Re: And how do you enforce that...

Hi, Henny. Well, for one thing, socialists do not believe that order or social stability has to be enforced by the barrel of a gun, or more specifically, by a political state. If everyone has a degree of ownership over society's product, and everyone receives an abundance in return for their work, society will lack the type of consciousness where people want to have more than their fellow human being. In a world without poverty, war, and economic instability people will lack a reason for turning to crime or for having a desire to possess more than everyone else. People will take from the social store according to their self-defined needs. Why won't certain people want to take an outrageous amount of product? Because it would be silly to do so...nobody in an economic democracy would have to worry about going hungry, or doing without medical care, or going without anything that they may need. Hence, the desire to over-consume society's product will not exist. For example, in a world without money and free access to society's food product, no one would ever have to worry about one week going by when they couldn't have enough food. As a result, people will not simply walk into stores and grab every product in sight, taking a year's supply of food at a time. There would be no reason to grab five turkeys for Thanksgiving Day instead of just one. The socially owned stores would still be there the following week, and people could simply take a week or month's supply of food at a time. I'm sure that delivery services will be available for those who cannot leave their home for whatever reason.

In a system of such stability, there will be no need for a professional police force to enforce order and to stop people from stealing and the social reasons for some of the horrible crimes we see today would not exist anymore (or exist very incidentally). I'm sure we will still need a security force, because there will be instances of people getting into fist fights and disrupting the peace now and again, but for the most part the need for a heavy bureaucracy to enforce order will no longer be needed.

I just want you to know that I do respect the type of libertarianism that you support, Henny. It's not quite the same thing as the type of socialism that I stand behind, but it would still be a hell of a lot better than unregulated laissez-faire capitalism, and I respect the fact that you adhere to our right to civil liberties and to keep government out of our personal lives while at the same time supporting a government that regulates the economy and does it's best to make life under capitalism for the poor as easy as possible with a compassionate safety net, and lacks the paleo-conservative ethos for selfishness and veneration of the rich and powerful. It makes much, much more sense for a member of the working class to support something like this than it does for the many working class folks who inexplicably support a system of unregulated capitalism that would turn the increasingly few rich people into the equivalent of feudal lords. Socialists refer to such a system as industrial feudalism for this reason, and it's a definite form of fascism. I'm glad that we share support for some sort of system that treats labor, who does all the useful work in society, with a degree of compassion and respect.