If you have ever had any sort of relationship with anyone, you ought to have a keen sense (unless you are an obsessive naval gazer) that nothing about socialism could ever possibly work.
People are fundamentally similar macroscopically, but microscopically we’re all a little different. And not because of skin color, culture, faith, or upbringing. Even when those things are the same, we are each our own selves in unique and often exciting ways (and sometimes not so exciting).
Be someone’s friend or significant other, and this is obvious. The success of a friendship hinges on big things you have in common, but after spending a week or just a weekend in close quarters with them, you might wonder why you ever liked each other. Not always, of course, but there are differences—little things.
More intimate relationships, successful ones at least, require greater tolerance levels, willingness to adapt, and a stronger desire for the benefits of being a couple than not. In the latter sense, you work together to cohabitate indefinitely. But if you forget that and begin to allow little things to niggle away at the edges and become big things, you are likely doomed.
That’s a cursory evaluation for political explanation purposes, but it demonstrates why central planning can be offensive to the human condition even on the most superficial level. A few hundred politicians (or just a handful) aided by an impenetrable wall of bureaucrats can’t possibly attend to anyone’s wishes but their own, at the expense of all others.
The handful, dozen, or in some cases, scores of little things that make you different are either meaningless to the central planner or an obstruction. They must be ignored or plowed under. And while people are willing to give up some freedom for the perception of security, or some things to satisfy the lie that the State is trying to care for everyone, the planned economy accomplishes none of that.
Almost everyone ends up on the wrong end of a co-dependent relationship where your “partner” has police powers and very likely all the guns.
You find yourself in a relationship where you constantly walk on eggshells. You have to police what you say, where you go, what you buy, and who you know.
The slightest inference of “impropriety” could have you put to the question, detained, confined, or worse.
Life is unnecessarily burdensome in that world, including personal relationships with people all suffering under the weight of the same boot.
No one wants to be trapped in an authoritarian relationship, be they a co-worker, friend, or lover, so why would you think one with your government could be any better?
It is a relationship where you are not only the 24/7/365 subject of someone else’s will. Your labors are taxed heavily to fund the abuse.
The constitutional Republic may appear messy, but it lets you be you as long as being you doesn’t prevent someone else from being themselves under the thinnest possible framework of laws needed to protect life, speech, thought, contract, and property.
And while we are well on our way down the road to the wrong end of a co-dependent relationship with a “partner” who has police powers, we’ve not wholly tied a knot we can’t undo, but we’re close.
And getting closer thanks to misguided people who think the government has any interest in helping them pursue their individuality.
