America could do with some more socialism, yes it costs money, but payed holiday, proper maternity leave, pension contribution and such help employees feel like a human being, instead of an exploitable company asset.
You know, I don't think this is necessarily about socialism. It may just be about capitalism, with rules. I personally do believe that some measure of antitrust regulation is necessary to preserve a market economy. Similarly, other measures may be necessary to insure that a competitive marketplace prevails.
Non-competes, for instance, are largely unenforceable in California, and it would be hard to argue that it has hurt the tech economy out here. In fact, the absence of non-competes may be so important that California can make a muck of almost everything else and still beat out other states that enforce non-competes.
Beyond that, I do agree that factors that limit the mobility of the workforce probably do harm the economy. Interestingly, the issues can move from the political left to the political right - mortgages that are underwater, health care, occupational licensing that makes it difficult to move from state to state, visa restrictions that make it difficult to change employers (or, perhaps more importantly, change fields), no-hire collusions like the one between Jobs and Brin, it runs the gamut.
I think that because large corporations and wealthy individuals are often such beneficiaries of capitalism and market economies, people sometimes think of them as being innately "pro-market". The truth is a lot more murky. Wealthy people and corporations will absolutely undermine free markets if it suits their interests, and because they are powerful, they often succeed. Keep in mind, skilled immigration may be something we should expand in the US, but the approach pushed by US tech companies essentially puts their HR departments in charge of who gets to live in the US, and the conditions under which they are allowed to remain. The no-hire collusion between apple, google, and so forth was an unusually brazen and galling abuse of free labor markets.
I'm ok with a fairly activist government where it comes to making sure large corporations can't use their power, especially where it comes to collusion, to undermining labor markets. This is a moral issue to me, but it's an economic one as well - a more free and open labor market will absolutely generate more economic growth.
The thing to me is, it's not a left vs right issue - some of the issues that free workers up appeal tremendously to the left (job protections, health care), others tremendously to the right (at will employment). The problem is that you get strange contradictions (someone who argues that employment should be at-will where it comes to firing people without notice or severance, but that the employee should not be free to change employers to get a higher salary).
> I don't think this is necessarily about socialism. It may just be about capitalism, with rules.
Socialism is when the state controls production and _capital_. Setting rules on labor is, in effect, a control on human capital.
I hate the way socialism and capitalism are pitted as a binary choice. That binary choice is a false dichotomy. In reality, they are only binary if every single action of every single person in an entire economy follows the rules (and assuming those rules are perfectly designed to support the official system).
China's foray into capitalism was a group of farmers who quietly made a contract to distribute earnings from their harvest proportionally by yield (which was illegal at the time) -- this was covered by Planet Money, an NPR show. Even deep in the midst of the most socialist time in China's history, they had a streak of capitalism which was later encouraged by the local government.
I find Socialism quite a broad name and depending on which shade we look at it through, it can mean collectivism, absence of a free market, centralized decision making, bureaucracy, and the potential for an authoritarian administration.
A Welfare State on the other hand covers the things you mentioned, and has fewer negative connotations. I'm saying this here because the state providing a minimum welfare guarantee to its citizens should be an unquestionably accepted idea, but the confusion with socialism often undermines it.
In the US, the terms socialism, welfare, and welfare state have been tarred with a brush for quite some time now... I only feel like the last election has started a fresh re-evaluation of all of them, but socialism in particular.
I would rather a larger portion of the value I create go to social programs than to shareholders. If I am going to be an exploitable asset, I would prefer to be exploited for reasons that do some good in the world.
You are a shareholder. You are a tax paying citizen of a organization nominally called a 'state' or a 'country'. You invest into this organization by your labor. You benefit by the services it provides.
Should you prefer, you may go and invest elsewhere, assuming the other collective would have you. If non of this suits you, you can move to a truly free place, like Somalia, and build your own medical, justice and defense systems, where you can compete with the other warlords that have done the same.
"If you don't like it, leave" has been used as a reply to accusations of rights violations since time immemorial.
Perhaps the black Americans sick of Police brutality should leave for Africa? Jews targeted by anti-semitism could always leave for Israel. I don't know what they stick around and complain for. /s
Leaving that part of your argument aside: the rest is a false dichotomy. You present two examples of rights violating societies - mixed-market socialism, and barbarism (feuding warlords) - while ignoring a solution that respects human rights:
