John McMahon
2 min readJun 15, 2021

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Very little of the USA is socialist in nature. One thing that all real socialist states including Nazi Germany and the PRC lack is freedom of association. Doing things with others outside of the collective is anethema to socialism. If everyone is on the same page economically and socially, there is absolutely no reason to start a new business or a club or a charity or a church outside of the state. In the USA, professional fields like medicine, the law, and engineering are not run by the state at all, but by a private association of its members. Labor unions aren't run by the state either, as they were in Nazi Germany and have been in all countries with the word "socialist" in their name.

Almost anything the government does can be duplicated by private individuals through free association. In the USA, the government and therefore the collective owns very little of the means of production, and as more government services are privatized it is less all the time. The only thing that the government itself manufactures is nuclear weapons. If you visit a military base you will find that most of the people that work there are contractors, not soldiers. The government pays for infrastructure, but they don't really build it, contractors do. When the pandemic hit, who came up with the vaccines? It wasn't the government. Want your own private police force? They're all over the place.

Socialism sounds good if you are looking for an equitable society, but consider for a moment that it is impossible to be a good socialist and have friends. If you don't favor your friends over other random people, they're not really your friends. If you do favor them over random strangers, you are not being fair to the random strangers because you are treating others better than them because of your relationship with your pals. Extend this to your family and any private association you may have with others, and it's clear why socialist countries ban freedom of assembly. You can't have it and be socialist, or have an equitable society. That people want to associate with, be friends with, and benefit people as much like themselves as possible is hardly surprising, but socialism can't work with that going on. The fact that people will do it anyway is why socialism can't work at all, and is always a disaster.

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