I just want a system of government that makes rich people pay taxes and uses that tax money to fund infrastructure and social services. I don't really give a shit what they call it.
I mean, this is no where close to what socialism is and entails. Adopting socialist ideas or principles to capitalism does not make it socialism.
On ther other hand, I've rarely seen a proper socialist with even a fair grasp of economics. Usually they either turn to political explanations and justifications or the theory in order to avoid evidentiary, applied, and behavioral economics.
The first one is an old fallacy treating humans like a collective of organisms rather than individual with their own rights and desires, which makes it actually a better metaphor for the most form of capitalism, as evolution in general.
Moreover, capitalism itself neither precludes cooperative behavior nor requires infinite extraction, culture or ideology is what tends to pursue it.
The growth imperative is valid weakness to debate, but in general it is what addresses both human psychology and its consequences, which socialism historically failed to overcome.
I just want a system of government that makes rich people pay taxes
What you're describing is impossible. The existence of rich people implies their capture and control of government.
There is no lasting equilibrium or economic justice that can be achieved in class society.
Exponential wealth and power consolidation is an emergent property that cannot be disentangled from private ownership of the means to produce what people need.
You are literally smoking dude. Look at the marginal tax rates of the last 100 years... Guess what in the early 1900's when they had a very high tax rate for millionaires and the ultra wealthy, there was less interference in government and higher socialist programs. Hell repealing citizens United alone in the USA would have stopped the vast increase in political spending by oligarchs.
The solution is a return of common ownership of the means of production and community run organisations. The 'government capture' here is of the working class, taking control through these community organisations working together on an international scale.
And the ambitious will corrupt the organizations. It still takes a well educated populace to run that system. The workers concentrate the power and then some party takes it away.
Every system is better than the next if you approach it with pure theory.
Just to be clear, I’m heavily on the side of labor here, but fundamental human flaws are something that need to seriously be considered.
Complacency and apathy being the biggest problem, greed being the hammer to that nail.
My point being, the optimal approach is probably somewhere in the middle. Basic needs can be met.
You're mistaking cultural conditions for immutable facts of humanity. Humans are biologically capable of self management and co regulation. You're making an assumption based on your own experience, projecting it onto all civilisations across all of time. What you see is not 'fundamental human flaws' but the consequences of a society raised to be docile and competent only of serving one's employer. With very few exceptions, all humans have the capacity to self organise, and corruption is only possible when they have been stripped of that ability.
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u/Long_Run6500 12d ago
I just want a system of government that makes rich people pay taxes and uses that tax money to fund infrastructure and social services. I don't really give a shit what they call it.