Why Socialism Will Never Really Work

I feel it necessary to comment on this subject before going on to discuss the presidential candidates. Socialism is a form of economics which believes that all resources and production firms should belong to the community as a whole (http://www.dictionary.com/). In theory, this sounds perfect; in practice, an entirely different picture is painted. When everything belongs to the State, then the State has to dictate how the market acts. Rather than being guided by the "invisible hand", as a free-market economy is, market prices for goods are fixed, as are the amount produced. In other words, instead of allowing supply and demand set prices, the economy depends on people setting them. If the price is set too low, then there will be a shortage as people rush to buy up all that they can; conversely, if the price is set to high, no one can purchase the product, and all of the capital that went to making the product is wasted, assuming that a quality product was made. This leads to the other part of the problem. Socialism dictates how much a person is paid, and usually people are paid much closer to equal wages than in other economies: in other words, a doctor, after going through eight years of higher education, will not make much more than a trash collector or a janitor. So, what incentive does anyone have to enter a high-skill job, when they can make close to the same amount of money flipping burgers? If someone is only making $15,000 a year, and he can't get a better salary elsewhere, he's only going to do a $15,000 a year quality job. This equal-salary policy is done to rid an economy of social classes; the theory is that if everyone makes the same amount of money, then everyone will be in the same class. The only problem with this is that the different classes is what drive us to better ourselves. If we only had one class, we would stagnate and die off. The incentive of bettering our economic status is what drives innovation and leads to scientific breakthroughs. If we remove the incentive, we remove the drive to better ourselves. This leads to requiring the government to force us to do tasks, most likely under some kind of threat. The end result is something like Cuba or the former Soviet Union: labor camps under strict guard forcing the citizenry to work.