Socialism, as far as Marx was concerned, is a transitional stage to Communism. This is why it gets a lot of push back. Because of that connection. Worse, youve got generations of people conflating the two. And worse still, you have a few examples of people who were claiming to be socialist, who were really just using socialism for their own ends.

The reality is that Socialism is about everything being about the betterment of the people. That assets are a shared ownership, rather than privately owned. This in turn creates a fairer distribution of the wealth generated. So everyone’s lives improve.

The issue, the real issue, is that socialism needs a very large government in order to work. The fear is that this would create out of control bureaucracy. With middle mangers everywhere doing middle manger things that would create a system that was slow and worse far easier to corrupt. On top of that, you have the issue of competition not being the driving force of innovation. The government would control and mandate investment and innovation. Which again comes back to the middle mangers. There is also an issue with free speech. After all, if the government controls everything, where do you go if that government doesnt see the issues that its created? And worse still, how might it handle those dissenting voices?

The reality is that no one system is “the best” and really what would work best is a mixed system. One that builds a well regulated economy while maintaining a safety net for the people. So you would have private businesses, competition, innovation combined with free healthcare, free education, unemployment support, worker rights, high taxes, and high transparency and accountability.