”, we decided to do an old -fashioned deeper dive into the subject of what “socialism” exactly is. Of course, Fox and right wingers think that anything and everything that is designed to help the poor, the elderly, the sick and/or workers is a form of “socialism”; and, to make matters worse (from the right wing perspective) socialism, is but a gnat’s eyelash away from…gasp….communism, that we would take a deep dive into learning about and discussing socialism and communism.
Frankly, both terms have been misued and even abused to such an extent, that their real meaning has become blurred and the mere use of them is often designed merely to scare, inhibit and/or to outright intimidate either a particular person and/or all or a portion of the general public. Is what we are seeing today, nothing but a 21st century version of Senatory Joe McCarthy’s “red scare” of the 1950s? That’s a major issue because the strong opinion here is that the midterm elections of 2026 will be the most important midterm elections ever held. In fact, they may also be the most important elections of any type ever held, period.
Of course, if the right wingers are going to fire up the electorate by scaring them with warnings about the evils of socialism and/or communism its best to know that those evils are. Sometimes if one takes time to do one’s homework the bogeyman isn’t the bogeyman.
Okay. Okay. We at reasonandbalance.com are not Marxists. We are not communists. (Marxism and communism are not necessarily the same.) If you read Rao’s Solution (availabe at this website) you know that we believe that good old capitalism is the best economic system going. In fact, we are very pro free trade. (Remember the good ole days when the Republicans worshipped Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations? Tariffs? What the Hell happened?!!).
However. And this is a big however. We agree with Marx that capitalism leads to undesirable and dangerous concentrations of power. Congress apparently also agreed with Marx because they adopted anti-trust laws forbidding monopolies. If you read Rao’s Solution you know that rich players have greater ability to take more risks (because they can take more than one bite of the apple if they lose) than do poor players. Anyone who can take more and bigger risks and not die in the process has a big advantage over poor players; or even middle income players for that matter. This is a major reason why the rich always get richer and, relatively speaking, leave the poor and middle income folks further and further behind–all of which, by the way, leads to disproportionate large amounts of political power in the hands of the poor. (And if you don’t believe us consider Elon Musk’s $300 million dollar contribution to Donald Trump’s election campaign in 2024, and the huge effect Republican Super PACs have on American politics.) (Yes Democrats have super PACs but they are not quite as significant.)
Moreover, history has shown that profit motivated capitalists, don’t seem to care too much about whether their activities are going to cause environmental harm. And not just a little bit of harm. Harm that’s already starting to kill tens of thousands of people and which will eventually cause population dislocations, famine, etc. etc., in short, an environment which will kill us all, if AI doesn’t do so first. At the rate we are going our children, grandchildren and future generatons (if they survive) are going to hate us, or perhaps worse, suffer a very difficult life.
Before we get any further afield, suffice it to say, that we fervently support our constitutional democracy and while we believe in capitalism, capitalism must be regulated in such a way so as to prevent undue concentrations of wealth and political power in the hands of a few. Otherwise we will have oligarchy or worse a dictator.
And yes, much much more needs to be done to protect the environment.
And by the way. Our Constitution and a whole myriad of statutes prohibit the vast majority of discrimination that can occur out there in every day society. That’s a great thing. Simply put, there can be no genuine peace if folks are being discriminated against because of race, color, religion, national origin and/or sex.
God Bless our Constitution with its three co-equal branches of government (The Congress, the President and the Supreme Court) , its federal/state system, its notions of due process and equal protection of the law and it’s Bill of Rights! And let us not forget and always support the rule of law and the notion that the government and all government officials are themselves subject to the law just like private citizens.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of our system and before we digress any further, here’s our video. Please note that the first part of the video contains a “table of contents” that allow the viewer to search out specific topics of interest without watching the whole video. Note that the video contains a discussion of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Senator Bernie Sanders simply because they are two highly relevant actual examples of an organization and a public official who are regularly (rightly or wrongly) associated with “socialism”.