Bernie Isn’t After Your iPhone

Drew Magary tried to come out as a capitalist today, but instead he came out as something a lot more common and relatable: someone who enjoys being in the middle class. Magary doesn’t brag about his capitalist exploits in the way that Trump-branded plastic straws do. He’s lamenting his impact, and admitting that he’s scared of change, ostensibly of the socialist kind. That’s understandable, but it’s got very little to do with the “socialism” on offer today. His confession is full of misnomers and crucial errors — he doesn’t quite define what socialism is, and none of the things he’s scared of are on the “socialist” agenda.
Let’s take it from the beginning: Magary defines his “capitalism” in material terms. He doesn’t talk about investing in companies, raising the rent on his tenants, or getting every last penny of value from his employees while keeping their wages down. Instead, he confesses to behaviors that are more readily described as “lazy consumerism.” He admits to throwing out plastic bags and diapers, and driving gas-powered cars to his non-solar-powered home. He acknowledges, implicitly, that this is undesirable behavior, but seems to think that it’s essential to his lifestyle, and is imperiled by creeping “socialism.” It isn’t.
The democratic socialists running for office across America aren’t calling for a nationwide police force to monitor the behavior of individual consumers. Bernie Sanders and AOC don’t want to scold Magary every time he tosses plastic in the garbage. Instead, social democrats around the country are trying to adjust market forces so that Margary doesn’t have to deal with plastic bags or gas-guzzling cars in the first place. Through 10 cent taxes on plastic bags and subsidies to companies developing solar power, electric cars, and biodegradable diapers, social democrats are trying to make sure that the market presents Magary with responsible options so that he can continue his lazy consumerism without having to feel bad. That’s not socialism. It’s just a tiny bit of market regulation, the kind that used to be normal in America pre-1980. The fact that we can’t separate small environmental regulation from all-out government-controlled markets says more about our — and Magary’s — definitions of “capitalism” and “socialism” than it does about any actual political proposals today.
Magary’s confessions continue. He likes money, and feels bad when he has less of it. Well guess what, Drew? Everyone likes money and feels bad when they have less of it. But no one running for the Democratic nomination is calling for him to have less money… unless Drew Magary is sitting on $32.1 million, in which case: is GEN hiring? If he does, in fact, have $32.1 million, then he has a point: Bernie Sanders would like him to pay a crushing 1% tax on that. If Drew finds that1% tax on a $32.1 million fortune oppressive, he could vote for Elizabeth Warren, whose wealth tax doesn’t kick in until Drew has amassed an even more astounding sum of $50 million. If he’s truly worried about having less money, then he certainly should avoid anyone looking to cut entitlements like Social Security, which historically has included not only Republicans but centrist Democrats like Joe Biden.
This is just another point where Magary’s confusion over what is and isn’t socialism clouds his argument. A real Soviet socialist wouldn’t hit a $50 millionaire with a 2 cent tax; they’d murder them. Looking at the candidate’s proposed wealth taxes, Bernie’s most extreme punishment is an 8% tax on fortunes over $10 billion. Not quite a death sentence.
Throughout his piece, Magary continually asserts that he likes his middle-class lifestyle and is scared of losing it. But no one is coming for his precious iPhone; they’re coming for small pieces of Tim Cook’s $625 million fortune and Apple’s astonishing $1 trillion. But Magary is so terrified of an imaginary form of socialism proposed by no one that he writes, “people like me are so used to this being The Way Things Are that it’s very frightening to consider doing things in a new way.”
While relatable, that doesn’t seem to be true, even for people like Drew. In 2016, we learned that millennials have a higher opinion of socialism than capitalism. One year later, we learned that Bernie Sanders is the most popular active politician in the nation. Perhaps millennials and Sanders fans can differentiate between the socialism of the USSR and the modest economic policies proposed by today’s candidates.
But Magary’s most crucial, fundamental error is one that isn’t even voiced: His definition of middle class is exclusively credited to “capitalism.” He continually pleads that he has a house, a phone, a car, a security system, because “I am a capitalist.” But the goods to which he’s so attached were made by workers educated in public schools, who attended universities with state-backed student loans. Those goods traveled on public roads, lit by public electricity. His iPhone works on a cell network that was state-subsidized. And everyone in that process, from laborers to management to Magary himself, has clean air and water, and some version of good schools for their children, because of policies that would have been considered “socialist” 200 years ago. Today, they’re just considered the bare necessities of a functioning “capitalist” market economy.
We’re faced with the same choice now as the middle classes that preceded us: Do we cower in fear of losing our comfortable lives, or do we recognize that small regulations on a barreling economic engine can actually lead to better markets?
Magary’s choice isn’t actually between socialism and capitalism: It’s just between two different capitalisms, one an amoral system that increasingly imperils our society, democracy, and environment, the other a slightly better version in which he can blissfully drop a biodegradable bag in the trash with the same unthinking ease with which he gets water out of the tap today. In one of these futures, he has to write a Medium post feeling bad about his choices, and in the other he can turn his attention to more worthy targets, like the NY Times’ inability to address racism. Please, please, let him choose the right one.
