The finest definition of socialism that I have seen

Willis Eschenbach nails it with this essay:

The Unsocial Reality Of Socialism
A lovely but unfortunately uber-liberal friend of mine shared this graphic on Facebook. It revealed such a profound and frightening misunderstanding of socialism that I felt I had to unravel it a bit.

First, what is “socialism”? Well, it’s not any of the things listed in the graphic. Not one. In fact, it has nothing to do with any of those things. Socialism is an economic system where the government owns the means of production of wealth. Here’s the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition:

Definition of socialism. 1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.

And here’s a definition from Paul Samuelson, the winner of the first Nobel Prize for economics:

“Socialism refers to the government ownership of the means of production, planning by the government and income distribution”.

Simply put, socialism is where the government owns the farms, the fishing boats, and the factories, and decides who gets the wealth thus produced.

Now, do you see anything in there about healthcare? Nope. Social security? Nope. Affordable college? Nope.

Why not?

Because those are all services, not the means of production of wealth. Let me make a small digression here.

A bit long (most thorough explanations are) but well written and really covers what socialism is and why it fails whenever it is tried. Willis is a national treasure.