“How can half of Americans between 18 and 29 favor socialism over capitalism? Because they do not know the first thing about capitalism”
“Many young Americans sympathetic to socialism mistakenly believe that capitalism is a relatively modern concept, first seriously examined in Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, published in 1867. However… private property—an essential ingredient of capitalism—has been an integral part of Western civilization since ancient Athens, which had ‘a highly developed system of private property.’” - Law & Liberty
Another reason that many young Americans are more sympathetic towards socialism and hostile towards capitalism is that crony corporate capitalism, with its favoritism and close ties from certain government entities and officials, have become much more visibly prevalent. The lack of rule of law, combined with government regulations has created a bureaucracy that passive-aggressively picks the winners and limits opportunities for startup entrepreneurs an companies. They realize the certain systems within the social order is rigged, but they can’t identify why it’s rigged so they automatically think the only way to unrig the system and make it “fair” is to put it into the government’s hands with wealth distribution which is an even worse solution.
I agree Joel, but socialism only makes this worse. I am encouraged that the president and republicans are now raising concerns about favoritism toward large corporations during the lockdown while the small businesses are shut down. Perhaps addressing this will be one of the benefits of the COVID crisis. I found it interesting that the governors who despise socialism the most were the ones who wanted to keep the small businesses on an equal playing field with the big box stores.
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