Dear Supervisor Desmond,
Sorry, but your use of the word socialism (“The road to socialism,” Commentary, June 2) sounds antiquated to me.
It seems you hope the word itself will inspire fear in people, as it did for Cold War warriors in the ’50s.
But a lot has changed since then. The word is no longer a bogeyman for millennials and the younger generations.
Maybe that’s because they’ve noticed that the Western European social democracies are the most sensible and effective governments in the world.
Those governments that began as post-war experiments have demonstrated that using bits of socialism in a capitalistic system, called a “social democracy,” just seems to work better than anything else tried thus far.
The citizens all have medical care; there’s universal pre-kindergarten; the homeless and mentally ill are not left to sleep on the streets; and college is free.
And as a bonus (non-economic) policy, they’ve figured out how to not allow such lax gun regulation that children are afraid to go to school for fear of getting murdered.
Don’t worry, there’s plenty of capitalism and meritocracy to go around in those systems. You may have heard of companies like Mercedes-Benz, Ikea, Bosch, and Carrefour?
You should also be comforted to know that ambition has not been dulled by social-democratic regulation. Just look at the list of the most entrepreneurial cities in the world: Many are in Europe.
And competition in business, and everything else, is still cutthroat — if that makes you feel better. The difference is that their CEOs only earn something like a hundred times more than average workers (still ridiculous), not a thousand times more like our American CEOs (ridiculously ridiculous).
Oh yes, those European countries are still capitalistic. But the wealthy are taxed appropriately, and there’s sufficient regulation to prevent greed from running ostentatiously rampant.
This prevents the development of an oligarchy, as exists here and in places like Russia. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel one super-yacht per family is enough; a couple palatial homes will suffice, but nine is probably overkill.
I’m not saying the European social democracies are problem-free. They’re not. Just that we can learn from their tax and regulatory systems.
No, socialism is not the “ism” we should be worried about today. The real threat to economic stability at the moment is nationalism. Putin, Trump, Xi, Orban, Erdogan, Netanyahu, Meloni. These are the words we should fear.
Nationalism is the trend that caused violent extremists to attack the US Capitol, and it could very well undermine the world stability we’ve known for the last 75 years, if the above autocrats have their way.
So, relax your fears about (boo!) socialism. Taxing the wealthy fairly so there’s enough money for basic social programs and regulating the utilities so they don’t rip us off — that’s not some gateway drug to Soviet-style communism. It’s just good sense.
Darius Degher is an Encinitas resident.
