Arthur E. Sowers is a resident of Harbeson.
Dave Skocik’s good letter asks this important question: “Will America become a third-world country?” Spoiler: Skocik is warning us that socialism will make us a third-world country.
But, as I pondered his letter and while I was composing this letter, I was thinking about a different important question: How many people have been paying attention to Donald Trump’s efforts to deliberately introduce enough chaos into the 2026 election to allow him to declare, for example, at an opportune time, a national emergency over “election security” and then take over the ballot counting? Trump has refused to declare that he will not meddle with the 2026 election (and he has already tried, but failed, to overthrow our 2020 election on “conspiracy” grounds that were massively disproven in court cases and investigations). Here is just one of many articles I have seen about this, from CNN: “The light is blinking red on Trump messing with the 2026 election.” Here is another article, via CBS News, that explains how Trump and his buddies are already meddling with our elections: “Whistleblower warns Postal Service’s new mail ballot system has ‘potentially catastrophic problems.’” And here is just one recent article, from North Carolina’s News & Observer, about Trump being willing to ignore our Constitution: “Donald Trump’s not-so-subtle hint at ignoring the Constitution.”
Trump has been justifying his takeover of our upcoming elections mainly on the grounds of noncitizen voting. But this has always been a “nothing” issue. If you were really keeping up with the news on this, you would have also seen articles like this one, released by the Georgia secretary of state: “State Audit Proves Georgia is National Leader in Clean Voter Lists.” There’s also a conservative opinion on Facebook about how noncitizen voting is miniscule. I reference it because it was through a credible third party and is widely cited on the internet, similar to this KERA News article: “Project 2025 think tank data shows noncitizen voting isn’t widespread, despite GOP concerns.” There are many more of these articles, and you can find them on the internet, as I did, by using this keyword string: “Best state evidence articles saying voter lists are clean.” I also used this keyword string in another internet search: “Conservative voices say non-citizen voting is not a problem.” Therefore, Trump’s false claim of many illegal voters keeps getting refuted by the facts and is just another example of him making a mountain out of a molehill, so he can wedge himself into greater power to expand his dominance and control over more and more of all of our lives. So, I say: The problem is Trump, not socialism. Or, to put it another way, will Trump make America become a fascist country, rather than a third-world country?
Otherwise, for the rest of this letter, I will switch back to the subject of Skocik’s warning about socialism. In short, that threat is overblown. Skocik’s story gave good, coherent, correct summaries and morally valid judgments of the real histories of Russia, China, Cuba, etc., where fanatical, power-seeking and otherwise bad people, like Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, caused violent revolutions that also changed capitalist economies to communist/socialist/fascist economies. Yes, in all of Skocik’s examples, the revolutions caused massive suffering and deaths of very large numbers of otherwise innocent people. However, Skocik’s anti-socialist letter completely left out two very important facts of history.
First, most third-world countries operate in a capitalist — not socialist — economy. And they exist as permanently bad situations. As a matter of fact, since as early as the beginning of detailed written history, landownership was concentrated in the hands of only a few people, who ruled as tyrants or as oligarchs in a plutocracy, where the rich landowners bled the underling renters to death (read the ancient Greek histories of Solon and Pisistratus). The majority of the people were always poor. Socialism didn’t become an item until the early to mid-1800s. Therefore, this is the first part of my two-part refutation of Skocik’s warning. Third-world conditions were the rule for thousands of years before the theory of socialism became any kind of ideology.
The second part of my two-part refutation of Skocik’s warning is the fact that socialist components of an economy can come into existence without violence or a suddenness or decline in the standard of living or a loss of democracy. In post-World War II England, Clement Attlee and others carried out an administrative nationalization of sectors, adding up to about 20% of the British economy. Decades later, conservative Margaret Thatcher privatized back most, but not all, of those nationalized sectors in the belief that private ownership was better. But, on the contrary, there are reasons to think that private ownership was not better. See, for example, this We Own It article: “10 reasons why privatisation is bad for you.” The histories of privatization failures and subsequent renationalizations can also be easily found by an internet search.
Socialism in the U.S. was expanded by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and that also happened without violence or bad endings. Polls showed majority approval of these socialist programs, and studies often show more efficiency than privatized management. Social Security overhead is less than 1%! Further, virtually all the countries of the European Union have many socialist sectors and mixed capitalist-socialist systems. These developed successfully over decades, all over the world, by peaceful political processes and often involved “social democrat” or “labor” political parties. Denmark has socialized medicine, and all the Nordic countries have high socialist components and consistently rank as having the happiest people in the world, low crime, high educational attainment and low problems with “conspiracy theory” mindset thinking.
Finally, it looks like Skocik is unaware that China, Russia and Vietnam have all evolved, over decades, from pure hard-line communism to a mixed capitalist-communist/socialist economy. And, especially in the last two decades, they are doing quite well without any wars (Russia is the recent exception), bloodshed or extra suffering. And Chinese electric cars are as good as Tesla electric cars but cost only half as much. Another fact not well appreciated among Americans is that 28% of U.S. land is government-owned; therefore, we are already 28% communist. And our federal plus state plus local/county/city budgets add up to about one-third of our gross domestic product, and thus, we are essentially already a mixed capitalist-socialist economy. These facts of history prove that, if socialism comes into the picture, it does not necessarily mean you will get a bad ending.
Overall, I would say that anyone who says the word “socialism” in a terrifying tone of voice might be jumping to a conclusion before looking at all the details.
I also wondered why Skocik’s letter said not one word about Trump. Internet searches confirmed my memory about: 1.) Trump saying he will “take” countries like Canada, Greenland, etc., and militarily, if necessary (like Hitler and the others Skocik listed); 2.) Trump constantly preaching against socialism/communism; 3.) Trump stating that one of his ultimate goals — presented as a positive thing — is to privatize (i.e., “de-socialism-ize”) many government businesses, including the U.S. Postal Service, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and others. Then, do you remember how Trump bombed Obamacare? See this Brookings article: “Six ways Trump has sabotaged the Affordable Care Act.”
I did a Google search on this keyword string: “What is the ripoff people get when privatization takes place.” And here is a quote of the first two sentences of the artificial intelligence summary, given with reference links: “The ‘ripoff’ of privatization is that the public pays higher prices for worse services while private shareholders pocket money meant for public infrastructure. Governments often sell off public assets or outsource essential operations under the promise of efficiency, but citizens end up losing out.” My two cents is that Trump is running a self-serving, corruption-based self-destruct sequence on this country, while “salvaging” government assets to sell to crony capitalism rich guys and big corporations (in other words, “socialism for the rich”). Or, to answer Skocik’s question, yes, this country may become a third-world country but not because of socialism. The real goal should be to keep people like Hitler, Stalin, etc., and greedy-selfish “Trumpy types” from getting into power in the first place.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
