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social[s87,jmc]		Socialism

	The socialist idea is attractive to many people, but it
hasn't worked as well as capitalism so far.  Our object is to
propose how socialism might be made to work better than it does.
Maybe it would then be better than capitalism but maybe not.  We
certainly wouldn't advise a country like the U.S. where
capitalism works relatively well to switch, but perhaps some
country that already has socialism might improve it along the
lines suggested.

	1. Electoral democracy is essential.  This includes
access to the media and the right to nominate candidates to every
group including groups wanting to get rid of socialism.  First of
all, the right engage in politics is a human right in any decent
society.  Secondly, limiting the effects of intellectual
arrogance, greed and corruption requires that it be possible to
vote the rascals out of office.

	2. The right of emigration is essential.  The right of
the elected leaders to give some group a bad deal needs to be
limited by the possibility of that people who think they can do
better elsewhere to emigrate.  Political thinkers designing as
society almost always imagine their design to have a monopoly.  A
society ought to be stable against secession by any individuals
or groups.

	3. Critics of socialism have often claimed that socialism
is not in accord with human nature.  This has turned out to be
true but not exactly in the way they usually predicted.  It has
often turned out much worse than they predicted.  Present
socialist societies bear a strong resemblance to feudal
societies.

	The early critics of socialism thought that ordinary
people wouldn't develop the public spirited attitude required to
not take advantage of other people.  What they didn't anticipate
was that the leadership of a socialist society has tended to go
to people with the ideology of gangsters.

	4. The allocation of rewards must be as impersonal as
possible.  Modern capitalism has greatly reduced the level of
personal antagonism based on personal rivalry for specific
benefits.  Neighbors are rarely competitors for specific jobs.
The larger the organization at a given level, the more promotion
is through the operation of the system rather than a matter of
the boss choosing between me and him.

	5. Computers can help.  Shadow prices can be better than
real prices for allocating resources among well understood
activities.  However, the availability of computers can't prevent
politically powerful people from ignoring the results of the
computations or even forcing biases on the programs.