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This is mainly a critique of welfarism, not socialism. Socialism doesn't really take your wealth and give it to others; instead, it organizes production in such a way that what you (and others) make are for direct use by others (and you). Almost every time westerners discuss socialism, however, it's not viewed like this. Probably because westerners don't know what socialism is.
Meh, I think this is kind of a fine distinction - if you're organising production for the benefit of everyone, that implies that the group is the highest priority, that the individual must put themselves second to that.
What you said is also a critique of democracy and the US Constitution. People like thinking that those two things are all about the individual, but they're not. You could probably say they're mostly about the individual but the collective has to be addressed in order to maintain the individualism.
Democracy is not at all about the individual, and I think we have altogether too much of it in many parts of the world - what I mean by that is, that democracy when taken to its endpoint is just mob rule, on the other hand, if a system of law fundamentally recognises certain inalienable rights that even a large majority can't take away, then democracy serves very well indeed in deciding public/civic matters.
The ideology focuses too much on what the individual is entitled to have and not enough on what the individual is entitled to give.
Yeah, just because someone should have the right to keep their wealth entirely for themselves doesn't mean I believe they should. Socialism and welfarism seek to redistribute that wealth according to "need" though, as such the individual is forced to be charitable indiscriminately with no regard to who his/her money is going to and what projects/aims/ideas it is supporting.
How can an act of charity/philanthropy be moral? If it is compelled, it can never be - it has also long been my intuition that in socialism/welfarism there is a lack of faith in the human capacity for decency - if people must be compelled to do things for others, that implies that without that compulsion we'd live in a fundamentally selfish world where no-one would give a shit about anyone but themselves, I'm more optimistic than that about people on the whole.
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