Everything's worse but it was fair and moral (Part 2)
Questions crumble Utopian ideas: A deep dive into 500K homeless vs. 16 million vacant housing
This post is a continuation from my last post called Reasoning from Utopia vs. from Reality where I discuss the channel Second Thought which describes itself as being "devoted to the education and analysis of current events from a Leftist perspective.” The channel has dedicated many videos to denouncing capitalism and promoting socialism. Surprisingly, one source found 2/3rds of young britons want to live under a socialist economic system and data from 2023 showed that 54% of Gen Z hold negative views of capitalism and 41% hold favorable views of socialism.
To be clear, Second Thought isn’t talking about something like socialism (as in capitalism with strong welfare policies), but actual socialism as in the government ‘seizing the means of production.’ For example in his video titled Why would anyone work under socialism?, he describes the capitalist workplace being bad because you have to do what your boss tells you and that “as a result of the common ownership of the means of production, this kind of thing would not be a feature of socialism.” He’s also said in his America's Looming Housing Crisis that if you have wealth at your disposal, you should “buy and distribute copies of socialist books,” because after all “we wouldn’t have had Marx without Engels.”
If Second Thought was not advocating for ‘collective ownership over the means of production,’ but for something like a free-market, capitalist economy with more welfare providing more security for the citizens, I probably wouldn’t be writing this.
By the way, many people have said that we should be socialist ‘like Denmark.’ But Denmark isn’t socialist. The Denmark Prime Minister himself said specifically:
“I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore, I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy, Denmark is a market economy. ...”
As a Part 2 to my Reasoning from Utopia vs. from Reality post, in this article we’ll investigate one type of thinking used in Second Thought’s video, what Thomas Sowell calls “One-Stage Thinking.”
As described in this excerpt from his book, when Sowell was studying economics under professor Arthur Smithies at Harvard, he asked Sowell what policy he favored on a particular issue of the times. Sowell explained to Smithies what beneficial outcomes he could expect from his favorite policy. Smithies then asked him “And then what will happen?” Sowell then stopped for a moment to think and went on to explain the economic consequences he could expect from his policy. Smithies then asked him agina “And then what will happen?” Sowell started speculate more while coming to realize some of the negatives that his preferred policy would lead up to. Smithies persisted, asking him again: “And then what will happen?” Sowell finally realized that after enough dominoes had fallen, the policy he advocated for would eventually make people worse off than before it was enacted.
So in this article, to get a grasp of the perils of and the cure for One-Stage thinking,
1. First we’ll take a look at Second Thought’s video titled Why Would Anyone Work Under Socialism
Second we’ll pick up where we left off last time and take a look at one of the solutions he proposed in his video How Capitalism causes Loneliness
We’ll do a deep dive into the Utopia First approach to the homeless crisis in California because it’s similar to Second Thought’s solution to the housing issue
Let me reiterate that I’m certainly not saying capitalist countries like the United States are perfect - plenty of unfair things can and do happen in a capitalist countries. They should be changed and improved. However not all bad things that happen in a capitalist country are inherent features of capitalism.
The Socialist Utopia where Humans stop behaving like Humans
Let’s briefly take a look at another one of Second Thought’s videos Why Would Anyone Work Under Socialism? as it’s a demonstration of one-stage thinking. It wouldn’t get past many rounds of “and then what will happen?”
He says that having to work to earn food or housing is a “brutal way to organize labor in a society.”
After describing how in a socialist society, the government would take care of people’s food, shelter and so on, he asks “How do you get people to work if all their basic needs are met?” Then he essentially argues that people will still be motivated to work because it will be a lot more fun because you won’t have a boss and the workers will just ‘collectively’ call the shots.
First I’m wondering how exactly this works when people drastically differ in areas of expertise, experience and competence? There’s a reason factories in the states require factory managers to have 5+ years experience in engineering and operations management and pay them six-figures rather than having unskilled workers just … come to an agreement on how the factory should be run.
In any case, there are of course tons of terrible employers in the states making peoples jobs super crappy … but is whoever has the last say on which line cook will do what at the socialist government approved Burger King going to be any less of a jerk than an actual boss in a capitalist restaurant?
Anyways, Second Thought argues that once people move out of capitalist workplaces that treat you like “an interchangeable cog” and into socialist workplaces that “takes up a lot less of your time and treats you like a human being with agency,” we will be encouraged to work because we will just enjoy it like we enjoy cooking a meal for ourselves. Though apparently won’t be encouraged to work as much as in capitalism because as he says, work will take up a lot less of our time…
Second thought says:
“If we can make the unpleasant things we do pleasant, we will do them because that’s how we treat everything else. That’s why we cook for ourselves, make our beds and clean the counters, it’s why 1/4 Americans volunteers. We make necessary things pleasant. Doing work with a clear result that has a demonstrable impact where you can see progress and where you work with other people, makes people happy. Work that takes this into account, not just the bottom line, is work that is attractive. We can do that for the whole economy once we stop prioritizing profits.”
So… Somehow Janitors, Traffic Wardens, Portable Toilet Cleaners, Brick Layers, Roadkill collectors, Sewer Cleaners, Crime Scene Cleaners, Pest Control Officers, Dead Fish harvesters will all be motivated to do their (usually) unpleasant jobs despite already having food, housing and other basic needs already met. They won’t be resentful of the people doing the much cushier jobs.
Are Wind Turbine Technicians still going to be motivated to risk their lives to do their duty despite not really… having to? Who’s going to volunteer to do the jobs listed as most dangerous by OSHA? Jobs like Roofers, Logging Workers, Construction Workers, Fishing and Hunting Workers, Structural Iron and Steel Workers, Underground Mining Machine Operators, and Refuse Waste and Recyclable Material Collectors? Are people going to enjoy those jobs just because they can see the impact that their work is making?
So keep this logic in mind as we go forward because these flawed assumptions about human behavior are illustrative of why Second Thought’s video on loneliness doesn’t pan out.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Joseph Everett’s Newsletter to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.