Yah! I got published in the University Daily Kansan! Here's my Letter to the Editor, which was a response to a guest editorial. I've heard incredible range of reaction from "a slamdunk" to "dumbest letter to the editor ever." Here it is:
I would like to expand upon the analogy offered in an editorial comparing socialism and capitalism. The idea was that if student grades were averaged out, the best students would stop trying, thus proving socialism makes society lazy. But socialism isn't about taking away the rewards of the successful. Socialism is the allocation of public resources so that everybody will have a more fair chance to compete, or even survive.
To use the classroom analogy, socialism would be like giving every student a syllabus on the first day of class; and if a student misses that first day of class, they can still get a syllabus at another time. Capitalism would be giving the first three or four students who show up to class a syllabus and ignoring everyone else. Real world example: government funding for suburbs in the 1950s, which helped create property appreciation for homeowners. The funding ignored minorities who were red-lined out of home loans.
As a future millionaire myself, I'll have no problem paying more than my fair share of taxes for fire departments, libraries and health care because I know that having my neighbor's house burn down doesn't help me, having illiterate people doesn't help me and having sick people doesn't help me. Even if I'm a fire fighter, librarian or doctor, these don't help because I could have used that time or money on something new (see: Broken Window Fallacy).
As a last note, America can implement socialist policies — and has for centuries —without being socialist; much in the way that I can drink a beer without being an alcoholic. So stop looking for the simplest answer, because more times than not, it’s simple.
