SOCIALISM

I thought I might be a socialist until I read these definitions.

Webster’s New World Dictionary offers this definition:  

1   any of various theories or systems of the ownership and operation of the means of production and distribution by society or the community rather than by private individuals, with all members of society or the community sharing in the work and the products

2   [often S3] a) a political movement for establishing such a system b) the doctrines, methods, etc. of the Socialist parties

3   the stage of society, in Marxist doctrine, coming between the capitalist stage and the communist stage, in which private ownership of the means of production and distribution has been eliminated: see COMMUNISM (sense 2)

I listened to all the commentators and have read a few other explanations of our economy and concluded that I am a student of Adam Smith with two exceptions.  Totally uncontrolled markets can lead to greed and monopolies.  Greed has led this nation to its current situation.  Senior executives of large corporations are earning an average of $4,000 per hour.  These high earnings are reported to be common among Wall Street managers too.

One need to go no further than the preamble to our constitution “… to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity…”  In order to ensure domestic tranquility and promote general welfare our nation needs to pass laws that limit the power of a few that would work against our general welfare.

This does not mean we need socialism.  It means we enforce what are known as antitrust law in the United States.  From Wkipedia

Competition law, known in the United States as antitrust law, has three main elements:

• prohibiting agreements or practices that restrict free trading and competition between business entities. This includes in particular the repression of cartels.
• banning abusive behaviour by a firm dominating a market, or anti-competitive practices that tend to lead to such a dominant position. Practices controlled in this way may include predatory pricing, tying, price gouging, refusal to deal, and many others.
• supervising the mergers and acquisitions of large corporations, including some joint ventures. Transactions that are considered to threaten the competitive process can be prohibited altogether, or approved subject to “remedies” such as an obligation to divest part of the merged business or to offer licences or access to facilities to enable other businesses to continue competing.

The banking industry has been given free reign in its management.  I and my wife were offered opportunities for new credit cards daily over the past few years.  We accepted two of those offers increasing the number of cards from two to four.  I have read that the average person has 13 credit cards.  Fareed Zakaria pointed out in the October 20, 2008 issue of Newsweek that household debt was $680 billion in 1974 and now amounts to $14 trillion.  Type in the words “there is a silver lining” into Google and you will see that his column has struck a significant cord.

John McCain is an adherent of the free markets philosophy that has brought our nation to this economic meltdown.  Barack Obama has avoided taking a position.  Given the philosophies of the Democrats and Republicans I have to anticipate that Barack Obama’s election will bring the needed regulations that will promote our general welfare.  It won’t be socialism.