Why is socialism so distasteful to those who seek improved societies?

In the contemporary United States, at a time of growing unemployment, a jobless man or woman is not a full member of the community. In order to receive even the exiguous welfare payments available, they must first have sought and, where applicable, accepted employment at whatever wage is on offer, however low the pay and distasteful the work. Only then are they entitled to the consideration and assistance of their fellow citizens.

Why do so few of us condemn such "reforms"—enacted under a Democratic president? Why are we so unmoved by the stigma attaching to their victims? Far from questioning this reversion to the practices of early industrial capitalism, we have adapted all too well and in consensual silence—in revealing contrast to an earlier generation. But then, as Tolstoy reminds us, there are "no conditions of life to which a man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees them accepted by everyone around him."

A game theorist might see the problem here quite clearly. The cheats, non-cooperators, free riders, slackers or whatever you want to call them should be stigmatized - punished in game lingo - and those who fail to punish should also be punished. This is called altruistic punishment and speaks to the idea that society as a whole prospers when individuals perform altruistic deeds at cost to themselves, when they do their "fair share", step up, man up or whatever you want to call it. So, you must look for work and you must accept work on offer and do your share of the lifting that elevates society as a whole or you are criticized for shirking.

It is also due to the socially destructive effects of dividing society into those who work and those who shirk, each of which has different incentives and imperatives. When this continues for years you get new generations that know no other way to be and who have internalized the ethos of their birth circumstances - both versions: they understand that they are scorned by the worker types as well as understanding the shirker ethos.

Some call this social death. The system might provide you with the minimum requirements to remain physically alive, but you have no place in society. It is a condition that the best and brightest strive to escape, but most lack the intelligence or energy to struggle against it and so it self perpetuates.

This "disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition...is...the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments." Those are not my words. They were written by Adam Smith, who regarded the likelihood that we would come to admire wealth and despise poverty, admire success and scorn failure, as the greatest risk facing us in the commercial society whose advent he predicted. It is now upon us.

We have not "come to admire wealth and despise poverty", we have always done so. We rightly admire those who are successful - the alpha members of the pack - since they are the best of us and their deeds benefit us all. What can be criticized is that due to social distortions it is not always the best and brightest who succeed. Some of them can more properly be considered to be criminals who prosper not because they are productive or brilliant so much as by deceit and violence. The distinctions are not sharp. Some criminals find shelter in government, or hijack government completely. Some individuals rationalize and excuse criminal behavior as a legitimate route to high status: the Kennedy fortune in the US was built on drug running money during the period of prohibition. If they can take the criminal route to high society then it is no surprise that others might slip over to the dark side and admire the power however it was achieved.

But there's a worse problem: the more common shirking becomes, the more shirkers you get.

as the Wall Street Journal article points out:

Mr. Sobelman has plenty of company. In a recent study of people who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth, economists Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza and Luigi Zingales found that about four out of five believe defaulting on a mortgage is morally wrong if one can afford to pay it. But they also found that the people become 82% more likely to say they'll default if they know someone else who defaulted.

We are better off living in a culture that believes that if you say you'll do something, you'll try your level best to do it. Most of us get pretty outraged, as we should, when companies violate those norms because hey, they're not actually legally obligated to ensure that you have a computer that turns on, or a toaster that makes toast. That outrage serves a valuable function whether it is directed at people or companies. It allows us to put some level of trust in those around us.

Socialism leads to sick societies where everyone shirks as much as possible in expectation that someone else, somewhere else, will foot the bill. This can work for a time so long as it begins from a level of great wealth but it consumes social as well as physical capital and monotonically degrades until society collapses. It infantalizes society, making it dependent, uncreative and unproductive.

Socialism needs a better grounding in reality and what many will see as a moral compass. I hesitate to use the M word that way, preferring instead a notion of an evolved set of norms and preferences that have contributed to social success over time and so deserve due consideration in any reform attempt, and not be discarded lightly.