ElectricRCAircraftGuy
commented
11 months ago Potential alternative title: On socialism and military retirement
Be sure to have multiple legitimate sources, from reputable sources and economists, to back up my views on socialism above, or to correct me if I am wrong. Includes these as full quotes at the bottom of the article.
Full disclosure/About the author: I was in the US military for nearly 12 years, including 4 years as an active duty cadet at the US Air Force Academy, and 7.5 years as an officer in the Air Force. My salary is currently paid for by private contracts with the US military, meaning: my salary is also currently paid for by socialism.
This is the rough outline of a real conversation I had with a retired US Army soldier:
US retired soldier on government military retirement: socialism is evil! Those who support it are evil! Democrats are evil socialists! Stealing from the rich to pay the poor is wrong!
Me: you do realize that the US military is one of the purest forms of socialism, right? It acts as a standalone society and all-encompassing and all-controlling economic structure within our society, and is completely and wholly paid for by taxpayer dollars, taken collectively by the United States government to keep it funded. And, your retirement is paid for by government, socialist-collected funds.
Soldier: no! I worked for my money! I'm not a dirty socialist!
Me: then why is your retirement paid for by government-collected funds?
Do you not understand the meaning of socialism? Socialism is where "the government controls the means of production" (add source). This includes controlling taxation and collecting taxes from the citizens for collective purposes deemed worthy of forced taxation, such as for a military. In a pure capitalist system, there would be no taxation at all, and there would be no government -sponsored army. Rather, wealthy people who desire an army would individually pay, or create paid societies which pay, for their own personal soldiers, armies, and protection. Those who could not pay would either be protected by the goodness of those who could, or they would be left to die if our country was attacked. The same goes for firefighters, police, courts, utilities, and schools.
So, dear citizens and soldiers who are consumers of socialism, the question isn't whether or not socialism is evil, the question is how much socialism is evil. But Until you can acknowledge your own consumption of and benefits from socialism, I think it rather hypocritical of you to simply ignorantly declare all socialism to be evil.
Let's start by acknowledging that you seemingly like, support, want, benefit from, and maybe even love some base level of socialism, and then we can begin the foundation of a constructive conversation from there and decide which types of socialism and what degree of socialism is acceptable and good, and that which aren't.
Before you seek to categorize good and evil, you need to recognize truth from falsehood. Your retirement is socialist.