what you're really arguing against is democracy. We all vote for these socialist programs. My guy doesn't always win, and I usually don't like what all the other people think is good, but what's the alternative? Until you get a dictator made in your own image you are stuck with mob rule.
I'm arguing on behalf of options. I'm not asking for anyone to "dictate". Quite the opposite, I'm asking to decide for myself. In a republic, property rights take precedence over voting outcomes. We are a republic. This shouldn't be a matter of "my guy vs. your guy". Both our guys need to agree to certain ground rules or the game is up. Governments cannot long survive when half the population finds them illegitimate. Legitimacy is the most important element of any government and forms the spiritual foundation of the connection between the individual and the state. Mob rule is not legitimate in the minds of any thinking man, even one who is currently in sync with what the mob wants.
I guess a better question would be, "Have peoples spirits become so broken that they will vote for their own interest against the common good?"
I meant more along the lines of has the governments control prevented the free market working to the degree that people have lost faith in it and decided to get benefits instead because it is just easier. In other words the governments high tax has created a situation where it is so hard to succeed in the free market they just take welfare instead.
According to the World Bank, the USA is the 4th most business friendly country in the world. Haiti is the least business friendly. Just as an optimist sees the glass half full where a pessimist sees it half empty, you can look at the USA and say it's unfrienldy to do business when a customer can spill coffee in her lap and sue the restaurant that made it for millions of dollars and win. After all, the clumsy coffee drinker would not have gotten a penny if it had happened in Haiti. It's socialism that gives us police, fire, army, navy and a good network of roads. It's the poor regulation that allows your clumsy customer to take all of your money via the courts.
oh, are we going to start that crap again? The coffee was too hot, it had been sitting on the burner too long, it burned her so bad she had to go to the doctor. All she asked for was McDonalds to pay the doctor bill and reimburse her a days lost wages. When they refused to see her in small claims court she got a lawyer and that's when the big bucks got involved. The jury said the main reason they ruled in her favor was because the lawyers for McDonalds were so arrogant and condescending. Talk about a spirit that refuses to be broken. If the whole world was filled with little old ladies like that, and jurors like the one at that trial, the world would be a better place.
Well, certainly the people who would take office to administer to the public good shouldn't tempt the people by pandering to their narrow interests over the public good. Otherwise, we may as well be governed by random selection, which I actually am in favor of, as well as having co-Presidents, each with absolute veto power, to ensure, in the first case, that no one stays in office for multiple terms and, in the second place, that only laws which have broad support get passed over the veto power. We'd see a lot of this mob rule crap go away quickly.
I know you're trying, but until you can convice the mob to think like you, you are stuck with them. The one that cracked me up was William Buckley, "I would rather have nine people picked at random from the phone book sitting on the Supreme Court than nine Harvard graduates."
Those are not "socialism", they are "public goods". It is an entirely different class of good. Going from "the government provides policing" to "the government should provide a basic retirement income, even if it means taking from some and redistributing to others" is a logical leap across the friggin Grand Canyon. The first kind of good, e.g. police provision, is available to everyone (obviously, not all at the same time) whereas the second type of good is the taking from one to give to another, thus making the good (in this case, money) unavailable to the first person (i.e. the one who actually labored for it). Are you capable of understanding that? If not, why are you even interested in politics at all, since that distinction is about a billion years old and part of any introduction to political economy pre-reading. Not even the introductory course, just the pre-reading to the course.
Sometimes I think to myself that proof positive that there is a God is that only God would have the sublime sense of humor to have me be born in this day and age. Nietzsche thought he had it bad living amongst the Germans of his day. 19th century Germany was an intellectual utopia compared to 21st century America.