Socialism

Idk I feel like there is an implication here that the people making less in a capitolistic society don't work as hard. Does that hold up though? Are the big execs at a wealthy company really working harder than teachers, EMTs, construction workers? Some of these people probably work a lot harder than the people in the 1% of a capitalistic society but the 1% are benefiting off their work

Sure there is nuance to it, and it’s good to help people and society, but we shouldn’t be forced to.

the other comment challenges one half of this, but i'll also challenge this bit since i get the sense this is a position you believe you hold but don't actually. i'll briefly illustrate why, and you can correct me if i'm assuming wrong of you here.

i am going to assume you support taxation. there are a lot of reasons to—it maintains your roads and allows your fellow citizens to survive, be housed, be clothed, and be fed. but you are compelled to pay taxes by legal sanction and even imprisonment. so if your issue is with being forced to help people and society, wouldn't it then be necessary to oppose taxation, since it does that but it's not voluntary?

I felt the same way as you do until I realized that actually socialism has very little to do with welfare, and more to do with other things. I will summarize a few that are important to me.

1. The workers owning the fruits of their labor: If you work for someone, and they get the fruits of your labor, what you have signed up for is tantamount to a slave contract. What capitalists say you get in favor of this system is investment capital, but why should the ability for someone to do something for work be derived from their ability to convince rich people to invest? All that amounts to is some people hoarding stuff, and then infinitely benefitting from their hoarding, gaining power over others due to their claim to ownership. Also there is no law of nature that says people should have the right to own infinitely. Obviously people have the right to own stuff they use, but stuff they never see, use, or touch, simply to infinitely extract value from it? That's up for debate. A better system is possible, one where you own your own labor and democracy (whether that's government or credit unions) decides what to invest in. Anecdotally, I think anyone who has worked for others can admit this is not only better for the worker, it's better for society. In my experience, CEO's and investors are literally the worst people to be making decisions for their workers. They are little more than leaches taking most of my salary, and offering BS opinions on how to do my job better. And for society, CEOs and other solely-profit-motive individuals are basically the reason for all society's ills, especially climate change. So the workers now own the fruits of their labor and are therefore, on average, richer and more free. Now what?

2. Equal Opportunity: One of the facts of life is that we are born randomly, to a random family, to a random set of circumstances. This requires a just society to provide equal opportunities to those born. This means that children need calories, education, and all the things children need to grow. We have pretty much already agreed to this in society, but we have failed to expand the definition of education to the market level, that of College level education. We also are failing about free school lunches, etc. We also are failing at the acceptance of people for who they are: trans, neurodivergent, racially, etc.

3. The elimination of unjust markets: Healthcare is an unjust market. Bad health implies you can not work. Your health is not an elastic good, so you will pay anything for it, which encourages doctors, hospitals, and drug companies to charge you for all you have. You cant price shop in the middle of an emergency. Lots of reasons make it an unjust market. These need to be socially owned, which is basically just a consumer union or a monopoly mutual insurance company, and is perfectly just to doctors just as much as any consumer union or mutual insurance company already is. It's just the power of the people to unionize against unjust market forces. Again this can be done via government or via other forms of consumer organizing, but it needs to be done. I'd say that any need is an unjust market, and that's why socialism tends to nationalize them. We already do this under capitalism too. We subsidize farming, medicine, water, sewer, and pretty much everything else. We just don't own the fruits after we have literally paid for them. That is true injustice, that the people can fund drug research, and then not own the drug. That's capitalism.

4. The handling of negative externalities or Environmentalism, the Tradgedy of the Commons, etc: Let's face it, extracting all the oil from under the ground and burning it, literally all of it, would destroy the planet. Fishing all the fish would destroy the oceans. Etc. We live in a world of limits, and people who own, while they do tend to protect what they own, don't pay the full price for their downstream effects. We need to ration, and we need to maintain. But capitalism forces us to grow to our own destruction.