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Wisdom Letter #35 | The one about the “isms”
“In times of a pandemic, everyone’s a socialist”
There’s a certain ring of truth to that quote. When we are in a crisis of this scale we all rely on our governments to take care of us.
We want the state to have more power, and more access so that it can infringe on some of our rights to take care of the greater good of the nation. Right?
We want the state to dole out more welfare schemes that take care of the unlucky ones among us, its okay if the prosperous few have to empty their pockets just a little bit extra to help support that endeavor. After all, its the state that enabled their path to this prosperity. Right?
And no, we don’t want free market competition right now, that will be the death of an already struggling economy. Right?
There’s a narrative brewing around the world right now, that an authoritarian communist system (China) is better suited to deal with a large scale pandemic than a democratic system based on free market economics (US of A).
By the time this crisis is over, there’s a good chance that most of the world would have moved many inches left on the political scale. In fact, the methods and systems we will have to build to tackle this crisis will ensure that the state gets more and more power. And we know, once a state grabs some power, its nearly impossible to wrest it back.
A small example of this are the contact tracing apps developed by various governments.
They have been criticized of collecting more data than necessary to do their jobs. These apps are exactly the kind of tool that will enable problematic surveillance states in the future.
But who can question the government right now on the nuance of which permissions its app “needs” to do effective contract tracing, and which permissions its actually taking unnecessarily which I am uncomfortable with.
As I said — “In times of a pandemic, everyone’s a socialist”.
And naive socialism believes in the idea of an incorruptible state with more and more power for enabling the greater good.
An idea is not very different from a virus.
It has the power to spread far and wide, and spread fast. It can take over the world in a matter of a few days. And sometimes even the whole of humanity combined can find it hard to come out of the shackles of the idea.
I think by the time the Corona Virus is under control, the idea of Socialism will be well and truly on its way to spreading far and wide into the world. Its an idea that has been around for a few centuries and has already been tried, tested and failed in multiple iterations in multiple countries. (Including India)
Every new generation still finds it seductive and falls into the Utopian dreams that socialism promises. (By the way, the Millennial Socialists are also coming.)
But is it really that bad?
And what are our alternatives?
And what exactly goes on in China? Is it Socialism? Or Communism, Capitalism, Authoritarianism ? Or something else? How did China get to where it is today, how did it become one of the most powerful economies in the world within a couple of generations?
Today on The Wisdom Project, we explore the “isms” being used around the world to drive policy. We rekindle the age old “socialism vs capitalism” debate in a new light. And we try to understand a much misrepresented value system that very few people actually get — Libertarianism.
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