Maybe I watched too much Star Trek as a kid.  If you look at the very basic foundation of their society, they don’t work for a paycheck and go home at the end of the day and try to forget about what they do during the day.  They all work at a job that is enjoyable to them and is a challenge to them, and in exchange they are provided with all of their “needs” and their reasonable “wants.”  Look at the crew in Engineering.  Sure there are days where things break and things don’t go according to plan, but the overwhelming majority of their time is divided between general upkeep of the systems, and research into bettering those very systems.  They figure out a way to attach the sensor array to the warp drive to exponentially increase the range and accuracy of those sensors.  Sure that attracted an alien race from another dimension that wanted to experiment on crew members, but the point is they were working to better the equipment so they could increase the learning efficiency and potential for their society.  They don’t go home at night wondering if what they did is going to make a difference, and by the same token they don’t expect get rewarded with physical items for major accomplishments.  The drive is in the pride of the work they perform.

The unfortunate reasons that our society can not support true socialism at this point is primarily because of two main points, the first being corruption.  When you get leadership (or even middlemen) that find ways to cheat the system and siphon off their own resources, that creates a drain on the society.  As they gain more and more resources, their power to drain even more grows and creates a vicious cycle.  The rich get richer, and the society gets poorer.  This also applies to literary works.  Copyright was originally designed to allow a performer or author to sell their works without competition for the first (approximately) decade, after that their work would move into the public domain so that the entire society would be able to benefit.  Unfortunately we have corrupt leadership in place that has taken the intent of copyright and extended it to allow a media cartel to run the show.  No longer can a budding author take a book from 10 years ago and change key elements in the story and re-write it into a new work based on the original.  This is a prime example of taking a socialist idea and killing it with corruption.

The second reason is there are way too many people in our current society that are more than happy to freeload off of whomever they can, and do the least amount of work they can to get by.  Why work when they can get whatever they want anyway?  Our society even encourages this behavior right now, with government “assistance” programs designed to take the benefits away if a person even tries to get ahead and get off of the program.  A person receiving a disability (or SSI) payment every month will lose that money if they try to work extra in order to get ahead.  Even worse, they are not allowed to save any money.  The SSI payments are designed to help with basic living and medical expenses.  If the person were allowed to save up $5-10K, they would be able to afford the medical expenses out of their own pocket and would no longer need SSI every month to play catchup on the medical debt.  Instead, they are told they have to spend every dime they make or they will lose the assistance.  It is no longer an assistance program to help a person get ahead, it is a full time job designed to keep them from getting ahead.

Capitalism isn’t all bad either.  When people work hard and save their money, ideally they are able to use that money to help society by donating to charities, building community centers, and things along those lines.  The problem is too many people don’t understand this and hold onto their money so tightly that it doesn’t do anybody (including themselves) any good.  For a good example of the way to do it, take a look at Bill Gates.  This man has more money than anyone could ever possibly need.  He set up a non-profit organization (Gates Foundation) that he funnels his money through to do amazing things to help the citizens of our little planet.  Even though the company that made him his money has a reputation for being money grubbing and heavy handed, he still chooses to take his own share and use it for good.

There are so many problems in this world today, but rather than working together to solve them as a group, we tend to pick our own little slice and try to make sure it is given the priority.  Until we all learn to work towards a common goal as a society and move all of our actions in line with that goal, we will never progress beyond where we are now.  Unfortunately we spend too much effort on propping up the failures rather than emphasizing the successes.  All I can do is raise my children to work at something they enjoy and to be proud of the work they do, and maybe someday we’ll be ready to become a true socialist society.