Any government powerful enough to give you your house, food, clothes, etc is powerful enough to take it all away. Its also completly failed multiple times.
From what socialists have told me, REAL socialism has never been put in to practice just very loose versions of it that were labelled socialism when in fact weren't very much like it at all. They tried to recruit me not too long ago and I went to a couple of meetings but stopped going due to lazyness, but it seemed better than any political viewpoint that I've ever heard of before. Also they were all very very smart so I reckon it definitely has potential, but I'm a bit politically retarded like you too so my opinion doesn't mean too much.
A system where the means to production are owned either commonly or publicly. What this means is that everything non-human that is required for production (factories, machines, tools, infrastructure, capital etc...) are owned in a wide range of manners, in employee co-operatives, held invisibly in the name of the public, owned directly by the public or by a state operating on behalf of the public. People are often quick to point out that this or that isn't real socialism (and by extension that there are no true Scotsmen) but forms of socialism vary so widely in what form of social ownership they have, how much they rely on markets or planning, the size and function (if any) of the attached state etc that there is no one definition that encompasses all types. Just so you know the next time someone says "that wasn't real socialism" in response to something - they're talking shit. It can go all the way form basic reformism to National Socialism. At the libertarian part you have workers having direct control over means to production, there are state socialists who believe these things should be owned nationally and democratic socialists believe it should be brought about democratically. That's a bad thing because all democracy is inherently oppressive - You can read extensively on the tyranny of the majority if you wish. Even in anarcho-socialism these rules of who owns what still exist, the state is simply swapped out for the will of the collective - it's not really anarchist at all. That's why Anarcho-Capitalists sometimes claim that only An-Cap is actually Anarchistic. There's no reason you should not like it, that's begging the question. Research it and make a decision.
Actually This is why you should not like it. First off, its immoral. Do you think its a good thing to steal other peoples money at gunpoint? Of course not, and thats what the government does already so we have some socialism already. now blow that up and think about if we were pure socialism. yuck. I like an anarchist type society though and i have good reasons for it
It's not easy to simplify the basic idea of socialism so a "politically retarded" person can understand but I'll give it a shot. First, socialism, and other political philosophies, boils down to collectivism. The basic idea behind collectivism is that it's ok to sacrifice an individual human for the good of the group. The problem with this idea is that groups don't exist in reality but individual humans are real. The idea that helped me understand stand this is: There is no such thing as a forest, their are only individual trees. So a philosophy that puts an abstract idea (groups) above reality (individuals) is a logical and moral fail. Since a group is made up of individuals the question becomes: Why should one individual be sacrificed for the gain of another individual?
It depends on the type of socialism. The socialist ideal is pretty good, but the means to achieve it kinda suck. It's just impossible to have a socialist state without the use of force. Edit: I didn't really explain it very well. The root of all political ideological thinking is human nature. Real socialists believe that human nature is plastic and malleable. By this, they mean that human nature can be shaped. On the other hand, conservatives and capitalists believe that humans are "self-serving egoists"[Thomas Hobbes, "Leviathan"], but that these "self-serving egoists" are also capable of compassion. Socialists believe that the apparent selfishness of human nature has only arisen because of the capitalist world in which we live and that, if given the choice to live outside of capitalism, human nature would change to something far more selfless. So, to the average socialist, "enforced" socialism would not actually be necessary.
Then you've proved the socialists wrong. Selfless was probably the wrong word, it's more of a sense of community thing. Everyone works together and looks out for eachother to give everyone a decent standard of living. It's a method of ending disparity of wealth and class. By selfless I mean, the bourgeois manipulation of the proletariat comes to an end because they care more about the feelings of others than they do about their own capital gain.
No single person shapes human nature, society shapes human nature. For example, a socialist would say that the inherent greed of capitalism shapes people so that they think about life in terms of money=happiness. The problem is self-perpetuating. Kids grow up in a system where you need money to survive, and they want to make as much money as they can because they want to be rich. However, due to the nature of capitalism, getting rich is always at the expense of the poor. This means that getting rich is, in itself, a selfish act. I'm not actually a socialist by the way, I'm just a politics student trying to answer the OP's question. I don't mind answering your questions either, I love discussing politics.
@Malvolio Do you expect a "politically retarded" person to understand your explanation? I'm well versed in political philosophy and you lost me...just saying.
I really don't want to muddy up the thread with posts other than explanations for the OP. But everything after, and including, "The root of all political ideological thinking is human nature."
I don't believe that socialism could work, even anarcho communism unless it was small scale, like a village or at most a small city. The smaller the community the better because human beings care about people they know and are in contact with. If the community gets much bigger the people just become numbers and you WILL have corruption, becuase the bigger the community the bigger the bureaucracy that will ration the resources becomes and the more powerful.