I'm no socialist and despite how people like to think we're in the majority good, we're not. Two of the most powerful and common emotions a human has, which govern almost everything, are fear and greed and they're not nice emotions.
And that reminds me of one of the reasons why I believe socialism has a not insignificant following, it's not to make everything better for everyone, it's to make sure "they" don't have more than "me", "because it's unfair".
An interesting experiment done by a professor (it could have been Robert Cialdini phd) into social perceptions of money, sat 2 people at a table along with $100 and asked them to share it.
One was a person off the street and one was an actor. They then assigned each a role. The Actor got to decide how the $100 was shared between them, then the person off the street got to decide whether they got that amount or they got nothing.
After performing this test many, many times, it turned out that if the actor said he wanted $70 or more, then the member of the public said he'd rather have nothing. Amusingly, rather than leave the room with $30 more than they entered with, they'd rather leave with nothing, than let the other take the loins share.
To see if this was because $100 was not enough, I believe the same experiment was repeated with a greater sum producing the same results. Then to see if the results were because we're greedy, already have enough and it might be down to the western perception of money, they tried the same experiments in third world countries where the sum of $100 was more than most earn in a month. Crazily, nothing changed. These people with barely a penny, would rather have nothing, than see someone else have more.
And this one:
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class.
That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan".
All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.
The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.
As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
Could not be any simpler than that.
