Why I Want A Socialist Economy

When I discuss different economic models with people the general complaint I hear about socialism is “nobody will do any work if they don’t have to.” That’s actually something I want. Our amazing capitalist system means that because there’s money to be made in computers lots of people want to work with computers regardless of whether they find them truly interesting or not.

I’ve been having an irritating time with what should be rock solid pieces of technology in the last couple days.

Two days ago I went to the ATM to get $500 to pay my rent. I punched in $500, the machine futzed around for about 30 seconds before crapping out with a “transaction could not be completed” error. That’s all fine and good since I’m pretty sure the machine only had $20s in it and that would have been a fat stack of cash, except that it debited my account the $500.

The machine knows, with absolute certainty that it didn’t give me the money. What kind of shitty programming does it take for the system to not properly handle this relatively simple error condition?

Then I find out that the Mauritanian Peace Corps Invitees Google group has just disappeared from cyberspace. I received no notification that anything was being done to it. As best I can tell, no system exists for determining where the hell it went.

I was a manager of the group. I should have been notified when the group ceased to exist, whatever the reason. The whole point of the damned thing was that the same questions are asked every year and the archives allowed people to get their answers without endless repetition.

Part of my motivations for trying to create systems that guarantee everyone’s basic needs are met are humanitarian, but at least as much as that it is the simple observation that people who are not passionate about their work tend to do at best a mediocre job. Nothing will suck the passion out of an activity like forcing someone to do it.

I just want everything to work as well as it has the potential to and we are definitely not there yet.