Explain Like I'm Five

Hold over from Stalin and Mao era, the commies was the big bad. Like after 9/11 it was the Muslims

Socialism. Production and distribution is owned by the community (government).

It has nothing to do with "Handouts". Or helping your neighbor really.

There is no redistribution of wealth. That is communism.

Socialism with handouts is communism.

You could have a completely Socialistic society that let's some of it's people starve because it benefits the majority.

A great example to look at socialism is the nazi party creating Volkswagen.

People in Germany needed an affordable car. They created the production and distribution of affordable cars, owned and operated by the controlling government party.

Now, you can debate all you want on if it was a good or bad idea.

Average German looking for simple affordable car? Probably would think it was a good idea.

Rich German looking for a Duesenberg? Probably hates the idea of Volkswagen and spending their tax dollars on it.

Poor German? They aren't getting a car anyways

A large government can easily have a monopoly on a good or service.

If that's a good or bad thing is debatable

For example, say America was 100% Socialistic.

Government would gain access to all satalites and towers and issue the Volkstelefon. Affordable phone and internet for everyone!

Sounds great?

Imagine if tomorrow Trump issued his phone in that style.

Probably not a good idea?

So why all the hate?

ELI5: Because socialism is not always the right answer just like capitalism isn't always the right answer.

Personally I don't mind "social safety nets".

But for me the issue is that I work hard to have, and to continue having a nice life for my family and I. I took the risk, I invested in myself, and made the right choices over and over again. There should be a reward for that.

And while I don't think people should be homeless and starving, I'm realistic enough about the current politics (of both parties) to know that the wealthy won't be the ones to pay for it, it will be weaponized to drive the wealth gap further apart.

Sure in a perfect world billionaires would be taxed (and actually have to pay), and we could provide all this wonderful socialism everyone here wants, but that's never actually going to happen and I don't feel like paying even more taxes to watch the funds disappear into the already massive (and misused) budget.

There used to be a country called the

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

It was built on the principles of socialism

It turns out that actually living in a socialist state is oppressive to the point where millions upon millions were starved because that was what was needed to give socialism the chance to take off in a capitalist world.

In case you're not aware, lemmy.world has (pre-emptively) defederated from the two instances that have the vast majority of socialists and communists on Lemmy, hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml.

If you want a lot more socialists to read your question and provide more informative answers, you may want to post in a community on lemmy.ml or lemmy.zip, which don't defederate those instances.

People will downvote my message and complain that hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml are "tankie" instances, which I interpret to mean that they hate people who want to make socialism happen in real life some day.