Socialist ... Or Worse?

I certainly knew that he holds a different political view from my own, but that had never stopped us from discussing events before. This time it was different. It was that word "privatization" -- a veritable hot button -- which I had pressed unknowingly. He referred to me in his e.mail reply as "possibly a socialist or worse" and suddenly my e.Mac screen turned purple, with ominous midnight-blue printing, and a fish-eye format. Much like self. Especially as it was 3 days before computer repairs allowed me to reply. What's wrong with being a socialist, I wanted to say (no idea what the "or worse" meant but I had enough to deal with in his reasons). He had said decisively: "after thinking about this overnight, I have decided that Private Enterprise will do a better job of running B.C. Ferries." My old friend was happy to anticipate privatization of all BC Ferries systems! So at the first opportunity, I had to relieve the pressure on my brain by reminding him that the fanatical old Free Enterpriser, W.A.C. Bennett, had established the government-owned BC Ferries Corporation in the first place -- and for good reasons. Because why? Because before that, we'd had a mish-mash of privately-owned bits-and-pieces of rag-tag routes. Once these were brought under the B.C. Ferries system, British Columbia's coastal communities blossomed by having a guaranteed "highway" -- the ferry system -- to get in and out of their communities. It's been 50 years -- plenty of time to understand the importance of B.C. Ferries to the wellbeing of the province. B.C. Ferries is a proven asset which serves the public good admirably. I told him that without being able to control the ferry system to serve the public in good times and in bad, B.C. would probably return to that rag-tag mish-mash of private for-profit enterprises which could inflate the fares or cancel routes, whatever was needed to enhance the bottom line. People are not the first priority in that scenario. The public good isn't a hot-button topic. If it were, we wouldn't have so much difficulty understanding Organized Crime. Unemployment, for example, often improves the profits of a global corporation. But where there's unemployment, there's poverty, homelessness, despair. And this is where Organized Crime thrives, too. If the public good can't be returned to a position of first priority, desperate people will feel there's no other way to earn an income. To survive. At University, in Economics, we talked a lot about the forms of production best suited to Capitalism. That was the Seventies and we decided that Space Travel was the best industry because its products were destroyed after use, constantly having to be replaced. Oil was certainly another. We understood that the best industry is a wasteful one which sells at a high price, must be replaced, leaving nothing behind. We noticed that the public good didn't enter into this equation. Now, 30+ years later, I think I see that narcotics is the product best suited to Capitalism. It's cheap to produce. It's constantly being used up. It creates its own expanding market. It's very profitable. Drug trafficking goes farther: it changes the society it thrives in. It can imprison its own customers, making their exploitation easy. If customers can't pay for the drugs they need, there's always the opportunity to "work" for Organized Crime, doing the crimes on Mr Big's behalf. If the people are clever enough or strong enough or "lucky" enough to survive, they might go up the crime ladder to a short, brutish, but cash-filled life -- a big attraction in our $$-oriented society -- but there's no thought of their welfare, much less the public good. The many who fail to become successful criminals simply crash by the wayside. Organized crime -- like other global corporations -- has absolutely no interest in people beyond that point. I told my friend that's how I see my home province these days: creating the breeding grounds for exploitation of an unemployed population with the danger of our social fabric crumbling around us. If priceless crown assets like B.C. Ferries and B.C. Rail and parts of highways can be "sold", I asked him, where's the stability? What is B.C., some kind of moveable bazaar? The biggest industry in B.C. today is Organized Crime, which sucks $6,000,000,000.00 (minimum estimate) out of the economy each year. How reassuring is that, for men, women, and their kids? If these were the Dirty Thirties, Lefties would be organizing workshops and lectures to explain these things to people, so that some sense could be made of today's society, and actions fashioned to serve the public good. And lots of people would gather in churches and community halls to listen and to talk and to show solidarity. We'd feel strength in being together, learning to control our lives again. The kids would feel it, too. It was called "community" in olden times. I couldn't tell my friend that part, though, because by now, I knew that if he heard the word "Leftie" he'd be bouncing off the walls again. He's a good person. Kind, generous, witty, loyal, concerned. But he's schooled in a different way: God has told him that people must suffer and that if people suffer willingly, we'll go to heaven and be with Him forevermore. My friend believes that our suffering is caused by our own failures, for example, same-sex marriages, abortion, contraception, and liberal values. His friendship is precious to me so I say nothing more about these important points. But oh, how strange it feels, to have lived long enough to come full circle, where it's once again desperately important to be a caring Socialist. And yet, where it's once again the fashion for even a good friend to think that to be a socialist is not quite "the worst" but very close to it.