A Camping Trip In Why Not Socialism By G.A. Cohen

After reading Why Not Socialism by G.A. Cohen I’ve concluded that I respectfully disagree with his stance that Socialism is a better way to manage an economy than capitalism. Even though socialism sounds good on paper, I have found through readings and history that it doesn’t work well in the real-world. Cohen has the premise that capitalism ruins the sense of equality and the principle of community in society. He gives an example on pages 3 and 4 of his book where he talks about a camping trip. The premise is that it would be more beneficial if a group of friends shared their supplies rather than each individual bringing their own. He says, “You and I and a whole bunch of other people go on a camping trip. … We have facilities to carry out our enterprise: we have, for example, pots and pans, oil, coffee, fishing rods, canoes, a soccer ball, decks of cards, and so forth. And, as is usual on camping trips, we avail ourselves of those facilities collectively: even if they are privately owned things, they are under collective control for the duration of the trip, and we have shared understandings about who is going to use them when, and under what circumstances, and why. … There are plenty of differences, but our mutual understandings and the spirit of the enterprise ensure that there are no inequalities to which anyone could make a principled objection.”() This quote stood out to me because camping trips usually involve you going with friends and family, and I don’t believe that society would conform to that given an entire population. Everyone tends to be at least a little selfish, and not everyone wants to give up the possessions they worked for. While looking across history I feel as if socialism always inevitably fails in time, and leads to full out war. An example in history would be the USSR and present-day Venezuela where there is an all-out civil war going on today. Another thing Cohen fails to mention in his book is events such as The Fall of the Berlin Wall, Cuba, and the mess that is North Korea as he fails to give examples of where it has succeeded.

I also feel as though socialists tend to be hypocrites as they proudly strut around all the luxuries of capitalism, while at the same time preaching socialism. I don’t understand why politicians can say they will take a majority of your wages while living in million-dollar mansions. I find this highly hypocritical, as Capitalism promotes the idea of achievement while socialism promotes mediocrity. If you want something, I feel as though you need to work hard for it, while socialism promotes and incentives laziness. If you incentive people to become lazy, what do you think your society is going to become?

I, like Hayak, believe that a healthy economy is helped by a decentralized price system. This leads me to my point that Hayek’s idea that a decentralized price system is important for a healthy and efficient economy. I happen to agree that letting a central authority plan our economy is foolish, as we should let the market govern itself. Hayek believed that making economic allocations required local knowledge and that only a decentralized price system could deliver local knowledge to the decision-makers. Hayak said in his book The Use of Knowledge in Society, “Fundamentally, in a system in which the knowledge of the relevant facts is dispersed among many people, prices can act to coordinate the separate actions of different people in the same way as subjective values help the individual to coördinate the parts of his plan.”() I agree that we need to have a free market and let the individuals be the decision-makers for a multitude of reasons. For starters, having a free market leads to more freedom and choices, which is something this country was founded on. Everyone should have the right to buy what they want and sell what they want at any given time. This in terms leads to more economic growth and competition in the market as every single person’s voice is heard. Under Capitalism, everyone has an opportunity to work their way up the ranks to the top, while socialism, on the other hand, stifles your ability to prosper. I believe that the government should stay out of our lives and pockets as much as possible, and socialism causes high government regulation and interference. Cohen feels though a free market is based on “Greed and Fear” while giving hollow analogies such as his camping example listed above.