Allocation of Goods and Services
Socialism at its core seek to be a more fair system to distribute wealth. Capitalistic market economics distribute the wealth to people who contribute the most to creating the wealth, however their contributions are often pre-existing wealth. While this greatly incentivizes society’s resources’ efficient use, it inordinately rewards people with unique talents, people who create new things, and people who already have wealth.
Socialism and communism oppose this. No matter how much one person creates for humanity, he is still just one person and deserves nothing more than the next. All should only get what they need, and all should have to work just as hard whether they are inventors or laborers. All men need the same things, and these should be provided to them by society. They are positive rights that everyone should get regardless of what they do or it takes.
Obviously without strong incentives, people may not work as hard. This is however okay in a post-scarcity society. If all of the United States’ production was actually distributed fairly, each person would get $63,000 equivalent of goods and services per year. If the United Kingdom’s was, every person would get £35,000. Even after subtracting 20% for taxes, $51,000/£28,000 is more than almost anyone needs to survive. Even if ending employment caused a moderate drop in this amount, it would clearly not be the end of the world.
There are however proposed incentives to keep society’s productivity high without the imposed incentives of capitalism. Socialism typically has the state oversee people’s work and ensure that they are working as hard as they should. It also would then have government workers allocating workers and resources and deciding what needs to be done rather than letting people with money do so to try to get the best return. With a competent, efficient government, it could then keep production almost as high as capitalism does without needing any market.
Under communism, there is obviously neither a state nor money to require people to work, but by that point, people will simply be used to the fairness of socialism and will know what society needs. They therefore will just look at those around them and voluntarily choose to work on producing what society needs without needing any incentives to compel them to.