Thank You NPR
For telling me this story.
If we can't have socialism because it saps the will to work, perhaps this story will convince someone that it's worth trying for kids. It boggles the mind that this person has had to worry about how to feed his family, and probably still does not have a decent retirement plan.
posted by Anonymous at 6:33 PM
1 Comments:
A small point, but the Army, America's leading socialist institution (think it through) provides ample, arguable superior incentives for hard work.
Capitalism sucks at valuing public goods exactly the way state/central socialism sucks at valuing commodities. Classic public goods are water and defense, but include justice, equality, beauty, love, benevolence, air, lack of giant meteorites laying waste to Venezula, and the health of the planet Earth.
Markets provide a mechanism - I'm all for pollution taxes - that can manage public goods, but cannot really provide the impetus to value them. That is always a social - and in all but name socialist - responsibility.
Market forces disconnected from other social structures that value "public goods" screw things up badly, in particular education. (Anecdotal, but my recent experience at a for-profit school was typical - it was essentially federal fraud, marketing/pressuring kids into taking out huge federal loans, paying teachers less than fuck all, and pocketing the enormous difference.)
There is no market mechanism to value a teacher like this. There never will be (saving, God forbid, socially programmed robot investors, which on reflection are certainly on their way).
Greed can only partly drive our best efforts, and markets can only indirectly and often fail to reward people who produce essential and intangible public goods. Creating mechanisms for producing public goods is socialism, and is oddly necessary for capitalism to function at all. There is nothing to do but suck it up, socialize as far as these things go, and pay for what matters.
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